Laura Zigman, SMALL WORLD
[0:02]Hi, I'm Zivi Owens, the creator and host of the award-winning podcast that you're listening to right now
[0:07]Thank you so much. Called moms. Don't have time to read books
[0:10]It is a daily podcast
[0:12]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
[0:24]Although I wasn't when I started this podcast and you can get my new memoir book ends
[0:29]A memoir of love loss and literature wherever books are sold starting July 1st and my children's book princess charming
[0:36]You can learn more about me at Zivi Owens.com
[0:39]But really you're here to learn more about the authors and that is what we're going to do
[0:43]Also, be sure to check out all the other podcasts in the zcast podcast network
[0:49]You can learn more at zcastnetwork.com and definitely check out those shows as well
[0:54]Laura Zigman is the author of Small World a novel
[1:01]She's been on this podcast before and is also a member of our author advisory board at Zivi books
[1:06]Laura is the author of five novels including separation anxiety which was
[1:10]optioned by Julianne Nicholson and the production company
[1:14]Willop who did mayor of east town for a limited television series
[1:18]She also wrote animal husbandry which was made into the movie someone like you starring Hugh Jackman and Ashley
[1:23]Jed dating Big Bird her and pieces of work
[1:26]She has go straight and collaborated on several works of nonfiction including Eddie Isert's
[1:30]New York Times bestseller believe me she has been a contributor to the New York Times
[1:34]the Washington Post and the Huffington Post
[1:37]She produced a popular online series of animated videos called annoying conversations and was the recipient of a yatto
[1:44]Residency she lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Welcome Laura. Thanks for coming back. Mom. Don't have time to read books to discuss small world
[1:52]Thanks for having me. I'm thrilled to be back. Uh-oh
[1:56]Your book was so good and I feel like it's particularly good knowing what you relate in the book about your own
[2:03]personal background and how it tied into the story
[2:05]So what do you mind sharing for listeners? What Small World is about but also your personal connection to it?
[2:11]Yes, sure. You know the book is about two adult divorce sisters who move in together
[2:17]after their divorces and
[2:19]There's that comic element of
[2:22]What that would be like, but it was a real opportunity for me to finally write about my family
[2:28]And in the novel the two sisters Lydia and Joyce are
[2:32]You know thrown together in this in this situation and then they end up dealing with their childhood and in their childhood
[2:39]They had a sister a middle sister Eleanor who was developmentally disabled and physically disabled
[2:44]With um, cerebral palsy and a seizure disorder and she died when she was 10 and that
[2:51]Completely shaped their childhood as those things do and for my family the truth of my story
[2:57]Was that I had a sister my I had an older sister oldest sister Cheryl who was born first and she died at seven
[3:05]From a very rare bone disease and so my sister who lives in LA my sister Linda
[3:10]And I she was five and I was three when our sister Cheryl died
[3:14]So we really didn't know her so it wasn't that kind of sibling loss
[3:18]All kinds of things like that ours was like
[3:21]We didn't really know her but my parents did and so we grew up really shaped by this
[3:27]Experience because it completely changed
[3:29]Our parents and who they may have been and so it was also the 1970s and things like that weren't really
[3:35]You know therapy wasn't really a thing yet and all that so
[3:38]My sister and I now as adults have kind of you know finally
[3:43]Talk we talk about this stuff and there's not that much to talk about for us in terms of like we didn't know her
[3:48]But we talk about what it was like to grow up in that kind of environment
[3:51]And so Lydia enjoys in the book are very much shaped their circumstances are again
[3:55]It's slightly different because there's just a lived with them and their sister was the absolute main focus of their mother Louise
[4:01]Who was a real
[4:02]Activist for disability rights in the seventies and so that's very different
[4:07]But your sister did live with you or she didn't live with you. You know, it's funny
[4:11]She lived with us as she was born in 1958 and then at six months old
[4:15]she was diagnosed with this very rare thing and so you know both my parents are gone and
[4:22]My father was so kind of
[4:25]I say the use the word obsessed and I don't mean it in any way other than then he was obsessed with her
[4:30]For his whole life and so there was a part of me that didn't want to ask too many questions because I sort of felt like
[4:36]He talked about it so much and then
[4:39]I was kind of tired by the by the time I was in my you know 50s like
[4:43]I was tired of hearing about it. You know, I was kind of like well
[4:46]I'm here and my other sisters here and so I regret that so much
[4:49]I regret not asking more questions
[4:52]But after they were both gone. I did get really curious
[4:56]A little too late but in the research for this book
[4:59]I did find a few photographs and there was one in particular of Cheryl with my sister Linda
[5:05]And they were at home and Cheryl must have been about two maybe two and a half
[5:09]So that was like I'll never get an answer because I was known to ask
[5:13]But I was amazed that
[5:15]And I had the picture frame for my sister because I thought by they they actually did
