Brooke Lea Foster, ON GIN LANE
[0:02]Hi, I'm Zivi Owens, the creator and host of the award-winning podcast that you're listening to right now.
[0:07]Thank you so much. Called moms don't have time to read books.
[0:10]It is a daily podcast, 365 days a year, and each day we talk to an author about all of the things related to their career,
[0:18]their book, their life, and more in 30 minutes or less because who has time?
[0:22]I am now an author myself, although I wasn't when I started this podcast, and you can get my new memoir,
[0:28]bookends, a memoir of love, loss, and literature, wherever books are sold starting July 1st, and my children's book prints is charming.
[0:36]You can learn more about me at zimbyones.com, but really you're here to learn more about the authors and that is what we're going to do.
[0:43]Also, be sure to check out all the other podcasts in the Z cast podcast network.
[0:48]You can learn more at zcastnetwork.com and definitely check out those shows as well.
[0:58]Brookley Foster is the author of On-Gen Lane.
[1:01]Brook is an award-winning journalist whose articles have appeared in the New York Times, the Washington Post magazine, the Atlantic, the Boston Globe Sunday magazine, and have post-among others.
[1:09]An alumna of the Writing Institute at Sarah Lawrence College.
[1:13]She's the author of three non-fiction books and the novels, Summer Darlings, and On-Gen Lane.
[1:18]Welcome, Brook.
[1:19]Thank you so much for coming back on mom's and on-time to read books to discuss On-Gen Lane a novel,
[1:24]which for people listening has one of the most gorgeous covers I have ever seen.
[1:29]So if you are somewhere where you can quickly Google this cover On-Gen Lane by Brookley Foster, you should absolutely do so.
[1:35]Thank you so much for having me to be. I'm so excited to be here.
[1:38]And, you know, Summer Darlings, my first book had such an amazing cover, so I didn't think they could top it, but I actually think they did.
[1:44]That's true.
[1:45]I don't know. It's like the gold, not that I even love gold to it,
[1:49]but this gold is so perfect, and it reflects the light in this gorgeous picture.
[1:53]And, oh my gosh, it's just...
[1:55]Yeah, it is. It's so shimmery.
[1:57]And, you know, it's so interesting because they actually sent us my editor in agent and I,
[2:01]12 choices of different book idea covers.
[2:04]And all of us, like let's say this one was labeled number 10.
[2:07]All of us were like number 10, number 10, number 10.
[2:09]It just jumped out at us, the image because it captured the story so well.
[2:13]There's a longing in the woman's face on the cover.
[2:16]She's kind of looking out, and I think that really captures the longing of my meeting character.
[2:21]Well, let's talk about Everly.
[2:23]Since we are going there already, I kind of want someone to make me a hotel after reading this.
[2:30]I'm like, what would my hotel look like?
[2:32]And like, yeah, I would agree with a throw fellas.
[2:35]Anyway, tell listeners what the whole book is about.
[2:39]And then let's get into the characters.
[2:41]Sure, sure.
[2:42]So, um, onto Lane is about a young debut on in the summer of 1957.
[2:47]She lives in New York City.
[2:49]And her fiance whisks her off to Southampton for the weekend.
[2:54]But when he gets there, he gives her this fabulous ocean front hotel, which she's utterly shocked by.
[3:01]And she, and he announces they're going to stay the whole summer.
[3:04]So she's a bit ambivalent about that.
[3:06]She didn't really have a say.
[3:07]He just kind of decided they're going to stay there for the summer.
[3:10]And after, but she kind of comes around.
[3:13]And after a pretty glamorous, I think you would agree.
[3:17]Grand opening party where Marilyn Monroe and Arthur Miller even make an appearance.
[3:22]The hotel burns to the ground.
[3:24]And the book is part a mystery of who burned the hotel down.
[3:29]But really, it's the story of a young woman finding her voice at a time when women didn't really have a voice.
[3:35]And kind of finding out that maybe this fiance of hers that she thought was Mr. Perfect is not so perfect after all.
