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June 12, 2025 36 mins
Ben and Tonya Mezrich have been long time supporters of Lisa’s Book Club, and The Billy and Lisa show even from the early days! We pulled this one out of the archive because of a discussion we had on the Billy & Lisa Show. Ben and Tonya co-wrote a children's book together, and it was the first children's book to be featured on LBC.  
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Episode Transcript

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Speaker 1 (00:04):
Hey, welcome to Lisa's book Club, a podcast where I
interview best selling authors from the New England area, pulling
back the curtain on what it's really like being a
best selling author. They're guilty pleasures, latest projects, and so
much more so because of the fiftieth anniversary of the
Jaws movie coming up next week, we had this incredible
topic on the Billy and Lisa in the Morning show,

(00:26):
what is your favorite movie that was either filmed or
set in Boston. So then we took it one step
further for the Lisa's book Club podcast and then we
were talking about what books were written by New England
authors that were turned into major blockbuster movies, and there
are so many, So the jumping off point was that,

(00:49):
but I have a really cool interview with Ben and
Tanya Mesick where there are children's book Charlie numbers, So
give it a listen. I couldn't be more happy to
actually be doing a children's book for once. This is
our first, so welcome you guys.

Speaker 2 (01:03):
Thank you so much. Yeah, we have always been such
a huge fan of yours and back in the Maddie days,
and we're so excited for this new chapter with Billy
and the book club was just you know, it just
made sense. And we always said, Lisa is gonna be
better than Oprah. We can only have right, Yeah, you
have an amazing following, so we're we're excited to be here.

(01:27):
My background is actually I come from a slightly different background.
I actually studied dentistry. I'm a dentist. Yes, I don't
know if people knew that. And then my career path
took me in a few different directions, and I started
writing because I was inspired by Ben, who you know,
knew he wanted to be a writer since he was twelve.

(01:49):
And when the time came for when Asher was two,
our son was two, we thought, oh, hey, maybe he
wants to read something of yours before he turns fourteen.
So we thought of this idea of creating the series
called Charlie Numbers, and this is We're excited that this

(02:10):
is our fourth book in the series. And the rest
was history.

Speaker 3 (02:14):
Yeah, and I'm Ben, and yeah, Lisa, thank you so much.
You know, I've been going on the show for what
seems like forever. I much started my career going meeting
with you, and it kind of launched me in a
lot of ways because I've been a writer for a
very long time. As Tanya said, I wanted to be
a writer since I was twelve years old. And my

(02:36):
first book that anybody heard of was called Bringing Down
the House about some mit kids who made lots of
money playing in Vegas. And I came on the show
for that book, and the book was really a big hit,
made into a movie called twenty one. And I wrote
a book that was made into a movie called The
Social Network about Facebook and where that came from.

Speaker 4 (02:55):
And the kid's book.

Speaker 3 (02:56):
As Tanya said, we really wanted our kids to be
able to read something that, you know, we were writing
before we got too old to enjoy it. And I
always wanted to do a kid's version of the big
books I was writing. So it originally started out that
whatever adult book I was working on, we would try
and put together a kid's version. So this is book
four of the series, Charlie Numbers and the UFO Bash,

(03:21):
and Charlie is a kid in just outside of Boston.
Him and his group of friends go to a school
in the Newton area that we kind of invented, so
it's not a real school. It's kind of based on
where Tanya went to school when she was a kid,
because she remembers her early life more than I remember
my early life. So it's about a group of kids

(03:42):
who are really good at a bunch of different things.
Charlie is great at math, which is how he got
the nickname Charlie Numbers and his friends and you can
see a lot of them on the cover. Cantaro is
next to him, and he's a brilliant language and electronics.

Speaker 2 (04:00):
And Crystal, who is sort of the ring leader of
the team. She is a rock specialist.

Speaker 3 (04:05):
A rock specialist, knows every rock that you stumble upon
in the yard. And Janis is a is just brilliant
and knows a lot of history and things like that.

Speaker 4 (04:14):
And they have a friend Mario who's an incredible.

Speaker 3 (04:16):
Artist, Marian Marian Marian an incredible artist. And it's just
really fun to write about, you know, kids solving mysteries.
I don't know if any of you, of the adults
remember the Encyclopedia Brown series, but that was kind of
what we, you know, were thinking of when we started
this series, and so we started writing it a few
years ago and this is book four, which is great.

Speaker 4 (04:38):
We're gonna have a box set of.

Speaker 3 (04:40):
It which is really really fun, and we're trying to
work on a TV show version of it, which also
should be a lot of fun and should I.

