Morgan Pager, THE ART OF VANISHING: A Novel
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[0:45]Welcome back to Totally Booked Live.
[0:47]I am so excited to be here today with Morgan Taylor.
[0:51]This is so fun.
[0:52]She is the author of the Art of Vanishing, a novel, and I am just so excited to have
[0:56]you here.
[0:57]I'm so excited to be here.
[0:58]I'm going to read your official bio really quickly, if you don't mind.
[1:02]Okay.
[1:03]Has anybody heard of At NYC Book Girl, because that is Morgan, which is super exciting.
[1:09]Okay.
[1:10]Getting settled too.
[1:11]Morgan Pager is the director of marketing and social media at atria books and the content
[1:15]creator behind At NYC Book Girl, a graduate of Duke University.
[1:20]Morgan lives on the Upper West Side with her husband and their cat.
[1:23]The Art of Vanishing is her first novel.
[1:25]Welcome.
[1:26]Thank you.
[1:30]So I have to say, when I started my podcast in 2018, you were already up and running
[1:34]at At NYC Book Girl.
[1:35]So I want to hear when you started that.
[1:37]And she had all these followers and was posting the coolest things.
[1:40]And I was like, how does somebody do that?
[1:42]And then I ran into you and said, it's so hard for her.
[1:44]Yeah.
[1:45]I was like, oh my god.
[1:46]You're like a celebrity.
[1:47]Let me take your picture.
[1:48]So I made her take a picture with me.
[1:49]And now here we are.
[1:50]Very fun.
[1:51]I get recognized in very bookish locations exclusively, so a bookstore inside carver was exactly
[1:56]the right place.
[1:58]I was there for it.
[1:59]OK.
[2:00]Well, back up at At NYC Book Girl.
[2:02]Tell us how you got started and then we'll end up with your novel.
[2:05]Absolutely.
[2:05]So I started At NYC Book Girl in 2017.
[2:08]I was working at the time as an assistant to a Broadway producer and was loving it.
[2:13]But the job was very hurry up and wait.
[2:15]So when she needed me, she needed me.
[2:16]And when she didn't, she was the only other person in the company.
[2:19]So it's just the two of us.
[2:21]And so I felt like I needed something that was my own creative outlet.
[2:24]And I kind of got into the world of books to Graham and heard that people were getting
[2:29]books sent to them by publishers and I was making nothing at the time.
[2:32]So I was like, that would be a great way to not spend all my money on books anymore.
[2:38]And I just jumped right into it.
[2:39]I feel like I went in with no plan, the handle I went in was available.
[2:44]I just started taking pictures on my iPhone.
[2:46]And then I quickly learned how to create content that would interest people, how to share
[2:50]more of myself in the way that I was responding to what I was reading and a way that would
[2:53]draw people into my platform specifically.
[2:56]And I made an amazing community of friends from it.
[2:59]So I became friends with other influencers in the city, with other people working in marketing
[3:02]and publishing.
[3:03]And with other readers who I would run into at bookish events, like the Brooklyn Book Festival
[3:08]and things like that, I never expected it to grow so big.
[3:11]I always remember that one of my best friends asked like, oh, you've got two or three
[3:16]thousand followers now.
[3:17]When do you feel like you'll be done with this?
[3:18]And I was like, I don't know, at 10k maybe, like there was going to be an end date
[3:23]on it.
[3:24]And now it's become my whole life.
[3:25]So he and I were both clearly out of the, out of the right spitting range there.
[3:30]But yes, I've been doing it for eight years now.
[3:32]And it's taken over completely.
[3:33]I now work in publishing and this is my first novel.
[3:36]And I like to say that I'm a professional bookworm because I, books are my career, my
[3:40]hobby and my passion.
[3:41]It's amazing.
[3:42]My son just asked me the other day, he's like, mom, what do you do in your free time?
[3:48]And I was like, I don't have any free time.
[3:49]I was like, I work, but my work is my love and he's like, no, when you have no work, what
[3:53]do you do?
[3:54]And I'm like, I read.
[3:55]So, so yeah, it can take a fair vote.
[3:58]Yeah, we've really like figured out the secret of life here.
[4:01]I know, I think I think it's the right way to do it, but I don't know, maybe there are
[4:04]people out there who are like, don't monetize your hobby in every way, shape and form.
[4:08]And to them I say, whatever.
[4:12]When did you decide you wanted to be an author?
[4:16]Was that something that was a throughline all the way or something new?
