June 5, 2025 • 49 mins
Daisy Alpert Florin joined Lisa to talk about her new book My Last Innocent Year. Daisy Alpert Florin attended Dartmouth College and received graduate degrees from Columbia University. The two chatted all about the new novel, and how Elin Hildebrand is a big fan!
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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. Hey, welcome into Lisa's book Club podcast where
I sat down with Daisy Albert Florence. She wrote My
(00:24):
Last Innocent Year. We were at memoir at Encore, hundreds
of people in attendance, and this book was so well
written and it's basically linked to the Clinton Lewinsky era,
just as you might remember, with so many twists and turns.
I hope you enjoy it.
Speaker 2 (00:41):
Last time it.
Speaker 3 (00:42):
Is crow Ellen Hildegrand was the US and I asked
Ellen why she was currently reading, and Ellen said that
she was reading your I mean, she is.
Speaker 4 (00:57):
An amazing literary citizen who's just really you know, raises
up debut authors who really.
Speaker 2 (01:03):
You know, could use some exposure.
Speaker 4 (01:05):
It's hard, it's hard to sell books, it's hard to
break through the noise.
Speaker 2 (01:09):
So I'm incredibly grateful. I don't know her, the book
just found it's made of her, and that's just exactly
you know.
Speaker 4 (01:16):
What point you want to hear is just sort of
spreading like a virus, you know, which is.
Speaker 2 (01:23):
A good virus to that? I mean, but you have
Ellen Hilda.
Speaker 3 (01:26):
Brant saying, read my book. So Dacy's regrettish Connecticut. You
went to Dartmouth, you d kind a degree from Columbia.
Speaker 2 (01:36):
You're very smart. I'm very deppressed. But this is your
debut novel.
Speaker 4 (01:43):
What is that.
Speaker 2 (01:48):
Putting it together? I mean, it's it's crazy that it's here.
Speaker 4 (01:52):
And I try not to read like a class about
it because it's it's I started writing scenes that eventually
became this book, and started writing in twenty fifteen.
Speaker 2 (02:03):
So it was a long time of just you know,
you're writing into the dark. You know, you have no
one was waiting for this book. I had no agent,
I had no deal. You just have to kind of
I feel like it's like faith.
Speaker 4 (02:22):
You know, it's like something you can't see and you
don't know if it.
Speaker 2 (02:26):
Exists, so you just have to like believe in it.
Speaker 4 (02:28):
And I just kept going and for some reason didn't stop, and.
Speaker 2 (02:35):
Eventually you know it, you know, I finished writing it
in twenty twenty.
Speaker 4 (02:40):
And then you know that's five years, and then you
know the process of you know, getting an agent and
publisher and then you know, it took about a year
and a half or to come, you know, become a book.
Speaker 2 (02:52):
That's in your hand. So that's a long.
Speaker 4 (02:55):
Journey and it's hard. Like now it feels like, oh,
of course it's.
Speaker 2 (03:00):
A book and it's on the shelf and people hide
on Amazon and.
Speaker 4 (03:04):
People can like pull it in their hands. But I
have to remember that, you know, that was not always
the case. So it's fantastic, It's it's a dream come true.
Speaker 3 (03:14):
You know when you first saw it on a bookshelf
or you saw it.
Speaker 2 (03:21):
Hit Amazon and people's tarp worry and what like, how
did you react? I mean, there's sunny thing about the
way that publishing works is that before it's a.
Speaker 4 (03:36):
Book, it's something called it advanced reader copies. It's like
a galley and it's sort of a it looks like
the book, it looks like sort of a paperback version
of the book, and your publisher sends it out to
lots and lots of people.
Speaker 2 (03:50):
I don't really know.
Speaker 4 (03:51):
You know, both both fluencers and early readers consertion that
people basically to read it and then post about.
Speaker 2 (03:59):
It or review it on good Reads.
Speaker 4 (04:01):
So when I first realized in months before I book
came out, that people were reading it and were giving
it on good Reads, that was kind of weird. And
if you're familiar, I don't know, if you're familiar with
good Reads at all, Like people don't always say really
nice things on good Greeds. I mean it's sort of
a thing that authors talk about all the time, like
never look at good Reads.
Speaker 2 (04:21):
Just do not ever look at it.
Speaker 4 (04:24):
Just know, just as like step away from good Reads,
don't look at it.
Speaker 2 (04:28):
And I don't know, I mean I think people who
were being on.
Speaker 4 (04:31):
Good Reeds, like they don't think that authors are maybe
looking at it.
Speaker 2 (04:36):
Maybe they think that we're.
Speaker 4 (04:37):
Like so busy and like so fancy or something, but
like all right, or some like always looking at movies.
So I mean that was part of my first in
like you know, inkling that people it was out there
and people were reading it and people were liking it,
and people were having strong opinions about it, and that
took that was like a little I mean, it was great.
Speaker 2 (04:58):
I have to remind myself that every kind of someone.
Speaker 5 (05:00):
Even take the time to write about it, write a review,
even if it's not a great review, like they've engaged
with it in some way and it's like made them
feel something, right, So that's that's in gradation.
Speaker 2 (05:14):
Yeah, that's right, bet or bad. So I'm gonna basically
most of.
Speaker 6 (05:19):
Us write the book, right, Yeah, we're always.
Speaker 3 (05:23):
So I want to talk about Isabelle because she's obviously
the name character in the book.
Speaker 2 (05:30):
How much of Isabelle is you?
Speaker 3 (05:32):
Or how much of you is in Isabelle because I
know you went to Darman and it's set in New Hampshire,
you know, Polish and Wilder, So can you spend on that?
Speaker 2 (05:44):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (05:46):
So when I started writing, when I started to start
of take myself more seriously as a writer, I started
to write personal essays.
Speaker 2 (05:53):
That was sort of how I started writing.
Speaker 4 (05:56):
And I wasn't really aware of it at the time,
but I was writing a lot of essays that were
set in my college years, and I don't know, I
think that there was something about that time that was
really you know, dramatic. It's such a like rich time
or lifehey, or making so many impressions. I kind of
say that. I think like when.
Speaker 2 (06:17):
I was in college, it kind of felt like I
was living in a novel, like anything could happen.
Speaker 4 (06:22):
You know, you like turn a corner and you could
like thumb into someone who could change your life, or
you take that class that changes your life.
Speaker 2 (06:28):
So it was just a very rich time. I was writing.
Speaker 4 (06:31):
About how it felt to come of age in the nineties,
how it felt to be a person like me on
a campus like dartment, the.
Speaker 2 (06:39):
Relationship that I had. My kind of said like, oh,
I'm gonna write an essay about all my old boyfriends
and then I'll be done.
Speaker 4 (06:47):
So after I finished writing in this series of essays,
which I didn't even think of as a series, and
I realized I really wasn't done that with the setting,
with the time, with the time period, and I wanted
to just say more about, you know, things that hadn't
happened to me, but things that had happened to other people,
or things.
Speaker 2 (07:06):
I could just imagine happening.
Speaker 4 (07:08):
And I wanted to kind of tell a story that
reflected something in the culture of that time, something about
patriarchy and the male gaze and all you know seeking
you know, external mail validation, which were all things like
themes in my life that I just wanted to write about.
(07:32):
So I kind of created this story that could attach.
Speaker 2 (07:36):
To those themes.
Speaker 4 (07:37):
So because of that, Isabelle started out very close to me.
I am from New York. Although my background is different,
I did go to school, like, you know, like Wilder,
and a lot of the way that she feels at.
Speaker 2 (07:51):
Wilder is you know, it is kind of how I
felt that I had to make Isabelle make more mistakes
than I did.
Speaker 4 (07:59):
I had to kind of I had to really isolate
her in these ways and these like fundamental ways so.
Speaker 2 (08:06):
That she that she would, you know, fall into this
love affair. And so in those ways, as I was writing,
I was like, I have to make her different from me,
because you know, in.
Speaker 4 (08:22):
A novel, you have to let your character make mistakes
right and have like things happen because that's how.
Speaker 2 (08:28):
The you know, the engine of the novel keeps running.
Speaker 3 (08:33):
So one of the kind of I mean, one of
the big themes in the book was.
Speaker 2 (08:39):
Her questioning when do I become a woman? When does
a girl become a woman?
Speaker 3 (08:45):
And I guess the question in the book was is
it a series of things?
Speaker 2 (08:49):
Is it one thing? Can you speak to me? Because
I know I have.
Speaker 3 (08:53):
My own personal feeling about when she became when she
stepped out of her you know sort of adolescence that
I want to hear it.
Speaker 4 (09:03):
Yeah, yeah, I mean early on, I decided that the
boat was going to take place during our last semester
of college. And I made that decision intentionally because I
think there's something about that moment.
Speaker 2 (09:17):
When you're you know, leading college, going out to the world,
that for me at least just very like difficult. We
talk a lot about and I have kids in college now.
Speaker 4 (09:28):
Some people who are sending their pick off to college,
it's like, oh, they're leading the nest and that feels
really dramatic and it is for us. But I think
that the bigger transition for our kid for kids, is
leaving college.
Speaker 2 (09:42):
Because you're leaving this like institutional support.
Speaker 4 (09:45):
So because I set it during that semester, it does
sort of ask the question.
Speaker 2 (09:50):
Of like, well, are you an adult when you leave college?
Speaker 4 (09:52):
And I think Isabelle is really trying to figure that out,
like why am I going to get the information that
all of these adults have that's going to make me
ready to be an adult? And she's kind of waiting for
that download of information. She's watching the adults around her
really closely. She's sort of reflecting on her her parents.
Speaker 2 (10:13):
You know, she's very.
Speaker 4 (10:14):
Adult focused in the book, and I think, I mean
we were talking about there isn't really I mean, honestly,
we all know that there's no switch when you become
you know, you're a child and you become an adults.
It happens for different people at all different times.
Speaker 3 (10:30):
And I think we were talking about, Yeah, there was
a podal scene and I don't know, I love to
hear from you guys, when she knows that Connolly has
helped Tom hide the child.
Speaker 2 (10:41):
And I felt like at that moment she.
Speaker 3 (10:44):
Was able to step out of herself and her relationship
with him, do the right thing and say this is
very black and white with me, I'm going to the
police because you're doing something wrong.
Speaker 2 (10:55):
And for me, that was when she became a woman. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (10:59):
I don't know if anyone else had that same feeling,
but I felt like that was such a good little scene.
Speaker 2 (11:06):
You know, I think she's at that moment sort of
sitting to an adult, sitting to a man, saying to
her lover, you know, I don't think you're doing the
right thing, and I'm gonna make.
Speaker 4 (11:17):
A decision that that contradicts, and then I'm gonna you
know towards the relationship, and so I.
Speaker 2 (11:23):
Mean, I do agree with that.
Speaker 3 (11:24):
Right, you mentioned that the look is sort of set
in the nineties and in the nineties.
Speaker 2 (11:30):
I mean, I think a lot of us we're alive
and living our lives in the nineties, loving the nineties,
and you know it was before the me Too movement?
So did you do that on purpose?
