A Zibby Summer Reads pick! Jamie Brenner, A NOVEL SUMMER
[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,
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[0:31]Jamie Brenner is the author of a novel summer, which is a novel, and it is also coming out
[0:37]this summer. Actually, it's out now. Jamie has been on this podcast, by the way, eight million
[0:41]times. It feels like, and her book-a-year pace has been extraordinary. She'll talk about that as
[0:48]well. Jamie is the best-selling author of seven novels, including the Forever Summer and Blush.
[0:53]She spends her winters riding in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, and her summer is visiting the beach
[0:58]that inspire her books. Welcome, Jamie. Thank you for coming back on Mom's Don't Have Time to Read
[1:02]Books for what? Is this your fourth time? I mean, this is great. I mean, I've lost count.
[1:06]Or fifth counting when you're having so much fun. Who's count to go to your having so much fun?
[1:10]Writing so many books, it's like a piece of cake. Okay, a novel summer. Tell everybody what your book
[1:16]is about. Please, your most recent book. My new book coming in July, July 16, the plot of the book
[1:24]is a novelist is called back to the beach town where she spent her college summers to help out
[1:32]at the indie bookstore there. But when she gets to town, her old friends are really upset about
[1:38]some of the things she's written in her novels, things they recognize about themselves.
[1:43]So while it's about her return to this beach town, the book is really about college friendships.
[1:50]And how the friendships we make during that time in our lives just can never be matched
[1:56]by the friends we make later in life. But also about how life tends to pull us away from those
[2:04]friends and the pursuit of our careers and our dreams that we shared so closely with people in
[2:11]college are often the very things that separate us in adulthood. And it's sort of often it's
[2:19]inevitable. But at this point in my life, I see a certain point in that in the trade-offs in life
[2:26]that we have to make. It's this time. We're all thinking so much about friends and friendships
[2:31]and how they affect us forever. And I know I've been thinking about that. I feel like everybody I talk
[2:36]to is like, okay, because I don't know, there's something also with the summertime and the end of the
[2:40]year and getting that moment to step back from craziness even though it's still crazy. And just be
[2:45]like, what did I miss this year? Did I see my friends? What's going on with my old friends?
[2:49]Yeah. And how much do you write about your friends and your people?
[2:53]Yeah. I mean, summer, you know, no matter how busy our summer makes us stop on some level and think
[2:59]of like the happiest times in our life. I think at least for most people I know and talk to about
[3:05]why do you like summer books or what is it about that? And yeah, in the past few years, you know,
[3:10]I look at my closest friends from college and high school. And remarkably, we've all found careers
[3:18]doing exactly what we said we wanted to do. You know, I have a friend who's a broadcast journalist,
[3:24]a friend who's a TV producer, you know, I write books. And at the time these goals seemed really
[3:30]lofty. And now I realize honestly, the hardest thing is just keeping in touch with people.
[3:37]And you know, we're all in different states because where we have to be for work,
[3:42]reasons or family reasons. And if we get together once every few years, we consider ourselves lucky.
[3:48]And I don't think I realized at the time that we left school, it will never be like this again.
[3:54]I knew it, you know, intellectually, but I didn't understand what that meant emotionally.
[4:01]So those were the feelings I was kind of sitting with when I started writing a novel summer.
[4:07]What about mom trenches type friendships? Definitely. It's a different type, you know, and of
[4:13]course my mom friends now that our children are just graduating college, that seems like a lifetime
[4:21]ago and that I've known them forever. And you know, when I see their grown children, I remember them
[4:27]wreaking havoc in my living room during the play days. And that's its own thing. And the fact that
[4:34]I knew that I have friends from even before that seems almost impossible to me because I can barely
[4:40]remember when my 23 year old was a baby. And yet I still have a friend that I met in a children's
[4:48]clothing store on third avenue on the upper east side called Ben's. It's now long gone. But we met
[4:54]in the aisle. And to this day, you know, she's in London. Now I go to London. She comes here.
[4:59]Mom friends, that's pretty real too. But it's still an adult friendship versus the naive
[5:09]childhood friendships. And I still in college, you know, they are still children. They're adults,
[5:15]but they're little like child adults. So the way we can find it in each other. And the way
[5:21]you know, female friendships in college can be almost like like romantic relationships and how
[5:26]they can break your heart and how attached you can feel and how heavy little things can make
[5:32]you feel so betrayed. Yes. The competition, you know, all those little things. And then you look
[5:38]back on it as adults. And what remains, you know, a lot, all the stuff that really matters.
