William Dameron, THE WAY LIFE SHOULD BE
[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]William Dameron is the author of The Way Life Should Be, a novel.
[1:07]This episode was guest hosted by Julie Chavez, author of the forthcoming Zippy Books title,
[1:11]Everyone But Myself, and host of Ask a Librarian.
[1:15]And Bill is on my podcast for his previous book as well.
[1:19]William Dameron is an award-winning blogger, memoirist essayist, and the author of The
[1:23]Lie, a New York Times editor's choice.
[1:26]His work has appeared in The New York Times, Times in the UK, Telegraph, Boston Globe,
[1:30]Washington Post, Salon, HuffPost, Operdaley, Sarah Knack, Review, Lit Hub, and in
[1:35]the book, Fashionably Late, Gay, Buy, and Transmen, who came out later in life.
[1:39]William and his husband split their time between the coast of Southern Maine and Florida.
[1:43]Bill, thanks so much for coming back on Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books.
[1:47]I'm so excited to have you here today.
[1:49]It is exciting to be back and I hope I would be back with another book.
[1:55]I bet.
[1:56]I am so, I have so many questions for you, especially since you wrote your memoir and this
[2:03]is a novel and it just feels like it had to be such a different experience.
[2:08]Was it for you?
[2:09]The experience started out to be very similar to be honest with you because this book,
[2:17]It's Life, began as a memoir and about 100 pages in, I switched it to a novel.
[2:25]Interesting.
[2:26]Okay.
[2:27]I really learned on this book how to write fiction, how to switch from first person to
[2:32]third person.
[2:33]Oh my goodness.
[2:35]It's so fascinating for me because I wrote a memoir and I'm slowly trying to do the
[2:40]same thing, working on a novel and it is such a different headspace and before we go
[2:46]any further.
[2:47]Let's clear up.
[2:48]We're talking about your new novel.
[2:49]The way life should be, which it turns out is Maine's tourist slogan, is that correct?
[2:55]That is.
[2:56]It's one of the tourist slogans, the other one is vacation land and welcome home.
[3:02]The way life should be resonates much more for me.
[3:06]Absolutely.
[3:07]Will you give the listeners just a quick synopsis of what you would say to books about?
[3:12]Sure.
[3:13]The book is about two dads who get a second chance, really.
[3:19]They get married later in life after coming out and finding each other, purchase a home
[3:25]and southern Maine and they're living kind of an idyllic life as a second chance when
[3:32]one summer all three of their nearly adult children descend upon their home, each and
[3:39]a crisis that threatens to tear the family apart.
[3:43]I thought this book was so well done.
[3:47]It is beautifully written.
[3:49]Some of the ways that you express things will really stay with me and I especially loved
[3:55]how it feels like this book is about so many things.
[3:58]It feels like it's about marriage.
[4:01]It's about relationships.
[4:02]It's about parenting and so I really do think there will just be something for everyone
[4:08]in it.
[4:09]So I'm so thrilled for you and I'm so happy it's going to be out in the world, so congratulations
[4:15]on that.
[4:16]Thank you.
[4:17]You really accomplished what you set up today.
[4:18]Thank you.
[4:19]It is about a lot of things and that was intentional.
[4:23]I wanted the reader to understand all the different scenarios, all the different issues
[4:32]that extended families have to go through, especially when they're in a tiny space and
[4:39]compressed into a small amount of time.
[4:42]So I was trying to make the reader feel sort of that sense of being crammed into a small
[4:50]space, but also learning how to live with it and to laugh with it.
[4:56]There's such a tenderness to it and I really, I loved reading about that.
[5:00]I know I shared with you before we came on that I live in a small home with my husband
[5:04]and two teenagers and I mean I was texting them at swim practice just now.
[5:09]saying, hey, don't shower and Tom done with this recording, like it's just, there's
[5:13]a whole different world for those of us that, you know, we're down a bathroom and things
[5:19]get real, right?
[5:20]You got to, it just, so you do that so well.
[5:24]And I think you do it so effectively by sharing the cottage rules.
