Alafair Burke, FIND ME: A Novel

[1:19]Zibby Owens: Hi. This is Zibby Owens, and you're listening to the award winning podcast, Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books. And speaking of books, I have two of my own books coming out this spring and summer. Princess Charming is a picture book, which debuts on April 19, and A Memoir of Love, Loss, and Literature comes out on July 1, and it is truly a labor of love. I hope you'll preorder, order, and join me on tour as I go across the country. You can find out more at zibbyowens.com or bookendsmemoir.com. And you can follow me on Instagram at zibby owens because I always post about everything. Enjoy the show. Alafer Berk is the author of Find Me, a novel. She is a New York Times best selling author whose most recent novels include The Better Sister, The Wife option for a feature film by Amazon, and The Ex which was nominated for the Edgar Award for best novel. She's also the co author of the best selling Under Suspicion series with Mary Higgins Clark. She currently serves as the president of Mystery Writers of America and is the first woman of color to be elected to that position. A former prosecutor, she now teaches criminal law and lives in Manhattan and East Tim. Welcome, Ala Faire. Thank you so much for coming on momstone of time to read books to discuss your latest find me. Thank you so much for having me. I appreciate it. It's my pleasure.

[2:42]Alafair Burke: Could you please tell listeners what your novel is about? Yeah. So the main character of Find Me, it's really two women. One goes missing. Hope Miller moves out to East Hampton, leaves a small town in New Jersey where she's lived for fifteen years and she decides she wants to go someplace, have a little more anonymity, a little more independence. She moves out to East Hampton and within a few weeks vanishes. And her best friend, Lindsay Kelly, is determined to find her. So find me is kind of literally a search for hope in the present. But one of the many interesting things about Hope is part of the reason why she wanted to leave this small town where everybody knew her for the last fifteen years is she suddenly appeared there after a major car accident and was found at the side of the road, presumed dead. She survived her injuries. But when she came to at the hospital, she didn't know who she was, why she was there, where she was from. She had no ID and no cash. It turned out the car that she wrecked was a stolen car. That's really all she knew about herself. So when she disappears, the search for her is a little complicated by the fact that she doesn't really have a past. So it's not just a search for her in the present, but also kind of turns into a search for her true identity.

[3:55]Zibby Owens: I mean, what you just said, the search for hope in the present, is like a double entendre?

[4:02]Alafair Burke: Her name so she had to pick a name for herself in this little town that kind of takes her in. It's called Hopewell. And so she's like, well, I guess I'll call myself Hope, because people have been calling her Jane Doe. Some people sort of started calling her Hope. The name stuck. But yeah, whatever, it is sort of a search for hope maybe.

[4:21]Zibby Owens: Interesting time to write a book like this, right? I found it interesting in the book actually when you're talking about her assuming an alias and everything that only and maybe this isn't even true, but it was in the book as fact, so I'll assume it's fact, that there were only three cases, three recorded cases of somebody trying to who had, who didn't know their identity, trying to file and basically assume a new name legally. I'm not saying that very well. There is somebody who has a baby who was left on a stoop and this fictitious hope who Right.

[4:53]Alafair Burke: Yeah. And a homeless person. So those, that is actually, I don't know that three is the right number, but in the book it's that there's only three in New Jersey, but it is true that it's incredibly difficult to establish a new identity. Mean, you and I could go and change our names, that's fine. But then there'll be kind of an almost like a chain of custody. You'll know that the person who changed her name to X used to be Y. To just create a new identity when you're not able to say who you used to be is close to impossible. And the reason for it is if you think about it, there's very few people who would have a need for that, right? It would be a person who showed up either too young or non verbal or with amnesia, like to know, to be able to say who they were. And then the potential for fraud is limitless. Because of that, there's really no institutional incentive to set up a way to create a new identity from scratch. But what I found more interesting is, for people who don't know my work, I used to be a prosecutor, a law professor, and I would have just thought given what I know, like there's a missing person's database, right? There's also a database of people who are found dead and who are unidentified, right? That's a separate information pool. But there's nobody who There's not even a way to put yourself into a database if you are alive, but unidentified. That's when they said that New Jersey had actually started a database for that, but there was hardly anybody in it, including her.

