Brenda Janowitz, THE LIZ TAYLOR RING: A Novel
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[0:41]Brenda Genowitz is the author of The Liz Taylor Ring.
[0:44]She's the author of Seven Novels, also including The Grace Kelly Dress,
[0:48]which I interviewed her for on this podcast.
[0:50]She is the former books correspondent for Pop Sugar,
[0:53]and her work has appeared in The New York Times,
[0:56]The Real Simple, The Washington Post,
[0:58]and The New York Post, among others, including the modern love column.
[1:01]She is a graduate of Cornell University in Hofstra School of Law,
[1:04]and lives in New York with her husband and two sons.
[1:07]You can find her on Instagram at Brenda Genowitz' writer.
[1:10]Welcome, Brenda.
[1:11]Thank you so much for coming back on Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books
[1:14]to talk about The Liz Taylor Ring, your latest book.
[1:17]Thank you for having me.
[1:18]I'm so thrilled to be here.
[1:20]I know we are in the midst of all of the excitement of public and everything.
[1:24]So for those who don't, I want to hear you talk about this book, obviously.
[1:27]But for a minute, for people who might not be authors,
[1:30]or don't know what it's like to have a book come out in a given week.
[1:34]What does public look like?
[1:35]What does it look like for you?
[1:37]Yeah.
[1:39]I mean, I guess I would just start off by saying it's completely overwhelming.
[1:43]You think you're prepared for it, but you're not.
[1:45]Of course, launching a book during COVID is completely different
[1:48]because normally I'd have all these live events
[1:51]and you get like the energy and you get to see friends and you get to see other authors.
[1:55]This time, mostly everything's virtual, although ironically,
[1:59]I'm about to hop on a plane to go to Lichfield Books.
[2:02]I do have one or two in person things, but it's a little different this time around
[2:07]just because it's so sort of heavily reliant on screens.
[2:10]So my eyes are exhausted from doing online stuff.
[2:14]But mostly it's just, you know, really exciting.
[2:17]It's, you know, you sort of work on a book for so long.
[2:20]And in the case of the Listalering, it was two years of work.
[2:24]And finally, your baby sort of out there in the world.
[2:27]And so it's all the things, you know, overwhelming, wonderful, exciting, scary,
[2:33]you know, a little of everything.
[2:35]But it's definitely, it's weird for this to be my seventh book
[2:38]and feel like I'm doing things for the first time just because the world has changed so dramatically.
[2:43]So that's, that's the one little caveat for probably this time.
[2:48]Oh my gosh. Well, when we did our event at Barnes and Noble,
[2:51]it was like right before, it was like the last event before the pandemic started, right?
[2:57]I feel like, yeah, it's my, you know.
[3:00]And honestly, I thought that my two book events were going to book end COVID
[3:04]because March 3rd was the Grace Kelly dress.
[3:06]And this was kind of February 2022.
[3:08]And I was like, oh, plenty of everything's going to be fine by then.
[3:12]So, you know, over the summer it was first it was like, well, can you do live events?
[3:17]And I was like, if it's safe, I'll go.
[3:20]But then I had one last week in Connecticut that canceled rescheduled for April.
[3:25]So I'm hopeful that'll happen.
[3:27]But let's field book state on the books.
[3:29]So that's good.
[3:30]But you know, you just have to be really comfortable with moving things around quickly
[3:35]and going with the flow, which is not my forte learning and trying to sort of go with the flow.
[3:41]I feel like anything in life now I'm trying not to put too much time into planning any event.
[3:47]Yeah.
[3:48]Like because it could easily be canceled.
[3:50]So I'm like, I will plan this.
[3:51]Yeah.
[3:52]You know, in a sort of offhanded way and I will save any details for the last minute, which is not what I would normally do either.
[3:59]Exactly.
[4:00]It's tricky.
[4:01]But I guess it's good.
[4:02]You know, it's good to always be learning and trying new things and learning to sort of zig and zag when you have to.
[4:09]Okay. So the book, the book though, and you know, this is a great cover and everything. I love it. And I'm like, we, is it true, by the way, the list, Taylor really has two rows of eyelashes that you put in the book.
[4:22]Yes. Isn't that insane.
[4:24]I mean, she's so famous for her eyes.
[4:26]Her eyes, just the color, her eye color is so incredibly stunning.
[4:31]But I always noticed it looked like her lashes were always very heavily lined and that was part of, you know, the dramatic look.