[5:28]And I want, before we talk about that, I want to tell you when I was reading through them.
[5:32]So my husband is kind of a, I mean, we won't call him a militant minimalist, but he's
[5:37]you know, aggressively happy when things are being thrown away.
[5:41]I don't know.
[5:42]So, but as I was reading the cottage rules, I was cracking up.
[5:47]I had a moment where I was like, I think my husband would like to live with Paul.
[5:51]So if he shows up at your door one day, you'll know what he sounds like it.
[5:56]Oh my gosh.
[5:57]Yeah.
[5:58]Tell us about the cottage rules because I know you have an author's note in the beginning
[6:01]that that is the one piece of this book that is nonfiction.
[6:05]So will you tell everybody about that?
[6:07]That's right.
[6:08]So as I said, I began the book as a memoir.
[6:12]And my publisher said, I love the premise, but we think it would be better inspection.
[6:18]It, it originally took place during the pandemic.
[6:22]And I didn't want to write about that.
[6:23]It was, it was too constraining.
[6:26]And so I decided, turn it into fiction, make it go off the rails, put my family and
[6:33]situations they were never in.
[6:36]Yes.
[6:37]But I'm going to take the rules that Paul authored many years ago when we did have several
[6:44]of our children living with us because we would make them read them publicly and we would
[6:51]laugh at it.
[6:52]And I thought this is a great framing device for chapters.
[6:57]And so I took those rules and Paul, like your husband is a militant minimalist.
[7:06]And we had a amount of time, seven and a half minutes for a shower.
[7:11]So I understand, yes, but you have to create those rules in order to live peacefully.
[7:18]You really do.
[7:19]Otherwise things will get ugly fast.
[7:21]I mean, people can really want to murder each other over a wet towel or something in the
[7:26]watch.
[7:27]Really is you are not wrong.
[7:29]So I loved it.
[7:30]Well, tell Paul, he did, he did well.
[7:33]And that one's about having your chi aligned and all of those really got to me out toward
[7:38]the end.
[7:39]So those, it was such a perfect framing device for it too because I felt like in the reading
[7:44]of the book, that kept bringing me back to not only the real, I think it did bring me
[7:51]back to the realness of what you were sharing like that this, this book is fiction.
[7:57]But it is true because there is so much truth inside of it.
[8:01]And really, really enjoyed that.
[8:03]I wanted to talk briefly.
[8:06]So when it Zibi interviewed you a few years back, you were planning the premise for this
[8:11]novel, what you were planning on working on was different.
[8:14]And so I was surprised now, how did that happen?
[8:17]Did you attempt the other project and then go a different direction?
[8:22]Yeah, I can tell you what happened.
[8:24]I was working and still am working on a couple of other other projects.
[8:29]The one I spoke to Zibi about was more historical fiction and that when I'm still working
[8:35]on, but like many other writers when the pandemic hit, I couldn't write anything, reality
[8:43]it was just too much and I couldn't even imagine a world beyond the one I was living
[8:51]and my agent called me off and said, Hey, how's it going?
[8:55]What are you working on?
[8:57]And I unloaded and then he stepped back and said, Okay, that was a loss.
[9:04]I think it was more than he expected.
[9:07]Totally.
[9:08]Why don't you just sit down because I had been telling him about it.
[9:11]Some of the things going on.
[9:12]We were taking care of my in laws who were older and declining and health and it was
[9:19]stressful and the world was falling apart and he said, Just write down life happening.
[9:26]Take note like a journalist and so I started to do that and that's when I realized a big
[9:32]part of writing is just showing up, just showing up and writing and so I did that and
[9:39]I had a hundred pages and I said, All right, here's my memoir, but then we shifted
[9:45]into it.
[9:46]You can imagine my editor's response, Oh, a pandemic memoir, yeah, yeah, please, fantastic.
[9:56]We've heard enough.
[9:57]We want to escape until I did escape and it was.
[10:00]able to get out of my bubble and just create this completely fictional account where I do
[10:05]horrible things to people who resemble my family members. But in the end, are we coming through it?
