Ashley Winstead, THE LAST HOUSEWIFE: A Novel
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[0:54]Ashley Winston is the author of The Last House Wife.
[1:01]This was guest hosted by Dewey Annichaldman.
[1:03]Ashley is the author of In My Dreams I Hold a Knife, The Last House Wife, and Fool Me Once.
[1:09]She has a PhD in English and lives with her husband and two cats in Houston, Texas.
[1:13]Ashley Winston, author of The Last House Wife.
[1:16]Thank you so much for joining us.
[1:18]Oh, it is my pleasure. Thank you for having me.
[1:20]So the Washington Post described The Last House Wife as deliciously unput downable,
[1:27]and I 100% concur. So tell us about The Last House Wife, what it's about.
[1:33]Yeah, thank you.
[1:34]And I call The Last House Wife alternately my cult revenge book and my rage novel,
[1:42]because I had some some rage to expel, which I think probably comes through in the page,
[1:47]but it is a book that opens with a woman named Shay Deroy. She's newly married,
[1:53]newly unemployed, should be working on her first novel, and instead she's doing a little
[1:58]lounging around, presses play on the latest episode of her favorite true crime podcast,
[2:04]and discovers that her college best friend is the victim who is at the heart of this latest
[2:11]episode. Her body has been found on their old college campus, and if that's not shocking and
[2:17]devastating enough to Shay, she realizes quickly that the manner in which her, her old best friend,
[2:22]Laurel's body, has been found almost exactly mirrors the way another woman's body was found
[2:29]on their college campus eight years ago. So Shay realizes that she might be the only person
[2:35]who's holding a lot of keys to this kind of puzzle of Laurel's death, how Laurel died.
[2:41]And she does what she wants vowed she'd never do, which is go back to her old college hometown
[2:47]and start unraveling the threads of her friend's life since she lost all her, and it leads to
[2:54]darker and darker circles of hell, I guess it's one way to put it. Yeah, so that's it in a nutshell.
[3:00]I found myself, I responded to a text while I was reading it, and I feel like the way I wrote
[3:07]the text was kind of creepy, and I was like, oh god, I'm getting, I'm in deep. I need to take a step
[3:14]back. But you said this was your, your book about culture of engine to channel channel the rage,
[3:21]tell us where that comes from and why. Yeah, so two separate things kind of came together for me
[3:28]in writing this book and figuring out what I was going to do with this second thriller of mine.
[3:33]And the first thing was I have wanted for so long to write a thriller slash horror story,
[3:41]because I think this book kind of is on the edge of those two genres about the experience of being
[3:47]a woman in the world. Simply, I think that that is unfortunately a fodder for a horror story,
[3:54]just the kind of fear that a lot of women feel simply leaving their, their home at night
[4:01]and walking out in the world in the dark. So I've had that idea in the back of my mind for a long time,
[4:08]and it wasn't until I got really in deep talk about falling in deep into a rabbit hole
[4:15]with the plethora of cult documentaries that came out like a year or two, maybe two years ago,
[4:22]particularly about the Nexium cult. I watched all of those went down a rabbit hole
[4:29]reading and researching about Nexium and also the Sarah Lawrence sex cult story really caught my eye,
[4:35]though at the time it hadn't received a ton of coverage the way Nexium did. Something about those
[4:40]two cults felt really modern and different to me, different from cults I was used to reading about
[4:47]like a religious sect somewhere in the rural wild. These were, these were cults operating right
[4:53]under the surface of society. You know, they were sex cults. They were founded on patriarchal
[4:59]ideologies and yet you had all of these women who, you know, had financial capital or social
[5:05]capital, erases and actresses in some cases with Nexium and college students with the Sarah Lawrence
[5:12]case of these women handing over their power and autonomy, you know, and swallowing wholesale.