[5:19]overlap
[5:20]At a really I mean my sister Linda was probably six months old or something like that
[5:24]But you know, it's like one of those things like I just wish I had more information and because the
[5:30]My sister Cheryl was institutionalized at a place called fernald in Boston
[5:35]And those records are like sealed and you have to get a lawyer and even then
[5:39]The records may not exist so I'm just so curious but luckily when you write fiction you can
[5:46]You can take a few facts and and then you know make your own story out of it
[5:51]I saw that you said Carolyn Levitt worked at fernald as an intern which I couldn't believe that's so I mean
[5:57]Small world yeah, yeah, and who's so bad with names lately, but Eileen Miles poet
[6:04]She worked there
[6:04]So there all these people that work there had something to do with fernald which was like a really well-known place good and bad
[6:10]So yeah, it's just seen in in small world
[6:14]When I I mean I feel like it's not giving anything away
[6:17]But if it you know when their sister goes and and the scene where they're waving goodbye
[6:22]I mean oh my gosh, and then to going back to the house
[6:25]I mean I finished reading this book
[6:27]And I just like held it in my hands and my husband Kyle was like
[6:31]I always know when you finish a really good book because you just sit there and you like
[6:35]Hold it and like look at the cover for a really long time afterwards
[6:40]And like you know, it's really funny
[6:42]Interesting funny about what you just
[6:44]Picked out is that
[6:46]When I was doing some research and I couldn't really get any
[6:49]Information because of the nature of the the privacy laws here is a here in Massachusetts
[6:53]I contacted a guy who
[6:55]Teach it. He's a writer and he teaches it in the Harvard School of Government
[6:58]And he's this great guy named Alex Green and he put me in touch. He's an expert in all of these issues
[7:04]And he put me in touch with a person whose brother
[7:09]Lived in the same building that my sister lived in and who at the same top like so
[7:13]I actually got on the phone with him and he described because I was so curious
[7:17]I was like how often did your family go and he described that he had kind of a big family
[7:21]And they would all get in the station wagon probably one of those panels station wagon
[7:25]And they would drive over and their mother would go up
[7:28]And all the kids and the father would stay in the station wagon and they would wave
[7:32]So it's like oh my god
[7:34]And then she would come down and the father would go because the kids weren't allowed to to go up
[7:38]So but it was just this incredible
[7:41]visual
[7:42]Thing like to you know anyway, it's yeah
[7:45]No, I'm an amazing thing to be able to talk to someone who who remembered that kind of
[7:51]Yeah, well, it's not surprising the details are so vivid
[7:54]I mean, there's so many things you also have the dynamic in their 50s of the two sisters. One of them is
[8:02]Probably I mean you say they're probably on the spectrum of some some kind right never know
[8:07]Whatever and how she's dealing with how and I love how you even said at some point like oh
[8:12]She's not like this with everybody, but it's she notices people's shapes and then says things
[8:17]You know, it's like it's a totally different way of interpreting another person
[8:21]Which anyway, I thought was really interesting. But anyway, how and the longing that
[8:26]What are these characters names again? I'm blanking on all of you and Lydia and Joyce right you said Lydia
[8:31]So like Joyce has the sense of longing for her sister so much and like this
[8:35]Like she's finally come home and of course in your signature wit you're like it's about time already isn't it you know
[8:41]Well, you don't have a sister, right you just have a brother have a brother if you have
[8:45]I mean siblings are the whole you know
[8:47]Then there's the comedy in the tragedy with siblings, but you know my sister and at my sister just like Lydia in the book
[8:53]My sister moved away to California right after college
[8:56]She went to arts. She went to RISD and she and she just wanted to live on the west coast and I totally understood except
[9:03]It was very far
[9:05]So for years, you know, I always imagine like what would it have been like if we had lived closer and and in some ways
[9:11]It would have been great and our kids would have been getting in probably in other ways was probably good
[9:15]We lived you know because then when you see each other it was really nice, but you miss out on all that and so Joyce is definitely like
[9:22]You know all she wants as a younger sister is to get her older sister's attention and that is you know
[9:28]And there's so much comedy. I mean when I thought about
[9:30]You know the setup for this which was sort of based on
[9:34]A real situation where we lived in an apartment in Cambridge mass and the people above us
[9:39]New people came and moved in and all of a sudden there was all this noise and I mean
[9:43]And they had built just like in the book they had built
[9:48]An actual young studio above our heads like it was like a business
[9:51]I was like this is a house and
[9:53]Anyway, it was very comical and maddening and now when maddening things happen like that
[9:59]I think
[10:00]It's just my next book, but I thought like,
[10:04]all right, the same thing, a couple lives downstairs
[10:07]and upstairs, and then I thought,
[10:08]I just wrote about a couple.