[6:23]Zibby Owens: It's

[6:24]Alafair Burke: like, did you ever see the movie Overboard in the eighties? You know, Goldie Hawn? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I loved that movie. Bumps her head, doesn't know who she is for a life. It would be like if she just like went roaming in and trying to establish a new name for herself. Right. I almost get a social security number. You know, it sounds kind of tropey and it doesn't kind of sound like either a wacky comedy or like this big soap opera or anything. But I think why, think the reason why Amnesia works in the book as a plot device, it's all because it's in the past, right? I mean, she went through this fifteen years ago and the moment of trying to frenetically search for who is this woman? Does anyone recognize this face? At some point when that didn't work, it makes sense to me that you might just have to focus on the present, right? And many of us do that figuratively, right? Whatever garbage we have in the past, whatever baggage we have in the past, at some point we decide enough is enough. I'm not gonna, I'm gonna stop wringing my hands about that, shut the door on it and put one foot in front of the other until you have a new life again. And she's had to do that literally, right? Didn't, and involuntarily. That door was kind of shut for her and has decided to go on her way and makes her way just fine with the help of this town where she doesn't need to have a driver's license because everybody kind of understands why she doesn't have one. She has a job under the table. She has this nice family that lets her live in a garage apartment. So she's kind of just made this life work, but she was either a late teenager or early twenties. I mean, a very young woman when this started and now she thinks that she's in her mid thirties and has still kind of been living her life in limbo. This was supposed to be a fresh start, but it might not have gone as may not have gone as planned.

[8:10]Zibby Owens: There's also the question, did she really have amnesia? Did she make up her own identity? We don't know. And we only know it from mostly from Lindsay's point of view, her friend. But there's always that big question mark. Are the journals really what she wrote, or did she make it all up? Or you know, once you start reading your book, you never know. Like, what do we believe? What do what is true? What is not? So it adds to the mystique. Well,

[8:36]Alafair Burke: and I'm glad that you mentioned that the reader gets to know Hope primarily through Lindsay's eyes, but Lindsay has her own point of view too. Mean, their friendship was forged in this very unusual way where Lindsey is actually the one who found hope thrown from the overturned SUV that turned out to be stolen. She's also around the same age. She had just graduated from college. She's driving home. She finds this overturned car and literally saves this young woman's life, which if you think about that, that happens to you when you're 22 years old, that immediately gives her this purpose. When Hope wakes up at the hospital and doesn't know who she is, Lindsay kind of decides to become her person and doesn't leave her. And so the two of them have this really entangled relationship and where they're arguably even kind of codependent on each other. And it's not surprising. It shouldn't be surprising to the reader Lindsay knows at some cellular level that Hope would not lie to her. And that Hope would never just ghost her or start over again without her. But the reader comes to learn, and it's not a spoiler, that other people who know these two are kind of like, you know, maybe Hope was over it. Like, maybe Hope really was feeling a little too smothered by this, or maybe she's playing the long game and maybe there were doubts there all along. Particularly Hopefully, it's a good twisty little mystery. Yes. Particularly

[10:01]Zibby Owens: Lindsey's boyfriend. She's kinda like, okay, great. Now Lindsey's gone. Can we please move things along here? Right? Like, enough with that. I think he was a little disappointed that she was driving back and forth to the Hamptons from New Jersey. Yeah.

[10:15]Alafair Burke: Yeah. Where I think a lot I've had a lot of female readers tell me that even though their friendships don't involve amnesia and overturned SUVs and stolen cars and missing people, but I think that a lot of women will recognize their female friendships in this book and the way that maybe the people outside of those friendships, including people like boyfriends and husbands are sort of like, what is it? Why is she allowed to talk to you like that? I'm not like, why wouldn't you drive across the country for her without me?

[10:46]Zibby Owens: Almost like this kind of jealousy or seeing it as somehow threatening to their relationship. And when Lindsay is willing to kind of drop everything for Hope, you can tell her boyfriend, there's a little bit of pushback there. I like also how you have Lindsay's dad is the head of police in her town and knows everything. And here she is the lawyer, and then she gets to check-in with him on all of the stuff, right? Like, what database did he use? What did this even mean? Give me the lay of the land. Right? So here he comes in as this total expert, and she's this, you know, sort of hustling little lawyer trying to figure everything out and use everything she knows, which to the dismay sort of the other police force in the town that Yeah. Is

