Jane Green, SISTER STARDUST: A Novel
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[2:30]Jane Green is the author of Sister Stardust, a novel.
[2:33]Jane is the author of 18 New York Times Best Sellers and 19 USA Today Best Sellers.
[2:37]She's a former journalist in the UK and a graduate of the International Culinary Center
[2:41]in New York.
[2:42]Her many novels include Jemima J, The Beach House, Falling, The Sunshine Sisters,
[2:47]and most recently, The Friends We Keep.
[2:49]She's also published a cookbook called Good Taste.
[2:52]Welcome, Jane.
[2:53]Thank you so much for coming back on Monster and have time to read books to talk about
[2:56]Sister Stardust.
[2:58]Lovely to be here.
[2:59]There'd be always great to be on your podcast.
[3:02]Oh, thank you.
[3:03]Jane, tell listeners what your latest book is about, please.
[3:07]So Sister Stardust is my first biographical fiction.
[3:11]It was, you know, when I was young, I saw a photograph of an incredibly beautiful woman
[3:17]on a rooftop in Marrakesh.
[3:19]It was taken in actually 1970 in this embroidered, actually, you know what, I have the
[3:26]photograph.
[3:27]I saw this well.
[3:30]So this photograph has sort of, it struck me and I just found something that had a magical
[3:38]ethereal quality.
[3:39]And I found out that her name was Toledo Getty, but she died very young and very tragically.
[3:46]And I've spent my whole adult life wanting to know more about her.
[3:50]And when my editor said, have you ever thought of historical fiction?
[3:54]I immediately thought, I want to, I don't know what her story is, but I want to find
[3:59]out and I want to tell it.
[4:00]And so, you know, obviously you fiction, it's biographical fiction.
[4:05]So I created a protagonist, Claire, who lives in England in the 60s and England in the 60s,
[4:12]but we were still covering from the Second World War.
[4:15]London was gray.
[4:17]It was covered in bomb sites, you know, where all the kids would play.
[4:21]My parents, you know, play with their friends on bomb sites.
[4:25]And all of a sudden in the 60s, Britain won the World Cup and the pill was introduced.
[4:31]And, you know, all these things started to happen.
[4:34]Timothy Niri was doing research and just psychedelic drugs at Harvard.
[4:38]And suddenly, London burst into color with its own music.
[4:42]You know, we had the Beatles and the Rolling Stones.
[4:44]So Claire is desperate to get to London.
[4:47]And once she does, she gets a job as a shock girl.
[4:51]And she falls in with a rock band who are sort of loosely based inspired by the Rolling Stones.
[4:59]And they spirit her off to Marrakesh to stay with Paul mentally to get you.
[5:04]And Paul Gettie, Jr., was the son of the richest man in the world.
[5:08]From the outside, they looked like they had everything.
[5:11]I mean, they bought this dilapidated palace in Marrakesh and had an American designer,
[5:17]friend Bill Willis, completely renovated and it was spectacular.
[5:22]And they threw these wild, majestic parties, you know, hundreds of people under the stars
[5:30]and picnics in the Atlas Mountains, where all the houseboys would carry.
[5:33]like onion tarts and tigines on brass trays into the mountains.
[5:38]But of course, behind closed doors, it was getting very dark.
[5:41]And there were jealousies, you know, free lovers complicated and living that lifestyle was complicated.
[5:47]And also, they were diving into first-world opium addiction and then heroin addiction.
[5:53]And so Claire, this young innocent girl is, you know, she thinks she's stepped into the Arabian Nights.
[5:59]And after a while, she has to get pulled in and she doesn't realize the danger that awaits.
[6:07]And it's a coming of age story that's set in the 60s.
[6:11]And yeah, my first, my first biographical slash historical fiction.
[6:16]Wow.
[6:17]So when you, you had the idea, you knew who you wanted to write about.
[6:21]Where did you go?
[6:22]How did you start researching her?
[6:23]And what did you find that you got really excited about early on?
[6:27]Yeah. Well, what was so interesting about her is that there's almost nothing written about her.
[6:33]There's so little.
[6:35]And I, I rather suspect that, you know, the Getty family are enormously private and insular.
[6:41]And, and there were some mysterious circumstances around her death.
