Jane Delury, HEDGE: A Novel
[0:02]Hi, I'm Zippy Owens, and you're listening to moms don't have time to read books.
[0:06]This 30 minute podcast features a new author interviewed by me every single day, 365 days
[0:12]a year for about 30 minutes.
[0:15]I am also the publisher for Zippy Books, which publishes 12 books a year, and fiction
[0:20]and memoir.
[0:21]Our books are already out now.
[0:23]You can check it out on zippybooks.com.
[0:26]And we have a magazine called Zippy Mag where we have lots of wonderful essays and lifestyle
[0:31]features.
[0:32]That's at zippymag.com.
[0:33]We have classes.
[0:34]It's a B-Classist.com.
[0:36]And I recently opened a book store in LA called Zippy's Bookshop at 1113 Montana Avenue
[0:43]at 11th Street in San Monica.
[0:45]I hope that you are able to enjoy some of our other offerings.
[0:49]But this here podcast is the basis of all of it and started in 2018.
[0:54]And no matter what I do, this is basically my favorite thing.
[0:57]Enjoy.
[1:03]Jane DeLaurie is the author of Head and Novel.
[1:06]I'm saying it in a cookie way like that because this is one of the books that we are publishing
[1:11]from Zippy Books.
[1:12]And I am so proud that I have my name attached to this book in any way, shape or form,
[1:17]because it is so good.
[1:19]It's getting so much press.
[1:21]It has just a really amazing life trajectory ahead of it.
[1:25]And I am obsessed with the cover.
[1:28]And I'm just excited in general.
[1:30]So anyway, here is Jane's bio.
[1:32]I hope you love the book and come to Zippy's virtual book club or any of the Zippy's
[1:37]book club chapters so you can talk about it since it's one of the book club picks.
[1:41]Jane DeLaurie is the author of the balcony, which won the Sioux Kauffman Prize for First
[1:44]Fiction from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
[1:47]Her short stories have appeared in Grandma, the Samani Review, the Southern Review, the
[1:51]Yale Review, Narrative, and other publications.
[1:54]Her awards include a pen slash O'Henry Prize, a push cart special mention, and grants from
[1:59]the Maryland State Arts Council.
[2:01]For essays have appeared in real simple, Oprah.com, lit hub, and poets and writers.
[2:06]A professor at the University of Baltimore, she teaches an MFA in creative writing and publishing
[2:10]arts, and directs the BA in English, originally from Sacramento, California.
[2:15]She now lives in Baltimore with her family.
[2:17]Welcome, Jane.
[2:18]Thanks so much for coming.
[2:19]On moms, don't have time to read books.
[2:20]I am so happy to be here.
[2:22]I have nine mapping copy over here.
[2:25]I mean, I'm so obsessed with how this hardcover turned out.
[2:28]I was like, oh my gosh, I was just like stroking.
[2:31]So I know I said this in the bio that was pre-recorded, but this is one of the Zibi books
[2:36]titles.
[2:37]And we got to see this from the first version of the manuscript all the way to completion.
[2:42]And in this downcover, it is so cool to watch a book go through this whole process.
[2:46]It's just, it does not get old.
[2:48]Yeah.
[2:49]In North for me, it was just so, it's just amazing.
[2:54]It's amazing.
[2:55]It uses so much work.
[2:56]You know, so many years of work and thought.
[2:58]And here it is.
[2:59]Here it is.
[3:00]Oh my gosh.
[3:01]Okay.
[3:02]Jane, can you please tell listeners what your book is about?
[3:05]Sure.
[3:06]Edge is about a struggle, I think many of us have, between pursuing our individual passions
[3:12]and taking care of the people we love.
[3:14]It's about a garden historian who restores ancient gardens back to life.
[3:20]And when the book opens, she's in a really unhappy marriage and she and her husband
[3:24]separated and she has moved from the Bay Area to the Hudson Valley for the summer
[3:29]to restore a garden at Montgomery Place, a 19th century state.
[3:34]And she's just, she's so happy.
[3:36]She's finding her work again.
