Hillary Rodham Clinton and Louise Penny, STATE OF TERROR

[2:17]Zibby Owens: Hi. I'm Zippy Owens, and you're listening to moms don't have time to read books. This thirty minute podcast features a new author interviewed by me every single day, three hundred and sixty five days a year for about thirty minutes. I am also the publisher for Zippy Books, which publishes 12 books a year in fiction and memoir. Our books are already out now. You can check it out on zippybooks.com. And we have a magazine called Zippy Mag where we have lots of wonderful essays and lifestyle features. That's at zippymag.com. We have classes at zippyclasses.com. And I recently opened a bookstore in LA called Zippy's Bookshop at 1113 Montana Avenue at 11th Street in Santa Monica. I hope that you are able to enjoy some of our other offerings, but this here podcast is the basis of all of it and started in 2018. And no matter what I do, this is basically my favorite thing. Enjoy. This weekend I am re releasing an episode which is one of my favorites with Hillary Clinton and Louise Penny. I originally did this as part of an event for the Temple Emanuel Stryker Center, and I was particularly nervous and it ended up being one of my favorites. We were laughing and it was awesome. And I really still can't even believe I did this interview. I hope you enjoy it. I am so excited to be releasing this episode based on my conversation with the Temple Emanuel Stryker Center live with Hillary Rodham Clinton and Louise Penny about their novel State of Terror, which had just hit the New York Times bestseller list about an hour before we started this event together. So thank you to the Stryker Center. Thank you to Hillary Rodham Clinton and Louise Penny's publicist for asking me to moderate this event, which was perhaps my favorite that I've ever done on this podcast. So exciting. I was a little nervous, but it ended up being fantastic. And I hope you enjoy it. It was great. Okay. So in case you don't know, Hillary Rodham Clinton became the first woman in US history to become the presidential nominee of a major political party in 2016. She served as the sixty seventh secretary of state from 01/21/2009 until 02/01/2013 after nearly four decades in public service, advocating on behalf of children and families as an attorney, first lady, and senator. She is a wife, mother, and grandmother. Louise Penny is the number one New York Times and Globe and Mail bestsell author of the chief inspector Armand Garmash novels. She has won numerous awards, including a CWA dagger and the Agatha Award five times and was a finalist for the Edgar Award for best novel. She lives in a small village south of Montreal. I really hope you all enjoy this episode. It was such a thrill to do it. It's nice to meet you, ladies. Thank you. I'm Hi. Thanks to Gaudi and the Stryker Center for all this. I am so excited to discuss your book. It was so good. It destroyed three days of my life where that was all I could do. I'm sorry. That's all right. No. You're not sorry at all. She is not sorry at all. I feel like I hadn't felt that way since I binged on Homeland and I couldn't get off the couch. Was riveted. It had that same level of intrigue and made me obsess with it. So anyway, thank you. And I also wanted to say there were so many references to the ladies in this book having some chardonnay together. So I brought a little bottle so we can pretend that we are enjoying this. Zippy, that's not a little bottle. That is not. I'm just going to have it after, you know, settled this week. Of course. Yeah. If I had a pair of Spanx, I would put them on here as well. But that was part of what made this book so amazing is that the two of you together made Ellen Adams seem like the most relatable and yet amazing woman ever. So she's doing the things that every other woman who's probably on this Zoom or in the world has to do every day and yet so much more. So she becomes such a multidimensional, amazing character. Tell me a little bit about how the two of you collaborated. I know it says a lot in your amazing acknowledgments, which are award worthy in their own right, but how you collaborated to craft this character. Well, I'll start, Zivia, and then Louise can continue on because it's a wonderful story that brought us together to become friends and then led us to collaborate.