Speaker 3 (11:48):
Can you explain your thought process behind that?
Speaker 2 (11:51):
It's sort of like what's different now? Yeah, and well,
you know we have not information though, and so you
have her in from I don't think that. I mean,
I think I didn't sort of since decide right set
in the nineties.
Speaker 4 (12:06):
It just was set in the nineties because I went
to college in the nineties and I would be hard
pressed to write a novel about coming to college now.
Speaker 2 (12:14):
I would have no idea what that looks like.
Speaker 4 (12:16):
So so that that's that decision was.
Speaker 2 (12:20):
Just kind of an a body of the decision.
Speaker 4 (12:22):
I did eventually sort of adjust the year and a
sort of having sort of loosely overlap with the Clinton
Lewinsky scandal that was like a little bit later in
the game, because I actually wasn't in college during those years.
But I decided, oh, that would be fun because I too,
like I kind of wanted to task global frames. So
there were these sort of cultural things pushing in on
(12:43):
the story.
Speaker 2 (12:45):
You know, I've talked about this a lot.
Speaker 4 (12:47):
Like what's changed, what's different, And for a while my answered,
I was like, I don't know if anything's really different, But.
Speaker 2 (12:56):
I think I don't think that anymore.
Speaker 4 (12:58):
So, I mean, I think more pack much better conversations now.
Speaker 2 (13:02):
I think there's a lot more awareness.
Speaker 4 (13:04):
I'd have a kid in college, and I'm a girl
who's you know, going to be a senior in high school,
so she's gonna go off and we have these conversations,
you know, maybe not as much as we should. That's
certainly more than I ever had. I've talked to friends
who went to college in the nineties, and when of
(13:24):
my friends were like, oh, I feel like, you know,
we we did talk about that stuff.
Speaker 2 (13:29):
We like it said, you know, like no means no.
Speaker 4 (13:32):
And like take back for any marches and all that,
and that's all true.
Speaker 7 (13:36):
But I felt like it happened like when you ride
out of college campus.
Speaker 4 (13:40):
We were you know, just sort of like let loose
in this way, and then we're having all these conversations
like at the exact same time, and it was almost
like too much information, too late. So I think the
way that we talk about it now, I mean, I
just think girls today are really awesome and.
Speaker 2 (13:57):
Like just have a better handle on things than I do.
So I think that's changing things for my closer words,
I'm having to do that. I don't really know, right,
So I think we're talking about consent and you know.
Speaker 3 (14:11):
And that was a big message in this book from
her experience with zeb where that was.
Speaker 2 (14:19):
Very consent, yes, but no, kind.
Speaker 3 (14:23):
Of one of those situations where a lot of us
have been unfortunately, and then moving to Connolly and.
Speaker 2 (14:31):
Having him be so insistent.
Speaker 3 (14:35):
And asking her over and over again, is this what
you want? We later come to find out why and
he kept doing that.
Speaker 6 (14:45):
But my question is to you, do you think that
Isabelle was manipulated by Connolly?
Speaker 2 (14:55):
Or do you think she knew exactly what she was
doing and and used it to her benefit? So I
think it's I think it's sort of both. I you know,
I don't think she used it like was explicitly out
she used it. But I had to ask myself this
(15:16):
question as I was writing, like is Isabelle really good writer?
Like is she really a great writer? Like Comedy is
always telling her, And I actually wasn't really sure that
that was true, and I didn't think. I was like,
I don't think I need to know that, because all
I all I need to know is that he's telling
(15:36):
her that she's good, and she, I don't think explicitly
uses it, but that she needed it.
Speaker 8 (15:43):
She needed it, and she decides to just believe him,
and I was like, Okay, I'm gonna believe it, and
ultimately uses that to like build her life around that,
so she.
Speaker 2 (15:54):
Gets something out of the relationship at the end. It's
not what she went into the relationship looking for. Certainly
he was manipulative.
Speaker 4 (16:03):
I think anytime we have that kind of power differential,
there's always a touch manipulation involved. But I think I
think in the end, she you know, they're kind of
on opposite tracks of the power, so you know, she's
on the rise and doesn't really know it. Then he
(16:24):
knows it and he's on the decline and she doesn't
know it but he does. So they're kind of like meaning.
Speaker 2 (16:30):
At this moment where they're like power is switching. She
doesn't realize it. And he's he does, you know, but
doesn't tell her. Yeah, And then the scene in the
end his death is sad yet kind of not surprising
in a way.
Speaker 3 (16:50):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (16:51):
Right, did you struggle with that, like how that end
would happen? Well, when I.
Speaker 4 (16:57):
Started writing the book, and I wrote common the book
for a long time and have these two timel things.
So I sort of imagined this.
Speaker 2 (17:03):
Whole scenario where Isabelle goes back to Wilder, like you
know in the twenty ten you know, twenty.
Speaker 4 (17:09):
Seventeen or something, and means coming then and they have
these conversation and they're going to come to some sort
of I don't know, have some conversation that's.
Speaker 2 (17:18):
Going to be really cathartic or or something. And I
worked on that for a really long time, and I
just couldn't like make it work. It just I couldn't
figure out how to cut them together. And I think
more importantly, I couldn't really figure out like what they
would have to say to each other at that time.
So I ended up having that all out and that
helped me a lot.
Speaker 4 (17:39):
I knew so the last chapter, which kind of imagined
Isabelle like forward in time, I knew that chapter I
wrote very.
Speaker 2 (17:46):
Likely because I knew exactly.
Speaker 4 (17:47):
Where she was.
Speaker 2 (17:48):
I knew like where she was going to end up,
so that idea like why they're calling would die.
Speaker 4 (17:57):
I just like kind of decided that that was like
the way to sort of end his arc. It felt
like I don't know the way his art had to end.
And again I'm like shady a little bit.
Speaker 2 (18:08):
I'm like, is it suicide? Is it you know, the
heart of time?
Speaker 4 (18:13):
And I don't even know that, like no, the answer
to that question, you know, I mean, yeah, I just
I feel like that was the like he had to.
Speaker 2 (18:21):
Like go into a mond and that was just where
he had to go. Because I was I was happy
to that, I know all.
Speaker 3 (18:31):
I think it is so manipulative with all of as
much he finally come out that he was doing with all.
Speaker 9 (18:36):
These other women, it was like, ah, I know, it's
not a nice sidy no, And I think that, you know,
one of the things that was interesting to go back
to the Clinton, you know, Lewinsky thing.
Speaker 2 (18:50):
I had to sort of read, you know.
Speaker 4 (18:52):
Like research that a little bit because I was like, oh,
I'm very much time aware of it, but I didn't.
Speaker 2 (18:56):
Really like really remember it, like on Pranda our level.
So it was interesting to think about the way that
that was like portrayed at the time. It was a
lot of hoes on her obviously, I think, if you know,
that's just what we do two women. But there was
like this question of like, well, who was there stopping Clinton,
(19:19):
you know, saying, I know, like this isn't a.
Speaker 4 (19:21):
Great idea, like he it's a legal maybe it's I
know you're paring and that's kind of great, but like just.
Speaker 2 (19:28):
Into look, it's not a good idea. I mean, I
feel like, you know, your husband, like there were we
saw it would be like just don't do it. So
I think that, yeah, I think that he commily is
commo about it. Yeah that's funny, that's right. The brow
(19:48):
you know grows, helping grows or something.
Speaker 4 (19:54):
Yeah, yeah, I just I.
Speaker 2 (19:57):
Can I ask you about.
Speaker 3 (19:59):
Connelly's wife, rock Stan. I just have so many questions
about her character. Did she know?
Speaker 2 (20:07):
Did she not care? Was this and arrangements?
Speaker 3 (20:11):
What was she doing with all of the letters that
Isabelle was sending, Like what happened there?
Speaker 4 (20:18):
So I feel like rock Stan is kind of like
a little bit in the shadows in the book, like
she Kinaly doesn't appear in the book, like as much
as you know, I do.
Speaker 2 (20:31):
Not like she should appear more. But she doesn't appear
that much in the book. And I think because I
felt like Isabelle would not really think about her that much.
Speaker 4 (20:41):
I just felt like she might be like vaguely interested
in her, but she wouldn't really play like a big
part in.
Speaker 2 (20:48):
Isabelle's mind of like what that meant.
Speaker 4 (20:52):
I think she doesn't have to just kind of compartmentalize that, like, well,
their marriage was over or this is how marriage works,
and this is just like it's not my problem.
Speaker 2 (21:00):
So I mean, I think as like you know, Ald
at my age. Now, I'm like, okay, Roxanne is probably
a really tiquely interesting character. Who is or maybe her
whole own book or something. Right, There's a book that
came out last year called Vladimir Red.
Speaker 4 (21:20):
So Vladimir is a great novel, and it is told
from the point of view of the wife.
Speaker 2 (21:29):
She's like in her fifties and her husband has Hadale's.
Speaker 4 (21:33):
Affairs, which she has totally known about. It's I've been
there kind of agreement. And so I feel like Vladimir
is like rock stands the story a little bit.
Speaker 2 (21:45):
I don't know.
Speaker 4 (21:46):
I think, you know, I think there's a line where
like Isabelle at the end, you know, kind of things
that like, oh, Roxanne has made these terrible, you know,
compromises in her life.
Speaker 2 (21:58):
But then as Isabelle grew older, you know, she's like, oh,
you know what, like we don't we just don't really
know what goes on in people's marriages and just how
they how they just you know, function in a way
that makes it possible for them to endure. And I
think that's like one of the things I.
Speaker 4 (22:16):
Was interested in the book was these gray areas and
the nuances around, like the rules we think when we're.
Speaker 2 (22:23):
Kids, like I never do that, or I don't never
marriage like that. You know, it's like ultually, you know,
life is.
Speaker 3 (22:31):
Yeah, do you think that there's more life to isabel
able to be another novel with her as the main character.
Speaker 10 (22:41):
No, I'm working on something now is not with Isabelle,
but I think it has Like I think I'm sort
of obsessed with some of the same themes, so I
can see some overlap just in the maybe in the themes,
and I like, I don't know.
Speaker 2 (22:58):
I might have someone be like oh Leer Brad or
something you know, I don't know. I'm afraid to think about.
So I asked Daisy. I said, oh, you know, if
this is your first novel, is there any interest with
this being made into a TV show or a series?
And I think you have seen I mean it has
an option for TV or film, which also a great
(23:29):
have to like disclaim that it's kind of like lots
of things.
Speaker 4 (23:32):
To option and there's like sort of a whole like
lightning storm list of things I have to like, olth
all right for a so.
Speaker 2 (23:41):
I've been vocal if I feel it would be great.
I think it.
Speaker 7 (23:45):
I know it.
Speaker 2 (23:47):
Who would play a solf?
Speaker 11 (23:50):
Know?
Speaker 2 (23:51):
I think we have to. I know I wasn't like
everyone that.
Speaker 4 (23:55):
We suggest will be like too old. So there's probably
someone like yeah, we are not aware of. But totally
it was like fourteen hours or something. Right, Kay, what
Olivia Rober you go into acting or that's that's amazing news.