[3:38]She's finding freedom again.
[3:40]And she is developing a deep friendship that starts to turn romantic with an archaeologist
[3:45]who is also working at the site.
[3:48]But her daughter, her 13 year old daughter is struggling.
[3:53]Mod realizes this, but she has some deeper issues and secrets of her own that start to
[4:00]emerge over the course of that summer and eventually really blow up.
[4:03]And two years later, Mod is back in the Bay Area trying to reconcile what happened over
[4:09]the course of that summer, back in her marriage, trying to make things work for her daughter.
[4:12]But some things don't go away and they don't promote.
[4:15]And so she ultimately has to figure it all out all over again back home.
[4:21]Wow.
[4:22]So this has gone through lots of changes over time.
[4:25]Yes.
[4:26]Tell me how this whole project started, like we're actually maybe back up and explain how
[4:31]you got into writing the balcony, like let's go back a bit and how did you start being
[4:37]a writer, all of it, let's do the archaeology.
[4:41]Let's do the archaeology.
[4:42]Yes.
[4:43]Let's do it.
[4:44]So I majored in literature in college at UC Santa Cruz.
[4:47]I'm originally from California, that's the whole Bay Area, the love of the Bay Area.
[4:51]I was born in San Francisco.
[4:52]I left for France for my year abroad, where I fell in love with the man who ended up
[4:59]becoming my husband and the father of my first two kids.
[5:03]So I moved back to France and did a graduate degree in literature as well.
[5:07]And while I was there, I really missed, I missed the English language, I was speaking
[5:13]French all the time.
[5:14]And I think that's what got me to write my first short story was I felt this strange
[5:20]distance and almost alienation when I went back to California.
[5:23]I was sort of kind of becoming French, but of course I wasn't French.
[5:27]And so I think those first stories were about reconnecting to the language on my culture
[5:32]and figuring out who I was in this new place, vis-a-vis, who I had been for the first 23,
[5:37]four years of my life.
[5:40]And so I started writing these stories, I joined a writers group, I sent them to the
[5:43]US, this was back in the olden days, when you mailed everything, I used to joke in my writing
[5:48]group that we had an edge because we had these beautiful French stamps on our envelopes
[5:52]and maybe editors would give us extra attention.
[5:54]I don't think that actually went.
[5:56]And so from France, I lived there for almost five years and then I applied to graduate
[6:00]school in Baltimore at the writing seminars at Johns Hopkins.
[6:03]And so that brought me to Baltimore, where I have been writing and teaching ever since
[6:08]teaching fiction.
[6:09]And so my first sort of job out of Hopkins was as an adjunct at the public university
[6:15]University of Baltimore.
[6:16]And I've just kind of, I've been there for almost 20 years teaching graduate and undergraduate
[6:20]fiction.
[6:21]So I just, yeah, I just live and breathe fiction all the time.
[6:25]And so those stories that I started writing in France that were about the US, things changed
[6:30]when I moved to the US.
[6:31]I started writing about my life in France and people I had known there, especially my
[6:36]back now, ex-husband's family.
[6:39]And so the balcony, which was my first book, was a novel in stories where I took about
[6:44]five or six of the stories that I had been writing.
[6:46]They were based on this area of France that my ex-husband's grandparents lived in.
[6:51]And I created one property with two houses of manor house and a servant's cottage.
[6:57]And I told the story of the people who lived in those two houses over the course of the
[7:00]20th century.
[7:02]So each chapter is a standalone story, but taken together, they tell a bigger story as a
[7:07]novel.
[7:08]So that was my first book.
[7:11]And then I just kept, you know, I was still writing stories, but the hedge kind of erupted.
[7:17]You know, when we look back at our lives, doing the archaeology, we can see faces.
[7:21]I'm sure you relate to this or eras.
[7:24]And so hedge really came out of another era of my life, which was, I got divorced.
[7:29]I had a seven-year-old and a 13-year-old.
[7:31]I, you know, I basically, I wasn't married at 21, but I was in a committed forever relationship
[7:38]at 21.
