Helen Ellis, KISS ME IN THE CORAL LOUNGE: Intimate Confessions from a Happy Marriage
[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]Helen Ellis is the author of Kiss Me and the Coral Lounge, Intimate Confessions from a
[1:07]Happy Marriage.
[1:08]Helen is the best-selling author of American Housewife and Southern Lady Code, which she
[1:13]came on this podcast to talk about.
[1:15]Last time, this time, it's Kiss Me and the Coral Lounge.
[1:17]She has been published in Modern Love and Garden and Gun and is a poker player and it
[1:21]plant lady.
[1:22]Raised in Alabama, she lives with her husband in New York City.
[1:25]Welcome Helen.
[1:26]Thanks so much for coming back on mom's don't have time to read books to discuss Kiss Me
[1:30]and the Coral Lounge, Intimate Confessions from a Happy Marriage.
[1:34]Hello!
[1:35]So you have been in this Coral Lounge.
[1:40]I have.
[1:41]I have been at the Coral Lounge and I had a great time.
[1:43]Yes.
[1:44]It's quite an impression.
[1:46]I'm so glad I went that night.
[1:49]I mean, you're legendary in the Coral Lounge.
[1:53]Anyway, it was a lot of fun and I'm so glad it would have benefited one story.
[2:00]Yes.
[2:01]Yes.
[2:02]We had a, I mean, pre-pandemic, this Coral Lounge was a hot in place and can I tell, you
[2:08]know, what happened?
[2:10]So what had happened was we had a game night for one story magazine, the best lit
[2:17]mag out there and in addition to things like charades and memory game and family feud, we had
[2:27]a dare bag and for a hundred points, you drew a dare out of the dare bag and you did
[2:34]it.
[2:35]And what it was was you, I assume you stepped into the bathroom.
[2:39]Yes.
[2:40]It was a stranger from another team and completely changed clothes with this person who
[2:46]I believe was my friend Jean at, you know, wore the other woman's clothes all night long.
[2:51]Do you think we could still get away with that at parties?
[2:53]I don't know if you cinch the wind for your team.
[2:58]I was so determined to win the game night that I wouldn't do anything and actually when
[3:05]your friend put on the dress I was wearing, I was like, oh my gosh, I'm never going to wear
[3:09]that dress again.
[3:10]It looks terrible.
[3:11]I'm like, it's such an unflattering dress.
[3:15]What was I even thinking?
[3:16]I know exactly what stress it is.
[3:17]I can't bring myself to give it away, I still have it because I like the color of it.
[3:24]Yeah, that was a memorable night, so when I was reading and the bug about like the
[3:29]corral lounge abandoned to post COVID or during COVID and what you two were up to in
[3:34]the house and even how the plants have just taken over and what it's become, I still
[3:40]feel like there's all that joy from before, right?
[3:43]It's just like, it doesn't leave all that festivity.
[3:46]That's made in the festive room these days with the pandemic.
[3:50]It was me, my husband, and Joan Collins and a bunch of master of plants, and that was
[3:55]it.
[3:56]Well, both of those sections were hilarious.
[3:59]So part about what you learned, I wonder, I think I dug your this section, what you learned
[4:04]from Joan Collins and Alexis and all of that.
[4:06]And oh, oh my gosh, we have talked about the snoring.
[4:09]And then also, yeah, hold on, can I just read this little part, I love it when someone
[4:14]quotes me to me.
[4:15]I'll quote you, you said, you were thinking how you want to be exactly like her and then
[4:19]you said, well, maybe not a thrice divorcee with a cab here addiction, but I want to live
[4:24]like a 1980s TV villainous.
[4:26]And then you said, if someone doesn't return my call, I want to climb into the back of
[4:29]a Rolls Royce and flip through a Vogue as I'm chauffeured to their home replaced of work.
[4:34]No, it doesn't matter if they're in better and immediate.
[4:36]I will tuck my pet leather clutch under my armpit, barge in and demand an answer.
[4:40]If I don't like what I hear, I will slap that person across the face.
[4:43]Yes, slapper.
[4:45]I will slap a lady in a hospital.
[4:47]Yes, I will slap a lady in front of a shitsu, I will slap a lady in a hospital corridor.