[4:39]And yeah, she has this thing where she has two rows of lashes.
[4:42]So she has this gorgeous alabaster skin with this black hair. And so these very dark lashes.
[4:49]Yeah. So that's part of the look and why her eyes are so incredibly dramatic and incredible.
[4:54]I also read something on the internet just recently because even though I'm done with the book, I still can't get enough of Elizabeth Taylor and I'm still constantly researching and people are sending me articles and I'm still reading.
[5:05]Someone in an article recently said there's something about how many inches her eyeball is from her eyebrow and maybe it's a little higher than most people and that's why her eyes are so big and beautiful.
[5:17]I'm sure there is. I'm sure if I dug deeper there's like a medical term for what that is or whatever. But yeah, I thought that was really interesting. So just sort of the way her face is spaced out is just sort of perfect and gorgeous.
[5:31]Perfect photographs and movies. Yeah.
[5:34]Cool. Have you always been a huge Taylor fan? Always. Always. You know, I've always been a fan of these like 1950s and 1960s starlets from when I was younger and they used to play those black and white movies on Sundays.
[5:47]I always used to watch old movies on Sundays. Sometimes with my mom, sometimes without.
[5:52]And I just sort of became obsessed with them. They were so different from what I was seeing at the time. And there were something just so different about the zeitgeist of the time as compared to the time I was living in that I was sort of fascinated with.
[6:06]So yeah, I couldn't get enough of these films and my favorites were really Grace Kelly Elizabeth Taylor Audrey Hepburn.
[6:13]We're just certain that I fell in love with. And then, of course, when I was growing up, Elizabeth Taylor was still alive. So she was sort of still in the news. She was basically a news item from the time she was like nine or 10 years old until the day she died.
[6:27]You know, I was very aware of her. And then, of course, with her incredible age activism, it just like added this other layer of things that I was obsessed about because here's this beautiful woman with all of her diamonds and she could just be still sitting on a yacht, but no, she was going to dedicate her life to charity, which I thought was incredible.
[6:46]I feel like I don't know enough about her. I mean, she's I don't do as many deep dives. I feel like into older starlets as except for maybe like princess diet, but she's not older. I don't know.
[6:59]We did do that. I mean, I've always been fascinated by like a woman who could have that many marriages and what did that mean and what did that say about her.
[7:07]Yes. Well, yeah, I'm really interested in that. And also, since now I've done Grace Kelly and now I'm doing Elizabeth Taylor and next I'm doing Audrey Hepburn. I'm also sort of obsessed with how the world perceived all of these three women.
[7:22]I think because back then, you know, of course, the head paparazzi, but it wasn't like now with the internet and just constant and social media, of course, where they're posting their own stuff.
[7:32]People knew less, but somehow the public persona, they weren't in complete control of it. Like today you look at the Kardashians, they're more in control of their image because they're contributing to social media and reality shows where as these starlets.
[7:48]You know, Liz gets married. They don't know. They don't know the real story. They just sort of project what's going on. So it's like, oh, she's married again, she's married again, they sort of create this aura around her, whereas now I think it's more controlled.
[8:01]So that's really fascinating to me sort of with our let's became which sort of, you know, which, what do I like which stereotype essentially like which archetype.
[8:12]Yeah, right. Like the goddess like Grace Kelly was always a princess before she was a princess, but Liz Taylor, because of the many marriages, some people said maybe not so nice things about her.
[8:24]When in the meantime, you know, she married everyone she was in luck with. So there's something kind of amazing about that.
[8:31]It's true. I mean, that would yeah, if you had to publicly acknowledge every single relationship.
[8:37]I feel it right. I mean, that's very different. Anyway, okay, so the book itself, I love the family. I love by the way that you started off with a girl who basically turns her family business into like a complete success.
[8:53]And that she's only 19 at the time and says like it's time to put this online and next thing you know, they've built this entire brand and then they can even have, you know, their family be the models and all of that.
[9:04]So start off with this entrepreneurial blast.
[9:08]Yeah, so you know, part of the book. This is not biographical fiction. It's a novel. It's about this fictional family.
[9:15]But I had been researching Elizabeth Taylor so much parts of her sort of made their way into the book in a lot of different ways. And at the end of the book, I have a little appendix where I go chapter by chapter telling readers exactly what reference inspired that chapter.
[9:31]In terms of the entrepreneurial spirit, Elizabeth Taylor, once she was not doing as many movies, she again didn't just relax on it. Yeah, she started what would become a multi actually I think it's a billion dollar perfume business with her white diamonds and that whole thing from the 80s.