[7:39]So I was very much new to being on my own and living on my own.
[7:43]And despite a lot of support, you know, from friends and family, I had to buy a house.
[7:50]I had to figure out how to be in my own financially.
[7:53]It was a whole new world that I think I didn't realize how difficult, which sounds a little
[7:58]muddy, looking back, but I thought we were all going to be okay, and I was going to make
[8:03]it okay.
[8:04]And I knew it was my responsibility to make it okay for my girls, but it was hard.
[8:08]And those were hard years of transition.
[8:10]And I wrote the first draft of hedge in my garden the first summer, where I bought this
[8:15]house, which I loved, but I couldn't afford to fix anything.
[8:18]And there were a lot of things that needed fixing, and I wanted it to be beautiful for my
[8:21]girls.
[8:22]And the one thing I could do was I can make the garden beautiful, even though I wasn't
[8:26]a very good gardener.
[8:27]Because plants are actually not as expensive as remodeling a kitchen.
[8:30]I miss the girls a lot when they were with their dad.
[8:35]And I just found this refuge in my garden and in this manuscript of the story of a mother
[8:41]who much like me was facing this conundrum and the struggle of pursuing her own happiness,
[8:49]but not wanting it to be expensive of her children's happiness.
[8:53]And your own life was there a deep friendship that brewed?
[8:56]Well, the deep friendship that brewed actually, is it Trader Joe's right now?
[9:01]I wonder the whole, you know, and I'm really unlucky in having an ex, too, is a great
[9:09]father and was a great co-parent.
[9:11]So everything could have been a million of course, but I sort of declared to a writer
[9:16]friend about two months after I moved out, I am never going to be in a relationship again.
[9:21]Like I saw myself, I was going to be on my own for the rest of my life, I was going
[9:24]to go to my women and friends.
[9:25]We were going to travel together.
[9:26]It was all going to be great.
[9:27]And so, I don't know if I should, oh, what the hell, I'm going to tell you, I said, with
[9:31]Laura Vandenberg, who's a wonderful writer, and I said to her, we were driving down Charles
[9:35]Tree in Baltimore.
[9:36]I said, I would just love to make out with someone on a bench at AWPC adult, which is
[9:41]this writer's conference.
[9:43]And Laura said, I know the perfect person for that.
[9:45]And reader, I married him.
[9:47]So that was my first date.
[9:50]John lived in Philadelphia, where he directed a creative writing program.
[9:54]And he's a writer, and it has six books.
[9:56]And we started this epistolary correspondence.
[10:00]and know what he was getting into.
[10:01]I mean, he's older than I am,
[10:03]and it had never lived with anyone.
[10:05]And here he had this like neophyte
[10:06]who was like, love to email 95 times a day.
[10:09]I'm talking the phone every night.
[10:10]And so anyway, that's a whole other novel.
[10:12]But yes, it all worked out, it all worked out really well.
[10:16]But I realized recently about hedge
[10:19]that that was also a lot of work for all of us,
[10:23]for my daughters, for Don, for me
[10:24]to create this new unit.
[10:27]First, there was creating this unit with my two girls.
[10:29]The three of us.
[10:30]And then eventually, after many years,
[10:33]about five years Don moved in with us.
[10:35]And so that was a whole other kind of reinvention.
[10:38]And so I think that's actually in the book too,
[10:40]those years of making this new, this new family.
[10:44]Wow, that's so funny.
[10:46]My Duke friendship is a Trader Joe,
[10:48]so that's one of my favorite lines from a podcast,
[10:50]I think, amazing.
[10:53]Was it always called hedge?
[10:54]You know, it was called hedge from the beginning.
[10:56]But the original draft of this book,
[11:00]which was very different, took place at Monticello,
[11:02]which is kind of a seat of landscape history
[11:06]and garden restoration in the United States.
[11:08]And there aren't that many of them.
[11:09]Most of this is in England.
[11:11]And Mont actually trains in England
[11:13]and lives in England for years
[11:14]before she moves back to the area.
[11:15]So the original draft was at Monticello.
