Nabil Ayers, MY LIFE IN THE SUNSHINE: Searching for My Father and Discovering My Family
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[1:32]Nabil Ayers is the author of My Life in the Sunshine Searching for My Father and Discovering My Family.
[1:38]He has written about race and music for the New York Times NPR, Pitchfork, Rolling Stone, and GQ.
[1:43]His memoir was published on June 7th, 2022.
[1:46]He is the president of Bigger's Group US, where he has run campaigns for the National Big Thief, Grimes, Future Islands, and St. Vincent,
[1:53]as well as Reissue campaigns, including Pixies album Doolittle, which was certified platinum in 2019.
[1:59]At the age of 25, Ayers and his business partner opened Seattle's Sonic Boom record store, which they sold to a long-time customer in 2016.
[2:07]As a drummer, Ayers has performed in several bands, including The Long Winters and Tommy Stinson.
[2:13]On his own record label, the control group, Slash Valley of Search, Ayers has released music by Kate Lamon, Leaky Lee, the killer's P.J. Harvey, Patricia Brennan, and his uncle, the jazz musician, Alan Brofmann.
[2:25]He lives in Brooklyn with his wife.
[2:27]Welcome.
[2:28]Nabil, thank you so much for coming on mom's.
[2:30]Don't have time to read books to discuss.
[2:32]Thank you.
[2:33]My life in the sunshine searching for my father and discovering my family.
[2:37]Thanks for having me.
[2:38]It's nice to be here.
[2:39]It's nice to have you here.
[2:41]You wrote this beautiful memoir, Musical, and it's lyricism and in the way you wrote it, but also all the music influences in it.
[2:50]In the way you talk about your family was so interesting, start out by explaining more about the book, and also how this misperception that your mother was left
[3:01]when really that was not at all what happened.
[3:03]Right.
[3:04]The book starts the moment my mother meets my father when she was 20 years old, and my father was, I think, 29.
[3:10]And he is a relatively famous jazz musician named Roy Eres, and she was a kind of retired ballerina who was lost in New York, not sure what to do, and knew in her head that she wanted to be a young single mother.
[3:21]And the moment she met my father, she said, this is the person I want to have my child with.
[3:26]And to be clear, she didn't say, this is the person I want to be with, or this is the person I want to marry.
[3:32]It was all about the child and her raising a child on her own.
[3:36]So they got together a few times and she eventually asked him, will you be the father of my child?
[3:42]You don't have to be involved in our lives.
[3:44]And he said yes.
[3:45]And I've always known that story.
[3:47]And she's always known that story, obviously.
[3:49]And everyone kind of kept their end of the deal.
[3:52]And this really ideal, like, amazing childhood where my father wasn't in the picture, but it never really felt like he was missing because there wasn't a divorce.
[4:00]He didn't leave us.
[4:01]Everything happened exactly the way it was planned.
[4:04]And I had an incredible uncle and really great male role models.
[4:08]And I think in a lot of ways, a better childhood than a lot of people with, you know, traditional on paper, perfect two parent households.
[4:15]So that's, that's kind of where it begins.
[4:18]And you don't often hear somebody saying, like, that's the, you know, let me just grab that DNA.
[4:24]I know.
[4:25]But I love it.
[4:26]It was so empowering.
[4:27]But later in the book, you talk about how it's almost a selfish act when a woman decides that on the part of the child.
[4:35]Like, you wish you had had a dad.
[4:36]Like, you know, why were you deprived of that before you even had a shot?
[4:40]Like, why did you position it like be involved?
[4:43]So tell me that.
[4:44]And that's what's interesting now that the book is out.
[4:46]Of course, I'm getting lots of, you know, opinions solicited and unsolicited from fans and other people who say, but you never got to be part of this decision, which is, of course, a great point that I lived my life based on a decision these two other people made.
[4:59]And there were points at which I mean, when I'm, it was, it wasn't until my 30s that I finally decided.
[5:04]I think it's time to try to meet my father.
[5:06]He's always sort of existed in my life because I hear his music all the time. People asked me if I'm related to him.
[5:11]We work in the same business and live in the same city, but truly don't know each other, never see each other.
[5:16]So when I had lunch with him when I was about 35, we really got along well and connected and it kind of felt like that.
