Katherine Center, The Shippers + Lila Raicek, The Plunge
[0:00]Hi, this is Zibi Owens and you're listening to Totally Book to the Zibi.
[0:06]Formerly, moms don't have time to read books.
[0:08]In my daily show, I interview today's latest, best-selling, buzziest, or underrated authors
[0:14]and story creators whose work I think is worth your time.
[0:18]As a bookstore owner, publisher, author, and obviously a podcaster, I get a comprehensive
[0:24]look at everything that's coming up and spend my time curating the best books so you don't
[0:29]have to.
[0:30]Stay in the know, get insider insights, and connect with guests like I do, every single
[0:35]day.
[0:36]For more information, go to zibimedia.com and follow me on Instagram at Zibi Owens.
[0:45]Today we have a double episode, Catherine Center, is the New York Times best-selling author.
[0:49]She writes deep, nuanced, laugh, and cry rom-coms that brim with open healing.
[0:53]Her books have made countless best-of lists, including America's top 100 books of the
[0:58]year, Barnes & Noble best books of the year, and the indie next great reads list.
[1:02]Goodreads best books of the year, Library Reads, Hall of Fame, People Magazine's Best
[1:05]New Books, and more.
[1:07]And now we have The Shippers, which is so exciting.
[1:10]Two of her novels have become global, top 10 movies on Netflix, and a third at the bodyguard,
[1:16]just wrapped production.
[1:17]Catherine lives in her hometown of Texas with her husband and their fluffy but fierce
[1:20]dog.
[1:21]Welcome, Catherine.
[1:22]Thank you so much for coming back on Totally Book to talk about The Shippers.
[1:26]Congratulations.
[1:28]Ah, thank you.
[1:29]I'm so excited to be here.
[1:30]I really enjoyed the book.
[1:31]Really.
[1:32]I mean, I've read a lot of your books now.
[1:33]I feel like this is my favorite.
[1:35]I love the characters.
[1:36]I'm missing, JoJo, and Cooper right now.
[1:39]I'm like, what is happening with them today?
[1:42]I want to know.
[1:43]I haven't had enough of them.
[1:45]So that's how I feel.
[1:47]Yeah.
[1:48]You're awesome.
[1:49]I kind of feel the same way.
[1:50]I really love them.
[1:51]You know, they just, there's so many shenanigans and there's so much banter and the way
[1:56]they tease each other and like mess with each other and put each other in head locks is like a
[2:02]sweet spot for me.
[2:03]It's just like, it's my favorite thing.
[2:04]I just feel like I could watch it all day long.
[2:06]Okay.
[2:07]So back up and tell everybody what The Shippers is about.
[2:10]Okay.
[2:11]Well, the little, you know, the little log line for The Shippers is she wants him to help her
[2:18]woo someone else.
[2:21]And then it says genius foolproof can't go wrong.
[2:24]But basically our main character JoJo has to go to her sister's wedding on a cruise ship.
[2:31]And she has decided to sort of solve all of her intimacy issues by conquering her childhood
[2:38]crush.
[2:39]This guy named Finn.
[2:41]And she sucks in her childhood bestie, Cooper Watts to help her and be her wingman while
[2:47]she tries to catch this other guy.
[2:49]And shenanigans ensue, you know, the two of them are just stuck on a cruise ship together,
[2:55]engaged in this sort of crazy bananas endeavor.
[2:59]And I don't think it's a spoiler to say that Cooper and JoJo fall in love with each other.
[3:04]I mean, I feel like that's just something to look forward to.
[3:07]Like, you know from the cover who it's going to be.
[3:10]We know where we're headed.
[3:11]So yeah, it's very fun.
[3:13]I thought that was so interesting.
[3:15]You put in the author's note at the outset of the book that you tell everybody these people are falling in love.
[3:21]And you had a different name for it.
[3:23]You said it's not a spoiler.
[3:25]It's a what did you call it?
[3:26]It's an enhancer.
[3:27]An enhancer.
[3:28]Yeah, it enhances the story to know that I think.
[3:31]So you said you like to know the ending of all your books when you start them.
[3:38]I do.
[3:39]I'm shocked by that.
[3:40]Well, you know, I really have thought about this a lot because my, my big sister is a huge reader.
[3:44]And she reads way more than I do.
[3:47]She's constantly reading.
[3:48]And she is very, very, I don't want to say paranoid.
[3:52]She's very concerned about spoilers.
[3:54]Like if you ever read a book and you want to tell her, oh, I just read this great book.
[3:57]Like she is on patrol from the minute you start talking about whether or not you're going to put in a spoiler.
[4:02]And I think that's because for her, the thing, the main thing, the primary thing that is pulling her through whatever read she's engaged in is curiosity.
[4:12]You know, it's not knowing what's going to happen.
[4:15]She loves that feeling of not knowing what's going to happen.
[4:17]And she needs to protect that at all costs.
[4:19]But I'm like the opposite of that.
[4:21]I don't like the feeling of not knowing what's going to happen.
[4:24]I want to know that I have something good to look forward to before I go in.
[4:29]And this has become more and more true as I've gotten older.
[4:31]When I was younger, I was a kind of a more literary reader.