[9:50]She started this business. It became huge and that sort of fascinated me because. Oh, but wait, I should go back. I'm sorry. In terms of business acumen. Of course, she was
[10:00]the first actress to ever make $1 million.
[10:03]And she negotiated it almost by accident
[10:05]because she didn't necessarily want to do Cleopatra.
[10:08]And so in Eddie Fisher, who she was married to
[10:10]at the time, picked up the phone,
[10:12]he's like, what do you wanna do?
[10:13]And she said, tell them I want a million dollars.
[10:16]And I think she thought she was kidding,
[10:18]but they came back and they were like, no problem.
[10:20]And so she was like, okay,
[10:21]and she even worked actress
[10:23]to ever earn a million dollars for a film.
[10:25]So I mean, she always had this savvy.
[10:27]She had been in the business and she was a kid.
[10:29]So I certainly wanted to put that into the book,
[10:33]this idea of a woman being really business savvy.
[10:36]And maybe you think she's one thing,
[10:37]but she's really a lot of different things.
[10:40]And I think a big part of the book is also family story
[10:43]and family lore and how that changes.
[10:45]So Eddie perceives herself as the one having created
[10:49]this business, the business is all because of her.
[10:52]But her brother and her husband,
[10:54]who now run the business,
[10:56]maybe have a different idea.
[10:58]So that's one of the first times we see,
[11:00]like family stories, what's actually true,
[11:02]who's telling the truth, which parts of it are true.
[11:06]And you have a line like that,
[11:08]but let me find it about like it doesn't matter what's true.
[11:12]Or that that's, yeah, at the end of,
[11:15]this is right in the beginning,
[11:15]but you said, Courtney, the last soul,
[11:17]thought her father, who she still mourned
[11:20]with the same ferocity as the day he died,
[11:21]even though he'd been gone for seven years,
[11:23]wanted at a poker game.
[11:24]He was unbeatable when he was on a streak once upon a time.
[11:28]None of these stories are true.
[11:29]All of these stories are true.
[11:31]More than one thing can be true at once.
[11:33]I love that.
[11:34]Thank you.
[11:35]Yeah, that's really for me where the book started
[11:37]and sort of what the book is about
[11:39]because, you know, I think a lot about family stories.
[11:43]And I should take a step back
[11:44]because I'm a very black and white person
[11:46]and I'm not good at living in the gray,
[11:49]but I think especially now life is all about the gray.
[11:53]And when we think about these family stories,
[11:54]this one's right, that one's right,
[11:56]the truth is in the middle.
[11:58]I think the more I thought about it
[11:59]and the more I investigated it,
[12:01]I thought, no, everything's true.
[12:03]And maybe nothing's true and maybe that's not even the point.
[12:06]And so I really wanted to infuse that in the book.
[12:09]So parts of the book have different family stories
[12:11]told by different family members at different times.
[12:13]And you get to sort of see when they put their sort of film on it,
[12:18]how the story sort of turns out.
[12:20]Oh, and at one point, Richie tells the story
[12:22]of creating the business too.
[12:24]And so we get a different glimpse.
[12:25]So you see it from lots of different family members.
[12:28]And that's something I really wanted to explore.
[12:30]Right now I'm working on an essay for real simple
[12:32]and I'm tracing an heirloom item
[12:34]through my husband's family.
[12:36]And so I wrote the first draft thinking of what I first learned.
[12:40]Like when they first told me about the story 14 years ago
[12:42]and I met my husband.
[12:44]Well, and so what was the story?
[12:45]So it's about an heirloom ring
[12:48]that belonged to my mother-in-law's father.
[12:50]And it was really important in the family.
[12:52]And this was one of the things that,
[12:55]my point is when I gave them the draft,
[12:58]my husband was like, that's not right.
[12:59]And my mother-in-law's like, that's not right.
[13:01]And they didn't necessarily agree.
[13:02]But when I was first told the story,
[13:05]this was the most valuable ring.
[13:06]Everyone wanted it.
[13:07]It was a very big deal.
[13:09]The grandfather was known by this ring,
[13:11]but it was always known that my husband would get it
[13:13]because he was the only grandson.
[13:15]But it was interesting when I talked about,
[13:17]this was the most valuable ring.
[13:18]My husband's like, well, I don't know if it was the most valuable.