[5:23]That's the first time I sort of had some different questions for my mother, which were kind of, you know, I think she always protected me and in a way didn't expose me to him because she was worried that I might miss him or feel like something was missing.
[5:36]Whereas we had this really great life without him. And I think as soon as I met him and realized, Oh, wow, there's a connection here and there could be more, I thought about the past and thought, what if my mother had helped me do this when I was 10 or 20 or even 30.
[5:51]I mean, you know, 35 years old is pretty old to finally kind of meet your father for the first time. So that's the first time I wouldn't say felt anger, but didn't see everything exactly as my mother had presented it.
[6:03]And you said also that it was so crazy for you to see somebody who looked so much like you.
[6:09]Oh, it was really wild to sit across from him at a table at a restaurant and just mannerisms and the way he laughed and certain motions and sounds it was just like this is so weird.
[6:19]We've never really met, but that's exactly what I would do.
[6:22]Oh, my gosh. Really powerful. Yeah.
[6:24]That is crazy.
[6:25]You did write a lot about your uncle, Alan, right?
[6:28]Your mom's brother and how he was so influential in raising you as well. And you woke him into like so many scenes all throughout.
[6:36]Tell me about like what is there is he is everything. What's your relationship now?
[6:42]Like, dad, how does that? How does that work? Because then he went and had his own children and everything.
[6:48]Yeah. Yeah. I mean, he's still a huge part of my life. Alan is like, yes, seven.
[6:52]Everyone is so many. I know. I know. He's like, I think he's 71.
[6:57]I think he's 71. I mean, the crazy thing is that he and my mother never drank, never into drugs, even in New York in the late 60s, early 70s, very clean living sort of hippie people.
[7:07]So they have these really perfect memories. They're in great health. It's kind of, it's great.
[7:12]So he's two years younger than my mother. They grew up very close to each other, both moved to New York City as soon as they could when they were around 18.
[7:19]And when my mother decided to have me, Alan pretty much vowed at that moment to be a part of my life when my mother was kind of having this.
[7:26]Well, this is what I want to do. But what am I doing moment Alan stepped in and said, don't worry.
[7:31]I hear everything's going to be fine. And he was always a huge part of my life. Even when we didn't live in the same city, I would spend summers with him in New York or he would come visit us and he was really my father figure.
[7:41]And what's interesting is, you know, I've had a life in music. I played music, played drums and bands for decades. And now I run a record company and that's all I've ever done is something to do with music.
[7:51]The assumption has kind of always been that I got that from my father who's a very talented, famous musician.
[7:57]But I'm sure I got someone who's DNA, but I never got anything else from him whereas Alan and my mother both really nurtured that.
[8:05]Alan bought me a drum set when I was two years old and he would play music with me and he took me to so many concerts and bought me records and, you know, the two of them were the people that really made sure that music was part of my daily life.
[8:17]So it's this nature versus nurture thing.
[8:19]But didn't Alan go to Berkeley school of music? Oh, he did, of course. Yeah.
[8:23]He also had that in his awesome, amazing musician. Yeah. Yeah. And we've also learned sort of later on that on my mother's side and now inside there are tons of classical musicians and opera singers and way more people than we thought. So
[8:37]You were just, you were right. It comes from everyone.
[8:40]You know, what choice did you have really? Yeah.
[8:42]Tell me about being part Jewish. I was sort of surprised to read about this. I am Jewish myself.
[8:49]Oh, you are.
[8:50]How you changed your name. Tell me that. Right.
[8:53]You said that like visiting your family was so funny and I had a grandpa Joe by the way.
[8:58]Oh, wow.
[8:59]You just read your grandpa Joe in flat bush.
[9:02]Let's see. You were talking about what it looked like in flat bush. You said they looked at my mother and me, but nobody smiled or said hello.
[9:09]The residents of flat bush likely had no idea that by Jewish law, both my mother and I were Jewish.
[9:14]Instead, we walked the streets feeling judged and unwelcome.
[9:17]But when we arrived at grandpa Joe's, we were home.
[9:20]He's such a snorer.
[9:21]And he described a neighbor who always asked to borrow things. She was talking me like a chin egg.
[9:26]Joe exclaimed about a former colleague who talked too much.
[9:29]The next winter when my mother brought me to the doctor with a serious call, the doctor asked me to describe my symptoms.
[9:34]I didn't even know how to show a hawk and a snaz.
