Tessa Hadley, FREE LOVE: A Novel
[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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[0:32]And now, back to our daily author interview site and a quick hello from some of my kids.
[0:36]Hi, hi, hello.
[0:38]Enjoy the show.
[0:40]Tessa Hadley is the author of Free Love, a novel.
[0:43]Tessa is also the author of four highly praised novels, Accidents in the Home,
[0:48]which was long listed for the Guardian First Book Award.
[0:50]Everything will be all right, the Master Bedroom, and the London Train,
[0:54]which was a New York Times notable book.
[0:56]She's also the author of two short story collections, Sunstroke and Mary Love,
[1:00]both of which were New York Times notable books as well.
[1:03]Her stories regularly appear in the New Yorker, and she lives in London.
[1:07]By the way, sometimes people ask me for Zivi Books.
[1:10]My new publishing company, they say, you know, if you could have any book that was on the market now
[1:15]and have it be a Zivi book, which what would it be?
[1:17]And I think that this book Free Love by Tessa Hadley is something that I really wish had been a Zivi book.
[1:21]So anyway, enjoy.
[1:23]Welcome, Tessa.
[1:24]Thank you so much for coming on Mom's Son of Time to read books to discuss Free Love.
[1:29]It's a pleasure to be here, Zivi.
[1:30]Thank you for having me on the program.
[1:33]Of course, I have to say, I posted that I was reading your book over the weekend.
[1:37]And so many people were like, oh my gosh, just have to do a book out.
[1:40]That's so exciting.
[1:42]So you have a fan club over here.
[1:45]Lovely to hear.
[1:46]It's always been a bit of a miracle to me how those books that, in a way,
[1:50]as I write them, they feel very British, very English.
[1:53]And I just love it that they obviously set off some reverberation that you in America respond to.
[2:00]And that's such a privilege for me.
[2:03]I mean, everything in Britain seems more exotic.
[2:06]And like, it's like down to Abby, right?
[2:09]I don't know.
[2:09]It's like everything just, it's just the accents that you can tell.
[2:13]Like, I don't know.
[2:13]There's a thing.
[2:14]There's just the works the other way around to be.
[2:17]You realize you need to know.
[2:18]I don't know.
[2:19]And then there's a lot ofics.
[2:21]I suppose that's a lovely thing, isn't it?
[2:23]And isn't it one of the great novel traditions that we read American novels and Americans read
[2:29]animals?
[2:30]And it's the same English, but it's, you know, full of such different worlds,
[2:34]but we do know each other in all kinds of ways, but partly through our fiction traditions.
[2:41]So true.
[2:42]Actually, I co-host a podcast with a woman named Tracy Cox, and she's in London.
[2:46]Yes, even hearing all the idiosyncrasies in language when we talk about the most basic things.
[2:52]I like get such a kick out of each word.
[2:55]So yes.
[2:56]But when you went, when my first books went to, you know, were published in America, it,
[3:01]first of all, the editors kind of wanted to change everything like drawing pins and
[3:06]push chairs and flats and, you know, rubbish instead of garbage.
[3:11]But in the end, actually, that's really, we, I, we, when we're reading American, but we want
[3:17]strollers and pacifiers.
[3:20]I don't know why I'm doing that baby thing, but those are all the words that bring
[3:24]to mind that are different.
[3:26]So that's part of the pleasure, isn't it?
[3:28]Yes.
[3:29]I think you're right.
[3:30]I think you're absolutely right.
[3:31]But of course, part of the pleasure of this book is that you're an absolutely beautiful writer,
[3:34]as I'm sure you know, but maybe doesn't hurt to hear again, but from the very beginning,
[3:39]you, the way you create a scene and get us so close to like the dressing room and then
[3:46]as you go through from, you know, dingy flats and to all backyards to, and all these
[3:54]things, even like watching the car outside waiting is actually because it gets her stuff.
[3:59]I mean, all these images are so visual and amazing.
[4:04]You just like sink right into it.
[4:06]Well, that's just lovely to hear because I can't quite know that about myself.
[4:11]You can't, you're just doing in a workman like way the best you can and it's always just
[4:19]delicious.
[4:20]When people say, well, I saw it, I was there and I saw it because, because that's what
[4:24]you want.
[4:25]Yeah.
[4:26]Would you mind giving a little synopsis of the book and then maybe I could just read
[4:29]a passage that I thought was particularly great to hear.