[5:20]These really old ideas about what it means to be a woman in the world as just fascinated like
[5:26]why in 2022 is that still so salient and attractive to, to women. And those two ideas,
[5:36]all of a sudden I had this lightning bolt moment where I realized, oh my god, there's something about
[5:43]being a woman in the world, the horror of that and also the way you're conditioned to make yourself
[5:50]small and so many cases to hand over power and autonomy in really subtle and insidious ways
[5:56]that maps on to the extreme experience of like being in a cult and handing over power that way.
[6:03]So once I realized that connection, like the last housewife just unschooled out of me really,
[6:10]how quickly did it take you to right? I think the first draft was like under three months,
[6:16]well, which I was working full-time at the time. You were working full-time, I was, yeah,
[6:23]in what capacity? So I worked as a communications director for a like political progressive,
[6:29]political philanthropy, the Arnold, Arnold ventures, if you're familiar, probably not,
[6:34]they're based here in Texas, New York and DC. So I was doing that full-time, which was very
[6:40]demanding time-wise and then every hour I could get free writing. So two questions from Matt,
[6:47]okay, demanding time-wise, but also like the emotional, I would imagine like the emotional trauma
[6:54]some ways of writing something like that. How did you block off like the writing from like the
[7:01]professional you and the world outside of this novel? I don't know that I did a very good job doing
[7:10]that to be completely honest with you. And I feel like both my my writing world when writing this
[7:17]book and my professional, you know, a day job professional world fed each other because, you know,
[7:23]I joined this organization in 2016. The world was looking very different politically and
[7:31]scary to me. And a lot of the things that I was working on were trying to restore reproductive
[7:38]health care access for women across the country and studying, you know, reproductive care deserts
[7:46]in different states and just, you know, working on the kind of policy and research of that
[7:52]among other things. And so I think like the rage and fear and helplessness that I was feeling
[8:00]in doing that work, fed the last housewife in a lot of ways. And I think there's, you know,
[8:08]I was having a conversation with myself really about if you can't in this book, if there's no way
[8:17]to topple the patriarchy, you know, through policy or law or diplomacy or grassroots or all of
[8:25]these like nice, you know, nonviolent ways, like what are you left with other than cutting off
[8:34]the head? Sorry, no spoilers. But you also wrote this. I mean, we're talking about this in a post
[8:40]row world. Yeah, you wrote it. You wrote it. Yeah. Yeah. How do you see this book in that context?
[8:50]It's so interesting to me because I actually remember having, and again, I'll try to do a delicate
[8:57]dance around spoilers. There's a moment in the last housewife where the truth scope of this
[9:05]underground society of men is revealed. And they're, you know, like how high their membership and
[9:12]tentacles kind of reach. And part of it is into the political world. And I remember my editor
[9:17]kicked the manuscript back to me with a note, like, do you think this is really plausible? Do you
[9:23]think that this could really go this high or like, you know, this, this would be allowable? And I
[9:29]remember having to defend myself and feeling really secure in it because of my work, you know, in my
[9:34]day job and saying like, yes, yes. And then I mean, here we are a year later or so from this conversation
[9:43]and already Roe v Wade is overturned. And it's like the Supreme Court, you know, you can
[9:51]make speculations about certain members possible participation in a group. I know that's a salty thing
[9:57]to say, but it just, so it really, I think.
[10:00]had this like kind of horrific experience
[10:02]of watching real life creep closer and closer
[10:06]to this world that I set up in the book.
[10:09]I don't think it's unfair to say that, you know,
[10:12]if you look at the last five years or so,
[10:15]we've all lived through a lot that none of us expected
[10:19]to see in our lifetime.
[10:20]Like no matter where you are on the political spectrum.
[10:23]Yep, I completely agree.
[10:25]You've mentioned the word power a lot
[10:28]and I really think that was such a fascinating theme
[10:31]that you explored throughout the book,
[10:33]the power of beauty, the power dynamics within a marriage,
[10:37]within a relationship, within society.
