Eliana Ramage (To the Moon and Back) feat. M.L. Rio, Guest Gay Reader

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:04):
Gays reading where the greatsdrop by trendy authors.
Tell us all the who, what, andwhy.
Anyone can listen.
Comes we're spoiler free Readingfrom politic stars to book club
picks where the curious mindscan get their picks.
So you say you're not gay.

(00:24):
Well that's okay.
There's something for everyone.
Gays Reading.

Jason Blitman (00:34):
Hello and welcome to Gay's Reading.
I'm your host Jason Blitman, andon today's episode I have Eliana
Ramage talking to me about herbook to the Moon and back.
And my guest gay reader is MLRio, whose book Hot Wax just
came out last week, uh, to theMoon and back.
Is this month's Reese's BookClub Pick.

(00:56):
I'm so excited for Eliana.
I just announced my October bookClub Pick with Stora.
It is Middle Spoon by AlejandroRela.
I just released an episode withAlejandro talking about the
book, which of course thatconversation is spoiler free so
anyone can go listen to it.
But we talk about the book, wetalk about, uh, some of the

(01:17):
themes and stuff, and I.
It's, it's so good.
It's so interesting and I don'twanna say too much about it.
But it's in, it's a book toldthrough unsent emails to a
recently ex-boyfriend and, uh,yeah there's.
Themes of polyamory andheartbreak and grief and, um,

(01:42):
yeah, it's super interesting andreally prescient and I'm so
excited.
You could check out the link inthe bio, uh, or in the show
notes to learn more about theAlto Book Club.
your very first book is only$1,which is great.
So you can get middle spoon forjust a dollar.
What else do I need to share?
Oh, of course.
Eliana and ML'S bios are both inthe show notes.

(02:03):
You can follow us on socialmedia.
We are at gays reading over onInstagram.
I, there is a gays reading BlueSky, but I feel like the people
aren't using Blue Sky anymore,so I've been less active over on
the blue sky.
I don't know if that's a goodthing or a bad thing, but.
But we're there so you couldfollow us there too.
There's also substack and merchand, oh, so much, so many

(02:28):
things, so many gays readingthings.
And of course, if you like whatyou're hearing, please share us
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We are just a super itty bittyindie podcast, which I know
sounds crazy'cause there havebeen some really tremendous
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But it's, it's an indie podcast.
It's a labor of love and so anysupport.
Is super, super appreciated andhow can you support really of

(02:52):
course you can join the Substackor buy merch, but even more so
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You can also all of the episodesare over on YouTube, and so if
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way to support too.
Just click the subscribe buttonover there or on your, your

(03:13):
podcast platform of choice aswell.
I think those are all the thingsyeah that's everything.
All right, y'all.
Thank you so much for being hereand now please enjoy my
conversations Eliana Ramage andML Rio.
Eliana Ramage.
Welcome to Gay's Reading.
I'm so happy to have you here,

Eliana Ramage (03:33):
I'm so happy to be here.

Here to talk about your book to the Moon and
back.

There it is.

This is gonna be one of my favorite books of the
year.
No Pressure.

It's very kind.

And I was reading it simultaneously with a book
called Indian Country by ShowBora.
And this is a book that is noton anyone's radar, and I need
it.
I need everybody to be readingit because it is so good.
And reading the two bookssimultaneously was it like,
broke my brain and it was theperfect way to consume both
books.
I loved them both so much.
They were cousins of each other.

(04:10):
And I just finished them bothyesterday and I'm like in a
state of ecstasy because it isnot always the case where you
like.
Read two books simultaneouslyand they both are gonna be among
your favorites of the year.
So I'm gonna, I'm coming to youfrom a very excited place.

Now, so I already, I think it was like
last week that I heard aboutIndian country and I was excited
about it.
Now I'm like really ready

Yeah.
It is a cousin of your book andI think you're gonna like it
anyway.
For the people, what is your,I'm sure not very practiced
elevator pitch of to the moonand back.

to the moon and back.
It is a novel about one youngwoman's relentless quest to be
the first Cherokee astronaut andthe women she loves best, whose
lives are changed by herjourney.
That is my memorized pitch.