[11:18]I ended up moving it because Thomas Jefferson
[11:22]cast too long of a shadow.
[11:23]And the original draft of the book
[11:25]was much more about wrestling with these problems
[11:28]in restoring a place like Monticello,
[11:30]where, by the way, Thomas Jefferson, you know,
[11:33]he contributed.
[11:34]But he wasn't out there doing all of the actual work.
[11:36]That was, you know, the enslaved people
[11:38]who lived on the mountain.
[11:40]Anyway, so I spent a lot of time at Monticello
[11:42]learning about, you know, the gardens,
[11:44]the restoration of the gardens,
[11:46]the lives of, you know,
[11:47]the people who lived on the mountain
[11:48]who worked in the garden, the gardeners.
[11:50]But ultimately, the book is a novel
[11:53]with a pretty, I think, dramatic plot
[11:55]about the mother and daughters.
[11:56]It's not about, you know, the history
[11:58]of race in America.
[12:00]And that's not a topic that can be treated lightly.
[12:03]So when I decided that I needed to kind of cut
[12:07]those 95 pages out of the book,
[12:10]I needed a new setting and I brought the hedge with me.
[12:13]So that hedge, it's actually, was it Monticello?
[12:17]But I, when I moved the book
[12:18]to the Hudson Valley into Montgomery place,
[12:21]I actually said to Amy Parela,
[12:22]who is the head of grounds and gardens at Bard
[12:25]and was hugely helpful in this relocation.
[12:28]I said, we walked around the grounds
[12:30]of the estate and I said, okay, I just, I need a hedge.
[12:32]I can't let go of the hedge.
[12:34]It's important to me in some title.
[12:35]And so we walked around.
[12:36]She was like, well, let's see.
[12:38]Where could you have a hedge?
[12:39]You could have one right over there.
[12:40]So we actually found a spot where this hedge could exist,
[12:44]which was just a really fun day with her.
[12:46]Like walking around, I basically just told her the novel.
[12:48]I was like, and then I need a romantic scene,
[12:52]by a body of water and she was like,
[12:54]oh, you know, they'll swimming lake and so on.
[12:56]So it all just translated really well.
[13:00]And yeah, and it always was the title
[13:02]and it was always important that it be,
[13:04]like, you know, sometimes you attach to something
[13:07]in the drafting, everything changed,
[13:09]but the title didn't change.
[13:10]That's so funny.
[13:12]How did you reconcile your teaching brain
[13:16]with your writing output?
[13:18]Like, how did you take your own advice, so to speak?
[13:21]And like, what were you aware of yourself doing
[13:23]that you teach other people or maybe teach people not to do?
[13:27]Well, first of all, I would say almost everything.
[13:29]I mean, in drafting, I feel like, you know,
[13:31]I spent so much time critiquing manual scripts,
[13:34]talking about these issues.
[13:36]But the truth is when you sit down to write,
[13:39]obviously, I get lay live, right?
[13:41]I do get that right now.
[13:44]I'm thinking of what else.
[13:45]I don't start stories with an alarm clock going off
[13:49]unless I'm doing it ironically.
[13:50]Like, there's some things, yes, I have learned not to do.
[13:53]But, you know, it's used to paint wire,
[13:55]we know it's starting chapters within an alarm clock.
[13:57]Oh, I don't know.
[13:58]That's just one of those sort of teaching cliche rules
[14:01]is, you know, everybody wakes up with an alarm clock.
[14:04]So unless, you know, the alarm clock is like, you know,
[14:07]set off by a dinosaur, it's not that interesting
[14:10]to start your story that way.
[14:11]It's just one of those like teaching for shop kind of cliches.
[14:16]But yeah, so all of these deeper issues
[14:19]of how the heck do you do this,
[14:23]all everything I know kind of goes out the window
[14:25]when I sit down and draft in a good way, right?
[14:29]Like, when you're doing that first draft,
[14:31]you're like, there's everything so wonderful.
[14:33]And this is so fabulous escaping to this wonderful world.