Speaker 1 (04:49):
So I wanted to ask you when you guys decided
that you wanted to bring you know, one of your
books into you know, for children's literature, how long was
that process when you guys actually sat down as a
couple to write a book, Like did you did you
do different chapters? Did you think about character development and

(05:10):
then come together?

Speaker 3 (05:10):
Like?

Speaker 1 (05:11):
How does that process work? So?

Speaker 2 (05:13):
I guess with every every book or every paper that
you write, it all starts from an outline. So we
kind of brainstorm on the theme of the book. And
it was, as Ben was saying, each one of these
books is sort of loosely based on one of his
adult books. So Bringing Down the House, Bringing Down the
Mouse was based on Bringing Down the House. Charlie Numbers

(05:34):
and The Man in the Moon was based on I
don't know if I can say that title here, Sex
on the Sexing about a moon Rock heist, and then
Charlie Numbers and The Wooly Mammoth was based on Wooly.

Speaker 1 (05:44):
So all of these are loosely based on true stories,
true actual events.

Speaker 3 (05:48):
It's all real events and real science and real math,
but then kind of done in a in a more
accessible and fun way. And UFOs is something that I
wrote a book a while ago called thirty seventh Parallel
about a guy in Colorado who investigates UFOs. And I'm
sure a lot of you kids kind of know what
UFOs are or maybe are interested. It's a topic that

(06:10):
I think a lot of kids are interested and adults.
Now it's all over the news now about whether could
these be real? Are there really aliens coming from other
planets and visiting us? Or is it just some crazy conspiracy.

Speaker 1 (06:23):
And what the government knows?

Speaker 3 (06:25):
Yeah, what people know and what people don't know. And
I actually spent many months hanging out with people who
really really believe when I wrote the adult book and
chasing down stories that may or may not be real.
And so we wrote a kid's version of it, which
this is so a lot of the information in here
is actually based in real stuff, but the story itself,
obviously is you know, so.

Speaker 1 (06:46):
When you decided to do it, how long did it
take you to kind of get to where you were
going to send it to your publisher?

Speaker 2 (06:52):
From start to finish I'd say the whole process is
about a year.

Speaker 1 (06:56):
Is that pretty standard or is that quick?

Speaker 3 (06:58):
For though that's not quick, I would say for what
we do. The way we work together is we brainstorm
an outline together while sitting in a food court somewhere,
and then I usually put it into more of an
outline outline, and then Tanya takes a shot at a
draft and that can take anywhere from a couple months
to six months, depending on how busy our lives are,

(07:18):
and then I kind of go through it and rework
and then we kind of finish it up. So I
would say the writing part of it is only about
four to six months. And then and then you know,
there's editing back and forth with your publisher.

Speaker 4 (07:32):
To get it ready.

Speaker 1 (07:33):
So when you present it as a rough draft, you
haven't have you done a lot of your own editing
though as far as just like because grammar is just
well grammar.

Speaker 3 (07:43):
I mean right, Yeah, I mean I definitely edit in
terms of structure and what scenes work and what scenes don't.
Grammar you know usually comes last.

Speaker 2 (07:52):
Yeah, I think the copy editor with the publisher.

Speaker 3 (07:55):
Yeah, the publisher will fix huge detail.

Speaker 2 (07:57):
It's not a big deal, No, it's not a huge detail,
but taking out his four letter words that had to.

Speaker 1 (08:03):
Be done right that you might have missed when do.

Speaker 2 (08:05):
You realized we were writing for eight to twelve year olds?

Speaker 1 (08:10):
So again like going back to like the whole process.
So it takes a year. And then did you know
so you based it on each one of your other
your adult books, so you kind of knew where you
were going with the next one and with the next one.
So can you tell us what the next book will be?

Speaker 4 (08:26):
Yeah, we have to decide.

Speaker 3 (08:27):
We have a lot of adult books.

Speaker 2 (08:30):
Well, we were going to go off of our our
pattern and we had pitched an idea to do a
roller coaster book. Yeah, because we were always you know,
the kids are obsessed with roller coasters, and we thought
that that's you know, there's a lot of cool science
and physics behind the making of a roller coaster. So
we might revisit that idea for a fifth book. It's
that wouldn't really be based on one of your books.

Speaker 3 (08:52):
Yes, but we'll see. I mean, we have a lot
going on with adult books, so we could do it doing.

Speaker 2 (08:58):
Social network book for kids. Yeah, Well, did you.

Speaker 1 (09:02):
Give it to Asher to read?

Speaker 3 (09:05):
Been reading it a little bit he read some of
the earlier ones and he hasn't read this new one yet.
I don't think so today he'll be getting a copy
to read.

Speaker 2 (09:13):
Yeah, and Aria, she's a good reader too, so maybe
that definitely helps. Right, they're both shaking their hands.

