Carley Fortune, EVERY SUMMER AFTER
[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.
[0:08]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 bookends,
[0:29]a memoir of love, loss, and literature, wherever books are sold starting July 1st, and my children's book prints is charming.
[0:37]You can learn more about me at Zivi Owens.com, but really you're here to learn more about the authors, and that is what we're going to do.
[0:44]Also be sure to check out all the other podcasts in the zcast podcast network. You can learn more at zcastnetwork.com and definitely check out those shows as well.
[0:58]Carly Fortune is the author of Every Summer After, which is now a New York Times bestseller, and has become one since we spoke since this is like really exciting.
[1:08]Anyway, she is a debut author of Every Summer After, The New York Times, and USA Today best-selling novel.
[1:13]Carly is an award-winning journalist who most recently served as the executive editor of Refinery29 Canada, a job that gave her a lot of pride, joy, and a few migraines.
[1:23]She lives in Toronto with her husband and two sons, and is currently writing her second novel.
[1:28]Welcome, Carly. Thank you so much for coming on Momstone. Have time to read books to discuss
[1:32]every summer after a novel. Thank you so much for having me. I'm excited to be here.
[1:37]My pleasure. Can you, first welcome, congratulations on your book. Very exciting.
[1:43]Can you tell listeners what it's about and what inspired you to write it?
[1:47]Sure, yeah, it is a sweeping love story about Percy and Sam, who meet when they're 13 years old,
[1:55]when Percy's family buys the cottage next door to Sam's house on a lake in Barry's Bay.
[2:01]And the two of them are best friends, but in the present as 30-year-olds, they haven't spoken in more than 10 years.
[2:11]And the book is told in alternating now and then timelines. So it's over the course of six
[2:17]suburbs in the past where you see them meet and become best friends and fall in love. And one
[2:22]weekend in the present where they're reunited and it's a very tumultuous weekend. And the whole
[2:29]time you're trying to figure out what it is that caused them to split apart and whether they can
[2:34]overcome the mistakes of the past. Love that. We tell me about your connection to Barry's Bay,
[2:42]because I read your scary mommy piece about your aunt and all this stuff. And it was mentioned
[2:47]there. And I feel like, like, give me the lowdown. Where is Barry's Bay? Like, tell me about this
[2:51]whole like, okay, tell me. Yes, I would be thrilled to. So Barry's Bay is a real place. It is a
[2:59]small town, 1200 people in rural Ontario. And I grew up there. I lived there from fourth grade
[3:08]until the end of high school when I moved to Toronto for university. It had been where my family's
[3:14]cottage was when I was born. I was born in Toronto. We lived in Australia for many years. And then
[3:20]when we came back, my parents decided they didn't want to live in the city. They wanted to live
[3:24]on the lake. So we made the cottage at home. So I grew up much like the character of Sam in the
[3:31]book down like a dirt road in the middle of the bush on the lake and spent my summers, you know,
[3:38]on the dock, swimming all day, reading. And my parents had an in and restaurant in town. So at
[3:46]nights, I was working at the restaurant, which is something that Sam's family has a restaurant too.
[3:51]So it is the book is very much a love letter to that part of the world. It's been so fun to see
[3:57]people learn about Barry's Bay because even, you know, where I am in Toronto, most people have
[4:01]never heard of Barry's Bay. It's so tiny. Oh my gosh, that sounds like an idyllic way to grow up.
[4:07]I'm like, yeah, I'm a little doc with a book and that, like, please right now. I don't, I mean,
[4:14]I loved that part of it. I think, though, sometimes you don't appreciate what you have when you're
[4:20]younger. And I was dying to leave and like, go to the city and make a big life for myself.
[4:26]But I have missed the, I missed the lake. And that's one of the reasons why I wrote the book. My
[4:33]parents sold that house maybe 10 years ago. But we still cottage in the area. My husband and my
[4:41]kids. And we had been up there in 2020, which is why kind of when I started writing the book,
[4:47]I was very nostalgic for the summers of my youth. How old are your kids? My oldest is almost six.
[4:56]He'll be six in November. And my youngest just turned one. Oh, yeah. Yes. Yeah. Amazing. How you
[5:04]can get anything done with that. We don't have time for anything, but we do everything. Right.
[5:11]Exactly how it is. Yeah. That's my whole thesis statement. I know. I know.
[5:19]So you've had so much experience in journalism and working with your friend for 29 and all of that.
[5:24]How did you go from the doc to here? I, like, I studied journalism in school. And because I
[5:36]always wanted to write, I always wanted to write a book. But I didn't think you could be an author
[5:40]as a full-time job. It seemed impossible to me that you could make the living that way. And I grew
[5:46]up Barry's base of very working class town and my parents as restaurant owners, which is a very
[5:52]tough business. I saw a lot of financial struggle. And I was like, no, not going to try to be a writer.