[10:12]You do. It is such a strange exercise. It feels like to shift from writing things that actually
[10:18]happened to shift to, oh, I can make whatever I want happen in here. And so what fits this story best.
[10:26]So it's I really like the way that this book captures messiness. Because I feel like that is
[10:36]you can keep a clean house, but you can never keep the messiness out of our relationships and
[10:42]ourselves. And so I thought that that this did such a good job. Are you a person? That's actually
[10:49]a good point because the Washington Post that cited my book this weekend, they call it a no-worthy book
[10:56]for July and August. So exciting that it the joy of Cameron's novel is a chaotic messiness
[11:04]of a blended family that comes together and love and laughter and I kind of love the way that
[11:08]summed it up. So it is that chaotic messiness and there always is that. Yes. But if at the root,
[11:16]you're honest and authentic, you can get through it. Yes. Oh, I love that chaotic messiness. It's so
[11:23]and it's so true to life. We all experience that, right? Even when you're in seasons that are
[11:28]maybe less volatile than others, there's still just the messiness of our internal selves, too,
[11:34]that's always informing that. I really loved one of the lines that you wrote, it was early in the book,
[11:41]but you wrote, we think we know our spouse is better than they know themselves. Because in a way,
[11:47]we create them as if before us, they were waiting to be brought to life. And I have to tell you,
[11:54]I highlighted that, I've dogged the page, and I have been turning it over in my mind
[12:00]as since I read it because I, you know, I say that my husband is a militant minimalist,
[12:06]which he is, but I also have my own control freak sides. And reading that was so,
[12:13]I was so fascinated by that. Was that something, I mean, things like that sort of
[12:17]insights that you put in, is that something you see in yourself? Where do you pull that for a novel?
[12:22]That did come from myself and the way that I knew Paul, and especially since we, too,
[12:31]our fathers who came out later in life, we weren't our full selves before we married each other.
[12:39]And I feel like in a way, we create that image of the person that we love by loving them.
[12:49]And they truly didn't exist in that way before us. That's the way I see it. And other people might
[12:56]see it another way. But for me, that's what it is. And it's also the absorbing of his memories and
[13:03]experiences. We have talked so much about everything that he's done, what his family has done.
[13:10]I have watched old home movies. And I do forget, wait a minute, was that my memory or was
[13:16]that his? And I think that's what I do is when you meet the person you're supposed to be with,
[13:23]you want to be them in a way. You want to completely be them. And I think that's how we create them.
[13:32]Does that ever weigh on you? Because listening to that, listening to you say that makes me realize
[13:41]that I feel that way. And the fact that I can never fully inhabit the mind of this person that I
[13:49]love so much, sometimes that feels sad to me. Does that resonate for you at all?
[13:55]It does resonate for me because I want to understand really all is very good at
[14:02]being this happy-go-look, lucky person. And I want to know when he is genuinely hurting.
[14:10]And he doesn't always show that. And I think that for me is sad. And I think even worse is when
[14:18]I might say or do something that hurts him. And I want to know how that feels. But there's
[14:26]another part of me who does not want to know all of his thoughts. No, it's so true. It's the
[14:33]dance of intimacy, right? Where it's like, I need to be close to you, but there's a, there's a two
[14:39]close that wouldn't be good for us because I would know too much. Right? Gosh, I just, I love thinking
[14:47]about those sorts of journeys in our lives. And I think you put so many really effective words
[14:55]to it because you did meet him later in your life when you weren't. And until then, you had
[15:01]been shielding this part of yourself. So to have that wholeness and fullness in your relationship,
[15:07]I would imagine is a very beautiful thing for the two of you. It is. And our families are totally
[15:14]enmeshed. I mean, not our families. We just call them our family. Yes. Also, yeah, it is, it is a
[15:23]really great place. The wonderful chaotic messiness of living with people. Yeah, I wanted to talk to
[15:31]about, I listened to I read your modern love column, which still after all this time is just so
[15:38]wonderful. And I want to go back and read your memoir after listening to the interview with
[15:43]and also just learning about that. So I read the column and then Anna Martin interviewed you
[15:49]last year because it had been 15 years, which also just the passage of time as I get older is
[15:57]really incredible. I mean, the speed at which things turn is insane. Did you enjoy revisiting that
[16:05]with her? I really did because I was in a completely different place. Also, I just love
[16:12]modern love column. Oh, yes. I've been rejected by them, which I actually was very happy about.
