Stephanie Gangi, CARRY THE DOG: A Novel
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[2:29]Stephanie Ganges is the author of Carry the Dog.
[2:32]She is a poet, novelist, short story writer and essayist living in writing New York City.
[2:37]Her debut novel The Next was published by St. Martin's Press, and her second, Carry the Dog, is published by Algonquin books.
[2:43]Ganges work has appeared in Among Others, Arts and Letters, Catapult, Electric Literature, Hippocrates, Poetry, Anthology, Lithub, McSwainy's, New Ohio Review, Next Tribe, and The Wolfurm.
[2:54]She's working on her third novel, The Good Provider.
[2:57]Welcome, Stephanie.
[2:58]Thank you so much for coming on Moms.
[3:00]Don't have time to read books to discuss your beautiful novel, Carry the Dog, which I was so captivated by.
[3:06]I loved it.
[3:08]Your fabulous writer and the story was haunting and just fantastic.
[3:14]And I, wow, it was great.
[3:17]Thank you so much.
[3:18]Thank you, first of all, of course, to be for having me.
[3:20]I'm a follower of yours and a fan.
[3:23]And I just really do from the heart want to thank you for how much you do for books and writers.
[3:30]You know, been a saving grace for me reading and writing too in the last two years.
[3:36]And especially today, you know, with the current events, it's just such a refuge and you are, you know, one of our Sherpas.
[3:44]So thank you.
[3:46]Thanks for saying that.
[3:48]I know.
[3:49]I feel like this is my like dirty secret that I cope with everything by reading and like basically not dealing with everything. So I don't know.
[3:57]I mean, it's better than other places, I guess. So I don't.
[4:01]Anyway.
[4:02]Okay, for people who aren't familiar with Carry the Dog yet, could you give like your little elevator pitch about what it's about?
[4:09]Sure.
[4:10]So, Carry the Dog is about a woman who is taking stock of her life on the brink of age 60.
[4:18]And she's suffered trauma in her childhood and has figured out ways to navigate that trauma across a lifetime in ungraceful awkward, wrong, crazy and maybe not the healthiest ways.
[4:37]And yet she has managed to make a life for herself and get where she is with all the trials and tribulations that we all experience.
[4:45]And now on at 60, she's ready to go forward with more grace and more power.
[4:54]And she has to figure out what about herself provides that.
[5:00]And so it's a journey that is sounds very interior and there are aspects of it that are very interior for her.
[5:08]But it's also I think a kind of a fun and also maybe even a little bit joyful journey for her, despite the trauma.
[5:18]Is that that's pretty good. Yeah.
[5:20]I don't know why I start by putting all authors on the spot.
[5:23]It's really mean of me. I should I should really have a different introductory question.
[5:26]But I do like, you would think by this point, I would be able to have that role.
[5:31]No, that's okay. That's all right.
[5:35]I love the photographer, Sally Mann.
[5:37]And I did a whole paper on her in college and I've been following her ever since and read a hold still and you know, a whole thing.
[5:43]And so I was thinking about that photographer and how she took photos of her sort of inappropriate ask controversial photos of her children, her three children, two boys and a girl.
[5:54]And I was thinking about that until it came up in the book and you actually referenced Sally Mann and made it like, she was like in conversation with her almost in a way.
[6:03]Like there was a dialogue like as art does, tell me a little bit. If that infill if her body of work influenced you, if that spurred this.
[6:12]I mean, what what or if that was related at all to what inspired you to write this story.
[6:17]Yeah. I mean, I am a huge Sally man fan always have been and you know that work was never something I saw as pornographic.
[6:27]always felt to me like the children who were the subjects of her work, of course, much of her work, not all of her work were very much themselves in the photographs.
[6:39]So this story is really about a mother who actually does exploit the kids and they are not themselves they are avatars for her own ghosts and her own life being haunted.
[6:53]And she's trying to work out her own issues through the kids.