Very succinct.
Perfect.
I don't take this the wrong way.
I'm shocked by how much Ilaughed.

How could I ever take that the wrong way?

I don't know.
You're like, what would I, didyou think I wasn't gonna be
funny?

It actually didn't used to be funny.
'cause I think that might belike a little bit of a literary
fiction thing that at least for

allowed to be funny,

yeah.
I was like, oh no.
Especially, starting out, it'slike they must be crying.
And one of the ways I actuallywere off topic, but one of the,
one of the ways I got intowriting in general was in high
school I was writing a lot ofcreative nonfiction essays and I
realized that anytime I wrote anonfiction essay about my
grandmother, who was like myclosest person in the world and
was like, living with us and hadAlzheimer's, like my mom and my

(05:47):
aunt would cry and so I'd belike, oh, I need to like,
writing has power.
Let's like keep writing theselike really deep sad things.
Anyway, so didn't think I wassupposed to be funny in books.
And then I was lucky enough toend up with a US editor, Margot
Sch Manter, and a UK editor,Bobby Must and Owen, who are

(06:07):
both like two of the funniestpeople I know.
And in the last couple years ofdrafts, it became like a within,
how can I make them laugh?
Like I really want them tolaugh.
They're so funny.

Yeah, like literally on page, like page six
in the galley is really page twoand we're like halfway down.
And I wrote LOL with anexclamation point, like page
two.
I'm laughing already.
Anyway, that just surprised meand I wanted to tell you that
Steph, the, our protagonist inthe book, there's she declares

(06:39):
that there's one thing thatwould hold her over until she
could get to the rest of herlife.
And that a space camp, shedecides that like she just needs
to go to space camp.
'cause that'll hold her over.
What would your thing have been,or what would your thing be now
even

Whew.
Okay.
I went through different phases.

Yes.
Tell me.
I wanna know.
Tell me all of them.

I wanted to be an actor, and then when I was, no,
I wanted, okay, I wanted to be adoctor.
And then my friends, I wanted tobe a pediatrician.
I was really into it.
And then my, after three yearsof that dream, I was in second
grade and my friend's mom saidthat what do you wanna be?
And I said, obviously a doctor.
That's my personality is that Iwanna be a doctor.

(07:24):
And then she said, no, youdon't, because of the
malpractice insurance.

The,

She said, people are

that is a good point To, but like, why are you
telling a 6-year-old

I dunno, but it killed the dream.
I didn't know what it was, but Iwas like, people are gonna sue
me, whatever that is.
And then I wanted to be an actorand then I went to a week of
acting camp and I was we had toaudition in like first grade and
the part they gave me was achair and people sat on me and a
table and people ate on me.
This is for Alibaba in the 40Thieves.

(07:56):
I wanted to be a sign languageinterpreter, but I didn't know
sign language and I wanted to bean Arabic interpreter and his
fashion interpreter, like therewere all these really intense
phases with writing on the side,but like all these really
intense dreams that like died.

fascinating it like makes sense that you've
become a writer though, becauseyou can live out whatever dream
or fantasy you want now.

Yes.

Oh, that's so interesting.
Was there something where youwere like, I am desperate to.
Blank as a kid.
So if Steph was, I'm desperateto go to space camp, you were
like, I'm desperate to have adog, or I'm desperate to dye my
hair.
Or was there something that youwere like, I need to do this, or
I'm gonna die as a child.

I needed to win the Reading Rainbow contest that
I never won.

Oh, devastating.
Wait, tell me more about thiscontest,

I don't remember if it was called like the
Reading Rainbow Story contest orbook contest or what, but it was
like you the children, every,you can do, every year you write
a, like a book, a children'sbook.
'cause you're a child, you writea book and you like color each
page, you're like making theactual thing.
And then you mail it into yourlocal PBS station and they
choose the winner and then youdon't.

(09:20):
I mean, I guess some people win.
I, I lost over and over and overand over again.

The story did not have Happy ending.

Yeah.
But at one point I, and my lastyear doing it before, I think I
aged out, I plagiarized what Idon't even, maybe it was Ella
Enchanted.
I just took I was like, okay,fine.
I'll do a book that like otherpeople like, and I wrote did a
10 page handwritten version ofthat and that didn't win either.