[4:55]Yes.
[4:56]I will wrestle lady and quite fine.
[4:59]Oh my gosh, you're so funny.
[5:01]I was never allowed to watch Dynasty in the 80s when I was a kid.
[5:07]So that is how I spent my pandemic watching all nine seasons.
[5:11]And those seasons are 28 to 30 episodes long and it lasts to be a good long time during
[5:19]the pandemic.
[5:20]I just fell in love with 1980s, Joan Collins.
[5:23]It's so true.
[5:24]My mom would watch Dallas and Dynasty while I was watching the little house on the prairie.
[5:28]Well, I'm also going to run down in the ship and I'm still recovering from Mary going
[5:34]blind.
[5:35]I know.
[5:36]I know.
[5:37]I know.
[5:38]I know.
[5:39]It's so deeply.
[5:40]I'm always really worried about having glasses in the sun after that, you know, and I'm like,
[5:45]oh my gosh, I have my glasses and it's really sunny and I literally burn this in the
[5:48]snowboard down.
[5:49]I think about it all the time.
[5:52]Well, also in this chapter, you said, I want to wear makeup so heavy.
[5:58]It exceeds jet blues carry on living.
[6:00]You're so funny.
[6:02]Oh my gosh, anyway, I want a sex drive that rivals a Chevrolet dealer.
[6:10]Oh my gosh, anyway, so funny.
[6:15]The whole thing I laugh like at least 20 times, like a big laugh out loud by myself,
[6:20]you know, as opposed to the many chuckles and the many, oh, it's funny times.
[6:24]Oh, thank you very much.
[6:26]Well, I know you were very happily married, so that makes me very happy to hear that.
[6:31]Oh, you know, it's happy marriage.
[6:36]That's what I'm interested.
[6:38]I feel like the subtitle of this book is so good because what does it mean to even have
[6:41]a happy marriage?
[6:42]And especially if you are not happy all the time, can you have a happy marriage and not
[6:46]be happy in like other areas of your life?
[6:49]And is it okay to still fight?
[6:51]And is it still a happy marriage?
[6:53]What does that mean?
[6:54]I feel like everyone aspires to that, but like what are the limits of a happy marriage?
[6:59]How happy do you have to be happy with everything?
[7:03]Happiness, romance, those things are small things.
[7:07]They're constant, quiet things.
[7:09]I think, you know, in today's, you know, it world wide web, people think they have to
[7:15]be so public about their marriages and things have to be grand gestures and we all have
[7:20]to be up at hot air bullets and that is not the case.
[7:24]You know, I, we've been married for 22 years, you know, a very, very long time and when
[7:31]you're married a very long time, you appreciate the good times.
[7:35]And even when you're in bad, bad times, you think we've been through this before and
[7:39]I'm really happy to be with this partner.
[7:43]So that's it.
[7:44]That's another thing.
[7:45]Marriage is long and romance is small.
[7:47]Does that make sense?
[7:49]It's a lot of it.
[7:51]So, although it sounds like romance was fairly large, given your host actually on fight
[7:57]and run.
[7:58]Take, take.
[7:59]No, I can all drop off the sample.
[8:01]Would you like to enter in the corner?
[8:04]Just put it in his milkshake.
[8:07]Let me tell you, I'll tell you, years, that's a very first piece I wrote for the collection
[8:14]and you interviewed me and had me to your house for a Southern lady coat a few years back.
[8:20]And in that book, I wrote a piece called Free to Be You and Me and Child Free and it was
[8:26]a piece that I wrote to my younger self to let me know it was okay and I would be happy
[8:32]without having children, which is kind of a, it's a choice, it's a big choice.
[8:39]And so I wrote this piece called The Bright Side About My Agra because I wanted everybody
[8:44]and my young self to know about it.
[8:47]Don't wait.
[8:48]It's recreational.
[8:49]Go get it.
[8:50]It's very enjoyable.
[8:51]You're like, you're like, no, we're never going back.
[8:56]That was the thing that we tried and then we don't want to do it without it.
[9:02]I'm never going to come to adultry and it's with my own husband.
[9:07]And he's cool, I mean, obviously you've talked about it, but he's okay with you sharing
[9:13]all this stuff.