[10:09]I don't ever want to write about another couple
[10:11]about marriage, but, and then I thought,
[10:12]oh, what if they were sisters?
[10:14]Because sisters really push each other's buttons too.
[10:17]And I knew if my sister moved in with me,
[10:20]she would, you know, like part of her would be like,
[10:23]yeah, it's very annoying.
[10:24]And then the other part would be like,
[10:26]you know, I'm so much more chill than you.
[10:29]I want to take the yoga clip.
[10:31]I mean, she would want us sort of like engaged, you know?
[10:34]So it's just, it's so much, it was really fun
[10:37]to write those parts.
[10:38]It reminded me of like the funny troop of performers
[10:41]who came in and separation anxiety.
[10:43]Yeah.
[10:44]Like all these characters.
[10:45]I'm like, who are the characters?
[10:46]So he's blasting under the seat and shaking things up.
[10:50]Yeah, that was funny.
[10:52]The attention you had to all the details
[10:54]of their conversations and like what you can say
[10:57]and what you can't say to set each other off.
[11:00]Like, you just nailed that.
[11:02]Like when Lydia rearranges all the furniture
[11:04]and join us in the moment is like,
[11:06]okay, I can't say, I can't say this,
[11:09]but I can't say that, I can't do this.
[11:11]And I can't do that.
[11:11]Well, she wins if I do this.
[11:13]I mean, it's so funny.
[11:14]Thank you.
[11:15]Yeah, it's, I mean, whether it's a sibling
[11:17]or your, you know, your parents,
[11:20]it's a minefield with family.
[11:22]And it is just, there's just so many triggers
[11:24]with like what you say and what they say
[11:27]and how they trigger you.
[11:28]And then, you know, it's just, it's funny to me.
[11:30]It's really funny.
[11:31]I mean, now it's funny.
[11:32]There was a time when you had kind of a point.
[11:33]But now it's like, oh, you know, we don't know.
[11:37]And everything's fine.
[11:38]But it's just, there's a lot of humor in it for me.
[11:40]Yeah.
[11:41]It's like, it's like everybody's really driving
[11:44]a bumper car in the family.
[11:45]Yeah.
[11:46]You have to either like back up
[11:47]or you have to be so careful, right?
[11:49]No.
[11:52]To your point about how people didn't talk about it
[11:54]as much in the 70s and everything.
[11:55]You have another scene where the mom takes the two girls
[11:59]to the beach soon after.
[12:01]I don't know what is wrong.
[12:01]I can't remember anybody's name.
[12:02]But there's this story goes to Eleanor.
[12:04]Yeah.
[12:05]Eleanor goes to the institution.
[12:07]And she's on the beach with the other moms.
[12:09]And she says she's never read as much
[12:11]because the moms don't want to talk about,
[12:13]oh, no, this is after Eleanor passes away.
[12:16]And she says, you know, nobody wants to talk
[12:18]to me about having a child.
[12:20]Like nobody, they want to talk about, you know,
[12:23]nothing, housework, whatever.
[12:25]So she's like, what can I do?
[12:26]I just read.
[12:26]I've never felt so alone.
[12:28]Yeah.