[5:56]That's not going to, I'm not going to be able to make the living that way. So I became a journalist,
[6:01]which was probably not a better decision. And studied journalism started working right out of school
[6:10]and just kind of moved up in the world of magazines and newspapers. And eventually, my last
[6:17]job was launching Refinery29 in Canada. The, like, editorial side of the team and overseeing that.
[6:25]And I always had it in the background. I had that in what I was writing a book. But I just
[6:30]never thought I would do it. And I had this moment in 2020 when we were up at the lake.
[6:37]I had read my teenage journals and locked down a couple of months earlier, one of those first
[6:43]lockdown weekends. I'd never read them before. So I was thinking a lot about those teenage years.
[6:49]And then we were up at the lake for July and August because the owner of the cottage that we
[6:55]ran is American. And he couldn't get across the border. So he let us squat there. He let us squat
[7:00]there all summer. And I got off a very stressful work hall and work. I had been really tough that
[7:06]year. And I thought, that's it. I'm going to write my book. I don't know what that book is, but
[7:11]I'm going to write it. I'm going to finish it by the end of the year. And it would be good enough.
[7:17]That was, that was the goal just to get a book done. It felt really important in 2020, I think,
[7:24]to like reclaim my creativity. I hadn't done any creative work for myself as an adult. It had
[7:29]always been for, been for an employer. So that's kind of the, it was like, I like to say it was
[7:36]fueled by your like, righteous indignation in nostalgia. I love that. You know, the best part of what
[7:43]you just said is, is saying that it was good enough. Because I feel like there's this, at least
[7:49]for me and other perfectionist types, it's hard to say, I'm going to try something or I'll,
[7:55]I'll do it, but I won't have time to finish it. Or I don't know. Maybe this isn't the perfect time.
[7:59]Like you can, so easily fall into those traps. Like, well, I can work on it this morning, but I
[8:03]only have like an hour. And so it probably wouldn't be better. I'm going to wait till I have six hours
[8:07]or there's always some rationalization. Yeah. But if you say, you know what, I'm going to do
[8:12]it this morning for an hour. And it's going to be good enough. And then I'll pick it up another time.
[8:16]Like, exactly. That's so freeing. That's so like, it is. Like, shoulders sort of like,
[8:20]you know, like, you know, yeah, yeah, the way I approached it because I'm very goal oriented,
[8:26]I figured out how many words, um, the manuscript should be. So it was eight thousand words.
[8:32]And then I calculated how many days were left in the year. Yep. And then how many words
[8:37]I'd have to write a day to get there. And it was three hundred and eighty eight words.
[8:40]I was like, I can do that. No problem. So I get up before my son woke up and before I started
[8:47]work and and do it then. And I didn't worry too much about whether it was good. I figured
[8:53]as an editor, I knew that I just needed to have something. I can't do anything if you don't have
[8:58]something. Yeah. But can you go into like, I was at this author event last night and
[9:05]some of the authors were saying that they needed like big stretches of time because to really
[9:10]get into their voice in the novel and back into the characters, that alone takes a big chunk
[9:15]of time. So do you feel, but others were saying they could just like open up the laptop
[9:19]online at the bank or something. So do you feel like you need that kind of
[9:24]marination time at the beginning, like reorienting yourself or not?
[9:28]Um, I didn't have it. So I have, I didn't have that. I, that is not how I worked. And even with my
[9:38]set the second book, which I've been working on now, I just finished the third draft. When I started
[9:43]writing it, it was six weeks after my son was born. Oh my gosh. And so I was writing it
[9:51]in his nap time when we were up, we were up at the cottage that summer too. And you can't really
[9:57]have two small children at that cottage.
[10:00]without having eyes on them at all times,
[10:02]when you're a child, not child friendly at all.
[10:05]So I've just not really had that in the initial drafting phase.
[10:11]My husband took a paternity leave
[10:14]in starting in September, he's a teacher.
[10:16]So he has been off with the baby this year
[10:18]and I have had larger chunks of time.
[10:21]And that has been wonderful.
[10:23]But I would say when I spent,
[10:26]what I spent a lot of time on with this second book
[10:29]is just fighting self doubt.
[10:31]I would waste hours just trying to get over that hurdle
[10:35]of you can't do this.
[10:38]The first book was a fluke.
[10:40]This isn't gonna be any good.
[10:42]Nobody's gonna like it.
[10:43]And that's what I spent a lot of time doing.