[4:34]You know, I read a lot of Kafka and Camu.
[4:37]And as I've kind of come into my own life and figured out who I am as a reader and as a human.
[4:44]And embraced my identity as like a mad crazy romance fan.
[4:50]I've kind of come to grips with the fact that what I really want, but when I have a free Saturday and a fuzzy blanket and a hot cup of tea, right.
[4:58]And I can curl up with a book like the ideal experience for me is to curl up with a love story.
[5:04]And I want to know in advance that that love story is going to end well.
[5:09]I really, really, really felt very betrayed.
[5:12]Reading a book a few years ago that my sister recommended to me where I was totally invested in a love story the whole way through and then right at the end.
[5:18]The author killed off one of the main characters.
[5:21]You know, I was like, I just gave this book a week of my life.
[5:24]I cared about these people and now I feel so betrayed.
[5:26]I threw the book across the room.
[5:28]Oh my gosh.
[5:29]I feel like for me that's like a guarantee that I'm just never going to do that to you.
[5:32]I'm just not going to kill the main characters at the end.
[5:34]Like we're all going to be okay.
[5:35]We're going to be better than okay.
[5:37]And that's what I want as a reader.
[5:39]And so that's what I write as a writer is the anticipation of love in general better than the actual love.
[5:46]Once it is consummated in a way like it is, is are you like a butterflies all the way person right because then you have the relationship.
[5:55]Yeah.
[5:56]Because where it stops like you could have them get together when they first reunite after that first chapter.
[6:02]And like that could be the end.
[6:04]I wouldn't be fine with that.
[6:05]But then like the rest of the book would just be them hooking up essentially right.
[6:09]Right.
[6:10]Yeah.
[6:11]That's a great question.
[6:12]I actually have very strong feelings on this question.
[6:14]And you know, this is my personal preference.
[6:16]And I think part of our job as readers always is to figure out what it is that you like.
[6:21]Whatever it is that does it for you and keeps you hooked is what you need to gravitate towards as a reader.
[6:26]For me, I love a slow burn and I do not want to see people like acknowledge that they're in love with each other or even really smooch unless it's under interesting circumstances until the end.
[6:38]Because my favorite part of a love story, the most tension saturated component of it, the most addictive up all night.
[6:47]Part of it for me is waiting for that moment before they figure it out and like declare love.
[6:54]Right.
[6:55]And if so, if they declare their love at the midpoint, then I'm kind of done.
[6:59]Like in a lot of books about like how to write a romance.
[7:02]And one of the things that they say is that the in a love story that two leads should have sex at the midpoint.
[7:09]And that's like a thing that you'll see a lot in how to write romance books.
[7:13]And for me, I'm always just like, no, because for me, like once they've gone to bed, I'm like, we're done.
[7:18]Everything's been accomplished.
[7:19]Like we're finished now.
[7:20]And I'm just like closing the book.
[7:22]Okay.
[7:23]Because I love that anticipation, the anticipatory period of when they get together.
[7:27]And that's not to say that, you know, I've been married 30 years being married is great.
[7:32]And there's all kinds of amazing surprises and joys and worries and tensions and dramatic things going on in a marriage, of course.
[7:40]But in a book, in a love story, my favorite favorite part is that part before everything's been declared before it's been settled.
[7:49]Right.
[7:50]All still unsettled and everybody's trying to figure out what everybody else thinks and feels and how we're going to get there and will it happen or won't it happen.
[7:57]It will, but will it or won't it?
[7:59]How much do you do ahead of time?
[8:01]Like do you know everything about these guys before you start writing the story?
[8:05]No, because I think that you do get to know characters kind of in the way that you get to know real people in real life.
[8:10]To kind of through what they do and what they say and how they react to things.
[8:14]But I do, I never ever start until I know what they need to grow around or what their arc needs to be or what they need to change about themselves.
[8:25]Because to me, those two things are really embedded.
[8:27]Like the plot really just exists to push those characters to change.
[8:33]Right. And both of the leads in a love story have to change.
[8:36]So your main character, the point of view character, I always have like the sort of woman in the story be the narrator.
[8:45]So the narrator has something big in the shippers.
[8:47]It's Jojo and she thinks she's bad at love.
[8:50]Right. And she has trouble committing and if you are too nice to her, she'll stop.
[8:54]She'll lose interest in you and she's trying to fix that about herself.
[8:57]And she thinks it's all her dad's fault because he was very absent.
[9:01]But then you've also got Cooper and he's got things that he needs to grow from too.
[9:05]Right. He's got some stuff in his past that he needs to rethink and work on and share and work through.
[9:11]And so in a love story, it always has to be both of them.
[9:14]And I never ever start until I know what those two people need to change about or rethink.
[9:20]And also I need to know what kind of a situation they're in, like what the situation, how that situation is going to push on those changes.
[9:27]And if you don't, like for me, if I don't have that at the start, I'm never going to find it.
[9:32]And I think it's that tension between the people and the situation that they're in that creates the sort of electricity that lights a story on fire from the inside out and like brings it to life.
[9:44]And if you don't have that, your story is going to be flat.
[9:47]You can never get it.