(24:18):
So congratulations.
Speaker 2 (24:19):
I know Ellen Ellen Hillo grand basically hold us.
Speaker 3 (24:22):
I think she was on her twenty ninth book and
now she's fine that the Perfect Cop is finally Neday
and she sort of said the same thing.
Speaker 2 (24:29):
She's like, oh my god, you have no idea how
long this journey takes. And half the time it doesn't
work exactly.
Speaker 3 (24:35):
It's like still, but you know it's better than not, right,
I mean less it's in chemistry is coming out the
book we read The Seven Husbands and definitely what that's
coming out, and a lot of these were I mean
less it's in chemistry that hasn't been now that long, right, right,
that would not have happened really fast for like a lot,
(24:56):
you know.
Speaker 2 (24:57):
So sometimes it happens fast, and sometimes it takes twenty
year out. Yeah, well I just hopefully, I know.
Speaker 12 (25:03):
So.
Speaker 2 (25:04):
I love to ask writers, Uh, what are you reading
right now? Yeah? I mean I'm reading a million things
at the same time. I kind of, you know, pick
up things and leave them and then move our some
thing off.
Speaker 4 (25:20):
But two books I read and finished recently. One is
called The Guest, Right, I'm a clime, and she wrote
Girls the Girls or Girls of the Girls I think
a bundle of years ago, and I really loved The Guest.
It's kind of beard and an underliable barrier and a
(25:41):
set and kind of like the Hampton's and she's sort
of a sex worker who's having all Yeah, it's it's
it's like really, I really liked it. And I also
just finished a book called Everything's Fine by Cecilias I.
Speaker 2 (26:01):
Don't know how to knows A R A V E
S S.
Speaker 4 (26:04):
And it's it's a love story between a young black
woman and a young white guy on opposite side of
the political spectrum, sort of in the second Obama administration
leading up to the Trump years. And it's just funny
and sexy and kind of like a will there won't
(26:26):
day and should they or shouldn't they?
Speaker 2 (26:28):
And I just finished that with that one too. I
will have to add these to the last of things
that I read.
Speaker 3 (26:36):
I also ask every writer, what is your writing style?
I know a lot of people will give themselves I
have to read, I have to write a thousand words
a day. I know Ellen was a she wrote everything
in notebooks longhand she's amazing.
Speaker 2 (26:50):
What is your uh style? So I am not Alan
Nolan Wright and people who she publishes so often? So
I completely like I'm in all that.
Speaker 4 (27:06):
And imagine that the people writers who write like that
have to have like very strict you know, sort of
you know.
Speaker 2 (27:12):
Parameters around their work.
Speaker 4 (27:14):
So this one that my last is a year I
wrote very like randomly in corners of my life here
and there.
Speaker 2 (27:24):
I would just write scenes scene after scene after scene,
and they didn't always.
Speaker 4 (27:29):
Necessarily connect, and then it was like a long process
of figuring out like.
Speaker 2 (27:34):
What the order should be. Basically it was really a mess.
I don't I friend writing a book like that necessarily,
but the one I'm working at now, I'm trying to
be a little bit more.
Speaker 4 (27:46):
I mean, I'm trying to respect like that's my process,
and my process is kind of messy and yd but
I am right now, not today, but trying to write
a thousand words.
Speaker 2 (27:56):
Today because it's actually does maybe not every single day,
I want.
Speaker 7 (28:04):
To be real, but ye, but it doesn't take as
long as you as I think it does, and it
always like leads me somewhere that I wouldn't have come
if I hadn't just sat down.
Speaker 2 (28:16):
I'm like, okay, right, write a thousand words right now.
Speaker 3 (28:19):
So do you get up in the middle of the night,
like if you can't safe and you like get something
and she you're like, oh my god, great idea.
Speaker 2 (28:26):
Yet you start writing.
Speaker 4 (28:28):
I mean, I don't really get to bed necessarily, but
I will, like if I move in the middle of
the night and I think of something I jot down
because you always think you're gonna remember it, and you're like,
I'm definitely gonna remember that soja or idea, and you
never remember it.
Speaker 2 (28:43):
But instead of yeah, never, it is true that the
idea has come to you, Like if you're in the
world of the book, right, like if you are.
Speaker 4 (28:51):
Writing a thousand words a day and you're kind I'm
kind of like, so I'm sort of thinking about it.
Then I could be driving or in the shower, you know,
all those times where your mind can.
Speaker 2 (29:01):
Kind of go a little loose, I will think of
something and so then when I'm in the car, I
will do like a.
Speaker 4 (29:08):
Voice memo or like text my you know, voice dicto,
a text to myself like O, remember this idea of something.
Speaker 2 (29:16):
But that's like you have to be sort of swimming
in the water of the novel and yeah, and that
you get there. Why just trying to write one thousand words,
five hundred words whatever, touching it, touching it as not
every day, but as often as you can. When I
was doing my.
Speaker 11 (29:34):
Research for you, I was on your website and you
have written a lot of different.
Speaker 2 (29:39):
Free smore publications and blogs and things like that. I
want to mention one which I think was so clever.
Speaker 3 (29:46):
You wrote a piece about looking back at your Amazon
Kart over the last twenty or twenty years anyhow.
Speaker 2 (29:55):
It really gets you a roadmap to where you were
in your life. Yeah, and I thought it was such
an interesting concept, you know everything.
Speaker 5 (30:06):
I'm so glad you read that, because you know, if
you really look that.
Speaker 2 (30:12):
Like, it's crazy.
Speaker 10 (30:13):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (30:15):
Yeah, so I did start.
Speaker 4 (30:17):
When I started writing, I wrote like I wrote essays
at my kids, and then sort of like moved out
of that to different kinds of right personal writing.
Speaker 2 (30:25):
But that was when I wrote. I think I wrote
it like in the I started in twenty twenty, like.
Speaker 4 (30:29):
When we were in the pandemic we were ordering so
many things from Amazon or no, I think I wrote
it before that and.
Speaker 2 (30:34):
Updated it for the you know, for twenty twenty. But yeah,
it was I mean it was crazy because I did.
The first thing I ordered from Amazon. I was in
like nineteen ninety nine.
Speaker 4 (30:45):
Was like before I was married, and you know, I
was like ordering books, and then it was like I
was getting married, and so there was maybe some weddings
stuff in there.
Speaker 2 (30:54):
And then like trying to have a baby and then
like a baby here, I mean literally suddenly here. I
don't know what it is, but yeah bold.
Speaker 4 (31:04):
Bigger shopping cart, and I like Smith Pipers and like
board books and like all.
Speaker 2 (31:10):
The phases of your life. If you shop on Amazon,
which you brought me. Yeah, thank you for reading our
air pol even though over our website. What is your website?
What is that? Fazyfloren dot com? Yeah, you know mine,
it's really really well that. So do you watch television?
Speaker 3 (31:29):
I always asked to writers that because always fel like
writers don't have to climb.
Speaker 2 (31:32):
But are you then the watching anything?
Speaker 4 (31:34):
You know?
Speaker 2 (31:35):
Then I know, I actually we're not reading. I know,
I just text times and I was like, what do
we watch on TV?
Speaker 4 (31:41):
Because so just like point everybody out, like Mike Lotus
if we watched like Breaking That and with my daughter,
I've been like watching person rack and the there I'm
in into the figure right, Yeah, I mean there's so
here's so much I think writers. I think, like, I mean,
(32:05):
TV is fantastic for a writer because like that pilot episode,
like it shows you how you get all the information
that you need to know, Like in the first couple
of scenes.
Speaker 2 (32:16):
Like you're the characters, you're the players.
Speaker 4 (32:18):
Here's the conflict, right, Like, here's the problem, and that's
that's what you do in a book too.
Speaker 2 (32:24):
So I think it is I think it counts as writing. Great. Yeah,
no writers, right, we're in support of the writers. So
I want to go back to the first.
Speaker 3 (32:35):
Question that I asked you about what you saw your
first novel in a bookstore of what my action did
you have?
Speaker 2 (32:43):
Well, one of the things I discovered is that because
now I'm saying it with friend and kind of books
coming out, that Barnes and Noble gets the book a
little bit early.
Speaker 4 (32:53):
So my book came out on February fourteen, but like
on February I don't know, fit or something. I went
into Barnes and Noble and I just saw it there
on the shelf. So that was crazy, and I was
like with my kids and so we took all these pictures.
Speaker 2 (33:06):
But I like, love it dressed nicely, you know what
I mean, because it was like I was like not prepared.
So I don't first yours, but I know I didn't
worst into tears.
Speaker 3 (33:18):
I know.
Speaker 2 (33:19):
I think that I was like like I was kind
of weirdly embarrassed, and my husband was like, go up
to the people and work there, like so like know, well,
one of the things I dismembered is like if I walk.
Speaker 4 (33:34):
Into books orre and they have my book and I
was like, oh, do you want me to sign? And
everyone always say they asked and they're so nice and
they're so like friendly and everything. But at first I
was like, I can't have that's so embarrassing. So but
now I know that you can't do that and you
should do that, and that they want you to do that.
You didn't burst into tears.
Speaker 2 (33:54):
I don't think I was like thinking there. I don't know,
it was very exciting. I was like, but yeah, it
was great. I mean it's who did the cover for
the book. So it's a painter named Leslie Singer that
this is a painting that it exists, and so the
cover designer and whole just I don't know how they
(34:18):
do it. I'm not a visual of all, but they
they she found you didn't pick this photograph, No, she
found it and then presented that as the cover, you know,
with the.
Speaker 4 (34:30):
Typeface and everything, and we all just like love and
so when it was easy, yeah, sometimes it can be
more difficult. I'd like to take questions now, if anyone
that's anything, very easy question, yes, question. So I was
(34:53):
really curious and my friend kind of said something to me.
Why she always secret debt? Yeah, okay, so yeah, thanking
for bringing Aide into the room, because I do love
AID sometimes people like sometimes I owned event and we
talk exclusively about E and never talked about commedy.
Speaker 2 (35:16):
Actually, and now I feel like we were talking about comedy.
Speaker 4 (35:18):
So now, so Aid, you know, I think I just
like it was just one of those ideas that came.
And I feel like when I was right, I would
like if an idea came, I.
Speaker 2 (35:28):
Would try it out. Sometimes it didn't work and I would.
Speaker 3 (35:31):
Just start it.
Speaker 2 (35:31):
But that was one that just stopped.
Speaker 4 (35:34):
I think that I think that the sort of the
child adult relationship, like her sort of exploring that sort
of that divide is maybe compressed when she congered that
guy's first name, you know, I think she maybe is
like maybe another thing. I think one of the reasons
(35:57):
was that he has the same Aide Abraham, which is
kind of like an old like steadily kind of game,
and it's so different maybe than the names of her
classmates parents, you know, like Steve or you know, like
Clip or something. So I feel like maybe just to
punctuate that every time that she has this dad with
(36:19):
this kind of old world name, I think that was
part of it.