[4:19]And then when did this iteration of the book come to be?
[4:22]Absolutely.
[4:23]So I've always been like a highly imaginative storyteller as a kid.
[4:26]I always wanted to play imaginary games and I obviously was a huge reader from the moment
[4:30]that I could.
[4:31]There's nothing better than like being able to read a chapter book by yourself for the
[4:34]first time and get to experience the characters and their wins and their failures.
[4:39]So I knew from the start that books were really important to me.
[4:43]And I kind of weaved my way in and out of how I wanted writing to fit into that.
[4:46]I had a blog that was really active when I started on my Cbook Girl where I wrote more
[4:50]personal essays about my life and my mental health and the books I was reading.
[4:55]And always on the side I would be working on something kind of creative.
[4:59]Some of them were just like glorified journal entries where I was trying to work through
[5:02]something, but like a character was having the problem that I was having.
[5:06]And it wasn't until the pandemic and lockdown that I really started playing with writing.
[5:11]More seriously I joined a writing group that one of my friends formed as a way to gather
[5:16]all of our friends virtually on a bi-weekly basis.
[5:20]So people from all walks of life who had never even thought about writing before were sharing
[5:23]their writing.
[5:24]And it was in that group that kind of the seeds of the idea for the art of vanishing
[5:29]came to me and what set that one apart from everything else I was playing with was that
[5:33]I could see from the beginning of the story to the end.
[5:36]So a lot has changed in the book since I started writing it, but I knew what the opening
[5:41]concept was and I knew what the last beat was going to feel like and that felt unique
[5:46]to me from all the other things that I'd been working on.
[5:48]So I was like let's stop and actually look in the story.
[5:51]And then yeah.
[5:52]So I was going to say and now tell everybody what the story actually is.
[5:55]Yes.
[5:56]And we've kept you waiting long enough.
[5:57]Yes.
[5:58]So it is set in an art museum and it is about a new museum employee and the subject of
[6:02]one of the paintings on the walls.
[6:05]And Claire, our museum employee learns that she has the magical ability to step through
[6:10]the frames of the paintings and into their settings.
[6:13]And she develops an unlikely relationship with one of the subjects of one of the paintings
[6:19]who is John Matisse on Rematisse's son.
[6:23]And they have this seemingly impossible love affair set against the backdrop of all the
[6:27]different paintings in the museum.
[6:29]And of course, there are tons of forces both inside the museum and outside the museum
[6:34]that are keeping them apart.
[6:36]And so it's up to Claire to kind of decide which version of reality she's able to stay
[6:41]in.
[6:42]Such a good premise, right?
[6:44]So creative and the way that you do it.
[6:47]So she doesn't just have the ability to go into the one painting.
[6:51]People in painting, it can go into each other's paintings.
[6:54]So it's like a whole another universe.
[6:56]Yeah.
[6:57]So within this museum at night after all the patrons have left, the subjects of the paintings
[7:01]are kind of freed from their jobs, their day jobs of sitting in place.
[7:06]So they have this like wild and vibrant life within the paintings themselves of different
[7:12]friendships and relationships.
[7:13]And so Claire and John are able to explore all of his world together.
[7:17]You have a funny part about the partying and all of this.
[7:23]Hold on.
[7:24]Let me find it.
[7:26]Is it this one?
[7:27]We all read this.
[7:29]I haven't, this is after John and Claire are in the painting, having the time of their
[7:35]life.
[7:36]I won't give away the relationship, but it gets quite spicy for an in painting relationship.
[7:46]I haven't felt like this and forever, she said.
[7:49]This is what I always thought growing up was going to feel like one big party.
[7:53]I couldn't have been more wrong.
[7:55]I don't think I've ever felt like this.
[7:57]I said this is John because they alternate perspectives.
[8:01]Instead I ask a question, what is going up felt like?
[8:04]Like one long string of responsibilities.
[8:07]She let out a sigh and she took a big swag of her drink.
[8:09]Like there's always something I'm falling short on, always something I'm behind on, always
[8:13]something I didn't do well enough.
[8:15]I know I'm too young to feel this way, but it seems like life is already passing me by.
[8:21]her chewed on her bottom lip, but it's not all bad, of course.
[8:24]Sometimes life is beautiful and awe-inspiring in ways I never could have expected.
[8:28]I just have to remember to take the time to see it.
[8:31]I think we all feel that way sometimes I said, even in a place like this where it feels
[8:35]like there's nothing but time.