[9:48]Like no amount of, if it's not there in the center at the heart of it all,
[9:54]no amount of like crazy shenanigans or verbal fireworks is going to get.
[10:00]you that deep heart going. I don't know if that makes sense.
[10:03]Yeah. I'm really careful about not starting until I know what those elements are.
[10:09]And yet you're cranking out books like so fast. I mean, I feel like I'm talking to you like every
[10:15]other day. No, I'm kidding. But like, didn't your last book? I'm out like a year. Are you every year?
[10:19]Yeah. It's every year. Yeah. Because I saw an Instagram you already finished 2027.
[10:24]Yep. Congratulations. Thank you. Can you share anything about that?
[10:29]You're a very coy on Instagram. But it's fun. Yes. I always feel like I don't want to say anything
[10:36]about it until my editor is read it. And I'm very, I'm very funny because I never like, I guess
[10:41]some authors like check in with their editors quite a bit while they're in the process of it.
[10:46]But what I do is basically in the fall, I'll tell my editor this is the idea that I have. What
[10:51]do you think? Do you like it? And she'll say, I love it. And then I just disappear for six months. And I
[10:56]just write it. I don't want any input. You know what I mean? Like for me, I feel like so much
[11:01]about the process of it is sort of turning inward and connecting with what my own inner reader
[11:08]would like to see happen or longs for. And if other people are talking to me or like making
[11:14]suggestions, like, what if you did this? What if you did this? It like throws me off, right? It
[11:18]kind of messes up my compass. So I don't. I'm very secretive about it actually. And part of
[11:23]that's part of what makes it fun is this idea that like, okay, when I finally give it to her,
[11:27]it's going to knock her socks off. I hope I hope, you know, and that keeps me like fired up to
[11:31]keep going so that it'll just be totally amazing. Because you really only ever get one chance
[11:36]to knock somebody's socks off, right? I mean, she will read other drafts and we will talk about it
[11:40]over the course of the summer before it's kind of done. But she's never going to see it for the
[11:45]first time again. So yes, I'm very secretive about it all because she follows me on Instagram. I don't
[11:50]want to. But she's got it now. So hopefully she's reading it and loving it. The writing
[11:57]this book was a little frantic because I kept having these things. Like the way that I write is
[12:02]I leave town and I go away for like four or five days at a time. And I do a big chunk like 40 pages,
[12:08]50 pages. And then I come home and I get back to real life. Like when my kids were younger,
[12:12]they're grown now, but when my kids were little, it would be like going to the orthodontist,
[12:16]just do mom stuff, carpool stuff. And then, but then I would go back out of town for four or five
[12:21]days and reimburse into the story. And that rhythm of like being all story and then not even
[12:27]think about the story. And then all story for me is it's a good for them because it allows it to
[12:31]kind of settle in between sort of bursts. And I tend to be very obsessive anyway. So like if I can
[12:37]do all story all the time, that's really fun for me. So I had all these carefully planned out
[12:43]in my little calendar, you know, weeks when I was going to be away between January and May,
[12:48]so I could get the story done. And then just thing after thing after thing got in the way, you know,
[12:53]I got called for jury duty, you know, there was a the house where I go and stay down in Galveston,
[12:59]had a plague of fleas right that happened. And I just like had to leave, you know, I got I got to,
[13:05]I actually got to visit the movie set for a one of my books that's being turned into a movie
[13:10]kind of unexpectedly. And so, I mean, that was a very good reason, but I missed a full week
[13:15]of writing because I was, you know, needed to find a clear week. And that was one that I had.
[13:19]It remind me which movie that is. It's a book called The Body Guard. Yeah. And it's being
[13:24]turned into a movie with Jared Padalecki and Layton Meester and Andy McDowell, isn't it? Which
[13:32]very thrilling. But yeah, that was really fun. I got to go up to Canada and watch them film and
[13:37]hang out on the set. And I took my mother and I'm the middle child of three girls. And we're
[13:43]always sort of, you know, jocking for like who is the favorite child. And I was like, I've got to be
[13:47]your favorite this week. She agreed. I was the front runner for sure that week. It was very fun.
[13:54]That's so cool. Oh my gosh. Well, having written how many now? 12? No. Oh gosh. I'm losing count. I think
[14:02]I think it's, I think it's 13. It might be 14 even. Oh wow. I'm bad at math. I'm not a good
[14:07]numbers person. A lot. Double digits. So what is, what is writing all this fiction bring to your
[14:13]own personal life? Like what does it do for you emotionally? That's like, I've literally never
[14:19]gotten that question before. That's a great question. I think, well, writing love stories
[14:23]has made me better at love just period. And I think people who read love stories are better at
[14:28]love too because there are people who take love in all of its forms very seriously and value it
[14:34]above other things. I think it's made me better at people. You know, I've over my lifetime,
[14:40]I have gotten very, very good at paying attention to people and the things that they do
[14:45]and interpreting those things and thinking about those things. I mean, probably what I would say
[14:49]career wise is I'm sort of like the opposite of an overnight sensation, you know, because I've
[14:55]been writing books for 20 years. I'm like the great grandma. I've been doing this for so long.
[15:00]My first book came out in 2007. So it's been almost 20 years. And it was a very slow burn.