[6:43]Hillary Rodham Clinton: It really started back during my presidential campaign. Gotti mentioned my coming to the Stryker Center to talk about that. And during that campaign in 2016, one of my closest friends, my best friend from literally sixth grade, a woman named Betsy Johnson Ebeling, was interviewed about me, which, you know, is what happens to your friends when you run for office. They get asked all kinds of questions. And so she was being asked by a reporter, well, what do you and Hillary like to do together? And, you Betsy named some things, but she said, we have always loved to read the same books and then we talk about them and we trade ideas about books. And literally we used to go to the library as little girls. And so the reporter then said so what are you reading now? And none of this would be happening. We would not be sitting here with you Cibby if Betsy had not told the truth which is that we were reading the latest Louise Penny Gamache books in her wonderful series. So fast forward, the article was read by Louise's publisher and take it from there, Louise. Yes and

[7:54]Louise Penny: Sarah Melnick who read it said, got in touch with me and said, Did you know Hillary Clinton reads your books? And when I regained consciousness, I said, I don't think I knew that. She said, Her best friend Betsy would like to meet you when you're in Chicago where I was launching the next book. And I said, yeah, would love to. So Betsy and I met and you when you reach a certain age and you sort of think your dance card is full, it's not, but that was the assumption I had. I've met all the profound, I have made all the profound friendships I'm going to make. And that could not have been more wrong because that was the moment that my life changed. And Betsy and I immediately had a bond and she became the taproot for so much that has happened in my life and that ended up, you know, in this marvelous moment right now. We bonded, we kept in touch. Two weeks after my tour ended, my husband, Michael, who had dementia passed away. And I was, it was just, it was shattering. It was a terrible, terrible I thought that I might die, but I clearly didn't. And I was reading, and it was very comforting to read the letters of condolence, many of which were from people who were friends and we knew, and I'd sort of expected them and there they were, and it was very nice, but one I didn't expect, and it was from Secretary Clinton. Couldn't believe it. She wrote, she took time from the most brutal political campaign to write a letter of condolence. And it wasn't just dear occupant, sorry for your loss. This really talked about Michael and his contributions to medicine and about loss and grief, something that she knew a lot about and knows even more about now. It was such a kindness to write to a woman she'd never met, about a man she'd never met, and a woman I couldn't even vote in the election. This was an act of pure kindness. And from that moment on, I mean, Michael adored Hillary. I always had such respect for her, but it went to a whole other level, as you can imagine. But after the election in February, Betsy got in touch and said, Hillary's invited us to her home in Chappaqua for a weekend. And I thought, of course, I would love to come. But frankly, Zippy, going through my mind was like, a weekend. Like initially it was going to be one night. I don't know if you remember this, Hillary. And then you made it two nights and I'm thinking, I can probably not say something really stupid for one night, but what are the chances? Like, how long can I smile and nod? But you and I, I just have one more little, like the moment we actually met, we were at dinner at a restaurant, Bill was obviously with us and a couple of other people. And Hillary, you were giving a talk in Boston and you flew back and you were a few minutes late for the dinner. So we were already seated. The restaurant was full, it was throbbing. Hillary shows up at the door and the place goes silent. And then as one, they rose and the cheers and the clapping, I'll never forget it, I've never seen anything like it. And then as the coda to that, throughout the dinner, as Hillary is trying to eat, these young women came over and thanked her. They didn't want someone to photograph, but for the most part, they just wanted to thank her. And many were in tears. And Hillary, you were so gracious with them. It was obviously a moment I'll never forget. It was beautiful. Well that was the beginning Zippy of our

[11:21]Hillary Rodham Clinton: wonderful friendship. And we got to spend time together. We spent it with my family, with Betsy and her husband. Obviously Louise was a gracious host. We actually went to Canada. I came to your place for Thanksgiving. Did. Came for Thanksgiving. We went to Canada to see you, to see some of the places that are scenes in your books. And then we lost Betsy. Betsy passed away in July 2019 from breast cancer which she'd been fighting for ten years. And both Louise and I were honored to speak at her memorial service. It was, you know, just an incredible shared grief losing our friend. But it also further expanded the circle of friends that welcomed Louise. So all these friends of mine literally from high school who we'd stayed in touch with and Betsy was kind of the pivot around which we all rotated because she was the one who'd keep us informed about somebody's family or if an illness struck anything that was important. And we've continued to be great friends. And then, you know, toward the end of twenty nineteen, we were both called by our agents asking if we'd consider, you know, writing a political thriller. I have to confess, I was very apprehensive. I said, look, you know, I love Louise as a friend. Obviously I admire her greatly as a writer. I have never written fiction. I don't know whether this could work. I'm really cautious and not particularly convinced. I think Louise had a similar reaction and our agents encouraged us at least to talk and