[8:36]Yeah, you can share that with your son the next time he asks what you do in your free
[8:39]time.
[8:40]Sometimes I read him books to help him fall asleep at night, but I won't admit whose books
[8:45]they are.
[8:47]But I found this concept so interesting because the book has this very cool idea behind
[8:55]it and yet the concepts are so rooted in reality.
[8:58]Who hasn't felt like they're not doing a good enough job sometimes or the pressures of
[9:03]the world?
[9:04]So talk a little bit about that because it actually made me feel a little bit sad for
[9:06]you when I read it.
[9:07]I was like, oh no, is she feeling like that she's doing a good job?
[9:10]I mean, definitely yes, of course I felt that haven't me all, especially as I was talking
[9:15]about earlier the balance between social media and writing and work and life.
[9:20]There's constantly like some ball that's going to not rise as high as the others.
[9:25]I don't know if I'll admit that they fall.
[9:27]But I feel like Claire has things in her life that have forced her to grow up faster than
[9:33]others.
[9:34]So she's 21 when she says this, which is maybe a little early to be having that realization.
[9:39]But I was writing this in 2022 and 2023 at a time where the pandemic was really closing
[9:44]in on us and we just come out of lockdown and I felt like I saw a lot of other young people
[9:49]having that experience as well of pieces of life forcing them to admit to what growing
[9:57]up is really like.
[9:59]And then I saw.
[10:00]So some whimsical part of myself
[10:02]that wanted to live out this version of Claire's life, too,
[10:04]of getting to run around with a cute guy
[10:06]and a bunch of amazing paintings and party
[10:08]until dawn and not feel like that weight of responsibility, too.
[10:12]Did this, was this one of those things
[10:14]where you were in a museum one day and you're like,
[10:15]wouldn't it be really cool if I could just jump in there
[10:17]and then next thing you know, it's on my lap?
[10:19]It starts so much farther back than that.
[10:21]My grandmother was an art history major.
[10:23]She is the coolest person in the world.
[10:26]She's had many different careers
[10:27]and she now works as an architect with my grandfather.
[10:29]But I used to go up and spend a couple weeks every summer
[10:32]at their house and every summer she would choose
[10:35]a period of art for us to study.
[10:37]That was like the kind of nine-year-old that I was
[10:39]that this is what I wanted to do.
[10:41]So she would choose a period of art for us to study.
[10:43]She's also handicapped.
[10:44]So she was born without half of one of her feet
[10:46]and so steps are like gold for her.
[10:49]So she really reserves them.
[10:50]So at the end of the summer, we would like save up
[10:52]all the steps for a museum trip
[10:54]and we would go see the art that we had been looking at
[10:57]through books and online all summer long.
[11:00]And she was the one who taught me to really look at the art
[11:03]as if it's a story and coming from a period of time
[11:05]where it's talking about real people and real things.
[11:10]And so this is all in her honor.
[11:13]She also is from the Boston area.
[11:14]So we did go to this Elle Stuart Gardner Museum
[11:17]where I am obsessed with the Unsolved Art Heist at the ISG.
[11:21]And I was like pondering one night,
[11:24]we're just never gonna know who took those paintings,
[11:26]which is why the book's not set at the ISG
[11:28]because I didn't want to try to solve that heist.
[11:31]But one night I was like, you know who knows
[11:33]who took those paintings.
[11:34]The people in the other paintings on the walls,
[11:37]like they saw it happen.
[11:39]And it was really that like train of madness
[11:42]that led me to the story.
[11:44]So oh my gosh.
[11:47]So where there is there a painting
[11:49]that if you could jump into, you would go an amazing question.
[11:54]The one that they have the most fun in the book
[11:56]is La Boner de Vue, which is another Matisse painting
[11:59]that's also in the same museum.
[12:01]And it is like rainbow and all of the figures are maybe nude,
[12:04]but they're all different colors
[12:06]and they're wearing like flowers draped around their bodies.
[12:09]And so that was the one that was like the wish
[12:10]fulfillment for me of like getting to experience.
[12:14]But what a world that looks nothing like our world
[12:16]would feel like if you could step into it.
[12:19]I think I might bypass stepping into a photo of all nude.
[12:22]They're like pink and purple and yellow and blue.
[12:24]I'm sure it's beautiful.
[12:26]I just say if I had my choice.
[12:30]Crushes and desire and all of that also play a role, of course,
[12:35]in this story.