[6:45]I think Paul Getty, her husband, was felt, he felt culpable in some way.
[6:52]And the story changed a couple of times about how exactly him went.
[6:56]So there was so little written about her.
[6:58]So I had to find anybody who was in that circle and I read everything I could.
[7:05]So it didn't matter how kind of extraneous they were, how much on the outskirts.
[7:09]I read it.
[7:10]And every now and then, I stumble upon a nugget about Anita.
[7:16]Or, you know, and sometimes the nuggets were quite big.
[7:19]And it was like finding, you know, the diamonds in the haze.
[7:22]It was just amazing.
[7:23]And it took me about nine months of just constant reading reading reading.
[7:29]And by the end, I, I felt like I had a, a very good sense of who she was and
[7:37]why the things that happened to her happened.
[7:40]And the thing I, I think that I hadn't known was the trauma of her early life,
[7:45]because she, her, her father was a painter.
[7:48]And they had gone to the Dutch East Indies to Java as it was then to on a painting expedition.
[7:55]And the Japanese invaded while they were there.
[7:57]And they rounded up all of the Dutch and threw them into prison camps.
[8:01]And there was a lot of inhumane treatment and torture.
[8:05]And Toledo, you know, would, would one of her friends, you know, spoke of how he once
[8:11]sort of made a joke gesture at her face with, with his fingers and she shrunk back in fear.
[8:16]And actually talked about how when she, when she was a child, the Japanese,
[8:21]the guards in the, in the prison camp would, would put their fingers into the children's eyes.
[8:25]And I think her mother then died shortly after.
[8:29]So I think she was deeply damaged, despite being extraordinarily beautiful.
[8:34]And having everything that you are supposed to, to want, she wasn't just beautiful.
[8:39]She was vivacious.
[8:40]She was just fun loving the free spirit in it.
[8:43]And everybody fell madly in love with her.
[8:46]And it wasn't enough to, to save her from herself.
[8:51]And it was a powerful story.
[8:53]I mean, the effects of trauma early on, you wonder, what would she have been like,
[8:57]what would her life have been like, had that not been her start?
[9:00]Well, and, and also had she been alive today because of course, now we have access
[9:07]to so much.
[9:08]I mean, therapy and programs and retreats and treatment and medications.
[9:14]And I think in the 60s, particularly in England, because she was raised,
[9:19]her father went to England.
[9:20]So she was raised first of all in, in Holland, but then in England.
[9:25]And it was a very different generation.
[9:27]And also our sensibilities were then you're, you're very stoic, you know, that you stiff
[9:33]up a lip and there's a reason why the British colonized the world.
[9:39]It was because the soldiers, you know, the boys were sent off to boarding school at six
[9:43]and there was very little love and nurturing.
[9:47]Now I do think to me to have that from her stepmother.
[9:50]I think she was very fit.
[9:51]They had a very good relationship and her father.
[9:55]But I, I wonder, I wonder whether so much of the people who
[10:00]did dive into addiction in the 60s?
[10:03]Well, it was self-medicating.
[10:05]You know, they were running from their pain
[10:08]and drowning it in alcohol or drugs.
[10:12]And I wonder whether so many of those extraordinary talents
[10:16]that we lost so early, you know,
[10:18]Jim Morrison and the list goes on and on,
[10:21]but the 27 Club Mark Bowland,
[10:24]whether things would have been different, you know,
[10:26]had they had access to some of the things
[10:28]we now have access to today.
[10:31]Who do you think Toledo would be today?
[10:33]Like who is she most comparable to in the celebrity world
[10:37]these days, even at her peak before the damage?
[10:40]Is there anybody at the kind of resonates in that way?
[10:44]You know, I think Kate Moss actually,
[10:45]I think Kate Moss is, I always think,
[10:48]because the other sort of huge inspiration
[10:52]for the book, although I didn't realize it
[10:53]when I started writing about it,
[10:55]I didn't realize how much the Rolling Stones
[10:59]were linked to Morocco in the 60s.
[11:01]And Morocco was really an enormous retreat from them.
[11:05]Whenever things sort of blew up in London
[11:07]and whenever drugs were found or there was a drugs bus,
[11:11]the Rolling Stones would head out to Morocco.
[11:14]And there was a love triangle.