[9:14]It comes across very well.
[9:16]It's a very flattering story and I think when it was like I said, it was the first
[9:21]piece I wrote and I said, I'm going to write about it, is that okay?
[9:25]And he said, yeah, because he wished he had known about it a little bit earlier.
[9:31]And double day wrote me a nice check.
[9:35]Everybody has their price and he had his price.
[9:38]I think my number should be sponsoring this book tour.
[9:45]It really should.
[9:46]You should go after them.
[9:47]You should at least get some affiliate revenue, right?
[9:50]Yeah.
[9:51]A discount code.
[9:52]I should call it.
[9:53]I should call it.
[9:54]It kissed me.
[9:55]A discount code.
[9:56]But you also talk about it.
[10:00]her husband's storing and how everybody you know deals
[10:02]with their husband's storeings and deals with different
[10:04]like his cow snore.
[10:07]I don't know if he would want me to talk about it.
[10:09]I mean, yeah.
[10:09]But yes.
[10:10]Yeah.
[10:11]That's amazing.
[10:12]Yes, but I'll just say this in general.
[10:14]I'll just, I'll just say this in general.
[10:16]I have, yes.
[10:20]They all snore.
[10:21]My husband is the one who actually titled that chapter
[10:24]because I, you know, I think I called it sleeping
[10:27]with other people or something like that.
[10:29]And he said, no, you should call it.
[10:30]My husband snores and yours will too.
[10:32]Because that's what we all are talking about.
[10:34]All of her husband snore.
[10:36]And we all deal with it in creative ways.
[10:41]You said how you like,
[10:42]flail your legs up and then like whack them against the bed
[10:45]so that it all shakes.
[10:46]And then pretend you don't do anything
[10:48]as close as I come to being a mermaid.
[10:50]My legs are glued together and I do go hoop.
[10:53]And then I pretend he wakes up,
[10:54]what? Oh, you've had a terrible dream.
[10:56]You're dreaming.
[10:57]Oh, that's me.
[10:58]There's a great scene and speaking of slapping.
[11:01]I think it's called, it's the Doris Day Rock Hudson movie.
[11:04]And I want to say it's Pillotok, but I'm not sure.
[11:07]So Doris Day Rock Hudson is snoring like a chainsaw
[11:14]and she walks into his bedroom
[11:15]in a beautiful, beautiful green language and she pulls
[11:18]her hand back and she slaps him across the face
[11:21]and he wakes up and she says, oh, but darling,
[11:23]you were having a nightmare, you were a thing.
[11:26]And I have threatened to wake him up that way,
[11:28]but I just want my technique.
[11:35]I mean, I think that's part of the genius
[11:36]of this whole collection is that you take all these things,
[11:39]well, maybe not everyday things, like finding crazy,
[11:43]very objects, it's an advantage to your city buildings
[11:46]or whatever, but mostly everyday things,
[11:48]taking care of a cat and making it into like,
[11:50]or two cats, making it into the funniest thing ever.
[11:53]Like it doesn't have to, but it is funny
[11:55]how like specific we all are with like the needs
[11:58]of our animals or our plants or like just all the things
[12:02]that we keep in our heads when you put them out on paper
[12:04]and especially in your funny voice.
[12:06]Like it's just hilarious.
[12:07]Every day life becomes like such material for comedy.
[12:11]It's true.
[12:12]I mean, now when we have a cat center,
[12:14]I just give them that essay because it's so,
[12:18]it's true, it's all true.
[12:20]And that's the thing about the book.
[12:23]It's a very normal marriage, you know?
[12:25]It's a very normal happy marriage.
[12:26]I mean, I'm sure you, you know,
[12:28]there's nothing in there, maybe outside
[12:30]of what we found in a box of the basement
[12:32]that you don't recognize.
[12:33]It's just, it's, you know, the romance is small,
[12:36]but humor is small.
[12:40]To say.
[12:42]And wait, talk to me about the gardening
[12:43]because I'm interested in this too
[12:45]because Kyle loves plants.
[12:47]So when we first got together,
[12:48]he came with all these plants.
[12:50]So I inherited it with the plants.
[12:52]Oh yeah, he moved into the plants.