[5:46]This is making me like during this topic. I know, but hopefully in a good way. And so basically
[5:52]in a novel summer, these three best friends, they reunite on Cape Cod. And it's three years after
[6:00]graduation. And it's really a turning point to whether or not they're going to make that transition
[6:06]from college friends to lifelong friends. And the book is about the summer where the little
[6:12]decisions they make are going to tilt the scale. So that's the essence of the book.
[6:17]And how did you come to this plot? So three years ago, oh my gosh, maybe it's five years ago,
[6:24]my friends from college, we met up in the city, one lives in DC, one lives in the suburbs,
[6:31]I was living in the city. We met up and we had, we took a picture where we recreated our graduation
[6:38]posts and together. We took a picture in this restaurant on the upper west side. And we said,
[6:44]we're not going to wait this long to do this again. And it hasn't happened again. And I have accepted
[6:51]that. But, you know, the trade off of living busy lives and pursuing the things that we need for
[6:57]our own goals or families or whatever. It's always there's a little sacrifice. And that's
[7:05]what I was sitting with when I started writing this book. It's interesting to be older,
[7:11]I'm in my 50s, and be able to write characters in their 20s because I know things they can't know
[7:19]and sort of play around with events or obstacles that tease them with what I already know is going
[7:26]to happen in life is a really fun way to sort of time travel. Like what I wish I could have told myself
[7:33]or what I try to tell my daughters that they really don't want to listen to. Well, I can
[7:38]explore that in my characters. And, you know, they're interlives versus what they're experiencing
[7:44]in the real world. So what do you really want people to know? Like, what was something you were like,
[7:50]oh, I wish my daughters would listen to me say this. Like, what do you know? I mean, obviously,
[7:56]we all know a lot more. But what I've really come to believe in life that what is meant for you
[8:03]will find you and to stress out. So I think we are raised with the illusion that if you push, push,
[8:10]push, you're going to get whatever you want. And sometimes if you're pushing really hard,
[8:15]it might just be that you're pushing in the wrong direction. And people who are very ambitious
[8:22]or type A, they feel like if something isn't happening, it's because they're not doing something
[8:30]right or they're not working hard enough. And I've really come to see that if you just take a
[8:35]step back, like the path will ease a little bit. Maybe not the path the way you wanted to direct it,
[8:43]but in a way that might get you someplace unexpectedly. And if someone told me, I remember watching
[8:51]the show 30 something, which is a big show when I was in college. And I was like, what
[8:55]have you loved? I watched it again. By the way, I got like the, I started going into it when I,
[9:02]I think like five or 10 years ago. So interesting. So good. But to be older now than them,
[9:08]whereas before I hold up. Yes, but it's just so different. You should go back and watch it again.
[9:12]Just different experience. I, I, I want you, I'm afraid I'll be such a,
[9:18]anyway, a character, a peripheral character says to the main character, life can be as simple
[9:25]as a fall. It's also easy once you just let go. And I remember that for, you know, it's been 30
[9:33]years now or something, but only recently have I started to understand how incredibly true it is.
[9:40]I wanted it to be true, but I didn't believe it. But false can hurt life hurts.
[9:46]You know, I feel like if you hold on for dear life, maybe it doesn't hurt as much.
[9:51]But I think sometimes we hold on to the wrong things. And because we, a lot of people, it's like,
[9:57]you don't want to give up. You don't want to be a quitter. You don't.
[10:00]But it's like sometimes letting go or giving up is actually being wise and brave and clearing
[10:09]the way for like whatever is supposed to be there. True. Very true. And I just that's just not,
[10:15]hey, it's not a conversation we have that often. And like I said, when you're in your 20s,
[10:19]someone tells you that you're not going to necessarily believe it. Some things you have to experience
[10:23]on your own. You need to write 50 something. Oh my gosh. Well, you know, Eric and John wrote that
[10:29]great book, fear of 50. Yeah. Which I also read when I was my 20s. And the one thing that stuck
[10:36]out from that book was she wrote the idea of marriage, like one person for your whole life. She's
[10:42]like, that just didn't work for me. She's like, but I found really worked was I had a different
[10:47]partner for like almost every decade because I was in the same person I was from 30 to 50. So I
[10:54]needed a different person by my side for like different phases of my life. And I was like, wow,
[11:01]that was like a little mind blowing. And I remember before I got married, I was like, well,
[11:06]I don't understand. Like maybe we should have like re up decided, you know, like it's not a divorce.