[13:20]I'm like, well, when I was told the story,
[13:22]this was like a Ruby Liz Taylor would own.
[13:26]And then, when I gave them drafts of it,
[13:29]they both had little nitpicks.
[13:31]And I thought that was so interesting
[13:33]because I have my memory of how the story was told to me.
[13:36]They have their memory of living it and telling it to me.
[13:39]So it sort of went through all these iterations.
[13:41]And then you'll appreciate this
[13:42]because you work with essays all the time,
[13:44]eventually the word count got cut down.
[13:46]So the story got distilled to us Athens.
[13:49]So it didn't really matter.
[13:50]I was telling a much more sort of lean version of the story.
[13:54]So I do think I got to the truth,
[13:57]but the whole thing was so fascinating
[13:59]and it sort of proved what I was trying to say in the book
[14:02]that these stories do sort of morph over time
[14:05]and as different people tell them,
[14:06]they become different somehow.
[14:09]Oh, and of course in the book, Ritchie is a gambler.
[14:12]And when it comes to gamblers and their stories,
[14:15]they're always telling stories.
[14:16]And every time you hear the story,
[14:18]it's slightly different.
[14:19]And when someone else was like, no, no, I was there.
[14:23]It's just they all sort of go together
[14:24]for this idea of story and the nature of story
[14:28]and how it can change.
[14:30]That's true.
[14:32]I have this memoir coming out in July
[14:34]and it's not what we were excited.
[14:36]But at the beginning, I put a note like,
[14:39]this is how I remember it.
[14:41]And if you remember it differently, you're probably right.
[14:43]Like, I don't know.
[14:45]But like, this is how I remember it.
[14:46]So sorry, you know,
[14:48]because you just don't know.
[14:49]I mean, I could be wrong, who knows?
[14:51]Absolutely.
[14:52]But I think that's the beauty of memoir.
[14:54]It's your story in your words, right?
[14:57]Also, I'm going to need an advance copy of that like ASAP.
[15:00]I need to read it.
[15:01]No, we still don't have the galleys,
[15:02]which is like insane.
[15:03]It's I'm yeah, conversation for it.
[15:06]At least yeah, it's an offline conversation.
[15:08]No, I just, I kept like tweaking and tweaking.
[15:09]And anyway, they should be here soon.
[15:11]But yes, yeah.
[15:12]I can't read.
[15:13]I hope you're doing it.
[15:14]It would be so good.
[15:15]So compare writing this one to writing the Grace Kelly ring.
[15:19]Wait, these are different time periods.
[15:21]Different characters, right?
[15:22]This has a lot more male characters, gay characters,
[15:25]like very different than the much more female dominated one
[15:29]of the last time.
[15:30]So talk about how it felt different writing,
[15:32]at least these two most recent books.
[15:34]Yeah, that's such a great question.
[15:36]I mean, I'm going to take it back a step even further
[15:38]because I wrote them in different periods of time.
[15:40]I wrote the Grace Kelly dress before COVID
[15:42]and I wrote the list coloring entirely during COVID.
[15:45]And so my mindset was different for both of them.
[15:49]So I think that's why a writer recently asked me like,
[15:54]why the book was for lack of a better word so crazy.
[15:56]And I was like, well, I wrote it during COVID.
[16:00]But in terms of Grace being sort of so female,
[16:03]that's a great question.
[16:04]And I hadn't thought of that, but it's so spot on.
[16:07]So when I was working on the Grace Kelly dress,
[16:09]what I was really trying to explore was,
[16:11]well, you know, when you're working on a book,
[16:13]you work on it for so long.
[16:14]So you really have to be writing about things you're obsessed with
[16:17]because you write it for a year or two.
[16:19]You edit it for a year or two
[16:21]and then you're promoting it for at least a year or two, right?
[16:23]So you have to love what you're talking about
[16:25]because it's with you for such a long time.
[16:28]So my agent said, think about something
[16:29]you're obsessed with that other people are obsessed with.
[16:32]And I was like, okay.
[16:33]And so we were thinking about how I love weddings.
[16:36]I mean, there's just something so hopeful
[16:38]and beautiful and wonderful about weddings to me.
[16:40]So my agent found this today show story about a wedding dress
[16:45]that had been passed down through 11 generations.
[16:47]And I was like, perfect.
[16:48]I love writing about families.
[16:50]I love writing about women.
[16:51]And so that sort of came about really organically.
[16:54]And it was definitely my real,
[16:56]wheelhouse to write something really female, right?