[9:37]I have a hawk and a snaz. I said it in a nasal voice describing my sore throat and stuff.
[9:41]You know, it's my own made up. You just get it sounding terms.
[9:45]I'm glad you like that as a Jewish person and they aren't offended by it.
[9:49]I mean, no, not at all.
[9:51]I love it.
[9:53]My mother and Alan, my uncle were raised by my grandparents who were Russian and remaining Jewish in Long Island and they were raised.
[10:00]is Jewish and everyone's last name was Braffman,
[10:02]which comes from the Romanian Braffmanu, very Jewish name.
[10:06]And I was raised or born to be all Braffman.
[10:09]And that was my name until I was done with high school.
[10:11]But I was never really, I wasn't raised Jewish.
[10:13]I wasn't really raised in any religion.
[10:15]My uncle and my mother didn't convert,
[10:18]but sort of became, this is the word I like to use,
[10:21]behai is the behai faith in New York in the early 70s,
[10:23]which is a very open accepting religion
[10:27]that's all about equality and peace and love.
[10:29]And it's pretty amazing.
[10:30]And my name comes from a behai book.
[10:32]So they never abandoned their Jewish faith,
[10:33]but they definitely sort of took on something else.
[10:36]And so we went to a lot of behind things when I was a kid,
[10:39]but Jewish culture was always a huge part of my childhood.
[10:42]My son, my grandparents a lot,
[10:43]I knew my great grandparents,
[10:44]so you just read about and that scene.
[10:46]I mean, we used to go visit them in Flatbush and Brooklyn.
[10:49]And what we haven't mentioned yet is that my father is black
[10:51]and my mother is white.
[10:52]And my mother was definitely,
[10:54]even when I was 10 years old, a pretty young,
[10:57]cool hippie who wore great dancer outfits.
[11:00]And so I was just remembering what it was like
[11:02]for us to walk down the street
[11:03]in this sort of conservative Jewish neighborhood,
[11:06]her in like really short shirts and a tank top
[11:08]and me with an afro and probably a kiss t-shirt.
[11:11]Like it was just, it was a crazy scene.
[11:13]And what those people didn't know is that we were going
[11:15]to visit my 80 year old great grandfather,
[11:17]Joe Chesler to go, you know, eat locks and go filter fish
[11:20]and do the whole thing.
[11:22]And I had that very much felt like instill feels like
[11:25]a part of me and my wife is Jewish
[11:26]and we had a Jewish wedding with a rabbi.
[11:29]And I don't necessarily consider myself Jewish
[11:31]because I don't, you know, I don't got a temple
[11:33]or do anything, but it's a huge part of me.
[11:36]I would say a lot of people who are Jewish.
[11:39]Right, right.
[11:40]And, you know, I mean, it's all about,
[11:42]a lot of it is about the identity and culture behind it
[11:45]as you don't know.
[11:46]And my mother, the funny thing as my mother
[11:48]is now back to being Jewish, culturally Jewish,
[11:51]but her husband is a non Jewish person
[11:54]from North Dakota who converted, which as you know,
[11:57]is much more difficult to become a Jew that way
[12:00]than to be raised Jewish and simply fall into it.
[12:02]And I went to his bar mitzvah when he was
[12:04]and watched him chant the Torah and he does all the work.
[12:07]He's super devout.
[12:08]It's amazing.
[12:09]Oh my gosh.
[12:10]My husband converted when we got married.
[12:12]My second husband.
[12:13]Anyway, it was very sweet.
[12:14]Yeah.
[12:15]I'm like, oh yeah, I didn't really know that,
[12:17]but yeah, it's a good, it's a good crash course.
[12:22]Tell me about the press is writing this book
[12:25]or when did you even decide to write a book
[12:27]and then what was it like doing it?
[12:28]Yeah, it's funny.
[12:29]I mean, I've never been a writer.
[12:31]I loved writing in college.
[12:33]I was a terrible student because all I was doing
[12:35]was playing in bands and putting on parties
[12:37]and DJing at the college radio station
[12:38]and doing all the things that applied directly
[12:41]to my life in the music business now.
[12:43]And it all makes sense when I look back.
[12:44]But the only A I got in college was in a writing class.
[12:48]And it wasn't because I really buckled down
[12:51]or worked hard simply because I loved it.