[11:31]Alafair Burke: I love I like to play with point of view. And, yeah, when she goes to East Hampton looking for her friend and needs a, let's let's just say skeptical police officer, when he starts hearing about amnesia, he's rolling his eyes going, yeah. No. But it's interesting to look at Lindsay through his eyes where he's immediately like, lawyer. Gotta be a lawyer. But Lindsay's really smart. At some point, she says, you know, there's formal law, and then there's the way stuff actually works. Mhmm. And, you know, she knows how to try a case. You know, if there's motions that need to be filed, she can write them. But when there's no case file and there's nobody being prosecuted and she's just trying to get police to do something, she realizes she really doesn't have the power to do that formally, but she's kinda clever enough that she figures it out. Well, I love that you have this set at

[12:20]Zibby Owens: a home that was being prepped for an open house in the Hamptons because I've probably been to, like, 8,000 open houses in the Hamptons. That was, like, my favorite thing to do with my kids too on the weekends. I'm like, who wants to get an open house? It's so bad. But I there is like nothing I enjoy more. So I love it. Like your book. And I don't know if you know of Open House by Katie Seis, which is like an Amazon No. Bestseller, which is set in an open house. And it also kind of reminded me of like Ramana Lom's, like in the Airbnb. I don't know. There's like this whole

[12:49]Alafair Burke: I'm very fascinated by real estate, like all of my real estate porn. Know, it's like, I have all these set up Zillow searches and places I don't even live. Seriously. Just want to get into houses. I'm getting like Key Biscayne

[13:02]Zibby Owens: listings. I'm like, why? Like, because I think one day I was like, maybe we should move to Florida.

[13:08]Alafair Burke: Minus Siesta Key. I keep looking at listings in Siesta Key. So funny. Oh my gosh. I probably looked at more houses online than I don't even know. It's ridiculous. Very funny. So since you're talking about so the, again, not a spoiler. The prologue is set where Lindsay finds a sorry. Hope finds a job out in East Hampton with this kind of sketchy realtor working under the table, helping him set up open houses. And but she refers to this house as, like, not being a really great house. It just has a really good lot, And somebody would probably buy it for $2,000,000 and tear it down. By the time the book came out, it's like, oh, it would be more like three and a half. Honestly, I read that and I was like, there is no way you could get a six bedroom south of the highway in Cygoponic

[13:48]Zibby Owens: for that amount of money. No. Know. I'm And thinking, it must be a teardown. And then then it comes out and you're like, well, it does need a lot of work. I'm like, even but two acres? I don't know. I think it would go for more. By the time the book came out, it's like, oh, it's probably closer to four. But that's the kind of like that's like sick money that you can't start putting if, like, you know, people not from New York read these books and it will not sound credible to them at all. Yes. No. $4,000,000 for a house to tear it down even though people do that. Yeah. I I understand. I thought it was really funny though. So you've written so many books and you've become such a success. You're like master of the genre. How do you approach each book, like, at this point and your whole career of writing? Because I feel like once you become a certain, I don't know, echelon of this is like, this can be your job full time. You can do it even though you're a law professor as well. Like how do you approach it? How do you just like keep basically, how do you structure your writing life as a career and all of that? Yeah. It makes

[14:50]Alafair Burke: it sound really simple, but it's in theory, you write a little bit every day and you have a book in a year. I've not, particularly the last couple of years, haven't been as great about it. There are too many days where I'm like, I'm just gonna sit and look at this TV all day. And then you gotta make up for it later. But in general, I still kind of just try to, it's just a little bit of time, but I do, I think over time I've become a little more of a plotter, as they say, instead of a pantser. I think things out a little more thoroughly before I start writing than I used to. I think part of that to be is when I co authored six novels with Mary Higgins Clark before she passed away And we both were cancers. We were just kind of like, Oh, I have an idea and I think I've got these good characters and I'll just start writing. If it means a lot of rewriting, so be it. But we can't do that with two of us. People can't just make stuff up by the seat of their pants and both be working on it at the same time, or we wind up with two completely different She decided that person did it and I decided the butler did it. It's not gonna work. So we really had to sit down and think through all the characters, what define them, what their motivations are, what are their secrets, what are the tensions, what are the desires, and then how does that spiral out of control, right? What situation pushes those pressure points to the point that they can't withstand the pressure anymore? And then what happens to whom and how is it gonna unfold? And if you talk through all of that stuff before you start writing, it's amazing how much more sane the writing process is. So I'm a little more structured now in terms of kind of knowing the big, big beats and the character arc and what everybody's kind of searching for before I start writing. At that point, just kind of pluck off little pieces of it. I'm going to try to get these two scenes done today. Two weeks from now, I want to hit this point and

[16:51]Zibby Owens: kind of work it backwards. But it doesn't make it sound very sexy, but No, that's all right. Where do you Are you a Post it all over the wall person? Is it all in a Google Doc? Like what's your process?

