Courtney Preiss, WELCOME HOME, CAROLINE KLINE
[0:02]Hi, I'm Zippy Owens, and I am the host of this podcast, Mom's Don't Have Time to Read Books.
[0:08]I am also a newly minted USA Today best-selling author of the novel, Blake.
[0:14]I've created a whole community of book lovers around this podcast, a publishing company,
[0:19]reading retreats, a bookstore, and more. Learn more at ZippyMedia.com or follow me on social
[0:25]at Zippy Owens or join the community at Zippy Readers.
[0:31]Courtney Priest is the author of Welcome Home Caroline Klein.
[0:35]Courtney was born in Brooklyn and raised in New Jersey off the same highway 9 Bruce Springsteen
[0:39]sings about on Born to Run. She graduated from Emerson College with a BFA in writing,
[0:44]literature, and publishing. She lives in Asbury Park, New Jersey with her husband and the rescue dog
[0:49]Barry. Welcome Home Caroline Klein is her first novel. Welcome Courtney, thank you so much for coming on
[0:55]Mom's Don't Have Time to Read Books. Discuss, Welcome Home Caroline Klein. Thank you so much for having me.
[1:00]I listened to this podcast all the time and this is like a big writer dream come true to be
[1:05]chatting with you. So thank you so much for having me really. Oh my gosh. I love hearing that.
[1:10]And your book made me laugh so much. Even in the beginning when you're like, who is Ross?
[1:16]Oh my gosh. Like I laugh out loud reading your writing. Like so funny. Anyway, I just really
[1:22]appreciate your sense of humor. So that's the highest compliment to me. So thank you.
[1:26]No, it's true. It's like I'm just so funny. Okay. Why don't you tell listeners what your book is
[1:32]about, please? Okay. So welcome Home Caroline Klein is about a woman whose life in New York City
[1:38]is just falling apart in every way. She loses her job, her apartment, and her boyfriend in quick
[1:44]succession. She gets a call from her ailing father that he wants her to return to her Jersey Shore
[1:50]hometown. He doesn't want her as a caretaker though. He wants her to replace him on the men's soft
[1:58]ball team where he's been a local star for decades. And they're on the verge of a championship.
[2:03]Coming home obviously feels, you know, mortifying for her, but she really feels like she's out of
[2:09]options. So she moves back just to deal with her father's illness and this hostile team of all men
[2:15]and running into old friends turned rivals. A night gone wrong puts her in the path of her
[2:22]first love. It forces her to decide if she is willing to let go of what she thought her life might
[2:29]look like and embrace the beauty of everything it has the possibility to become. I love that. Oh,
[2:35]my gosh. You do so much to get the reader sort of in it right away in the story. And part of it is
[2:43]this horror at her dealing with her dad who has fallen down a flight of stairs. And you know,
[2:49]as her, you know, it was kind of up at eight stepmother says like he had landed in a very odd
[2:54]position. And you just as a reader, you can't help but just like freeze and think about,
[3:01]oh my gosh, what if this were to happen to my parent or my loved one and how horrible and how
[3:06]you would handle. And I love that even Caroline couldn't even tell anyone because she knew if she
[3:11]we were to say it out loud. She would start crying like over and over again. She's like, I'm
[3:14]just not going to get there. I'm just going to focus and like plow ahead because otherwise I'll be a mess,
[3:18]which of course is how we all get through life a lot of the time, right? If we just stop and think about
[3:22]it, we would not be able to keep going. Absolutely. So talk about at least like the entry point
[3:29]into the story. How you came up with this has this happened to you in some way and or is this a fear
[3:35]because of course a fear of mine. I mean, a fear everything, but just one of many fears and how this
[3:40]became a device for getting Caroline home. It's definitely a fear of mine. I'm very much playing
[3:46]on my own fear here and I assume yes, like the fear of everyone to some degree if not for
[3:52]specifically for their parents, for a loved one. I was inspired to use this as the entry point
[4:00]for the novel. I had something much less severe. Thank God happened to me on my 30th birthday.