[14:35]But then when you actually have the draft
[14:37]and you look at it and you start giving it to people,
[14:39]then you see like all these things that you need to address.
[14:43]So I had, I mean, I,
[14:44]but I'm a really avid supervisor.
[14:47]I'm not afraid of revision.
[14:48]I love revision.
[14:49]I mean, I don't always love it.
[14:50]Sometimes it's painful and terrifying.
[14:51]But, you know, I really went out the book,
[14:54]but I think in terms of like teaching,
[14:57]my teaching brain and my writing brain,
[14:59]I try to set aside the critical brain when I'm drafting,
[15:03]which is a lot easier in the summer.
[15:05]I mean, I will be frank, like working on novels
[15:08]during the school year is hard.
[15:09]I write a lot of stories.
[15:11]But for me, with a novel, you really,
[15:13]I need to just kind of go with it
[15:15]and live in that parallel world.
[15:17]And because in teaching that critical brain,
[15:20]it's so turned on all the time.
[15:21]It's a lot harder to shut it up for my own work.
[15:23]So that's why summers are so important for me
[15:26]for longer projects.
[15:28]Interesting. So what are you going to work on this summer?
[15:31]Well, I started something that I'm not calling a novel
[15:34]that I did start as something
[15:36]because I went to Ireland last summer
[15:37]with my mother and my daughters.
[15:39]And I was very close to my grandmother
[15:41]who was from County Mayo.
[15:42]She was a very important figure in my life.
[15:44]And we went to Dublin.
[15:45]And we did one of those heritage investigation sessions.
[15:50]And all of these documents, the historian
[15:53]put up all these documents that contradicted
[15:55]what we knew of my grandmother's childhood
[15:59]growing up at the turn of the century in Mayo.
[16:01]It was just like things were off and wrong.
[16:04]And it was just a very interesting moment, you know,
[16:07]again, I'm so interested in the stories.
[16:09]People believe about themselves
[16:11]and believe about the other people they love.
[16:12]And this was an example of that, you know,
[16:14]like my grandmother who we thought had grown up
[16:17]with her mother and eight kids.
[16:19]It turned out actually was living with an aunt,
[16:21]30 miles away.
[16:23]And my mother didn't know about this.
[16:25]And so all of these interesting questions about her
[16:28]and my family history came up.
[16:30]So anyway, I'm working on a something about someone
[16:33]who discovers something similar, thinking,
[16:38]you know, and then I'm kind of going into the back in time,
[16:42]you know, to kind of figure out sort of like being
[16:44]a time detective, but not literally,
[16:47]I don't write sci-fi.
[16:48]So there's no actual time travel or fantasy.
[16:50]Anyway, it's a big mess right now, but it's great.
[16:52]And look at it.
[16:53]And I'm really fun with it.
[16:55]You know what I mean?
[16:55]And it's not even the summer right now.
[16:57]So you're ahead of yourself.
[16:59]True, you're right, you're right.
[17:01]You can have the summer to really dive deep.
[17:03]That's really exciting.
[17:04]So even though the balcony came out,
[17:07]it was short stories.
[17:08]And now at this point, you're in debut novelist really.
[17:11]I mean, how does that feel?
[17:14]It feels great.
[17:15]I mean, the balcony was funny that way
[17:17]because it really isn't, I mean, it works as a novel,
[17:20]but this is an actual, not like this is a novel.
[17:23]Like, so yeah.
[17:24]So for me, even though probably for the rest of the world,
[17:27]this is not my debut novel, you and I both know.
[17:30]And maybe a couple other people, it really is.
[17:33]And it feels, it feels great.
[17:35]I mean, it does feel like I ventured into a different form
[17:38]because again, I really love short stories
[17:41]and I'm really, I'm comfortable.
[17:43]I mean, not that I don't write duds
[17:45]and feel like I don't know what I'm doing
[17:47]and question myself constantly
[17:48]because that's just always there.
[17:50]But the novel form is quite different.
[17:53]I mean, I will say hedge is a very compact novel right
[17:57]with one point of view and a pretty clear,
[18:00]through line chronology.