[15:06]It was a very slow process, you know, with no guarantees at the end, you know. And so for many,
[15:12]many years, I was just putting out books and trying to get people to read them. And that's not
[15:17]an easy thing to do because it's hard to be seen and it's hard to get attention. And the book
[15:23]market is very crowded. And, you know, it was just a long, long process of literally driving to
[15:29]book clubs all over my hometown of Houston with books in the trunk of my car and meeting people
[15:34]and drinking wine and eating cupcakes and chatting about books and just sort of slowly,
[15:39]slowly building an audience, sort of one book club at a time. And, you know, every time I
[15:44]have a new book come out, I would hope that it would be like hit, right, and be a huge book
[15:49]and everybody would read it. And that never happened. It was just, you know, every book would have
[15:55]a few more readers than the book before, right? And just very slowly found my people who were
[16:00]going to like the kind of particular bittersweet romantic comedy that I was writing, which there
[16:06]wasn't even really a category for when I first started, you know, there was kind of like women's
[16:11]fiction and there was romance and I was somewhere in the middle. But what I will say is that I think
[16:17]that process of massively delayed gratification, right, of having something that I wanted so
[16:24]bad that I was trying so hard to make happen every single day year in and year out for decades
[16:30]with no guarantee forced me to kind of double down. Like my only way that my only strategy that I
[16:37]could come up with for how to survive this life of like incredible uncertainty was to double down
[16:43]gratitude and to just be grateful that I got to write stories at all, just to be grateful that I
[16:52]got to spend my life thinking about stories that that reading romance novels in the bubble bath was
[16:57]part of my job description, you know, that I got to be here. And, you know, for many, many years,
[17:02]I kept thinking I was going to have to quit, you know, that I might not get another contract,
[17:06]you know, there was a lot of uncertainty, no guarantees. And, you know, I decided even in the face
[17:12]of that that if that happened, I would be grateful that I ever got to do this at all. And,
[17:17]I'm not very good at gratitude. I'm much, much better in life just sort of by nature at like
[17:23]having a list of, um, a friends and things that I'm mad about and, you know, things like bad
[17:28]things that happened. It's much easier for me and probably a lot of us to kind of look at those
[17:33]things. But it I forced myself over 20 years to get better and better and better at noticing the
[17:40]good stuff that's happening being grateful for the like little, little tiny good things that come
[17:45]along. So I think more than anything, that's what it's taught me to do to to learn how to be grateful.
[17:52]Amazing. Katherine, thank you. Thank you for the delight and joy I got. And I guess now I can
[17:58]articulate it as anticipation of love. So thank you for that. I really appreciate it. And thank you
[18:04]for this conversation. Uh, it's a fun to talk to you. Thank you. You too. Okay. Bye Katherine. Bye.
[18:10]Lila Racic is the author of The Plunge, a novel. Lila is an acclaimed playwright and screenwriter.
[18:16]Her new play, My Master Builder, was the hit of London's West End last year, starring
[18:21]Ewan McGregor and Elizabeth Dabekki. She has worked on television shows such as Younger and
[18:25]Gossip Girl, and is currently writing an erotic thriller series starring Nina Dobrev.
[18:30]Her new play, Fire Season, is in pre-production for Broadway. She holds a BA in creative writing
[18:35]from Barnard College and an MFA in playwriting from Columbia University. The Plunge is her first novel
[18:41]and was already called The Smart Sexy Scandalous Read of the Season by Town and Country.
[18:46]Welcome, Lila. Thank you so much for coming on Totally Butch to discuss the Plunge. Congratulations.
[18:52]Thank you. Thank you, Cynthia. It's my first podcast. I can't believe it.
[18:56]So you've already done a fence and you're a pro in all of that. Well, you're my first,
[19:00]you're always my first. Okay, the Plunge. Tell listeners what the Plunge is about.
[19:08]The Plunge revolves around the character of Lila, who's a 31-year-old writer,
[19:13]who survives a very traumatic accident that kills her fiance weeks before their wedding after he's
[19:20]very publicly disgraced in LA. And she comes fleeing back to New York where she's living in a
[19:26]decrepit-made-through of a dying poet on the upper east side. And she's awash and guilt and grief
[19:33]and shame and hiding from this public scandal. And then she gets a phone call one night from a
[19:40]mysterious man from her past, inviting her to a party. And she's so desperate for escape and connection
[19:47]that she decides to go. And at that party, she meets Damon, her former neighbor, and who's a
[19:55]the curial, mysterious jewelry designer. And he is there with-
[20:00]The beguiling is a bell, an older widow in her 60s,
[20:04]whose rumored death have been a fixer
[20:06]for her husband's private investigative firm,
[20:09]and live in denial.
[20:11]But also an author.
[20:12]And also, yes, a former writer,
[20:14]and of an icon in the 1970s.
[20:16]And we have, again, desperate for distraction
[20:20]and in denial of the truth.
[20:22]That haunts her that she plunges into this,
[20:25]charged dynamic with these two-dazzling duo.
[20:31]See, that's not where I thought the plenished the title.
[20:34]Ah, well, come with a little yes, exactly.
[20:37]Multiple meanings.
[20:39]But can we ever evade our past?