Speaker 2 (36:23):
But I think also just that they were more she
maybe she maybe feels like more equivalent with him or something,
although she's not. I mean, he's a he's a I
think he has more wisdom. I think she realizes he
has more wisdom in the end, and she maybe thought
going through. But yeah, thank you for asking that questions.
(36:48):
This is Jackie.
Speaker 3 (36:51):
Hi.
Speaker 2 (36:52):
I have two questions, Daisy. I want everybody to know
about the game list meth.
Speaker 12 (36:57):
Yeah, and I that I was really fascinated by sort
of the progression of adulthood for losing her mother so early.
I wonder if your mind because maybe you thought she was.
Speaker 2 (37:18):
More mature an adult.
Speaker 12 (37:19):
Because she had suffered such a great loss, and that
kind of contributed to this relationship with Conny. I mean,
there's so many different ways you can become, you know,
jaded or an adult or prepared for things, but they
(37:40):
are different, and that loss is not equal the same
thing as a relationship and ability to consent.
Speaker 2 (37:47):
So I was wondering it was beautifully mighty in other words,
and I wonder how you came to make it as
complex as it was. Okay, so I don't just to
act like answer that sort of last part.
Speaker 4 (38:03):
I think that's sort of how I see the world
is like in this kind of like gray like money place.
Speaker 2 (38:10):
I'm not like a toxic positivity person or.
Speaker 10 (38:12):
You know what I mean.
Speaker 2 (38:13):
But and I think that it's kind of going to
be sort of frustrating for me. Sometimes I'm like, oh, well,
I feel this, but like.
Speaker 4 (38:22):
I can also kind of see that side of it,
you know, like it makes me get a little fuzzy sometimes.
Speaker 2 (38:28):
And I have friends and people who will be like, no,
this is kind of like how Deborah acts for Isabel.
Speaker 4 (38:35):
It's just very like, you know, maybe rightly or wrongly,
like trying to clear about things. So I really can
I feel like I can only write things.
Speaker 2 (38:44):
I feel like exactly how they would happen in the world.
Speaker 4 (38:48):
And I think that I've had, you know, people say
to me like, oh, that last scene where she encounters
Zeb at the praturniting party, I wish she had just said.
Speaker 2 (38:57):
You know, really told them off or really And I'm like,
you know, I don't know, I don't.
Speaker 4 (39:02):
Feel like that's that's not how the world works in
my experience. I think there's so I think that's just
a function of how I see the world, and it's
kind of makes it a frustrating way to live sometimes.
Speaker 2 (39:14):
But I think it makes me a good writer because
I can kind of like see all the side of something.
Speaker 4 (39:20):
In terms of her mom, I mean, I think that
that was another thing that just like organically came out.
I was like, well, she's going to have lost her mom,
partly because I think it stand ups her as different
when she goes off to college. You know, like most
people going off to college like have a loss of parents.
Like most that's not like the sort of normal course
(39:43):
of things. So I think that that would already make
her feel a little bit like as part of these
things that she feels made her an outsider.
Speaker 2 (39:52):
I thought that like the grief of that would be
part of it. And I also it was also another
way to isolate.
Speaker 4 (39:58):
Her, because I was talking to someone who's like, well,
if she had her mom, maybe all this like messed.
Speaker 2 (40:03):
With and happened, you know, So it was a way
to kind of to keep isolating her.
Speaker 4 (40:09):
And then just in terms of the dateless method, because
that's how Jackie and I know each other.
Speaker 2 (40:14):
Or through this dateless method, which is basically a method
of writing, that really helped me just get down into business.
Speaker 4 (40:27):
It's about sort of silencing your inner critic and sort
of which is what we all have to do really
to like actually function, but really to create anything, to
do any creative work, you have to kind of silence
that voice that sort of pops up immediately, and it
pops up for everyone to sort of like recognize that
as a separate voice that it's telling you things that
(40:49):
are not necessarily true.
Speaker 2 (40:51):
And once I started doing that, or.
Speaker 4 (40:55):
You know, trying, I mean, it's like a sort of
a not like a switch you can just necessarily of
the Once I started to do that, I was really
able to just like geat words out on the page
and like you fix them later. You can fix them later,
but if you're already like, oh, this is terrible or
this really sucks or this sentence is so bad, then
you never.
Speaker 2 (41:13):
Get to the point where you can fix it.
Speaker 3 (41:15):
So that really helped is the gateless method online, Like
how can people find that?
Speaker 4 (41:21):
So if you have it's Beless Writing dot Com and
it's it's created by this amazing women in un Hid
named Suzanne King Ferry, and she runs retreats and workshops
and you can find out when you can always reach
out to.
Speaker 2 (41:38):
Me and ask ask me more about it, and you
can go on the.
Speaker 4 (41:42):
Beatlesswriting dot com and sort of if that's something you're interested.
Speaker 2 (41:46):
In a lot of creative Yeah, I think for all
facets of our lives. Oh, you're not doing any creative writing.
Speaker 3 (41:54):
I didn't ask people in question about why you had
Isabelle stealings so much in one.
Speaker 2 (42:01):
Part of her life, Like why did you make that choice?
Speaker 4 (42:04):
So that was another thing that I kind of just
tried out, was like what if she's if.
Speaker 2 (42:08):
She it kind of like a stayed. I felt like
it sort of worked for her. Did you as have
any one of your college years that did that?
Speaker 6 (42:20):
I did?
Speaker 4 (42:21):
I did.
Speaker 2 (42:21):
I did have a friend who did that and and
I was And it's actually it's like more common that
you know, like it's it's kind of common. I'm sure
someone in this room you know what I mean. It's
like even had a sort of adolescent days.
Speaker 4 (42:36):
Of like stealing, you know, like an eyeliner from CBS
or something, you know, but then this was even more
like pachological.
Speaker 2 (42:44):
But it always comes from a place of law black
the feeling that you lack something.
Speaker 4 (42:50):
So I think it was it was It's always fun
to give your character a secret or like sort of.
Speaker 2 (42:59):
Like a compulsion or something that she's trying to hide.
And because is it all sort of it feels like
something she would.
Speaker 4 (43:08):
Do, come from the background that she comes from, and
having lost her mother and sort of suffering that kind
of you know, extended.
Speaker 2 (43:17):
Illness, just kind of it just kind of worked, so
I kept it there.
Speaker 1 (43:23):
It was.
Speaker 2 (43:23):
It was interesting. I find to be very interesting. I
think someone else is a good question. Did you always
want to be a writer? Was there like a specific
book that inspired you to be a writing when you
were growing up?
Speaker 4 (43:38):
Oh, you know, there wasn't a specific book, but I
it's like I had a long an answer, I guess,
but I'd always grew up laying around words.
Speaker 2 (43:47):
So my whole family, no one's really a writer, but
we all like kind of me and.
Speaker 4 (43:52):
My brother's a reporter, and my dads worked in the theater,
and so my aunt was an English teacher, like, so
we all like kind of trying in like words and stories.
Speaker 2 (44:02):
So I was always doing that. I was doing about
a fear when I was younger.
Speaker 4 (44:05):
And music and always reading, and people would say that
I was like a good writer.
Speaker 2 (44:12):
Oh, you're a good writers are Like.
Speaker 4 (44:13):
I could write like a good paper in school and everything,
But I didn't think of myself really as a writer.
Speaker 2 (44:22):
I mean really until like kind of now, I don't know,
it's like, I don't know, it's yeah, you're kind of right.
That's out of the days and everything, not like you
kind of see it until it's like right in front
of you. But like looking back, I can see all
the great drums. But it's kind of a hard thing
(44:44):
to be, like, I'm going to be a writer, you know,
It's like what does that even look like. I didn't
really feel like I knew how to do that, so
I didn't like a lot of other things, you know,
all sort of connective. But yeah, yeah, you're right, I
have to because anyone else, you know. Yeah, Connolly is a.
Speaker 4 (45:17):
Little bit fatless, So when I was starting out featless writing, actually.
Speaker 2 (45:21):
Like there is a little bit of his like he
is a little I mean, he's a cat.
Speaker 4 (45:28):
And he's also kind of a good teacher, you know,
and he's sort of to be like encouraging her to
I don't like this expression, but like get out of
her own way, but just to like he's sort of
filling her up in this way.
Speaker 2 (45:43):
And sort of giving her some of the secrets. Although
I've been he's incorgrated and.
Speaker 4 (45:49):
Maybe himself right because he's still kind of you know, uh,
stuck on his his sort of glamorous past.
Speaker 2 (45:58):
But you know, yeah, I want to say that.
Speaker 11 (46:03):
What I took away from this whole experience of reading
your book was because we're a similar age, was I
consciously took a step back and.
Speaker 2 (46:13):
I thought about my experience in college. I like those
years late teens, early twenties, and what was going on
and what did I do and the choices I.
Speaker 3 (46:28):
Made, And it really made me because you're right, because
you go from pointing to point being all of a sudden,
you've got a couple of kids.
Speaker 2 (46:36):
You know, only what happened back then to bring me
to where I am now, And so much of it
really starts.
Speaker 3 (46:45):
There with how much confidence you have or how much
confidence you don't have, and yeah.
Speaker 2 (46:55):
The different people that moved through your life.
Speaker 3 (46:57):
So I really appreciate this book because of that. I
think it's really important and I'm really hope being made
it into some sort of series to bring up more people.
Speaker 2 (47:09):
I really thank you. Yeah. I think that that time
in your life is so fragile. You know, you can
shape in.
Speaker 4 (47:15):
Good ways and bad ways, and I think that like
it could really be almost like stamped out in a way.
Speaker 2 (47:24):
You know, your flame is like a little fragile, a
little fragile thing, you know, and.
Speaker 4 (47:30):
It can be virture if you find the right people,
and crushed if you find the wrong people.
Speaker 2 (47:37):
Sure, but.
Speaker 13 (47:40):
The good thing is that you can play yourself out
of it, right and that yes, And that I think
is why it was really important for me to have
that last chapter where we.
Speaker 2 (47:50):
See years agell. That was really important to me because
it was like, well, you need to know that, you know.
Speaker 4 (47:57):
Things can happen to you and you can come back
from them, you know, Like I mean, there are categories
of things that you might not come back from. So
don't want to be clear about that, but I think
that you know, we've all gone through things, you know,
and it's like you've just sort of incorporated that and
you kind of keep going.
Speaker 2 (48:17):
Yeah. So I thought is also was an important message
for me, So I'll make the last paragraph because I
thought it was just so poignant. I drank that night.
Speaker 3 (48:25):
Of the women I knew, and the girls they once spit,
and the girls I knew, and the women may become
a slow, gradual morphing of one into the other.
Speaker 2 (48:34):
In the end, there was only me standing in sunlight.
Speaker 3 (48:37):
A girl in dusty sandals and denim shorts, chipped the
unpolished and cigarette breath. She was alone and a little
bit sad, hopeful the way young girls are. I could
see her features fooling out before of her brilliant and
terrible and beast.
Speaker 2 (48:52):
Hey listen up.
Speaker 1 (48:53):
In our Saturday edition the a bonus chapter with producer Riley,
We're going to talk about my trip to Nashville when
you read with Jenna Jenna bush Hager's first book festival.