[18:01]So one might say that it's a very long short story
[18:06]which maybe helped me write it.
[18:08]It's not a 700 page tone with 15 points of view.
[18:13]But who knows, maybe that will be next.
[18:15]Who knows, I guess we'll just find out after the summer.
[18:20]Oh my gosh.
[18:22]Wow, so tell me more about your daughters
[18:25]and how they reacted to this book,
[18:27]especially in light of all that your family had gone through.
[18:31]Yeah, so my daughters first of all are wonderful.
[18:35]And yeah, they're both sort of coming into,
[18:38]well, one of them really is an adulthood.
[18:40]The other one's almost there.
[18:41]So this is an interesting time of life for me.
[18:43]I started hedge when they were younger,
[18:45]Marco, my eldest was still at home.
[18:47]She's now, she's in her junior college.
[18:50]Rose is in her junior high school.
[18:53]She said to me yesterday,
[18:54]you time is really well.
[18:55]You're not gonna have to pay for both of us
[18:58]for college at the same time.
[18:59]She's like, did you think about that when you had us?
[19:01]I was like, no, not really.
[19:03]But yeah, so Marco has read the book.
[19:06]Rose hasn't read it yet.
[19:08]They, I don't know.
[19:09]I mean, I think this might be true for many writers.
[19:12]Like my kids, like I'm mom, I'm me.
[19:15]They are so supportive of my writing.
[19:17]They're wonderful, but they kind of don't,
[19:20]it's almost like someone else wrote that in a funny way.
[19:23]I mean, I definitely get grief,
[19:25]a little bit of grief from my eldest
[19:27]about, you know, that all this daughter
[19:29]who is really not like her at all.
[19:32]And they recognize things.
[19:33]So even though,
[19:34]Mod is quite different from me
[19:36]and the daughters are quite different from my daughters,
[19:38]I mean, they recognize you can't help it.
[19:40]Like stuff slips in.
[19:42]So for example, Mod likes to tell stories
[19:45]on her daughter's back.
[19:46]And I used to do that all the time, you know,
[19:48]with Marco, like I'd act out the whole story on her back.
[19:51]And so I wasn't even consciously thinking about that
[19:55]when I wrote the book,
[19:56]but she actually was like stories on the back,
[19:58]like, you know, he always do it to me.
[20:00]Oh, right. That's, that's where that came from. So they recognize things. They don't like when I write sex scenes. That's definitely
[20:08]In fact, that my youngest daughter, I don't think she'd mind my saying, she like picked open one of my husband's books and like there was a
[20:16]description of a body part on page four or something. And like that was it for his of shoes. Like
[20:23]So she hasn't brought that in stock. But you know, I think they always take everything I write with a grain of salt. I mean, they recognize
[20:31]the reality, but I'm so careful. Like I'm careful in all of my fiction to to change things up so that nobody can be fully recognized.
[20:42]It's of any of my son who's eight is doing a mystery unit at school. Okay. And he was like,
[20:47]it's once he's at one a mystery. And I was like, kind of. I mean, all in all, there is something mysterious. And he was like,
[20:53]well, can I bring it into reading at school? He's like, but if there's anything like any curse words or anything inappropriate,
[20:58]I'm going to get expelled. So you better make sure there's I was like, first of all, you're not going to get expelled.
[21:03]Oh, I love that. So anyway, I'm on the car on the car. I just go in this morning. I was reading through it. And I was like, well,
[21:08]they do like describe someone's boobs here. And he was like, nope, forget it. Leave it at home.
[21:12]Yeah, like, leaving through it. You just got to put the black, you know, like the CIA with like the sharpie.
[21:21]Yeah, exactly. I know about it. It does say the rest. And he's like, forget it. I can't do that.
[21:28]I know it's so awkward. This whole, like, kid parent sex through writing. I mean, it's bizarre,
[21:34]right? Because kids would never want to have it. Well, anyway, I don't know. It's just,
[21:38]I mean, I don't, you know, I don't write super Stevie sex. Like, I'm not good at it. And, you know,
[21:44]I don't, you're not good at writing about it. Yeah. I do like the neck. Oh, right. Thank you.