[11:16]Brian Jones was the founder of the Rolling Stones
[11:19]and he was this extraordinarily gifted musician.
[11:22]He put the band together.
[11:24]He found Keith and Mick.
[11:25]He named the Rolling Stones.
[11:28]And they always used to say about him.
[11:29]He could pick up any instrument
[11:31]and even if he'd never played it before,
[11:33]he would create something magical immediately.
[11:36]He was also enormously damaged.
[11:39]His girlfriend was a woman called Anita Palomberg.
[11:43]Forgive me for being stuffed up.
[11:44]I'm getting over a code, not COVID happily.
[11:47]But his girlfriend was this woman Anita Palomberg
[11:50]who was terrifying and brilliant and beautiful.
[11:54]And she was very much the news for the Rolling Stones.
[11:57]And actually she and Brian had a very troubled relationship.
[12:01]There was a lot of, he would beat her up.
[12:03]It was, it was really problematic.
[12:06]And they, after one of the drugs bust,
[12:09]it's a famous one called the Redlands bust,
[12:11]which happened at Keith Richards's home in England.
[12:15]Keith, Brian and Anita jumped into the back of his S3,
[12:19]bent the S3 Continental, went to Tanjere.
[12:22]Brian got pneumonia on the way.
[12:24]They dropped him off and of course,
[12:25]Keith and Anita then fell madly in love
[12:27]in the back of the car.
[12:28]And that inspired the story,
[12:31]you know, a lot of the story in Sister Stardust.
[12:34]But Anita Palomberg was great friends with Kate Moss,
[12:37]you know, as an older woman.
[12:39]And I think that Kate Moss has that kind of,
[12:43]I don't know, I'm almost a magical quality.
[12:46]She's a hard part yet.
[12:48]And you know, friends of mine have worked with her on shoots.
[12:51]And they always said it didn't matter
[12:53]how hard she partied once the camera was on,
[12:56]she was just magic.
[12:59]And I think, I think she is probably the one today
[13:02]that I think is most like the women of that era.
[13:07]Interesting, I love it.
[13:09]You have a whole another piece of this book,
[13:11]which is Claire and Claire's story and her,
[13:15]the loss of her mother and her father and her stepmother.
[13:17]And also her relationship to her own body
[13:20]and how she tries to come to terms with that.
[13:22]And it's almost the impetus for her leaving home
[13:25]is sort of sneaking food and all that.
[13:27]And you have some really interesting lines
[13:29]about her relationship with food.
[13:30]So I was gonna just read if that's okay,
[13:32]just like a couple of quick lines.
[13:34]This is towards the beginning,
[13:35]but it's about Claire and her body.
[13:37]She said, I tried to fight it.
[13:38]I tried to bury myself in a book,
[13:40]but the words swam on the page.
[13:42]I could taste the chocolate, feel the chocolate.
[13:44]And I couldn't think about anything else.
[13:45]I raced downstairs, grabbed the tonnics
[13:48]and took them up to my bedroom,
[13:49]guilt, fear, and excitement, making my heart pound.
[13:53]And then you say, for those few minutes of eating,
[13:56]I felt absolutely nothing.
[13:57]I didn't understand then that I was using food as a drug,
[14:00]numbing myself from pain, that no amount of numbness
[14:03]would stave off the crushing guilt and shame
[14:05]that would sweep over me the minute I finished eating,
[14:08]the minute that chocolate was all gone.
[14:10]I knew I had to finish them.
[14:12]And then later, you say, oh, what misery I think now,
[14:15]looking back at young me, I was perfect just as I was.
[14:18]Why did we think that being thin was the answer to everything?
[14:21]How did we buy into such a ridiculous thing?
[14:23]Okay, so tell me about this piece of the story.
[14:27]Well, I've written about, I suppose,
[14:31]I can't say it's all women's relationship with food,
[14:33]and I am enormously gratified to see my daughter
[14:37]and her friends having a very, very different relationship
[14:40]to their bodies and to their food.
[14:43]So a lot of it is about timing,
[14:45]is about growing up in the, you know,
[14:47]I was born in 1968, it was about growing up in the 70s,
[14:50]and also growing up in a family
[14:53]where beauty and thinness was celebrated.