Speaker 2 (49:04):
It was a blast, and I'll fill you in on
all the details
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. Hey, welcome into Lisa's book Club podcast where
I sat down with Daisy Albert Florence. She wrote My
(00:24):
Last Innocent Year. We were at memoir at Encore, hundreds
of people in attendance, and this book was so well
written and it's basically linked to the Clinton Lewinsky era,
just as you might remember, with so many twists and turns.
I hope you enjoy it.
Speaker 2 (00:41):
Last time it.
Speaker 3 (00:42):
Is crow Ellen Hildegrand was the US and I asked
Ellen why she was currently reading, and Ellen said that
she was reading your I mean, she is.
Speaker 4 (00:57):
An amazing literary citizen who's just really you know, raises
up debut authors who really.
Speaker 2 (01:03):
You know, could use some exposure.
Speaker 4 (01:05):
It's hard, it's hard to sell books, it's hard to
break through the noise.
Speaker 2 (01:09):
So I'm incredibly grateful. I don't know her, the book
just found it's made of her, and that's just exactly
you know.
Speaker 4 (01:16):
What point you want to hear is just sort of
spreading like a virus, you know, which is.
Speaker 2 (01:23):
A good virus to that? I mean, but you have
Ellen Hilda.
Speaker 3 (01:26):
Brant saying, read my book. So Dacy's regrettish Connecticut. You
went to Dartmouth, you d kind a degree from Columbia.
Speaker 2 (01:36):
You're very smart. I'm very deppressed. But this is your
debut novel.
Speaker 4 (01:43):
What is that.
Speaker 2 (01:48):
Putting it together? I mean, it's it's crazy that it's here.
Speaker 4 (01:52):
And I try not to read like a class about
it because it's it's I started writing scenes that eventually
became this book, and started writing in twenty fifteen.
Speaker 2 (02:03):
So it was a long time of just you know,
you're writing into the dark. You know, you have no
one was waiting for this book. I had no agent,
I had no deal. You just have to kind of
I feel like it's like faith.
Speaker 4 (02:22):
You know, it's like something you can't see and you
don't know if it.
Speaker 2 (02:26):
Exists, so you just have to like believe in it.
Speaker 4 (02:28):
And I just kept going and for some reason didn't stop, and.
Speaker 2 (02:35):
Eventually you know it, you know, I finished writing it
in twenty twenty.
Speaker 4 (02:40):
And then you know that's five years, and then you
know the process of you know, getting an agent and
publisher and then you know, it took about a year
and a half or to come, you know, become a book.
Speaker 2 (02:52):
That's in your hand. So that's a long.
Speaker 4 (02:55):
Journey and it's hard. Like now it feels like, oh,
of course it's.
Speaker 2 (03:00):
A book and it's on the shelf and people hide
on Amazon and.
Speaker 4 (03:04):
People can like pull it in their hands. But I
have to remember that, you know, that was not always
the case. So it's fantastic, It's it's a dream come true.
Speaker 3 (03:14):
You know when you first saw it on a bookshelf
or you saw it.
Speaker 2 (03:21):
Hit Amazon and people's tarp worry and what like, how
did you react? I mean, there's sunny thing about the
way that publishing works is that before it's a.
Speaker 4 (03:36):
Book, it's something called it advanced reader copies. It's like
a galley and it's sort of a it looks like
the book, it looks like sort of a paperback version
of the book, and your publisher sends it out to
lots and lots of people.
Speaker 2 (03:50):
I don't really know.
Speaker 4 (03:51):
You know, both both fluencers and early readers consertion that
people basically to read it and then post about.
Speaker 2 (03:59):
It or review it on good Reads.
Speaker 4 (04:01):
So when I first realized in months before I book
came out, that people were reading it and were giving
it on good Reads, that was kind of weird. And
if you're familiar, I don't know, if you're familiar with
good Reads at all, Like people don't always say really
nice things on good Greeds. I mean it's sort of
a thing that authors talk about all the time, like
never look at good Reads.
Speaker 2 (04:21):
Just do not ever look at it.
Speaker 4 (04:24):
Just know, just as like step away from good Reads,
don't look at it.
Speaker 2 (04:28):
And I don't know, I mean I think people who
were being on.
Speaker 4 (04:31):
Good Reeds, like they don't think that authors are maybe
looking at it.
Speaker 2 (04:36):
Maybe they think that we're.
Speaker 4 (04:37):
Like so busy and like so fancy or something, but
like all right, or some like always looking at movies.
So I mean that was part of my first in
like you know, inkling that people it was out there
and people were reading it and people were liking it,
and people were having strong opinions about it, and that
took that was like a little I mean, it was great.
Speaker 2 (04:58):
I have to remind myself that every kind of someone.
Speaker 5 (05:00):
Even take the time to write about it, write a review,
even if it's not a great review, like they've engaged
with it in some way and it's like made them
feel something, right, So that's that's in gradation.
Speaker 2 (05:14):
Yeah, that's right, bet or bad. So I'm gonna basically
most of.
Speaker 6 (05:19):
Us write the book, right, Yeah, we're always.
Speaker 3 (05:23):
So I want to talk about Isabelle because she's obviously
the name character in the book.
Speaker 2 (05:30):
How much of Isabelle is you?
Speaker 3 (05:32):
Or how much of you is in Isabelle because I
know you went to Darman and it's set in New Hampshire,
you know, Polish and Wilder, So can you spend on that?
Speaker 2 (05:44):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (05:46):
So when I started writing, when I started to start
of take myself more seriously as a writer, I started
to write personal essays.
Speaker 2 (05:53):
That was sort of how I started writing.
Speaker 4 (05:56):
And I wasn't really aware of it at the time,
but I was writing a lot of essays that were
set in my college years, and I don't know, I
think that there was something about that time that was
really you know, dramatic. It's such a like rich time
or lifehey, or making so many impressions. I kind of
say that. I think like when.
Speaker 2 (06:17):
I was in college, it kind of felt like I
was living in a novel, like anything could happen.
Speaker 4 (06:22):
You know, you like turn a corner and you could
like thumb into someone who could change your life, or
you take that class that changes your life.
Speaker 2 (06:28):
So it was just a very rich time. I was writing.
Speaker 4 (06:31):
About how it felt to come of age in the nineties,
how it felt to be a person like me on
a campus like dartment, the.
Speaker 2 (06:39):
Relationship that I had. My kind of said like, oh,
I'm gonna write an essay about all my old boyfriends
and then I'll be done.
Speaker 4 (06:47):
So after I finished writing in this series of essays,
which I didn't even think of as a series, and
I realized I really wasn't done that with the setting,
with the time, with the time period, and I wanted
to just say more about, you know, things that hadn't
happened to me, but things that had happened to other people,
or things.
Speaker 2 (07:06):
I could just imagine happening.
Speaker 4 (07:08):
And I wanted to kind of tell a story that
reflected something in the culture of that time, something about
patriarchy and the male gaze and all you know seeking
you know, external mail validation, which were all things like
themes in my life that I just wanted to write about.
(07:32):
So I kind of created this story that could attach.
Speaker 2 (07:36):
To those themes.
Speaker 4 (07:37):
So because of that, Isabelle started out very close to me.
I am from New York. Although my background is different,
I did go to school, like, you know, like Wilder,
and a lot of the way that she feels at.
Speaker 2 (07:51):
Wilder is you know, it is kind of how I
felt that I had to make Isabelle make more mistakes
than I did.
Speaker 4 (07:59):
I had to kind of I had to really isolate
her in these ways and these like fundamental ways so.
Speaker 2 (08:06):
That she that she would, you know, fall into this
love affair. And so in those ways, as I was writing,
I was like, I have to make her different from me,
because you know, in.
Speaker 4 (08:22):
A novel, you have to let your character make mistakes
right and have like things happen because that's how.
Speaker 2 (08:28):
The you know, the engine of the novel keeps running.
Speaker 3 (08:33):
So one of the kind of I mean, one of
the big themes in the book was.
Speaker 2 (08:39):
Her questioning when do I become a woman? When does
a girl become a woman?
Speaker 3 (08:45):
And I guess the question in the book was is
it a series of things?
Speaker 2 (08:49):
Is it one thing? Can you speak to me? Because
I know I have.
Speaker 3 (08:53):
My own personal feeling about when she became when she
stepped out of her you know sort of adolescence that
I want to hear it.
Speaker 4 (09:03):
Yeah, yeah, I mean early on, I decided that the
boat was going to take place during our last semester
of college. And I made that decision intentionally because I
think there's something about that moment.
Speaker 2 (09:17):
When you're you know, leading college, going out to the world,
that for me at least just very like difficult. We
talk a lot about and I have kids in college now.
Speaker 4 (09:28):
Some people who are sending their pick off to college,
it's like, oh, they're leading the nest and that feels
really dramatic and it is for us. But I think
that the bigger transition for our kid for kids, is
leaving college.
Speaker 2 (09:42):
Because you're leaving this like institutional support.
Speaker 4 (09:45):
So because I set it during that semester, it does
sort of ask the question.
Speaker 2 (09:50):
Of like, well, are you an adult when you leave college?
Speaker 4 (09:52):
And I think Isabelle is really trying to figure that out,
like why am I going to get the information that
all of these adults have that's going to make me
ready to be an adult? And she's kind of waiting for
that download of information. She's watching the adults around her
really closely. She's sort of reflecting on her her parents.
Speaker 2 (10:13):
You know, she's very.
Speaker 4 (10:14):
Adult focused in the book, and I think, I mean
we were talking about there isn't really I mean, honestly,
we all know that there's no switch when you become
you know, you're a child and you become an adults.
It happens for different people at all different times.
Speaker 3 (10:30):
And I think we were talking about, Yeah, there was
a podal scene and I don't know, I love to
hear from you guys, when she knows that Connolly has
helped Tom hide the child.
Speaker 2 (10:41):
And I felt like at that moment she.
Speaker 3 (10:44):
Was able to step out of herself and her relationship
with him, do the right thing and say this is
very black and white with me, I'm going to the
police because you're doing something wrong.
Speaker 2 (10:55):
And for me, that was when she became a woman. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (10:59):
I don't know if anyone else had that same feeling,
but I felt like that was such a good little scene.
Speaker 2 (11:06):
You know, I think she's at that moment sort of
sitting to an adult, sitting to a man, saying to
her lover, you know, I don't think you're doing the
right thing, and I'm gonna make.
Speaker 4 (11:17):
A decision that that contradicts, and then I'm gonna you
know towards the relationship, and so I.
Speaker 2 (11:23):
Mean, I do agree with that.
Speaker 3 (11:24):
Right, you mentioned that the look is sort of set
in the nineties and in the nineties.
Speaker 2 (11:30):
I mean, I think a lot of us we're alive
and living our lives in the nineties, loving the nineties,
and you know it was before the me Too movement?
So did you do that on purpose?
Speaker 3 (11:48):
Can you explain your thought process behind that?