[4:33]It's quite unusual for me in that it's really is set in, I mean, especially to someone
[4:38]as young as you must see the past.
[4:41]It's the past and I was only a little girl in the 1960s.
[4:45]So I've set my whole novel in 1967 and 1968, which is a long time ago, but I think we appreciate
[4:53]from the vantage point of now that it was pivotal.
[4:56]It was a moment at which everything changed and I wanted to feel that change, but not not
[5:02]in the abstract, not as a piece of sociology.
[5:05]The change happens in my story across one woman's life.
[5:09]She begins the book giving a, a casual family dinner party, which she's a bourgeois, suburban
[5:17]housewife, her husband's a civil servant.
[5:19]He's a really decent, nice man.
[5:21]They have two kids.
[5:23]She's happy with her life and then something happens at the dinner party.
[5:26]A young man, I'm not spoiling the story really.
[5:30]It happens so quickly.
[5:31]A young man kisses her almost randomly because he thinks that would be an unboiled
[5:36]what I think to do.
[5:37]And he's a rebel and he's a dropout and he's an intellectual and he lives in a shoddy
[5:42]sort of bedside in a weird, dilapidated, dark, deco place in West London where the counterculture
[5:48]is happening.
[5:50]And that kiss sort of it really is a sort of sleeping beauty thing.
[5:55]It awakens Phyllis, the housewife, and she pursues him to his room and her life changes
[6:04]in every possible way.
[6:06]And the novel sort of stands out from there and it doesn't only follow what happens
[6:10]to her and her love affair, it also follows through on, well, what does that do to the family?
[6:19]What does that, what happens to her husband?
[6:21]What about those two children?
[6:23]What becomes of them?
[6:25]Like the whole thing sort of widens out.
[6:27]Well, I have to say, I am so glad that I read this book I covered a cover because I would
[6:31]never have predicted the way it all twisted and finished up.
[6:36]I was like, anyway, I couldn't believe it.
[6:40]So well done.
[6:41]I can never really see this because there's a surprise that I had up my sleeve and I had
[6:46]it from the beginning.
[6:47]I knew it.
[6:48]I knew it was really.
[6:49]Oh, yeah.
[6:50]I wrote around it, holding it back and yet at the same time, I hope putting little
[6:54]seeds and signs in there.
[6:56]I mean, I would have to go back now and reread it to find the clues because I do not make
[7:02]you miss them.
[7:03]Yeah.
[7:04]I know you're not meant to.
[7:05]It's just that you've got to make it work when you do get to that point and oh my goodness,
[7:09]you mustn't have anything.
[7:10]Oh, no, that's not possible.
[7:12]It's sort of got to work with what you've read so far so that's what I meant.
[7:15]You weren't meant to.
[7:16]You weren't meant to think it didn't work.
[7:17]Okay.
[7:18]All right.
[7:19]Well, either way, it was, I can't believe it.
[7:20]I was like, oh my gosh.
[7:22]Anyway, but here's a little passage just to show your sensational writing and anyway,
[7:28]it's towards the beginning.
[7:29]Well, not so beginning.
[7:30]It's like 77.
[7:31]Is it Lascivius?
[7:32]Is that he pronounce it?
[7:33]It is.
[7:34]His Lascivius uninhibited gaze was as arousing almost as if he touched her.
[7:37]And by the way, this is where Nikki and Phyllis are getting together.
[7:41]She had never been seen like this before or allowed herself to be seen without any ironic
[7:45]deflection, not with Roger, who is her husband, nor that other man getting his pleasure.
[7:50]Nikki was so heedless and unconstrained so that she too was unconstrained and didn't care
[7:54]how he saw her.
[7:55]Married love was too kind, she thought.
[7:57]It hovered on the threshold of this knowledge and never went inside.
[8:01]Never took the necessary liberties because her shared life with her husband was grown up and
[8:05]consider it.
[8:06]They had made love considerably, like innocence.
[8:09]Also, she'd been ill with miscarriages after giving breath of collet, which was why in
[8:12]the end they had come home to England.
[8:14]This had shadowed their lovemaking with the gravity of failure, made them apologetic.
[8:18]Nikki had no history of failure and no grown up authority in the world.
[8:22]So when he made love to her, it was with his whole frank concentration and with such
[8:25]urgency as if nothing else was important.
[8:28]That was what Phyllis thought then too.
[8:30]Nothing else was important.
[8:31]I love that.
