Miriam Landis, LAUREN IN THE LIMELIGHT
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[1:03]Mariam Landis is the author of Lauren in The Limelight.
[1:06]Mariam is a faculty member at the Pacific Northwest Ballet.
[1:10]She was lit camp fellow and an assistant editor at Simon & Schuster, Hyperion, and the Amazon
[1:14]books team.
[1:15]A Stanford grad, she was also a student at the School of American Ballet and a professional
[1:20]ballerina with Miami City Ballet.
[1:22]When not writing teaching or dancing, she enjoys life on Lake Washington near Seattle, alongside
[1:27]her husband and four children.
[1:29]In addition to Lauren in The Limelight, she is the author of two young adult novels, Girl
[1:33]in Motion, and Girl on Point, previously published as Breaking Point.
[1:36]Welcome, Mariam.
[1:37]Thank you so much for coming on Momstone.
[1:38]I have time to read books to discuss Lauren in The Limelight.
[1:41]I'm thrilled to be here.
[1:42]Thank you so much for having me, Zippy.
[1:44]I've listened to your podcast forever.
[1:46]So it's really amazing to be here myself.
[1:48]Oh, thank you.
[1:50]I'm always open for tips and improvements, whatever I can do from someone who listens regularly.
[1:55]So, you know.
[1:56]Oh my gosh.
[1:57]Oh, we've welcomed.
[1:58]Oh, I love it.
[1:59]I'll ponder that, but no, I just, I get so much pleasure out of it.
[2:02]You feel like you're really part of a community of writers and just everything you do.
[2:06]I mean, I feel connected to all the different arms of your organization and I just thank
[2:10]you to the best job.
[2:11]Oh, thank you.
[2:12]Thank you.
[2:13]Thank you.
[2:14]Okay.
[2:15]Lauren in The Limelight.
[2:16]This is your third book, First Middle Grade.
[2:19]You had two other, all of which have beautiful ballet imagery.
[2:22]Yeah.
[2:23]That's what's ballet.
[2:24]Oh my gosh.
[2:25]Okay.
[2:26]Talk about this specific book, but I want to hear about your whole career and everything.
[2:28]Okay.
[2:29]All right.
[2:30]Yeah.
[2:31]So, so many things I could interview you.
[2:32]I have something to question.
[2:33]It's for you.
[2:34]So this book in particular, it is my first middle grade.
[2:37]It centers around three young dancers who all live on Mercer Island, which is where I live,
[2:43]which is a small suburb right outside of Seattle.
[2:45]It's about 10 minutes across the bridge to downtown Seattle.
[2:49]And they go to a very small town ballet school here on Mercer Island.
[2:53]The book chronicles the year that they go on point, which for ballet dancers, that's
[2:58]a really big.
[2:59]It's like the bottom.
[3:00]It's for year.
[3:01]You know, you get your punches.
[3:02]It's a really big deal.
[3:03]So it follows them through that year and during that year, they also auditioned for the
[3:07]Pacific Northwest Ballet School, which is where I've been on the faculty for 13 years.
[3:12]So I kind of know that spot.
[3:14]And they also prepare for their school's performance of Alice in Wonderland.
[3:18]Oh, so and the book is really, you know, I spend a lot of time with kids this age
[3:24]since I teach them.
[3:25]And I'm also I'm also momma for I have 11 year old twins and a six and an eight year old.
[3:30]Oh, my gosh, I you know, this, this is you're the only person I feel you've ever met with
[3:35]like such a similar breakdown, you know, oh, my gosh, but you don't, you do don't have
[3:40]twins.
[3:41]I do.
[3:42]I do.
[3:43]I do.
[3:44]You do.
[3:45]Yeah, I have 16 year old twins and almost nine year old and a 10 year old.
[3:48]You're the only person I've ever met who had twins and kept going.
[3:52]There are others, most people like they get to their twins and they're like, goodbye.
[3:57]Yeah.
[3:58]So that's that's yep.
[3:59]Okay.
[4:00]So you know, so and all four of them are students at the Pacific Northwest Ballet School.
[4:04]They're all girls.
[4:05]No, there's one boy.
[4:06]The twins are boy girl.
[4:07]Okay.
[4:08]The twins are in the Nutcracker this year, which is super follows their school.