[12:28]So it's like, yeah, I mean, that's the thing.
[12:30]I think, you know, it was hard being raised in a family
[12:33]that was sad.
[12:35]And yeah, who could blame them?
[12:36]I mean, it was like I said, it was the 70s.
[12:39]There were, you know, my father ended up going
[12:41]to a therapist, but it was still very much
[12:44]like my parents were first generation.
[12:45]And for my mother, like the fact that he was going was like,
[12:49]you know, first generation kids, people like that were often
[12:52]like, you know, you were mentally ill
[12:53]if you were seeing a psychiatrist.
[12:54]That's how they pronounce it.
[12:55]You're seeing a psychiatrist, you know, like, you know,
[12:59]like you're going to have a breakdown.
[13:00]But so it was very shameful.
[13:02]And I know she was embarrassed that he was going.
[13:05]But, you know, for her, it was really,
[13:08]she didn't talk about it much.
[13:09]And, you know, just like in the scene,
[13:12]no one wants to talk about that.
[13:14]No one wants to talk about it now either.
[13:15]You know, most people who lose a child,
[13:19]they have only, you know, I mean, you did a great interview
[13:22]with Rob Delaney.
[13:22]I blerved that book.
[13:24]I saw him in Boston.
[13:25]He's amazing.
[13:26]And there are so many people like him.
[13:28]And who wants to talk about it usually,
[13:30]except when people like him really open up that conversation,
[13:34]they make all the people who have been through it.
[13:38]Because, you know, you're like a pariah.
[13:40]People think it's like almost contagious.
[13:42]Like they don't want to hear about it.
[13:44]And there was a really amazing piece just last night
[13:47]on today.com about the siblings of Newtown and Sandy Hook
[13:52]and what those siblings of those kids,
[13:55]it's been 10 years and what they feel.
[13:58]And that's a conversation that, you know,
[14:01]needs to be had too.
[14:02]Because they're sort of the forgotten people in it.
[14:05]You know, not that, I mean, just there's so much grief
[14:09]to go around.
[14:09]But that's a whole aspect of it that I'm glad
[14:12]is finally getting some attention to.
[14:15]Well, grief and joy go hand in hand so much too.
[14:18]I mean, sometimes people are happy to talk about someone
[14:22]like because they get to think about them
[14:23]and talk about them and just in a really lowest larry,
[14:26]which is amazing.
[14:28]But I had read that she had lost a child
[14:30]and I was sort of afraid to ask like,
[14:32]can I ask her about this?
[14:33]And I so I sort of gently asked.
[14:34]And she totally lit up like talk about him.
[14:37]And she's like, oh my gosh, he was so amazing.
[14:39]And, you know, and I was so happy then
[14:42]that she was talking about it.
[14:43]But if you're always afraid to ask,
[14:46]you don't know, you assume you're bringing on pain.
[14:48]But like you said in the book, like I forgot,
[14:50]like I was going to forget that somebody may be never in.
[14:54]No, but it's great.
[14:55]I mean, it's great.
[14:55]I know you're publishing some people who are writing
[14:58]about grief and it's so much in the public conversation
[15:02]now, sadly, because of COVID and all that.
[15:05]But it is something that is really helpful
[15:07]for people, especially for whom losses really
[15:10]fresh or for people who have had years and years of it,
[15:14]kind of with this expectation that they're just
[15:16]supposed to move on and get over it.
[15:18]And, you know, I mean, it's almost impossible
[15:21]to get through life without having any grief, right?
[15:24]How does one do that if you live long and have very
[15:27]that same way?
[15:28]So you might as well figure out a way to deal with it.
[15:30]Right, right, right.
[15:31]The marriage between the parents is also really interesting.
[15:34]The effects on the marriage and what happens
[15:37]when there is an event like this.
[15:39]And that's another thing that you never know.
[15:41]You hear like so many marriages split up after a loss of a child.
[15:46]But then there's like this closeness
[15:47]like what Rob Delaney talks about in the throes of it,
[15:50]the passion and like how you cling to each other.
[15:53]So I found it interesting how you depicted the relationship
[15:55]between them, the parents.
[15:57]Yeah, I mean, you know, for the parents in the book,
[16:02]they, the father was an orthodontist
[16:05]and he, you know, was sad also.