[14:57]There wasn't really an option,
[14:59]and I was clearly neither of those things.
[15:02]And so I grew up feeling like I was just a disappointment
[15:08]and inadequate in every way.
[15:10]And so that has fueled a lot of my books.
[15:14]I mean, for my first book that was published
[15:16]in the States, Jemima, Jay to,
[15:19]I didn't think I'd be writing about it again now,
[15:22]but I realized that really the culture of that time
[15:26]was extreme skinniness.
[15:28]Twiggy was who everybody has spied to be in.
[15:31]And she really, she had the figure of a boy.
[15:33]And so the pressure on women was enormous.
[15:36]So I decided that Claire would be somebody
[15:40]who had to go through some of that journey.
[15:44]And actually, look, she does it in that time,
[15:48]you needed to be a certain way to have an odd,
[15:52]or I don't know that you needed to because there were people
[15:55]who didn't, but it made life easier then.
[15:59]And I'm so happy that it's not that way anymore.
[16:01]And I'm so relieved for my children and the younger generation.
[16:07]But I certainly felt it.
[16:08]And I wanted to put that in the book
[16:11]because that was all sort of part of her journey.
[16:13]And the truth is, it doesn't really make much of a difference
[16:16]is that my weight has fluctuated my entire life.
[16:19]Sometimes I'm bigger, sometimes I'm smaller.
[16:23]Do I feel different?
[16:26]Well, I'm thinking, well, I get to wherever I want.
[16:29]I love being able to wear smaller, tighter clothes,
[16:34]but I'm also turning 54 this year,
[16:37]and I'm really happy in a calf tan or a poncho.
[16:42]I was also menopause.
[16:43]I mean, I wish I was that,
[16:46]and I probably have to start doing some exercise now
[16:48]because I'm really, really bad at it.
[16:51]But I meant a pause sort of turns your whole life upside down.
[16:55]And I think that I'm too busy to fight it
[16:58]by doing three hours of exercise a day.
[17:01]It's just, that's never gonna happen.
[17:03]I do walk, I could probably walk more.
[17:05]But it's the things that have made me stop and think
[17:10]and that there are so many situations that have come up again
[17:15]and again in my life and they always find their way
[17:17]into my books.
[17:18]Interesting.
[17:20]I mean, I'm glad to hear that about your daughters.
[17:21]I don't feel like it's totally gone though.
[17:23]I mean, I do feel that,
[17:25]I mean, at least from my vantage point
[17:27]or maybe not just my kids, but social media and all that.
[17:30]I mean, I do feel there's a lot of pressure still
[17:32]and with COVID, there's been a rise in eating disorders
[17:35]and young girls with Instagram and all that.
[17:37]So I hope that what you're saying is the case
[17:40]as we move forward, but I'm not sure it's completely gone.
[17:44]So I don't know that I agree with that.
[17:47]I also think there's a socioeconomic factor
[17:50]in that when you live in a big city like New York
[17:54]or like LA, you still, you have these girls
[17:58]who have a tremendous amount of pressure, not just,
[18:00]and I think a lot of it is actually for them,
[18:03]the pressure of living up to their parents standards
[18:05]of going to schools that are intensely competitive
[18:09]of the fear that they are not good enough.
[18:11]And so again, I mean, I was eating disorder
[18:14]because of that reason.
[18:16]And so I think in towns that have that kind of pressure,
[18:20]absolutely, the girls are still very much under it.
[18:23]And I know, I mean, I can count,
[18:27]I mean, I know a number of families right now
[18:31]whose daughters are struggling
[18:32]really hard with eating disorders.
[18:34]And I live in West Book, Connecticut.
[18:37]I mean, of course that's gonna happen.
[18:39]You go to somewhere like Austin, Texas,
[18:41]where my daughter is at university, that's not the case.
[18:44]And actually, all sizes are celebrated.
[18:48]And I am seeing that more and more on Instagram
[18:52]with younger people, not perhaps in the cities.
[18:55]I think the pressure is still very much on.
[18:58]So it's time for me to take a trip to Austin, Texas.
[19:00]Yeah.
[19:02]Well, maybe I once did a keynote somewhere in the Midwest.