[4:11]So we're like the Vontrap family dancers, it's a little cheesy right now.
[4:14]I'm sure we're going to outgrow it.
[4:16]There's a lot of ballet, there's a lot of ballet feelings in this house.
[4:20]How does yours been?
[4:21]Has nothing.
[4:22]I was going to ask how he feels.
[4:23]Oh, gosh, especially after this book tour, he's like, I don't wear ballet.
[4:26]I mean, he's a, he's a physician.
[4:28]So he's just like, can we please like, they're all acting out the Nutcracker in the living
[4:33]room and we have five ballet schedules.
[4:36]Oh, my gosh.
[4:37]Well, my little guys are in the midst of the little mermaid and we have acting class here
[4:41]every Tuesday with like eight kids and like, like screaming singing through the house.
[4:47]You know, oh, my gosh, it's like, how does your husband like that?
[4:51]He's always just like, okay, so it's very loud.
[4:54]The noise canceling headphones, exactly.
[4:57]Exactly.
[4:58]Wow.
[4:59]So in the midst of all this, you're writing and, you know, when did you do this, but
[5:05]like when did you write the book?
[5:06]Like when did you write the book?
[5:07]Yeah, when did you write the book?
[5:08]Okay.
[5:09]All of it predates the kids like the family, the whole thing, the ballet, like that's
[5:13]like goes back to, you know, my childhood.
[5:16]So I can never really shake it.
[5:18]Yep.
[5:19]This book in particular, I wrote it during the pandemic when you can probably relate to
[5:23]this.
[5:24]I have four kids at home, 23 or seven on Zoom school and it was super fun.
[5:29]I had to make my own fun.
[5:31]So I had actually been working on adult fiction for a while and trying to get an agent
[5:35]for a long time and getting close, but no cigar.
[5:38]So I consider that sort of my big training novel and I put it in a drawer and I was like,
[5:43]I'll just write another ballet book because I had done these the other two or 20 years
[5:47]old.
[5:48]And then I thought about it in here, my kids are 11.
[5:51]Are they going to continue ballet, is my daughter going to go?
[5:54]So I'm like, that's the age group I didn't get before because that book is when they're
[5:58]16 to 18 and this one, there's like 18 to 20.
[6:02]So I was like, Oh, I missed that big year where they go on point.
[6:05]So kind of in a fairly short amount of time, maybe five months, I wrote Lauren in the
[6:11]line line and then I spent two years clearing it and there's a whole backstory to the book.
[6:16]I mean, I'd love to talk about what's in the book because I think that that's probably
[6:19]the most interesting.
[6:20]Yeah.
[6:21]But this book has been a huge journey because and actually all these books have been a huge
[6:25]journey because forever the publishing industry has told me ballet is Tunisj, ballet is Tunisj.
[6:33]One of the reasons that I started writing them initially is that there is almost nothing
[6:37]to comp them on the shelf.
[6:39]So if you go to the dance section, you find, you know, children's books that are illustrated
[6:45]about dance and then you find nonfiction memoirs of famous dancers, history of the Great
[6:50]Ballets.
[6:52]And there's a few, you know, middle grade YA, but again, when I was even querying to come
[6:57]up with comm titles, it was like ballet shoes from 1970 or, you know, there's very
[7:03]low on what there is there is not mostly not written by dancers in the way that like
[7:09]I'm so deeply enmashed in the dance world, like I lived and breathed it every 45 years.
[7:15]You're like, the ultimate dance moms is you, that actually I'm going to have nightmares
[7:22]that you said that because I'm so not a dance mom.
[7:27]I'm kidding, I'm kidding, I know, but you know what I mean, like this is, I'm so in the
[7:31]culture that that is like a, and I love dance moms, I mean, I love them, but I also am
[7:37]prickly about the stereotypes and the caricatures and anybody that you talk to who's in
[7:42]the dance community, which the dance community is a really small type, you know, it's like
[7:46]when you see your fellow Jews, you're like, oh, you're a fellow, you know, it's a really
[7:50]tight community and I mean, I remember when the movie center stage came out, I was dancing
[7:55]in Miami City Valley at that time and a lot of my friends who I was at ballet school
[7:59]with were in that movie and we were all like, okay, this movie is finally going to tell
[8:03]our stories finally going to show what our experience is like without sensationalizing it
[8:10]or care concerning us or whatever.
