Lauren Edmondson, WEDDING OF THE SEASON
[0:02]Hi, I'm Zippy Owens and you're listening to moms don't have time to read books.
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[1:03]Lauren Edmondson is the author of a wedding of the season, a novel.
[1:07]Lauren has a BA from Williams College and an MFA in fiction from Sarah Lawrence College.
[1:11]She lives in Northern Virginia with her husband and two children.
[1:15]Ladies of the house was her first novel and is now followed by wedding of the season.
[1:19]And actually, Lauren is going to be doing an event with all of ours, with several of
[1:23]our Zippy books authors at the ocean house in Watchel, Rhode Island, this August 23rd.
[1:31]So save the date.
[1:32]Welcome Lauren.
[1:33]Thank you so much for coming back on mom's turn of time to read books this time for
[1:36]wedding of the season.
[1:39]Thank you so much for having me.
[1:41]It's so good to be back and it's so good to see you too.
[1:45]This is like another ad for the ocean house though, I have to say, which I love and is
[1:52]one of my favorite places so beautiful.
[1:55]And I love the way you write about it in the book.
[1:57]I hope you're having an event there for the launch or something.
[1:59]Are you?
[2:00]I hope so too.
[2:01]You and I were supposed to get together at ocean house along with lots of other authors
[2:08]before pandemic derailed those plans.
[2:11]Yeah.
[2:12]I hope that one day we can reschedule a retreat there because I was so looking forward
[2:18]to it.
[2:19]I'm doing two other retreats and I'm like, I know I have to go back.
[2:22]There were so many logistics involved.
[2:23]I'll do it differently this time and just make it a little easier at myself versus like
[2:27]managing people's food preferences and roommate requests and I was like, a travel agent
[2:32]for a month.
[2:34]But yeah, you don't need to do that on personally.
[2:37]Okay.
[2:38]Right.
[2:39]Okay.
[2:40]Tell listeners about wedding of the season.
[2:42]Wedding of the season is set in Newport, Rhode Island.
[2:46]It's about the descendants of a great, formerly great, gilded age family who have fallen
[2:54]in from Grace, fallen from riches and the middle daughter comes home after a long time
[3:01]away and after having sort of written her family and her hometown off.
[3:07]She comes back to Newport to help her older sister get married basically.
[3:11]But the twist is that her older sister is marrying the son of the family that now owns
[3:18]the great mansion that had once been theirs.
[3:23]The land.
[3:25]It's a story about a homecoming about families with adult children dealing with aging
[3:32]parents.
[3:33]It's as my previous books were sort of about society and the clash between old money
[3:39]and new.
[3:40]But it's also I hope really fun and full of giggles and friendship and sisterhood and beautiful
[3:48]scenery.
[3:49]So I really hope that people enjoy it.
[3:51]I really enjoyed writing it.
[3:53]People are totally going to enjoy it.
[3:54]It's really fun.
[3:55]This is the perfect wedding season gift and the characters, of course.
[3:59]I mean, I feel like you kind of are writing about old and new money in this book just
[4:02]by writing about Newport or maybe it's only old.
[4:05]Yes.
[4:06]New money.
[4:07]You had a paragraph in the beginning to this little scene.
[4:11]Let me just read this.
[4:12]Okay.
[4:13]Jack is at least your conversation into banal territory.
[4:15]Ambassador and Miss Frederick Stern's just back from a cruise to Antarctica, too damn cold.
[4:19]Too many penguins.
[4:20]Bunny Mills.
[4:21]I designed garden benches.
[4:22]Susie.
[4:23]Susie can show you the lookbook.
[4:25]Dr. Jennifer Cohen.
[4:26]When was the last time you saw a dentist, her practice was in middle town.
[4:29]There's she only worked on Mondays now.
[4:31]That's the day the golf course is closed.
[4:32]Now, remind us what you do.
[4:34]As I explained what I did outside of Rhode Island, I was shortly reminded of this fact.
[4:39]When those who haven't left the closed loop of Newport, New York, Palm Beach are in the
[4:43]company of one who has, they find themselves earnestly inspecting the curiosity before them
[4:47]as one might an indecipherable gallery installation.