[12:52]And it felt natural and it was really fun and easy for me.
[12:55]So I thought about that.
[12:58]But then I started working in the music business
[13:00]and playing in bands and it just never was never part
[13:03]of my life.
[13:03]And about six years ago, just started writing.
[13:06]I think I was old enough in my 40s
[13:08]and I had so many stories in my head about touring in bands
[13:11]and the record story used to own
[13:12]and just lots of things that for some reason it felt like,
[13:15]I feel like I should start writing these down,
[13:17]not necessarily to publish them,
[13:19]not even for anyone to see them.
[13:22]And this, if I think about it,
[13:23]this, my mother does this.
[13:24]I get emails every day that are kind of short stories.
[13:26]Her observations from writing a subway
[13:28]and the people that she saw and my grandmother
[13:31]wrote a ton of short stories.
[13:32]And I found them a few years ago.
[13:34]And they're really incredible about Brooklyn
[13:36]and the 40s and 50s.
[13:37]So I think maybe it's just kind of in my blood,
[13:39]the sort of storytelling or documenting of my life.
[13:42]So I started writing these fun stories
[13:45]and published a couple of them,
[13:46]which was really fun and exciting and felt good.
[13:49]and my wife finally said, look,
[13:50]this is really fun.
[13:52]It's great that you're writing about your record stores
[13:54]and your band.
[13:55]What you should really do is write about your father
[13:57]and your race because that's what you're interested in
[14:00]and that's what people will be interested in.
[14:01]And I thought about it and it scared me a bit,
[14:04]but in a good way because those are much more personal topics.
[14:07]Those are things I don't talk about very much.
[14:10]And in a weird way, I thought,
[14:11]oh, that's a great idea because I'm already writing
[14:14]with no plan for anyone to see it.
[14:16]So I don't see why I can't tackle these more difficult subjects
[14:19]with no plan for anyone to see it.
[14:21]So I did, but I'd never known my father.
[14:24]So I kind of, I remember being puzzled
[14:26]and sitting there in the Brooklyn Historical Society Library
[14:29]where I did a lot of writing at the time
[14:31]and kind of saying, what do I write about?
[14:33]And I thought, well, I can just write about
[14:35]each of the times I met him when I was a kid
[14:37]and what that felt like.
[14:37]And there was one time when my uncle brought me
[14:40]to Electric Lady, a famous recording studio in New York
[14:42]and we met him for a brief moment or another time
[14:45]and we ran into him on the street.
[14:46]And my mother sort of introduced me to him,
[14:49]all these things that were in my head.
[14:51]So I started writing those as just kind of short stories
[14:55]and then started writing about what it was like
[14:57]to hear my father's music at a bar or in a club,
[15:00]which happens all the time and it used to happen all the time
[15:02]or when someone asks me if I'm related to him,
[15:04]all these things and eventually it's very visual to me.
[15:07]This was all on a computer, of course.
[15:09]But I saw this long table and these little stacks of paper
[15:14]that started at age zero and went till very recently.
[15:18]So decades of stories.
[15:20]And I realized, huh, that's interesting.
[15:22]If I just could figure out a way to connect these
[15:24]and kind of figure out a theme
[15:26]and a sort of binding element, which of course is music,
[15:29]I might be able to turn this into a book.
[15:31]And that's the first time that it occurred to me.
[15:33]I was never trying to write a book.
[15:35]And I think it would have been much harder to say,
[15:37]I'm going to write a book chapter one
[15:40]and there's no part of me that was ready to do that.
[15:42]But I'd done so much of the hard work.
[15:45]Now, I mean, there's still a lot to do,
[15:46]but emotionally sort of getting into the father stuff,
[15:49]which was the hardest part.
[15:50]I'd already sort of taken my brain and my heart there
[15:53]so it felt like, well, now I'm in it.
[15:54]So I should just really try to do this.
[15:57]Wow, interesting.
[15:59]And then when did you sell it and all that?
[16:01]Like what happened then?
[16:02]I spent about a year and a half,
[16:05]probably closer to two years on my own,
[16:07]getting it together and got it pretty far.
[16:10]I mean, there's a version of it that was done.
[16:12]And then it's funny,
[16:14]because I don't know anyone in the publishing world,
[16:16]no agents, no authors.