[8:12]And I mean, I know that's a cult classic, but none of them ever quite hit the note I wanted
[8:18]to see, but I felt like reflected my experience in who I was authentically as a person,
[8:23]not just a dance stereotype or something.
[8:26]So these books just felt like I wanted, well, the older ones were more like I was writing
[8:31]for my younger self.
[8:32]This one, I just want my students to feel seen, my kids to feel seen that when I was
[8:37]a kid, if you saw someone like you in a book, you felt seen, you felt safe, like there was
[8:44]a place for you in this world.
[8:45]And I just have never seen characters like this in a book and so that felt super important
[8:50]to me.
[8:51]So delve more deeply, go into plotting how you found the plot, like the characters, like
[8:56]what you're most excited about, like what should I know about this book that they now have
[9:02]to run down the streets, ballet dancer or not or maybe they have to twirl.
[9:07]We're all down the street.
[9:08]You're so good with the pitch.
[9:09]Okay.
[9:10]Twirl down the street.
[9:11]Okay.
[9:12]So there are three characters in the book.
[9:13]There's Lauren, obviously, Lauren, all three kids basically represent a big lesson that
[9:17]they need to learn, that they learn by the end of the book.
[9:19]So Lauren is the dancer who she's grown up in Mercer Island.
[9:23]It's always come easy to her.
[9:24]She walks into her studio.
[9:25]She's the best.
[9:26]She never has to try very hard.
[9:28]But her parents don't really have, they don't really want her to continue because financially
[9:33]it's expensive.
[9:34]The dad works in the arts and thinks it's a terrible career.
[9:38]And so that's Lauren.
[9:40]And then we have the new girl, sort of the inciting incident at the beginning is this new
[9:43]girl named Serena arrives from New Jersey.
[9:46]And she's the best.
[9:47]And she walks in and we've all had that experience for, you know, you get really comfortable
[9:50]than someone is way better than you.
[9:52]And so Serena is very talented.
[9:55]Her mother was a professional dancer.
[9:57]And so she's also sort of...
[10:00]the most traumatized of the kids because her brother,
[10:02]not to spoil, but her brother had passed away.
[10:04]And so the family's moved sort of because of that.
[10:07]And her mom is wants her to dance.
[10:09]This is taking out a lot of her trauma on her child.
[10:13]So Serena has all the skills,
[10:14]but maybe it isn't really in her heart to do that.
[10:18]And then the third character,
[10:19]which is like a whole father conversation is Brian.
[10:22]Brian is a black boy who also wants to dance on point.
[10:26]And this is probably the hardest character to write.
[10:29]And then when I felt the most scared to write,
[10:30]especially in today's climate,
[10:32]if you're a middle-aged white woman,
[10:33]write about a black 12 year old who wants to,
[10:36]in some point, you're gonna be, you know,
[10:38]I just knew that I would be up against a lot there,
[10:41]but I also felt like if I didn't write him,
[10:43]who was gonna write him,
[10:44]he's never gonna appear in a book.
[10:46]And especially where I work at PMB,
[10:49]within the dance community,
[10:50]PMB has really been on the forefront of inclusion
[10:52]and really allowing dancers to do things
[10:55]that they haven't done in the past.
[10:56]We have non-binary dancers in the company
[10:59]who perform on point.
[11:00]And it just felt super important to include him,
[11:04]he's a him in this book.
[11:06]And Brian's journey is really about,
[11:08]has nothing to do with skin color or point shoes
[11:11]or anything like that.
[11:12]But it's really about being,
[11:15]learning to have the courage to be who you are inside,
[11:17]even if the outside world does not see you,
[11:20]the way that you see yourself.
[11:21]And that sort of Brian's journey,
[11:23]I tried really hard to get that character right.
[11:26]It was very important to me.
[11:28]So anyway, all of those kids have a lesson learned.
[11:29]Lauren needs to learn that she has to work
[11:31]if she wants to achieve something,
[11:33]if she wants to achieve excellence,
[11:34]hard work is there.
[11:35]Like you can't just walk in and, you know,
[11:37]that's a big coming of age lesson.