[10:46]And I think maybe if I had just had that short window of time,
[10:50]I wouldn't have wasted all those voices in my head.
[10:55]But I think every writer is so different.
[10:58]And but I just have decided,
[11:03]I will never have ideal conditions, I don't think.
[11:06]I don't even know if that exists for anybody.
[11:09]And so I just tell myself, I'm gonna write, it's work.
[11:12]I'm gonna do my work.
[11:15]That's how I approach it.
[11:17]Wow, I love that.
[11:20]Get this other author, little Jane Green
[11:21]was talking about how she worked at the Guardian.
[11:24]And they were like, you have to write 2,000 words
[11:26]about shoe soles or so I don't know whatever
[11:30]in the next hour.
[11:30]And she's like, I didn't have time to wait
[11:32]for creativity to strike like it was due.
[11:34]And I feel like you're saying the same,
[11:36]like this is your work, you get it done.
[11:38]This is when you have to do it.
[11:39]No questions, no rationalization, boom.
[11:41]And you can just do it.
[11:43]Yeah, absolutely.
[11:44]I think that is absolutely it.
[11:46]And I think working as an editor helped with that mindset.
[11:51]I don't think writing is an art and it is also craft
[11:56]but at the end of the day, it's nothing special.
[12:01]I was talking with a very good friend
[12:03]of mine about this this morning,
[12:05]how it's worked like any other work.
[12:08]And it's different and it looks different
[12:10]because it's creative.
[12:11]But I think when we hold something in this
[12:16]up on this platform or put it in this reverent place
[12:20]that we make it like not accessible,
[12:23]but it is accessible.
[12:25]And it doesn't mean it's easy, but it's doable.
[12:28]Yeah, it's almost like pushing,
[12:30]pushing fiction to journalism, right?
[12:32]Because if you were an artist, right?
[12:34]If you were like, here's a canvas, you wouldn't be like,
[12:36]it's just work.
[12:37]I'm giving you 20 bucks.
[12:38]Go do it.
[12:39]I mean, I guess you guys.
[12:40]I guess if you're, I don't know.
[12:42]Never mind.
[12:42]I mean, like what's the end product?
[12:44]I guess like, yeah, you're right.
[12:47]You're right.
[12:48]But I think when you're approaching first drafts,
[12:50]you just have to have faith
[12:54]that your future self will improve it.
[12:57]And also you, and that you have an editor who you trust
[13:00]who will also help you get there.
[13:02]And you just have to have faith in that process.
[13:06]I love that.
[13:07]It's like, I'm viewing this as like not that I play football
[13:12]or anything, but just the way you set like handing it off,
[13:14]right?
[13:15]There's like, you're throwing this pass
[13:17]like that you don't even know.
[13:18]Exactly.
[13:19]But it's yourself who gets to get to that, exactly.
[13:22]The other day I was debating.
[13:24]I can't remember why maybe my twins birthday or something.
[13:26]They just turned 15.
[13:28]And I was debating if I should post a picture of myself
[13:31]like massively pregnant with twins, you know?
[13:34]And I literally said to myself,
[13:35]like, my younger self would kill me for doing it.
[13:39]I can't do that to her.
[13:40]Yeah.
[13:41]There's nothing she would have wanted less
[13:43]than to be blastered all over the internet looking like that.
[13:47]So I was like, I can't do that to her.
[13:49]So that's so interesting.
[13:50]I was thinking about that too recently
[13:53]because I, as I mentioned, I had read my childhood journals
[13:58]before I wrote the book, not with the intention
[14:00]of writing a book just as curiosity.
[14:03]And I kept journals from the age of seven throughout university.
[14:07]And I did this presentation to my imprint Berkeley set up
[14:13]this really smart, I thought, influencer event
[14:15]where we presented our books for authors presented our books
[14:19]to bookstagrammers and reviewers and book influencers.
[14:22]And my presentation, we could talk for three to five minutes
[14:25]about an aspect of our books.
[14:26]And I talked about how my journals informed writing a book.
[14:30]And I read little pieces of the journals
[14:33]and showed like some of the notes that were in there
[14:35]to the audience.
[14:37]And I was like, I don't know how teenage Carly would feel
[14:40]about this.
[14:41]Like, would I have been so mortified?
[14:45]Or would I be like, oh my gosh, I can't believe somebody's
[14:48]interested in this.
[14:48]This is so cool, but I couldn't figure it out.
[14:52]I didn't have an answer.
[14:54]That is a really good exercise to do though.
[14:56]Like, how would you convince in three to five minutes
[14:58]somebody to cover your book, read your book, right?
[15:01]It's more than the elevator pitch, right?