[17:00]These three women in the same family.
[17:02]When it came to the list tailoring,
[17:04]I definitely had the Grace Kelly dress in mind
[17:06]because I wanted to do something different.
[17:08]Ellen Hildebrand once said something so great.
[17:10]It was something to the effect of, I'm gonna butcher it,
[17:12]but it was something like,
[17:14]I'm gonna write the exact same book for you,
[17:16]a completely different.
[17:18]And I love that because that's the essence
[17:20]of what readers want, right?
[17:21]You want an Ellen Hildebrand novel,
[17:23]but you obviously want it to be totally different.
[17:26]So I knew I wanted to do another heirloom item.
[17:30]I knew I wanted to connect it to a Hollywood starlet.
[17:32]So I thought about the heirlims that are important to me
[17:34]that I'm obsessed with.
[17:36]And on most days, I wear my grandma Dorothy's ring.
[17:39]And so I thought about jewelry.
[17:40]This idea of jewelry, I started talking to friends about it.
[17:43]And people had the most fascinating stories for me
[17:46]about jewelry, especially jewelry that was handed down.
[17:50]But even pieces that had been given
[17:51]that are important to them.
[17:52]Like if you could remember the one Valentine's Day,
[17:55]your husband gave you something
[17:57]or the necklace your son made you in preschool.
[18:01]There are just, there's just something about these things
[18:03]that we keep and hold on to.
[18:04]So when I decided to do jewelry,
[18:07]there was no other Hollywood starlet to choose,
[18:09]but Elizabeth Taylor since she is famous
[18:11]for her jewelry collection.
[18:13]From there, I knew I wanted it to be different than Grace.
[18:16]So I didn't want to do three generations passing the heirloom
[18:20]down.
[18:21]So instead, I decided to do three siblings
[18:23]and have them fight over it.
[18:25]And then I thought it would be a fun twist on this idea
[18:28]of playing with the three, doing something different.
[18:32]And then the other timeline,
[18:33]instead of being three timelines of three women
[18:36]in the same family passing the item down,
[18:39]I had the parents in love story as the other timeline.
[18:42]So similar, but totally different.
[18:45]And then once with that, I started thinking about the siblings.
[18:48]And you know, sometimes the characters just sort of come to
[18:51]and they speak to you and Addie and Nathan sort of came
[18:53]to me fully formed.
[18:54]I felt like I knew who these people were.
[18:57]I wanted to have these siblings who were so close
[18:59]only 11 months apart, they were practically twins.
[19:03]But because of the tumultuous nature of the relationship
[19:06]with the parents, I wanted there to be a sibling
[19:09]who was much younger, who grew up essentially
[19:11]in a different family than they had
[19:13]because the parents had changed so much.
[19:15]And I thought that would be a really fun dynamic to play with.
[19:18]So it did turn out being a little more male,
[19:20]especially with all the gambling.
[19:22]And at one point I did wonder if women,
[19:26]like when I was writing those scenes,
[19:28]I definitely thought about my reader
[19:31]and the female reader and had a sort of keep it interesting
[19:34]for her and how to explain things,
[19:36]but not over-explain so they could just sort of go along
[19:39]with the ride and enjoy it, but not be a lesson
[19:42]on how to play craps, for example.
[19:45]So yeah, I guess it did turn out very different
[19:48]from the Grace Kelly dress,
[19:49]but I think that's a good thing.
[19:50]I don't wanna necessarily write the same book each time.
[19:53]So hopefully readers will agree.
[19:55]Yeah, no, I mean, it's fantastic.
[19:58]I felt like this one.
[20:00]who had a hundred years the wrong way.
[20:02]It's like you have little like the last of information.
[20:05]Like shorter chapters, more alternating, like quicker.
[20:08]Like it just felt like the paint,
[20:10]like if it was a treadmill,
[20:11]it would be going a little faster.
[20:13]So you know, like like the alternating.
[20:15]You know?
[20:16]I love that.
[20:17]Yes. And actually in an earlier draft,
[20:19]there were even more perspectives.
[20:21]Believe it or not,
[20:21]I sort of edited it down to the essence,
[20:24]which was the three siblings and the parents.
[20:26]But at one point,
[20:27]the twins had a point of view,
[20:28]Diego had a point of view
[20:29]and at a certain point,
[20:30]my editor and agent were like,
[20:32]there's a lot of people in it.
[20:33]But I don't regret doing it
[20:35]because I think it helps you to discover
[20:37]who the characters are.