[19:07]I don't even remember where it was,
[19:09]but it was like somewhere like Ohio or,
[19:11]and I wasn't feeling very good about myself.
[19:13]I was definitely on the bigger side.
[19:15]And afterwards, there were a lot of men,
[19:18]it was a tech thing.
[19:20]And there were a lot of men in the audience.
[19:21]And after this, the organizer was like,
[19:23]oh, they were all saying, you know,
[19:25]how pretty you are now.
[19:26]And I was like, oh my God, I felt so good.
[19:29]I was like, I wanna move here because it's so awful
[19:33]about myself.
[19:33]And I was getting this validation,
[19:35]but that's also food for thought, you know,
[19:37]but it's cultural as well.
[19:40]That's true.
[19:41]I know we think that where we are sometimes,
[19:42]these are the only people,
[19:43]there's the only views.
[19:45]But there's a whole world out there.
[19:47]And so for any people who need the consolation
[19:51]of that, it's very true.
[19:53]So, Jane, after all of this time,
[19:55]you spent into Toledo's life and this crazy time.
[20:00]history and all of that. What has changed now about your view of the world and like how you're
[20:06]going about your life and like how is this research and this writing and this process? How is
[20:11]how if it all has it changed you? Well, you know, I think I started this journey actually when I
[20:18]turned 50 and in fact my birthday party was a 70s Moroccan or 60s Moroccan birthday party and it was
[20:28]I think I, as I turned 50, I just thought, who the hell am I? You know, I've spent 50 years of my
[20:34]life trying to fish in not feeling good enough and I'm really, really fed up with this and I've
[20:39]got to figure out who the hell I am because I don't want to step into, you know, what you'll call
[20:44]the afternoon of life, not knowing. I don't want to live like this anymore and and Toledo was, you know,
[20:51]in fact when I look back on my ideas for what I would work and just cost you, you know, for my
[20:57]for my 50th, it's all pictures of Toledo. It's Toledo ever. Toledo, Vorishco, and Marissa Berenson, like
[21:03]all over my photo and feed. So I think it started then and I think sort of diving into her world.
[21:09]There's, I think I have a freedom that I didn't have before. I think I was so frightened that people
[21:16]would see that I wasn't good enough that I was always quite stiff and and was very rarely able to
[21:24]relax and I think that I am much more relaxed. I definitely drink much more. I definitely
[21:36]probably do, oh, I definitely do drugs more than I used to. Sometimes a little bit too much. So
[21:41]so the influence is, you know, I'm very aware of bad things can happen. And probably as I'm a
[21:46]lightweight, actually, that's the real problem. The problem is I don't, it's not even that I do
[21:50]too much. It's that I can't handle it. And so, you know, what, what for everybody else is totally fine
[21:56]for me, just wipes me out a number of times. My, you know, it's like, oh, I have a migrant. You have to
[22:01]take me home. But I think there is a freedom. I'm having fun. I'm having more fun in my 50s than I
[22:08]have ever had before in my life. And it's also, I think I'm very aware now that I'm not somebody
[22:16]who fits in. And that's fine. In fact, I love it. I wouldn't want to be somebody who fits in.
[22:21]You know, it started with the pink hair. And, and I think that was my kind of experimentation of
[22:27]trying to figure out who I am. And now I realize, you know, I am whoever I feel like on that day.
[22:34]But it's also, it's sifted out the wrong people. And also, I think being authentically me has
[22:41]attracted the right people. So I'm in a really good place. That's amazing. I love that it's
[22:48]inspiring and awesome. And there's so much, you know, I feel like there's so much fear about getting
[22:53]older and this and that. And there's not enough like, Hey, you know what, it gets better. It gets amazing.
[22:59]I mean, it really does. I mean, you really, you stop. I mean, I still care a little bit. I,
[23:04]you know, somebody wrote to me today that there's, oh, drama, an author who has sort of
[23:10]bullied me fairly regularly on social media channels. And, you know, I went and found what
[23:15]had been posted and watched it. And, you know, five years ago, I would have been devastated.