[16:09]But Louise, the mom was just so, you know,
[16:12]committed to this inclusion.
[16:14]You know, so everything revolved around Eleanor.
[16:17]And so the whole family dynamic revolved, you know,
[16:19]Eleanor was the center of attention.
[16:21]And that's a great thing too.
[16:23]There's just always a cost.
[16:24]No matter what you do,
[16:25]so whether you have special needs kids or non-special needs
[16:29]kids or whatever, you're always gonna, you know,
[16:32]your choices are always gonna be wrong for somebody
[16:34]or cost somebody.
[16:37]So if you do the great thing of putting
[16:39]the special needs child in the center,
[16:41]then you feel like, you know, in this particular case,
[16:44]Joyce and Lydia were slightly neglected
[16:46]and it was the 70s.
[16:48]So benign neglect, I'm a little older than you.
[16:51]So I was truly raised in the 70s.
[16:53]I did have a shoelace with a key on it,
[16:55]but everyone did.
[16:56]And you were just like,
[16:58]nobody talked about their feelings
[16:59]and nobody, you know, it's like,
[17:01]you know, are you eating, you know, are you this?
[17:03]You're fine.
[17:04]But especially for Joyce and Lydia,
[17:06]they just were not really considered, you know,
[17:09]they were walking and talking.
[17:11]They didn't need help.
[17:12]They weren't in a wheelchair
[17:13]and they didn't need help eating
[17:15]or being, you know, anything like that.
[17:17]So they were fine, you know, they were fine.
[17:19]But they weren't fine.
[17:20]And that's always the case.
[17:21]And so, you know, the father had a little bit more sense
[17:24]of that, but, you know, he obviously wasn't much help
[17:28]in that regard.
[17:29]And Louise really was committed to that.
[17:32]He was a big parent's movement in the 70s.
[17:34]And my parents were actually both very, you know,
[17:36]Cheryl died when she was seven.
[17:38]And they stayed, there was a parents group.
[17:40]And they stayed involved for over 20 years,
[17:43]fundraising and doing all kinds of stuff,
[17:45]which was incredible.
[17:46]And we knew those families for a really long time.
[17:48]And most of those kids,
[17:49]they were called retarded children at the time.
[17:52]You know, they were in their 40s and 50s
[17:56]when I still knew them.
[17:57]So it was like kind of amazing
[17:59]that they stayed in that world.
[18:02]And then of course you have all the poems,
[18:04]which are so creative.
[18:06]The poems that you made from the message board,
[18:09]like this neighbor next door, whatever.
[18:12]So do you have next door, the app?
[18:14]I have it for LA.
[18:15]Yes, you know, yes, it's really fun.
[18:18]So I have a friend who is a professor
[18:20]at University of Maryland, Baltimore.
[18:22]He's like a big American studies professor,
[18:24]he's an old friend.
[18:25]And a couple of times a year he'll post on Facebook
[18:28]and he'll just take kids,
[18:29]I don't know if he's his next door,
[18:30]just like a regular thing, listserv.
[18:33]And the absurdity, he would just take a post straight
[18:35]from the site.
[18:38]And he would just cut it into stances, like lines.
[18:42]And it would be a poem, but he hadn't changed the word.
[18:45]And I was like, I love this so much.
[18:47]I want to marry it.
[18:48]I just think that's,
[18:50]then I was like, I'm going to try it myself.
[18:52]And so I did it.
[18:53]And I, the first one was like a lost cat.
[18:55]And I was like, oh, I'm obsessed.
[18:57]I could do this for a job.
[18:58]Will somebody pay me?
[18:59]And then of course nobody would.
[19:00]But I wove that in.
[19:03]And I was so excited at the beginning
[19:04]that I think my first draft I turned into my publisher.
[19:07]And I was like, no, the poem is real.
[19:09]And she's like, oh, you can't do that.
[19:11]You can't just do that, but you have to,
[19:13]but I was like, but they're so good.
[19:15]I love the fact that they were real.
[19:17]You know, but then I, I took them all out
[19:19]and I did my own.
[19:21]Oh, yeah, maybe they were real.
[19:24]I assumed they were real.
[19:25]I wanted they were so good.
[19:28]The real ones were so good.
[19:29]And so I did have to redo them for legal purposes.