[12:53]And one, in fact, we put on,
[12:55]he had like rented this apartment
[12:57]when he first came to the city.
[12:58]And I was moving stuff around,
[12:59]trying to organize for him.
[13:01]No, he was not that he wanted that necessarily,
[13:03]but that's what I do.
[13:04]So anyway, I put it in the color coded book case
[13:07]on the back.
[13:09]I'm a little neurotic.
[13:10]I won't lie.
[13:11]I've got my issue.
[13:11]The core, that's,
[13:12]I have for this work.
[13:15]But anyway, I had the plant
[13:17]where these like, you pressed a button
[13:18]to the shade with the go down.
[13:20]And the shade like went right into the plant.
[13:22]And he like dove across the room,
[13:25]dressed him as plant.
[13:26]And I was like, what is going on?
[13:27]What is the big deal?
[13:28]I don't even understand.
[13:29]I bet it was a big big big big big big big big big big big.
[13:31]I don't even know what to call it.
[13:32]I know you and he should have a talk.
[13:34]You should come around here and check out our plants.
[13:36]Anyway, it like landed in such a way.
[13:37]It almost like amputated part of this plant
[13:39]that he had had for many, many years.
[13:42]And it now has grown differently.
[13:44]It survived, but it grew differently.
[13:46]Which I feel like this is his beautiful co-terrion.
[13:49]I'm your man.
[13:50]Together, I'm a little bit hobbling around,
[13:55]but I agree.
[13:56]You know, I've got a lot of plants.
[13:58]I never had plants.
[14:00]And I'm from the south.
[14:01]So like, we're supposed to be garden ladies, you know?
[14:05]And my mother had plants.
[14:06]For grandmother had plants, it goes way, way back.
[14:09]This is in my nature, like Alabama football.
[14:12]This should be, you know, an eight to me.
[14:14]And I got plants during the pandemic.
[14:18]And I got them shipped to me because you couldn't go out.
[14:21]So I was trying to support small businesses.
[14:24]They came from Florida all wrapped up in like cotton candy
[14:29]gauze.
[14:29]They came from Washington state.
[14:31]They came from Brooklyn and arrived at the door and mummified.
[14:36]And most of them survived, but some of them did not survive.
[14:42]But I do have quite a few still in the house,
[14:44]but I became a pandemic plant lady, you know?
[14:47]I have a friend who really became a pandemic plant lady
[14:50]up in Vermont and started growing pot in a garage.
[14:52]So, you know, there were a lot of us.
[14:54]Oh my gosh.
[14:55]Wait, so how did you, so you wrote that first essay
[14:58]and then just when the spirit moved,
[15:00]do you kept writing essays and then put them together?
[15:02]Yeah.
[15:03]The spirit moved, that's like the logo for my background.
[15:07]Yeah.
[15:08]I tell you, so that was the first one.
[15:12]And this is my third collection of essays.
[15:14]So, God bless double day, I can come to them
[15:18]and say, I want to write a book about marriage.
[15:21]And they say, okay, I mean, it's just a miracle.
[15:24]And I list the things that I plan to write about.
[15:27]And some things I always know I want to write about
[15:30]is some things I didn't.
[15:31]Like the Niagara pieces, the one that really started
[15:33]the whole thing, because I start every essay
[15:35]with the idea of I have got to tell you
[15:38]about what just happened.
[15:40]And usually it's always a positive thing.
[15:42]Like I've got to tell you about a friend
[15:44]who had a baby at 50 on her own.
[15:46]I've got to tell you about a friend who got out of a bad marriage.
[15:50]I've got to tell you about a friend
[15:51]who got back alley abortion.
[15:53]You know, I've got to talk, I've got to abortion
[15:54]and I'll talk, I'll talk, I'll talk, I'll talk.
[15:57]I can't wait to talk, you know.
[15:59]And so I had to tell you about Niagara.
[16:01]And then some pieces, you know,
[16:03]I always wanted to write about and, you know,
[16:07]finally have the outlet to do it.
[16:08]Like there's a, he's called permanent vacation plans.
[16:12]And it's about how, you know, we're married a long time.
[16:15]So you have to have those discussions about
[16:18]planning for death, you know, and planning for,
[16:22]you know, the sickness part of the vow.