[15:03]It has to be like, and it's so hard.
[15:06]It's so hard to keep people's attention
[15:08]and differentiate yourself quickly.
[15:11]And I don't know.
[15:12]And describe something that is an immersive experience
[15:15]that takes hours.
[15:17]Right.
[15:19]It was like a joke.
[15:20]It's a musical that anyone's ever so.
[15:22]Well, my answer to that was like a bad performance art
[15:25]of writing journals, journal entries, which are so embarrassing.
[15:33]Oh my God, that's so funny.
[15:34]Although now I'm like, ooh, maybe I should open up
[15:37]the cabinet with all my journals.
[15:39]In the back of my head, I'm always like,
[15:41]I'm saving those to write a middle grade novel at some point.
[15:44]Yeah, you should read that one day.
[15:46]My husband went to read his, he kept a live journal back
[15:50]in the, I guess it would be early 2000s,
[15:52]one of those like online live journals.
[15:54]And has downloaded it and kept it.
[15:57]And so he was like, I want to read my live journals.
[15:59]And he started and then he stopped.
[16:01]He was like, no, I absolutely cannot do this.
[16:03]It's too awful.
[16:05]The only one I read, I found a travel journal
[16:07]when I was after eighth grade, I went with my parents
[16:10]and my brother to China, Japan and Hong Kong.
[16:13]And like a week after we got home,
[16:15]they got to worse.
[16:16]So I'll just, I'll just preface the trip with that.
[16:19]But I kept a little travel journal
[16:21]and I read it out led to my kids who were like,
[16:24]my little guys who were seven and eight at the time.
[16:27]And it was like, they got to know me when I was 13.
[16:30]I was 13.
[16:32]And it was pretty cool.
[16:32]There were some things that were so similar.
[16:34]I don't know if you found this in your journals.
[16:36]But like, I was writing down like,
[16:37]everything I ate, which I sound like.
[16:40]So focused on it.
[16:41]I'm like, I had the sound on the plane
[16:42]and it really wasn't very good.
[16:44]And like that ate this and I'm like, oh my god.
[16:47]Here I am in like Japan eating like a Caesar salad
[16:49]or something.
[16:50]You're dealing with that.
[16:51]So funny.
[16:53]And still today, when you have a bad blood,
[16:55]you're like, oh, right.
[16:57]You know, I was like, I had Caesar salad yesterday.
[16:59]It's like the same thing.
[17:00]Like I don't change.
[17:01]Some things just don't change about us.
[17:03]I'm so true.
[17:05]What did you find in your journals
[17:06]that like rang so true for you now, if anything?
[17:10]I feel pretty different from that person.
[17:14]I of course, teenage, most of them are the teenage years
[17:17]and they're so dramatic.
[17:20]And when you're using your journal,
[17:22]it's when you're at your most emotional.
[17:24]And I felt very, I had a really close circle of girlfriends
[17:28]but I felt so alone.
[17:30]And I felt like nobody understood me.
[17:32]And I really wanted a boyfriend,
[17:34]which I did not have a boyfriend in high school.
[17:38]And I wrote about, I had so many crushes.
[17:40]So I wrote all, like all unrequited too.
[17:44]So I wrote extensively about that.
[17:48]And so that really stuck with me,
[17:51]that idea of wanting to have someone
[17:55]who made you feel seen and heard.
[17:58]And then the other thing,
[18:00]and it all just felt so present.
[18:02]Like it was 20 years ago,
[18:04]but it felt so present to me.
[18:05]There was, you know, a note that I wrote my crush
[18:09]telling him I liked him that I never said so.
[18:13]I know.
[18:14]And it starts out saying,
[18:16]I think it'll be easier if I tell you this way.
[18:19]And obviously it was not easier
[18:21]because I didn't send it.
[18:23]Did you tell him, did you tell him a different way?
[18:25]Or you just never told him?
[18:27]I'm trying to figure out which crush that was.
[18:31]And I think I did tell that crush
[18:34]and it did not go well.
[18:36]But I'm not sure it could have been in any way.
[18:40]I think across the board, like telling crushes,
[18:44]no, does not usually pan out well.
[18:46]It's not a good strategy.
[18:47]No, it's not a good strategy.
[18:51]I had no game.
[18:53]And then there was a letter from my best friend
[18:57]that was six pages long breaking up with me.
[19:00]Which was really hard to read
[19:02]because that was a really hard time.
[19:05]And there was the thing that actually made me cry
[19:07]was a little note, like torn piece of paper
[19:12]from a girl who said,
[19:14]you look so pretty and stylish, they have a great class.
[19:18]And I never felt pretty in high school.