[19:32]But I was inspired.
[19:33]I had all these little folders.
[19:35]They were like lost cats.
[19:36]And then there was like, you know,
[19:38]just weird, kind of weird stuff.
[19:40]And then bad neighbors.
[19:41]There was all different kinds of, you know,
[19:43]churky, big, churky threads.
[19:45]So I had lots to work with.
[19:47]And then I just did it, did it myself.
[19:49]But they were so fun because I was like,
[19:52]I also want to explain like,
[19:53]they could have been much better poems
[19:55]if that was the point.
[19:56]But they had to be kind of based on, yeah.
[19:59]No, they couldn't.
[20:00]be that good because they couldn't be that good.
[20:01]No, I have to be unbelievable.
[20:03]And you were starting to hear like, how many people, why did people keep losing their cats?
[20:06]Can these people just keep their cats inside?
[20:08]Please, honestly, like, what's with, you know, enough, they don't want to come back.
[20:12]Yeah, but I still, you know, you write, and I'm sure you procrastinate as much as the rest of us,
[20:17]but I found when I was writing this book, if I hit, if when I hit a wall, I would say, oh,
[20:24]okay, I want to go on next door, and I would just troll and look for poems, potential poems,
[20:28]and that was always a great way to kill some.
[20:32]I don't forget. And I don't know what you're talking about.
[20:34]Yeah, right.
[20:36]I just start drilling on next door.
[20:38]Oh, my gosh, that's a great, it's a great distraction device, all of it.
[20:43]So, did it take you a long time to do this one?
[20:46]It couldn't have it. I mean, I feel like this just came, like, it just came out so fast.
[20:50]Yeah, you know, it's funny.
[20:51]I sold it right during COVID, so like the summer of 2020, and I was like, oh,
[20:58]you know, I'm home in my house doing absolutely nothing. I'll have this done in six months, of
[21:03]course, that didn't happen and I ended up, but by the time I actually got to it, I was a little
[21:09]late with it, and so I was terrified, which is always the best way to write, absolutely terrified.
[21:14]So I did it pretty quickly, like six or seven months, I think.
[21:18]It was really felt like the book I'd always wanted to write, the story I'd always wanted to write.
[21:22]I don't know if you, I know that you told a lot of personal stories and book ends, which was
[21:27]great. And I know that this for me was like my, the story I kind of always wanted to tell,
[21:33]they'll hopefully be others, but I feel like we all have that story about ourselves, that we
[21:38]feel if we just tell this one piece of ourselves, people will understand us truly. And I always
[21:44]felt like I never really understood that I had a different childhood, and people have much,
[21:49]much worse, dramatically worse, but I just meant I didn't understand that my family was different.
[21:56]All our families were different, but mine was different in a particular way that I didn't
[21:59]really understand until I met other people who didn't grow up in a family that had a dead sister.
[22:04]You know, it just was a very particular kind of thing. And so now when I talk to people,
[22:09]and people have come out of the woodwork and will message me, and it is so common.
[22:16]In fact, I'm doing some coaching and I recently met with someone, and I got this vibe just from
[22:22]like what she was saying, and I was like, and it turned out dead sibling. And so there's a particular
[22:27]kind of thing that happens, I think, you kind of minimize your own needs, or you feel like
[22:36]there are, you don't want to bother people with your stuff because they have enough to, you know,
[22:40]that kind of stuff. So it's just, it's a particular kind of profile, I think. And that when we
[22:46]meet each other, we kind of know, like we have the same with the same thing. And it's
[22:51]unfairly uncommon just as things go just.
[22:55]And I know this is not like the biggest deal in the world, but one of the heartbreaking
[23:00]scenes for me was when the girls would come back, like from college or wherever they were,
[23:05]and the beds were never made. And instead, their beds were like mattresses covered by files that
[23:11]was really, you know, about the advocacy results from the other sister. And I think of like,
[23:17]what a big production I make, like when my kids come home from boarding school or something. And
[23:21]just that their mom couldn't even like get her own stuff off the bed. It's like such a metaphor.