[6:57]See that so much with Sally Mann. This is also I read everything, you know, of course, hold still the memoir and looked at a million zillion pictures, but this is also a mash up between Sally Mann I think and Diane Arbus.
[7:11]So, Diane Arbus famously had a relationship with her poet brother Howard Nimmarov and sorry about the sirens I'm sure you can hear that.
[7:22]I literally thought they were out my door there it's the same we could probably hear each other from across the park but anyway.
[7:30]And so it's kind of a Sally Mann, Diane Arbus mash up through the lens of the art mother right I got really wanted to kind of explore that a little bit I have I'm a writer and I have adult daughters.
[7:47]And I always think about what I write and how it impacts them. In fact, in some cases that even drives what I write or what I don't write.
[7:58]Interesting.
[8:00]Yeah, so it was some always it's always on my mind because I'm very respectful of them.
[8:06]And so I wanted to kind of explore what it would be like to explode that and not be respectful of the children and just I used the Sally Mann construct kind of as a device.
[8:18]But it's I would say if we're looking at it from a psychological level it's more Diane Arbus see than anything.
[8:25]Yeah.
[8:26]Yes.
[8:27]Yeah, there was a passage what there were so many passages that was telling you I've dug your like 20 different pages of beautiful prose but there was one just towards the beginning that I think sets the scene about her relationship with her mother the main characters relationship be with her mother.
[8:43]I'll just read this one paragraph just to show how great a writer you are at the least but Miriam marks is long dead and yet she's inside me where she has been my whole life from before my life.
[8:53]From when I was cells inside her trying to gang up and become a person.
[8:57]She seeped in with her low murmur and cigarette smoke and dark room chemicals she's dead and yet when I catch a whiff of sour wine at last in last night's glass or the stubbed butts from my astray on the fire escape.
[9:09]It's like smelling salts she's revived just the thought of green beans makes me gag remembering how she would dump them from my cannon to a pot and heat them in their tinged water to show Albert she'd put something green on our plates.
[9:21]To push them around my fork try to relax my throat try to swallow to keep pieces of the dinner table Mary sat back with her wine her cigarette the squint that meant she was killing time until she could retreat to the dark room with the days film.
[9:34]I don't know I could have read any passage honestly but that was a good intro I mean it's really the way she wrote about her mother and obviously so many people have complicated relationships with their own mother but this is a particularly fraught relationship.
[9:48]And how especially especially as an adult how do you look back and come to terms with someone who purports to love you and yet in their actions shows you the opposite.
[10:00]right that the person you're supposed to trust the most
[10:02]is the one who has a trade you.
[10:05]How do you come to terms or something like that?
[10:08]And even further, maybe even one step deeper
[10:12]is then that becomes your definition of love, right?
[10:16]That's true, yeah.
[10:17]I've said this, that is the atmosphere you breathe
[10:21]and it equals love.
[10:23]So without, you know, it's funny
[10:26]because every time I read for interviews,
[10:28]I'm so conscious and almost every other page
[10:31]has a spoiler on it.
[10:32]So, you know, there's a lot of plot,
[10:34]a lot of things happen and some twists and turns.
[10:37]So, but, you know, the sense for B
[10:40]of figuring out how to define love for herself
[10:45]that path for her is not easy
[10:48]and involves many, many compromises and mistakes
[10:53]and wrong turns.
[10:55]And yet, she, there is some part of herself
[10:58]that wants love, of course, and needs it
[11:02]and understands that it is a lifelong quest for her.
[11:06]Even though she rejects therapy
[11:09]and she's not the most introspective person,
[11:13]but she understands that she's a seeker of love.
[11:17]And I hope that we all have the gift of that in our lives.
[11:22]I know it, I'm 66 and at my age,
[11:24]that is the number one goal is more love, more love,
[11:29]more love.
[11:30]And so that I wanted to give be that revelation.
[11:34]It's amazing.