Speaker 2 (11:51):
It's sort of like what's different now? Yeah, and well,
you know we have not information though, and so you
have her in from I don't think that. I mean,
I think I didn't sort of since decide right set
in the nineties.
Speaker 4 (12:06):
It just was set in the nineties because I went
to college in the nineties and I would be hard
pressed to write a novel about coming to college now.
Speaker 2 (12:14):
I would have no idea what that looks like.
Speaker 4 (12:16):
So so that that's that decision was.
Speaker 2 (12:20):
Just kind of an a body of the decision.
Speaker 4 (12:22):
I did eventually sort of adjust the year and a
sort of having sort of loosely overlap with the Clinton
Lewinsky scandal that was like a little bit later in
the game, because I actually wasn't in college during those years.
But I decided, oh, that would be fun because I too,
like I kind of wanted to task global frames. So
there were these sort of cultural things pushing in on
(12:43):
the story.
Speaker 2 (12:45):
You know, I've talked about this a lot.
Speaker 4 (12:47):
Like what's changed, what's different, And for a while my answered,
I was like, I don't know if anything's really different, But.
Speaker 2 (12:56):
I think I don't think that anymore.
Speaker 4 (12:58):
So, I mean, I think more pack much better conversations now.
Speaker 2 (13:02):
I think there's a lot more awareness.
Speaker 4 (13:04):
I'd have a kid in college, and I'm a girl
who's you know, going to be a senior in high school,
so she's gonna go off and we have these conversations,
you know, maybe not as much as we should. That's
certainly more than I ever had. I've talked to friends
who went to college in the nineties, and when of
(13:24):
my friends were like, oh, I feel like, you know,
we we did talk about that stuff.
Speaker 2 (13:29):
We like it said, you know, like no means no.
Speaker 4 (13:32):
And like take back for any marches and all that,
and that's all true.
Speaker 7 (13:36):
But I felt like it happened like when you ride
out of college campus.
Speaker 4 (13:40):
We were you know, just sort of like let loose
in this way, and then we're having all these conversations
like at the exact same time, and it was almost
like too much information, too late. So I think the
way that we talk about it now, I mean, I
just think girls today are really awesome and.
Speaker 2 (13:57):
Like just have a better handle on things than I do.
So I think that's changing things for my closer words,
I'm having to do that. I don't really know, right,
So I think we're talking about consent and you know.
Speaker 3 (14:11):
And that was a big message in this book from
her experience with zeb where that was.
Speaker 2 (14:19):
Very consent, yes, but no, kind.
Speaker 3 (14:23):
Of one of those situations where a lot of us
have been unfortunately, and then moving to Connolly and.
Speaker 2 (14:31):
Having him be so insistent.
Speaker 3 (14:35):
And asking her over and over again, is this what
you want? We later come to find out why and
he kept doing that.
Speaker 6 (14:45):
But my question is to you, do you think that
Isabelle was manipulated by Connolly?
Speaker 2 (14:55):
Or do you think she knew exactly what she was
doing and and used it to her benefit? So I
think it's I think it's sort of both. I you know,
I don't think she used it like was explicitly out
she used it. But I had to ask myself this
(15:16):
question as I was writing, like is Isabelle really good writer?
Like is she really a great writer? Like Comedy is
always telling her, And I actually wasn't really sure that
that was true, and I didn't think. I was like,
I don't think I need to know that, because all
I all I need to know is that he's telling
(15:36):
her that she's good, and she, I don't think explicitly
uses it, but that she needed it.
Speaker 8 (15:43):
She needed it, and she decides to just believe him,
and I was like, Okay, I'm gonna believe it, and
ultimately uses that to like build her life around that,
so she.
Speaker 2 (15:54):
Gets something out of the relationship at the end. It's
not what she went into the relationship looking for. Certainly
he was manipulative.
Speaker 4 (16:03):
I think anytime we have that kind of power differential,
there's always a touch manipulation involved. But I think I
think in the end, she you know, they're kind of
on opposite tracks of the power, so you know, she's
on the rise and doesn't really know it. Then he
(16:24):
knows it and he's on the decline and she doesn't
know it but he does. So they're kind of like meaning.
Speaker 2 (16:30):
At this moment where they're like power is switching. She
doesn't realize it. And he's he does, you know, but
doesn't tell her. Yeah, And then the scene in the
end his death is sad yet kind of not surprising
in a way.
Speaker 3 (16:50):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (16:51):
Right, did you struggle with that, like how that end
would happen? Well, when I.
Speaker 4 (16:57):
Started writing the book, and I wrote common the book
for a long time and have these two timel things.
So I sort of imagined this.
Speaker 2 (17:03):
Whole scenario where Isabelle goes back to Wilder, like you
know in the twenty ten you know, twenty.
Speaker 4 (17:09):
Seventeen or something, and means coming then and they have
these conversation and they're going to come to some sort
of I don't know, have some conversation that's.
Speaker 2 (17:18):
Going to be really cathartic or or something. And I
worked on that for a really long time, and I
just couldn't like make it work. It just I couldn't
figure out how to cut them together. And I think
more importantly, I couldn't really figure out like what they
would have to say to each other at that time.
So I ended up having that all out and that
helped me a lot.
Speaker 4 (17:39):
I knew so the last chapter, which kind of imagined
Isabelle like forward in time, I knew that chapter I
wrote very.
Speaker 2 (17:46):
Likely because I knew exactly.
Speaker 4 (17:47):
Where she was.
Speaker 2 (17:48):
I knew like where she was going to end up,
so that idea like why they're calling would die.
Speaker 4 (17:57):
I just like kind of decided that that was like
the way to sort of end his arc. It felt
like I don't know the way his art had to end.
And again I'm like shady a little bit.
Speaker 2 (18:08):
I'm like, is it suicide? Is it you know, the
heart of time?
Speaker 4 (18:13):
And I don't even know that, like no, the answer
to that question, you know, I mean, yeah, I just
I feel like that was the like he had to.
Speaker 2 (18:21):
Like go into a mond and that was just where
he had to go. Because I was I was happy
to that, I know all.
Speaker 3 (18:31):
I think it is so manipulative with all of as
much he finally come out that he was doing with all.
Speaker 9 (18:36):
These other women, it was like, ah, I know, it's
not a nice sidy no, And I think that, you know,
one of the things that was interesting to go back
to the Clinton, you know, Lewinsky thing.
Speaker 2 (18:50):
I had to sort of read, you know.
Speaker 4 (18:52):
Like research that a little bit because I was like, oh,
I'm very much time aware of it, but I didn't.
Speaker 2 (18:56):
Really like really remember it, like on Pranda our level.
So it was interesting to think about the way that
that was like portrayed at the time. It was a
lot of hoes on her obviously, I think, if you know,
that's just what we do two women. But there was
like this question of like, well, who was there stopping Clinton,
(19:19):
you know, saying, I know, like this isn't a.
Speaker 4 (19:21):
Great idea, like he it's a legal maybe it's I
know you're paring and that's kind of great, but like just.
Speaker 2 (19:28):
Into look, it's not a good idea. I mean, I
feel like, you know, your husband, like there were we
saw it would be like just don't do it. So
I think that, yeah, I think that he commily is
commo about it. Yeah that's funny, that's right. The brow
(19:48):
you know grows, helping grows or something.
Speaker 4 (19:54):
Yeah, yeah, I just I.
Speaker 2 (19:57):
Can I ask you about.
Speaker 3 (19:59):
Connelly's wife, rock Stan. I just have so many questions
about her character. Did she know?
Speaker 2 (20:07):
Did she not care? Was this and arrangements?
Speaker 3 (20:11):
What was she doing with all of the letters that
Isabelle was sending, Like what happened there?
Speaker 4 (20:18):
So I feel like rock Stan is kind of like
a little bit in the shadows in the book, like
she Kinaly doesn't appear in the book, like as much
as you know, I do.
Speaker 2 (20:31):
Not like she should appear more. But she doesn't appear
that much in the book. And I think because I
felt like Isabelle would not really think about her that much.
Speaker 4 (20:41):
I just felt like she might be like vaguely interested
in her, but she wouldn't really play like a big
part in.
Speaker 2 (20:48):
Isabelle's mind of like what that meant.
Speaker 4 (20:52):
I think she doesn't have to just kind of compartmentalize that, like, well,
their marriage was over or this is how marriage works,
and this is just like it's not my problem.
Speaker 2 (21:00):
So I mean, I think as like you know, Ald
at my age. Now, I'm like, okay, Roxanne is probably
a really tiquely interesting character. Who is or maybe her
whole own book or something. Right, There's a book that
came out last year called Vladimir Red.
Speaker 4 (21:20):
So Vladimir is a great novel, and it is told
from the point of view of the wife.
Speaker 2 (21:29):
She's like in her fifties and her husband has Hadale's.
Speaker 4 (21:33):
Affairs, which she has totally known about. It's I've been
there kind of agreement. And so I feel like Vladimir
is like rock stands the story a little bit.
Speaker 2 (21:45):
I don't know.
Speaker 4 (21:46):
I think, you know, I think there's a line where
like Isabelle at the end, you know, kind of things
that like, oh, Roxanne has made these terrible, you know,
compromises in her life.
Speaker 2 (21:58):
But then as Isabelle grew older, you know, she's like, oh,
you know what, like we don't we just don't really
know what goes on in people's marriages and just how
they how they just you know, function in a way
that makes it possible for them to endure. And I
think that's like one of the things I.
Speaker 4 (22:16):
Was interested in the book was these gray areas and
the nuances around, like the rules we think when we're.
Speaker 2 (22:23):
Kids, like I never do that, or I don't never
marriage like that. You know, it's like ultually, you know,
life is.
Speaker 3 (22:31):
Yeah, do you think that there's more life to isabel
able to be another novel with her as the main character.
Speaker 10 (22:41):
No, I'm working on something now is not with Isabelle,
but I think it has Like I think I'm sort
of obsessed with some of the same themes, so I
can see some overlap just in the maybe in the themes,
and I like, I don't know.
Speaker 2 (22:58):
I might have someone be like oh Leer Brad or
something you know, I don't know. I'm afraid to think about.
So I asked Daisy. I said, oh, you know, if
this is your first novel, is there any interest with
this being made into a TV show or a series?
And I think you have seen I mean it has
an option for TV or film, which also a great
(23:29):
have to like disclaim that it's kind of like lots
of things.
Speaker 4 (23:32):
To option and there's like sort of a whole like
lightning storm list of things I have to like, olth
all right for a so.
Speaker 2 (23:41):
I've been vocal if I feel it would be great.
I think it.
Speaker 7 (23:45):
I know it.
Speaker 2 (23:47):
Who would play a solf?
Speaker 11 (23:50):
Know?
Speaker 2 (23:51):
I think we have to. I know I wasn't like
everyone that.
Speaker 4 (23:55):
We suggest will be like too old. So there's probably
someone like yeah, we are not aware of. But totally
it was like fourteen hours or something. Right, Kay, what
Olivia Rober you go into acting or that's that's amazing news.
(24:18):
So congratulations.
Speaker 2 (24:19):
I know Ellen Ellen Hillo grand basically hold us.