[3:42]You never know what you're going to get.
[3:45]It's true. And you know what? It's based on a true story.
[3:49]So I got the idea for the book because when I was researching a little tidbit in summer darlings, I was trying to find out where a young society woman would stay.
[3:59]in 1962 if she was traveling to Chicago.
[4:03]And it turned out it was most likely the Palmer House Hotel on the Chicago Loop.
[4:08]And you know, as a journalist, as someone who loves historical fiction and you know, kind of going down the rabbit hole,
[4:14]I just started researching, you know, the story behind that hotel.
[4:18]And it turns out it has this really fascinating backstory where Potter Palmer, it's a little bit of a tongue twister.
[4:24]He was a wealthy businessman in Chicago back in 1871.
[4:28]And he built that hotel and gifted it to his fiance who was a young socialite at the time, pretty very glamorous herself, Bertha.
[4:37]And 13 days after the grand opening the hotel burned down.
[4:41]So I filed that away because I just thought that's such a great plot, you know, but I'm here.
[4:45]I am still working on summer darlings.
[4:47]And my head is in a completely different island.
[4:49]And I'm right, there's been your number five years later, you know.
[4:53]But when it came time to work on my second book, I just that little nugget stuck with me.
[4:58]I just thought it would be great to take that idea from back in the 1870s and put it on a young Manhattan couple.
[5:04]Go out to the Hamptons for the weekend, which is the place I love and know well from growing up fairly close by and having him gift her a hotel.
[5:13]I mean, who gets to get gifted a hotel? I just thought I was so neat. And then to have it burned down, you know, it's like this image of perfection, which I think is runs rampant in the Hamptons, but really behind closed doors and those perfect pick defenses.
[5:26]There's, you know, we all put our pants on the same way and there's all the same family drama and heartbreak and longing.
[5:32]It's just playing out in much bigger houses.
[5:34]So in this case, it plays out in a hotel until it burns down.
[5:37]But to mention, it's not like, it really felt like things were going so great. Anyway, like she didn't even want to be in the Hamptons. Jeremy like, what was me kind of problem, right?
[5:48]But, you know, you feel for her because she wants to be near her parents and they had just been like working on this other house. And I think it sounded like she was mostly just happy that he wasn't that what's name.
[6:01]Rowland.
[6:02]Rowland.
[6:03]Rowland.
[6:04]Rowland wasn't just like not working at all because she had been worried about that that he was.
[6:07]Right.
[6:08]She was worried that he didn't have a, you know, a really reliable job and she was getting ready to go to her because he's in, he was an architect, architectural major.
[6:15]But he wasn't building anything that she was like, what is going on? You know, and she's ready to go to her dad and say, can you give him some work?
[6:22]You know, she comes from a place where, you know, there's a couple things going on with Everly. Her mother has been in and has struggled with mental health issues. Her mother is very depressed, has, you know, since I kept her problems and she's been in another hospital.
[6:34]And I think as a daughter, she ever leaves really shoulder that burden, you know, a lot of us do that. I think where we feel like we have to take on the problems of our family.
[6:42]And she certainly done that, you know, always checking on her mom worrying about her mom is her mom feeling okay, she's going to go to lunch.
[6:48]So going away for the summer is scary to her because she's going to really be leaving her mother with her mental illness all alone.
[6:56]But also there's the cultural, you know, there's the cultural factors at work at the time, the socioeconomic factors, which is like, you know, women at the time were pretty unhappy, you know, they were back in the home.
[7:07]They were in quiet. They were encouraged to get a Mrs degree, meaning you went to college just to meet a husband.
[7:13]You know, there's all this pressure on Everly to be the happy homemaker and move into this house in Bronxville in the suburbs.
[7:20]So yeah, so she's, she's shouldering a lot when she gets out there for the summer. And I think when the hotel burns down.
[7:28]It's heartbreaking, but it also becomes this opportunity for her to kind of unravel and separate a little bit from these pressures and problems. She's, you know, been dealing with in her life.
