Nina LaCour, YERBA BUENA: A Novel
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[0:58]Nina LeKur is the author of Your Baboyna, a novel
[1:01]Nina is the Michael L. Prince award-winning and nationally bestselling author of Watch Over Me. We are okay
[1:07]Hold still and everything leads to you
[1:10]She hosts the podcast keeping notebook and teaches for a Hameline University's MFA in writing for children and young adults program
[1:17]A former indie bookseller and high school English teacher. She lives with her family in San Francisco
[1:22]Your Baboyna is her adult debut
[1:24]Welcome, Nina. Thank you so much for coming on mom's. Don't have time to read books to discuss your Baboyna
[1:29]Thank you so much for having me thrilled to be here. Oh, it's my pleasure
[1:34]Can you please tell listeners what your book is about?
[1:37]Yes, a reader recently described your Baboyna in a way that I really loved. She's so good
[1:42]It was like a love story nestled within a coming-of-age story
[1:47]And I think that puts it perfectly
[1:50]Because at its center, there is a love story between two women Sarah and Emily
[1:55]But the full breadth of the novel is more about each of them
[2:01]Coming into themselves fully dealing with some very traumatic things that happen to them when they're teenagers and learning how to
[2:11]Can be the people they want to be in the world through a lot of trial and error and introspection and
[2:18]You know some self sabotage and
[2:22]You know other really digging deep into their passions and the things that they love and
[2:27]In so doing they become people who are capable of loving each other. Oh, well, that was a good description. There you go
[2:37]Well, let's back up a minute because I know you used to write YA and this is your first adult novel which is very exciting
[2:43]So how did you even start get like where did you how did you begin all of this and also of course
[2:48]You've become this huge writing advocate teacher everything in this whole world
[2:52]So where did it start and like where'd you grow up like go go back and like get me up to here, please
[2:59]Well, I'd live in San Francisco now. I have always lived in the Bay Area
[3:04]So I grew up on the east side of the Bay Area
[3:07]And I lived in a small town and I felt kind of stuck there
[3:12]It was like a really little place without a it's own freeway exit or a part station
[3:17]just like this little tucked away town and
[3:20]I really found so much of my sense of you know who I was and
[3:26]What I dreamed of and everything through reading and writing. So I was a very quiet shy
[3:32]introspective kid
[3:33]I spent a lot of time at this little creek behind the apartment where I grew up like reading and writing poetry
[3:39]So writing has always been a huge part of my life in books in general have been and
[3:45]Then I became pretty
[3:47]Singularly focused like I knew I wanted to be a writer. I applied for
[3:53]Creative writing program at San Francisco state because all I wanted was to move to San Francisco and to
[3:59]Right and so I did that and then I
[4:03]Actually started your vagina back then. So well long long time ago
[4:07]It was like right when I graduated from college
[4:10]I went to New York for the first time with my then girlfriend now wife and we explored
[4:17]New York she's from upstate New York so she knew a little bit about the city and
[4:21]There was something about being in a totally different place that suddenly I had this thought of a character
[4:28]And it was the character of Sarah who ends up in your vagina
[4:30]But it has nothing to do with New York, but like that's where this idea
[4:34]I came to me. I think sometimes being jolted out of your familiar
[4:40]You know home and being somewhere else kind of just allows for new ideas to come
[4:46]So
[4:47]That's when I had this first idea about the story and I had this the character Sarah and her little brother Spencer
[4:53]And I had this beautiful environment that they were in but I didn't know why they were there and then I
[4:59]wrote started writing that book and used it to apply to graduate school
[5:03]So I went to Mills College in Oakland for grad school and it was there that I discovered YA literature
[5:11]I hadn't read very much a bit as a kid, but I took a class on adolescent fiction
[5:15]No wonderful writer named Katherine Reese who has just a very long
[5:20]Steady career in writing for young people and I fell in love with the genre and I
[5:26]Started writing my thesis and which was my turned into my first novel hold still
[5:33]And it was a wonderful because I was in my early 20s and so those teen years were
[5:38]Close enough that I remembered them very intimately, but also
[5:42]Far enough that I had a little bit of distance and was able to