[4:10]I was going home to my Jersey Shore hometown and I went home to watch my father play in his
[4:18]Sunday Men's Soft Folly where he has played for decades and he, you know, my adult brothers had,
[4:25]you know, joined the league after they came of age and my brothers were on the field, but my
[4:30]father had been injured, not a serious injury. Thank God, but he had been injured. So I had this very
[4:37]surreal experience of watching the game with him, which I had never done before that was very
[4:43]rare for him. So to have him on the sidelines next to me was very strange and I kind of just kept
[4:49]joking around the whole game. I was like, you know, threatening that my sister and I could take his
[4:55]place, tuck our hair up under our cats and just like take the fields, which we joked about for
[5:00]years because my sister and I are both very consummate baseball players but are not allowed to join
[5:05]this men's league. And that, you know, joke threat turned into this idea for welcome home Caroline
[5:13]Klein. I started writing it in earnest very shortly after I moved to the Jersey Shore and, you know,
[5:21]I had this long commute to my office in Manhattan and I would play around with this idealize on
[5:26]the Jersey Transit. It all started with watching a softball game with my dad. Oh my gosh, I love that so
[5:33]you also just portray heartbreak and love and miss chances and what-ifs and, you know, the futures
[5:41]that we imagine and the futures that we have, like all of that love stuff that like takes up a huge
[5:48]portion of our brains. You have that by introducing as to Caroline on the heels of this completely
[5:54]unexpected breakup, which you also make funny and like I will never look at a hamburger in the same
[5:59]way as like when she's like, why was this hamburger even there? You know, like it was such an
[6:04]unnecessary. It wasn't unnecessary. It's something really funny, like because her, her boyfriend
[6:09]breaks up with her over dinner after she's quit her job and all of this stuff and she's like,
[6:14]couldn't have maybe mentioned this like before I quit my job and you said, well, I wasn't sure
[6:18]and it wasn't just that but it was like this posh life that she had been a part of and like
[6:23]going on these fabulous vacations and, you know, access to this lifestyle that also gets snatched
[6:30]away from her and now she's just like on a friend's couch and like this is like the opposite of like
[6:37]the Hawaiian villa or whatever. Talk a little bit about, you know, expectations and, you know,
[6:43]even the notion of her sister sort of hiding her exes like into the closet on that wall or on the
[6:48]mirror wherever she puts it. Like how you store away, you know, the past pain and all of that.
[6:54]Oh, I hate to start this off and be like, oh, this happened to me too that I'm like, oh, my
[6:59]father really was injured in the softball game. But the hiding the exes ephemera is actually a
[7:06]tradition in my family and something that my mother and my sister did after my absolute worst break
[7:13]up in college when I had to just like come home and like lay face tone on the couch for three weeks.
[7:20]They took everything in my bedroom that had anything to do with this ex and they hit it in the
[7:27]back of my sister's closet and, you know, I came home and my room was empty and, you know,
[7:33]many months or years later I was in my sister's closet for something and was met with an
[7:39]avalanche of everything from this past relationship. And I was just like, what is this
[7:45]museum of me going on in here? She's like, oh, yeah, we're trying to start trying this
[7:50]burial. But yes, I do think that getting your heart broken and going through these like ups and
[7:56]downs with love and relationships is so like when you're able to take a step back, like there's
[8:02]so much of it that's like so funny, right? Like in the moment, like it's so devastating and dark
[8:09]and when you're able to like take even a half step back and just kind of observe yourself from
[8:14]that perspective, you're just like, this is deeply hilarious. Like the time needs to pass,
[8:20]but I'm a big believer in letting that time pass and turning whatever hurt you into comedy,
[8:26]which is, you know, very hairy fish or ass, right? Take your take your broken heart, turn it into
[8:32]art. You know, this was a top of mind for me while I was writing the opening of the novel,
[8:37]but it's coming to me later on, especially as, you know, I've talked to film agents, like we've
[8:42]had some conversations around adaptation and the way that I've come to describe that opening scene
[8:48]is, you know, she goes through a through an elbow, she was like Elwood's ask moment. And, you know,
[8:55]I think that that's just such an interesting catalyst and such like a memorable catalyst, right?
[9:01]Like who doesn't, who doesn't remember Elwood's getting broken up with an legally blonde,
[9:05]she thinks she was about to get proposed to Caroline thinks that she's, you know,
[9:09]hot on the heels of moving to the west coast and living in this beautiful historic apartment with
[9:17]this, you know, man who's the son of two doctors, it's every Jewish girl's dream. And yes,
[9:25]it all falls apart. And she's, you know, looking down at her plate and she's like,
[9:29]I'm so embarrassed by the woman who ordered this hamburger and champagne mere moments ago,
[9:36]thinking her life was going well. And now I'm just sitting here heartbroken, man out the door,
[9:44]you know, I think it's really, I hope it's relatable. I hope that everyone who is having a hard
[9:49]moment relationship wise in love is able to know that a little while from now it will be funny.
[9:56]I promise. That's excellent advice. So funny.