[11:11]It's just like every five, 10 years. Like just let's just say, are we both still in it? What do you
[11:16]think or should we try something else? Absolutely. I mean, we, we renew our passport or drivers like
[11:22]why should this massive decision be something that is made? And you know, I think it
[11:30]marriage would be so much healthier if there was built in a 10 year check-in and options to renew
[11:36]or not. Yeah. I think they're the pressure. Yeah. Well, that's like the argument now of all the
[11:41]people who are not getting married is that they can do that whenever, like I feel like a lot of
[11:45]people now are not getting, I know we're totally off topic here, but I, but I'm having a really nice
[11:50]chat. There's like this whole trend of people not wanting to get married anymore because why?
[11:58]Yeah. I mean, look, things change. I don't know. I mean, I think being totally against marriage
[12:03]is maybe cynical, but thinking marriage one marriage for life is the only way is also a little
[12:10]perhaps unrealistic for most people. So, you know, I have, my daughters are in their 20s now.
[12:17]I can't imagine, you know, my oldest daughter is the age my mother was when she had me.
[12:22]And I still see her as, you know, she's, she's, she's the kid.
[12:28]So look how much things have changed in that regard since the 70s and I think it's a positive change,
[12:34]you know, like she views her 20s as having her whole life ahead of her. I feel like my mom was
[12:39]married at 20 and she probably felt like she was behind not having me till she was 23.
[12:46]So, who knows? But, you know, 20s are a really interesting time. And I think in book publishing right
[12:52]now, you know, I've had conversations with people, editors, because TikTok is such a
[13:01]influential realm of books, you know, I've had conversations where people are like, oh, you know,
[13:08]right, don't necessarily write about older women, you know, it's also write about younger women.
[13:13]So I've had to think about like, well, what's interesting to me about writing about younger women?
[13:18]Because older women, you know, you know so much, younger women don't know as much as they think they
[13:23]know. So the way I made it interesting for myself to write about younger women is to, like I said,
[13:31]hold both in my mind at the same time and see where that tension leads narratively.
[13:38]So I'd say a novel summer is the first book where I do not have an older, wiser point of view.
[13:47]It's all three young women kind of finding their way in this time of life.
[13:54]Do you think your daughters got the messages? Like, have they read a draft? Do you think that
[13:58]Oh no, no, no. I want daughter who only reads like the most like, you know, your literary
[14:06]text and one daughter who is reading whatever that like dragon quadrology is, right?
[14:12]Yeah, yeah, cutches. I just don't appeal to and either of them.
[14:17]Well, that's okay. So when I first read about your book, I was like, okay, so writing about a
[14:23]community afraid to go back like Jamie writes about all these communities. Like did something
[14:28]happen in one of the towns in which you based your not like a prior novel? Like did something
[14:34]did anything come from that that inspired this or was it just a plot point?
[14:39]Oh, because the protagonist wrote Shelby Archer as the protagonist and she drew from her best
[14:47]friend's life to plot her debut novel. That has not happened to me. I have never based a
[14:54]character on a real person, but it's amazing how many people think you are. Like who see themselves
[15:03]in characters. The one book I sent, I sent in my hometown, which was the husband hour, you know,
[15:10]people read into it. Like, oh, is it this person from high school that person? And I also feel like
[15:14]there is this, especially now, I think it's scary to think of offending someone or what's your
[15:21]what's your, the question is of the, I think a big question today is what is your story to tell?
[15:27]And you know, I think it's really dangerous for art to say like, you can't write about this,
[15:35]like write what you know, but don't write about what you know too well because that's
[15:39]you know what I'm saying. So I think there's a little bit of that too. Do you write what you know
[15:44]or you have to make everything up so you don't like, you know, upset the apple cart in your own life.
[15:49]I don't know what the answer is, but I'm sure I'm sure many novelists have written things that
[15:54]have offended people in their lives, whether they know it or not. And that's just, I think goes
[16:00]with the territory. So I'm a girlfriend of mine from college speaking of old dear friends.