Oh man.
Maybe no one went.
Do you know anyone who did?

My brother got honorable mention

my God, of course.

but because he won, we went to the local
station for PBS and they had amagician

What was the magician doing there?

he was the prized for the good writing kids and
like their siblings who were tagalongs.

The prize was go to a magic show at the local PBS
station.

It's pbs, like

That's so rare.
I was not expecting any

they can't throw around like giant prizes.

No, but I don't a certificate.
I don't know.
I was not expecting.

You also got a certificate with LaVar Burton's,
like a copy of his signature,which was like A squiggle, like
a big circle.
Squiggle.
Squiggle, yeah.

Cute.
I would like to meet him oneday.

Oh yeah.

He's maybe a dream guest.

could.
You could, that would be great.

My previous dream guest was Rosie O'Donnell, but
she has since been on the

Yes.

so now I think it needs to be LaVar Burton.

I was gonna say, you should make your dream list
and have all your dreams cometrue.

I know.
Oh my God.
Now we need to do that for you.
I'm like, I'm devastated thatthis little dream for little
Liana did not come true.

I know.
I know.
And now there's no illustrationsin this one.
And nobody wanted to see my art.

So many words, no illustrations.
Okay.
I'm like, excuse me.
As I was prepping for this, Iwas like, this is all over the
place because the book was justlike swirling inside of me and I
didn't really know where Iwanted to start or what I wanted
to talk about, but it's, thereis this like intersection of

(11:28):
this young woman's Cherokee nessand queerness and growing
upness.
I don't know what the right wordfor that is, but there is

Coming of age.

coming of age.
Oh my God.
Yes.
Thank you.
Remember I said it's early

one of my prepped words.
I.

right?
Buzzword coming of age.
Take a drink.
Right intersection of coming ofage, queerness, Cherokee ness.
What was putting pen to paper ofall of those intersections?
Like for you?

I have not thought of it like that before.
It took a long time.

Yeah.

So maybe the experience of it I was like, I
wasn't sitting down thinking I'mgonna take these.
I didn't think, one of thethings that's been interesting
about publication world is that,like before it, you're not
really asked to like, answerquestions like, what does it
mean?
Or

right.

and so just in the last three months I've been
sitting down and thinking aboutthis and talking about it, and
like understanding after thefact that there are things.
Queerness and Cherokee is thatlike there, there are things
about her identity that werealways gonna be there, that were
there from the beginning, butthe way, the specific way in
which all of these differentparts interacted was just many

(12:46):
years of let's focus on this.
What if we were in thatsituation?
Let's focus on that.
Like all of these differentthings.
And then trying to understandhow they could move together
while I was also like growing upat the same time.

sure.
So like you were intersectingEliana's coming of age With
Steph's coming, with Steph'scoming of age and these other
pieces of her.
So as you were discovering itthen, or as it got itself on the
page and you were like, oh, thisis what my book is about, what
was that?
Maybe reflecting, what is yourexperience like now being like,

(13:19):
oh, this is what's on the page.
What does that mean to you?
Because these are also pieces ofyou.

Yes.
I think the biggest way.
That I've started to think aboutit in a way that I didn't, as it
was happening, was the coming ofhow much older I had gotten, and
the time it took to write this.

That's interesting.
Say more.
What do you mean?

It took 12 years and I started it when I was in
like, what it, the first sort ofspark of it was my first few few
weeks of college.
So my first time out of thehouse and my experience of that
was like, oh, I know exactlywhat's gonna happen.
Like I'm gonna major in theArabic language even though I

(14:01):
have never taken a class in thatlike I just, you have some, or I
had like pretty certain under apretty certain understanding of
what was gonna come next in likemany different categories.
And here we are, like 12 yearslater I didn't expect anything
that happened.

Uhhuh.

And that's like a, now from this distance, I can
say that is like a very veryfamiliar path.
You grow up and you change.
And that is not a bad thing.
Even if bad things are happeningas part of it, this is just like
the arc of growing up issomething that I appreciate at
34 now.
And so one version of that, interms of what it means is that

(14:36):
when I started writing thisbook, I had an understanding of
this is like an ambition story.
We've got like astraightforward, like somebody
wants to be an astronaut andthen let's add like the, add any
cost concept.
And then over the years thepeople around her became so much
more important than that, andher idea of belonging became the
heart of the book.