[16:18]All of the best of us have. And I have to tell you, I've been rejected by my love too. This was my
[16:25]third. I submit it. There are times each and then I got it. So three years, the chalk. Okay,
[16:30]I will keep that. And I love when they interview the people who have spoken, because I want
[16:35]to know where they are today. My modern love column, if you read it, is really pretty much unresolved.
[16:43]It is me leaving my ex-wife and saying goodbye to all of that. But you as a reader have no idea
[16:51]what happened past that time except this was probably one of the most was the most difficult
[16:58]thing that I have been through. And my family has been through. So I was really happy to get
[17:04]to revisit that with Anna and talk about where I am and where my kids are. And they're all happy
[17:13]and whole. And my ex-wife is now engaged to another bill. I love that detail. Yeah. And I mean,
[17:25]I turned 60 this year. I was in my 40s when that happened. I had open-heart surgery last December.
[17:34]So I saw that in the author's note that your heart almost expired was the way you put it.
[17:39]It did. I was on the final edits for the book. And I had no knowledge of anything that was
[17:48]wrong with me except for a pain in my neck when I walked. And I went for a diagnostic procedure.
[17:55]And they wouldn't let me leave the hospital. My arteries were almost 1, 100% blocked the rest
[18:01]were 80 to 90%. So it was a quintuple bypass. And that changed my life too. And it's interesting
[18:11]because in the book I talk about near me, this is the people go through these events where
[18:18]they almost die and how it changes them. And then here was fiction becoming real life.
[18:26]As I'm writing the book, it was it was very profound. Yeah. How has that changed you?
[18:33]I am much more relaxed. I am much more relaxed with this book than I was the first book.
[18:40]I worried about it. I checked the stats every day. How many reviews did I get?
[18:45]You know, all of these things, this time around, I can't change any of that. I'm in a much
[18:51]better place though. So it's it's changed in a really good way. I have such gratitude to be alive.
[18:59]I bet. Is that something that you would, how would you advise someone so based on what you're
[19:05]talking about? Like this experience versus your first and some of that's inevitable obviously because
[19:10]it's just around how our lives unfold. But what would you tell someone with a first book coming
[19:15]out? What would, how would you advise them from the place you are now? It's a waiting game. You
[19:20]think when you get your book, when it's bought by a publisher, you think this is it. Now it's
[19:26]all going to move ahead. No, every step of the way is a waiting game. So don't stress over that.
[19:33]You're going to experience it. You're, you're going to want to hear more. You're going to want
[19:37]to be in more lists. You're going to compare yourself to everybody else. But don't do it
[19:43]because you are doing the best that you possibly can. And second, keep writing. When you turned
[19:50]into your book, work on the next one. I didn't do that with my first one. And then I found myself
[19:57]years later writing this one that
[20:00]I had to get done in five months.
[20:01]Oh wow. So it's important that you just keep writing even as your first book is getting
[20:07]published. And I think you're a good literary citizen, you know, read other books, promote
[20:14]other books, promote other authors because that rising tide lifts all ships.
[20:19]Yeah. Oh, that's really excellent advice. And you're still right. I think sharing other
[20:25]authors working promoting other authors is also such a tonic for the tendency toward
[20:31]comparison. And you know, because I don't think we mean to do it to the ego maniacs, yes,
[20:36]but we do. I mean, you just can't help it. It's such a, well, and I mean, you're an IT.
[20:42]So I also want to talk to you about that because your day job is so fascinating to me.