[10:41]I want to like kind of touch on each of those,
[10:43]but first, like let's talk about the power of in beauty
[10:49]and Shay, the main characters, former Miss Texas.
[10:53]Can you talk a bit about that theme
[10:55]and how you explored it in the book?
[10:57]Yeah, so that's always been something
[10:59]that I'm really, really interested in.
[11:01]That has really occupied a lot of my time.
[11:04]Just because I am so interested in women
[11:08]and kind of exploring and dissecting women
[11:11]intimately in my books.
[11:13]And beauty is a thing that is such a power
[11:18]or is felt as such a power for women.
[11:21]Growing up, I remember thinking like,
[11:24]if only I can be beautiful that, you know,
[11:26]that'll be like a thing that I can fall back on.
[11:30]You know, or like beauty is this power
[11:32]that you're taught, that you're something
[11:34]that your taught is a power that you can hold on to
[11:38]when you walk into the room.
[11:39]And I think beauty is particularly attractive
[11:42]as a power to people who don't have other means of power.
[11:47]So for example, growing up, you know,
[11:49]I come from a sincerely working class family
[11:54]who we did not have much of anything.
[11:57]I was the first person in my family to go to college.
[12:00]And I remember so many times feeling like,
[12:04]okay, you know, if nothing else in this room,
[12:08]I belong in this room with these people
[12:11]who have so much more than me
[12:13]because I maybe I can address well
[12:16]and put my makeup on well today.
[12:18]You know, I can pass with beauty as a power.
[12:21]And so I really wanted to explore with Shay,
[12:25]she is like extremely beautiful the way
[12:28]that I imagined her.
[12:30]And she also has grown up without money,
[12:35]without most supportive family infrastructure around her
[12:38]without a lot of support from teachers or, you know,
[12:42]other mentors.
[12:43]And so she kind of quickly finds that beauty
[12:47]is the thing that she can rely on.
[12:50]It's like maybe the only power she has.
[12:53]But of course, like the insidious thing about that
[12:56]is it's a power, it's double edge.
[12:58]So Lord, it's a power and a danger
[13:01]because the same attention that she attracts
[13:04]for being beautiful principally from men
[13:08]in her like small Texas hometown
[13:10]is the same thing that makes that attention
[13:12]makes her vulnerable.
[13:14]It requires her giving something over to them
[13:17]and being at their command.
[13:19]And so that's something that she wrestles with
[13:22]as she grows older.
[13:23]And it's this kind of dynamic
[13:25]that actually makes her vulnerable and prey to dawn later.
[13:32]And also the way in which Don tries to strip her
[13:36]of that power, there was a scene, again,
[13:41]I don't think it's not a spoiler.
[13:42]But where he says to her, you know,
[13:44]you look really beautiful with blonde hair.
[13:47]And then at the next time she sees him,
[13:49]he, she has a blonde hair and he doesn't say anything.
[13:53]And she noticed that he doesn't say anything.
[13:56]And like it brought me back to something with a former boss
[14:00]where they made some comment on my appearance.
[14:02]And I went, you know, I was not even 20 at the time.
[14:06]And I went and I changed it.
[14:08]And, you know, it wasn't recognized and thinking like,
[14:11]oh, what does this mean?
[14:12]It was so relatable and also haunting
[14:17]in how relatable it was.
[14:19]Like especially, I think, post me too.
[14:21]We've looked back at interactions times in our life
[14:26]where we just sort of accepted ways
[14:28]that we were talked to or treated.
[14:30]And that's been flipped on its head now.
[14:33]I love that you say that because so much of,
[14:35]I couldn't agree more.
[14:37]And thank you for sharing that.
[14:38]And so much of this book has been inspired
[14:41]by me looking back with the new lens right at my life
[14:46]and thinking like, oh my God.
[14:49]Look how much of me has been shaped
[14:51]in ways that I didn't even realize by these dynamics.
[14:54]Yeah, no, totally.