[20:41]And this investigative journalist named Rex
[20:44]starts to invade this inner circle of hers
[20:48]and threatening to reveal this devastating secret
[20:50]from her past that has to be the accident.
[20:52]And so she begins to unravel.
[20:54]And she embarks on this toxic affair with a demon
[20:58]while her relationship with Isabel is deepened.
[21:01]And they, as she live, follows them from Manhattan
[21:05]to the North Fork, to Lake Como,
[21:07]all of their lives collide in this
[21:10]exclusively dangerous game of desire and betrayal.
[21:14]That has a, I'll say, fatal end.
[21:17]So that's the moment, I guess.
[21:20]Well, thank you for taking me to all those places, by the way.
[21:24]And we don't find out a lot of these twists.
[21:27]Like you sprinkle them throughout.
[21:28]We don't find out anything about her accident
[21:33]with what happened with her ex-husband until about,
[21:35]not ex-husband.
[21:36]I'm so used to saying that.
[21:37]Yes, her late husband.
[21:39]Late fiance, sorry.
[21:41]Late fiance until it's revealed to us as the reader.
[21:45]Right, and she just has lots of secrets.
[21:47]Mm-hmm.
[21:48]I think one of the themes, if one can say,
[21:53]is like the most devastating secret is the one
[21:56]we keep from ourselves.
[21:57]And I was really interested in exploring a character
[22:01]who is an unreliable narrator, one who's memory
[22:06]has been warped by trauma and by loss and grief.
[22:11]And how does that affect us?
[22:13]In the end, she's lying to herself as much as she is
[22:16]to everyone else, but I thought that would be really
[22:18]challenging for me as a writer to write,
[22:20]but also taking us on a wild and propulsive ride
[22:24]as we learn how her own inner narrative has just in us.
[22:28]It's with the world she's living in.
[22:31]Well, love sort of combines loneliness and grief.
[22:35]The way that she, even when she's in this rapturous affair,
[22:41]the way you delve deep into her psyche.
[22:43]It's like, she still can't heal.
[22:45]Right.
[22:46]Like, nothing she is doing physically can heal.
[22:49]Right.
[22:49]What's going on inside?
[22:51]Yeah, I think I was interested in the process of,
[22:55]I feel like so much literature I've read about starting
[22:57]over, there seems to be some sort of roadmap.
[23:00]And I was interested in really plumbing
[23:02]the depths of what starting over looks like when it's,
[23:05]it is, if you almost have to plunge to an even darker place
[23:09]to find yourself again and it leaves case,
[23:12]that is unruly and messy and turbulent and tumultuous.
[23:16]And she keeps trying to run from herself and escape
[23:20]into these worlds that are not her own,
[23:23]but in the end the past, you know,
[23:24]always comes back to haunt us and she can't escape forever.
[23:28]And as her identity is, you know,
[23:31]she's on that journey to piece together the splinters,
[23:35]but it's shattering for her.
[23:39]Well, it's one of the most intense relationships
[23:42]I've read in a while, her endowment.
[23:44]It's like the passion with the distance,
[23:49]with the confusion, the push pull of it all.
[23:52]I almost couldn't decide if I was rooting for them
[23:55]to end up together or not, which is good.
[23:58]When you can't, you know, when you're like,
[24:00]there's no clear right answer.
[24:02]Right.
[24:03]I just wanted to see what was going to happen next.
[24:05]I'm glad you've felt that way.
[24:08]Yeah, I think that we get glimpses through flashback
[24:12]that she's kind of come out of this somewhat toxic relationship
[24:17]with this ex where she feels at once,
[24:21]I don't want to give anything away,
[24:22]but, you know, saved by this two sex-macking now
[24:25]that's coming down and kind of redirected her life,
[24:28]but I think as I don't want to speak for all women,
[24:31]but I think I've seen in my own self
[24:33]and in the women around me,
[24:35]how we often repeat patterns of behavior
[24:38]and as destructive and toxic,
[24:41]as that relationship in her past was,
[24:43]she's repeating those patterns in her affair with demon
[24:46]at once he feels familiar and safe
[24:48]because he is someone that she knew before her life had been,
[24:53]the course of her life had been reversed.
[24:54]He knew her when, before she had lived this life in LA
[24:58]and become this, you know, scarlet-lettered girl,
[25:02]but on the other hand, he and himself is unavailable.
[25:06]He's married more or less.
[25:08]He's in this very enigmatic relationship
[25:11]with this older woman and in a way,
[25:13]there's like a safety and an unavailability.
[25:16]And I think I was interested in that.
[25:17]And of course, it's very sexy affairs.
[25:20]Oh, really?
[25:21]Yeah, I mean, you've got a lot of them, really.
[25:23]Hot and heavy seats, yes, yes, even in Central Park.
[25:28]And yes, it's just a friend, yes, it's right around
[25:31]where we're talking today, so.
[25:32]Thank you for that.
[25:34]Thank you for that, that's been fun, right?
[25:36]Do you ever get embarrassed writing scenes like that
[25:38]or not at all?
[25:38]No, I think there was an Arthur Miller quote
[25:41]that I heard recently that he says,
[25:43]I'm going to misquote this,
[25:45]but the best writing we can ever do
[25:46]is the one that embarrasses us.