Speaker 3 (09:19):
Very exciting.

Speaker 4 (09:20):
This movement.

Speaker 1 (09:23):
So kind of taking a step back because we have
a lot of young kids here, and that's why we
wanted to do this. You wrote your first book when
you were twelve years old, that is my memory.

Speaker 3 (09:35):
Well, or any of you twelve other than ours? Been
there a couple of kids or twelve? Yeah, I knew
very early. I just wanted to be a writer and
I didn't know how to do it or anything. I
just said I'm going to write a book. And so
when I was twelve, I sat down and I wrote
a book. And back then it was on a typewriter.
I know none of you use a typewriter.

Speaker 2 (09:53):
Anybody know what a typewriter is?

Speaker 3 (09:56):
Does anybody have a typewriter at their house? Anybody? One person?

Speaker 2 (10:00):
Oh?

Speaker 1 (10:00):
The wow?

Speaker 4 (10:00):
One person.

Speaker 3 (10:02):
So we used to have to use a typewriter and
you pressed the keys really hard, and if you made
a mistake, you had to use something called white out
where you drew on it with white pain. He basically
would paint the letter away and then retype the letter.

Speaker 4 (10:16):
It was crazy, It was crazy.

Speaker 1 (10:18):
It was absolutely crazy.

Speaker 3 (10:19):
But I wrote my first book on a typewriter, and well,
my first story was called John the Mouse, and it
was about a mouse who really loved Swiss cheese. So
you had a real you had the whole story in
the first sentence. Basically he loved Swiss cheese. That was
his motivation. And then I wrote a bookieh when I
was twelve thirteen, another one, and I actually sent it
out to publishers in New York and got rejections, but

(10:41):
they would say, oh, how old are you.

Speaker 1 (10:42):
And so how long was the first book?

Speaker 3 (10:46):
Well, John the Mouse was about forty pages. And then
my first book when I was about twelve and a
half that I wrote was about one hundred and fifty pages.
So I was crazy even as a little kid writing
long books. And then I sold my first book right
out of cape, so when I was like twenty three
twenty four.

Speaker 1 (11:02):
So it's easier though for writers now to self publish.

Speaker 3 (11:06):
Everything is easier now. I think we're in a great
time right now. If any of you kids want to
be writers. It's actually a really wonderful time.

Speaker 2 (11:13):
How many how many in the audience is interested in writing?

Speaker 4 (11:17):
Yeah?

Speaker 3 (11:18):
You here because nowadays there's so many places. I know
you probably all watched Disney Channel maybe or Disney Plus
or I don't know, Netflix. There's a million places to
put things that you write now if you become a writer.
So it's a wonderful time to write. And uh yeah,
it's it's opened up. People can publish their own books.
There's Amazon, there's all different ways you can get a

(11:40):
story out there. So all you really need is a
great story and be willing to sit in your room
and write and write and write.

Speaker 1 (11:45):
Well, that's what was one of my questions. What's the
biggest hurdle in being a writer? Like when you just
say you sit in a room and write and write
it write, Like, how hard is that? And how do
you motivate yourself?

Speaker 3 (11:55):
Well, I mean I think the key is obviously to
read and read and read as much as you can
if you love reading. And then when you figure out
what you want to write, maybe it's like something that
you were reading or similar they call it genre, but
in a certain area that you like to read like,
if you read a lot of books that are funny,
then you might want to write something that's funny. If
you read a lot of books about horses, you might

(12:17):
want to try and write a book about horses. Whatever
it is that your interest is in. A hard part
is what Tanya was saying about an outline is, rather
than just sit down and start writing, which a lot
of people do in the beginning, is sit down and
come up with what's going to be in the story
from start to finish. So if you can plan out
your whole story before you start writing, it actually makes

(12:40):
the writing a lot easier. So if you sit there
and plan in the beginning, you know, Mike Charlie is
going to meet someone strange and mysterious, and the kid's
going to show him a weird rock that he found
that he thinks is from space. So that's kind of
how this book starts. And then you go, what's going
to happen after that? They're going to take the rock
to the bio lab and try and figure out what

(13:00):
the rock really is, and that's chapter two, And then
you think, oh no, the rock got stolen, it disappeared,
and you go from chapter to chapter until you have
a whole outline from beginning to end of the whole book,
And if you can do that before you start writing,
your writing is going to go much better. So that's
kind of one of the key of writing.

Speaker 2 (13:18):
The outline is sort of like the skeleton of the body.
It's the framework. It holds everything together and it will
tell the story beautifully. But if you don't have a skeleton,
you're just a massive jello. The story's not so good.

Speaker 1 (13:30):
How much research goes into one of your books.

Speaker 4 (13:34):
I mean it's a lot.