[20:47]How does that does that tie in for you at all with the like social media? Well, first of
[20:53]all, tell me what you do, because you wrote in the, in your bio that it's about the, let's
[20:59]see the perils of social engineering in cybersecurity. What does that mean? I don't understand.
[21:09]It is so relevant to what I write about because I write about identity and the way that
[21:16]people pretend to be people they're not, or love, or to gain trust, or for some gain,
[21:25]or just to hide who they are. So a lot of my writing is about identity. I'm an IT director
[21:33]for an economic consulting firm. Okay. And cybersecurity is very important. And I had that
[21:41]up for the firm and the way that most firms will be hacked or breached is through someone
[21:49]pretending to be somebody they're not. And someone will trust them and give them something. It
[21:54]happens with fish and emails. It happens through social media as well. This is the number one way
[22:02]that that happens. It also happens in personal relationships. I experience a cat vision incident,
[22:11]picture with stolen. That's in the first book. And I think I've had like 30 women. And if you
[22:16]men now contact me and say they've had an online relationship with somebody who used my stolen
[22:22]photo to catfish them. And they haven't lost money, but they've lost maybe something more valuable
[22:30]there, trust and emotion. So the two do dovetail. And I actually use that experience to welcome
[22:42]every new employee. So that they'll remember and they have a fate, my face, the face of deception.
[22:49]Yes. To remember, the face of deception. Welcome to our company. Yes. And I'll be managing
[22:57]your data. But you can trust me. Have a great day. That is, I will say, when you talked about that
[23:06]in your interview with Zibi, I said out loud to myself, what I just could. I mean, it's so it's so
[23:14]true. Okay. Thank you for explaining to me what that meant. I've learned so much now. But it is,
[23:20]it's an interesting time. I mean, we just live in this crazy time. So how we absorb some of
[23:28]these technological advancements that do have potential to give us life and give us connection.
[23:35]And then also take things from us like our trust. And so yeah, it's gosh, I always think about
[23:43]that right now. Like people that lived 50 years ago, did they feel like the world had changed
[23:47]as much in those 50 years as we do now? But no one came out to that question for me.
[23:53]I'll work on it. Maybe I need to be a journalist. But I do think the tale of sort of scamming people
[24:00]and pretending to be someone you're not goes back to the beginning of the time. Doesn't it?
[24:05]It just technology makes it easier. Yes. 30 women. Wow. Well, I do say you do have a wonderful face.
[24:13]so I could see how someone would say, this is the one I'm going to use. Thank you. I asked,
[24:19]I asked a couple of them. Why? And I said, your face is non threatening. And that was their
[24:25]response. Or there was a vulnerability. So right. It's it wasn't, oh, you're really handsome.
[24:36]Man, I mean, really, could they just have told you a little like a softball?
[24:41]Why? They're right. Like you're the most handsome man I'd ever seen. Well, I think at that point,
[24:45]they were going to be very honest. Oh, I can only imagine so. So in your life right now,
[24:51]what's your favorite thing about being a writer? Now it's interesting. Now I have embraced fiction.
[24:57]And I love it was scary before because I needed the structure of non fiction and we're to
[25:04]right. Okay. And I still do that in essays, but working on novels now, it's the ability to
[25:12]create an entire world and live in it. And it's experienced it as someone else. So again, I'm doing
[25:19]this with ideas. But they really do seem to live in my head for a while. And it's really enjoyable
[25:29]to go to that place and know that I even if it isn't non fiction, it's emotionally true.
[25:40]Yes. I love that. Is Paula reader? He is a reader. Okay. Does he typically doesn't really
[25:47]read a lot of non historical non fiction? He's very interested in, and he can tell you about
[25:57]all of the different figures and the monarchy in Britain. And wow, when they lived and he knows
[26:05]the flags of all the countries, he's just that type of person. Where I remember everything everybody
[26:12]says. Yes, you said you have a very good memory. Is that still true for you? Yeah, it is.
[26:18]It is. And sometimes that's good. Sometimes it's not so good because that language might show up in
[26:24]fiction where I've used something that somebody has said. Interesting. I didn't even think about that.