[20:39]And especially if characters aren't going to have their own viewpoint,
[20:42]they need to be really fully fleshed out.
[20:45]So I don't regret doing it that way,
[20:47]but yeah, there was a lot of cutting.
[20:48]So always a lot of cutting.
[20:52]I wonder if that was a product of writing it during COVID.
[20:54]I don't know.
[20:55]You know, I think at the time period I was writing it,
[20:58]which was mostly spring 2020 and summer 2020.
[21:02]That's when I was really working on the first draft.
[21:04]I definitely had, you know,
[21:05]I was still watching Tiger King at that point.
[21:07]I definitely was craving content
[21:09]and I was craving things that took me out of my head.
[21:12]So it is possible.
[21:14]I mean, I love short chapters in general.
[21:16]Most of my books have short chapters,
[21:18]but these were shorter.
[21:20]There were more of them.
[21:22]And I think part of it was this desire
[21:24]to sort of keep the reader engaged
[21:26]and sort of be like, this can take you away from life for a while.
[21:29]Just come on the journey and I will keep it entertaining
[21:33]and I will keep surprising you, which is great.
[21:36]Well, it worked.
[21:37]So there you go.
[21:39]What is your approach now with Audrey Hepburn,
[21:41]who I'd love, by the way.
[21:42]I mean, all of these ladies, but of course, Audrey,
[21:45]oh my God, I love Audrey so much.
[21:47]What is my approach yet, you know, now I'm in yet
[21:50]a different sort of state of mind,
[21:52]a little burnt out for sure,
[21:54]just the way we've been living for so long.
[21:57]And I mean, you know, you're a working mom.
[21:59]It's, and you write about it so honestly and so beautifully.
[22:02]It's been really hard.
[22:04]So yeah, what's my approach with Audrey?
[22:06]I'm trying to do something completely different yet again.
[22:09]So it's heavily inspired by the movie Sabrina, which I love.
[22:13]And also on the list, halo ring,
[22:16]one of the notes, my editor who was also from Long Island,
[22:19]one of the notes she gave me was, you know,
[22:21]we need more Long Island glamour.
[22:23]And I just thought that was the greatest expression ever
[22:26]and hilarious.
[22:27]And I really sort of like ran off with it.
[22:30]And I think she didn't mean it to sort of inspire me quite so much.
[22:34]She just meant like throwing a chapter here or there,
[22:36]but I can't stop with the Long Island glamour.
[22:38]So now for Audrey, we have like the Long Island glamour,
[22:42]kicked up a notch because Sabrina famously took place
[22:45]in Glen Cove on Long Island.
[22:46]So it's a Long Island story.
[22:48]It's heavily influenced by Sabrina.
[22:50]So we've got to love triangle,
[22:52]but it's really the story of a woman who goes back
[22:54]to her childhood home before it's set to be demoed
[22:58]to make way for a new development.
[23:00]So my approach is different.
[23:02]You know, I want to try to do something different yet again.
[23:05]So I'll keep you in suspense as to how I'm doing
[23:08]the modern timeline and the past timeline,
[23:10]but just trying to mix it up yet again
[23:12]and do something different.
[23:14]These books, I want them to all be very different,
[23:16]very distinct and sort of stand on their own
[23:19]and not just be retreads of each other.
[23:21]So that's sort of what I'm trying to accomplish with that.
[23:23]And again, trying to talk about things I'm obsessed with,
[23:26]but bring in Audrey, just a little tip,
[23:28]like for example, she will wear a little black dress.
[23:31]I mean, I can resist.
[23:33]So just bring in parts of her life again
[23:37]and different things I love from her movies.
[23:39]That sort of thing.
[23:41]Love it.
[23:41]So yeah.
[23:42]Oh, he's been such a champion of other people's books.
[23:44]And I know you used to write the pop sugar column
[23:46]and all of that.
[23:47]So what are some books that you,
[23:50]are there any books lately that you've been like,
[23:53]you guys have to read this?
[23:54]This is amazing.
[23:55]And do you ever miss analyzing like upcoming books
[23:59]with an eye for curation the way you used to do it?
[24:02]I mean, of course, yes, I totally do.
[24:05]I definitely miss getting books six to nine months
[24:10]to 12 months ahead of them being out in the world.
[24:14]I miss that.
[24:15]I also miss reading without knowing anything about the books.
[24:18]When I was doing the list for pop sugar,
[24:21]I would get the books so early there was less buzz.