[11:39]Brian learns that he can be himself.
[11:43]And then Serena learns that she also can be herself
[11:45]and she doesn't have to be what her parents expect
[11:48]or dictate her to be.
[11:50]So that's kind of their story.
[11:51]It's not like a complex story,
[11:53]but for 12 year olds,
[11:54]I think it's a pretty big coming of age realization.
[11:58]And then the other thing I want to show you
[11:59]is that the book is illustrated.
[12:01]I don't know if you look through it,
[12:03]but I had this wonderful,
[12:05]it was very important to me,
[12:06]A, that it was illustrated because
[12:09]dance is so visual.
[12:11]I should have probably gone.
[12:12]I'm holding one up.
[12:13]Oh, but you have one up.
[12:14]Yeah, it's cool.
[12:15]They are at the dance door.
[12:16]Yeah.
[12:17]So Jill, Cecil and I actually dance together as kids,
[12:19]but we didn't really know each other as kids.
[12:21]But I, because dance is so visual,
[12:23]okay, so here's Brian with his point shoes.
[12:25]Oh, and we actually,
[12:29]the way that we did these illustrations,
[12:30]here's one of the three kids in front of the space needle.
[12:33]That's one.
[12:34]Yes. Making it look easy as the dancer,
[12:37]sails through the air in a sight.
[12:38]That's some sleep and total split.
[12:40]Is that even possible?
[12:41]It is because, okay,
[12:42]so the story behind the illustrations
[12:44]that's super cool is that there is a woman,
[12:47]Jenny Barlow in Salt Lake City.
[12:48]So Jill and I both grew up in Salt Lake City.
[12:51]Okay, my dad was the only rabbi in the state for almost 20 years.
[12:56]That's a story like that.
[12:58]But so that dance community is very small.
[13:00]We all knew each other as kids.
[13:01]And there's this wonderful woman who went on
[13:03]and founded her own ballet school that my dance with.
[13:06]And so we reached out to her and asked,
[13:08]could we come and photograph the students?
[13:11]So we had something to illustrate off of.
[13:12]And there was one crazy weekend where I flew to Utah.
[13:15]Jill and I went to the studio.
[13:17]And these students actually acted out the story
[13:19]of Lauren and the Wineway and we photographed it.
[13:22]And then that's, I mean,
[13:24]in a perfect world, there would have been 50 illustrations.
[13:26]But we had these wonderful kids who were so excited about,
[13:29]I mean, that's when I knew the book kind of had to be
[13:31]because all these kids were like,
[13:33]you know, this is our story.
[13:34]Oh, that's amazing.
[13:36]So anyway, yes, that image that you held up
[13:38]is actually taken off a photograph of real kids doing it.
[13:42]And I was very inspired by those kids.
[13:43]I mean, I went home and wrote another draft of the book.
[13:45]That's really the character of Brian really evolved
[13:48]because of Eli, the kid who was Brian that that photo shoot.
[13:51]It really just helped me see those characters super clearly.
[13:55]Wow.
[13:56]So I've been hearing because, you know,
[13:58]I'm actually trying to sell a middle grade novel right now.
[14:00]Oh yeah, we could talk about that.
[14:02]I've heard, you know, I keep hearing how this market
[14:05]for middle grade fiction is so hard.
[14:08]And it's like collapsing, you know, in this dire state.
[14:11]You know, tell me about how you got the book published
[14:14]and your journey to that.
[14:15]Did you hear things like that?
[14:18]How did you persevere?
[14:19]Because here you have this absolutely beautiful package.
[14:22]I mean, it's for those listening.
[14:24]The book is like, it's a hardcover, you know,
[14:26]paper overboard, glossy, and it looks gorgeous.
[14:29]You know, it's a beautiful package.
[14:31]So thank you.
[14:32]Talk about that.
[14:33]Okay, so we can talk about that.
[14:34]So actually, especially because I know this is a podcast
[14:38]for readers, but I know a lot of writers listen to it too.
[14:41]And it's very much surrounded in a lot of love
[14:44]from the writing community.
[14:45]This book, I published this book.
[14:47]Yourself, I started my own publishing house.
[14:50]This is why I think I reached out to you
[14:52]like years ago and said, do you ever have time
[14:53]for a 15 minute mentorship call?