[10:00]And even the notion of like, you can't go home again.
[10:04]And all that stuff, like who are you when you re-inhab it,
[10:08]a space where you used to be a certain version of yourself?
[10:11]Like my mom's apartment, she's moving and it's like,
[10:15]she's putting it on the market or whatever.
[10:17]And I'm like, how can you sell our home?
[10:19]Like maybe I should, I just said to my husband last night,
[10:22]it's like, well, maybe we should sell our apartment
[10:23]and go buy her apartment and he's like,
[10:26]I feel like you're working out some like,
[10:27]really like some stuff with this.
[10:30]You know what I mean?
[10:31]Like, is this like, why do you need to go home?
[10:34]Like, what does that mean?
[10:35]So I totally relate to this whole like,
[10:38]what is it about your child and home?
[10:40]And this like longing and yet rejection at the same time, right?
[10:44]Because you're supposed to be flying the nest,
[10:47]but then there's something so inherently comfortable about it.
[10:50]I relate to that so acutely.
[10:53]Like when my parents got divorced and they sold the house
[10:55]that we grew up in,
[10:58]my young, I'm the oldest of four children.
[11:00]My youngest brother is 11 years younger than me
[11:02]and he's like, when I'm gonna buy back that house
[11:05]and I'm like, no, you're not.
[11:07]Like, no, you're not.
[11:08]But then there's like that little piece of me that's like,
[11:10]hmm, like what if I were to re-enhabit that house?
[11:13]Like, I don't know.
[11:14]I relate so acutely to that impulse.
[11:18]So I feel you.
[11:19]It's like, how are you dismantling the museum of me?
[11:22]Are you thinking?
[11:23]Yeah.
[11:23]And who's gonna, someone else is just gonna live there?
[11:26]And then I was like, I could kind of re-do it a little bit.
[11:29]Who's real?
[11:30]Like, it's, I don't know.
[11:31]I don't know.
[11:32]I'm like deep into this.
[11:33]I'm sure I'm gonna listen to this podcast
[11:35]and be like, oh, remember that night
[11:36]when I thought about that?
[11:37]I can't believe I even talked to somebody else about it.
[11:40]No, it's good.
[11:41]It's good to have it down.
[11:42]It's good to have record of that.
[11:43]It's so, oh my gosh.
[11:46]So this is gonna sound like a stupid question.
[11:48]Like, have you always been funny?
[11:50]But like, when did you really like step into your identity
[11:55]as someone who was funny?
[11:56]If you have it, if you have yet.
[11:58]My God, I love you.
[11:59]This is amazing.
[12:00]Okay, I was obsessed with Saturday Night Live
[12:04]when I was a child.
[12:05]Like, I think that there were a bunch of dreams
[12:08]that predated becoming a novelist.
[12:12]And they all sort of like landed me here.
[12:15]And now my greatest dream is to be a novelist
[12:17]and now I am a novelist, so that's great.
[12:19]But when I was a child, I wanted to entertain, right?
[12:23]Like, I wanted to entertain.
[12:24]I wanted to perform.
[12:26]I think that I, you know, I'm like a triple threat.
[12:30]I can't say I can't act, can't dance.
[12:32]So that was like not feeling on the table for me.
[12:37]But I was definitely, like I was definitely consumed
[12:41]with comedy in that way.
[12:43]I grew up watching a lot of Saturday Night Live,
[12:46]a lot of funny movies.
[12:48]I come from a big family and everybody is really funny.
[12:51]You know, my mom said to the family as a Italian
[12:53]and my dad's side is Jewish.
[12:55]And like, both of those sort of cultural dynamics
[12:58]are very funny and then together are inherently funny.
[13:02]But yeah, I do think that the way that my dreams
[13:05]sort of evolved from like, I'm gonna be on Saturday Night Live
[13:08]when I was, you know, seven and writing sketches
[13:11]for my family, the Saturday Night Live
[13:13]wanted me to comedic novelist pipeline is so real.
[13:19]Wait, so what was the job you were taking New Jersey Transit
[13:24]to work at?
[13:25]So it's the job that I currently still work at.
[13:29]I'm the creative director at a marketing agency.
[13:32]And at the time, I had just started dating my now husband
[13:37]who at that point, he had been a close friend of mine
[13:40]for 12 years and we fell in love and we decided we decided
[13:45]that we were gonna live in New Jersey
[13:47]because he was working for his family's business
[13:49]in New Jersey.
[13:51]It made more sense than him moving to Brooklyn
[13:53]where I had lived for a decade
[13:55]and doing that sort of funny and versed commute.