[13:02]Louise Penny: we started. And we did, and we did. We sort of felt there's nothing to be lost to just chat. Let's see how far we can take it. But you're absolutely right. I'd never collaborated with anyone. I had no idea how it's done. Then I read a couple of books where people had collaborated and tried to get a sense of how it's done. So that was my fear really, was as you described, losing the friendship. I was just afraid that, it's like going from playing singles tennis to playing doubles. And I was just really afraid I'd keep hitting her on the back of the head with a tennis ball. Or worse would be you hitting me, or it would be mutual. But yes, what they did was the publishers who had no faith at all, by the way, that we could do this, so they refused to sign a contract with us very, very wisely before we proved we had an idea. So we sat down, we were in quarantine by then, or not quarantine, we in lockdown. You were in Chappaqua, I was in Quebec, and we hammered out a 19 page outline. It was quite something that I'll always remember when we were tossing around, what about this? We knew obviously some of the broad strokes was clear. It would be a woman secretary of state, obviously, it would feature strong women characters. That is not exactly a plot line. So we were tossing ideas, but what about this? And I suppose that happens. You remember when Hillary would say something, I'd say, yeah, but what about this? And then she'd say, no, I don't think that works. And what about that? At one stage, Zibby, do you remember this, Hilary? We got so confused that we actually just stopped talking and stared at each other.

[14:50]Hillary Rodham Clinton: then I have to give Louise all the credit. She then asked the question that unlocked the plot. She asked me, well, what were my nightmares as secretary of state? And I had quite a few to be honest, but I ran through some of them with her. They're still my nightmares, but one of them which I worried about when I was a senator from New York, especially after 09/11, obviously I worried about it all four years in the State Department, was the possibility that terrorists could get ahold of nuclear weapons. Whether it was a dirty bomb or something more sophisticated because I knew and this is in, the public record, I'm not spilling any classified secrets that that had been a constant theme. The terrorists seeking out on the dark web or through criminal gangs or the Russian mob, whoever they could possibly connect with, the idea that they wanted to possess a nuclear weapon. And when I told Louise that, I mean, she was as terrified as I was. I don't think she slept very well the next Thanks a lot. Yeah, that's great.

[15:53]Zibby Owens: I don't think I've slept since I finished this book. I mean, if you do, don't say that. I hope you do. You

[15:59]Hillary Rodham Clinton: have a bunch of little children, so yeah.

[16:01]Louise Penny: I mean, that's part of why. Yes, okay, fine. But this did not help. Let me just say But you know, the other thing that Hillary, of course, is just a genius on so many levels, not only creatively, but obviously what you bring Hillary geopolitically. Because again, we could have the, yeah, a dirty bomb, okay, but it's still not a plot. And Hillary provided the plot. The plot is Afghanistan. Afghanistan, all the morass that is that region of the world and the chaos, and then added to with the American withdrawal and the Taliban coming in, Hillary foresaw this, this was prescient. The Taliban will come in with the Taliban will come Al Qaeda, a lot of the, obviously the gains that had been hard fought for twenty years would be lost and the terrorists would again have a foothold and a launching pad again. And so she walked me through this, and it really was. And then we had, sadly, we had the plot.