[14:55]So sorry, I did not know that.
[14:57]It's not on your website.
[14:58]I didn't remember that you said that.
[15:00]I feel terrible.
[15:01]No, I am not public about that.
[15:03]Okay.
[15:04]Like, did I miss something big?
[15:06]Oh my goodness.
[15:07]No, you did not.
[15:07]I mean, okay, so the other thing to know about my background
[15:10]is, yes, I danced, you know, I trained at School of American
[15:12]Ballet, I danced Miami City Ballet,
[15:14]but then I had a 10 year gap where I was out of the ballet
[15:16]industry and I went to college.
[15:18]I went to Stanford and then I worked in book publishing.
[15:21]I did read that.
[15:21]Yes.
[15:22]Okay, so my first internship was with Alice Mayhew,
[15:25]which I don't know if people know who she is,
[15:27]but she was like the heavy hitting nonfiction editor
[15:30]at Simon Shuster for decades.
[15:32]And I, you know, recopied her role at X.
[15:35]I mean, I was a fly on the wall in her office
[15:37]for a long time and then I worked at Hyperion
[15:40]with some of her other mutual friends.
[15:42]Welsh wall, he was with my boss at one time.
[15:44]And just I have been very fortunate to be in the room with
[15:48]the people that do the big things.
[15:50]And so I sort of felt like I'd spent decades of my life
[15:54]preparing when I finally reached the moment where I was like,
[15:57]well, nobody's going to do this for me.
[15:58]I better do it myself.
[16:00]And oh my gosh, I spent the last 30 years preparing for this
[16:03]without knowing that I was preparing for it.
[16:05]And during that time where I was working in book publishing,
[16:08]when I originally moved to New York, it was because I was
[16:09]writing that book, Girl in Motion.
[16:12]Because when I left ballet, you know, any professional
[16:16]dancer leaves ballet, it's like this crack of your identity
[16:18]where you're just like, who am I, what am I doing?
[16:20]So the way I dealt with it was I wrote about it.
[16:23]And so I had it in my mind.
[16:24]I was going to write this book.
[16:26]And when I was in New York, I actually had an agent who,
[16:29]at the time she and I were just young assistants going
[16:31]and getting drinks in New York, but she's now
[16:32]one of the biggest agents in the industry, fabulous.
[16:36]And so she tried to sell, we, the first two books,
[16:39]actually, she tried to sell them.
[16:40]So this is in 2005.
[16:43]And it was right when Twilight was big.
[16:46]And we kept hearing ballet as Tunish.
[16:49]And it's too sweet.
[16:50]And I'll be very frank.
[16:52]I didn't really know how to write a novel.
[16:54]I mean, I just poured my guts on the page.
[16:55]I was 26.
[16:57]So there was room for improvement in those books.
[17:01]So anyway, we spent a year trying to sell them.
[17:03]We could not sell them.
[17:04]So I put them in a drawer.
[17:06]I ended up moving to Seattle to work on the Amazon books
[17:09]team.
[17:10]I saw that too.
[17:10]You worked for the Amazon book review
[17:12]before they did a live blogging.
[17:13]Yes, I read that.
[17:14]Yes, no, I used to blog for them when it was omnivoracious.
[17:17]Yes.
[17:17]Yeah.
[17:18]Yeah.
[17:19]I sort of was a fly on the wall everywhere.
[17:21]I did.
[17:21]I've done publishing house, Amazon, bookstore.
[17:24]I worked for Island Books forever.
[17:26]Like it's in my DNA and all this stuff.
[17:30]And so anyway, put those away.
[17:32]When I met my husband and we got engaged,
[17:34]it was right when Crete space started at Amazon.
[17:36]And I was working there.
[17:37]So my husband pulled those books out the door
[17:39]and he was like, well, let's just put them up there.
[17:42]You know how to do it.
[17:43]And you know, I think it's shifted a lot since 20,
[17:47]whatever that was, 2007.
[17:49]But there's a stigma around self publishing.
[17:52]And I had been up in the most elite rooms
[17:56]at Simon Schuster and Hyperion going with those self published.
[17:59]We were turning people down left and right.
[18:01]So to me, that just felt like I felt ashamed
[18:04]at the idea of doing that at that time.