[4:51]I was an oddity past, present, and future.
[4:54]Yes, that captures how our main character casts, feels.
[5:01]Although she is a, like I said, you know, she's a great, great, great granddaughter of one
[5:09]of these old money American royalty families, those days of yacht clubs and jet setting
[5:17]to Palm Beach and horses and stables and diamonds, those days are over for her.
[5:24]So she's had to work, you know, and really find her own way in the world.
[5:29]And so coming back into New York is still sort of like being dropped through the looking
[5:35]glass.
[5:36]She has to sort of readjust to the way rich people move about the world and also react
[5:43]to her as somebody who is really straddling these two spheres of society.
[5:49]Interesting.
[5:50]And it's like so fitting that you have her be a photographer, right, with this old school
[5:54]camera.
[5:55]It's like injury prone camera or whatever, so that she can be the observer sort of of the
[6:02]whole scene.
[6:03]Yeah.
[6:04]And it is amazing.
[6:05]I mean, there are pockets of society still.
[6:09]I mean, these places still exist like this, they're not just in New York, but I'm trying
[6:15]to think of other like little communities like this around scattered about that really
[6:19]are frozen in time, like you said.
[6:20]I mean, it's, I don't know how, but it happens.
[6:24]Yeah.
[6:25]Yeah.
[6:26]And, you know, cast notices at later in the book, but it's deliberately sealed.
[6:33]You know, it's, it's, it's a by choice and by design, they, they seal themselves off
[6:39]from the rest of the world, you know, I think a lot about, uh, Sea Island, Georgia.
[6:45]Have you ever been there?
[6:47]No, but my husband used to teach tennis there.
[6:50]Oh, she did.
[6:51]Yeah.
[6:52]That's it.
[6:53]I want to talk to you more about that later.
[6:54]But when we first went to Sea Island, I guess it's a privately owned island.
[7:00]And I commented to my husband that there's no signs anywhere.
[7:06]You know, there's no big sign that says, Sea Island this way, you know, the different parts
[7:12]of the island where they have, you know, hotel, beach club, uh, lodge, golf course.
[7:18]The signs are like five centimeters high and like embossed in metal.
[7:24]So you can't really see them.
[7:26]It's designed for people who already know where they're going and it's not designed
[7:31]for newcomers.
[7:33]And this is a deliberate, you know, design choice.
[7:36]And I just find that so fascinating, the kind of calculation that goes into keeping a place
[7:43]like like Newport or certain parts of Newport, I should say, remote, even though it's part
[7:49]of a bigger community, there are just parts.
[7:52]Like you said, parts of the world that like to keep themselves hermetically sealed.
[7:56]Yeah.
[7:57]And I feel like there are still many clubs that have not revised the rules.
[8:03]I mean, like I feel like the rules do not apply some of them.
[8:06]So Cass, she reunites with people from her past right away and dot dot dot all things
[8:15]in Sue by showing us taking her following her through this whole season, if you will.
[8:21]And I love the Instagram, the constant Instagram posts is a little burst.
[8:26]Yeah.
[8:27]The gossip, the new part.
[8:28]Awesome.
[8:29]Yes.
[8:30]Which is awesome.
[8:32]So when you were envisioning writing the book and you thought of Cass as the character,
[8:36]what were you trying to like what were you super excited to get across with her view of
[8:41]this world?
[8:42]That's such a good question.
[8:44]I quote her as the middle child because she had this vibe for me of always feeling kind
[8:53]of sandwiched.
[8:55]She has a very talented, beautiful older sister who's a ballerina.
[9:01]She has a charming, dashing, younger brother who is everybody's absolute favorite.
[9:09]And she's sort of plunked there in the middle.
[9:12]And this echoes how she feels about her place within Newport, where she's like I said
[9:20]before, you know, she's kind of trapped in this really nebulous place between being
[9:25]in and being out.
[9:26]You know, she's not completely in because of course, she doesn't have the money.
[9:31]And you know, her mother is kind of cookie in a really lovely way.