[14:56]And ways that I don't blame us for not knowing.
[15:02]But, you know, I hope that women growing up today
[15:06]or young girls, like we'll see the world in a different way
[15:10]and that we'll be teaching them to see it
[15:12]in a different way.
[15:14]So let's talk marriage.
[15:15]Yeah.
[15:19]The power dynamic that you explored with marriage
[15:22]is also so interesting and the connection,
[15:26]the thread that Shay has in her relationships
[15:29]that actually ultimately connect Don and her husband, Cal.
[15:34]Yeah, yeah.
[15:36]Yeah, so I am newly married when I started writing this book.
[15:44]And, you know, I was older when I got married
[15:48]and had spent quite a lot of time on my own.
[15:51]And I think simply was doing a lot of reflecting
[15:56]about the, you know, all of the power and autonomy
[16:00]that you maybe give up without even thinking about it
[16:05]simply by being married.
[16:07]And especially for women, you know,
[16:09]as someone who has always considered myself a feminist
[16:12]and, you know, kind of fiercely independent.
[16:15]I had this moment when I realized post-marriage
[16:20]that my husband was, I'd let him make all the spreadsheet,
[16:25]financial spreadsheets and being charged
[16:27]of all the finances and know the inner workings of all of that.
[16:32]And I told myself that it was just me
[16:34]like offloading work onto this person.
[16:37]But I had this moment where I was like,
[16:39]oh my God, what have I done?
[16:41]I've put myself in this like kind of,
[16:44]I love my husband, I trust him,
[16:46]but still in this precarious position and vulnerable.
[16:51]Yeah, vulnerable.
[16:52]And that's the thing is like, I think there are probably
[16:55]a subset of people to whom this might sound sad,
[16:58]but I don't think that a woman have the luxury
[17:02]of doing that, you know, of like resting comfortably
[17:06]and saying like, oh, this is, this is there,
[17:09]I'll let him take care of it.
[17:10]That's just not something that I feel comfortable with.
[17:13]And so I started thinking about, okay,
[17:16]well, it's a slippery slope.
[17:18]Like I let certain things happen.
[17:21]I let him be in charge of certain things.
[17:23]You know, and maybe I could see next year
[17:25]a little bit more and then a little bit more.
[17:28]And the more I started to think about that,
[17:31]to me it was kind of like the same sort of seductive
[17:36]dance that a cult, a cult member might perform
[17:41]with someone that he was, because it's always a he,
[17:45]that he was like slowly learning in.
[17:49]Like give me just a little bit of your trust and your power.
[17:52]Okay, tomorrow I'll take a little bit more
[17:55]and you're safe in handing it over to me.
[17:58]And this is the kind of dance that Don performs.
[18:01]And so I really wanted to kind of marry
[18:06]the Patrick society, which is this cult in the book
[18:10]to kind of put them on a spectrum
[18:14]with traditional heterosexual marriage
[18:18]and think about the ways that patriarchal values
[18:23]like very clearly underpin the Patrick society,
[18:27]but also really are uncomfortably close
[18:30]to a lot of dynamics that people and women, you know,
[18:34]kind of I've witnessed, you know,
[18:37]are comfortable operating within the confines
[18:39]of their own marriage.
[18:40]And maybe this is like my text is coming out
[18:43]not to besmirch, you know, text, textons,
[18:46]but I've just looked at so many friends and acquaintances
[18:50]and looked at their marriages.
[18:51]And again, I like I confess my own
[18:53]and just thought, huh, men are really leading here
[18:57]in a way.
[18:58]Yeah.
[18:58]I think the thought that you just articulated
[19:01]that you put into conceptualizing this on
[19:04]and putting it down into words is one of the reasons
[19:09]why it's such a haunting, haunting greed
[19:12]and why it just sits with you.
[19:14]But in a glass half full kind of view,
[19:17]you also say that this is a romantic novel.
[19:19]Yeah.