[25:48]And I think as a writer, you know, I was formally,
[25:51]I still am, a playwright and screenwriter.
[25:54]I was always investigated as a woman.
[25:57]I'm interested in as a woman investigating those,
[26:00]the dark edge of desire and lust and the costume desire.
[26:06]And so I think you have to really go there
[26:09]and explore that edge of desire and darkness
[26:13]if you're going to be a truthful and honest
[26:15]in your own work.
[26:15]So I think it's only embarrassing when, you know,
[26:19]like my mother-in-law would read it or something,
[26:22]but I know I had this play in London
[26:24]with you and McGregor and Elizabeth DeBeckey.
[26:25]And there was a lot of, it was a sex on stage,
[26:29]but it was very provocative
[26:32]and it was interesting, especially to present that
[26:35]to a British audience,
[26:36]but there's a lot of pro-coaching in the culture
[26:38]and to make people feel unsettled and uncomfortable
[26:41]and provoked and challenged,
[26:43]especially in the landscape of female desire.
[26:46]I think it's a really exciting place to be right now.
[26:50]I feel like women's stories of all ages,
[26:52]at all stages of life are being explored.
[26:54]And so it's an exciting time to be able
[26:56]to explore that messy side of female desires.
[26:59]There's definitely the theme of not just in your book,
[27:02]but lust and grief, right?
[27:06]Like I read another book where this couple has just lost
[27:10]a child and then yet they come together physically,
[27:13]like so intensely.
[27:15]And there's like, it's almost like you have to
[27:18]stake your physical space to offset the terror
[27:23]of knowing that you're just one step away
[27:25]if you're not even existing anymore.
[27:27]Yeah, I've always been interested in exploring
[27:30]that sort of porous, slippery boundary.
[27:32]I think a class I took in grad school for playwriting
[27:35]was called Sex and Death, which is Freud's written about
[27:39]the death drive and the sex drive in a sense,
[27:41]one in the scene.
[27:42]And I think our desire is often what makes us feel alive,
[27:46]especially in a space of grief.
[27:49]And I think that is very truthful to the character of Live.
[27:53]She's kind of in that space where she's,
[27:55]she doesn't know how to reconcile both things,
[27:58]the grief that she's feeling and the desire she's feeling
[28:00]and how in a sense one is in conversation with the other.
[28:05]And I think that's a really interesting space to explore
[28:08]as a writer and especially as a female character.
[28:11]And they're really all grieving something.
[28:13]They are.
[28:14]They are brother and Isabel is being multiple people.
[28:19]I don't give anything away because I was so sad.
[28:22]I mean, they all have, they all have loss
[28:26]and they're processing it all in very differently.
[28:28]Exactly.
[28:29]And I think there's something tacitly unexplained
[28:32]about the way they all come together.
[28:34]They're, of course, there's this.
[28:37]It's vibrating at this level where they are going on this,
[28:41]again, like propulsive and almost dazzling journey together,
[28:44]but it's also to mask the true pain
[28:48]of what is finding them all.
[28:50]And this kind of space where their center of gravity
[28:54]has all fallen out and how do we cling to those
[28:58]that understand that dark space we're in,
[29:02]whether we talk about it or not and in the novel,
[29:06]I feel like everyone talks about how sexy the book is,
[29:09]but really I'm glad that we're talking about
[29:11]kind of the undercurrent of grief.
[29:12]And Isabel is in the book,
[29:15]goes to this bereavement group that Mount Sinai every week.
[29:17]And she kind of drives a little more by the way.
[29:19]Oh, very happy to be there.
[29:22]And she drives live along with who is, again,
[29:25]in denial of this past that turns her and comes back
[29:29]to haunt her, into denial of her own grief and ascends,
[29:32]but just that act bonds them together as women
[29:36]in very different stages of life.
[29:38]So in the end, underneath the sex and the murder
[29:43]and the sundry.
[29:44]Trench scenery, there is, I feel like that,
[29:47]to me, the central relationship,
[29:49]aside from the one between that demon is like the catalyst
[29:52]that all brings them together,
[29:53]but that central core is really the heart of it
[29:56]as Isabel and live and both trying to and struggling.
[30:00]me to not only move on, but find some sense of healing.
[30:04]So you're so accomplished.
[30:06]You've written in multiple medium media, whatever,
[30:10]stage, screen, whatever.
[30:12]You've gotten so much press about this book.
[30:15]I couldn't even believe it.
[30:16]Everywhere I turn, it's like, oh my gosh, what are you
[30:18]even doing?
[30:19]But a lot of it delves into your own personal life.
[30:23]How do you feel about this?
[30:25]Thank you for that question.
[30:26]I appreciate that.
[30:28]I set out to write a novel, which is a work of fiction.
[30:31]And like any work of fiction, I think, especially
[30:33]a first work, a debut work.
[30:35]It's often in a amalgam, a composite of personal experience,
[30:40]research, and one's own active, overactive,
[30:44]and fertile imagination.
[30:46]I will say that because what I had gone through
[30:50]was on such a severe, I had it.
[30:54]Maybe you should just say quickly what?