Speaker 3 (13:35):
In terms of the books that I write for adults,
it's many, many weeks of research. So it's usually calling
people up who are in the story, going to the
places where the story takes place, taking pictures of everything,
talking to as many reading books, you know, getting any
documents you can get. For the kids books, it's more, yeah,
planning out where the scenes are going to take place,

(13:56):
and then maybe going there and checking them out. Tanya
did some research. Some of this book takes place at
a robot factory.

Speaker 2 (14:02):
Yes, can anyone guess a robot factory in town? Raise
your hand if you know any robot factories?

Speaker 1 (14:08):
Anyone know?

Speaker 2 (14:09):
Anyone know?

Speaker 3 (14:10):
So there's a real robot factory in town, one of
the best and most incredible in the world, and it's
called I Robot. And Tanya went over there and hung
out with the I Robot people and yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 (14:21):
To tour the factory and they have a great educational
program as well. We did change the name to something
else in the book, but it's it's basically based on
I Robot.

Speaker 1 (14:31):
Did they ask you to change the name?

Speaker 2 (14:33):
No, the publisher wanted us to.

Speaker 4 (14:35):
Yeah. Yeah, Usually when you hand in the book.

Speaker 3 (14:37):
One of the books had an amusement park that was
just like disney World, and they say, well, you probably
shouldn't just call it disney World. And then when you
do a book and there's I Robot, you kind of
change the names just in case. But you know, in
the end, you know you can make it as similar
as you want and make it really cool.

Speaker 1 (14:54):
Yeah, how about names, because it's always you guys have
a lot of kids, a lot of characters.

Speaker 4 (14:58):
Yeah, I can't remember anything, right, So.

Speaker 1 (15:00):
How did you come up with the names? Because you know,
we've talked to other authors in the past, and I
know Ellen Hildebrand she keeps a running list in a
notebook which she goes to a cocktail party, she'll you know,
look at she'll she'll remember names, or she'll take you know,
a page out of her you know, yearbook or something
and she'll just go down the list. So how did
you guys come up? I yehs running of names?

Speaker 2 (15:22):
How do we name story?

Speaker 4 (15:23):
Yeah? I have a name story.

Speaker 1 (15:24):
So names are really I think of your story.

Speaker 3 (15:27):
Names are really really really hard because you want to
name to sound real and but not be distracting from
the book, but be interesting enough that it's useful. And
and so I was writing. Uh, when I wrote Bringing
down the House about the MIT kids who went to Vegas,
I interviewed a kid who was on the MIT blackjack team.
Did a long interview with him, and at the end

(15:47):
he said, whatever you do, just you know, you can
use me for me, just.

Speaker 4 (15:51):
Don't use my name. Nobody knows I'm doing this.

Speaker 3 (15:53):
So I went home and I wrote this article that
was for the Boston Globe. I think about the group
of MIT kids, and I'm like, I got make up
a name. So I made up the name in Matt Cutler.
I wrote, Matt Cutler, it sound like a fake name. Whatever,
And the article comes out and then I get this
phone call and he's yelling at me on the phone.
He's like, what did you do?

Speaker 4 (16:11):
And I go, what do you mean?

Speaker 3 (16:12):
He goes, I told you to make up a name,
and I did make up a name, and he goes,
I'm Matt Cutler. I literally made up the kid's name
and it was really his name.

Speaker 1 (16:23):
Names are hard.

Speaker 4 (16:23):
Names are hard.

Speaker 3 (16:24):
It's hard to make up fake names that work.

Speaker 4 (16:27):
And then uh, and once you.

Speaker 2 (16:28):
Get the right name, like, then, yeah, how did you
do it? His main character in this name, his name
is Anthem, and it just it feels right, you know,
you can feel that that's that character, and you it
just sounds right and feels right, and you know it.
So we we do kind of go through the names
when when they're meeting new friends and trying to pick

(16:49):
and choose what makes the most sense.

Speaker 3 (16:50):
Yeah, and sometimes you change the names as you finish
the first draft because you realize two, the name sound
too much alike or you know, you someone's name, you know,
it doesn't work. The balance is off. Naming is hard.
I mean I used to go through phone books and
just pick random names out of the phone book and
say that's the name I'm going to use, and then
when you sell a movie, before they make the movie,

(17:11):
they go through and they have to check every name
because they don't want to use someone's name who's really
in that same business. So they actually run all the
names through a system to figure out whether the names
match any real people who do whatever it is that
that character's.

Speaker 1 (17:26):
Doing, and has that happened a lot in your I.

Speaker 3 (17:28):
Mean they always change all the names, or all the
names are pretty much changed. When they made twenty one,
they made the main character's name Ben for me, so
that was fun. But they do change the names of
the characters.