[17:04]Alafair Burke: I was a cork board and index card person. Okay. And now I have now I'm not in my office right now, but in my office, I have a very, very, very large whiteboard. And that is kind of my bible. And I even like before I travel, I will take pictures of my whiteboard and use it to be like eyes on the front, like describing this one little thing right now. By the end of the week, to get to this point, keep things moving. I think that moving to that structure, kind of having goal points and knowing, I want to get to there by 40,000 words or something like that. I think that my books have become shorter and also quicker. There's not a lot of stuff there that doesn't need to be there. I think they're quick reads. I think if you could I love my early books too, but I think with my early books, I was kind of like, I don't really need to know what I'm gonna write two days from now because right now I'm just gonna write the hell out of this. And sometimes, know, lots of neat details and things like that, but I don't know if the story moved quite as fast.

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[21:07]Alafair Burke: Well, tell me about how you became a writer and a lawyer and when these two paths intersected in your life and maybe the influence of your dad who's also a crime writer on your career trajectory and all of that. Yeah. I've kind of got the opposite story of, you know, there are a lot of people who out there who are like, oh, I would have loved to have been a writer and artist, but my parents told me to be a lawyer or a doctor. My dad told me to be a writer, so I became a lawyer. So my father's a writer. My father's James Lee Burke. I was always as a little kid, my mom is a librarian. She would take me to the library every weekend to get a new stack of books. And I realize now she was just trying to get me out of the house so that my dad could write. I was the youngest kid in the family. I loved to read and I would see my dad, I see that typewriter back there. Would see my dad writing books on his manual royal typewriter and I would go in and write little stories. And he's like, Oh, you're gonna be a writer. You're gonna be a writer. And everybody rebels against their parents even if they're telling you something great. Maybe if they had told me, Go party and do drugs. I would be like, No, don't do it. Do the opposite. So I was like, no, I don't wanna be a writer. It's not practical and dah, dah. And so but I always did share a fascination with crime. I was always fascinated by crime. And I think part of that is, I don't know if you know this, I grew up in Wichita, Kansas, and there was a serial killer active when I was a kid. When we first moved there, I was like, Oh, so you moved me to a place that one doesn't have an ocean and two has a serial killer? Thanks mom and dad. This is a great place. But I think where a lot of parents would have protected their kids from that news and turned it off when the glory stories came on, my parents had no problems like me knowing all the details and my father and I would sit around and like, I must've been in junior high. And like, would talk about who we thought he probably was. We thought he was a student at Wichita State because a letter was found there. So I was always really interested in crime. When I went to law school, I actually went for one purpose, but I loved criminal law. I loved my criminal procedure cases. And so I wound up being a prosecutor and I started out as prosecutor in Portland, Oregon. And I'd go to Powell's bookstore, which you might know, and just kind of load up on paperbacks of mysteries. That was kind of my nighttime reading and weekend reading. And before too long, I kind of became yet another lawyer with an idea for a book. And I thought, someday I'll write it. And when I moved to New York and started teaching as a law professor, I had a little more time. I'm like, I'm gonna write that book. And so I thought it would be one book and I'd have it on my shelves with all my non fiction book. Professor Burke wrote a book one time and when they sold, my agent sold it, he called me. He's like, Well, the good news is lots of people are interested. And he's like, But a lot of people want to know if it's a series. And I was like, Do they want it to be a series? He's like, Yeah, yeah, yeah. This is back when everybody wanted a series. And they're all like, Yeah, they're assuming it's a series. Then yes, yes, it's a series. I can totally do this again. I'm like, Oh my God, what have I done? If I had to go tell, you know, I was an untenured law professor. I had to go tell my dean. I was like, so I wrote this book and now I'm gonna promise to write another book, but I can still do everything and I can still be a scholar. And he was like, that's awesome. Everybody wants to write a book. He was very supportive. Was like, Oh, thank God. So I'm still at that law school. I'm still a law professor. But my first novel came out since 2003. When you were saying, you're a known author and you clearly have a career as a writer. I was like, do I? I don't know at what point it starts to feel real. I'm like, it still feels like two books at a time for me. But yeah, at this point, I guess I'm an actual established writer, I suppose, even though it really does sound odd to hear myself describe it that way.