[23:28]You know, that's a really, that's exactly the right thing that I was, you know, and yet you can't,
[23:37]if you're the child of that, you also feel like you can't really be angry because the person
[23:43]is doing good. So it makes it even more complex in terms of how you see it and what you feel
[23:50]entitled to feeling. So it's complicated. I mean, my parents did stuff like that. You know,
[23:54]and I always felt like I don't, I shouldn't be upset because look, they were suffering. And yet
[24:01]I'm home, aren't you glad? You know, aren't you glad I'm here too? Like, so it was very complicated.
[24:08]I always felt, and I think deep down, I was angry, really angry. And like, that's why I didn't
[24:14]ask a lot of questions, because I was kind of like, I'm tired, you know, I'm tired of not being
[24:18]seen, you know, that kind of thing. And it's very childlike, but it was, you know, you kind of,
[24:25]I always felt like they were occupied by something else.
[24:30]Well, a child not feeling true love in their own home and true appreciation. It's not
[24:36]something you can just like get over. It doesn't matter what the reason is. It's like, it's
[24:41]still, the end result is the same. It's a loss. It's a loss for you too. You know, sad. I'm
[24:49]really sorry. That's, I mean, yeah, and, and, and there was, you know, other good parts, I guess,
[24:55]to it too. But yeah, no, I just always wanted to write about it. And hopefully there's, there's a
[25:00]lot of funny stuff in it too. There is. There is a balance. But, you know, I also feel like,
[25:07]I don't know. The stories I want to tell now have both really both. It's like Catherine Newman's book,
[25:12]which is like, yeah, it's all too sweet. Yeah. So you're sobbing through the book and laughing
[25:18]through the book. And that isn't that what we want to read now. Yeah. Like the real stuff.
[25:23]The real stuff. Yeah. But yours was like that too. It's the same, you know, it's the same hand over
[25:29]hard. And yet I'm laughing. So, yeah. Okay. Now, what's, what's, what can we look forward to
[25:35]after this one? What's next? Well, we're hoping that the separation anxiety TV happens. We've got
[25:42]Julian Nicholson, the great actress from many, many things, including Mayor of Easttown,
[25:47]and that great production company, whip. So they're, they've optioned it and they're moving
[25:52]forward. And hopefully there'll be some good news one of these days, hopefully. She's great.
[25:56]And then I'm starting work on another novel called Bloom Chaser. Bloom Chaser is a candle.
[26:04]Okay. So this is, I became obsessed with the Kardashians last winter, but I started through
[26:08]lots and a lot of Kardashians. And then I got kind of obsessed with Kris Jenner. And so I downloaded
[26:13]her memoir. And in the beginning of her book, she was raised in La Jolla, California. And her
[26:19]grandparents had a candle store. And I bet you're wondering why I'm telling you this story,
[26:24]but she talks about her grandparents, candles, or how she love these candles in those candles.
[26:28]And her favorite candles were the gloom chasers. And I was like, oh, my God, I love that word.
[26:33]And so Bloom Chaser is a beverage like it's a drink, like it looks like a martini, but
[26:37]gloom chaser candles are stained glass boaters. So you put the little candle line and you light it
[26:43]and the gloom gets chased away. Oh, anyway, so it's about, it's like about a woman who gets
[26:50]divorced and moves to the north shore of Massachusetts and starts into life. They're
[26:56]gloom chasing. Amazing. Oh, wow. I can't wait to read that too. So great. Laura, thank you.
[27:03]Thanks. This time was so fast. I had like a million other things. But anyway, the book was so good
[27:07]and meaningful. And, you know, I feel like you gave the little bits that you were willing to
[27:16]like let escape from the vault. I really are really meaningful. And, you know, now everyone
[27:22]can sort of look back and rethink all of your past work, you know, through a different lens and all
[27:28]of that. Yeah. Thank you. Thanks for reading it. Thanks for having me. No, it was great. All right.
[27:34]Thanks. Thanks. Okay. Bye. Thanks for listening to this episode of Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books.
[27:41]Don't forget to follow me on Instagram at zebi Owens and at Moms Don't Have Time to Read
[27:46]Books. Also sign up for my newsletter at zebiowens.com and sign up for my virtual book club and
[27:51]meet lots of authors on Zoom every other week. Thanks so much to Steve and Ryan at Textures
[27:56]Sound for the Sound Editing. And thank you to Morning Moon Productions for providing this
[28:00]fantastic intro and outro music.