Speaker 4 (17:38):
Yeah, a lot.

Speaker 1 (17:40):
Do you guys want to read from the book?

Speaker 3 (17:42):
Yah?

Speaker 2 (17:42):
Sure, we'll read a little bit from chapter one. And
if you don't have the book yet, we have this
wonderful bookseller, Winchester Bookends out front. You can grab a
copy and they have generously agreed to donate fifteen percent
of the sales today to our chosen charity, Raising a Reader.
Feel good about supporting local and supporting raising a reader

(18:03):
as you grab a book for the end of your
summer reading.

Speaker 1 (18:07):
And it's good because Ben and Tany can sign them.
And they're great holiday gifts too. Yeah, really great holiday gifts.

Speaker 2 (18:13):
Happy to sign anything out out front at the end
of the event. All right, how do I do this?
With a mic and a book? A warm summer wind
pulled at Charlie Lewis's hair as he navigated his way
through the thick woods, each of his steps cushioned by
the dewy grass that blanketed the narrow trail. Beneath his feet.
An errant branch reached for his face, like the curled

(18:34):
fingers of some terrifying apparition. Charlie did his best to
ignore it. Ducking below the leaves. He was determined not
to let anything slow his progress, break his will. His
nerves were sparking off like fireworks on the fourth of July,
but he pushed the fear deep down. If he turned
back now, he knew he'd never forgive himself. The air
was humid, mossy, and moist in his nostrils, even though

(18:58):
it was only the first week of June. Three days earlier,
Charley's summer vacation had officially begun. Usually, this was his
favorite time of the year, the pressures of school dwindling
in the rear view mirror, months of science camps, swimming
pools and slumber parties with friends ahead, but at the moment,
memories of summer and school were far from his thoughts.

(19:18):
Charlie had been moving through the overgrown forest for what
seemed like hours, tripping over roots and careening through dried
up stream beds, and every step seemed to take him
farther away from the warm, comforting world he understood of
science and history and logic, and towards something else, something
dark and confusing and scary. And suddenly, right in front

(19:39):
of him, there was a flash as bright as lightning,
so stark white that it made him blink and stumble.
In that first split second, eyes watering off balance, Charlie
still had the presence of mind to reach for his camera.
He had been carrying the darn thing around for days,
an old digital point and shoot model that he found
in his dad's desk drawer, and was sure this was

(20:02):
the right moment to use it. No one really used
these type of cameras anymore, unless concerns of electromagnetic waves
were involved. He hurriedly snapped open the lens cap and
hit the tiny black plastic button on the top, attempting
to turn the old beast on silence. He had pushed
this button so many times before and had always heard
the familiar beep of the camera going on. How could

(20:24):
it fail him now? He squinted down at the camera's
casing and realized that led light was no no power.
He quickly reached into his pocket and dug out a
spare battery. He ripped the compartment open, tossed the dead
battery to the side, shoved the fresh one in and
hit the button. And again, no beep, no LED light,
no power. How was this possible? One burnout battery? Okay,

(20:49):
maybe but two. Charlie looked up from the camera bewildered when,
just as quickly as it had come, the bright light
was gone. The forest once again plunged into pitch blackness.
Charlie blinked several times to adjust his eyes. Still nothing,
no light, no shadows, just the ebony sky above, an overwhelming,
enveloping darkness, one that was almost liquid like oil, blanketing everything.

(21:14):
And then from somewhere ahead, there was a sound, a
rustling tree branches being pushed to the side, something moving
along the ground through the trees toward him. Charlie froze.
He had hiked these very woods before, a year earlier.
On a camping trip with his dad. Normally, sounds in
the woods didn't scare him, but this rustling, scraping even

(21:38):
was something different. It certainly wasn't his friends, three of
whom he knew were somewhere behind him in the forest.
He'd foolishly sprinted ahead when they'd first arrived, his eagerness, curiosity,
and yes, disbelief at what they had found over the
past few weeks getting the better of him, spurring him
to take unnecessary risks, And now he regretted not pacing

(21:59):
himself so that could keep up. And then suddenly the
sound stopped and a strange, burning, plastic smell filled the air.
Charlie coughed momentarily choking, and just as he was about
to turn around and sprint back the way he'd come
the bright light it exploded in front of him again.
Charlie gasped, falling backward for a second, then caught his

(22:20):
footing and peered through the trees. Everything was suddenly visible.
He could see in that instant that ten yards in
front of him there was an opening in the woods.
The opening was circular, with a perfect ring of trees
surrounding it, and at the center Charlie could make out
a formation of rocks, also in a circle, mimicking the trees. Wow,

(22:41):
Charlie whispered, what the heck was he looking at? Without thinking,
he lifted his camera flicked the switch, but it was
still dead. Charlie steadied himself, then shielded his eyes with
his hand, trying to get a glimpse at what was
creating the incredibly bright light. But before he could see anything,
the brightness flashed on and off again like a lightning storm.