[18:05]But when you have someone who loves you
[18:07]and believes in you, it kind of changes the game
[18:09]in a huge, huge way.
[18:11]So anyway, he talked to me to doing it.
[18:13]We self published those books.
[18:15]And like the most, I mean, they're not designed.
[18:18]They were not designed.
[18:19]These are the new additions, by the way.
[18:20]They were not designed.
[18:21]They were not, they're edited by me.
[18:23]And we just uploaded them and published them.
[18:25]And Zibi, those books sold over 10,000 copies.
[18:28]What?
[18:30]That's amazing.
[18:31]This is really good.
[18:33]I mean, Ryo, that's amazing.
[18:35]OK, so if they have any message to give anyone,
[18:37]it's that if you know who you're writing to
[18:40]and you know your audience, the publishing industry
[18:43]is just a big gatekeeper.
[18:46]Because honestly, when we're writing,
[18:47]we're writing for readers, we're not
[18:49]writing for executives who are making business decisions.
[18:53]And so I mean, so that was because I'd
[18:56]been in the ballet industry for so long.
[18:57]And there wasn't even really social media then,
[18:59]but I would put it on Facebook.
[19:01]And I had danced in so many places
[19:04]that I just knew people in all those places
[19:05]and I'd been teaching.
[19:07]So it was total word amount.
[19:09]And those books, they were not great.
[19:11]They're just word-o-competitiveers.
[19:13]There's just nothing on the shelf next to them.
[19:16]And there also aren't a lot of former dancers
[19:18]who are writing, at least not at a former professional
[19:21]dancers, like you could line us up in a short row.
[19:25]And so anyway, those books went away.
[19:27]I went on.
[19:27]I had four kids.
[19:28]I did a lot of other things and then started writing again.
[19:31]So I'm sorry, no, I need to get through my story.
[19:34]But after queering, Lauren, the lime white for two years,
[19:37]I was like, OK, this time I'm going to start over.
[19:40]I'm going to do this the right way.
[19:42]I'm older.
[19:42]I know what I'm doing.
[19:43]I know the writing is better.
[19:44]Kept hearing the same, no, no, no.
[19:46]And then I had this moment where I read this article about a woman
[19:49]who went viral on TikTok and got her book deal.
[19:52]It's like a YA book.
[19:54]So I was getting really creative at that point.
[19:55]I was like, OK, I'm just going to make a book trailer
[19:57]and see if I can get it to go viral.
[19:59]So made of a trailer.
[20:00]And then I know people in the ballet world in every place.
[20:04]So I had a lot of my ballet friends who have big platforms.
[20:07]I asked them, well, you're opposed to the trailer.
[20:09]So the trailer went to maybe 10 to 15,000 people.
[20:12]It wasn't huge.
[20:14]But I had a retired agent who knows the ballet industry
[20:17]contacting me and said he wanted to work with me on the manuscript.
[20:20]So we actually did a rewrite.
[20:22]So I had a lot more help that someone else believed in it.
[20:24]And then the other thing that came of that,
[20:26]this is a very strange story.
[20:27]And social media is like a whole other subject.
[20:30]But I've taught adult students forever
[20:32]for 13 years here in Seattle.
[20:34]So there's a big community of adult dancers
[20:36]who come and take my class.
[20:39]And I know them so well.
[20:41]It's a really wonderful community.
[20:42]But we don't always know who we are outside of our leotards.
[20:46]And at this time, I had this one student
[20:48]who had been to my class forever who came to me and said,
[20:50]I saw your book trailer.
[20:53]And I have a really big following on Instagram.
[20:56]Let me help you build your Instagram.
[20:58]And I, of course, was like, I mean,
[21:00]before this, my husband and I were very private,
[21:02]like it just was the most awkward sounding thing ever.
[21:05]But she was like, you have this huge community of students
[21:07]who has been in your adult class forever.
[21:10]She's like, let me just ask you questions
[21:11]about what we do in ballet class.
[21:13]So I don't know if you, I think we're friends on Instagram.
[21:16]I mean, you probably don't even read.
[21:17]But I do these videos that are, hey,
[21:19]Maryam, where's your foot in time to?
[21:22]And these videos went viral, like the first four videos
[21:25]went like to over half a million people.