[30:55]Yes, OK.
[30:57]In 2017, I did survive my own very painful and public
[31:03]Hollywood trauma, where I was engaged to be married.
[31:06]And three weeks before the wedding,
[31:08]my fan fiance, who was a public figure,
[31:11]was me too at the very beginning of me too.
[31:15]And it sent me scrambling back to New York.
[31:19]And I felt like, oh, I'm going to cry in your podcast,
[31:21]Libby.
[31:23]I ended up living in a me-through of a female mentor
[31:26]right down the block.
[31:27]Oh my gosh, you should edit this out.
[31:30]It's so funny because I've been talking about it,
[31:32]having to talk about it, and you put it
[31:34]a wall, and you have your things that you want to say.
[31:37]But really it came from this place where I felt like I didn't
[31:41]know how to start again.
[31:42]And my whole life had, my future was just in a flash gone.
[31:47]And I was living in a me-through, actually,
[31:48]kind of down the block.
[31:50]But very much, you had definitely worked in.
[31:52]I read that so much.
[31:53]Yeah, it was actually, I enjoyed living in a few me-throughs,
[31:55]but Daphne's is one of them who is a really generous mentor
[31:58]of mine who I had met at Barnard.
[32:00]She's a Barnard alum.
[32:02]And so the book, in many ways, I think,
[32:06]the scaffolding of the book begins.
[32:09]I wanted to kind of take those emotions
[32:12]that I was feeling, that confusing morass of guilt
[32:16]and shame and grief and starting over,
[32:19]and explore, I think, the aftermath of all that.
[32:23]The book begins six months after this character,
[32:26]lived, has gone through something similarly.
[32:29]And how does one reshape their life and reshape
[32:32]their identity when they feel like they've lost everything?
[32:36]And but to answer your question, because to me,
[32:40]the book is not about that.
[32:43]It really, again, I feel like the emotional, very similar
[32:47]to is there, but in any work that I would write,
[32:51]I'd want it to feel honest to a sort of emotional place
[32:55]I was in, but I didn't expect at all press to drag this up,
[33:00]because I refuse to talk about, actually,
[33:02]the first person I'm talking to, about I refuse to talk about it.
[33:05]I said, this is a work of fiction,
[33:07]and it really has nothing to do with how the novel unfolds.
[33:12]And so that's been difficult for me.
[33:14]But I think part of the book, too,
[33:16]is in this moment where, especially as women,
[33:19]how do we reconcile different narratives,
[33:22]public narrative, a private narrative,
[33:24]once they can be completely at odds with each other.
[33:27]And it's a very hard as women to reconcile them.
[33:30]And I admire women like a bellbird
[33:32]and use written a memoir.
[33:34]And I specifically decided not to write a memoir.
[33:37]Did you even debate it?
[33:38]No, no, no, to me, the way I process my own life,
[33:43]the way I process emotion is through fiction.
[33:46]It gives me the liberty to explore stories I never would
[33:48]and to take characters and directions
[33:50]that I may not be as brave to do in my own life.
[33:54]So it to me, it was always a work of fiction.
[33:57]And that gave me a real disbeast to explore something
[34:00]and to connect it to other,
[34:02]the experience of women who feel like there are lives
[34:07]have been upended by the toxic wreckage of men.
[34:10]And that's a very universal experience, I feel.
[34:13]So anyway.
[34:15]I cried in your pod, my first podcast.
[34:17]So it's okay.
[34:19]Not the first to cry, but I can't, don't feel that.
[34:22]No, I just feel that sometimes the way
[34:27]the media twists and turns things to their advantage
[34:31]doesn't take into account the feelings of the real people
[34:35]behind the story.
[34:36]And truthfully, I think somebody who's
[34:39]spent 20 years as a writer, exclusively as a writer,
[34:44]had the education, have the credibility
[34:47]and have been successful in my field.
[34:50]And I was kind of appalled that the press would
[34:55]drag that, dredge that up, and put that in the headlines.
[34:58]And I understand the clickbait of it all,
[35:00]but also this is a work of fiction.
[35:03]And I've stuck to that story and have not opened up.
[35:06]And so it feels a bit kind of same misogynistic in a sense.
[35:10]Do you feel like if you, would you still
[35:14]publish the same novel knowing how much stuff has
[35:17]been dredged up as a result?
[35:18]100% OK.
[35:19]Because I think in the end, as writers,
[35:23]I'm proud to have lived an interesting life,
[35:26]a life that has given me, despite the messy choices
[35:29]that live me, because I'm proud that I've made as well.
[35:33]And it is all the material from which we
[35:38]gleaned our source material.
[35:41]And I think I've always, in my life,
[35:43]and most admired female writers who
[35:46]have transformed memory into art and painful experiences
[35:51]and to fiction to me, that is, in part,
[35:54]the extraordinary thing about writing
[35:57]in whatever form it takes.
[35:59]And so that's a part of who I am.
[36:02]And what I experienced, and I'm very fortunate to have
[36:07]come out on the other side.
[36:08]And that paired with, I started writing this book in 2021
[36:13]when my best friend died, who was 35 at the time.
[36:17]And he was everything to me.