[17:03]Zibby Owens: I couldn't believe that passage was in there about what could happen with Afghanistan. I was flipping back. I was like, Wait a minute. When did they write this? Like, they couldn't have just written this. So, you know, it's amazing and terrifying. We

[17:16]Hillary Rodham Clinton: obviously did the outline and wrote most of it before the election in November, certainly, you know, before the attack on our capital, before the withdrawal from Afghanistan. But I did have one very important piece of information and that was the agreement that the Trump administration signed with the Taliban, which happened before the election. And basically as one of Trump's former national security advisors called it, it was a surrender agreement. We got nothing. We got no commitment to keep Al Qaeda out. We got no commitment to follow the laws that had been adopted or their constitution. We got nothing. Nobody got anything. And it was just as they said, a surrender document. So I knew that we were on a path to getting out, that it would be very hard even if you wanted to, which, you know, I think most people wanted to end that war and get our troops and everybody home. But even if you wanted to do otherwise, you wouldn't be able to because the momentum was on the side of the Taliban. And that was, as I said before the election and certainly before the deadline to withdraw. So as we were talking about this, you know, the ramifications because I very much agreed with what Secretary of State Blinken said a few weeks ago. He said, you know, the Trump administration did not leave us a plan. They left us a deadline. And so in our plot, we have a former president who leaves Afghanistan and then the incoming president inherits that situation with, you know, all of the, you know, potential threats and dangers that it sadly conveys. So yeah, I did think a lot about it and obviously Louise and I kicked back and forth all sorts of ideas. But we really wanted this not only to be a fast paced thriller and we're obviously thrilled people are liking it and reading it. But we really wanted it to be a cautionary tale about both enemies abroad, enemies within and the kind of you know threats that we have to be ready to address. And one that because it's fiction, and you've talked about this, rather than non fiction, were in the position of making it more palatable for people to be able to take it on board

[19:41]Louise Penny: in a way that was entertaining, at times playful, but also, as Hilary said, as a cautionary tale. But we also wanted it obviously to be more than just that plot driven. We wanted the characters to come alive because really what we want the people at the end of it to remember is the threat and the importance that we all stand up and be vigilant. But we also want, I think people are most likely to also remember the characters, to bond with the characters. As you were saying, you know, the Secretary of State, so identifiable. She's not a superwoman. She is an intelligent, thoughtful, smart, motivated person who has found herself in this position where she can give back, and she does.

[20:28]Zibby Owens: There's no better way to transmit information than through storytelling. So I feel like that's what you've done, right? You'll remember that. You'll remember the moments and the scenes in your head more than you will, you know, paper on documents or agreements. So it's the most illustrative way, I think, to to tell a story that's memorable. And I saw in the notes that you said, and I wanted to ask how president Clinton is and how that whole thing I was like, sure, this was going to be canceled like everything else in life in the last two years. But how is he doing? And then I saw that he had been your sort of fact checker, which is quite the job, you know? Oh, well, thank you for asking, Zibby. You know, he's getting better. I have to say it was a very serious

[21:07]Hillary Rodham Clinton: infection. And he thankfully, he was in California for events around the Clinton Foundation and he hadn't been feeling great, but he felt good enough to go. And then that evening he got high fevers and shaking and his staff took him to the UC Irvine Medical Center which was absolutely an excellent place for him to be because they had to search to find the source of the infection and what the infection was. And it had gotten into his bloodstream and so he had developed sepsis which is very scary as I'm sure most of the viewers know. And they had to work with the antibiotics because oral antibiotics were not going to work. We are now in the world of multi drug resistant bacteria and so they had to get the right combination and start them very quickly on IV antibiotics. But by Sunday he was well enough to come home. We flew home. But he's going to have to take intravenous antibiotics every day for four weeks in order to try to knock out the infection. So you know, I am you know just so grateful that he had such excellent care, that he is you know recovering, he is getting better. But I hope all of our viewers you know really take seriously any kind of fever, any kind, you know, it was non COVID, thank goodness. But still, we're in a world now where we're in a race to try to get, you know, better treatments for bacteria like what he was infected by. And that's a pretty important challenge too.