[5:46]Kind of rehab some of the experiences that I had when I was younger just disguising now making them fiction of course
[5:53]But kind of mining that personal territory
[5:56]And then I just kept writing YA. I kept getting more contracts. I love writing about teenagers
[6:01]There's things so
[6:03]immediate in a teen story because there are so many first experiences and
[6:09]you know first time is facing the
[6:12]You know joys and sadnesses of the of the world and
[6:16]So I've enjoyed it a lot that this your point at this book has always been there
[6:21]Like waiting for me to turn back to it and finish it
[6:23]So during the pandemic when it was them serious lockdown
[6:27]I just thought this matters to me and I want to do it and so I started over from the beginning and
[6:34]Oh my gosh and somewhere along the way because I heard in your
[6:38]Keeping a notebook podcast that you used to work at diesel is so tell me about that. I love diesel vlog start. Yeah
[6:44]Yeah, oh, thank you for listening to that too
[6:48]So I I love working books. There's actually my very first job
[6:51]It was when I was 14 and it was in a little independent bookstore and Moroccan the time where I grew up
[6:57]That it's since closed
[6:59]But I wrote the owners a letter because I just desperately wanted to work there
[7:02]It wasn't even about the money
[7:03]It was just like the idea of being able to work in a bookstore was so magical to me
[7:07]So I wrote them a letter letting them know that even though I was 14
[7:11]Like I read a lot and I was very responsible and they hired me and then when they're shop closed
[7:18]They kind of handed me over to another bookstore
[7:22]The Lafayette bookstore and that one ended up closing too
[7:26]But I kind of got my my beginnings in bookstores
[7:30]And then when I was in grad school
[7:32]I was looking for a part-time job
[7:34]And I lived really close to diesel bookstore in Oakland at the time and I
[7:39]applied and got that job and I am telling you about a different diesel bookstore
[7:43]So you might have been well, it was in a chain. I only got one in the LA
[7:47]Yeah, I know like yeah, yeah
[7:49]So John and Allison are the owners. Okay. Um, yeah, that the Oakland one is now East Bay booksellers
[7:54]But they used to own one in Oakland in Malibu and in Brentwood and um, they still have the Brentwood shop
[8:01]And yeah, the consumer there, which is wonderful
[8:03]And we're doing it. I hear a point. I think they're actually are you
[8:07]What is that? Maybe I can oh, I don't know the exact way. I'll look it up. I'll look it up really soon
[8:13]Okay, great. Awesome. Yeah. Um, that's exciting
[8:16]What do you think? So having worked in a bookstore in terms of a discoverability like one thing
[8:21]I found I had this anthology come out and I was like, okay, this bookstore has like one or two copies on a high shelf
[8:27]No, it's ever gonna find it like what do you do in terms of helping
[8:31]Except for the curation that you can give as a bookseller like how do you get books discovered?
[8:37]If they're not on the front table and
[8:39]You know, I mean like how how do you what is the what is the secret for
[8:44]Other people who don't get that placement or whatever. That's such a good question. I mean
[8:50]I think the you know that front table is so important that the staff picks is also
[8:56]I mean, that's such a
[8:58]beautiful place because
[9:01]Most of those books on the front table are the new releases, you know, and they have a short lifespan being
[9:07]displayed in in that way and it's really rare for a book that's been out for a while to make it
[9:13]Back onto a front table unless you have a store like diesel for example that has just like
[9:19]Wonderful themed displays which then like, you know, let's say we're doing something on joy
[9:25]Then like people the booksellers just go and find all the joyful books and and then it gives those older books like more of a
[9:33]Second chance to be seen, but those staff picks shelves are just the most beautiful thing because it's just
[9:39]Things that books know there's a passionate about. They can be old. They can be new
[9:43]They can be totally obscure
[9:44]They can be from like super small presses or big, you know huge presses and it's really just done
[9:51]It's such an equal playing field on those on those
[9:55]Shut, you know those shelves
[9:56]So I think you know making natural connections with booksellers
[10:00]making sure that they read, you know, what you've written because hand selling is such a huge part of being, you know, especially an independent bookstore, like you get to really as an employee there you get to really advocate for the books that you love. So I think that's, that's my best piece of advice for that.