[7:40]And she kind of finds a whole new path that summer. I really believe in the power of transformative summers. I don't know if you do too.
[7:46]I just from being out there all summer, but I feel like we wait all year in New York for our summers and somehow from Memorial day to Labor Day.
[7:53]I don't know that I necessarily change every summer, but I do feel different by the end of the summer. I come back with goals and ideas and, you know, new ways of looking at myself and I think Everly certainly does in this book too.
[8:06]I love that the transformative nature of summer. I feel like that's an essay contest, you know, like you should you should ask people, you know, in the spirit of this.
[8:15]Like what's a transformative summer experience or it's a summer where you really transformed. That would be a great idea.
[8:25]Yeah, no, I would love to meet those. Yeah. Oh, that would be fun. Maybe we should do like author related writing challenges.
[8:33]Yeah, you know, yeah, things like that on way back when I used to not way back when maybe like four years ago or whatever. I used to write for them.
[8:41]Today, parenting community site and they would have like a challenge and then everyone would write and they would like post about the same topic like step parents or I don't know.
[8:50]Yeah.
[8:52]I mean, I can even think back on, you know, several summers at pivotal points in my life, whether it was when I first graduated college and was finding my way with figuring out what the heck I was going to do with my life, right.
[9:08]I spent this summer trying to figure that out. I spent one summer. I remember working through like stuff from my childhood where I remember by the end of the summer feeling like I had peeled myself because I kind of gone there.
[9:19]I had summer romances, right, where you spend this summer.
[9:21]Really.
[9:22]You know, there's so many, I would love to. Oh my gosh, I could write so many summers. I would also be another like a fun device for a memoir.
[9:30]You know, only writing summers. Right.
[9:32]Yeah.
[9:33]That says about summer.
[9:34]Yeah, number 11 or something.
[9:36]Yep. Well, I mean, I want to hold the brands 28 summers. I feel like it's a good example.
[9:40]Oh, yeah, right. Of course.
[9:41]Summer has been having them add up to a larger.
[9:44]But that's fiction.
[9:45]That's fiction. Right.
[9:46]Yeah. No, I'm kind of thinking is like personal essay.
[9:49]Yeah. No, I know. Gotcha.
[9:51]I don't know. Cool. Okay. Anyway. Yeah. So that record card.
[9:54]But we're going to launch an essay contest. Great.
[9:57]Oh, a contest. Yeah.
[10:00]I guess it could be a contest.
[10:01]So we'd have a prize and everything.
[10:02]Yeah, this is even getting even more exciting.
[10:05]Yeah, okay, sure.
[10:06]What's our prize going to be?
[10:08]I need to be published, right?
[10:09]It was just that.
[10:10]Yeah, not like a trip to Southampton or something.
[10:13]I mean, that would be amazing.
[10:15]Right, and we've been there, yeah.
[10:17]We get into, well, now we're really going crazy.
[10:20]Uh, all right, well, this is fun.
[10:23]I like this.
[10:25]All right, let me think about some fun prize.
[10:27]I still think it should have something to do with Hampton's
[10:29]but, yeah, but anyway, okay.
[10:31]Yeah.
[10:32]Uh, well, anyway.
[10:36]So when you were writing this and putting yourself in
[10:38]Everly's shoes and everything about sort of the limitations
[10:41]of her voice, right, and her power.
[10:44]And even the fact that she was like damaged goods
[10:46]because of this one horrific situation that had already
[10:49]happened to her and like that at such a young age too.
[10:52]I mean, it's like ridiculous.
[10:55]Like, what if it was still like that?
[10:58]Like, where do you go?
[10:59]Like, what would life be like if that hadn't been the case?
[11:03]I don't know.
[11:03]Like, when you think about, when you extrapolate Everly's
[11:06]all over the world and then realize that we don't have to live
[11:10]like that anymore.
[11:12]I don't know.
[11:13]I know.
[11:14]It's so funny because, so I've been listening to authors
[11:18]and obviously talking to authors with a book coming out.