[9:37]But she's not completely out because she has the name.
[9:40]She is a really famous name that everybody knows.
[9:43]You know, the inspiration was sort of a Vanderbilt-esque in that way, where you really
[9:49]can't escape your last name, even though she sort of tries to.
[9:54]So I really thought that would be an interesting place for her to be as...
[10:00]this wedding of the season looms large,
[10:03]this big society wedding,
[10:05]because her sister is, as a ballerina,
[10:07]pretty famous within the elite circles of society.
[10:11]And she's marrying a very new money rich guy.
[10:15]So it has all of those trappings of wealth.
[10:19]And the wedding takes place at the land,
[10:21]this grand mansion set on the cliffs of Newport.
[10:25]And weddings have a way of bringing out our best
[10:29]and our worst, especially within families.
[10:32]And the added stress of a wedding that is planned basically
[10:37]in three months, you have this compression of time,
[10:41]compression of issues and compression of place.
[10:45]So Cass really has to figure out in a short space of time
[10:50]with all these external pressures where she is
[10:55]and where she can hold space for herself,
[10:58]where she can function happily in this middle ground.
[11:01]So that's kind of where I plop her.
[11:04]Talk about the writing process of this book,
[11:07]especially after last book.
[11:09]And like the differences do you feel like
[11:12]it's getting much easier.
[11:13]And where do you see all this going?
[11:16]You know, I was thinking about this today
[11:18]because I feel like we,
[11:19]it was almost exactly two years ago
[11:21]where we first chatted.
[11:24]And like I said, that long,
[11:25]I felt like it was so recent, but okay.
[11:27]I know.
[11:29]Because I was ladies of the house was just about to come out
[11:33]and I was two months postpartum with Shepherd.
[11:36]And I remember you asking me like,
[11:40]oh, what are you working on now?
[11:41]And I said this book about Newport,
[11:44]but I confessed to you that I really
[11:47]hadn't been writing very much
[11:50]because of my son being a newborn.
[11:53]And you said, that's okay.
[11:55]You know, you've just grown a human.
[11:58]I think you can take some time.
[12:00]And I don't know if you noticed this,
[12:02]but I actually borrowed that kind of concept
[12:04]because in, well, I don't wanna ruin it.
[12:06]But Has says something similar to a character in the book
[12:11]and I was thinking about you as I was writing that
[12:13]because it's like, yeah, I was growing a human
[12:17]and recovering from growing a human.
[12:20]But soon after we talked sort of two years ago,
[12:22]I really got back to the page
[12:25]and it was not easier in so many words.
[12:29]I think because my son was basically home with me.
[12:33]You know, it's a very young baby.
[12:35]Thankfully I had help.
[12:37]I had a wonderful babysitter who came a couple hours
[12:41]a week to help me.
[12:42]I had my housekeeper come every other week
[12:46]to help me keep the house clean.
[12:48]I have a very supportive husband
[12:50]and extended family and friend groups.
[12:52]So I was not without help.
[12:55]But it was very challenging nonetheless
[12:58]to be that exhausted from caregiving.
[13:02]And then to oftentimes at the end of the day
[13:05]when the kids were in bed to sit down
[13:07]and turn to the creative part of my brain
[13:11]when all I wanted to do was watch Sister Wives on TLC.
[13:15]You know, it was, it was difficult.
[13:19]I found myself sort of like dragging myself
[13:22]a lot to my computer.
[13:23]Or I would be really excited to write during the day
[13:27]when I felt really good.
[13:28]And what I would often do was write during Shepherd,
[13:31]my son's nap times.
[13:32]And if he skipped a nap or if he wasn't settling
[13:36]as quickly as I wanted him to, I would get so anxious
[13:40]about like, this is my waiting time.
[13:44]Why can't you do this last week?
[13:47]So it was challenging logistically, you know,
[13:50]to find the hours and the space.
[13:54]But it ended up actually really later on into the process.
[14:00]It really ended up doing a lot for me emotionally
[14:04]because I, about a year after my son was born,
[14:08]I was really struggling with postpartum anxiety.