[11:35]At age 66, tell me about your writing career
[11:38]and this novel and I love the idea of an older female
[11:42]protagonist because it is so important.
[11:44]I'm sort of obsessed as most people are
[11:47]with sort of what's coming next, right?
[11:48]Like I'm like very much craving all these memoirs
[11:52]and novels about women a little older than me
[11:55]because I just to see, you know,
[11:57]like what's this is like the older siblings
[12:00]kind of I didn't have, like, so tell me a little bit
[12:03]about writing at this stage, if you will,
[12:06]and how your whole career has sort of led to here.
[12:09]Yeah, you know, my whole career,
[12:12]which is I put in scare quotes
[12:14]because it was so fragmented and patchwork for many years.
[12:18]And I was always what, I think Natalie Goldberg
[12:21]writing deal on the bones calls a shadow writer.
[12:24]So I always have had jobs like writing
[12:27]or some kind of writing, but it wasn't actually fiction
[12:32]or essays, you know, kind of writing I'm doing now.
[12:35]So I wrote my debut novel at age,
[12:38]I published my debut novel at age 60.
[12:41]And I loved when you said, you know,
[12:44]I'm always looking to see what comes next
[12:46]because the title of that novel is the next.
[12:49]And I am I too, I'm always interested to see what comes next.
[12:53]I do feel that I've suddenly woken up
[12:56]as kind of a canary in the cold mind of aging.
[13:00]And, you know, it is beautiful to see how many new voices
[13:05]I'm hearing and certainly when my mother was my age,
[13:09]no one was talking about aging.
[13:11]I think my mother shipped four sisters.
[13:13]They used to whisper the menopause word on the phone.
[13:17]So it's great to hear and see, you know,
[13:21]to hear and see also represented women my age.
[13:26]I don't know one woman, I have a lot of female friends
[13:29]and I don't know any who are like the stereotypes
[13:33]of what we've come to know over the years
[13:36]that the culture has fed us.
[13:38]They're crazy dynamic and interesting
[13:41]and quite frankly more than the men.
[13:45]They're sometimes attached to.
[13:47]We can all seem like all burners on, you know,
[13:51]just doing their thing, figuring out life at this age
[13:54]and also like be trying to figure out
[13:57]how to go forward with some grace
[14:02]and by integrating not only wisdom that they've acquired
[14:07]but the many selves they've been, right?
[14:10]Like I feel like I'm still adding selves
[14:14]and identity and it's not a process that stops.
[14:19]You don't, you know, stop growing
[14:21]and sit in a rocking chair.
[14:22]That's just, I don't know anybody like that.
[14:24]So-
[14:25]You have rocking chairs anymore.
[14:26]I know exactly.
[14:27]Where'd they all go?
[14:28]Exactly.
[14:29]I wouldn't mind a rocking chair knowing that.
[14:31]So, you know, I guess my, you know, path here
[14:37]was one that was kind of traditional.
[14:40]I was raised to be a wife and mother
[14:42]and I don't think I realized that that wasn't enough for me
[14:46]until my kids starting getting a little bit older
[14:50]and I looked at all the work I had done
[14:53]and it was always right or adjacent.
[14:56]And I'd always written and it was a hobby
[14:59]and I never centered it and frankly never valued it.
[15:03]I never saw myself in a, in the group of people
[15:06]in the world that would be published.
[15:09]And so I started playing around with a novel at 55.
[15:12]I had a corporate job.
[15:14]I was director of corporate communications, you know,
[15:17]always like a writer.
[15:18]And I kind of, I embarrassingly,
[15:23]but I'll say it had a big heartbreak in my mid-50s.
[15:27]And, you know, after my marriage and I was divorced
[15:30]and I was with somebody and it was a big heartbreak.
[15:33]And I had a friend over a glass of wine, of course,
[15:36]say to me, you gotta stop talking about it, just write it.
[15:39]And I thought, hell, it was like a thunderclap.