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[25:42]Zibby Owens: Well, I'm so sorry. I was thinking as I read the book and your acknowledgments at the end about all of the loss that you have had. And Louise, you too, with your husband. I mean, that is so crushing. And your brother, Secretary Clinton, and your other friend. And like, there's just so much. I know a lot of people obviously in the world have had a lot of loss, particularly lately. But sometimes just even the sight of a hospital room can bring all of it back, the smell, something like that. So anyway, my heart was kind of going out to you and just wondering if this was all you know, if it was even more than the fear of losing someone you've been with forever

[26:18]Hillary Rodham Clinton: coming right back. I mean, Debbie, that's really both very thoughtful and astute of you because Louise and I have really reflected about how a lot of the, motivation behind this book frankly was fueled by loss. As you point out, the person I thought of as we were developing the character of the Secretary of State Ellen Adams was a dear friend of mine, Ellen Tauscher, had been a member of Congress from California who I had asked to leave Congress to come to the State Department with me to run the program on arms control. She became the Undersecretary for Arms Control and she understood the threat of nuclear weapons. She was really one of the experts and she passed away prematurely in May 2019. I did lose one of my two brothers in June 2019 which was just such a heartbreaking tragedy. And then we lost Betsy. So as we began talking about this book and we talked about the characters, I shared with Louise who had never gotten to meet Ellen Tauscher you know what kind of person she was and how when I thought about a Secretary of State going toe to toe with adversaries around the world trying to stop a nuclear catastrophe, I would have sent Ellen anywhere anytime to do that high stakes diplomacy. And it was so I don't know how to tell you it was liberating for me as well as exhilarating because I've only written fiction and I'm kind of trapped by you know making sure everything is factually correct which I believe in. I live in the fact based world. But this gave us a chance to tell a story rooted in reality but with just enough elbow room and license that maybe readers could actually absorb it better than, you know, some, you know, 500 page treaties about the danger of nuclear weapons falling in the hands of terrorists.

[28:12]Louise Penny: We would show not tell, I guess I would say. You've described it as not having to force feed people spinach. Yeah, right, right, exactly. But I think, know, exactly what you're saying that the, I think that's one of the reasons the characters resonate with people is that, you know, that they are founded in people that we loved and cared about. And so that there is a responsibility we felt to Betsy and to Ellen and to others that they be people in full, not just cardboard there to fuel along the plot, that there be a depth to them. And it was a joy to write them as well, wasn't it? To bring them alive again and make them immortal and introduce them to hundreds of thousands, millions of people who would never get a chance to meet them.

[29:03]Zibby Owens: That is what's so nice about writing about those of the people that we've loved so much who we've lost. And I've lost a number of people too, actually, on nine eleven. And, you know, it just it's so heartwarming when you can introduce them to people through words. And it's like you've done some sort of a mitzvah because you kept their memory alive. So you could sense that in this book because so much of this book was about friendship. I mean, even just the the kind words exchanged between Betsy and Ellen. And there was one scene where they were on the phone just thinking and Betsy said, you know, be careful, Ellen Sue Adams, after this long pause. And it was just this lovely moment where they're working together, but there's so much love there too. So I don't know. I felt like, yes, of course, it's this nail biting thriller with like more travel than I don't even know how many miles Ellen Adams has put on at this point. I'm like, is it even physically possible for them to have gone to this many places in this amount of time? I don't know, I'm sure you checked.

[30:02]Louise Penny: We did, actually, that's one of the things our editor did, because I think, Hilary, you and I, we had Ellen flying all over the place because she had to, and others were flying all over the place. Our wonderful editor, Jen Enderlin, was the one who sort of said, how can it be 03:00 here, but 09:00 there and 7PM there? And maybe you wanna sort of work that out a little bit. Yeah,