(23:02):
Then the forest was enveloped in blackness. Charlie kept his
eyes open, his neck craned, but there was nothing but blackness,
and in that moment, Charlie realized the moon and stars
had disappeared.

Speaker 1 (23:15):
To what do you guys think happened there? Anyway?

Speaker 2 (23:29):
Silence?

Speaker 1 (23:32):
What what do you think? Alright? With? Scientifically, I'm very creepy.

(23:57):
I like that? So who wrote that chapter? Did you
write that?

Speaker 3 (24:01):
I mean, we wrote it. It's a it's a yeah,
it's a real combination. She'll write some and then i'll,
you know, go through the sentences that she's written, and
it's kind of a mix. Like I recognize some of
the words, but I'm sure she recognizes some of the
words too.

Speaker 1 (24:16):
Yeah, it's definitely a mix. Do you guys have any
questions for Benania about writing or reading? Did you guys
read to your kids a lot when they.

Speaker 3 (24:27):
Were Oh yeah, we were big, big readers to our
kids all the time.

Speaker 1 (24:31):
And then.

Speaker 2 (24:35):
We still are.

Speaker 3 (24:36):
We still read to Aria a lot.

Speaker 2 (24:38):
Yeah, sure, reading The Boy who Harnessed the Wind right
now with Aria?

Speaker 4 (24:41):
Is that the one you now?

Speaker 3 (24:42):
Yeah, we're reading a lot of what was the one
with the bears that.

Speaker 4 (24:46):
Have armor on them?

Speaker 2 (24:47):
The Golden Compass, Golden Compass, Philip Pullman, that one good.

Speaker 3 (24:53):
But yeah, we're big, big believers. And the more you
read to kids, the better it is for everybody. And
there's no thing more important than than kids reading. So
we're forcing.

Speaker 4 (25:03):
Our kids now. They love reading. And when I was little, my.

Speaker 3 (25:07):
Dad had a rule that we had to read two
books a week before we were allowed to watch TV.

Speaker 4 (25:11):
Wow every week.

Speaker 3 (25:12):
So that's I know, we should institute it.

Speaker 1 (25:15):
But what's your What are some of your favorite kids books?

Speaker 4 (25:20):
Yeah, I mean it's hard to remember.

Speaker 3 (25:22):
When I was a kid, I was, I was definitely
into the Encyclopedia Brown books.

Speaker 4 (25:26):
I loved.

Speaker 3 (25:27):
There was a book called The Electric book. If I
remembers that book where it's almost like the whole world
became a video game and he should write happened He'd
write and then it would happen, and he'd write and
it would happen. So it's probably what I'm trying to
model my life after write and then whatever I write happens.
It was called the Electric Book.

Speaker 1 (25:46):
What were some of yours, Tanya?

Speaker 2 (25:48):
I loved the Encyclopedia Brown books as well. I loved
some of the Bubblegum books, the Sweet Valley High books.
They weren't great literature, but they were fun and a
beverly cleary.

Speaker 3 (26:02):
And you know, yeah, and then yeah, and then I
became obsessed with like science fiction books when I got
a little older and things like that, and then the
Lord of the Rings Hobbit stuff and yeah. And then
as I got older, I moved more into sort of
more you know, more adults or fiction stuff. But I
was just a voracious kid.

Speaker 1 (26:23):
Yeah, sounds like, Yeah, do you guys have any questions
for Benentonia Callum?

Speaker 4 (26:30):
So what do you think the difference between writing for adults.

Speaker 3 (26:33):
And writing for kids and which one do you like more? Yeah,
that's a great question. I mean writing for adults.

Speaker 4 (26:39):
For me is it's funny.

Speaker 3 (26:43):
I write quicker for adults, so I write a book
in two or three months when I write my adult books,
and these books actually take a lot longer even though
they're a lot shorter, which is interesting. Writing for books,
I think you have a little bit more in a
weird way, a little bit more freedom because you're not
as I have to be as controlling out how you
write necessarily mean writing for fiction, I mean writing no

(27:04):
adults out. Yeah, I don't know.

Speaker 4 (27:07):
I like both.

Speaker 3 (27:08):
I think they're both a lot of fun. They're just
very very sort of a different process. And writing by
myself versus writing with Tanya is probably the bigger difference
than writing adults and writing kids. Writing with someone is
a very different way of writing than writing just alone
in your room kind of thing.

Speaker 4 (27:26):
Yeah, thank you.