[12:38]And writing about desire and romance is also often a challenge.
[12:44]And I'm curious about how you found a way
[12:47]to write your way through it.
[12:48]And also, if you share this self-doubt, if you will,
[12:54]what if I'm no good?
[12:56]I rubbed the back of my neck.
[12:58]I'd never tried anything like that.
[12:59]I didn't know if I could hack it.
[13:01]Jean, Jean.
[13:03]I've read every book in this place.
[13:04]And most of them are really bad.
[13:06]And even then, I enjoyed reading them.
[13:08]I won't care if it's not very good.
[13:09]I'll love it anyway.
[13:10]And if you hate it, we don't have to tell anyone else.
[13:13]It can just be for us.
[13:15]Yes.
[13:16]So that's a part where Jean is talking about maybe writing.
[13:20]I do think I share that doubt.
[13:22]I was talking about this with Sasha, your lovely employee
[13:25]on the way in here.
[13:26]But there's a lot of rejection involved in publishing a book.
[13:29]So it does just take one yes to make it through.
[13:32]It takes a yes from an agent and a yes from an editor.
[13:34]But on the sidelines of that, there
[13:36]is so much other no that comes into the conversation.
[13:41]So I can't remember if I wrote that in the first draft
[13:45]or the 10th draft of the book, maybe the first.
[13:48]But I think there's something that you
[13:50]have to tell yourself about the fact
[13:52]that your book might not be for everyone,
[13:54]but it's going to be for someone that powers you
[13:56]through the process of writing.
[13:59]And then in terms of writing about love and desire,
[14:02]Jean and Claire are both young and John
[14:04]as 117 or something like that,
[14:07]because he's been in this painting for so long.
[14:10]But there's a newness to their relationship
[14:12]and a freshness to that.
[14:13]And I feel like I just really tried to play with my memories
[14:16]of how strong and how important every relationship
[14:19]when I was 17 and 18 felt or 21 or 25
[14:24]and to keep that in their relationship too.
[14:27]FYI, there is no cell service when you're in a painting.
[14:31]So it becomes an issue for Claire, which becomes an issue.
[14:35]There are lots of twists and turns at the end.
[14:37]And there's a whole extra layer of why Claire
[14:41]feels so torn between these two worlds.
[14:43]And in a way a lot of us can feel torn
[14:45]between two opposing worlds.
[14:47]What do you feel most torn between these days?
[14:49]Oh my goodness.
[14:50]I feel so torn between how much of myself
[14:55]to give to my writing career.
[14:57]So I'm balancing a full-time job, my social media career,
[15:01]and my writing career on top of trying
[15:02]to be a person and a wife and a friend and show up for my family
[15:07]and my loved ones.
[15:09]So I feel like I fight a daily battle between when
[15:12]I say no and who to say no to and not
[15:14]wanting that person to be myself.
[15:16]Because that's the first, that's always my first instinct
[15:19]is to give myself to everyone else.
[15:21]But I feel like I'm in, we're two months out from pub,
[15:24]and I'm in this moment where this is the first and only time
[15:27]my first book is going to come out.
[15:30]And I hope 20 years from now, I've published five books,
[15:32]and I look back on that, and I'm like, how cool
[15:34]did I try all this fun stuff?
[15:35]Why only five?
[15:36]Oh, OK, sorry, 10.
[15:39]Maybe we'll be on the good two-book of year cadets.
[15:41]But I do want to give myself the space
[15:45]to say yes to the things like this that make this process so
[15:49]special and getting to share it with you and with all of you
[15:51]as well.
[15:53]So that's the internal battle that I
[15:54]fight on on daily basis.
[15:56]I feel like there's no good solution to this.
[15:59]But it would be so nice if there were.
[16:00]Yeah, absolutely.
[16:03]When you write, do you feel like, how did you write this book?
[16:07]Did you have certain deadlines each day?
[16:09]Did you have a word count?
[16:11]How did you go about it?
[16:12]And if you are to approach, are you writing another book?
[16:14]And will you approach it in the same way?
[16:16]Yes.
[16:17]So I've tried every way of writing a book,
[16:19]and it's changed for me what's worked.
[16:21]I've tried the daily word count goals.
[16:23]I've tried some people swear by morning pages
[16:26]of waking up at 5 a.m. and starting their day that way.
[16:29]My brain is not alive at 5 a.m.
[16:31]And if it is, it's with anxiety.