[11:20]And I feel like what's really interesting about this
[11:22]crap of books coming out right now is that we all wrote them
[11:25]during lockdown.
[11:26]Yeah.
[11:27]So what ends up on the road.
[11:28]It's really, really interesting, right?
[11:30]Because it's either what we fixate on as people
[11:33]or what was leaving us at the time as people.
[11:35]And there's all these time travel books that came out, right?
[11:37]That aren't science fiction.
[11:40]And you know, I remember being interviewed for summer
[11:41]darling's back then.
[11:42]I think it was by the Washington Post and he was saying like,
[11:45]do you think you'll ever write a book set in the present day?
[11:48]And I was like, no, because I'd much rather go back in time,
[11:53]especially at this moment, so writing historical fiction
[11:56]during the lockdown was really like a saving grace, right?
[12:00]But for me, when I was thinking about that question,
[12:02]like what emerged in my writing from that time,
[12:06]I came back to this one quote that's in Anjan Lane,
[12:09]where so everly ends up meeting this celebrity photographer
[12:14]like person, kind of, I relate her to almost like
[12:17]an Annie Lebowitz of the time.
[12:19]And because Everly's dream is to really get in touch
[12:22]with her, you know, photography and maybe pursue it,
[12:25]but she's always been discouraged and embarrassed.
[12:28]But she is encouraged by Arthur Miller
[12:31]and Marilyn Monroe to kind of visit this artist colony
[12:34]and say, I harbor that I daydreamed up.
[12:37]And she goes and she meets stuff with this woman named Starling
[12:41]who, you know, started taking pictures in the 40s
[12:44]when a lot of the men were away from the war.
[12:46]But then when men came back, when her husband came back,
[12:48]she kind of refused to go back to domestic life.
[12:51]And Everly's kind of working through, you know,
[12:54]as at work one day, she gets a job working for her.
[12:56]So I forgot that part and she's at work.
[12:58]And they're just kind of talking about, you know,
[13:00]what she should do with her life and moving forward.
[13:04]And Starling kind of looks at her and she says,
[13:06]you know, you only get one life
[13:08]and you get to do whatever the hell you want with it.
[13:10]Yep.
[13:11]And I love that light.
[13:12]I mean, I know I wrote it.
[13:13]I found it so empowering.
[13:16]That's kind of what I was telling myself, right?
[13:18]That we all have this one life
[13:21]and we get to decide the rules of this life.
[13:23]We don't, we don't have to,
[13:25]and this is, it was a long way to answer your question.
[13:28]But the point is, is that, you know,
[13:29]there's rules all over.
[13:30]We even set limits on ourselves.
[13:32]We tell ourselves what we can and can't do.
[13:34]Society tells us what we can and can't do.
[13:36]But that's not true.
[13:37]We decide.
[13:38]In the end, it's all about our own choices
[13:41]and finding our own voice and, you know, path forward.
[13:44]And that's what, that's really what I wanted to show.
[13:46]And I think in lockdown,
[13:48]that's what I was kind of obsessed with was all these rules
[13:51]and, you know, things of what we couldn't do.
[13:54]But in the, in the present moment,
[13:56]but then larger, you know, the larger idea
[13:58]that we were, I was suddenly reassessing my own life.
[14:02]You know, here I am as a mom, teaching school.
[14:04]You remember how it was, it was, you know,
[14:06]we were all kind of getting through it.
[14:07]But, you know, moving forward, like,
[14:09]I get to live on my own terms.
[14:11]So that was kind of author working through a character there.
[14:14]Oh, I love that.
[14:15]That's so cool.
[14:17]I love it.
[14:17]Author empowerment moment.
[14:19]Exactly.
[14:20]My, my characters teaching me, right?
[14:22]What kind of work you step out in our writing?
[14:25]Totally.
[14:27]I feel like everybody should have,
[14:29]they should have like novel therapists or something.
[14:32]I mean, like, or like, or just sessions
[14:34]where like you just read someone's book
[14:36]and then you can like have, you know,
[14:38]well, what about this scene?