[16:05]When I showed her a draft of, I can't remember, it was something, it might have been a book
[16:10]that never saw the light of day. But anyway, I remember I showed it to her. And she was like, that
[16:14]was so nice how you made me blah, blah, blah character. And I was thinking, what on earth is she like,
[16:19]what? Like, it didn't even cross my mind. Like in my head, that character looks and acts and
[16:24]is totally different. What, how did she see that? But people continually see themselves, right?
[16:28]And you're fair to go. Exactly. Well, I guess when you're looking, I don't know, not that I don't
[16:33]adore her. But yeah, I just didn't happen to make her into a character. Well, in the book,
[16:38]in the novel summer, she did. She did use her friends secrets. And she has a possible lesson to
[16:45]learn about that. And it's also about, you know, choices. What's important in life is your career,
[16:51]the most important thing, our friendships, the most important thing is love and finding a partner
[16:56]are the most important thing. And if you had to choose one out of the three, what would you choose?
[17:01]That's the type of thing that I explore in the book. So there are so many great books that
[17:07]come out in the summer. Like, I feel like it's a great time, but it's also a really hard time
[17:11]because there's a lot of competition, but there's a lot of great stuff, but there's a lot of time,
[17:15]blah, blah, blah. You could go back and forth. So when readers browse, like all the summer
[17:21]reads that are coming out, yeah, and you have yours that, you know, at your lemonade stand,
[17:26]like, how do you differentiate? Like, what do you say? What do you think? Like, how do you
[17:32]position? And I mean this, I could ask this of literally anyone with a book coming out of the
[17:37]summer, but particularly in this genre, right? Where the covers are looking more similar,
[17:43]because readers are supposed to know what type of book this is quickly, which is important,
[17:48]right? How can you make your book stand out? It's just like the age-old question. But do you
[17:53]think about all this? Well, this is a really interesting question, Zibi, because this is my seventh,
[17:59]seventh or eighth summer book. Okay. And there were times when I, like, it's not my job to market,
[18:06]decide on the cover, all of that is out of my control. To be honest with you, like my preference
[18:14]and instinct as a writer would not to be have, not to have a book with summer in the title.
[18:21]Okay. Like, I wrote a book once, summer was not in the title. It was a summer book. And my editor
[18:27]was like, we have to put summer in the title. And I'm like, okay, we'll change the title.
[18:33]Then I had books that, okay, then my last summer book did not have summer in the title. It did
[18:40]not have a beach on the cover. And when I went into some bookstores, they didn't have it on their,
[18:46]like, summer reads table. So I had to explain to them, oh, this is a summer book. And they're like,
[18:51]oh, we didn't know. So we're like, okay, I guess summer has to be in the title. We have to
[18:55]the beach in the cover. That's just the way it goes. How to differentiate. It is beyond me, Zibi.
[19:00]Because frankly, I mean, all I can do is hope because I've written a lot of books. There's,
[19:06]there are people out there who sort of know what a Jamie Brenner book is. And I build on that.
[19:11]But if this were my first book, and it was, you know, this is sitting on a table with every
[19:17]other one. It's a Herculean task to make it stand out. I do not know. And I think that's sort of
[19:24]the question that it's central to publishing right now. But it's also out of my hands. Like,
[19:31]all I can do is tell the best story that I can tell and how to make it stand out with all the
[19:38]the noise. I kind of let that be someone else's brain child because A, it's not ultimately
[19:46]my decision. And B, I don't have the answer. I don't even know if anyone has the answer to that
[19:52]right now. A part of me, you know, I have I'm starting to have fantasies about writing in an entirely
[20:00]season or mood, just so I can maybe like try something that looks and sounds a little different.
[20:09]Just for my own like creative stimulation, you know, so my next book I'm working on is set in a small river town called New Hope.
[20:19]And it's about a mother and daughter who think they're about friends and they go to a knitting retreat together.
[20:25]And it's what happens to their relationship over the course of this long weekend.
[20:29]And so that, depending on when I hands it in, that might come out in the fall or winter, which I actually would like just to shake things up a little bit for myself.
[20:40]But who knows.
[20:41]What are you calling it unraveled?
[20:44]That's how I feel right now when I deadline, but I don't know.
[20:48]So I'm going to have to talk to my Eric, my editors, Erica and Ronnie.
[20:52]And she's just amazing.
[20:54]And I know when the time comes, we'll have a conversation.
[20:57]I trust her so much that I let her take the lead on things like that.