[25:12]Zibby Owens: That's the great thing about interviewing authors all the time. Like nobody has I mean, does anybody No. Nobody. Feel like that? I don't think so. I mean, maybe Nicholas Sparks.

[25:25]Alafair Burke: John Grisham is probably pretty convinced that he's a successful writer. Everyone else I know is still kind of like, how long is this gonna last? You know?

[25:34]Zibby Owens: Yeah. I think self doubt, anxiety, all of that is a it's like the work jacket, you know, like the paleontologist puts on like the special outfit. I feel like that's the jacket that authors wear. And

[25:49]Alafair Burke: I don't worry about us because to me that seems normal. I worry about the debut authors who are like, I got it made. I'm like, Oh, wait.

[25:57]Zibby Owens: Yeah. Well, no. Yeah. There's always a new hurdle. There's always a new challenge. Before I was like even remotely in this industry and just a recreational reader and lover of books, I was like, Well, the be all end all is to just have a book, you know, come out. Like that's it. That's the goal, Full stop. But then it's like, well, but I want it, you know, in the bookstore. Well, I don't just want it in the bookstore. Want it over here in the bookstore. And I don't just want it out. I want it to do well. And then I want there to be another book. And then, well,

[26:28]Alafair Burke: I don't know. It's like the goal I points know. Are always can be very unhealthy. It can be very unhealthy. I saw I wish I could credit it to the right person. Some nice person in writer Twitter the other day said something like, just remember what someone else's book is doing has nothing to do with what your book is doing. Like your writing career is your own and it is successful no matter what other people are doing. Right? Just kind of remember what your original dream was. Yeah. Anyway, I found it. There was that reminder.

[26:57]Zibby Owens: The anthology about not an anthology, but the yeah, it was kind of an anthology for Dorothy of Benton Clark that a bunch of women authors had. I can't remember what it was called, something about that. But there was one funny scene, I think by I now I'm forgetting all the details. But anyway, it's about two authors meeting in heaven, and they were like, but I still never got that number one New York Times bestseller. And it's like, I know. Can you believe it? I was number three, and I just never got there. I'm like, is that even a thing? Are people worried about that? A thing. Oh my gosh. I was like, I can't even I can't even believe. It's just so funny. But anyway, I guess you just never know. So what what books are coming next? Are you done with your next book? You must be already or I am about done with it, which is why I was reminding myself,

[27:43]Alafair Burke: too many days sitting on that couch. I am writing a sequel to Where Are the Children? Oh. Just something that Mary Higgins Clark and I had talked about before she passed away. That book is It's such an iconic book for a reason. You go back and I hope people will, I think they're reissuing it. There's a reissue write about to come out. If you reread that book, Mary's mysteries kind of became known as a Mary Hagans Clarke mystery, but without really looking back to the origin of it, which is Where Are the Children? That book has children in peril. It has an unreliable, potentially unreliable narrator. It has a gaslighting husband. It has some really kind of hints of dark things. The danger to children is kind of the worst kind. And it's a really kind of eerie dark book and danger close to home. And all the DNA is there for modern psychological suspense. There's no Gone Girl without where are the children. And so to be able to write a book that it's basically the children in that book, where are they now? The setup for the book, to be able to revisit all of those themes that Mary, she was a trailblazer in that area. To be able to write a book that's kind of an homage to all of that is pretty special. So I'm excited about it. That is exciting. That'll be out in about a year. And then I'm working on my next standalone as well. A book about friends go on trip and things go wrong. I'll both say that.