[10:19]That's right. Oh, he's looking at a, I always look at those stuff fix. Yeah. Yeah. It's true. I feel like people are just so longing for direction. Right. There's so many books in a bookstore where do you start.
[10:30]How do you find your way. Yeah. Yeah. For sure. And I mean, even the books that are up there on, you know, the high shelves.
[10:39]As long as sometimes people go in looking for that book, you know, that's what keeps them. That's what keeps it there and keeps it being seen and plenty of customers do go in and just spend hours looking at those shelves and want to discover something for themselves and so.
[10:55]So one of my dreams in life at some point to try to be a part of a bookstore to try to figure out a new way to display books or something.
[11:06]So I have some ideas that make no sense, but I would like to try anyway.
[11:11]But yeah, there's no better place to be stuck, I would say on an afternoon outside of a bookstore, which is angry.
[11:20]Also, in your podcast introduction, you, it was so great because I felt like you were like channeling my inner monologue sometimes because you're like, well, I'm debating if I should do this podcast.
[11:33]But you know, I am plagued by self doubt, but then the listeners like it. So perhaps I'll continue. But then the near last episodes. I was like, Oh, no.
[11:43]I thought she'd got nowhere in the hump and like, you know, it's a great podcast voice. It's like so calming and awesome and you know, keeping a notebook is to great titles. And why did you stop?
[11:55]Now, I may return to it. I, I just, I have, I mean, I feel funny saying this to you because you have so many projects.
[12:04]But I just felt like I had too much and something. I had to set something aside. I teach at a low residency MFA program, Hamlin University.
[12:16]I have, you know, you're going to coming out. I also have my first picture book coming out. I have a job series that'll be out like in a year or so.
[12:25]I have a, why a novel I'm working on and I have my next adult novel that I'm working on as well.
[12:31]A lot of stuff. That's a lot. I have an eight year old daughter. I have a puppy. I have a wife. You know, I just, I couldn't.
[12:40]It was just too much and the podcast I enjoyed. But when it, if it was, if I had to cut something, that was the thing about that to go. Yeah, I have no balance in my life at all.
[12:50]I didn't get lots of things and you're a much smarter woman than I am for prioritizing what you need to do. And well, it was, it was an act of desperation.
[13:03]So I'm sure that's not true. Wait, so tell me about all the teaching. So you ran all these classes. Tell me about that. What's it called the novel that the novel.
[13:10]Slow novel.
[13:11]Yeah, tell me about it. I've been fascinated by nano rhino. You know, everyone.
[13:16]You guys have a novel writing month. And I have, I've like tried modified versions of that for myself where, you know, like with a friend will commit to writing like 500 words a day or something like a much more
[13:30]than my mind reasonable word countful. And, but I'm, I'm a slow writer. Like I'm a methodical slow writers. That's a lot of time thinking before putting words down on the page and I found that it was just kind of counterintuitive for me.
[13:49]And I found myself thinking like, wait a second. Like I don't want just a ton of words by the end of a month. That's enough words for a novel that might not be anything that I would ever want to see published. Like it's just, that's not what it wasn't right for me.
[14:08]And then also as a teacher, I would see people come to me with their nano rhino novels and be like, help me make sense of this, like, what do I do now and
[14:18]of course, some amazing novels have come out of that process and I truly believe anybody should lean into whatever process is working for them and is exciting for them.
[14:28]So there could be a different way too. And so I put together this class called the slow novel lab and it is based on like my own philosophy on how I craft novels and how what approaches have worked for me when I feel stuck.