[21:02]So we'll see.
[21:03]But that's where I am creatively.
[21:05]You know, FYI just to add to this summer, you know, seasonal positioning thing.
[21:10]I have a book coming out from Zibi books that takes place like in on ski mountain, right?
[21:16]It's about like skiing.
[21:18]And the feedback was that it felt too wintery.
[21:22]And would people want to read it in the summer if there was a ski cover?
[21:28]So what was the decision?
[21:30]I don't know.
[21:31]Now we're messing around with the cover.
[21:33]I don't know.
[21:34]It's just always something.
[21:35]So if people, I mean, this is maybe an interesting question for like when you're with a bunch of like, I don't know if people read necessarily as seasonally blocked as we believe that they do.
[21:47]Yeah.
[21:48]I see plenty of people reading some like summer books in the middle of winter.
[21:52]And I see people reading serious literature pool side, you know.
[21:56]I think it really has to be writers should write in the head space they're in.
[22:00]And readers are going to come to the book when that matches their head space bottom line.
[22:04]And I don't think, I don't know if it's, I think we get very locked in to like our ideas of what people read when I don't know.
[22:13]I don't know how like percentage wise how true it is or not.
[22:20]But it's interesting.
[22:21]I mean, interesting survey.
[22:22]Yeah.
[22:23]Well, it's interesting for me having this conversation with you specifically because you have been cranking out a book a summer for how many years now.
[22:31]I mean, how many books do you have?
[22:33]2016.
[22:34]I mean, it's crazy.
[22:35]So many books.
[22:36]I know.
[22:37]I know.
[22:39]And the genre has changed so much even in this amount of time.
[22:45]And to be honest with you, if I had known how like crazy the summer books landscape would become by 2024, I probably would have never.
[22:57]I would have been too intimidated to even write in this space.
[23:01]So it's like sort of like I'm glad I didn't have a crystal ball to tell me what it would look like this summer.
[23:08]And there was a certain naivete to when I started writing summer books and it was just because I loved Ellen Hilda brand books so much.
[23:15]And I was reading those books in the winter, absolutely.
[23:19]Like to escape New York City in the winter and to be on Cape Cod, you know, reading as the ultimate arm chair vacation.
[23:27]So it's ironic because I like summer books.
[23:31]Not in the summer.
[23:32]That's when I read them.
[23:34]Yeah.
[23:35]So we can make it look however we want.
[23:39]Exactly.
[23:40]Ski book in the summer.
[23:42]Sign me up.
[23:43]Amazing.
[23:44]Jamie, what advice do you have for aspiring authors?
[23:48]I have one of those.
[23:50]I gave birth to one of those.
[23:52]And this is the advice I tell her.
[23:54]A.
[23:55]Keep a day job for a while.
[23:57]Right.
[23:58]Would you want to write and read a lot in the space that you're writing in.
[24:03]Oh, very good.
[24:04]Those are my three rules to live by.
[24:07]Biring writer life.
[24:09]And I know that you feature a bookstore in a novel summer.
[24:13]Is it based on a particular bookstore?
[24:15]Do you have a particular bookstore that's like your dream to escape into as you're writing?
[24:20]Well, it's set in province town.
[24:23]The main thing about province town is it's really a very small place.
[24:28]I think maybe Main Street is like two miles long.
[24:31]Like three streets wide.
[24:34]And there are many bookstores along the path.
[24:37]And there's one bookstore that had been there forever.
[24:40]And my first summer in province town, a new bookstore opened.
[24:44]And the booksellers in province town are the most passionate, interesting people.
[24:50]And I definitely have this place East End Books in province town in mind.
[24:56]When I wrote this book, like I pictured it physically, the space.
[25:01]And yeah, it's very much a reflection of the book selling vibe in province town specifically.
[25:10]Amazing.
[25:11]Well, congratulations.
[25:12]Enjoy the summer.
[25:13]Hope you read lots of seasonal or not books.
[25:17]Maybe I'll see you in the winter next time.
[25:19]Yeah, that'd be great.
[25:20]Save you soon.
[25:21]How is it?
[25:22]Okay.
[25:23]Thanks so much to be.
[25:24]Thanks to me.
[25:25]Bye.
[25:26]Bye.
[25:27]Thanks for listening to momstone have time to read books.
[25:30]If you love it, please leave a review and follow us on social at city Owens and at city readers.