[30:27]Hillary Rodham Clinton: know, Zibby I love the idea that it's a mitzvah keeping the memory of people that we loved alive. And you know, when I think about this book, I think about how in the acknowledgements Louise really summed up the feelings we had about it which is that yes, it's a book about terror. It is a page turner. It is ripped from the headlines, all the things that I think are fair to say about it. But it's also at its heart a book about love and courage. And you know we are living in a time that demands a lot of courage from a lot of people and some you know are able to step up and others you know are reluctant to do so. When we came up with a plot that included domestic terrorists, as I said it was before you know January 6, but I was really concerned and shared my concerns with Louise who of course was watching with great interest from the other side of the border about what was happening in America that you know we are really not only divided, everybody knows that, but there are truly people who think attacking our capital, undermining our democracy, trying to stop an election, pumping big lies into social media and beyond that they are the patriots. And we wanted to really kind of help the reader think that through. And you know we don't yet have much detail on who's reading it. We're thrilled to be number one on the New York Times bestseller. It's on everyone. We are thrilled. But we also are interested in who's reading it. You know one of the things that one of our editors said is you know women writing a political thriller about women of a certain age is pretty unique. Know most political thrillers are written understandably by men. They star men as the protagonists. They have a lot of action. We do too. We have things blowing up and all sorts of stuff. So this is gonna be interesting to see whether you can develop characters the way that Louise brilliantly does in the Gamache series. Characters that you just take into your heart. You wanna know what's gonna happen to them. You can't wait for the next book to come out because that's gonna give you more insight into them. Those are the kind of characters we wanted to put in the middle of a incredibly intense political thriller. And because those are the kind of characters we want not only to spend time with by reading, but we want reflected in, you know, popular fiction. Right. We

[33:06]Louise Penny: set out among many things to also write a book we would read. Yes, that's true. And that's, you know, and at the center of it, strong women who aren't perfect. These aren't super women as we've all said. These are women who have doubts, who have insecurities, who wonder if they've done the right thing, who come out of a meeting and lean against a door and pray to God they haven't just made a terrible mistake. Things we've all done, we've all done. The difference in this case is that the stakes are so high. And that's one of the great joys and insights of working of course with Hillary is getting inside the room, getting to see what it's like when there is a global catastrophe underway. And information has come, people have been, foreign ministers and prime ministers woken up in the middle of the night, information is coming in and it's half baked and who knows what's true and who knows who to believe. Trust is a major issue that runs through this whole story. Who do you trust politically? Who do you trust personally? Do you trust yourself?

[34:14]Zibby Owens: And even layering on mothering of adult children and what you do when their paths kind of aren't maybe Well, anyway, when the paths diverge in the woods and you see what your kids end up wanting to do, whether or not that's what you had in mind or not and how you keep all those conflicts together while you're busy, like, you know, running the country and everything else. That's

[34:37]Hillary Rodham Clinton: such a great insight, Zibby. You know, obviously the plot has many twists and turns and some of them have to do with adult children as you just rightly point out. And you know that's what I think we mean when Louise is saying, you know these women are not perfect. You know and in most political thrillers, the women who are there, you know, they're they're assassins or or they're love interests or, you know, they're the stern, you know, intelligence director who gives the guys in the field their orders. And and you don't really get to see much about their life. And yes, this may be the only book you'll ever read, Zibby, that has both Spanx and flannel moose pajamas in it.

[35:21]Zibby Owens: Oh, I hope not. I hope not.

[35:24]Louise Penny: They may make another reappearance.

[35:26]Hillary Rodham Clinton: Yes. And wear wear the We'll tell you we'll tell you the story behind the moose pajamas. Can you do that, Louise? What do you say? I know. We will.

[35:35]Louise Penny: This never end? Alright. So here's the story. So we're in the middle of the pandemic, of course. We have had ideas that we would be able to write this in a spa somewhere, right? That was our hope. Yeah, that was the hope. We'd spa in the morning. Hillary has actually made spa a verb. We would go spawing in the morning and then, I don't know, have lettuce or something for lunch, and then, didn't happen. So she's in Chappaqua, I'm just North of Montreal at Lake House, and we're FaceTiming and we're trying to figure things out and sending notes back and forth. And we say, you know what, let's FaceTime when the day settles down, 07:00. So we get on FaceTime. Isn't Hillary in bed? 7PM.

[36:29]Hillary Rodham Clinton: I do not know where the days went during the pandemic, but I would be ready for bed at 7PM. Wanted it, you know, to be on the downward slide. And Louise, of course, being the good Canadian that she is, she has the order of Canada. I mean, it's very distinguished. She's in her moose pajamas.

[36:46]Louise Penny: Well, comes with the order of Canada, actually. The order of Canada, not the order of moose. No. So then Hillary, of course, being the silly woman she can sometimes be, mocks me for like eight months. And it actually, as the readers know, it ends up in the book where a Canadian character is wearing moose pajamas. But I got, I did get my, slightly my own back. You came over for lunch the other day and I gave Hillary a pair of her own flannel moose pajamas.