[16:32]So it's not in a good place to be writing.
[16:34]I need to work out and clean my house before.
[16:37]And the right place to do that.
[16:38]So what has worked for me is the weekend.
[16:40]So I block six to eight hours every Saturday
[16:43]and every Sunday to write.
[16:45]When I started this one, as I said, I knew what the idea was.
[16:48]So I did a bunch of research at the beginning,
[16:50]and I had a vague outline of where the story was going.
[16:53]And so I followed that as I wrote my way through.
[16:55]And I followed that same work pattern for all the revisions
[16:59]and as well of just letting myself know that weekends
[17:02]were my time.
[17:03]There are some stuff that has turned around faster.
[17:05]So for my copy edit, I did the week nights as well.
[17:07]But that was really my system.
[17:09]And I've been doing that for book two.
[17:10]So I am working.
[17:11]I'm a third of the way through my next novel now.
[17:14]And I feel like that has worked really well for me
[17:17]is just knowing that Saturday and Sunday are my time.
[17:19]And then my husband knows that as well.
[17:21]And my friends know that too.
[17:22]So they kind of know when to ask if I'm available as well.
[17:26]And can you give us a sneak peek?
[17:28]Oh, absolutely.
[17:29]So this one is historical fiction.
[17:33]It also plays with maybe the magic that women have,
[17:36]that people don't look close enough
[17:37]to see like what Claire has in art of vanishing.
[17:40]And it is about two real magicians
[17:44]who performed with their husbands
[17:45]at the turn of the century who performed all over the world
[17:50]and very different kinds of magic.
[17:52]One does very big showy magic.
[17:55]And one does a quiet like mind reading act.
[17:58]So it's about an imagined friendship,
[18:00]competitor ship between these two women.
[18:04]Oh, that sounds good.
[18:06]I mean, there are so many things in the book
[18:08]that could lead to so many other conversations,
[18:10]even this notion of invisibility,
[18:12]Claire being at first on the janitorial staff
[18:15]at the museum, the invisibility of certain jobs,
[18:18]the invisibility of certain women
[18:20]when you get to a certain phase of your life,
[18:23]the invisibility of that, who helps you,
[18:25]who doesn't.
[18:26]So did you have that all consciously?
[18:29]Or was the title just like afterwards?
[18:31]And you're like, well, that kind of works.
[18:33]Well, the title was definitely a group project
[18:35]between myself, my editor, and my agent
[18:38]of me throwing every possible art-related word out there
[18:43]and us seeing what stuck.
[18:45]And so that definitely was piece of a piece of it.
[18:51]But I definitely knew the whole time
[18:52]that I was looking at what women can do
[18:55]that other people are maybe not looking at.
[18:58]And I think Claire doesn't look at herself
[19:00]for a lot of the story and John teaches her too,
[19:03]which is ironic because he's the one
[19:04]whose job is to be looked at.
[19:06]So I definitely think there's a piece of that
[19:08]that's playing with it,
[19:09]but the art of vanishing was not its title
[19:12]throughout the whole process.
[19:13]So what was it?
[19:14]I really loved the night shift
[19:16]because I think there's something magical
[19:17]about the word night.
[19:18]So I definitely play with that.
[19:20]At one point it was all-nighters,
[19:21]which my husband was like,
[19:22]that sounds like a sleepover.
[19:23]And I was like, good point.
[19:26]It's also a great play at MCC right now, also.
[19:29]And then we played with words like,
[19:31]it's set in gallery 19.
[19:33]So like night in gallery 19, things like that.
[19:36]And then I always really loved vanishing point,
[19:38]which is an art term,
[19:39]but there is not a vanishing point in this painting.
[19:42]So it would have bothered me forever,
[19:43]had that been the title.
[19:45]So art of vanishing kind of brought all of those.
[19:47]And I bet it would have bothered so many other readers.
[19:49]I know.
[19:50]Yeah.
[19:52]Me being like, yes, maybe really valid in there.
[19:54]So it clears super power is this ability to go into it.
[20:00]Paintings, what would you say your super power is?
[20:03]Because everyone has one.
[20:05]My goodness.
[20:07]My flippant answer is my ability to pick up a hobby.
[20:10]Like I loved to pick up a hobby.
[20:11]But I went through a flying trapeze stage during COVID.
[20:17]I went through a cross stitching phase.
[20:20]I have to keep myself out of a ceramic studio
[20:22]because I feel like that could be a really dangerous one for me.