[15:45]Like, yeah, yeah, so I did.
[15:50]And I remember saying to one of my daughters,
[15:53]a first of all, I did that secretly,
[15:55]the writing of that first book for at least a year.
[15:58]And then once I said to one of my daughters,
[16:00]you know, thinking about submitting this to an agent
[16:05]and they were astonished and proud
[16:07]and said, if not you, who, you know,
[16:11]because they're my kids, so they think I'm good.
[16:15]Not everybody's kids would think their mom was good.
[16:19]I know, I am in your obviously close with them.
[16:22]And, you know, very close and also very lucky.
[16:26]In fact, I'm working on an essay right now
[16:28]about what I'm learning, what I'm learning
[16:30]from my adult daughters, they're 35 and 31.
[16:34]And every encounter is a learning for me.
[16:38]I think, you know, the tables have turned.
[16:41]Anyway, so I submitted that book to an agent
[16:45]and as I still had a corporate job,
[16:48]I was getting up at 4.30 in the morning
[16:49]and writing for two hours, you know, the usual story.
[16:52]And it got sent back to me probably three times,
[16:57]easily three times, if not more.
[17:00]And so, you know, at that juncture,
[17:02]I had to say, am I really sticking with this at 58?
[17:05]Or am I setting it aside and getting my nice,
[17:09]corporate paycheck and, you know,
[17:11]and I just threw the cards up in the air
[17:14]and decided to take a leave of absence from my church.
[17:19]Which, you know, I live in New York City,
[17:21]so it's not necessarily the most financially sound decision
[17:25]that I could have made, but it was like the one thing.
[17:31]Only mine that I had always wanted to do and never did.
[17:36]And the clock was ticking, you know.
[17:39]I was very conscious of that.
[17:41]And so that novel was published when I was 60.
[17:45]And this one was published when I was 65.
[17:48]And one of the things I love is that I insisted
[17:51]on putting my age in my back flap bio.
[17:56]Mm-hmm.
[17:57]Because I don't, I'm not invisible.
[18:00]I don't feel invisible.
[18:01]I know visibility is something we struggle with.
[18:04]But I feel, I'm more visible to myself
[18:09]and denying everything that's come before
[18:11]seems crazy to me.
[18:13]So I, you know, felt compelled to say,
[18:17]this is who I am.
[18:19]And this is what I've achieved.
[18:21]And I'm gonna keep going,
[18:23]whether you like my age or not.
[18:27]I love that.
[18:28]That's so inspiring.
[18:29]It's so great.
[18:31]I mean, why not?
[18:33]The more experience you get and the wisdom and all of it,
[18:37]like it only makes you better, right?
[18:40]When we talk about practicing writing
[18:42]or practicing anything,
[18:44]it only stands to reason that older women
[18:46]should be better writers.
[18:48]There should be more.
[18:48]Yeah, more funny.
[18:50]The thing about, you know, this kind of new window
[18:52]onto aging, which by the way is of course
[18:56]being pioneered in a sense by women.
[18:59]I mean, it's not the men talking about aging so much.
[19:01]It's women.
[19:02]And, you know, for cultural reasons,
[19:04]I understand that.
[19:05]But, you know, sometimes I read something
[19:08]and I have to remind myself that they're talking to me,
[19:12]you know, that I'm the aging person.
[19:15]I don't necessarily identify myself by my age.
[19:20]Now, that's not to say that age is just a number
[19:24]because I am a human in a body.
[19:26]So obviously, I confront the mirror every single day
[19:30]as does be a mixed effect, you know, it's a mixed bag, right?
[19:36]But it, I don't feel like defined by my age.
[19:41]So I sort of am a little tiny bit resistance
[19:45]of all this age-centric combo right now.
[19:48]On the other hand, it's absolutely 100% necessary.
[19:51]And, you know, I'm part of it.
[19:54]I've written two books now about aging women
[19:57]and how they've had to adapt.