[16:18]I'm just in a totally different business,
[16:20]but in such a similar, you know, in New York,
[16:22]where I know lots of people who know lots of people.
[16:24]So I looked online and said,
[16:27]you have to have a book proposal.
[16:28]And so I said, okay, I'll write a book proposal and I wrote one.
[16:33]And I had a lot of fun doing it
[16:34]and it actually helped me figure out the end of the book,
[16:37]which was great.
[16:38]And I just started emailing some friends
[16:40]and saying, hey, who knows a literary agent.
[16:42]Apparently that's what I need to get this to the next step.
[16:45]And a bunch of friends got back and touched.
[16:47]And some people put me in touch with people.
[16:48]And this took a few months,
[16:50]but I met with I think seven agents
[16:53]and had offers from most of them,
[16:55]which was shocking and amazing
[16:58]and chose my favorite one who I love and still work with.
[17:02]And it was a crazy thing,
[17:03]because I work in the music business again,
[17:05]where I used to play in bands
[17:06]and you want to get signed.
[17:07]And there was always some,
[17:09]some confident manager who would be like,
[17:10]I'm going to get you a record deal in two months.
[17:12]I'm just going to send this out
[17:13]and you're going to get signed.
[17:14]And so I've been there a million times.
[17:16]And so my agent said, look,
[17:18]we're in a great place.
[17:19]This proposal's great.
[17:20]Let me tweak it.
[17:21]I'm going to get it out to a really small group of people
[17:23]who I think will like it.
[17:24]And I think we'll do a deal by Thanksgiving.
[17:26]And this was in September of 2019.
[17:28]And so I thought,
[17:29]well, that's crazy,
[17:30]but sure, do your thing.
[17:32]And to make a long story short,
[17:35]I'm going to sign the deal with Viking before Thanksgiving.
[17:37]Wow.
[17:38]And it was,
[17:39]which agent did you pick?
[17:40]He was your agent.
[17:41]Oh, it's Meg Thompson.
[17:42]Oh, great.
[17:43]Okay.
[17:44]My gosh, I hear more great things about her.
[17:45]Oh, she's amazing.
[17:46]Yeah.
[17:47]Yeah.
[17:48]That's awesome.
[17:49]And then it was another,
[17:50]what, about a year and a half of working with my editor,
[17:53]Meg Leader, who I loved and which was such a better process
[17:56]than I could have even imagined.
[17:57]Where, you know, of course,
[17:58]there were times when I got frustrated
[18:00]because I'm sure working on other books
[18:02]were taking a long time to work on my book,
[18:04]but then when she would bring a draft back to me,
[18:06]just the notes and the edits and the thoughts
[18:08]were so incredibly helpful and spot on.
[18:12]And there was never a moment that I feared,
[18:15]which was always going to be like,
[18:16]oh, she doesn't know what she's talking about.
[18:17]What is this?
[18:18]You hear about things like that.
[18:19]It never even came close to happening.
[18:21]It was really just a great match.
[18:22]And she totally understood it
[18:24]and helped make it so much better.
[18:26]Oh my gosh.
[18:27]Would you ever do it again now that you know what it's like?
[18:29]Yeah.
[18:30]Are you doing it again?
[18:31]I'm not doing it again yet.
[18:32]I mean, this weekend I finally had time to kind of sit
[18:35]and do some writing, but it's a funny thing.
[18:37]And I'm sure you've experienced this
[18:39]and lots of people have,
[18:40]I mean, the way that the first book came was so natural.
[18:44]And I wasn't trying, and I had all the time in the world
[18:47]and there were no expectations.
[18:48]Nobody asked me to write a book.
[18:50]And then it kind of happened.
[18:51]And now I definitely have this like,
[18:53]well, what's next?
[18:54]What are you doing?
[18:55]People are asking me and so it's,
[18:56]it is a different kind of pressure,
[18:58]but I'm just trying to do the same thing I did before,
[19:01]which is just think about what's interesting to me
[19:03]and write about it and see where it goes.
[19:06]Well, you know, you know, your process.
[19:08]So there's no straight line to getting this output.
[19:13]Yeah, yeah.
[19:14]World land, you know.
[19:16]For people who aren't as familiar with your dad or you
[19:19]and maybe music is not the center of their world
[19:22]or whatever, give more insight
[19:25]so that maybe when they hear a song
[19:27]or what you're working on now in the music world
[19:29]and just give a little work back on there.