[8:34]And of course, it's just one truth.
[8:38]I thought that's one of the great things about the novel as a form.
[8:42]You can have that and it's true.
[8:45]Nothing else was important.
[8:46]Then you put something next to it in the chapter, which makes you think, oh, yeah, actually,
[8:50]that doesn't last long and all sorts of other things are important, like your children.
[8:56]So that's what I love about novels is they hold all these truths alongside each other
[9:03]and they're all valid.
[9:05]Yes.
[9:06]It's amazing.
[9:07]I know.
[9:08]I felt so badly for her children.
[9:09]It was just pining away, really.
[9:12]One pines and maybe the other daughter, I feel, might be a great survivor.
[9:19]I think she might use her mum's vanishing and abandonment of the family.
[9:25]I think Collette, her daughter might use that as a stepping off board for her own adventure,
[9:31]which will be even bigger.
[9:32]Maybe you should break that next.
[9:34]Maybe I should break that whole novel about Collette and what happens with her life.
[9:40]You should get us all the way up to the present.
[9:43]Do you know, and when I was planning this novel, I did briefly entertain the idea of bringing
[9:48]the story up to the present and then I, which in a way that I've done that before in
[9:52]novels, I've sort of hoped, you know, had a big strides through time and I just thought
[9:58]it was too long.
[10:00]I wanted the focus. I wanted the intensity of that sort of 18 months or whatever. It just
[10:05]pops. It's two years. No, you're right. This was perfect. That's why we need like to jump ahead
[10:11]and see what happens next. Well, that's a lovely thought. I will hold it in mind.
[10:16]I'll let over in the midst of all your eyes. Take me back a little bit to how you got started
[10:23]in this whole field and how we arrived here. You mean writing novels at all?
[10:28]Yes, just mania, really. Being an obsessive reader from a very early age, being one of those
[10:38]little girls who was actually quite shy and bad at being in a crowd and joining in, had my intense
[10:45]friendships with certain girlfriends. This is when we were 8, 9, 10, 11, and maybe out of it.
[10:54]And we imagined we had imaginary games and I always think that actually that's where the
[11:00]gym for the novel making, the story making comes from. When we sat down together and said,
[11:05]I know, we're living on an island and we've got these children. That's what their names are.
[11:10]We have to road to the mainland. This was one game we played month after month for a few years.
[11:16]So I think that was important. But I was a reader obsessively. I love to read everything,
[11:23]went to the library, took out the books, read them, took them back. And then at some point
[11:27]that went crossed over into being, I want to write a book which will capture my life, which will
[11:34]capture my world, not my life, exclusive to me, but the world I'm in. And then there were long
[11:41]years of trying to do that and failing. Actually, while I was relevant to your title of your podcast,
[11:48]while I would mum with young kids, I was not only reading lots because that was my salvation.
[11:56]I was just talking to my best friend about that. I was talking about her daughter,
[12:00]just has given over her life 24 seven to her children. That's my friend's grandchildren.
[12:06]And my friend and I were saying, we couldn't do that. We had to greedily claw back time for
[12:13]reading, which is sort of, I imagine, that's what your podcast is sort of all about. Anyway,
[12:18]anyway, so not only was I reading in my time of being a mother to young children, now I'm a
[12:25]grandmother and they're all very grown up. I was trying to write. And actually I was a very slow
[12:31]starter and I had quite a lot of anguishing years of failing to write and writing about four novels
[12:39]were no good at all. And they're now in landfill, thank goodness. So that's what I was doing. And
[12:45]then in my 40s late, I got published. And although that was very painful for as long as the apprenticeship
[12:54]lasted and wasn't working, I kind of don't now. It seems right. It seems the right part of the story.
[13:01]I sort of needed to get that mature for me, not this is not true of everybody, but for me to be
[13:08]ready to tell my stories the way I wanted to. And then one wonderful day, you know, I found an agent,
[13:17]I'd hardly known before how to even do those things. I wasn't OFA with the world publishing,
[13:22]but I did do an MA and creative writing, which was like your MFA. And that was wonderful transition,
[13:28]not really because no one can teach you to write, but you have an audience and you have sort
[13:33]of almost like an editor, somebody working with you. And you also learn, oh, you need to send it
[13:38]to an agent, you need to probably send it to quite a few agents and then they, you know, all that
[13:43]stuff. So one wonderful day while I was at work, because I was teaching at the time in the office,
[13:50]I got a phone call and I was going to be published by Jonathan Cape. And then only a couple of weeks
[13:55]later, I had a phone call from Jennifer Bath, my wonderful US publisher, who's still my publisher,
[14:02]and a transformation began at a very, I mean, a very, very joyous moment for me.