[21:52]That's a mean point. I like this sort of 1950s, like, you know, the train going to the
[21:56]channel and the ship, you know, going out into the ocean. Like, you know, I think there's that,
[22:01]well, I don't want to give anything away. But I think I have a very strategic chapter break. Yes,
[22:06]which I'm sure my daughter's appreciate. Oh, my gosh. And how is it being married to someone else
[22:13]who has the same craft? Like, what is that? Like, it's really great. I mean, I can see how it could be
[22:20]not great. But for us, it works well. I mean, Don's my first reader. And I'm his first reader.
[22:26]I actually gave him a story on Saturday. I was like, okay, I need to, you know, start showing stuff.
[22:32]Yeah, he was, and he was so funny. He was like, oh, my God, I liked it afterwards. You know,
[22:37]we do, I mean, we react. We're very honest with each other. And we have our reactions.
[22:42]And, but we don't take it out on each other. We just kind of mope a little privately. And then
[22:47]we come back and are like, okay, let's talk about it now. Let's talk about it. Yeah. And you know,
[22:52]he's been through the publishing process for so many years. And that's really great. Like, he just
[22:58]gives me so much sort of, I don't know, perspective. But I, any good partner, I think you have one
[23:03]of these two, like a good partner who just like brings you back to yourself. I think whatever he did
[23:09]for a profession, like he would do that, just kind of help me like come down and put things in
[23:14]perspective. And, but yeah, it has, it's worked. It's been all good. That's been all really,
[23:20]really good, having a partner who's also a writer. And he was an editor for 20 years too. So
[23:25]I got a lot of free editing. I actually told him yesterday, because you know with has like,
[23:31]there's, you know, there's the book tour coming up. And, and there's just so much going on. And
[23:36]I'm also trying to keep writing. So I am working on stories and on this longer thing. But
[23:40]yesterday, I said, I think it was after he read the story, I said, to put you on retainer.
[23:46]It's like, should I be like, you know, I'll never do anything. So I'm always asking him,
[23:52]do you see where with my website or, you know, can you prove his letter or whatever? But yeah,
[23:57]he's really a good partner that way. That's awesome. I feel like he and Kyle could trade notes on
[24:03]step children as well. Oh, yeah. Yeah. You know, that's been a transition for, I mean, Kyle's
[24:09]so great with the kids. But it's, you know, it's it's unique role. And it is, it is. And you have to
[24:15]kind of, I think every unit has to kind of reinvent it, right? And, and my kids call him step
[24:22]dude. That was the term. Oh, that's funny. Because I think what we said, I mean, they have a father
[24:26]and they're very closer. Their father and he's, he's, he's awesome, you know? And so I think that
[24:32]was just, I think my youngest coined that term early on because that was like a comfortable,
[24:36]he stepped in. And he figured out how to be step dude, you know, everybody has to figure it out.
[24:42]Yeah. Have you kept the thread of French and French language and all of that in your life at all?
[24:48]Like, are you, do you go back off in or? Yeah. So that was that, that was a really painful
[24:53]aspect of the divorce that I wasn't expecting was sort of losing that connection to this
[24:59]culture and this country. And I had studied print. It was also a connection to my father who died
[25:04]when I was 16 because he was the one who really encouraged me to speak French. And so there was
[25:08]a whole history. We had family there. Anyway, so, and we spoke it, especially with my youngest,
[25:15]we spoke a lot of French when she was growing up. And then I kind of, I couldn't afford it. Honestly,
[25:19]I couldn't afford to go back. We used to go once or twice a year to France with the girls and
[25:24]stay with my husband's family and do our own thing. So I hadn't gone back for like six years,
[25:30]which again, had been an annual regular thing. So I went back last fall. I think you know this
[25:36]because we had a zippy retreat and I changed my ticket. I remember very well because
[25:41]Marga was in Paris on her semester abroad. And both of the girls, their dual citizens, their
[25:46]French is amazing. I mean, their accents are like so much better than mine. And so I went back for
[25:51]the first time to see her, Rose and I went together. They'd been going with her dad pretty regularly,
[25:56]but I hadn't been back. And it was amazing. It was like, I mean, first of all, it was amazing to be
[26:01]with my daughter in this huge city where she's just so independent and, you know, navigating,
[26:06]you know, the metro and her French, I mean, people that she was French were accents so good.