[16:24]What are you going to do?
[16:26]And then some things are really spur of the moment.
[16:29]One of the last pieces I wrote was because a friend
[16:33]sent me the obituary of the boy who's now a 53 year old man
[16:38]who was my first kiss and he died.
[16:41]And it got me thinking about the fact that
[16:44]like my husband Lex is my last first kiss, 28 years ago.
[16:49]And that's first kiss we hope.
[16:51]So sometimes they just come very easily.
[16:55]And after this long, you know, I have a lot of material.
[16:57]Yeah.
[16:58]Oh my gosh.
[17:00]Do you already have like a new crop of essays?
[17:04]Like what is your next collection about?
[17:06]I think, and you're hearing it here first.
[17:10]What hoo?
[17:11]I want to be at the nice for a long time, Zippy.
[17:16]You know, my mantra for writing,
[17:18]nonfiction is be honest, be funny, be kind.
[17:21]And I want to be naughty.
[17:23]And I want to write a naughty novel.
[17:25]So novel.
[17:26]And I will say, we'll see.
[17:29]I've got some ideas.
[17:30]Oh my gosh.
[17:31]That's amazing.
[17:32]I can't wait.
[17:33]I can't wait.
[17:34]Yay.
[17:35]Inspired by dynasty perhaps.
[17:37]So, yeah.
[17:38]So, wow, shoulder pads, shoulder pads and lip gloss.
[17:44]That's a good time.
[17:44]I want the 80s to come back.
[17:46]I'm ready for my arm.
[17:47]My bang, the pair, I'm ready.
[17:50]I love to the shoulder pad.
[17:51]Look, shoulder pads, oversized letter.
[17:53]A lot of it is coming back.
[17:54]The oversized is now back, apparently.
[17:56]So, yeah, God bless.
[17:58]Yes, I want the, I want the, you know, the waistline up
[18:01]to my nipples.
[18:02]And I want shoulder pads out to my, you know,
[18:06]as wide as the flying saucer.
[18:08]I'm ready.
[18:09]I'm, big, big.
[18:10]I want, you know, Susanne Sugarbaker,
[18:12]permed, curled, designing women hair.
[18:16]Yeah.
[18:17]You could do it.
[18:17]I bet you could pull that off.
[18:18]And I could.
[18:19]Yeah.
[18:21]I had it all.
[18:23]How, when you're writing an essay,
[18:25]is it something like you sit down and just like,
[18:28]do it, do it, it's all done.
[18:29]Or is it something like that?
[18:30]Do it, do it.
[18:31]Yeah.
[18:32]I think, you know, I had to thought that, you know,
[18:36]before I started writing essays,
[18:38]which were very much a surprise to me.
[18:39]I never knew I was going to write an fiction.
[18:42]I wrote short stories.
[18:43]And I think when I write a short story,
[18:45]it starts with the question, like, you know,
[18:48]what if a writer went on a reality TV show
[18:51]or what if a book club had a more sinister motive?
[18:55]And when I write essays, I asked myself,
[18:59]why do I keep telling this story over and over again?
[19:02]So like with the What's in the Box story,
[19:04]you mentioned, you know, my husband and a friend found
[19:08]this box in the bottom, you know, in an abandoned basement
[19:12]and had us all guess what was in it.
[19:14]And I kept telling the story over and over.
[19:16]And I thought, why am I telling it over and over?
[19:19]Same with, you know, there's a piece called
[19:21]the best part of a wedding is the worst part of the wedding.
[19:23]And it's like, why do we keep telling stories
[19:26]about what went wrong at a wedding?
[19:28]And then I start writing it and I figure out, why?
[19:32]I love it.
[19:33]This is the worst thing that happened at your wedding.
[19:35]Oh, the worst thing happened at my wedding to Kyle,
[19:42]the night before all the furniture that like,
[19:45]we rented some furniture, we had it at our house,
[19:47]or we had it at a rental house and rented like the,
[19:50]you know, like the tables and chairs for the actual thing.
[19:52]And it was all terrible.
[19:53]And I was like, I can't, the tables were supposed to be,
[19:56]we wanted it to look like farmhouse tables, you know, like,
[19:59]and they were.