[14:39]You know?
[14:40]Yeah.
[14:41]And it's so interesting because as a writer,
[14:43]you often don't even know you're working something out.
[14:45]You know, like, I didn't even think about that until yesterday,
[14:49]this idea that maybe I was working through something
[14:51]during that time when I was writing it
[14:52]because so much of it comes out without us realizing it.
[14:55]It's so deep down in the subconscious.
[14:57]Totally.
[14:58]I turned in my third book to my agent recently.
[15:00]And she was like, oh, this is so interesting.
[15:03]It's, you know, carrying on this idea of women finding
[15:05]their voices and, you know, women being restrained.
[15:08]But so all this stuff.
[15:09]And I'm like, oh my God, I just was writing the characters.
[15:12]I didn't even see it.
[15:13]I was like, oh, it's really good.
[15:15]I'm glad you saw that.
[15:16]We give a little more description of this next book, please,
[15:20]if you can.
[15:21]So OK, so this book was so much underwrite.
[15:24]It takes place in 1967 and 1977.
[15:28]And it's about two friends who won
[15:30]is a local kind of, you know, a local girl
[15:35]out in East Hampton.
[15:36]And her mother just died.
[15:38]And the other one is a summer girl
[15:41]who comes out from the city with her family.
[15:44]And there's kind of that same dynamic of, you know,
[15:47]rich girl poor girl, which I just love.
[15:49]And it's about their friendship and a secret they keep
[15:53]for 10 years and the two of them grappling with it.
[15:57]But and kind of coming back together and trying to face it.
[16:02]But it was such great fun to write because 1967 and 1977
[16:06]out in the Hamptons was just a really fascinating.
[16:08]You know, it was, you're moving up in time.
[16:11]You know, you have Andy Warhol throwing his parties out there
[16:14]and you have the rolling stones at the memory motel in Montauk.
[16:17]And, you know, the music was really interesting.
[16:20]And there's this one point in the book where they go
[16:24]to the drive-in movie in Bretonton.
[16:25]And they're seeing Star Wars.
[16:26]Because Star Wars released it in the summer of 1977.
[16:29]So it's been great fun.
[16:31]It's funny because my first book took place in Martha's Vineyard,
[16:34]which I love that island of pieces.
[16:37]And this book, John Lane, is in East Hampton,
[16:40]South Hampton, Bretonton.
[16:42]And I couldn't leave it for the third book.
[16:44]I wasn't ready.
[16:45]I was like, you know what?
[16:46]I had so much fun interviewing people and being out there
[16:49]and telling a story in the past out there.
[16:51]So I wasn't ready to leave it.
[16:53]So it's also set up there.
[16:55]Well, I have to say, I started going to East Hampton in 1979
[16:59]when I was just three years old.
[17:01]Oh my god.
[17:02]Yeah, I was, I was not there.
[17:05]I think we went to like Pound Ridge or something.
[17:06]And when I was just born.
[17:08]But yeah, I've been out there forever as I think I told you.
[17:10]I think, do you talk to my stepfather?
[17:12]I was like, oh my gosh, I talked to your stepfather.
[17:14]And I interviewed him about what it was like.
[17:16]Because, you know, so many, I'm sure you
[17:18]heard the same thing from your family
[17:20]as I heard from my family, which is they would always
[17:22]be like, God, we miss how it used to be out here.
[17:25]You know, it's always like it was a better time
[17:27]if you went back in time.
[17:30]And the truth is it was just different, you know?
[17:32]I mean, it was different in some ways,
[17:36]but it was similar.
[17:36]Like there was always like your stepfather was like,
[17:38]there was always traffic.
[17:39]You know, it was not like there wasn't traffic.
[17:44]You know, Black Fang, when I was doing my research,
[17:46]you know, there are parts of metal lane in Southampton.
[17:49]When you say you were to go down toward Cooper's Beach,
[17:52]but turn right toward Meadow instead of Jim.