[14:12]And this was too in a place like where we were going on,
[14:18]we were going on what year two of the pandemic.
[14:21]It was the time where I can't remember what variant it was,
[14:25]but like everybody was getting it.
[14:27]And it was winter time, you know, it was depths of January.
[14:31]And I felt so old and so like hopeless,
[14:39]almost the feeling like we're never gonna get out of this.
[14:42]My kids are never gonna be able to have a normal childhood
[14:47]and the work was also just very challenging.
[14:50]There was just a lot my editor was doing a lot for me
[14:54]to get the plot into place.
[14:56]And I really felt like I'm letting her down
[14:59]because I'm not, I'm not getting the book where it needs to be.
[15:03]And so I really started spiraling into this sad place
[15:07]of anxiety.
[15:09]But what brought me out was two things.
[15:11]Of course, the first being Lexapro, thank goodness.
[15:13]And then the second being this family,
[15:16]the Coventry Gelfords and Newport and this page
[15:18]because they are for me so wonderful.
[15:23]They're a family that I really enjoyed spending time with.
[15:27]I really enjoyed writing them.
[15:29]I loved having them all together in a room.
[15:32]And the way, you know, that I write my books is toward
[15:38]an ending where families are together
[15:41]and they are happy with each other.
[15:44]And they do come together and he unified loving way.
[15:49]So writing toward that,
[15:52]ending for them for these characters
[15:54]that I just grew to love in this place in Newport,
[15:58]which I've also grown to just adore.
[16:01]We really brought me out of that dark time.
[16:03]So yeah, the third book that I'm working on,
[16:07]I am hoping it's not gonna be so logistically
[16:12]emotionally challenging.
[16:14]But the second book is any indication.
[16:16]I'll have my war cut out for me.
[16:19]Lauren, I honestly don't even know.
[16:21]I mean, that sounds stupid.
[16:22]I don't know how you did it.
[16:23]But I mean, the access to creativity
[16:26]and mental energy you need to write fiction is like,
[16:31]so diametrically opposed to like,
[16:34]it uses the same store of energy that you need
[16:37]to raise babies and all of that.
[16:39]Like it's this, it's not like there's an ever flowing,
[16:44]like I'm envisioning this fountain.
[16:45]I can't talk because I've gotten asleep,
[16:46]but you know, like you used it all for one thing.
[16:49]And then you like dip in the wall is empty.
[16:51]And I don't know.
[16:52]I mean, I'm so sorry.
[16:53]I feel like I still have postpartum anxiety.
[16:55]It's my kids, but like 15 and a half.
[16:58]You know, it's that was a hard time of life
[17:01]for literally everyone on the planet.
[17:03]And then the little kids in the book,
[17:05]I mean, it's so much, it's just so much.
[17:08]And you did a good job.
[17:09]It's not even, it's like a really good book.
[17:11]Do you know what I mean?
[17:12]Like you didn't like just crank out some terrible book,
[17:14]which you could have.
[17:15]But you did it.
[17:17]Thank you.
[17:18]Thank you so much for saying that
[17:19]because if it really felt though,
[17:21]I was tipping off the precipice into like,
[17:24]am I just gonna have to phone this in?
[17:27]You know, like kind of,
[17:29]I remember tearfully calling my wonderful agent,
[17:32]Sarah Farron being like,
[17:34]I do not know if I can do this.
[17:38]And in her, you know, in her infinite wisdom,
[17:41]she was like, we will do this together.
[17:44]I will physically drag you across the finish line
[17:47]if I have to, you know, she was like,
[17:49]I will carry you on my back.
[17:50]And so I had help and I had support
[17:54]both physical and emotional.
[17:56]And certainly I wouldn't have been,
[17:58]I wouldn't have been able to pull this together
[18:00]without them.
[18:02]Did you consider putting back the release date or anything?
[18:05]We, Sarah and I had sort of a mention of it.
[18:12]You know, she was like,
[18:13]because I just fell in my anxiety spiral.
[18:16]I just felt like we're gonna have to change
[18:19]that publication date and it's gonna ruin everything.