[13:57]I'm like, I will move to New Jersey.
[13:59]I will only move to Asbury Park
[14:02]because Asbury Park is cool.
[14:04]So yeah, so Asbury Park to Midtown Manhattan is a long commute
[14:09]and I was taking the train.
[14:10]This was pre-COVID.
[14:11]We moved in August of 2019.
[14:14]So for a while, it was every single day on the train.
[14:19]And I didn't my day
[14:20]because it gave me a really long time to write.
[14:22]So I love that.
[14:23]Is there a stop in Asbury Park?
[14:25]Like how far is it?
[14:27]There's a stop, but it is a transfer.
[14:31]So yeah, so at the time, I didn't even have a car.
[14:36]I was really, it was really tough for me
[14:38]to get out of Brooklyn girl mentality.
[14:41]I didn't have a car.
[14:43]My husband would drop me off at the train station
[14:45]in Long Branch every day,
[14:47]which is like technically the terminus.
[14:49]It would be maybe like an hour and a half
[14:51]and an hour, 45 minutes.
[14:53]But if I really wanted to, I could walk down the street
[14:56]to the Asbury Park train station,
[14:59]take that a few stops, transfer, it's a whole thing.
[15:04]It's a whole thing.
[15:04]It's why people never leave the city
[15:06]because it's just, it's the death of ease, right?
[15:10]When you leave, getting back is just frustrating.
[15:14]So it's probably on purpose, you know?
[15:17]We want people to fight their way back.
[15:20]Correct.
[15:20]You know?
[15:21]As it should be.
[15:26]Oh my gosh.
[15:27]And do you like living there now?
[15:29]I do.
[15:30]I really love living here.
[15:31]I think at the time, look,
[15:33]I had talked to my therapist about moving for months
[15:37]and months before I actually moved.
[15:39]This was during my Saturn return,
[15:41]which is what the book is really about, honestly.
[15:43]It's the phrase that never gets mentioned in the book,
[15:46]but it is what the book is about,
[15:48]which for listeners who aren't familiar
[15:50]with the concept Saturn return is when you turn 29
[15:54]and, you know, the cosmic forces that be,
[15:57]I guess Saturn returns to the spot
[15:59]it was in when you were born.
[16:02]And it wreaks havoc on your life.
[16:04]Everything changes, everything gets up ended.
[16:06]And my life really did get offended
[16:08]when I turned 29.
[16:10]It's when I fell in love and when I moved to Asbury Park.
[16:12]So do you have a second Saturn return?
[16:15]Do you have another one at 48 or anything?
[16:17]Yes.
[16:18]Apparently you do.
[16:19]Apparently you do.
[16:20]It's every 29 years.
[16:22]It returns.
[16:23]It's when Saturn returns to the spot.
[16:26]I think it's every 29.
[16:27]I'm such an idiot.
[16:28]Wait, isn't that 59?
[16:30]59.
[16:31]58, not 48.
[16:33]Okay, 58, yeah.
[16:35]I went to Emerson, so I can't do math.
[16:37]I like waved out of math.
[16:40]58 sounds right.
[16:41]Yeah, that like Saturn returns.
[16:43]Yeah, I went 29 years.
[16:45]Wow, that's crazy.
[16:47]So when you wrote the book and you wrote most of it
[16:50]in transit, about how long did it take to write?
[16:52]I started in earnest fall of 2019
[16:56]and then COVID happened.
[16:59]And I was so anxious that I couldn't function
[17:03]for about pretty much like all of March and April.
[17:08]And then Jamie Attenberg has that 1,000 words
[17:13]of summer challenge.
[17:14]I was like, I'm getting back into this draft.
[17:17]Good for you.
[17:17]It's becoming my happy place.
[17:19]It's becoming my escape from the world around me.
[17:22]And I, yeah, so I joined her writing challenge.
[17:26]And I had never before really posted on social media
[17:31]about writing process stuff,
[17:33]because I thought that if nobody could see what I was working on,
[17:36]then nobody knows when I fail at it.
[17:38]But I started posting every day to really participate
[17:41]and connect with other folks who were doing it.
[17:44]I would post that to my Instagram story
[17:47]and be like, oh, I wrote X number of words at this time.
[17:51]And that accountability is that that's
[17:55]what I credit with being able to finish the novels.
[17:57]So I worked on it from about fall 2019 to,
[18:03]I finished the first draft the day before my 31st birthday.
[18:07]So one year from concept to draft.