[17:56]All of that, there were no houses there back then in 1957
[18:00]when I'm writing about you could ride your bike down that road
[18:02]and just look at the ocean in the bay,
[18:04]which I thought was so neat because now if you go down
[18:06]that stretch of road, there's all of these gorgeous houses.
[18:09]But, you know, you can't see the ocean.
[18:10]You can only see a little bit of the bay.
[18:14]But yeah, and there was a racing track out in Seik Harbor
[18:17]that I was golf course.
[18:18]Yes.
[18:19]Yeah, no, I've been there many times.
[18:20]It's so cool.
[18:22]Yeah, and they preserved the heritage of that too
[18:24]at the bridge.
[18:25]Yeah, it's very cool.
[18:26]Wow, it's so cool, right?
[18:27]And then I remember interviewing someone else
[18:30]who was telling me that there was a dress code
[18:32]in Southampton back then.
[18:33]So the woman I interviewed was saying her mom ran
[18:36]to the market to pick up groceries,
[18:38]and she was wearing hot pants in a blog.
[18:40]And a cop came up to her and was like,
[18:42]ma'am, you're gonna have to go put some clothes on
[18:43]or I'm gonna have to give you a ticket.
[18:44]You know, it's just so fun to think about that time back then.
[18:48]Wow.
[18:49]Yeah, well, there was just something so like wholesome
[18:52]and simple, I don't know, this longing for the way it was.
[18:57]Yeah.
[18:58]I don't know.
[18:59]Like there was like the candy store
[19:01]and the news company that sold all the newspapers.
[19:04]I don't know, it was just, it was so,
[19:06]it was already so different from life in the city, right?
[19:09]Right.
[19:11]So it's not even like it was truly that,
[19:14]it was frozen in time before.
[19:16]Yeah.
[19:17]So no, it's even anyway, whatever.
[19:19]But I, I mean, there's a joke.
[19:21]I don't know if you've got to this part in the book,
[19:22]but I have a joke where, you know,
[19:24]the two friends they're chatting about,
[19:26]all these people, they, you know,
[19:27]they built this, her fiance built the hotel in park
[19:30]because he wants to be able to bring more people out
[19:31]from the city.
[19:32]And her friend, Joseph, and it's like,
[19:34]the last thing I want to do is vacation with, you know,
[19:36]everyone from the city at the beach.
[19:38]And I just got a chuckle out of that
[19:40]because that's what we all do, right?
[19:41]Like we all know, we hang out in the beach with our,
[19:43]but, you know, back then in 1957,
[19:46]it wasn't necessarily the case.
[19:47]It was the case for some people, but,
[19:50]but that wasn't the culture.
[19:51]It wasn't that everyone out there was from the city.
[19:53]Right.
[19:54]Well, so, um, amazing.
[19:58]Well, are you going to spend time out there?
[20:00]I am. So we have a house on the North Fork. So that's where we are. And my families in Montauk, so I'll be out there a lot. And I'm doing some, I'm doing the authors night in East Ham.
[20:10]Always good.
[20:11]Oh, yeah, that's what I was hoping to be out there.
[20:13]Oh, good. Yeah.
[20:14]Yeah.
[20:15]I'm going to email you about that. So yeah, I'll be out there for that. But yeah, I go all the time. You know, I'm always like taking the ferry over from shelter Island and the shelter Island over to
[20:22]the second car burn. I love the beach down at the end of ocean road in Bratampden. And I have all these, you know, restaurants I like to, you know, we all have our summer spots that we that we try to get to. So yes, I will be out there also.
[20:34]I'm sure that I try to meet up out there. So I would love that I would.
[20:40]So what are you finding yet to be different? I know this is, you know, early days and all, but from summer darlings in this book in terms of anything you've learned or like what you're going to implement, either like on the tactical marketing side or just like from an author's, you know, emotional standpoint with the launch and all of that.
[21:02]Well, not to focus on when summer darlings came out, but summer darlings came out in May 2020. So I didn't do one in person event for summer darlings. So for this book, it's been really exciting to get out and talk to people in person.