[23:22]Every time this has happened in the past, I have been devastated. And I watched it today. And I
[23:26]just thought, gosh, you know, it's happened 15 years ago. And this is, I'm sad that this is something
[23:35]that you're carrying that you'd be carrying for 15 years. And I just, the fact that it didn't
[23:42]flaw me, it didn't have me, you know, spend the day in tears or try and, you know, think about
[23:48]doing something in revenge, you know, or kind of hit back. It's just like, it's, you know, you go
[23:55]and live your life. And I'm living mine. And actually, I'm good. I can't believe someone is
[24:02]bullying you on social media. I can't even begin to wonder what they're even saying that would
[24:07]even, that could possibly be the negative in this. Now I have to go scroll and try to figure it out.
[24:12]Well, and this is the thing. I realize when you carry things like that about anybody,
[24:18]it's never about them. It's never about them. And I, oh, I'm having a hot flash look, you can see
[24:25]I'm going. I did. I actually did notice that. I was like, is she getting really upset about this? We
[24:30]can talk about it. No, I'm actually having a hot flash. You know what? I've done a lot of work.
[24:35]I've been in 12 step programs for 20 years clearly, not, you know, alcohol is not one of them,
[24:41]perhaps it should be. But I've been in 12 step programs for 20 years, Alan on has changed my life
[24:47]and I've done the work. And what I know is that other people's behavior is, it's none of my
[24:54]business, nothing to do with me. So yeah, so it's really long. And I feel that about just life in general,
[25:00]whereas I used to get so upset. And I'm, I'm inherently a pleaser. I want to be like, don't want
[25:06]everybody to like me. And, and it used to be so hard when people didn't. And now I'm, it's okay.
[25:15]Well, I really like you.
[25:16]For whatever that's worth.
[25:22]Well, you know, to me, let me say something else as well. I think that I, because I felt so insecure,
[25:28]I think I also projected a very different image of who I actually am. And I think, you know,
[25:33]I stick into the role of who I thought I was supposed to be as a best-selling author. And I think
[25:39]also, you know, I'm English and I speak, you know, received pronunciation. And I think that can
[25:46]be intimidating. And I think people could people often assume that I'm quite grand or, you know,
[25:51]they, they project things on to me that actually aren't me at all. And the thing is,
[25:57]today, this really is me. But, you know, 15 years ago, I do understand how I came across.
[26:04]And I also know from my own journey, you know, I, I have given talks and walked into rooms of,
[26:11]of very beautiful park avenue apartments that have been filled with women that have looked me
[26:16]up and down. And, and I thought dismissed me. And then I have talked. And, and I have then had
[26:22]those same women line up to hug me and burst into tears in my arms. And, and I realized that
[26:29]I've made exactly the same judgments about them. And it was nothing to do with them. They were
[26:34]just being them. It was, it was me. Wow. Yeah. Have you thought about writing a book about this type
[26:43]of thing? Like, that's not fiction. That's about this. Like, is that, it would be really powerful,
[26:48]I think. Yes. I, this is something that my agent has been wanting me to do. Yeah, it's sort of,
[26:56]I'm not quite sure what it would be kind of a, and he said, don't even worry about what it
[27:00]should be. I mean, whether it's kind of memoir or, or I, because I'm, I'm so nervous about memoir,
[27:06]because, you know, nervous about writing about my, my family and my growing up, I've done it a
[27:14]little bit. And, you know, I, when my first book actually, where I did write a little bit about my
[27:19]childhood and, you know, my mother stopped talking to me for a while. And then, and then eventually
[27:24]sort of phoned up and apologized for my childhood. But, you know, and I also recognized my parents
[27:29]did the best they could with the tools they had, which were not only have tools in those days.