Speaker 3 (27:27):
And also Tanya mentioned there like what do you think
the differences are between fiction and nonfiction?

Speaker 4 (27:31):
Where like, yeah, so it's interesting. I'm a fiction writer.

Speaker 3 (27:35):
I'm a nonfiction writer who writes is nonfiction like it's fiction,
and my fiction like it's nonfiction. So the way I
write nonfiction is I write thrillers that happen to be true,
so when you read them, they read like a thriller
or a fictional thriller. So for me, there's not a
huge difference in the writing part. It's just the research

(27:55):
is very different. So although I do intense research for
my fiction, it not talking to people and getting their
actual story. It's figuring out things and then making up
a story. But I think nonfiction and fiction are very
similar reality. Reality can be just like a movie, right,
it can be just like a story. And the best

(28:15):
true stories are the ones that seem like they're fake,
So yeah, I try and do them the same.

Speaker 2 (28:21):
And the best fake stories are the ones that seem like.

Speaker 3 (28:23):
They're true exactly. So it's all kind of one and
the same.

Speaker 1 (28:27):
Do you have a favorite project, a favorite story.

Speaker 4 (28:30):
Of the books that I've written.

Speaker 3 (28:32):
It's hard to say. It's kind of like picking between
your children. Although that's easy to do, but it's it's tricky.
I you know, I've written a lot of books that
that that I loved writing while I was writing them,
and then but then you look at like The Social
Network was just an incredible movie. So the experience of

(28:53):
that movie was, you know, beyond anything I can imagine.
I have a new movie coming out in two weeks
called Dumb Money, which is based on a book I
wrote about the whole game stop craziness. If you all
remember when GameStop went insane and all these people made
lots of money, And that book was a blast to write.
And now I'm in the midst of getting ready for
a movie to come out, and so that's, you know,

(29:15):
probably most on my mind right now. But looking back
at my career, I would say Bringing Down the House
was the book that most kind of changed my life
and was just, you know, a wild.

Speaker 1 (29:27):
Where I went.

Speaker 2 (29:27):
Yeah, because he that was like his return. That was
his first foray into nonfiction. He had written seven or
published seven fiction.

Speaker 3 (29:35):
Books before, but that was my first book anybody actually read.
So it was definitely a big moment in my life.
So it's hard to pick. I mean, everyone has been
a lot of fun I bet, yeah, it's funny. So
I was just doing an interview talking about this. I
was watching it happen on a Wednesday, and the stock

(29:57):
went from twenty dollars to like five hundred dollars in day,
and I almost bought it because I was actually watching
it as it happened.

Speaker 4 (30:06):
And then instead I wrote a book about it.

Speaker 3 (30:09):
But yeah, I mean it was a gambling moment where
I came very close to buying it, and you know,
I don't know if you know the story, but it
went crazy up and down really fast. So I'm kind
of glad I didn't buy it because I would have
bought it exactly the wrong moment, I think. But it
was a fascinating Yeah. I did not buy game Stop though,

(30:29):
But one of the people I wrote about was a
college kid who basically took five thousand dollars out of
his tuition money and made three hundred thousand dollars in
a period of a few days.

Speaker 4 (30:39):
So a lot of fortunes were made.

Speaker 1 (30:41):
And it's a local story too, right, Yeah, it's the
main characters from Brockton, and he's a you know, roaring
kiddy he called himself.

Speaker 3 (30:49):
And it's a really fascinating story about this guy who
just fell in love with game Stop, the company game Stop,
and talked millions of people into buying the stock.

Speaker 4 (30:59):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (31:01):
Any other questions, think Christine, when you're making your next book,
is the option for a movie part of the process
at all?

Speaker 3 (31:15):
For my adult books, Yes, I don't write a book
unless I've sold a movie, so I actually do things
a little differently. I see a big story, I write
a ten page treatment, I sell the treatment in Hollywood,
and then I go and sell the book. So my
dream as an author was always to have a paperback
that sat on it Now, a major motion picture.

Speaker 4 (31:33):
You know. I wasn't trying to win a Pulitzer.

Speaker 3 (31:35):
I wasn't trying to win a Yeah, So my dream
was always movies, movies, movies. So for me, the process
is is this going to make a great movie? And
then I write the book with that in mind. For
our kids book it's very different. It's more we're trying
to you know, take a great story and and and
have you know, we're not thinking in that that way.

Speaker 4 (31:55):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (31:55):
So, but for my adult books, I'm definitely conscious of,
you know, the film side of it. Yeah. So, once
you've sold the story, do you have any control of.

Speaker 2 (32:07):
What happens with the movie.