[19:21]And it just, it brought up so much for me.
[19:24]And I think we often think of teenagers as quite silly
[19:28]and that their problems are small and overblown.
[19:33]Or we think of teenagers as like hooligans.
[19:36]And I really wanted to, when I was writing a book,
[19:39]I really wanted to be empathetic about that experience.
[19:42]And I think there's something about those
[19:44]young relationships that really stick to your ribs.
[19:47]And it's certainly like reading the diaries.
[19:50]I was like, oh gosh, this feels like yesterday.
[19:53]That's so, it's the nicest thing,
[19:56]like brought tears to your eyes.
[19:57]So it's, I feel like it would have been.
[20:00]the, I wouldn't even know what to start with the things that would make me cry going to my
[20:05]journey. It would just be so much. It would just be like, for one thing to next. Yeah. I mean,
[20:11]but you're right. I mean, the intensity of feeling though it and those years, like, it's so intense.
[20:17]It's like, we have, we're missing a layer of skin, you know, everything is. Everything is so
[20:23]like, just the sensation is like burning and like, yeah, wrong. So, um, yeah, there's all the,
[20:31]there's so much transition in a short period of time, just life transition, plus all the hormonal
[20:38]changes and the social changes. And it really is this like developmental, like adolescence is a
[20:44]developmental phase. And one thing that I think you would find this interesting, a piece I wrote
[20:50]for Refinery29 about motherhood and becoming a mom and learning how to be okay with just being good
[20:57]enough. I spoke to this doctor who studied matresence, which is that like, you know, becoming a mom
[21:06]as a developed like a stage like adolescence because there is all this like physical change and
[21:11]social change and relationship to your partner and your body, all of that change is like kind of
[21:19]like going through an adolescence, but different. And that, um, I can really like appreciate
[21:26]the teenage years through that lens now. So true. I found that research fascinating. And like,
[21:32]yeah, we're not like, you become somebody totally different. Like, yes, you're caring for someone,
[21:36]but like, you have become someone different. Yes. Over night. Yeah. Yeah. And it's, um,
[21:44]so quiet, but it like to other people. Um, and also because everybody goes through it,
[21:50]it's a little invisible, but it's such a huge shift for yourself. Um, I know I was not
[21:57]prepared for it at all. I found myself really flailing. Yeah. I'm still flailing. It's like 15 years.
[22:06]I'm not having the who am I. Will I ever be the same? What is this life?
[22:11]It's pretty kind of, although for the fourth, our second son, for his entire, he's like 15 months
[22:16]out. But for his entire first year, I was like, what do we do? Why did we do this? What have I done?
[22:21]What have I done? I think I'm past that now. It does get better. And that sounds so
[22:27]right. No, it does. It does. It does get so much better. What you've seen with your older, but
[22:31]yeah, I mean, just this morning, like my younger guys did something so funny about like, oh,
[22:38]it like, isn't it true that mommy long legs have longer legs and daddy long legs? No,
[22:42]it's like there are no long legs. He's like, yes, there are. I'm like, I don't think so. Anyway,
[22:46]we get into this whole debate. And I'm just like, you seem like a normal person. And yet,
[22:50]you have like kids have the most bizarre thoughts, right? Anyway, uh, but I was like, how great
[22:55]that this is the morning? You know, like that I'm not like cleaning up. Like I've been through
[23:00]all of it for so long, but I can just like have a sense of humor and like find the joy and not
[23:05]be utterly stressed all the time because now they can at least like get themselves ready for
[23:09]camps. I'm getting themselves ready. That's a game changer. Yeah. We had one day where I was like,
[23:16]take a shower and like they didn't involve me once. They like had it took the shower turned off,
[23:21]the shower got dressed, brushed their hair. And I was like, oh, the clouds parted. It was like, I had
[23:30]reached the end of the road and like the pot of gold or something. Anyway, well, sorry,
[23:37]this is like totally just a random fun conversation at this point. I hope people are enjoying your
[23:43]book every summer after. And then now you've soon fallen in love with Carly in her beautiful
[23:48]high school experience. And we'll pick up her book. So anyway, thanks for the very fun, Chet.
[23:53]And thank you so much. I'll see you in Toronto or something. I would love that. Absolutely.
[24:01]All right. All right. All right. Thanks a lot. Bye.
[24:05]Thanks for listening to this episode of Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books. Don't forget to
[24:09]follow me on Instagram at zebi Owens and at Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books. Also sign up for
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[24:19]Zoom every other week. Thanks so much to Steve and Ryan in fact, texture sound for the sound editing.
[24:24]And thank you to Morning Moon Productions for providing this fantastic intro and out trim music.