[21:27]Oh my gosh, good for you.
[21:28]So at that point, I went, and I heard enough
[21:31]know about the book, but I had in my mind
[21:35]I knew how I could reach the readers
[21:38]because of the ballet community.
[21:39]And I knew like I had helped doing the social media
[21:42]aspect of it.
[21:43]And my husband came to me and he said,
[21:44]I am so tired of you hearing people tell you
[21:46]you're not good enough.
[21:47]I mean, this had been like years.
[21:49]And I mean, I think I queried like 300 agents.
[21:52]I will just say it.
[21:54]I mean, I just knew this project needed to be.
[21:56]I knew the reader.
[21:57]I was like up in front of the reader.
[21:59]But there was this big industry in the way.
[22:02]Yeah.
[22:02]And he said, well, so I just said, sorry.
[22:07]And so I started wrote it in repressed.
[22:10]I hired my own package.
[22:11]I had my illustrator.
[22:12]I hired her.
[22:13]We said, I'm not buying a new car.
[22:15]I invested in it like it was my business, just like me.
[22:19]And here we are.
[22:20]And now we've got these new additions of the old books,
[22:23]which I, that's a whole other thing.
[22:24]I went and revised them and brought them up to snuff.
[22:28]And now I have three titles.
[22:30]And I did them in the way that I wanted them to be.
[22:33]I didn't have anyone telling me what the cover
[22:35]should look like, that it needed to be more salacious
[22:38]or needed to be something that the world thinks,
[22:41]the ballet industry is, which it is not.
[22:43]Or I don't want it to be seen as.
[22:46]And so yeah, so that's my story.
[22:47]Sorry, that was a lot of talking.
[22:49]Oh my gosh.
[22:49]That's amazing.
[22:50]And how are you distributing it?
[22:51]Through Ingram and through Amazon.
[22:54]Yep.
[22:55]And I was very fortunate that I've been really involved
[22:57]in the indie book store scene here.
[22:59]For a long time, I worked for Island Books forever.
[23:02]I did their blog and newsletter.
[23:03]And I hosted their Open Book Club.
[23:05]So they were super supportive of me.
[23:07]And I just, I've spent most of my life
[23:10]just supporting other artists.
[23:12]I really believe in it.
[23:13]It's very meaningful to me.
[23:14]I'm actually a lot more comfortable
[23:16]doing the kind of thing you're doing than being the author.
[23:19]But you know, those, that energy of wanting to support
[23:22]and love others, like it comes back to you.
[23:25]And the best part of this has just been finding the community.
[23:28]I just feel like my community has grown
[23:30]and reconnecting, you know, I've done this tour
[23:32]where I basically went to all the places
[23:34]where I lived and danced.
[23:36]And just all those old connections coming back
[23:39]and has been really, really meaningful.
[23:41]And to see young dance students reading the book
[23:44]and feeling like they could talk to me
[23:46]that I wasn't the scary faculty member
[23:48]at this exclusive ballet school.
[23:51]It really gave me hope for like what the ballet world
[23:53]might be for my kids or what,
[23:56]I mean, I'm only one person that like,
[23:58]if I don't show up, who's gonna show up
[24:00]and make it better.
[24:01]So are you going to publish other people's books?
[24:04]Or are you just gonna stick with your own books?
[24:06]Or what's the, do you have a vision for it?
[24:08]Okay.
[24:09]So that's a good question.
[24:10]I've gotten that at a couple events.
[24:12]I don't know.
[24:13]That's the full on answers that I really don't know.
[24:16]I'm working on it all novel.
[24:17]I still, I would like to have more time to write.
[24:20]I mean, I didn't,
[24:21]I didn't set out to be a publisher.
[24:22]I really wanted that time.
[24:25]And also I have four young kids
[24:27]and my husband works.
[24:28]And I also have a part of time job
[24:30]that I love the teaching.
[24:32]So I don't really know.
[24:33]I feel like every few years of my life
[24:35]I've totally reinvented what the heck I'm doing.
[24:37]So I'm not opposed to it.
[24:38]I think it would have to be a book I felt as passionately
[24:40]about, it did about mine.
[24:43]But it isn't like my life aspiration to be a publisher.