[14:08]Oh, that's amazing. Yeah. So then how many like, which novels tell me about your novels,
[14:14]I know I read about it on your website, but I've written, this is my eighth. And my first one,
[14:22]I think my first one, which was called, they've all been published both in the UK and the US,
[14:27]I had Jennifer Bath from the beginning, that that was marvelous. She was with Henry Holt, then,
[14:31]and then I moved with her to HarperCollins, accidents in the home. I sort of,
[14:38]I knew I'd failed at those great big clunky ugly novels. I knew I began to know I could write a short
[14:46]story. I had a grasp of that arc and that shape. And I wrote a couple that I was satisfied with.
[14:54]So accidents in the home, my first novel is really structured as a series of short stories put
[15:00]end to end, but they're all about the same people. I mean, it is a novel, you know, it's about
[15:04]them and things change and time goes on, but I managed to achieve that by still dealing in small
[15:12]pieces. And it was only on about my third or fourth novel that I really suddenly felt the
[15:19]spaciousness of the novel form. And I was able to relax a bit and wait for things to happen and
[15:26]resolve themselves and follow through more slowly. So I felt confident in that way for the last
[15:32]sort of three or four novels, I would say. Wow. That's interesting. The idea of like sort of stretching
[15:38]out, like you're putting your fingers. Yeah. Of course, you're so not putting your feet up.
[15:44]Oh, I know. Of course. But you're right. It does, it sort of does feel like stretching out and
[15:49]letting, letting yourself go into the local writing of the novel, not quite worrying about where
[15:56]it's going. I mean, you are all the time worrying, but you can, you can have those two things
[16:01]at once. You can be local and precise and get that bit right, but you still sort of know where
[16:06]the bridge is going to come down. You're building a long, long bridge across a wide river.
[16:11]And, and you, you sort of, you have, you can, you can see where it's going to come down, but you're
[16:16]also just concentrated on that bit. Actually, as a, as a metaphor, that doesn't work terribly well.
[16:21]I'm sure an engineer would tell you that is no way to go for it. It's a good way to make a novel.
[16:28]My daughter last night, I was, I said something and, and she said, really? And I said, no,
[16:33]no, no, it was an analogy. And she's like, well, what's an analogy? I'm like, uh, like,
[16:38]you are to your brother, like this person is to, you know, and she's like, what? And I was like,
[16:43]well, it's also like, anyway, we had this whole conversation about the difference, you know, like
[16:47]analogies and comparisons and similes. Anyway, it went nowhere, but really, anyway,
[16:52]none of that was not on nowhere. It will have gone inside and she will be reaching out
[16:58]stored away for the SAT prep or something. So what's your process like when you're writing a novel?
[17:05]I like to have one started while, so while free love is now being published this week in the
[17:12]UK and in a couple of weeks in the US, I have got the beginnings of a new one just very tentatively
[17:19]down. I, I think about it first and I make some notes, but it's all about story and character
[17:27]and, and, and shape. It's not like research. I'm not doing a great heavy sessions in the library.
[17:33]I never do those actually. I, I, I make it up first and then sometimes I check. I think,
[17:38]oh, I wonder what nursing was really like in the 1960s, you know, I had to do a little bit of
[17:43]research about that thought for free love because one of my characters is a nurse,
[17:47]trainee nurse, but so, but not that I would hate the idea of spending two years, you know,
[17:53]reading stuff about the 1960s and then eventually sort of getting that into writing. That's,
[17:57]I think you've got to go the other way around. Imagine it first, dream it first loads and loads
[18:02]of dreaming really. You've got to just, this is putting your feet up again. You've got to just
[18:08]relax and, and let the story sort of come inside your head exactly as we did when we were those
[18:15]little girls thinking, what should we play? I know, you know, it's that. It's, it's a magical thing.