[24:23]So I literally was going in blind to every book.
[24:26]Now when I'm picking up books,
[24:28]I'm sort of so much more aware of what's going on.
[24:32]So that part is tricky and I definitely miss that.
[24:35]I also miss like you said, reading with an eye towards making
[24:39]a list because as you know,
[24:41]because you do such amazing lists,
[24:43]there has to be a little of everything, right?
[24:46]Sometimes you have five books that are somewhat similar,
[24:49]but a list can't be all the same thing.
[24:51]So I miss that part of it.
[24:53]I don't miss deadlines and I don't miss
[24:57]the massive amount of time it used to take
[24:59]and I'm reading slower now, which I also like.
[25:02]I was reading some, I mean, you just wrote an essay about this.
[25:06]I was reading so many books so fast,
[25:09]but my method was a little different than yours.
[25:11]I was staying up till three a.m. like every night.
[25:15]Just trying to like get through things.
[25:17]I unfortunately I didn't have the zippy method.
[25:19]This wasn't smart enough to come up with it on my own.
[25:23]My, my, Kyle was like, you should not be writing this.
[25:26]Like, and I'm like, well, I'm not ashamed of it.
[25:29]Like this is how I read now and this is, you know,
[25:31]there has to be some way to do eight to 12 books a week.
[25:34]Like, and I want maybe if other people felt that way,
[25:36]people would be buying more books and reading more books
[25:39]and not feeling compelled to finish every single book
[25:41]or whatever and anyway.
[25:43]Yeah, I mean, part of what I love about your brand though
[25:46]is that you're just so honest and you're so genuine
[25:49]and you're so you and I always tell people
[25:53]that you're just so incredibly down to earth.
[25:55]And I think that's why people gravitate towards you.
[25:58]You don't BS, you really tell the truth
[26:01]and it's so refreshing because especially
[26:03]in this time of social media
[26:05]where nothing's true, you're not telling the truth.
[26:08]So anyway, but in terms of books that I'm loving,
[26:11]my friend, Jillian Cantor just published a novel
[26:13]called Beautiful Little Fools,
[26:15]it's a retelling of the great Gatsby
[26:17]from the perspective of the women.
[26:19]And so needless to say, when I heard the concept,
[26:21]I was super jealous, then I read it and I was super jealous.
[26:25]Like, why didn't I think of this?
[26:27]I probably, I always say to Jillian,
[26:29]I'm like, the mark of a good book
[26:30]is when your friend is super jealous and compliment.
[26:34]And it just became an instant bestseller.
[26:37]So we will be doing the Zoom this weekend with champagne
[26:40]because she lives in Arizona, so not at all.
[26:42]But that was phenomenal.
[26:44]And I also, I don't have that sitting here,
[26:45]so I can't flash it.
[26:46]But I recently read Sister Star.
[26:49]Oh, yes, I have that.
[26:50]Where is it?
[26:50]I have that.
[26:51]I'm excited, Jane Green, I love Jane Green.
[26:53]Yeah, she is the best.
[26:54]This comes out, even with my glasses on, I can't see.
[26:57]I think, yes, April 5th.
[26:59]And it's so fantastic and dreamy.
[27:01]It's completely different than anything
[27:02]she's ever done before.
[27:03]It is a coming of age story, which is very Jane Green.
[27:07]But then it's this woman living in London in the 60s.
[27:11]And she's trying to find herself.
[27:12]And she somehow gets swept up in the world
[27:14]of Talita Getty.
[27:16]And she somehow ends up in Morocco in this grand palace
[27:20]with all these rock legends.
[27:22]And the whole thing is dreamy and trippy and heady
[27:25]and amazing.
[27:26]And I just couldn't get over it.
[27:28]So I'm really excited for this book
[27:31]to come out into the world.
[27:33]And when you're just reading a book
[27:35]and you're so thoroughly transported,
[27:38]that's what this book was like.
[27:39]You know, you're home, but you're in Morocco at the same time.
[27:42]Yes, I love that.
[27:43]So there's a few books I'm sort of obsessing about right now.
[27:46]Perfect.
[27:46]Thank you.
[27:47]Well, I'm glad you had an answer to that.
[27:48]I feel like when people ask me that,
[27:49]I never have a good answer because I'm always like,
[27:51]OK, what did I read this week?
[27:52]I don't know.
[27:54]But when I used to work at Pop Sugar,
[27:55]I'd be like, go look at my list.