[37:16]Hillary Rodham Clinton: Exactly, exactly. As soon as the weather gets cold enough to wear, I intend to wear them, yes. Yeah, wanna see that. I'll send you a picture, honestly.

[37:26]Zibby Owens: It could be a good holiday giveaway. You could start selling the pajamas with a book and tying it with a red ribbon and like, you know, it could Oh, Zibby, good idea. Great idea. It's a great idea. I think a percentage needs to go to the Stryker Center, but you know, that's a fabulous idea. There you go. So are these characters going to live on?

[37:47]Louise Penny: Well, I think we're, you know, we are just having so much fun right now. Just, you know, to hear that we were just hit number one in North America, just, you know, it's, I think we just want to breathe it in, relax. I think sometimes, I mean, as we all know, life can just pick us up and we can, it's been like in a wave and we forget to just relax and take a breath and enjoy it and count our blessings. So I think we're doing that right now. And then we'll blow up some more stuff,

[38:20]Zibby Owens: you know. I find it hard to believe that either of the two of you are really just like relaxing and kicking back. I'm sure you have 8,000,000 other ideas brewing for what's to come.

[38:31]Hillary Rodham Clinton: Do have a lot of things going on. You know, Louise has so much happening with, you know, anybody who produces a book every year for how many years? Seventeen, eighteen years? Three hundred, three forty something. I don't know. Goes back to at least the revolutionary war. No, it's just so remarkable to watch her in action. And yet at the same time, we really do want to enjoy this. We're having a great time promoting the book, talking to people like yourself.

[39:06]Louise Penny: So we don't wanna get ahead of ourselves. We wanna just absolutely relish this. Don't you remember Hillary, when we first were, this was proposed and we had one of our first FaceTime calls and I think we both made it clear that we're not gonna do this unless we're going to enjoy it. Absolutely. We didn't need to do it. This was not something that either of us, you know, needed to do. We just did it because we thought in the end it would be a great experience working together. And it was, and we're still friends, probably even better friends because we've kind of been through, you know, the wars together, the literary wars, but also that's the other thing we wanted to inject in this. And I'm not sure how many political thrillers have a sense of playfulness as well and humor that there are these Easter eggs that we've put in for people to discover. The two, the women, actually they all, there are moments where all of them have fun. One of the things, Hilary, that we both loved is the relationship between the current president and the secretary of state that is, you know, it's antagonistic to say the least. And some of them get in, both of them get in some good shots every now and then.

[40:15]Hillary Rodham Clinton: But we do have the relationship evolve, was really to us because they start out, I mean, you know, this president who in her prior life as the head of a big media empire, Ellen had opposed. I mean, she did not want her to be elected. And then much to her amazement, he asked her to be secretary of state. And you know, ostensible reason was she ran this media empire, she had contacts around the world, but she had no political experience, no government experience. And he really wanted her to fail almost as payback for her opposing him. She took the job because you know, she is a woman of a certain age. It was an amazing opportunity and challenge, but she doesn't trust him at all. And so the two of them have a lot of testy interactions. And then as this crisis develops, they realize they have to trust each other. They have to listen to each other. They have to respect each other's gut and what is happening. And I loved that. I loved the trajectory of that. And so there's a lot in here that is not necessarily the headlines but they're kind of trend lines. They're what happens when people find themselves in difficult situations and they have to rely on each other. What happens when you don't know who the enemy is or maybe you think you do and then you get new information and that changes what you think. I mean, this is what happens in diplomacy. It happens in business. It happens, you know, in every walk of life, but the stakes could not be higher than they are in this particular plot. And that's sort of what you're describing so well, Hilary, is what

[41:55]Louise Penny: gives flesh to the bones. And that's really the heart and the soul of these stories, are the characters, is the richness of the characters, their relationships, their doubts, and the fact that all of them evolve. And the other thing I really like about the president and the secretary's relationship is we know early on why he appointed and why he hates her because of this media empire and her campaign against him. We don't find out till much later on, and I'm not gonna tell you, why she hates him so much. Right, right, right, exactly.