[26:31]Yes, retaining that. I was thinking more that I'm a person with a good memory. And the part I don't
[26:36]love is when my greatest hits of embarrassment start rolling at like 2 a.m. right when you're not sleeping.
[26:43]That kind of vibe. So that's always fun. Why did I say that in 2005?
[26:52]Most writer with horse sponges. We just absorb everything. It's so true. What do you think is the
[26:58]most challenging thing when you are in the thick of it? Because I know you mentioned in the
[27:01]acknowledgements that toward, you know, in the writing process, you are in your head quite a bit.
[27:06]So how do you, is that something you combat or do you just lean into it? Does that bother
[27:12]Pollard? Is he okay with that? I mean, how does that work? He is okay with it. I do have my writing
[27:20]process is to get up early five or six and write for a couple of hours before I go to work.
[27:27]So I'm typically doing that in the morning. I roll out of bed and do it. By the end of the day,
[27:34]I can't really write anything because I'm just like burn out by that point. But on the weekends,
[27:39]too, especially when the developmental edits come back in my deadline and I've really got to work
[27:46]on it. I do tend to ignore other things that are going on around me. But my family is very
[27:53]accepting, unfortunate. My kids are all grown. You know, if I was a young parent, that would be
[28:00]really difficult. But at this point, I can do that and Paul is aware of that. It's truly important
[28:07]to me. Yeah. What a gift to have that freedom and space in your life. And it is. It sounds like it was
[28:17]just so well-earned. But I also love you said it in the first podcast. And I think it's where we
[28:22]we should end today. When you talked to Zibi about how it is never too late, that there are so
[28:30]many gifts that you are experiencing to what you're saying right now where, you know, maybe there's
[28:34]a little less chaos or it's easier for you to kind of withdraw and do what you need to do.
[28:39]And that wouldn't have been the case for you earlier in life. So is that something you talk about a
[28:45]still just it not being too late? Oh, yeah. I do. I mean, I came out at 43, kind of married for the
[28:54]second time at 47, published my first book at 55 and now my first novel at 60. And I plan on continuing
[29:03]to try and achieve those milestones. And in a way, I have so much more experience to draw from now.
[29:11]So it really is never too late. And it's also what I'm writing about in my next book of fiction.
[29:21]It's the man who goes through open-heart surgery and wakes up to the world. And so I'm using that
[29:28]personal experience for my gain and my writing. Oh, I love it. I was going to ask what you were working
[29:35]on next. That is that is so wonderful to hear waking up to the world. Gosh, something we're just
[29:42]constantly doing. Well, this has been a joy to talk to you. One final important question. What is
[29:49]your least favorite cottage rule? Or what is the one that's hardest for you to follow?
[29:54]When the house is full, getting everybody's permission to use the bathroom.
[30:00]Sometimes they're round of the clubhouse.
[30:02]Yeah. I mean, we got to do what we got to do.
[30:05]It's right. We've got to pull down the street with some restrooms there.
[30:08]Like, I love it.
[30:12]Oh, well, this has been such a joy to talk to you.
[30:15]This book, The Way Life Should Be, is a beautiful end of summer read.
[30:21]I think it's coming out at the perfect time in the year.
[30:24]There's something about the end of summer that just feels so right for this one.
[30:29]So I'm wishing you all the luck and thanks so much for talking with me and just sharing who you are and about this book.
[30:36]It's wonderful.
[30:38]Thank you, Julie. I've loved it.
[30:40]Me too.
[30:42]Thanks for listening to this episode of Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books.
[30:46]Don't forget to follow me on Instagram at ZB-O-N's and at Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books.
[30:51]Also sign up for my newsletter at ZB-O-N's.com
[30:54]and sign up for my virtual book club and meet lots of authors on Zoom every other week.
[30:58]Thanks so much to Steve and Ryan at Texture Sound for the Sound Editing.
[31:02]And thank you to Morning Moon Productions for providing this fantastic intro and outro music.