Speaker 3 (32:10):
That's a great question. You're asking the same questions NPR
asked me earlier. Yeah. The most control you have as
an author is who you sell it to. So you
choose who you sell it to, and you try and
sell it to people who are the most talented and
the most likely to make the movie you want to
make and are the most likely to get the movie made.

(32:32):
Once you've sold it, you're involved when the screenplay's being written,
so the screenwriters will come and hang out with you
and you'll talk them through your story and they'll ask
you lots of questions. Once it's beyond the screenplay, the
director really is the king of the movie. You go
to the set, you hang out there and people will
ask you things, but you don't have any power. You

(32:52):
don't have any power once it's it's moving forwards, and
it's probably good that you don't, because I don't know
how to make a movie.

Speaker 4 (32:58):
I know how to write a story.

Speaker 3 (33:00):
Sorry, So you just choose who you sell it to
and hope you sell it to the best people.

Speaker 4 (33:05):
You can get who are going to make it.

Speaker 3 (33:07):
But you know they'll tell you who they're casting or
who they're thinking about. They'll tell you what they're thinking,
and if you have a real problem with something, you
could probably say something. But for the most part, you're
watching it go as you become a part of the
group that's making the movie, but you're not in control
of anything.

Speaker 1 (33:26):
And now with the writer's strike and the actors strike.
We were just talking before we started that Dumb Money's
coming out, but because of the strike, Ben's going to
be doing all of the publicity for the entire time.

Speaker 3 (33:36):
I mean, I'm talking about the book and I'm promoting
the book, which is great, and unfortunately the actors won't
be able to do anything until the strike.

Speaker 1 (33:43):
Ends, which maybe after this comes out.

Speaker 4 (33:47):
Yeah, we'll see.

Speaker 3 (33:48):
We're hoping, hoping that the studios do the right thing
and give the writers and the actors what they want
and so that we can all move forward happily. But
it's an interesting time for Hollywood for sure, where you
know the future is coming and nobody knows what to
do with it, with AI and all of these questions
about how things are going to get written and made
in the future.

Speaker 1 (34:08):
Yeah, it needed to happen.

Speaker 4 (34:09):
Yeah, it's the moment of it, right.

Speaker 3 (34:11):
But we would like to see all our actors at
the movie premiere and stuff, so we'll see what well.

Speaker 1 (34:15):
Pete Davidson's in it, So.

Speaker 3 (34:16):
Davidson, Seth Rogan, did you get to meet it.

Speaker 4 (34:19):
I haven't met Pete yet.

Speaker 3 (34:20):
Sebastian Stan from the Marvel movies.

Speaker 4 (34:23):
I guess to hang out with you, and.

Speaker 2 (34:24):
The movie was filmed I mean, this is off with
the children's topic, but the movie was filmed still during COVID,
so everything was shot very singularly, like it's very carefully done,
only one or two actors in each scene. So even
though it appears that everybody's all together, it was.

Speaker 1 (34:38):
Very they were being safe.

Speaker 4 (34:40):
Yeah, everyone had to be safe.

Speaker 3 (34:42):
But it's a great cast seth Rogan, Pete Davidson, Chilene, Woodleigh, America.
Far from the Barbie Movie Now and we've got Vincent
Dinafrio if you remember him, and Nick Offerman, Paul Dano
plays Roaring Kitty. It's really it's a great cast. Yeah,
really fun.

Speaker 1 (35:00):
So what advice would you give these all these beautiful
children that are sitting here if they love reading and
they want to write more, Like, what are some tips
you can give to them?

Speaker 2 (35:11):
Well, one piece of advice that Ben gave me as
my mentor was you can't sell an empty piece of paper,
So just get the words down on paper, no matter
what it is. As long as you get them out
of your head and onto the paper, then you've got something.
So that was a really good piece of advice that
I share with other emerging writers as well.

Speaker 3 (35:32):
Yeah, read a lot, and try and write a little
bit every day if you can. And if you find
a story that you really want to write, outline it
and then sit down and just try and write it.
And don't worry about if things aren't working perfectly, don't
try and be perfect. Just try and get it on
the page as good as you can and then find
some friends who want to read it. And I think

(35:52):
that's the important thing.

Speaker 1 (35:54):
Yeah, So coming up, Lisa's book club members, We have
a book club coming up on July seventeenth at the
Mandarin Hotel with doctor Nicholas Paracone. He is a celebrity
dermatologist to the stars and he just wrote a new
book about overall skin health and we are going to
have an incredible book club with him. Look for the

(36:14):
link to sign up next week. And then we have
an amazing group of authors coming up, like Jody Pico
on August twenty eighth, we have Chris Whitaker on September fourth,
and so many more book clubs coming your way, So
keep in touch and keep checking back on all of
our socials.
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