[42:31]Zibby Owens: Yeah. By the end of it, I was like, I don't know what's gonna happen with these two.

[42:38]Hillary Rodham Clinton: Exactly.

[42:39]Zibby Owens: Yeah. So anyway, my last question for the two of you is, what advice would you give to aspiring authors? Wow.

[42:47]Hillary Rodham Clinton: Well, first you have to decide if you want to write fiction or non fiction because, you know, my prior experience was all non fiction. You have to know what you want to say. You have to organize your thoughts the best you can. I actually was very used to writing an outline. Louise had not. So when our publisher said, write an outline, that was very familiar territory for me even though I had no idea for a novel what it would look like. But now that I've had this incredible experience with Louise learning from her, watching her, collaborating with her, fiction is so exciting and so full of possibilities that I am, you know, really just incredibly grateful that I had a chance to, you know, try my hand at it. Well, and I'm incredibly grateful that you have more nightmares.

[43:37]Louise Penny: Thank God. You know, my advice when aspiring writers ask is, I suffered writer's block for five years. And that was pure fear, fear of rejection, fear of failure, fear of the judgment of others. And finally, it came to me what I needed to write. And I couldn't worry about others. I couldn't worry about whether it'd even be written, couldn't worry about whether it'd end up on the bestsellers list, couldn't even worry about whether it'd be any good. All I could think about was just write a book, as we said earlier, that I would read. That's it. And if chances are, if I will read it, other people probably will too. So just keep it simple. Don't worry about what anyone else thinks and be very careful about who you show it to. Like, especially the former president of The United States.

[44:34]Zibby Owens: Well, did wait until

[44:36]Hillary Rodham Clinton: the whole manuscript was finished. True, true. Yes, and then I said- Did you have to hide it from him? Did you have to like walk him in his drawer? He had to cover it up whenever he would come into my office to see what I was doing. And then I finally said, would you read this? Tell us what you think. And thankfully he liked it. And he did have a few editorial comments. He did say at one point, you know, I'm not sure any president would say that. And, you know, Louise thought about it said, well, yeah, he was a president. Maybe we'll we'll kinda edit that. Yeah. I was that was I was on the verge of arguing with the man. But overall, I mean, because he was so enthusiastic and has, you know, not only written two very successful thrillers, but read, you know, a million of them, that made me feel like we were on the right path. He was very generous. I have to say he was very generous, Yeah. My mother is very happy that you had books coming out at the same time. Know? Great. Yes,

[45:30]Zibby Owens: yes. How nice that Thank you. I will. I will. Well, Louise, I think it's so nice that you took all of that fear and ended up writing a novel about courage. It's like a nice way that you flipped it. I have, in front of me as I write, I have the last words of the poet Seamus Heaney, who said on his deathbed, he said, Noli to Mary, and that means be not afraid. Because it's scary writing fiction. It's scary writing anything, isn't it? I mean, it's scary doing anything, you know? Just have to like just get over it and No, just going out the front door sometimes is scary. Well, I didn't mean to leave on that negative note there, but anyway, well, I know Gotti wants to hop back on to say goodbye, but thank you for me too. This was so fun. Thank you. Can we also say too, this is the last event in our virtual tour and I

[46:15]Louise Penny: can't imagine anything more special. Zibby, you've just been fantastic

[46:20]Hillary Rodham Clinton: and has the Stryker Center. Just thrilled. Thank you everybody at Stryker and Temple Emmanuel.

[46:27]Louise Penny: Thank you.

[46:29]Zibby Owens: Thanks for listening to this episode of Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books. Don't forget to follow me on Instagram at Zibby Owens and at moms don't have time to read books. Also, sign up for my newsletter at zibbyowens.com and sign up for my virtual book club and meet lots of authors on Zoom every other week. Thanks so much to Steve and Ryan at Texture Sound for the sound editing, and thank you to Morning Moon Productions for providing this fantastic intro and outro music.