[18:11]It's still really great.
[18:12]You're still so young to have this out.
[18:14]Just so you know.
[18:15]I mean, I know maybe it feels like a long time,
[18:17]but I hope you're feeling really good about it.
[18:20]That means a lot to me, so thank you.
[18:23]Coming from someone who failed to do this at about that age.
[18:27]I really wanted it.
[18:28]And I had to wait another two decades to get a look at.
[18:31]So anyway, I hope you feel good.
[18:33]Thank you.
[18:34]I really do.
[18:36]I do.
[18:37]I had wrote a book of essays that went on submission as a memoir
[18:41]and it died on submission.
[18:43]So I feel like, I don't know,
[18:45]people hate me a little bit when I'm like, oh, yes,
[18:48]this is the first time I tried to write a novel,
[18:50]but it's not the first time I tried to write a book.
[18:52]I definitely have written a book
[18:53]and had it fail spectacularly.
[18:56]So I would revive that book of essays now though.
[18:58]I bet it's really good.
[19:00]Thank you.
[19:00]Is it in your mouth to God's ear?
[19:02]I would love to revive it one day or so.
[19:04]Is it funny?
[19:06]It is funny.
[19:07]What's it called?
[19:08]It's called Sitting Ship Of For Dead Celebrities.
[19:10]That's funny.
[19:11]Thank you.
[19:14]I didn't ascend it to me.
[19:16]I will.
[19:17]Don't worry, I will.
[19:19]That's awesome.
[19:19]And what are you writing now?
[19:21]I sold this book, my real absolute dream come to you.
[19:25]I sold this book in a two-book deal to Putnam.
[19:28]Amazing.
[19:29]And so I am working on my second novel,
[19:32]which I'm still in drafting mode,
[19:34]so I probably shouldn't say too much.
[19:36]But I think that it has these hallmarks
[19:38]that will come to tie eventually all of my work together,
[19:42]complicated female protagonist,
[19:44]trying to find her place in the world,
[19:46]little bit of a family story,
[19:47]little bit of a love story,
[19:49]lots of Boise humor.
[19:52]But yeah, really my dream come true
[19:54]to be able to get to do this again for an imprint like Putnam.
[19:58]I just love them.
[19:59]Are you sad?
[20:00]Sally Kim left.
[20:01]I am.
[20:02]My editor for this book actually went to a different imprint.
[20:06]Once we were done with the editorial process,
[20:10]but still, I miss her as well.
[20:13]So her and Sally departing at similar times,
[20:17]I'm very excited for both of them though.
[20:19]And I do love the rest of my wonderful Putnam team
[20:23]that I work with.
[20:24]Putnam is awesome.
[20:25]Really great.
[20:26]That's awesome.
[20:27]OK, so advice for aspiring authors?
[20:30]Yes.
[20:32]OK.
[20:32]I highly encourage anyone who is pursuing this
[20:37]to take the class, write the fan letter, build your community.
[20:43]Writing is such a solitary act.
[20:48]You really need that community.
[20:49]And you really need other folks who understand
[20:53]what is going on, craft wise, industry wise.
[20:58]I joke all the time that I'm like, my therapist and my husband,
[21:01]like, both know what publishers marketplace is, which is weird.
[21:05]Like, you will try to clean up the people who
[21:07]your closest do in your life to get it.
[21:10]And to some extent, they will.
[21:12]But no one's really going to get it like the other writers.
[21:16]My writer friends are, I always say my writer friends
[21:18]are my favorite friends because we connect on a level
[21:21]that no one else in my life can connect on.
[21:24]Finding your people is a true gift.
[21:27]So give that gift to yourself.
[21:29]And I'd also say that confidence is really
[21:33]built when you're able to keep a promise
[21:36]that you make to yourself.
[21:37]So make the time to write.
[21:40]Make the time to keep that promise to yourself
[21:43]because nobody is going to pursue that for you.
[21:47]Be really relentless about finding that time to write
[21:51]and finishing what you start because accountability
[21:54]reads consistency and consistency.
[21:56]It's really a big key to success.
[21:58]Love it.
[21:59]That's awesome.
[22:00]Well, thank you, Courtney.
[22:01]This was great.
[22:02]Thank you so much for coming on and best of luck
[22:04]with all of it.
[22:05]I'm very excited for you.
[22:07]Thank you for having me.
[22:10]Thanks for listening to Mom's Don't Have Time to Read Books.
[22:13]If you love it, please leave a review.
[22:15]And follow us on social at Civi Owens and at Civi Readers.