[14:42]The things that I turned to how I think about character and plot and, and all of that and I've taught in traditional school settings for a lot of my life.
[14:52]I've been at city colleges and high school and this MFA program, Hamlin, which I love, but I also loved the idea of just being able to create a course that was not on the semester schedule that was not for a grade that was just exactly what I wanted it to be.
[15:06]And so I came up with that and it's been really wonderful and rewarding and hundreds of people have taken it and it's just been a really like lovely part of my life for the last few years.
[15:17]It's amazing. So do you stay in touch with the people who take the class.
[15:20]I mean, many of them I'm really terrible at email and very overwhelmed, but you know, as certainly and I love it.
[15:28]People send me updates and we have an Instagram where people like, you know, put their goals if they want to and it's a really sweet community and people.
[15:38]There've been a lot of connections among the students, you know, forms like long time writing groups coming out of the class and these really nice ways to get one another support.
[15:49]I mean, many of us are profoundly insecure.
[16:02]There's so much self doubt, so many of the reasons, you know, it's like that the class is a craft oriented class, but after teaching it so many times, I was realizing that we really needed a lot of mindset stuff.
[16:18]because so much of what holds people back has to do with self doubt of procrastination or a fear self critic that questions everything that we put down on the page and so acknowledging that and then
[16:35]figuring out just ways to help help us get get to something from a different angle or help us learn to say, Oh, just recognize like, Oh, I'm feeling stuck because this is difficult and I am scared about revealing the truth about myself.
[16:52]So I'm going to identify, for example, tell myself that that I may not share this thing that I'm writing it all and I get to choose that once it's out on the page and for now it will write whatever uncensored, you know,
[17:06]and I can make those decisions later. I like that sort of thing is something that can really help us just do our do our best most vulnerable work. Yeah, awesome.
[17:17]I feel like there's definitely something that's writing an anxiety or, you know, it's great. That's just like why I feel like I found my people in this world.
[17:27]It's, it's, there are a lot of, I feel like there are a lot of personnel. Like I feel like if you went into a third grade, I could be able to pick out who's going to write a book at this point.
[17:37]Maybe not like a well researched historical like by, you know, nonfiction book, but at least for like the memoir fiction area. I don't know.
[17:46]I think so too. There's also, I mean, just the ability to get completely swept away in a world that you're creating is such a beautiful thing. It's such a gift.
[17:56]And I do think that's something that you can spot very early on and swept away is a good would be a good title by the way.
[18:05]All right.
[18:07]Okay. So wait, the children's book. Tell me about that.
[18:11]It's called Mama and mommy and me in the middle. And it's illustrated by Kalani Juanita and Campbell with his publishing it.
[18:18]And it comes out on March.
[18:21]29th. So very soon, probably after this is being aired, maybe. And, or before this is being aired.
[18:30]And it's the story of a little girl who stays home with one of her moms or the other one is on a week long business trip.
[18:38]And so it's just a story about missing one parents, you know, bonding with the other one.
[18:43]And just how it feels a little bit off when the family life is, is different for a little while. And then it just kind of speaks to broader experiences too of just missing someone that you love or.
[18:58]And I'm super excited about it. I never knew that I would write a picture book and it's just been such a lovely experience.
[19:08]I have a picture but coming out in April actually.
[19:11]Yeah, that's so exciting. It's called princess charming.
[19:15]Also, it's like trying to find her thing.
[19:18]But yeah, I didn't think I would write one either necessarily. So yeah, it's fun.
[19:23]Thanks, you too. All these different, you know, markets and audiences and marketing and, you know, the whole thing to be overwhelming.
[19:33]And it really can. Yeah, but I love writing for different age groups. It's so fun. It's, I love, you know, for so many years I did strictly YA and I still love YA, but to be able to just, you know, speak to people of all ages through books is really exciting.
[19:53]Wait, okay, so last one is your chapter book series. So what is that?
[20:00]No.