[19:32]Yeah, and my dad is named Roy Ers.
[19:35]He is 81 right now, which is crazy,
[19:37]but he's been playing music for a long time.
[19:40]He's known as a jazz musician,
[19:41]but also sort of seminal in the kind of jazz funk scene
[19:45]where it kind of merged in the 70s.
[19:47]He's super heavily sampled.
[19:48]I think perhaps the most sampled artist of all time.
[19:51]And so really had this big resurgence
[19:53]in the 90s and 2000s when hip hop started doing that.
[19:56]And it's the most famous song
[19:57]that's called Everybody Love the Sunshine, which even.
[20:00]And if you don't know it by name, you've probably heard.
[20:02]And I think it was in five different commercials
[20:04]last year alone as an Apple commercial
[20:07]when a chorus commercial, it's really crazy
[20:09]how much this song 1976 lives on.
[20:12]So many of us, tons of albums and he's touring Europe
[20:15]right now as we speak, very active,
[20:18]can't do anything but play music.
[20:19]And we still don't know each other,
[20:20]but I like him and I love his music.
[20:24]And as far as me, I've played music all my life,
[20:27]my uncle started playing music with me.
[20:30]He's a saxophone player.
[20:31]I would play drums, he would play saxophone.
[20:33]We have amazing audio recordings of that
[20:36]when I was three or four
[20:38]and when he would have been like in his early 20s
[20:39]and it's me being really bossy,
[20:41]making it hear my mother in the background,
[20:43]introducing us.
[20:44]And then, and I was supposed to do a lot of jazz
[20:46]and kind of plunkers.
[20:47]I love how you were carrying around your sticks.
[20:49]Oh yeah, I was, yeah, I really wanted people to know
[20:52]I was a drummer that was important.
[20:53]It was like carrying around like a sign, walking around drumsticks.
[20:57]Yeah, there's lots of pictures.
[20:59]And then I saw a kiss when I was,
[21:01]well, I discovered a kiss when I was five
[21:03]and my mother took me to see them
[21:04]and Madisonsburg Garden when I was seven,
[21:06]which was truly a life-changing moment.
[21:08]And from then on, it was just like,
[21:09]I just want to be a rock drummer and that's it.
[21:11]And we moved a lot, lived in New York
[21:13]and Amherst, Massachusetts and Salt Lake City,
[21:16]but all I was trying to do was play in dance
[21:18]and moved to Seattle to go to college in 1989,
[21:21]which was just an incredible time.
[21:23]That's right when Nirvana and Sound Garden
[21:25]and Grunge and all that stuff started to happen.
[21:28]And it was coincidence that I was there,
[21:29]but was really there at the right time.
[21:31]So it was around for a lot of that,
[21:32]got to see some incredible shows
[21:34]and started playing in bands and toured
[21:36]through the 90s and 2000s
[21:38]and also opened a record store with my friend
[21:41]and always kind of had my feet in both sides.
[21:44]I was always interested in the business.
[21:45]Even as a kid, I was, you know,
[21:47]my band would record a demo tape
[21:49]and then I would try to sell it at school the next day.
[21:51]Like there's always a part of it
[21:52]that I understood and appreciated.
[21:54]So it wasn't weird for me to eventually
[21:57]stop touring in a band
[21:58]and start working for a record company.
[21:59]So now in the president of Beggars Group,
[22:02]which is I think the biggest
[22:04]independent label group we work with radio head
[22:07]and the national and Grimes and Adele
[22:09]and tons of great artists and it's a wonderful job.
[22:13]Wow.
[22:14]What a great story.
[22:15]I mean, which is why it's a great book.
[22:16]Yeah.
[22:17]Thank you.
[22:19]Really amazing.
[22:20]And we had joked at the beginning
[22:22]before we started recording.
[22:23]I have, but now I will admit to everyone with things
[22:26]that I accidentally revealed the cover of this book
[22:28]and feel terrible about it in a post
[22:30]after I'd gotten the galley
[22:31]and didn't realize it hadn't been publicly revealed.
[22:33]So I've been feeling contrite about that.
[22:35]I loved it.
[22:36]As I was saying, it was so funny
[22:37]because I had, I turned 50 on January 23rd
[22:40]and my plan was, I'm gonna announce my book on my birthday.