[29:08]Zibby Owens: Wow. In your daily life, it must be a miracle when anything actually goes according to plan. I feel like, right? When an open house is just an open house and nothing goes wrong, right? Because there's always the potential, the what ifs and all of that. Yeah,

[29:23]Alafair Burke: my friends What were you doing? Oh, the idea for my new book was when my friends and I were on vacation and something happened. I was kind of like, they saw me like in lava land and they're like, they'll know. My friends all know, Alifair's working now. You and I can continue to have our charcuterie, but she's doing something over there. The wheels are turning. And I they were like, like, we saw the car ride home. They were like, what were you doing there? Like and I'm like typing notes into my phone. And I was like, so what if instead of doing what we just did, this did happen instead? And they're like, you just did that, like, to our vacation. Like, that's what just happened. I was like, sorry. It's a really good idea, though. Where are your best girlfriends from? Like, what point of life or how did you meet them? Well, one of my best friends is the dean of Howard Law School, and she and I were colleagues at Hofstra when she first started her teaching career. And then she lateraled over to the University of South Carolina. And on one of her trips to visit her, I met one of the other professors down there. So we always we take an annual girlfriend trip, the three of us. So Oh, that's nice.

[30:29]Zibby Owens: Yeah. I usually take an annual girls trip with, like, six girlfriends from college, but we haven't done it in so long and they're actually all coming for dinner tonight from various places. So at least we have that. Yeah. I know. I'm excited. Yeah. The three of us that's so funny. The three of us are getting together in DC this weekend. I'm leaving I'm leaving on Friday.

[30:49]Alafair Burke: Nice reunions with the girl. Pandemic

[30:52]Zibby Owens: has not been good for making time for friends.

[30:55]Alafair Burke: Yeah. Well, I mean, in person. In person. That's what I mean. Yes. It's my long distance friends that actually made room in our schedules where we would never just hop on a We didn't even know what Zoom was, right? We wouldn't hop on the phone and talk for two hours. We were having weekly Zoom gatherings and pulling other people in. Did you see the There was a New York Times article about when does the group chat end? There's something that everybody who was kind of getting through the pandemic were constant group chats or text threads or Zoom parties. People are starting to drop out. And I'm like, No, I don't wanna drop out. People are important to me. That's

[31:37]Zibby Owens: true. Yeah. We just had a Zoom two weeks ago or something. I don't know. Maybe they'll just gradually sputter. And when you're not hanging with friends or working, like what do you like to do? And especially in the Hamptons, do you have any go to spots that you love? We go to a lot of restaurants. I mean, they're kind of the

[31:53]Alafair Burke: typical places you would go, but we increasingly, we wind up at Rowdy Hall a lot, Cochicoma d'Or. We like the bar, the palm. Weekends in the summer, we hide. We call it hiding at home. A lot of house parties. We host a lot of house parties, hang out at the beach, go to sunset. And then in terms of my personal hobbies, I actually golf, which people find very surprising.

[32:19]Alafair Burke: But I love to cook. So those two balance each other out. So I cook a lot. I'm looking forward to cooking this weekend. So That's awesome. Boring that I'm Not boring.

[32:28]Zibby Owens: Like I I sort of like golf. I can do it. I'm really good at drives, and then I, like, lose interest. I'm like, how far can I hit it? And then I'm then I'm like That's that's hard. That's my favorite. I like that. Okay.

[32:41]Alafair Burke: I'm not at first you were to say you were good at driving the golf cart.

[32:44]Zibby Owens: I'm

[32:45]Alafair Burke: probably better at driving the golf ball than the golf cart. Yeah. You're you're you're good off you're good off the tee. Yeah. I'm not. It's the second shot. That's the hard one. Yeah. It's same. It's all for me. I like the beautiful drive and then it's like, oh.

[33:00]Zibby Owens: Well then I like get in my head too much because I'm like, oh no, I missed this one. Now I miss this next one. And now I can't get my score back. Like it's too high. So then I stop frustrating. I don't know. It's a very frustrating game. I don't have the mental bandwidth. I don't have the mental toughness for golf, I think, is the problem. But anyway. Alright. Well, this was so nice to get to know you, and congratulations on finding me.

[33:23]Alafair Burke: Hope to see you in person sometime.

[33:24]Zibby Owens: You too. Yes. That would be fun. Thank you so much. Alright. Take care. Bye bye. Bye, podcast, you will love my new anthology called moms don't have time to have kids. Check it out, and you'll hear from 49 authors about all sorts of things moms don't have time to do. All the authors have been on this podcast. Also, check out my TikTok at withzivyandtracey, my other podcast, sex talk withzivyandtracey. Check out moms don't have time to write on Medium, and, of course, my new publishing company called Zibby Books. And now back to our daily author interview site and a quick hello from some of my kids. Hi. Hi. Hello. Enjoy the show.