[19:20]So tell us, tell us why.
[19:22]So I think that first of all,
[19:26]no one will accuse me of making all men bad.
[19:28]And nor do I believe that at all by any means.
[19:33]And so we have this wonderful character Jamie Knight
[19:37]appropriately named in this book.
[19:39]And Jamie is Shay's childhood friend,
[19:42]childhood best friend.
[19:44]He is the host of this true crime podcast
[19:47]that she loves listening to.
[19:49]He's the one who kind of uncovers and is fascinated
[19:52]by the circumstances of Laurel's death
[19:55]because he knows that Laurel has a connection to Shay.
[19:57]This friend he's been estranged from.
[19:59]And here.
[20:00]is the one who agrees to help Shea with this project
[20:03]of investigating.
[20:05]So to me, I call this a romantic book
[20:07]because over the course of Jamie interviewing
[20:12]Shea for his podcast, it's not only an arc of horror,
[20:19]like a horrific revelation of Shea's past
[20:23]and what she's experienced.
[20:24]But it's also, I hope that the reader
[20:27]can see the revelation of Jamie and Shea's
[20:31]kind of long-buried repressed feelings
[20:34]for one another coming to the surface.
[20:37]And I think Jamie is one of the most romantic men
[20:43]that I've written so far.
[20:45]And I write romance novels too.
[20:47]And still, he kind of takes the cake.
[20:49]And to me, it's because I'll just give this spoiler away.
[20:54]But he loves Shea, not in a perfect way, no one's perfect,
[20:58]but so profoundly, despite and with all of her trauma
[21:03]and her flaws, she strips down to her most naked self
[21:10]and shows it to him.
[21:12]And he accepts her and values her and is right by her side
[21:16]and lets her lead always, always taking her lead.
[21:21]And to me, that is the kind of most romantic version
[21:25]of a partner I can imagine.
[21:28]So you have that sheer as a counterweight to the darkness.
[21:32]And it works beautifully for you.
[21:34]And also the way that you write those scenes
[21:39]where you change the narration.
[21:41]So it is Shea talking in first person
[21:45]as though it were the podcast.
[21:48]And it just, it makes this for an even more dynamic read.
[21:52]As a reader, have you always gravitated toward crime fiction?
[21:56]Is that what's on your nightstand, right?
[21:58]I have, I read everything, everything under the sun,
[22:02]I devour, I am such a voracious reader
[22:05]and always have been.
[22:07]So it's crime fiction, it's romance, it's lit thick,
[22:11]it's nonfiction, it's just, yeah, everything,
[22:15]everything that pinks my interest,
[22:16]which probably explains why as a writer,
[22:19]I genre so much.
[22:22]So you're cause it's just, yeah,
[22:24]what are some of like three great books
[22:26]that you've recently read?
[22:28]Oh my gosh, okay.
[22:30]So this is like my favorite thing to do
[22:32]is talk about other people's amazing work.
[22:35]So I am truly obsessed with May Cobs,
[22:39]my summer darlings that came out this summer.
[22:41]It is her crime fiction take
[22:45]on the witches of Eastwick,
[22:47]like the premise of a dark and mysterious man coming
[22:52]to town to kind of like unsettle the lives
[22:55]of these three women.
[22:56]And it is juicy and sexy and dark.
[23:00]And I just absolutely loved it.
[23:02]And to kind of switch genres,
[23:05]I loved the very irregular society of witches.
[23:10]If that is, if I've, or is this a secret society,
[23:13]very irregular witches, the title is escaping me,
[23:16]but it's just the most heartwarming, lightly romantic,
[23:20]like story of witches in glint.
[23:23]And it's just like so charming.
[23:25]And what else have I loved recently?
[23:28]Oh my gosh, this isn't out until March.
[23:30]I usually read a lot of things that aren't out yet
[23:33]for blurred purposes and things like that.