[20:00]also how they resist adapting,
[20:02]which is also part of it, right?
[20:04]That's true.
[20:05]It's very true.
[20:07]Why did you say it was embarrassing
[20:09]that you had a heartbreak?
[20:10]Why is that embarrassing?
[20:12]Oh, oh, you caught me.
[20:16]So it was a relationship that was probably,
[20:20]I should have known better in a sense,
[20:22]like right from the beginning, I knew it.
[20:24]But you know, there's a part of me,
[20:26]I think that has a certain, hopefully charming recklessness.
[20:32]Whereas sometimes I just go for something
[20:34]because it's just too shiny to not.
[20:37]And I can't say I regret one second of it,
[20:40]but it did not go in the direction that I'd hoped.
[20:45]And I was more heartbroken over the fact that I recognized
[20:51]that this relationship wasn't going in the right direction
[20:56]and even though it was fantastic, I had to stop.
[21:00]And I had never really had to do something
[21:03]that was really hard to be in love and say,
[21:07]this is not going to end well for me.
[21:10]I wanted to age gracefully
[21:12]and I felt that in the context of this relationship
[21:14]that would have been harder to do,
[21:17]he was younger than I was,
[21:18]and we had a conscious uncomfortable, monthly,
[21:23]kind of motivated by me.
[21:25]And I had to be a grown up
[21:27]and I had to honor my experience and my knowledge
[21:30]and my wisdom and say, this is not going well.
[21:34]And then I had to do something also hard,
[21:37]but obviously, which has led me here today
[21:40]to kind of wind around to your point,
[21:43]which is decide that maybe I'm a person
[21:48]who can't write my novel if I'm in a relationship like that,
[21:54]all consuming.
[21:56]I know lots of people do,
[21:58]but maybe I had to stop with the men just focus on.
[22:04]And my kids were launched.
[22:05]So I had that runway.
[22:08]And so that's why it's a little bit embarrassing
[22:10]because it's my writing life has been so impacted
[22:15]by my personal life.
[22:17]And I even had to sort of strip down my personal life
[22:21]in order to get this work done.
[22:23]And of course, that's been the right decision.
[22:25]Of course, absolutely.
[22:28]So that's why it's embarrassing
[22:29]because it's revealing more than I want to reveal.
[22:35]So I don't think it's embarrassing.
[22:36]I think that's super relatable.
[22:38]Everybody has been in relationships
[22:40]that maybe they're not proud of
[22:42]or maybe they knew they might not be right,
[22:45]but you know, I just saw it all.
[22:48]I get, well good for you.
[22:49]I mean, yeah, exactly.
[22:51]Putting on the brakes.
[22:52]I mean, that's the bonus and also the curse
[22:56]of being in your mid 50s.
[22:57]It's like, okay, you know,
[23:00]you have some stuff in here about, you know,
[23:03]leader in life's sexuality with the egg whites.
[23:05]Is that a thing?
[23:06]Is that a thing?
[23:07]I was like, really?
[23:08]I was like, I didn't even know that.
[23:10]What is a thing?
[23:11]I'm not gonna reveal how I know that,
[23:14]but it is definitely a thing.
[23:18]I don't know if it's like a medically approved thing.
[23:22]I don't recommend anybody experiment with that on my say,
[23:26]so because I don't really, I'm a fiction writer.
[23:28]But no, it is a thing.
[23:30]That's so funny.
[23:31]Oh my gosh.
[23:32]We were talking before we started recording
[23:35]about how I was saying this is such a great movie.
[23:38]This feels like such an indie film, like dark and amazing.
[23:41]And I can just like see it and feel it.
[23:43]Maybe because you wrote in such a visual way
[23:45]to begin with that I already feel.
[23:46]like I saw the whole thing in my head.
[23:48]And you were having some casting,
[23:50]you know, he's been casting,
[23:51]who was it, who was your wish list on the other side?