[21:14]You know, the journalists and me, I love to go out and talk to people. So just giving an in person talk and having an event and then having people come up to afterwards and getting to know them and hearing their story. And I mean, I absolutely, I love that.
[21:28]And the other thing is I just feel like I have this group of author friends now we're so kind and so willing to help me get the book out there, which is something I didn't have with summer darlings. I was really the new person, the new kid on the block.
[21:43]So that's been really, really nice.
[21:47]And yeah, I think that's it. I don't I don't have any tactical. I'm probably should have more tactical. No, no, that was great.
[21:54]But yeah, no, I just, I'm always just so excited to put the book out and I'm exhausted. I mean, I feel like I've done nothing, but think about this book for a week straight and next this week too.
[22:09]It is exhausting to put out a book, but it's also so exciting. You know, you're doing the same thing right now. So yeah, this has been different because it's like so personal.
[22:18]You know, having a memoir come up, like it is just so every conversation is like, I had this one in your reassuring. It was like, it's the only one to talk about all the grief and loss at the end of it.
[22:29]I was like, this is so hard.
[22:32]Like, you know, like I you don't necessarily want to stop your your busy life to talk about like the saddest things in your life.
[22:41]But you know what, it's that I know exactly what you're talking about because I've written a lot of first person essays, but people hone in on what they relate to and then that's what they want to talk to about.
[22:50]Yeah, so it's like you're going to have to go. You have to go there. Oh, it's fine. I mean, I'm obviously happy to do it, but it's just like it's emotional emotional.
[22:58]Yeah, absolutely.
[23:00]Anyway, but I'm, but I like emotional. So that's good. And I'm so excited. So it's it's all good. I'm not complaining.
[23:06]Yeah, totally. And you're learning the tran, you know, the transformative power of your own words, which is that people are going to read your work and feel something and it's going to change the way they see themselves, which is as a writer.
[23:17]That's all we hope we can do right is teach something.
[23:20]Yeah, it has been so nice. I've started getting like emails because I really wanted people. I've always loved to write authors and so I just put like an email in the book.
[23:28]And now I like, I like make myself do with my other emails and I'm like, then I can scroll down and see if anybody.
[23:34]I know it's anybody.
[23:36]That's so nice though. I get that.
[23:38]Um, okay. Well, writing contest. I'm going to email you about this because I'm 100% want to do this.
[23:44]Yeah, I don't think you wanted to. Yeah.
[23:47]Maybe we can get grenades to donate a weekend or something.
[23:51]Or maybe even just like, you know, a fun lunch at St. Ambrose and Southampton, people could like drive back or whatever, wherever.
[23:59]Yeah, we don't have to.
[24:02]You don't, we don't have to commit all weekend. Yeah, you just like do lunch one on like a weekday or something. I don't know. We'll figure something.
[24:09]Yeah.
[24:10]Actually, we could do lunch with me and you and the winner. Oh, let's do that. Yeah. Perfect. That would be fun.
[24:17]Again, and so they have to.
[24:19]You know, they have to.
[24:20]On June lane, we'll meet on June, on June lane.
[24:22]We have to for a photo op, but I don't think we can either. No, we could, but you know, we'll, we'll stand under the side like you did on Instagram.
[24:29]Yeah, exactly.
[24:30]Um, perfect. Okay. Well, that's fun. Thank you so much. It was great.
[24:35]Thank you. And I'll be seeing you soon.
[24:38]I am no exciting. All right. Thanks, Divi. Okay. Bye. Bye.
[24:43]Thanks for listening to this episode of Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books.
[24:47]Don't forget to follow me on Instagram at ZB Owens and at Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books.
[24:52]Also sign up for my newsletter at ZB Owens.com and sign up for my virtual book club and meet lots of authors on Zoom every other week.
[24:59]Thanks so much to Steve and Ryan in fact, Texture Sound for the Sound Editing.
[25:03]And thank you to Morning Moon Productions for providing this fantastic intro and out trim music.