[27:34]So, but I'm nervous about it, but I do. He said, just stream of consciousness and I'm,
[27:40]I do realize that every time I post something on Instagram or Facebook about this and about,
[27:45]you know, the word authenticity, it's like, it's hard for me, because it's just become so
[27:52]ubiquitous now. But, but I, I think just, just, we're living in a society that is so judgmental
[27:59]and particularly on Instagram. We make so many assumptions and I'm guilty of it. You know, when I,
[28:04]in my old house, whenever I post your pictures of my beautiful kitchen, I'd slide the three
[28:10]ceiling high piles of crap, you know, six feet off to the sides of the kitchen. It's amazing,
[28:16]we all portray our lives as, as beautiful. And we don't show the messy and, and the difficult and
[28:23]the hard. Now, sometimes we can't, because we're just trying to get through the day and we're just
[28:28]trying to get through it until we can talk about it. But I, you know, more, I think there is,
[28:33]there is something in this. And I think, yeah, I think I'm, I'm getting ready to start writing about
[28:40]Thank you. Oh, if you want to open invitation to publish this with Civivax, if you want to do
[28:47]this memoir with us, I mean, honestly, this is exactly the type of story. And I'm sure people
[28:53]would be clamoring for your memoir. But this is what we want, showing the mess, showing the real,
[28:57]because all this hiding, it doesn't help anybody, right? It doesn't help people get through the
[29:02]clean kitchens or not, making anybody feel good. Yeah. I mean, there's something, there's something
[29:07]to aspiration, like, oh, I would love. Well, you're, and your house, I completely fell in love
[29:12]with, as you know, on Instagram, that I was like, I'm going to drive up and go find this happen.
[29:17]Getting, so I think the key is, because you're right, I love looking at pictures of gorgeous
[29:23]homes. I don't want it. I mean, I, I'm staying at my brothers. You've met my brother, Charlie.
[29:28]I was staying at Charlie's a couple weeks ago. And three weeks prior, he'd said to me,
[29:33]oh, Jane, I'm showing the house. He's selling his house. I'm showing the house.
[29:36]Could, you know, so just, just let, you know, oh, yeah, I'm really good at showing houses. And then,
[29:40]of course, it went out of my head. And so I'm lying in bed in my pajamas, messing around on my computer,
[29:46]doorbell rings. Some couple is there to see the house and then the state agent is there and he went,
[29:51]oh, sorry, we're a bit earlier. Give me 10 minutes. And so I, I quit, the kids toys were all over,
[29:57]so I shoved them under pillows. But I hadn't gone upstairs.
[30:00]two sets of people came in to see the house and it wasn't until they'd gone that I realized
[30:04]there was don't pull all over the garden, the beds were made, they were closed all over the
[30:09]floor, in the kids rooms and now I was like, Charlie, that's you can't show a house like this
[30:17]in a list of everything he needed to do but and there is something for me about see, you know,
[30:23]I want to buy into the aspirational light up and I also want the realness and I'm happy to
[30:29]have it side by side so so I think I am still pursuing pictures of my house, you know,
[30:35]my tiny, tiny little cottage looking gorgeous and I'm talking about, you know, very real things
[30:41]and sometimes I, you know, often in stories you'll see me with no makeup on looking,
[30:46]working pretty frightening. Well you have an amazing Instagram, it's like,
[30:52]and you're completely entertaining and you never know what you're going to get, I love it.
[30:58]True entertainment channels, it's amazing. What's your next book that's scheduled to come out?
[31:02]I don't know actually, I don't know. I have written a sequel to Sister Starcast, which
[31:08]is cool at the characters and takes them forward 10 years to 1972 not well,
[31:15]slightly less than 10 years, 1979 but that is actually exclusively for a podcast for a new
[31:21]podcast company that I'm actually involved with called Gemini 13. Ooh, that will be coming out,
[31:26]it's a novella and it will be exclusively available on podcasts. I don't quite know what I'm going to
[31:32]do with the publishing of that. Yeah, we'll see. So I don't know, I'm not sure what the next one will be.
[31:40]So maybe this, maybe this memory. Yeah, yeah, maybe. Amazing. Jane, thank you. It's always so great
[31:48]to talk to you and just to be so real and you're just telling it like it is. I mean, that's,
[31:53]it's the best thing that can happen. So I love it. I really love it. It's refreshing and open
[31:58]and honest and and you and awesome. So thank you. Thank you. It's always just so lovely saying
[32:06]you. Thank you, Toby. Thanks, Jane. Okay, take care. Okay, bye. Thanks for listening to this
[32:13]episode of Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books. Don't forget to follow me on Instagram at
[32:18]Zebioans and at Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books. Also sign up for my newsletter at zebioans.com
[32:23]and sign up for my virtual book club and meet lots of authors on Zoom every other week.
[32:28]Thanks so much to Steve and Ryan. Heck, texture sound for the sound editing. And thank you to
[32:32]Morning Moon Productions for providing this fantastic intro and outro music.