[18:22]And then you also have to be strenuous with it because you are a grown up and you're going to
[18:26]deliver, deliver a novel so you have to sort of strenuously think, will that work? And what can I do
[18:31]that? What could I, where could I take that? So lots of that thinking, but not, not, not dense,
[18:36]dense, not loads of post-its and not notebooks full, just a, some sketching. And then, and then,
[18:42]I do actually write from the beginning to the end. I don't, and I don't write a very, very rough
[18:48]draft. I write at the time it feels as if I'm writing the book. Of course, then I do go back
[18:55]through it. And I do cut a lot. And I'll sometimes put new scenes in even before I show it to anybody,
[19:00]but no, I think I'm not, I know lots of my favorite writers who do write a thin, quick forward
[19:08]pushing kind of draft and then go back and fill it out. I was talking with Lily King, who's
[19:15]I've loved where we came from myself. I really love, I, she's, I was talking to her about her short
[19:19]stories. Oh, yeah. Yeah, the day. And she was saying that it was a breakthrough for her when she
[19:25]learned to just write ahead, just push on with momentum and come back later. But I, I'm very
[19:30]controlling, I think, and I can't do that. So I am writing rather finished sort of final
[19:38]seeming prose, even if, of course, later I'm tinkering with it. And then I, so I write, hopefully,
[19:44]unless there's any catastrophes slowly, it takes me a couple of years to write a novel,
[19:51]which slowly from the beginning to the end. And, and, and I'm, I'm thinking, of course,
[19:57]all the time, not only about the local,
[20:00]I'll be writing now, but I'm also thinking, what do I need to come?
[20:04]Is it time to build that in?
[20:06]Where shall I veal?
[20:08]That secret I've got up nicely, if you know,
[20:11]and how would I best do that?
[20:14]And so on and so forth.
[20:15]So it's a sort of funny back and forth between the very, very,
[20:20]this sentence, this scene, like you said at the beginning,
[20:24]make, try and make them see what I'm seeing in my mind.
[20:28]But at the same time, trying to hold the long span of the book.
[20:32]Wow.
[20:33]And you do tape it, or you handwrite it.
[20:35]Yeah, type it on the computer.
[20:36]Handwriting the notes in my notebook and tinkering in my notebook
[20:40]and scribbling and jotting, but the actual sentences
[20:45]are going on to the computer.
[20:47]And I love that.
[20:48]I can't, and that, of course, I did write the first,
[20:50]those awful novels on a typewriter.
[20:54]But now that seems so immobile once it was there on the page.
[20:59]I mean, you could paint bits with tippex and do that.
[21:02]But the loveliness of being able to cut and paste and move around.
[21:08]And just, oh, suddenly, that part of should be there.
[21:10]But ease of that, I actually can't now imagine
[21:15]what it must have been like for most of the great writers.
[21:17]I'm mostly at my, you know.
[21:19]That's what I was just thinking.
[21:20]All of the classics, what would they be if they had been,
[21:23]you know, twinkled with cut and paste?
[21:27]But I think what they must, what it must be,
[21:30]is that it's simply where you do a certain level of composing.
[21:34]They're doing more in their head before it goes down onto the page,
[21:40]to a certain extent, where as I am, we in our era are able to sort of
[21:45]almost throw down at an improvised level onto the page
[21:49]and then perfect on the page.
[21:51]It must be that.
[21:52]Yes.
[21:53]And in Henry James used to dictate verbally to, you know, a secretary
[21:59]who took down his words.
[22:00]That's, that's very difficult to imagine, isn't it?
[22:03]Yeah.
[22:04]Yes.
[22:05]Wow.
[22:06]She put some credit.
[22:07]I hope she does.
[22:08]She does.
[22:09]She's quite famous.
[22:10]I mean, there was a man first, a young spot.
[22:12]And then there was a woman sealed or a bowsin' pet.
[22:16]And she is quite, she wrote a book about him afterwards.
[22:19]And yeah, she's, she's, she's right.
[22:20]She's got her do.
[22:21]Okay.
[22:22]Yes.
[22:23]I tell you about Henry James and that.
[22:25]Oh, well.
[22:26]Amazing.
[22:27]Well, what advice would you give for an aspiring author?
[22:30]Two and aspiring author, I should say.
[22:33]I would say read, read, read.
[22:38]And that's what fertilizes everything.
[22:40]You know, read the books you love.
[22:42]Don't read beautifully, but, but, but devour the books you love and, and sort of look
[22:47]at how they're working, not to spoil them.
[22:49]It doesn't spoil them, but to just admire what's going on and watch the sentences.
[22:55]And I mean, in a way, my advice would be, don't do it unless you man it clean it to.
[23:01]And you'll find nearly every writer will say, I couldn't stop.