[23:55]So I love like a give me a more tyranny or a dying lane,
[24:00]even Robin Wright who's, you know, just complex women
[24:04]who you can always see that there's a lot going on
[24:07]behind their eyes in a sense.
[24:10]And so of course I want that,
[24:12]but also this character has a lightness to her
[24:15]and you know, a love of life that nothing,
[24:19]no trauma has really flattened.
[24:22]And as many times as she falls down, she gets up.
[24:26]And so there's an openness too that, you know,
[24:29]I think would be so wonderful to capture on screen.
[24:34]I love how she navigates her looks
[24:38]and still cares about them.
[24:41]And is trying to figure out a new way to look at herself.
[24:45]So that the changes aren't depressing every day.
[24:49]Because, you know, I'm sure you know,
[24:51]and I know, and sometimes I do it too,
[24:54]there's, you know, some days where I just can't get out
[24:57]of my own way looks wise.
[24:58]And I'm like, I am literally avoiding mirrors.
[25:03]And so I wanted to capture that,
[25:05]but I didn't want it to be handicapping her.
[25:09]I mean, she has to figure out how to manage that
[25:11]and keep moving.
[25:13]And also not presented to the world.
[25:16]Because if you're truly vain,
[25:18]you don't want anyone to see all that going on.
[25:21]That's what I'm gonna get presentation to the world.
[25:26]You're such a like, you're really beautiful.
[25:28]Like an elegant woman.
[25:30]No, seriously, the fact that you would have a day
[25:32]where you're like avoiding the mirror.
[25:33]I mean, seriously, you have such a elegant look.
[25:37]I'm like, really, you're gonna wake up
[25:39]and avoid the mirror.
[25:40]What does it say about the rest of the people?
[25:42]Yeah, of course I struggle.
[25:44]I mean, I had a mother who was, you know, I,
[25:46]yeah, but as my daughter would say, okay,
[25:48]Boomer, don't start launching into, you know, all this.
[25:51]It's a long time ago and long forgotten,
[25:53]but, you know, certainly I had a great mother,
[25:55]but she did dump green beans in a can and a can
[25:59]into a pot.
[26:01]And she was very concerned with presentation
[26:05]is the way I put it.
[26:06]And that's something that I have, you know,
[26:10]worked to leave behind.
[26:14]Mostly.
[26:16]My grandmother passed away recently at 97
[26:19]and, you know, was going to curves until the end.
[26:22]And should I eat this shine and add and all that.
[26:24]And she, but what she did say to me, she's like,
[26:27]you know, nobody told me I looked good until I was like 90.
[26:30]She's like, oh, say, everybody's like,
[26:31]you look amazing.
[26:32]She's like, I've never looked better.
[26:35]I love curves thing.
[26:36]That is brilliant, brilliant.
[26:39]Yeah. Yeah.
[26:40]Yeah. So what do you like to read?
[26:42]Oh, I just actually, I keep a list, of course.
[26:45]I don't even know why I keep a list of everything I read,
[26:48]but I'm going to just take a quick look at it.
[26:51]I mean, I'm sure you do, but it's your job.
[26:53]I guess it's my job too.
[26:54]Oh, I read the Elizabeth Stroud.
[26:57]I love to, oh, William is great.
[27:00]I love, I actually really liked the friends.
[27:04]And I know that's controversial these days,
[27:06]especially with women writers,
[27:08]but I kind of liked it.
[27:09]I thought he took on the topic of religion in a way
[27:13]that was very balanced.
[27:15]And it is a fraught topic.
[27:17]And I thought he did a pretty good job with it.
[27:19]So I loved that.
[27:21]I've been reading Joan Silver,
[27:22]which I've never read.
[27:24]And wow, you know, I feel like I've stumbled into this land
[27:29]of wonders and it's just an amazing writer.
[27:33]I read The Inland Sea,
[27:35]which is a climate change novel set in Australia.