[20:01]My chapter of the series is called the apartment house on Poppy Hill, and it takes place in
[20:05]San Francisco on a fictional hill, and it's about a little girl named Ella, who's nine,
[20:11]who is sort of like, she's lived in this apartment house all her life, and she kind of
[20:17]rules it in a way.
[20:18]She's the only kid in the apartment house, but all the adults are, you know, have their
[20:23]little mishaps, and she kind of comes to their rescue.
[20:27]She's very clear-headed and determined, and it's just a super sweet and whimsical and fun
[20:34]and the cast of characters is really eclectic, and quirky, and it was just a real joy to
[20:40]write.
[20:41]You're a buenas, a book with a lot of, like, very heavy stuff in it, like there's a lot
[20:47]of beauty and joy in it too, but it has deals with a lot of very serious topics, and so
[20:55]being able to take little breaks from it and work on this very lighthearted, just like
[21:00]purely joyful, but it's been really fun.
[21:04]Okay.
[21:05]Last question.
[21:06]What advice would you have for aspiring authors?
[21:08]Okay.
[21:09]Well, for so many years, I doubted myself in writing your buenas, like I worried that I didn't
[21:21]know how to use the third person voice, well, it's a little potential, because all
[21:26]of my books have been a first person.
[21:29]I worried about the story, and, you know, if it was interesting enough, or if, like,
[21:34]how could I make sure that these two women that we could, you know, feel their love for
[21:38]each other, and just so much doubts were old in my mind, and then I realized that a lot
[21:44]of that worrying was happening when I wasn't writing it at all, and that I had to just
[21:49]take the giant leap and take on this ambitious project, but I cared so much about, I mean,
[21:55]and just pour, I had to pour myself into the active writing this book, and, and so doing,
[22:01]I just turned really deeply into myself.
[22:04]I wrote from my family history, on my dad's side, where Creole and my grandparents moved
[22:11]from New Orleans to Los Angeles as part of the Great Migration, and I was able to remind
[22:15]that family history, I was able to tap into all of the complicated, beautiful dynamics
[22:24]of siblinghood in order to examine these two sibling relationships in the book that aren't
[22:29]really, like, my sibling relationship, but still, you know, has all of that complexity,
[22:35]and I got to think about what I would do if I were in my character's place, and my brother
[22:39]was in the other's place, and I found, basically, that the things that I loved, like
[22:46]beautiful cocktails and whole restoration and flowers and just beautiful things that we get
[22:51]to make with our hands, or, you know, I found it all within me, so I'm trying to say,
[22:57]and so all of these worried, all of these external worries about how can, how can I tell
[23:02]this story, how can I make this book, what I want it to be, those can all be answered
[23:08]by just turning inward and trusting your way of seeing the world, trusting the things
[23:13]that you love, and trusting that if you write about what you're passionate about, people
[23:18]will be able to see that in the work and find something to connect to, so, yes, but, well,
[23:26]Nina, it was so nice to meet you, and congratulations on your many, many upcoming projects
[23:31]and this book, your Rubuena and I'll address, so, um, thank you, it's such an honor to be
[23:37]on your podcast and such incredible company with your past guests, and I'm just so impressed
[23:43]by everything you're doing with your publishing and your own writing and the series and
[23:51]just all that you have, your community is so cool, so I really appreciate paying invited
[23:55]up to it.
[23:56]Yeah, that means a lot to me.
[23:57]Thank you so much.
[23:58]Yeah, thank you Zippy.
[23:59]Okay.
[24:00]Have a great day.
[24:01]Bye.
[24:02]Bye.
[24:04]Thanks for listening to this episode of Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books.
[24:08]Don't forget to follow me on Instagram, at Zippy Owens, and at Moms Don't Have Time to Read
[24:12]Books.
[24:13]Also, sign up for my newsletter at zippyowens.com and sign up for my virtual book club and
[24:17]meet lots of authors on Zoom every other week.
[24:20]Thanks so much to Steve and Ryan at Texturesound for the Sound Editing, and thank you
[24:24]to Morning Moon Productions for providing this fantastic intro and outro music.