[27:57]I don't know.
[27:58]I'm like, I don't know.
[27:59]I can't remember.
[28:00]Anyway, just be like, look at my list.
[28:02]OK, advice for aspiring authors?
[28:05]Wow, I have so much advice.
[28:06]I'm trying to think.
[28:07]I don't remember what I told you last time,
[28:09]but I do have a new piece of advice.
[28:11]Let's hear the new piece.
[28:13]So I think Elizabeth Taylor has inspired me
[28:15]to think of old loves and old obsessions.
[28:18]So that when I first wanted to write my first book back in the day,
[28:22]I was dating this guy who's not my husband.
[28:26]And at the time, I was working on a novel and a short story
[28:30]and a screenplay and a teleplay.
[28:33]And I had to say, and a one act play.
[28:35]I had like 700 things that I was working on.
[28:38]And he turned to me one day and he said, well,
[28:39]why don't you just finish one?
[28:41]And at the time, I was like, how dare you, I'm an artist?
[28:44]I'm all right.
[28:45]You don't know anything.
[28:46]But the more I thought about it, I wondered if maybe
[28:49]I was procrastinating.
[28:51]And I was sort of afraid to do the one thing
[28:53]I really wanted to do.
[28:55]So I was filling my time with all these things
[28:57]that were sort of right or adjacent,
[29:00]but weren't going to take me to my goal, which
[29:02]was to publish a novel.
[29:04]And so once the dust settled, then I really
[29:07]let the advice sink in.
[29:09]That's when I finished my first novel.
[29:10]And I love this idea of finishing one thing.
[29:14]I should say, if you have a goal, like I've
[29:15]been talking to Yvrodski about unicorn space and I don't
[29:19]think you necessarily have to finish it.
[29:22]Like if you're happy like working on your scrapbook
[29:25]and then working on your novel and then, you know,
[29:28]being in an acting class, like that's fine too.
[29:30]But if you have this one goal, you should focus on that.
[29:34]So for me, I did want to publish a book.
[29:36]And I think that maybe I was afraid to finish the book
[29:39]because once you write a book, it no longer belongs to you.
[29:43]Other people read it.
[29:44]Other people have opinions.
[29:45]They're sort of putting their stuff on it.
[29:48]I think maybe I was scared to do that.
[29:50]So once I followed that advice, I finished my book.
[29:54]And then I found an agent.
[29:55]And then I published it.
[29:57]So I think that was good advice for me.
[30:00]That said, I think it's still okay if you have a lot of other things going on, but if you want to write a book, finish your book, and also don't be working on four books at once, or maybe work on four at once, but one is like the alpha book.
[30:15]Like writers were always working on a million things at once, like I bet, as we're sitting here, you have like five ideas for an essay going on in your head, novel and another memoir.
[30:25]Like as writers, we always have a million things we want to work on, but there's always the one project that you're like, okay, this is what I'm finishing next.
[30:33]So I do have a lot of things in my mind like the essays like a book I do want to write, but now it's not the time, but I'm focused on Audrey because that's the next thing.
[30:42]So, finish the one thing I would say.
[30:45]Amazing.
[30:46]Yeah.
[30:47]Brenda, I always love our chats, I can chat with you all day, and thank you for everything.
[30:52]Thanks for the sugar-wish surprise.
[30:54]So that was super sweet of you. I'm very excited.
[30:57]And yeah, just Liz Taylor-ring.
[31:00]So immersive, exciting, keeps you going, fast-paced, what's the retrospective?
[31:06]Like, I don't know, I should just delete myself.
[31:10]Really great, fun, we need to go get it there. How's that?
[31:14]Zibi, you were just the best. Thank you.
[31:17]Thank you.
[31:18]Thank you.
[31:19]All right, I hope we're doing well.
[31:21]Well, we'll have to like catch up if you ever.
[31:23]Yes, that would be fair moment. Let's try to get a catch up in there.
[31:27]Okay.
[31:28]All right, bye.
[31:30]Thanks for listening to this episode of Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books.
[31:34]Don't forget to follow me on Instagram at Zibi Owens and at Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books.
[31:39]Also sign up for my newsletter at Zibi Owens.com and sign up for my virtual book club and meet lots of authors on Zoom every other week.
[31:46]Thanks so much to Steve and Ryan at Texture Sound for the Sound Editing.
[31:50]And thank you to Morning Moon Productions for providing this fantastic intro and outro music.