[27:39]But it's also very Sally Runyish.
[27:42]It's about a relationship.
[27:43]The relationship is kind of the backdrop.
[27:45]I mean, the climate change is kind of the backdrop
[27:48]to the relationship stuff.
[27:49]And I thought that was great.
[27:50]I'm just starting, I'm hoping to write a little bit of a more,
[27:55]I'm working on a third novel and called The Good Provider.
[27:58]And it's a little bit more,
[28:00]I don't want to use the word thriller
[28:02]because it's too early in the process
[28:05]for me to say I'm doing that.
[28:07]So I'm reading some Graham Green now,
[28:09]just that kind of old school slow unfolding of tension.
[28:15]I love that as a reader.
[28:18]So that's my short list.
[28:19]There's more.
[28:20]Many more.
[28:21]No, I love it.
[28:22]I love it.
[28:23]Yeah, I keep reading.
[28:24]I keep, look, I'm always taking notes on what you're reading.
[28:27]OK, last question.
[28:30]What advice do you have for aspiring authors?
[28:33]Oh, I mean, my day job in a sense is,
[28:37]I do editorial development with writers.
[28:40]And in fact, I keep glancing over to my left,
[28:44]I know we're on a podcast, but I keep looking to my left
[28:46]because I have four manuscripts right now
[28:49]that are in the end stages of work
[28:52]with each of these authors.
[28:54]And one of the things that I have come to learn
[28:59]in a very compressed time frame
[29:02]because I started to late and I had to learn on the job
[29:07]in a sense.
[29:08]I don't have an MFA.
[29:09]I'm not a big writing workshop person,
[29:11]but along the way, the issues you face that slow you down
[29:17]or make you feel like you can't do it
[29:19]are not like those issues were it's Stephanie issues.
[29:23]They were writer issues.
[29:25]And I didn't really know that.
[29:27]I thought I was making, I couldn't do it.
[29:30]I wasn't experienced enough.
[29:31]I hadn't had an MFA program.
[29:33]And then the more craft I read and listened to online,
[29:37]the more I understood that every time I hit
[29:40]like a big challenge, it was a challenge
[29:42]that other writers had hit too at that same point in time,
[29:47]the dead middle.
[29:48]I mean, I could go through a long list.
[29:50]So one of the things that's been most gratifying
[29:53]and working with other writers is to open their eyes
[29:56]to that moment when they feel like I'm just.
[30:00]cut out for this. It's too hard because not writing is hard. It's world building. But is to help
[30:06]them understand that that's a part of the process. That's not a stop sign. That's a yield sign.
[30:15]I love that. So that's been very gratifying because I work with such talented people who are,
[30:22]who I want to succeed. You know, I have a lot invested in it. And so seeing that realization
[30:29]occur for me is like, it's just fantastic. Really good. So that's my big kind of headline news
[30:35]about that, which is it's a process, not failure. Amazing. Stephanie, thank you. Thank you for
[30:43]all this. I want to continue this over lunch or something. Yeah. But I'm glad we're so close by
[30:48]and that that that could be in the cards. And I again, I just loved this book and you're writing
[30:55]style. And I can't wait to read your next book. And now I have to go back and read your last book.
[30:59]But anyway, oh, yeah, that one's a little bit of a romp. Okay. All right. You like it. And I like
[31:04]that sleeping dog in the background. So yeah, that helps. Thanks. All right. Okay. Bye bye.
[31:14]Thanks for listening to this episode of mom. Don't have time to read books.
[31:18]Don't forget to follow me on Instagram at zebi Owens and at moms don't have time to read books.
[31:23]Also sign up for my newsletter at zebiowens.com and sign up for my virtual book club and meet lots
[31:28]of authors on Zoom every other week. Thanks so much to Steve and Ryan. Heck, texture sound for
[31:33]the sound editing. And thank you to Morning Moon Productions for providing this fantastic intro and
[31:37]now trim music.