Speaker 3 (24:22):
I think she was on her twenty ninth book and
now she's fine that the Perfect Cop is finally Neday
and she sort of said the same thing.
Speaker 2 (24:29):
She's like, oh my god, you have no idea how
long this journey takes. And half the time it doesn't
work exactly.
Speaker 3 (24:35):
It's like still, but you know it's better than not, right,
I mean less it's in chemistry is coming out the
book we read The Seven Husbands and definitely what that's
coming out, and a lot of these were I mean
less it's in chemistry that hasn't been now that long, right, right,
that would not have happened really fast for like a lot,
(24:56):
you know.
Speaker 2 (24:57):
So sometimes it happens fast, and sometimes it takes twenty
year out. Yeah, well I just hopefully, I know.
Speaker 12 (25:03):
So.
Speaker 2 (25:04):
I love to ask writers, Uh, what are you reading
right now? Yeah? I mean I'm reading a million things
at the same time. I kind of, you know, pick
up things and leave them and then move our some
thing off.
Speaker 4 (25:20):
But two books I read and finished recently. One is
called The Guest, Right, I'm a clime, and she wrote
Girls the Girls or Girls of the Girls I think
a bundle of years ago, and I really loved The Guest.
It's kind of beard and an underliable barrier and a
(25:41):
set and kind of like the Hampton's and she's sort
of a sex worker who's having all Yeah, it's it's
it's like really, I really liked it. And I also
just finished a book called Everything's Fine by Cecilias I.
Speaker 2 (26:01):
Don't know how to knows A R A V E
S S.
Speaker 4 (26:04):
And it's it's a love story between a young black
woman and a young white guy on opposite side of
the political spectrum, sort of in the second Obama administration
leading up to the Trump years. And it's just funny
and sexy and kind of like a will there won't
(26:26):
day and should they or shouldn't they?
Speaker 2 (26:28):
And I just finished that with that one too. I
will have to add these to the last of things
that I read.
Speaker 3 (26:36):
I also ask every writer, what is your writing style?
I know a lot of people will give themselves I
have to read, I have to write a thousand words
a day. I know Ellen was a she wrote everything
in notebooks longhand she's amazing.
Speaker 2 (26:50):
What is your uh style? So I am not Alan
Nolan Wright and people who she publishes so often? So
I completely like I'm in all that.
Speaker 4 (27:06):
And imagine that the people writers who write like that
have to have like very strict you know, sort of
you know.
Speaker 2 (27:12):
Parameters around their work.
Speaker 4 (27:14):
So this one that my last is a year I
wrote very like randomly in corners of my life here
and there.
Speaker 2 (27:24):
I would just write scenes scene after scene after scene,
and they didn't always.
Speaker 4 (27:29):
Necessarily connect, and then it was like a long process
of figuring out like.
Speaker 2 (27:34):
What the order should be. Basically it was really a mess.
I don't I friend writing a book like that necessarily,
but the one I'm working at now, I'm trying to
be a little bit more.
Speaker 4 (27:46):
I mean, I'm trying to respect like that's my process,
and my process is kind of messy and yd but
I am right now, not today, but trying to write
a thousand words.
Speaker 2 (27:56):
Today because it's actually does maybe not every single day,
I want.
Speaker 7 (28:04):
To be real, but ye, but it doesn't take as
long as you as I think it does, and it
always like leads me somewhere that I wouldn't have come
if I hadn't just sat down.
Speaker 2 (28:16):
I'm like, okay, right, write a thousand words right now.
Speaker 3 (28:19):
So do you get up in the middle of the night,
like if you can't safe and you like get something
and she you're like, oh my god, great idea.
Speaker 2 (28:26):
Yet you start writing.
Speaker 4 (28:28):
I mean, I don't really get to bed necessarily, but
I will, like if I move in the middle of
the night and I think of something I jot down
because you always think you're gonna remember it, and you're like,
I'm definitely gonna remember that soja or idea, and you
never remember it.
Speaker 2 (28:43):
But instead of yeah, never, it is true that the
idea has come to you, Like if you're in the
world of the book, right, like if you are.
Speaker 4 (28:51):
Writing a thousand words a day and you're kind I'm
kind of like, so I'm sort of thinking about it.
Then I could be driving or in the shower, you know,
all those times where your mind can.
Speaker 2 (29:01):
Kind of go a little loose, I will think of
something and so then when I'm in the car, I
will do like a.
Speaker 4 (29:08):
Voice memo or like text my you know, voice dicto,
a text to myself like O, remember this idea of something.
Speaker 2 (29:16):
But that's like you have to be sort of swimming
in the water of the novel and yeah, and that
you get there. Why just trying to write one thousand words,
five hundred words whatever, touching it, touching it as not
every day, but as often as you can. When I
was doing my.
Speaker 11 (29:34):
Research for you, I was on your website and you
have written a lot of different.
Speaker 2 (29:39):
Free smore publications and blogs and things like that. I
want to mention one which I think was so clever.
Speaker 3 (29:46):
You wrote a piece about looking back at your Amazon
Kart over the last twenty or twenty years anyhow.
Speaker 2 (29:55):
It really gets you a roadmap to where you were
in your life. Yeah, and I thought it was such
an interesting concept, you know everything.
Speaker 5 (30:06):
I'm so glad you read that, because you know, if
you really look that.
Speaker 2 (30:12):
Like, it's crazy.
Speaker 10 (30:13):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (30:15):
Yeah, so I did start.
Speaker 4 (30:17):
When I started writing, I wrote like I wrote essays
at my kids, and then sort of like moved out
of that to different kinds of right personal writing.
Speaker 2 (30:25):
But that was when I wrote. I think I wrote
it like in the I started in twenty twenty, like.
Speaker 4 (30:29):
When we were in the pandemic we were ordering so
many things from Amazon or no, I think I wrote
it before that and.
Speaker 2 (30:34):
Updated it for the you know, for twenty twenty. But yeah,
it was I mean it was crazy because I did.
The first thing I ordered from Amazon. I was in
like nineteen ninety nine.
Speaker 4 (30:45):
Was like before I was married, and you know, I
was like ordering books, and then it was like I
was getting married, and so there was maybe some weddings
stuff in there.
Speaker 2 (30:54):
And then like trying to have a baby and then
like a baby here, I mean literally suddenly here. I
don't know what it is, but yeah bold.
Speaker 4 (31:04):
Bigger shopping cart, and I like Smith Pipers and like
board books and like all.
Speaker 2 (31:10):
The phases of your life. If you shop on Amazon,
which you brought me. Yeah, thank you for reading our
air pol even though over our website. What is your website?
What is that? Fazyfloren dot com? Yeah, you know mine,
it's really really well that. So do you watch television?
Speaker 3 (31:29):
I always asked to writers that because always fel like
writers don't have to climb.
Speaker 2 (31:32):
But are you then the watching anything?
Speaker 4 (31:34):
You know?
Speaker 2 (31:35):
Then I know, I actually we're not reading. I know,
I just text times and I was like, what do
we watch on TV?
Speaker 4 (31:41):
Because so just like point everybody out, like Mike Lotus
if we watched like Breaking That and with my daughter,
I've been like watching person rack and the there I'm
in into the figure right, Yeah, I mean there's so
here's so much I think writers. I think, like, I mean,
(32:05):
TV is fantastic for a writer because like that pilot episode,
like it shows you how you get all the information
that you need to know, Like in the first couple
of scenes.
Speaker 2 (32:16):
Like you're the characters, you're the players.
Speaker 4 (32:18):
Here's the conflict, right, Like, here's the problem, and that's
that's what you do in a book too.
Speaker 2 (32:24):
So I think it is I think it counts as writing. Great. Yeah,
no writers, right, we're in support of the writers. So
I want to go back to the first.
Speaker 3 (32:35):
Question that I asked you about what you saw your
first novel in a bookstore of what my action did
you have?
Speaker 2 (32:43):
Well, one of the things I discovered is that because
now I'm saying it with friend and kind of books
coming out, that Barnes and Noble gets the book a
little bit early.
Speaker 4 (32:53):
So my book came out on February fourteen, but like
on February I don't know, fit or something. I went
into Barnes and Noble and I just saw it there
on the shelf. So that was crazy, and I was
like with my kids and so we took all these pictures.
Speaker 2 (33:06):
But I like, love it dressed nicely, you know what
I mean, because it was like I was like not prepared.
So I don't first yours, but I know I didn't
worst into tears.
Speaker 3 (33:18):
I know.
Speaker 2 (33:19):
I think that I was like like I was kind
of weirdly embarrassed, and my husband was like, go up
to the people and work there, like so like know, well,
one of the things I dismembered is like if I walk.
Speaker 4 (33:34):
Into books orre and they have my book and I
was like, oh, do you want me to sign? And
everyone always say they asked and they're so nice and
they're so like friendly and everything. But at first I
was like, I can't have that's so embarrassing. So but
now I know that you can't do that and you
should do that, and that they want you to do that.
You didn't burst into tears.
Speaker 2 (33:54):
I don't think I was like thinking there. I don't know,
it was very exciting. I was like, but yeah, it
was great. I mean it's who did the cover for
the book. So it's a painter named Leslie Singer that
this is a painting that it exists, and so the
cover designer and whole just I don't know how they
(34:18):
do it. I'm not a visual of all, but they
they she found you didn't pick this photograph, No, she
found it and then presented that as the cover, you know,
with the.
Speaker 4 (34:30):
Typeface and everything, and we all just like love and
so when it was easy, yeah, sometimes it can be
more difficult. I'd like to take questions now, if anyone
that's anything, very easy question, yes, question. So I was
(34:53):
really curious and my friend kind of said something to me.
Why she always secret debt? Yeah, okay, so yeah, thanking
for bringing Aide into the room, because I do love
AID sometimes people like sometimes I owned event and we
talk exclusively about E and never talked about commedy.
Speaker 2 (35:16):
Actually, and now I feel like we were talking about comedy.
Speaker 4 (35:18):
So now, so Aid, you know, I think I just
like it was just one of those ideas that came.
And I feel like when I was right, I would
like if an idea came, I.
Speaker 2 (35:28):
Would try it out. Sometimes it didn't work and I would.
Speaker 3 (35:31):
Just start it.
Speaker 2 (35:31):
But that was one that just stopped.
Speaker 4 (35:34):
I think that I think that the sort of the
child adult relationship, like her sort of exploring that sort
of that divide is maybe compressed when she congered that
guy's first name, you know, I think she maybe is
like maybe another thing. I think one of the reasons
(35:57):
was that he has the same Aide Abraham, which is
kind of like an old like steadily kind of game,
and it's so different maybe than the names of her
classmates parents, you know, like Steve or you know, like
Clip or something. So I feel like maybe just to
punctuate that every time that she has this dad with
(36:19):
this kind of old world name, I think that was
part of it.
Speaker 2 (36:23):
But I think also just that they were more she
maybe she maybe feels like more equivalent with him or something,
although she's not. I mean, he's a he's a I
think he has more wisdom. I think she realizes he
has more wisdom in the end, and she maybe thought
going through. But yeah, thank you for asking that questions.