[22:44]And then I thought, oh, actually that's a Sunday
[22:46]I should do it on the weekdays
[22:47]and we can get some press pickup
[22:48]for the business mine, kicked in.
[22:49]So I think whatever it was,
[22:51]I planned for a certain day
[22:52]and I think the day before your story popped up.
[22:55]And I was like, oh my God.
[22:57]And what my, oh my God was like this incredible feeling
[23:00]of excitement because it's the first time I saw it
[23:02]on a phone screen and it was really amazing.
[23:05]And I loved it.
[23:06]And I think IBM do it.
[23:07]I think I said like, thanks.
[23:08]I was gonna post this tomorrow.
[23:10]And you're like, oh my God, I'm so sorry, I'm so sorry.
[23:12]But honestly, it was, it couldn't have been a better launch
[23:15]and I'm thankful that you did that.
[23:17]Oh, okay.
[23:18]Well, good.
[23:20]I gave me this instant credibility.
[23:23]Yeah.
[23:24]I do a lot of stuff on the weekends anyway.
[23:27]Do you have any advice for aspiring authors now
[23:30]that you've gotten a book successfully out and everything?
[23:34]I mean, I think I was so lucky
[23:36]and I really realized this that I was never,
[23:38]I've never been a writer or an author for a living.
[23:40]So I've always been able to take my own time
[23:45]write about what I want to write about,
[23:47]not worry about getting paid for it,
[23:48]which are all, you know, it's an incredible luxury
[23:50]because I have a job and writing is sort of my,
[23:52]whatever hobby or side hustle or whatever you want to call it.
[23:55]So I know everyone's not that fortunate,
[23:57]but I do think that's a way to think about it
[23:59]is if you have another job or you do something else,
[24:02]which a lot of people do and you want to write
[24:04]the thing to do, but work for me,
[24:06]what we just talked about was really just writing
[24:09]with no intention of anyone seeing it ever.
[24:13]Just write for yourself.
[24:14]And it really for me took away this incredible layer
[24:17]of fear and insecurity and all the things
[24:19]that we all feel when we're writing about ourselves
[24:21]or better feelings or thoughts and all that stuff.
[24:23]And so it just allowed me to really write about anything
[24:27]and say anything and then eventually
[24:30]as I kind of honed it into this book
[24:31]or into shorter pieces or whatever,
[24:33]I just took out the things I was uncomfortable with
[24:35]or sometimes left in those things
[24:37]because actually I was like, wow, I'm glad I said this
[24:39]because actually maybe I can say this.
[24:41]It really, that's what really worked for me
[24:43]and that's what I recommend is just go in totally
[24:47]thinking no one's ever going to see this
[24:48]and hopefully something good will come out of it.
[24:52]And I think I'm going to take your wife's advice too
[24:54]when she encouraged you to write the stuff
[24:57]that you really wanted to write
[24:59]and even the stuff that made you feel scared
[25:02]and uncomfortable, that's usually stuff anyway, so yeah.
[25:05]I just will go there.
[25:06]Yeah, it's hard.
[25:09]It's hard, it's hard, it's hard.
[25:11]It's probably good.
[25:12]Exactly.
[25:13]It's feeling hard and I don't know, I feel like
[25:17]that's a really good sign for the reader at least.
[25:20]There we go.
[25:21]Nicole, thank you so much.
[25:22]Thanks for coming on mom's time to read books.
[25:24]Thank you.
[25:25]Shine fabulous book.
[25:27]As you know, I really, really enjoyed it
[25:29]and you're a great writer and have a wonderful story.
[25:32]So, thanks so much, Debbie.
[25:34]I appreciate you having me on
[25:35]and I hope you'll see you soon in New York.
[25:37]Yes, that'd be great.
[25:38]All right, bye, thanks.
[25:41]Thanks for listening to this episode of
[25:43]Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books.
[25:45]Don't forget to follow me on Instagram,
[25:47]at Zebi Owens and at Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books.
[25:50]Also sign up for my newsletter at zebiowens.com
[25:53]and sign up for my virtual book club
[25:55]and meet lots of authors on Zoom every other week.
[25:57]Thanks so much to Steve and Ryan at Textures Sound
[26:00]for the Sound Editing.
[26:01]And thank you to Morning Moon Productions
[26:03]for providing this fantastic intro and out trim music.