[18:22]And you know how those little knots of thought
[18:27]just get stuck and you're tugging
[18:29]and it just makes them tighter.
[18:32]Because I just thought that would be the greatest,
[18:34]you know, failure of my life.
[18:36]And she just reminded me again in her very common way
[18:38]that publication dates get changed all the time.
[18:41]So it would not be the disaster that I envisioned it would be.
[18:46]But we didn't end up having to change the update.
[18:49]We worked on it really hard.
[18:51]My editor and I worked on it really hard.
[18:53]And it did come together fairly quickly.
[18:56]You know, once we had gotten the major wumps out,
[19:00]it was like, okay, now we're going into sentences
[19:04]and starting to edit sentence by sentence.
[19:06]So that was different than my previous book
[19:09]where it was really, ladies of the house was really
[19:12]sort of a gradual combing of knotting hair
[19:15]where you just keep running the comb through
[19:18]and it gets kind of smoother and smoother.
[19:20]This was just a mess for so long until it wasn't.
[19:24]So we were fortunate in that way.
[19:28]Wow, novel writing as hair styling.
[19:31]I love it.
[19:33]No, it's great.
[19:34]It's like in perfect reality.
[19:36]So awesome.
[19:38]Well, that's off to you because I'm impressed.
[19:41]I mean, I'm impressed when anybody
[19:43]pulls off writing a novel and it's hard.
[19:45]Well done.
[19:46]Well, you've written two books.
[19:48]I feel like it's these different.
[19:50]I'm trying to write a novel now.
[19:51]I mean, I'm not trying.
[19:52]I am, but it is so hard.
[19:54]I mean, it's hard.
[19:55]It's, I don't know.
[19:56]Maybe it's easier for people who are actually like,
[19:59]this is what.
[20:00]I don't know. It's hard for me.
[20:02]It's hard for me.
[20:03]Do you find it more difficult than writing your memoir?
[20:06]Yeah.
[20:07]Like, feel.
[20:08]Yeah.
[20:09]Well, I don't know.
[20:10]I feel like to get in the mental space where I can do it is the hardest part.
[20:15]Like, there's too much going on.
[20:16]I can't do it.
[20:17]Like, the other kinds of writing, not to talk about me.
[20:19]Like, other kinds of writing, I can do in between like a podcast and a meeting downstairs.
[20:23]And this and that, I could like write an essay for an hour and boom, it's done.
[20:27]But I don't know.
[20:28]I feel like fiction.
[20:30]I need like the day. I need like hours.
[20:33]Yeah.
[20:34]Because maybe I'll sit there, but then maybe something will come to me.
[20:37]And then I really want to do it.
[20:39]But then it's like time for dinner.
[20:41]I don't know.
[20:42]I can't plan it as much, which frustrates me.
[20:44]Yeah.
[20:45]No, you do.
[20:46]You spend a lot of time staring off into space thinking.
[20:50]And then when something comes to you, you don't necessarily have that access because you are in the middle of dinner.
[20:56]And right.
[20:57]Yes.
[20:58]Yeah.
[20:59]I see that.
[21:00]I see that for me.
[21:01]I would.
[21:02]I feel as though it would be the opposite where memoir would be very hard for me because I would feel like I don't have.
[21:12]I don't have anything to like say about me.
[21:15]You know,
[21:16]I think this thing happened.
[21:19]How am I going to get it to a place where it's interesting to anybody else besides my mother.
[21:25]And that would that would trip me up.
[21:28]I think a lot.
[21:29]And I would spend a lot more time staring off into space than I do for novel writing.
[21:34]But you write you your memoir is so beautiful.
[21:38]So accessible.
[21:39]And so.
[21:42]So true.
[21:45]That.
[21:46]Yeah.
[21:47]It's just it's remarkable that you have been able to do all that you do.
[21:52]Oh, well, let's just compliment each other for.
[21:54]Okay.
[21:55]Okay.
[21:56]I'll just like lift each other up.
[21:58]And.
[21:59]Are you finding any time to read?
[22:02]Yes.
[22:03]Yeah.
[22:04]I'm reading a lot.