(36:48):
This is Jackie.
Speaker 3 (36:51):
Hi.
Speaker 2 (36:52):
I have two questions, Daisy. I want everybody to know
about the game list meth.
Speaker 12 (36:57):
Yeah, and I that I was really fascinated by sort
of the progression of adulthood for losing her mother so early.
I wonder if your mind because maybe you thought she was.
Speaker 2 (37:18):
More mature an adult.
Speaker 12 (37:19):
Because she had suffered such a great loss, and that
kind of contributed to this relationship with Conny. I mean,
there's so many different ways you can become, you know,
jaded or an adult or prepared for things, but they
(37:40):
are different, and that loss is not equal the same
thing as a relationship and ability to consent.
Speaker 2 (37:47):
So I was wondering it was beautifully mighty in other words,
and I wonder how you came to make it as
complex as it was. Okay, so I don't just to
act like answer that sort of last part.
Speaker 4 (38:03):
I think that's sort of how I see the world
is like in this kind of like gray like money place.
Speaker 2 (38:10):
I'm not like a toxic positivity person or.
Speaker 10 (38:12):
You know what I mean.
Speaker 2 (38:13):
But and I think that it's kind of going to
be sort of frustrating for me. Sometimes I'm like, oh, well,
I feel this, but like.
Speaker 4 (38:22):
I can also kind of see that side of it,
you know, like it makes me get a little fuzzy sometimes.
Speaker 2 (38:28):
And I have friends and people who will be like, no,
this is kind of like how Deborah acts for Isabel.
Speaker 4 (38:35):
It's just very like, you know, maybe rightly or wrongly,
like trying to clear about things. So I really can
I feel like I can only write things.
Speaker 2 (38:44):
I feel like exactly how they would happen in the world.
Speaker 4 (38:48):
And I think that I've had, you know, people say
to me like, oh, that last scene where she encounters
Zeb at the praturniting party, I wish she had just said.
Speaker 2 (38:57):
You know, really told them off or really And I'm like,
you know, I don't know, I don't.
Speaker 4 (39:02):
Feel like that's that's not how the world works in
my experience. I think there's so I think that's just
a function of how I see the world, and it's
kind of makes it a frustrating way to live sometimes.
Speaker 2 (39:14):
But I think it makes me a good writer because
I can kind of like see all the side of something.
Speaker 4 (39:20):
In terms of her mom, I mean, I think that
that was another thing that just like organically came out.
I was like, well, she's going to have lost her mom,
partly because I think it stand ups her as different
when she goes off to college. You know, like most
people going off to college like have a loss of parents.
Like most that's not like the sort of normal course
(39:43):
of things. So I think that that would already make
her feel a little bit like as part of these
things that she feels made her an outsider.
Speaker 2 (39:52):
I thought that like the grief of that would be
part of it. And I also it was also another
way to isolate.
Speaker 4 (39:58):
Her, because I was talking to someone who's like, well,
if she had her mom, maybe all this like messed.
Speaker 2 (40:03):
With and happened, you know, So it was a way
to kind of to keep isolating her.
Speaker 4 (40:09):
And then just in terms of the dateless method, because
that's how Jackie and I know each other.
Speaker 2 (40:14):
Or through this dateless method, which is basically a method
of writing, that really helped me just get down into business.
Speaker 4 (40:27):
It's about sort of silencing your inner critic and sort
of which is what we all have to do really
to like actually function, but really to create anything, to
do any creative work, you have to kind of silence
that voice that sort of pops up immediately, and it
pops up for everyone to sort of like recognize that
as a separate voice that it's telling you things that
(40:49):
are not necessarily true.
Speaker 2 (40:51):
And once I started doing that, or.
Speaker 4 (40:55):
You know, trying, I mean, it's like a sort of
a not like a switch you can just necessarily of
the Once I started to do that, I was really
able to just like geat words out on the page
and like you fix them later. You can fix them later,
but if you're already like, oh, this is terrible or
this really sucks or this sentence is so bad, then
you never.
Speaker 2 (41:13):
Get to the point where you can fix it.
Speaker 3 (41:15):
So that really helped is the gateless method online, Like
how can people find that?
Speaker 4 (41:21):
So if you have it's Beless Writing dot Com and
it's it's created by this amazing women in un Hid
named Suzanne King Ferry, and she runs retreats and workshops
and you can find out when you can always reach
out to.
Speaker 2 (41:38):
Me and ask ask me more about it, and you
can go on the.
Speaker 4 (41:42):
Beatlesswriting dot com and sort of if that's something you're interested.
Speaker 2 (41:46):
In a lot of creative Yeah, I think for all
facets of our lives. Oh, you're not doing any creative writing.
Speaker 3 (41:54):
I didn't ask people in question about why you had
Isabelle stealings so much in one.
Speaker 2 (42:01):
Part of her life, Like why did you make that choice?
Speaker 4 (42:04):
So that was another thing that I kind of just
tried out, was like what if she's if.
Speaker 2 (42:08):
She it kind of like a stayed. I felt like
it sort of worked for her. Did you as have
any one of your college years that did that?
Speaker 6 (42:20):
I did?
Speaker 4 (42:21):
I did.
Speaker 2 (42:21):
I did have a friend who did that and and
I was And it's actually it's like more common that
you know, like it's it's kind of common. I'm sure
someone in this room you know what I mean. It's
like even had a sort of adolescent days.
Speaker 4 (42:36):
Of like stealing, you know, like an eyeliner from CBS
or something, you know, but then this was even more
like pachological.
Speaker 2 (42:44):
But it always comes from a place of law black
the feeling that you lack something.
Speaker 4 (42:50):
So I think it was it was It's always fun
to give your character a secret or like sort of.
Speaker 2 (42:59):
Like a compulsion or something that she's trying to hide.
And because is it all sort of it feels like
something she would.
Speaker 4 (43:08):
Do, come from the background that she comes from, and
having lost her mother and sort of suffering that kind
of you know, extended.
Speaker 2 (43:17):
Illness, just kind of it just kind of worked, so
I kept it there.
Speaker 1 (43:23):
It was.
Speaker 2 (43:23):
It was interesting. I find to be very interesting. I
think someone else is a good question. Did you always
want to be a writer? Was there like a specific
book that inspired you to be a writing when you
were growing up?
Speaker 4 (43:38):
Oh, you know, there wasn't a specific book, but I
it's like I had a long an answer, I guess,
but I'd always grew up laying around words.
Speaker 2 (43:47):
So my whole family, no one's really a writer, but
we all like kind of me and.
Speaker 4 (43:52):
My brother's a reporter, and my dads worked in the theater,
and so my aunt was an English teacher, like, so
we all like kind of trying in like words and stories.
Speaker 2 (44:02):
So I was always doing that. I was doing about
a fear when I was younger.
Speaker 4 (44:05):
And music and always reading, and people would say that
I was like a good writer.
Speaker 2 (44:12):
Oh, you're a good writers are Like.
Speaker 4 (44:13):
I could write like a good paper in school and everything,
But I didn't think of myself really as a writer.
Speaker 2 (44:22):
I mean really until like kind of now, I don't know,
it's like, I don't know, it's yeah, you're kind of right.
That's out of the days and everything, not like you
kind of see it until it's like right in front
of you. But like looking back, I can see all
the great drums. But it's kind of a hard thing
(44:44):
to be, like, I'm going to be a writer, you know,
It's like what does that even look like. I didn't
really feel like I knew how to do that, so
I didn't like a lot of other things, you know,
all sort of connective. But yeah, yeah, you're right, I
have to because anyone else, you know. Yeah, Connolly is a.
Speaker 4 (45:17):
Little bit fatless, So when I was starting out featless writing, actually.
Speaker 2 (45:21):
Like there is a little bit of his like he
is a little I mean, he's a cat.
Speaker 4 (45:28):
And he's also kind of a good teacher, you know,
and he's sort of to be like encouraging her to
I don't like this expression, but like get out of
her own way, but just to like he's sort of
filling her up in this way.
Speaker 2 (45:43):
And sort of giving her some of the secrets. Although
I've been he's incorgrated and.
Speaker 4 (45:49):
Maybe himself right because he's still kind of you know, uh,
stuck on his his sort of glamorous past.
Speaker 2 (45:58):
But you know, yeah, I want to say that.
Speaker 11 (46:03):
What I took away from this whole experience of reading
your book was because we're a similar age, was I
consciously took a step back and.
Speaker 2 (46:13):
I thought about my experience in college. I like those
years late teens, early twenties, and what was going on
and what did I do and the choices I.
Speaker 3 (46:28):
Made, And it really made me because you're right, because
you go from pointing to point being all of a sudden,
you've got a couple of kids.
Speaker 2 (46:36):
You know, only what happened back then to bring me
to where I am now, And so much of it
really starts.
Speaker 3 (46:45):
There with how much confidence you have or how much
confidence you don't have, and yeah.
Speaker 2 (46:55):
The different people that moved through your life.
Speaker 3 (46:57):
So I really appreciate this book because of that. I
think it's really important and I'm really hope being made
it into some sort of series to bring up more people.
Speaker 2 (47:09):
I really thank you. Yeah. I think that that time
in your life is so fragile. You know, you can
shape in.
Speaker 4 (47:15):
Good ways and bad ways, and I think that like
it could really be almost like stamped out in a way.
Speaker 2 (47:24):
You know, your flame is like a little fragile, a
little fragile thing, you know, and.
Speaker 4 (47:30):
It can be virture if you find the right people,
and crushed if you find the wrong people.
Speaker 2 (47:37):
Sure, but.
Speaker 13 (47:40):
The good thing is that you can play yourself out
of it, right and that yes, And that I think
is why it was really important for me to have
that last chapter where we.
Speaker 2 (47:50):
See years agell. That was really important to me because
it was like, well, you need to know that, you know.
Speaker 4 (47:57):
Things can happen to you and you can come back
from them, you know, Like I mean, there are categories
of things that you might not come back from. So
don't want to be clear about that, but I think
that you know, we've all gone through things, you know,
and it's like you've just sort of incorporated that and
you kind of keep going.
Speaker 2 (48:17):
Yeah. So I thought is also was an important message
for me, So I'll make the last paragraph because I
thought it was just so poignant. I drank that night.
Speaker 3 (48:25):
Of the women I knew, and the girls they once spit,
and the girls I knew, and the women may become
a slow, gradual morphing of one into the other.
Speaker 2 (48:34):
In the end, there was only me standing in sunlight.
Speaker 3 (48:37):
A girl in dusty sandals and denim shorts, chipped the
unpolished and cigarette breath. She was alone and a little
bit sad, hopeful the way young girls are. I could
see her features fooling out before of her brilliant and
terrible and beast.
Speaker 2 (48:52):
Hey listen up.
Speaker 1 (48:53):
In our Saturday edition the a bonus chapter with producer Riley,
We're going to talk about my trip to Nashville when
you read with Jenna Jenna bush Hager's first book festival.
Speaker 2 (49:04):
It was a blast, and I'll fill you in on
all the details
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