[23:36]But I love it when you lie by Kristen Byrd
[23:40]is somewhere in between a family drama
[23:43]and a murder mystery.
[23:44]It's set in Tennessee, the Southern family.
[23:48]And it opens with these three proper Southern women
[23:51]standing over a grave shoveling dirt into it.
[23:55]And so then it kind of like schools that quickly
[23:58]to figure out who it is and how they got there.
[24:01]Fantastic.
[24:02]Oh, that's all sound great.
[24:03]And I love that they all explore.
[24:05]They're all that women and always
[24:07]in exploring relationships there.
[24:10]And what about you?
[24:11]What's next for you?
[24:13]I have two books coming out next year.
[24:16]Oh my god, you are a machine.
[24:18]I don't know why I do this to myself,
[24:22]but I just can't stop.
[24:24]I can't put a like stop around my brain, I guess.
[24:27]But yeah, I have a romance novel coming out
[24:31]contemporary romance novel coming out in spring of next year.
[24:35]And then my next thriller will be out in fall of next year.
[24:38]So the romance novel is called Boyfriend Candidate.
[24:41]It's a companion novel to my first contemporary rom-com.
[24:46]So it follows the younger sister of the main character
[24:49]of that book.
[24:49]And it is a fake dating comedy, romantic comedy set
[24:54]in the world of Texas politics like the first romance.
[24:58]So I love that.
[25:00]It's about as tender and soft as the last housewife is dark
[25:04]because I doubt I wrote it right after house life.
[25:07]So I needed like the switch for my brain.
[25:11]And then midnight is the darkest hour is my thriller
[25:14]in coming out in the fall.
[25:15]And it is a Louisiana.
[25:19]It's a magical romantic dark thriller set
[25:24]in a small town Louisiana by you setting.
[25:27]So do you take time off in between writing?
[25:31]I don't.
[25:32]It is just like pure production schedules.
[25:35]It is like bouncing from one right into the other.
[25:39]Wow.
[25:39]Do you start to think about the next one
[25:41]as you're finishing up?
[25:42]Oh, absolutely.
[25:44]Yeah, it's hard to wrangle my brain, actually.
[25:47]So my brain will already start going into the next book.
[25:51]And I have to constantly yank it back to the current project.
[25:54]How do you decompress?
[25:56]Like how do you clear the headspace?
[25:59]I think it really is, I decompress a lot
[26:03]consuming other people's art.
[26:05]It's both decompressing and inspiring to me.
[26:09]So I'll finish a book and then go like, oh, man,
[26:12]I need a few days.
[26:13]And then I'll watch some incredible movie
[26:15]or read someone's incredible novel.
[26:17]And I'll just think to myself, oh, no, OK.
[26:20]I'm full of so many ideas.
[26:21]Let's get right back to work.
[26:22]So that's usually how it works for me.
[26:25]But I actually think the genre switch up
[26:28]that I do between every book.
[26:31]Because I never write two books in the same genre in a row.
[26:35]That does a lot of work decompressing in me.
[26:39]Well, Ashley Wood said, author of the last housewife,
[26:43]thank you for this.
[26:44]It's a fascinating, unput downable read
[26:49]to quote The Washington Post.
[26:50]And it sticks with you.
[26:52]So thank you.
[26:53]Thank you so much.
[26:54]I appreciate that.
[26:55]You bet.
[26:57]Thanks for listening to this episode of Mom's Don't
[26:59]Have Time to Read Books.
[27:00]Don't forget to follow me on Instagram at Zibi Owens
[27:04]and at Mom's Don't Have Time to Read Books.
[27:06]Also sign up for my newsletter at Zibi Owens.com
[27:08]and sign up for my virtual book club
[27:10]and meet lots of authors on Zoom every other week.
[27:12]Thanks so much to Steve and Ryan at Textures Sound
[27:15]for the Sound Editing.
[27:16]And thank you to Morning Moon Productions
[27:18]for providing this fantastic intro and outro music.