[24:45]Like I'm glad I have the framework for it.
[24:47]But yeah, I don't know.
[24:48]That's my short answer.
[24:49]Okay, that's good.
[24:50]I could.
[24:51]I might.
[24:52]We'll see.
[24:53]We'll stay tuned.
[24:54]Well, I love it.
[24:54]I love your whole story.
[24:56]I'm just, you know,
[24:58]I'm so glad that our pads connected.
[25:00]I know this is still a podcast,
[25:01]but I was in Seattle last year or two years ago.
[25:08]Anyway, I never went to Mercer Island,
[25:09]but I went to Bainbridge Island like twice in two days,
[25:11]which was crazy.
[25:12]But anyway, hopefully we can,
[25:14]at some point, meet in real life.
[25:16]And let's please stay in touch
[25:17]because all the stuff you're doing is very cool.
[25:19]And I love your, you know, the dance community,
[25:23]all these micro communities are so important.
[25:26]I mean, that is producing content
[25:28]that a particular group of people love
[25:31]is the most important thing there is, right?
[25:34]And who better to know that than the person in it?
[25:36]I don't know.
[25:37]If you come to New York, by the way,
[25:39]I just saw this amazing play called How to Dance in Ohio.
[25:42]You have to go see.
[25:43]Oh, interesting.
[25:44]And one of the characters is someone
[25:46]who had been at Juilliard and got injured.
[25:48]She's like a, you know, in,
[25:50]anyway, I think you would really, it would,
[25:52]I, you know, I was in New York.
[25:53]I had, I had an event at the Cathedral flagship store.
[25:56]Oh my gosh, what a good idea.
[25:58]It was, I mean, well, that was the kind of thing
[26:00]where if you're an indie publisher, the bookstores,
[26:01]you know, there's a line out the door.
[26:02]I could not get an event.
[26:03]So on a whim, I called up the Cappuccio store
[26:05]and I talked to the manager and said,
[26:07]I know this is a crazy idea,
[26:08]but would you be willing to?
[26:09]And they were like,
[26:10]oh, I asked to go through corporate.
[26:11]That'll never happen, but I'll ask.
[26:13]This wonderful manager.
[26:14]And I forgot about it.
[26:15]I was like, oh, that'll never happen two months later.
[26:17]She called and said, can you be here in two weeks?
[26:19]So I was just in New York.
[26:20]I took the whole family.
[26:21]Oh, no, okay.
[26:22]Next step.
[26:23]I will be there again.
[26:25]I love New York.
[26:26]Anyway.
[26:27]Well, congratulations on Lauren and the limelight.
[26:29]This is such an inspiring story,
[26:31]but the story and the lessons they're in,
[26:33]but also the backstory.
[26:36]So you get a, it's like a two for one deal.
[26:39]Very cool.
[26:39]Yay.
[26:41]It's such a pleasure to meet you and thank you for everything.
[26:44]I mean, even just to support,
[26:45]I mean, to support an indie author like me,
[26:48]it just shows what a big heart you have, you know,
[26:50]like, I mean, I really treasure people
[26:53]who are not gatekeepers,
[26:54]but uplifters of others.
[26:55]And I think that that is something so special that you do
[26:58]and you're really appreciate it.
[26:59]So I probably people don't tell you that enough
[27:01]because you spend so much time appreciating other people,
[27:03]but we really appreciate you.
[27:06]So thank you, Sivi.
[27:07]Thank you.
[27:08]Thank you.
[27:09]All right.
[27:10]Great day, Liam.
[27:11]Good to meet you.
[27:11]Nice to meet you.
[27:12]Okay.
[27:13]Bye-bye.
[27:15]Thanks for listening to this episode of Moms.
[27:17]Don't have time to read books.
[27:18]Don't forget to follow me on Instagram,
[27:20]at Zibi Owens, and at Moms.
[27:22]Don't have time to read books.
[27:23]Also sign up for my newsletter at zibiowens.com
[27:26]and sign up for my virtual book club
[27:28]and meet lots of authors on Zoom every other week.
[27:30]Thanks so much to Steve and Ryan at Texturesound
[27:33]for the Sound Editing.
[27:34]And thank you to Morning Moon Productions
[27:36]for providing this fantastic intro and now trim music.