[22:05]I'm reading in sort of anticipation of my next project that I hope to be working on soon, which takes place in the Hamptons.
[22:16]Amazing.
[22:17]Which is another pocket of contradictions and simmering social tensions that I'm really looking forward to exploring.
[22:28]So I'm reading some stuff about the Hamptons and I'm also reading a book at my agent recommended to me that I have never read and it's one of those books where I'm like, oh my gosh, what I have and I read this before.
[22:41]I feel sad as I'm reading it that it's just coming into my life now.
[22:46]What is it?
[22:47]It's James Solter's light years.
[22:50]I haven't read it.
[22:51]It's a rather slim novel that was written probably in the 70s.
[22:58]It follows a couple through a few decades of their marriage.
[23:03]And it's so beautifully and tightly written every sentence is a revelation, but it's also so keenly observed, you know, the way he zooms into not just conversations on a random Wednesday night, but snippets of conversation that illuminate the beauty and the absolute
[23:26]mundaneness of marriage and family and raising children and what we're doing when we say we're raising children, what are we actually doing.
[23:37]I just I'm so in love with it. I don't want it to end.
[23:40]It's that kind of book.
[23:42]Oh, yes.
[23:43]Well, that was a great recommendation.
[23:46]Do you have anything fun coming up, not not writing related.
[23:49]Good question. I'm trying to.
[23:52]I'm trying to think of places to to go. I like to have stuff on my calendar to look forward to, especially in January when it's so cold and the holidays are over and my house is not decorated anymore and I like to have stuff on the calendar.
[24:13]So we're planning a few trips like thinking about, you know, my kids spring break and stuff with family this summer and my husband and I would really like to travel to just by ourselves this fall.
[24:28]So just finding different places to go. Christopher and I would really like to go to Scotland.
[24:33]That's always that's an online bucket list. Have you been there? I've never been there.
[24:38]So we're trying to make that happen. But of course it's all about us. You know, it's all about childcare. You know, what are we going to do these, what are we going to do with these kids while we're gallivanting around.
[24:48]This is the, this is the one part of divorce, you know, built in.
[24:52]Baby saying essentially.
[24:56]Yes, the silver lining silver lining. Yeah.
[24:59]Anyway, this is so fun.
[25:01]I love chatting with you. I love you. I'm so excited for your book. It was great. I love the characters in the setting and I just like the escapism of it.
[25:12]Just like I would like to be sitting on the porch of the open house with the croquet sticks and wandering around the land and all of that good stuff. So Newport is such a fun, beautiful, remarkable place.
[25:27]I feel as though it's not as hyped as it should be. You know, we hear Charleston, you know, New Orleans. We hear these sort of places where everybody is going and we don't are at least, you know, I haven't historically heard like.
[25:43]it's going to take a girl's weekend to Newport, like let's take a romantic get away to Newport.
[25:48]And one of these days, the secret is going to get out and it's going to be overrun by batch red parties. I know Newporters are already like no more bachelorets, no more hotels because it is just so cool.
[26:00]The food scene is great. The the bar scene nightlife arts and the hotels, you know, all the way from like ocean house in west or way up to Castle Hill and in the edge of Newport.
[26:14]It's so great. It's such a great place just to go for especially if you're on the East Coast just for the weekend. It's also really child friendly. It's really kid friendly.
[26:24]So I really recommend it. They should put you on like the council of travel, you know, your hospitality. What even is that called? Yeah, like travel bureau.
[26:35]Anyway, all right, Lauren, thank you. Waiting of the season. Very exciting. Thank you so much. It's so good to see you.
[26:46]You too. Okay. Bye, sweetie.
[26:49]Thanks for listening to this episode of Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books.
[26:53]Don't forget to follow me on Instagram at zebi Owens and at Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books.
[26:58]Also sign up for my newsletter at zebiowens.com and sign up for my virtual book club and meet lots of authors on Zoom every other week.
[27:05]Thanks so much to Steve and Ryan in fact, Texture Sound for the Sound Editing.
[27:09]And thank you to Morning Moon Productions for providing this fantastic intro and outro music.