[26:12]The minute I opened my mouth, they were like, oh, yeah, clearly not French mother. So
[26:17]but it was also amazing to rediscover that part of myself. It was like, it was strange. I told
[26:23]a friend of mine. It was like, there was still this 22 year old version of me sitting on a park bench
[26:30]in the Chardonnn, the two, you know, just like, still there. So it was really great. And I want
[26:34]to go back again. I think this summer is going to be hard with all the book tour, but I'm already
[26:38]planning. And I want to go back with Don because he hasn't been to France in years. So, and Rose
[26:43]and I now speak it, we're speaking it again. So we've started speaking French at home more often,
[26:49]which is great. And Don just, you know, in his calm, step-dude way, like, doesn't care. We're like,
[26:54]you're sure he just pretends he understands what we're saying. And it's a deco or which means,
[26:58]okay, it's just a decor. We're like, we'll never talk about you. That will be a rule.
[27:06]So yeah, that's another aspect of my life that I want to start integrating again because I do
[27:11]miss it. And Marcus going back this summer. And I think she'll be, she loved living in Paris.
[27:16]So I don't want her to move there. That's way too far. But I wouldn't mind if she spent,
[27:19]you know, periods of time there where I could go, you know, visit and stay longer. So
[27:24]or maybe you could somehow start writing short stories in French. And then you'd have to do like a
[27:29]French tour. I don't know. Well, I will tell you that yes, there is a bit, there is a
[27:34]a bit of a French angle to, uh, to this new project I'm working on. I think it's good to set fiction,
[27:41]set your fiction in places you want to visit. That's, that's the only wedding advice I have.
[27:45]Okay. You have to go there. You know, so like, when I moved the balcony, I was like, where am I
[27:52]I get to move it where I can drive? Like, I love Hudson Valley. It's so beautiful. You know, and so
[27:56]I got to go to the Hudson Valley like 10 times. You know, it wasn't that many, but to do the research.
[28:02]And, and those are these retreats on my own with my book. And I think, you know, as women and
[28:07]mothers and busy people can't always get away by ourselves. So yeah, I think it's a good idea to choose
[28:13]locations you want to go to. Anybody smart. That's my tip. That's a great tip. That's a really
[28:18]great tip by the way. On your right, the trips off, then you're going to want to talk to all
[28:24]those bookstore owners in the area, right? You're going to do a whole marketing thing because it's
[28:28]based there. So yeah, and they've been so great with supporting the book, you know, a bard and
[28:34]I mean, it is. It's, that's been, that's been terrific. That was a really good move. Nice move.
[28:39]Yes. Well, Jane, I'm so excited that hedge is coming out. I'm so excited that Lee Newman
[28:47]already, you know, knew you so well. I had so much respect for you. And we're so excited about this
[28:51]book when we started the whole company. And I've got to watch. I've gotten to see it just like
[28:56]bloom, you know, like a fast growing hedge. Anyway, it's been really fun. And you're awesome. And
[29:04]I'm very excited for what's to come. This was so great. Thanks, Debbie. All right. Thanks, Jane. Bye.
[29:12]Thanks for listening to this episode of moms. Don't have time to read books. Don't forget to
[29:16]follow me on Instagram at zebioans and at moms. Don't have time to read books. Also sign up for
[29:21]my newsletter at zebioans.com and sign up for my virtual book club and meet lots of authors on zoom
[29:26]every other week. Thanks so much to Steve and Ryan at Textures Sound for the Sound Editing.
[29:31]And thank you to Morning Moon Productions for providing this fantastic intro and now
[29:35]trim music.