[36:18]So I had gone through this one kind of very devastating
[36:23]dissolution of a relationship.
[36:24]And then that was followed by this devastating grief
[36:28]that I felt.
[36:29]And I was alone in the pandemic.
[36:31]And I didn't know what else to do to write my way out of it.
[36:34]So that's kind of how the book can be canned.
[36:37]But it's a really sexy book, a fun book, too.
[36:41]So we're making it out to me, but you know,
[36:43]it is sexy and fun.
[36:44]But hopefully it's the depth of feeling
[36:48]that I feel like distinguishes this book.
[36:51]And the analysis of pain and how pain helps us connect.
[36:57]And if you hadn't gone through any of that,
[37:00]it wouldn't feel, it wouldn't read as authentic.
[37:02]So I feel like the people who know what it's like.
[37:05]And they read it in fiction.
[37:07]They're like, oh, where are they with you?
[37:09]Right, exactly.
[37:11]And I wanted to take readers on that journey
[37:14]and really have to go to that dark, dark place.
[37:17]She's, I keep saying this because how could you not?
[37:20]But she's plunging as deep and dark as she can go.
[37:24]And it kind of almost a self-destructive act
[37:26]in order to hopefully at the end,
[37:29]find a sense of recovery and redemption
[37:32]wait, tell me about your friend who died.
[37:34]What was his name?
[37:35]Oh, his name is James.
[37:36]The book's dedicated to him.
[37:38]And he was an extraordinary human being.
[37:40]I've actually never spoken about it,
[37:42]but I think he in a way was, he was 35.
[37:45]And he was the closest friend I,
[37:48]I mean, he's my best friends in my freshman year at college.
[37:52]And knew very deeply the place I was personally
[37:58]in my life in a way that I feel like
[38:00]in times of crisis.
[38:02]We often, I find at least, and I know Bell Burnham
[38:05]talked about this in your podcast,
[38:07]the way in which who we decide to trust
[38:09]and who we decide to let into a very vulnerable moment.
[38:13]He was one of my closest people.
[38:15]And so I, I the book is dedicated to him
[38:18]and I feel like he guided me through the process of COVID,
[38:22]of COVID, yeah, 35 years old.
[38:25]Yeah, yeah, he was in India and got stuck there
[38:29]and did some longer story,
[38:30]but it was a devastating loss for me
[38:32]and for those who knew and loved him.
[38:34]And he also worked for Daphne working too.
[38:38]Yeah, so it bonded us together.
[38:40]He, he had also lived in that major room of art,
[38:44]just there in a way that was how this book was born
[38:48]because I was in New York and completely alone
[38:52]and dealing with this grief on my own.
[38:54]And I think it gave me also a wider lens
[38:58]in which to look upon grief
[39:00]because the character in the book,
[39:01]he was dealing with the grief and guilt she feels
[39:04]over the loss of her Beyonce,
[39:07]which is a plot twist we won't give away.
[39:10]But it, I had, I had to force myself to kind of go
[39:13]into those feelings in order to write it.
[39:15]Well, to your point on the whole novel being quite cinematic,
[39:18]like this has to be a film or something.
[39:21]Is it going to be it?
[39:23]Yeah, well, I can't speak about specifically who,
[39:26]but I'm developing it for a very exciting star.
[39:29]So we, you know, crossing fingers
[39:31]that will be an on zoom.
[39:32]Yeah.
[39:33]That's wonderful.
[39:34]Yeah.
[39:34]Well, I have to say,
[39:36]like I didn't know what to expect with the book.
[39:39]And I lingered like over every page.
[39:43]Like I didn't want to miss a line.
[39:45]I had to like take my time and feel the grit
[39:48]of the whole thing to make it out the other end.
[39:51]And I'm so glad I did because I feel like
[39:55]it's like the going through the dishwasher or something.
[39:58]Like I feel like you come at.
[40:00]kind of coo lead and like all this stuff is like mixed up and then, you know, and yet,
[40:06]you know, the dishes are beautiful. So there you go.
[40:08]Oh, well, thank you. Thank you. Um, I, I, I feel like that was the experience I wanted
[40:14]to give the reader or maybe I just, you know, gave myself all writing and, and I think
[40:18]the, the pain and joy for me of writing a novel on like the work I've done is a trigger
[40:25]that poetry background. So every sentence I, I, I, I, I, I recognize a very word
[40:29]degree sentence, I'm sure you can tell. But, um, I'm, I wanted to give you the reader,
[40:36]the experience of what that really is like to plummet and to inspire all into the darkness
[40:43]and I'm glad that you felt like there was a little bit of light at the end.
[40:45]No, 100%. I wish I could take this book and like, flutter down to you post COVID, like
[40:52]crying somewhere and just be like, look, look what you, look what you made of this.
[40:56]Oh, thank you. Thank you, Sibi. Thank you.
[40:59]Look what you made of it. Anyway, congratulations. Thank you. Thank you so much for having me.
[41:04]Thank you for listening to Totally Booked with Sibi, formerly mom's don't have time
[41:09]to read books. If you loved the show, tell a friend, leave a review, follow me on Instagram
[41:14]at Zibi Owens and spread the word. Thanks so much. Oh, and buy the books.