[23:05]I failed.
[23:06]I hated it, but I had to try again.
[23:09]So, you know, that process will sort people out.
[23:12]And those who do a, a first manuscript and it doesn't really work and they'll just give
[23:18]up.
[23:19]That's fine.
[23:20]That's very sensible of them.
[23:21]They can do something else, like, cook lovely dinners or something.
[23:24]If they, if they want to write, they will pick themselves up and try and try again.
[23:30]And so keep trying.
[23:33]And, and what would be my, I mean, I think my, I discovered my breakthrough, how I got
[23:39]the first Spory's right, is look close to home first, you, you don't have to write about
[23:46]yourself.
[23:47]You don't have to strictly write about what you know, but there's a lovely feeling when
[23:51]I was writing those first stories where I thought I had something real to say.
[23:56]And I wasn't just imitating other writers.
[23:59]It was because I was finding it very close at hand around me in the places I'd lived,
[24:05]the kind of people I lived with, the stuff I knew as a person, the very limited, you
[24:13]know, wisdom I had about life from, from family, otherhood, daughterhood, and a certain
[24:21]class, I suppose, and a certain pattern of relations that belong to my era, all of that
[24:28]stuff that almost I'd gone beyond it thinking, well, that's boring.
[24:32]That's, that does not worth much.
[24:34]Instead, that is the place that most of the best writing begins.
[24:39]It sort of begins at home, but that doesn't mean literally writing your own story,
[24:44]begins at home and close to home in your neighborhood.
[24:47]I love that.
[24:48]That's amazing.
[24:49]Are your kids so proud of you?
[24:50]Did they tell you that?
[24:51]I hope they are, they're all boys men.
[24:55]So they're ironic and teasing, but they are, they are, they're all coming to my London
[25:00]launch.
[25:01]I'm going up to London for my launch tomorrow and they're all turning up and we're going
[25:05]for real art games.
[25:06]Yeah, it is, it is really sweet.
[25:09]Oh, it's so great.
[25:10]I wish I were in London to just pop out your lunch.
[25:12]Oh, I wish you were.
[25:14]It would be so nice to see you though.
[25:16]Do you have boys or do you have girls or make kids?
[25:18]I have two boys and two girls.
[25:21]How lovely.
[25:22]Four, great.
[25:23]I had three boys.
[25:24]Yeah.
[25:25]Yeah, it's fun.
[25:27]It's circus, but it's circus, absolutely and occasionally extraordinarily vexing and difficult.
[25:36]I have to tell you as I'm like watching and listening to your story, I have my first
[25:40]memoir coming out.
[25:41]I'll be 45.
[25:42]I'm a 46 this summer and it's going to come out and I've been like maniacally writing
[25:47]it and rewriting it and rewriting it for basically 20 years of this point.
[25:50]And I'm listening to you and I'm thinking, wow, that's so neat.
[25:53]Like I could, I could try to just keep doing this.
[25:56]Like maybe I'll be sitting there one day on a podcast or whatever is invented by then.
[26:02]You know, talking because my kids are nowhere near, I mean, they're tiny, but maybe
[26:06]one day I'll be the grandmother who's like writing the books, like how cool would that
[26:10]be.
[26:11]So anyway, congratulations.
[26:13]That's very exciting.
[26:14]That's lovely.
[26:15]How super.
[26:16]It feels very, very good, doesn't it?
[26:18]Thank you.
[26:19]Yes.
[26:20]All right.
[26:21]Well, thank you.
[26:22]Tessa, it was so lovely to talk with you today and get your own little English idiosyncrasies
[26:28]and all that along the way.
[26:31]Lovely to talk to you today.
[26:33]Thank you so much for having me on the podcast.
[26:35]Okay.
[26:36]Have fun tomorrow.
[26:37]Okay.
[26:38]Bye bye.
[26:39]Bye bye.
[26:40]Thanks for listening to this episode of Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books.
[26:43]Don't forget to follow me on Instagram at zibbowens and at Moms Don't Have Time to Read
[26:47]Books.
[26:48]Also sign up for my newsletter at zibbowens.com and sign up for my virtual book club and meet
[26:53]lots of authors on Zoom every other week.
[26:55]Thanks so much to Steve and Ryan in fact, Texture Sound for the Sound Editing.
[26:59]And thank you to Morning Moon Productions for providing this fantastic intro and
[27:02]now trim music.