[20:25]So that is my ha-ha answer.
[20:28]But my real answer, which we've been talking about today,
[20:30]is this idea of balance and organization
[20:33]and fitting everything in.
[20:34]I'm a Virgo.
[20:35]And I think that my ability to keep all of my thoughts
[20:38]and desires and resolutions streamlined
[20:42]and then slot them into a calendar
[20:43]is the thing that makes me special.
[20:46]And it's the thing that has always kept me on task
[20:48]in terms of when I know that I want something,
[20:51]I figure out how to go out and get it.
[20:52]So that's a very important trait.
[20:55]Lastly, with NYC book girl,
[20:58]what are the secrets to Instagram?
[21:00]Oh my goodness.
[21:01]Just tell me the whole thing.
[21:03]Yes.
[21:04]Okay, so we'll be here for another hour.
[21:07]Great question.
[21:08]I think the biggest thing that I've seen over the eight years
[21:10]is that it changes.
[21:11]So what the platform wants from you
[21:14]in terms of what your followers want
[21:16]and are going to engage with
[21:17]and is going to give you better engagement,
[21:19]keep shifting, and you have to keep your eye
[21:21]on what content is working for other people.
[21:23]And then figure out how to tell that in your own voice.
[21:26]So people will come to content
[21:27]and engage with it once because it's interesting,
[21:30]but they'll stick around because they like who you are
[21:32]as a person.
[21:33]So you have to figure out how to take what's working
[21:36]for someone else and translate it into your voice
[21:38]in a way that's sustainable to do over and over again.
[21:42]And then building community is like a big piece
[21:44]of what makes it rewarding and what keeps you there.
[21:46]So I love when I get to meet people in bookstores
[21:49]who are like, hi, I'm Zebioans.
[21:50]And I'm like, oh my goodness, there you are.
[21:53]But I find that like the friends that I've made,
[21:55]there were people at my wedding who were friends
[21:56]that I had originally had been internet friends
[21:59]who I'd made on Instagram.
[22:00]So I'm so lucky to have had those friendships come.
[22:03]And it's been so wonderful as I've been promoting
[22:06]the art of vanishing and then moving into this period
[22:08]of like really heavily promoting it
[22:09]to have all the support from those people as well.
[22:12]We once had someone come to spend the weekend
[22:14]and my daughter was like, oh, how do you know them?
[22:15]And I'm like, I met them online.
[22:18]And she's like, I thought we weren't even
[22:19]supposed to talk to strangers on that.
[22:21]When I first invited one of my friends
[22:23]to come stay with me, my parents were like,
[22:25]are you sure?
[22:25]She's not a serial killer.
[22:26]And I was like a serial killer who's
[22:28]been waiting for the long con of me inviting her to come.
[22:31]Like she didn't invite me.
[22:32]So if there's serial killers, there's
[22:35]serial killers who read all the time.
[22:37]She really likes books for sure.
[22:38]So maybe we'd be friends anyway.
[22:40]Yeah, I said.
[22:43]Last question, what advice do you have for aspiring authors?
[22:47]Oh my goodness.
[22:47]So the difference between someone who wants to write a book
[22:49]and someone who has written a book
[22:51]is someone who stayed with the whole process.
[22:53]So you need to pick an idea that you're
[22:55]going to love enough that you're going
[22:56]to want to write the whole book and keep going through.
[23:00]The nose and through the days where you feel like the story
[23:02]is not going to come together.
[23:03]But I think the thing that makes me a good writer
[23:05]and the thing that's made me even better writers
[23:07]since I finished The Art of Vanishing
[23:09]is being a reader.
[23:10]That's obviously a core tenant of who I am as a person.
[23:13]But I think reading is like the warm-up for your brain
[23:16]to get you into writing.
[23:17]So make sure that you're reading of all different kinds
[23:20]of people and all different kinds of stories.
[23:22]And thinking critically about them as you
[23:24]think about writing as well.
[23:26]Amazing.
[23:26]Well, congrats on your debut.
[23:27]So excited to be with The Art of Vanishing coming soon.
[23:31]Thank you for listening to Totally Booked with Zibi,
[23:34]formerly mom's don't have time to read books.
[23:36]If you loved the show, tell a friend,
[23:38]leave a review, follow me on Instagram at Zibi Owens,
[23:42]and spread the word.
[23:44]Thanks so much.
[23:45]Oh, and buy the books.