[20:00]or disgusting.
[20:01]It was like someone had been,
[20:02]they've been in like someone's back at it
[20:04]and they were all like,
[20:05]I was like, I can't have,
[20:07]these are supposed to be nice farm cables.
[20:08]It's not like rustic.
[20:10]Yeah, this is beyond rustic.
[20:11]This is like literally from the trash heap.
[20:13]And it was like pouring rain
[20:15]and then all the furniture we rented
[20:17]for like the lounge area or whatever thing
[20:20]was like oversized and gaudy.
[20:21]And I was like, nothing looks the way it did online.
[20:24]So we had to like fix the whole thing
[20:28]before the next afternoon.
[20:29]And we did it.
[20:31]Odd bless her.
[20:31]I had this amazing wedding planner
[20:33]and she fixed it all and we put tablecloths
[20:35]and nobody knew the difference and you know.
[20:37]That's right.
[20:38]And I guess it's not that bad.
[20:40]Also, when I did the horror, you know, the dance.
[20:43]Yes.
[20:44]My daughter at the time was,
[20:45]I don't even know how old she was.
[20:46]Maybe three.
[20:48]Anyway, she was so scared.
[20:50]She was looking at me like screaming and sobbing
[20:53]as I was in the air bouncing around
[20:55]and I was trying to be like,
[20:56]put me down and everyone's like, yeah,
[20:59]yeah, anyway.
[21:02]What about you?
[21:03]The worst thing that happened in our wedding
[21:05]was that the place where it's supposed to have our,
[21:08]you know, reception dinner burnt to the ground
[21:10]and I guess, yes.
[21:12]You wrote that.
[21:13]Again, I think those stories,
[21:15]how you deal with a situation like that
[21:18]is how you're gonna deal with things in your marriage.
[21:22]So I was a secretary at the time
[21:25]and I just made a phone call to roof 57.
[21:28]57.6 and they opened up the downstairs Bordeaux
[21:32]like basement for my 49 guests.
[21:35]And we had a wonderful, you know, wonderful time.
[21:38]Yeah, it's a, you just what you remember
[21:40]about every wedding is the worst part.
[21:41]That's the first thing you tell
[21:42]because it's the most fun thing to tell.
[21:44]Yeah.
[21:45]You were funny writing about that too,
[21:47]being like, well, I mean, mostly it's good.
[21:48]You know,
[21:49]some of it's all seen.
[21:53]We've all seen the good stuff.
[21:54]We've all seen the, you know,
[21:56]walking down the aisle and the ideas
[21:58]and the exchange of the rings
[22:00]and, you know, cutting at the cake.
[22:01]We've all seen that, but we haven't seen, you know,
[22:05]my husband ripped his pants from,
[22:08]it was so funny.
[22:09]And once I, you know,
[22:10]right moments before you watch my mother down the aisle
[22:12]for my sister's wedding, you know,
[22:14]and we haven't seen my mother fall in a crowd
[22:17]parking lot two days before my sister's wedding
[22:20]and knock out our property, you know,
[22:22]these things happen,
[22:23]but you deal with them and, you know,
[22:26]you move on and you remember that?
[22:28]It's just that your mom did your mom say something,
[22:31]like that your husband, your father had a piece of ball.
[22:35]No, no, that your husband did that to make her feel better.
[22:37]He did, he did, I know, he did.
[22:41]He did, and he just said, yes, I did.
[22:45]Aww, oh my gosh.
[22:47]Okay, what advice do you have for aspiring authors,
[22:50]particularly authors who maybe they think they're funny?
[22:53]I don't know.
[22:54]Because you write humor so well.
[22:56]So for people who like to write humor also,
[22:59]like how do you pull that off in a good way
[23:01]and not like overdo it?
[23:03]Like you're such a master at this form.
[23:05]And by the way, this has to win the third reprise.
[23:06]You have to like submit it immediately.
[23:09]Oh God bless you.
[23:10]No, it's so funny, it's so funny.
[23:12]Oh, thank you.
[23:13]Thank you.
[23:14]I think, you know, when you write, you write alone.
[23:18]And I said before, you know, I write about stories
[23:21]but I keep telling.
[23:23]So I'll tell a story over and over again.
[23:26]You'll hear when people laugh and put that in the book.
[23:29]Like I kept telling about all the plants coming
[23:32]to the house and I kept saying, oh, you know,
[23:34]Lex asked me, how many plants do we have in the house?
[23:37]And I said, how many do you think we have?
[23:39]And he said seven.
[23:41]And I said, this sounds about right.
[23:43]We had 28 plants in the house.
[23:45]And so anytime you tell something and it gets a lie up,
[23:48]put that in the piece.
[23:50]And really, my thought is just write like you talk,
[23:55]you know, just write like you talk.
[23:57]That's there you go.
[23:58]That's my advice, but that's very good.
[24:00]If people laugh about what you say.
[24:01]And there's a thing, you'll sometimes you'll tell a joke
[24:04]or you'll tell a part of a story.
[24:05]You'll see people's eyes, you know,
[24:07]glaze over and you know, to take that out.
[24:09]So just keep, you know, peppering it
[24:11]with proven punchlines.
[24:13]Okay, I'm going to punchlines.
[24:15]Excellent.
[24:16]And when you read, do opt for funny,
[24:19]do you go to short stories?
[24:20]Like do you like a mix?
[24:21]I know you're in book group with end of politics.
[24:23]I know and all that.
[24:24]So what do you like to read?
[24:26]I'll tell you what I'm reading right now
[24:30]is, you know, I'm like classic trashy book clubber.
[24:34]So we read a lot of, you know, books from the 70s and 80s.
[24:36]And I am rereading for the fourth time Princess Daisy.
[24:41]Oh my God.
[24:42]That's one of my favorites.
[24:44]So yeah, one of my all time favorites.
[24:47]We can also think that we remember
[24:49]because that's all I remembered was all the sex scenes
[24:52]because that is how we learned back in the 80s.
[24:54]And yeah, it holds up.
[24:57]It really holds up.
[24:58]It's delicious.
[24:59]And like I said, I read it in high school.
[25:02]I read it, you know, in my 20s,
[25:04]I read it in my 40s and I'm reading it in my 50s.
[25:07]You know, you just cramps, heaven, heaven, delicious.
[25:11]So that's what I'm reading.
[25:11]It's a good summer, you know,
[25:14]I used to call them Boinkbusters.
[25:17]But that's something you're a woman telling you
[25:22]a sex story, a good story.
[25:25]No, you're absolutely right.
[25:26]My mom had all those scruples and like all the books
[25:30]by Judith Krantz.
[25:30]And I just like weaved my way through them
[25:33]after reading my books and I was like,
[25:34]I'll just take this one and I'll just take it.
[25:36]But I haven't read it actually since high school.
[25:38]So I should really.
[25:39]Oh, it's delicious.
[25:40]Before I school.
[25:41]I don't have to go back and read it again.
[25:42]I'll drop off my copy because it's not in the ebook form.
[25:45]It's not in audio book.
[25:47]I'll drop it off at your door.
[25:48]Oh, okay.
[25:51]Oh my gosh, amazing.
[25:53]Well, Helen, thank you so much.
[25:55]Thank you for this totally enjoyable read.
[25:57]Kiss me in the Quirrell Lounge and for all the fun times
[26:00]in the Quirrell Lounge and hopefully we can see each other
[26:04]even though we live like so close by and never see each other.
[26:07]But it's such a New York.
[26:11]Thank you, Zippy.
[26:12]And thank you for your continued support.
[26:14]I appreciate it so much.
[26:16]Of course, no problem.
[26:18]Right, have a great day, Helen.
[26:19]Bye, bye.
[26:22]Thanks for listening to this episode of Moms Don't Have Time
[26:24]to Read Books.
[26:25]Don't forget to follow me on Instagram, at Zippy Owens
[26:28]and at Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books.
[26:31]Also sign up for my newsletter at zippyowens.com
[26:33]and sign up for my virtual book club
[26:35]and meet lots of authors on Zoom every other week.
[26:37]Thanks so much to Steve and Ryan,
[26:39]in fact, Texture Sound for the Sound Editing.
[26:41]And thank you to Morning Moon Productions
[26:43]for providing this fantastic intro and out trim music.