(14:57):
So it became so much more of afamily story and like a humanity
story than what she probablythought it was about when she
would've been my age.

Sure.
So you, as you've just explaineddidn't have that one singular
dream your whole life, but youdid have maybe big dreams that
changed.
I'm curious, like seeing herjourney, How, what is the Eliana

(15:25):
parallel like you.
Obviously are very ambitious.
You had like lofty goals anddreams and how did, how do you
see your queerness and Cherokeeintersection intersecting with
the journey that you went on?

Oh, that's so interesting.
First off I know I had thesereally intense phases, but those
were all my like backup to beinga writer.
Dreams.

you also said writing on the side, so you
made, so there is something veryinteresting about people who
have decided that is not arealistic journey.
So they're gonna put it on theside or put it on the back
burner.

Yes.
And it's like something that Ienjoyed and it's something that
I wanted to get better andbetter at, but yeah, like that
was not that job.
'cause it's still not a it'slike such an imaginary thing.

But so is being an astronaut.

True.
So I think that's one in termsof when you asked me to compare
myself to her, there's so manyways we're different.
But one way, just in terms ofambition and career is she's a
child who, like, when we firstmeet her announces like, this is
what I'm gonna do.
Nothing else matters as much.
And I'm willing to throw otherthings away and I don't know, do

(16:38):
some things that I would never,ever do.
And then for me, writing wasalways second to other, other
people how, how I always wantedto be, I don't know.
Like I wanted to have a job thatI loved that was stable, that I
didn't have to worry about andhave kids someday and spend a

(17:01):
lot of time with friends andfamily.
I don't know.
I like was thinking about theday to day and I would, and I
was not interested in like theagony of your job is writing and
yeah, actually that's not fair.
It's, sorry.
It's not about the agony ofthat, it's more just that's just
didn't, I would not have thoughtof that as that's not a job you
can go get.

Sure.

Yeah.
Like not, I wanted something Icould apply for.

In a weird way that is like that, is that makes
you the opposite of Steph.

Yeah.
And I, it feels weird to talkabout ambition that way.
'cause I really like, as I'm aparent, I'm like, not trying to
say that you like can't be awriter and a parent.
I just think that from like mychildhood dream was I had these
things that sounded like reallyambitious, but I would never

(17:47):
have put them above other peoplein the way that she does.
Yeah.

So one of the.
to me, moments in the book is I,ambition has been a theme
running through my own life too.
When I was a kid at theatercamp, I got a certificate at
four something at the end ofthis session.

Good job.

the thank you and on the certificate said, shoot
for the moon.
Even if you miss, you'll landamong the stars.
And that has been a mantrathroughout my whole life.
And when I think about ambition,it's okay just try your best and
then worst case scenario, you'restill like amongst the best.

(18:38):
And then of course the Mala Prepin.
The book is Shoot for the Moon.
Even if you miss, you'll landamong the stairs, which I
basically peed in my pants whichwas not a typo.
It's supposed to be that way inthe book.
So it's just interesting tohear.
I think I'm so stuck on thislike ambition and comparing, not
comparing you to Steph, buthearing your journey and your

(19:00):
life story.
Because I was so stuck thinkingabout me and my journey and who
I was and what that trajectoryis.
And I think, thinking about aperson wanting to be an
astronaut, you're like, whatdoes that even mean?

Yeah.
I love that.
It's like an impossible dream.

What was that like research experience like
for you?
Because there's a lot of likesciencey, very official stuff
that comes up in the book.

I'm so happy you called it science sciencey,
because that was.

sciencey.
I didn't say

Because it's not science, it's sciencey.
It was

yes.

I love I as basically this is like very
writer of me, but I like havesuch veneration for science and
scientists as like a concept inthe universe as a metaphor.

Uhhuh.

Cannot do it.
There's math, I

My husband has a degree in chemistry.

Oh wow.

Me, I like I does not compute to me.

No, but it's so beautiful, So happy other people
are out there doing it.
So the way I approached sciencewas I thought back about, I
thought back on the way Iconnected to science as a kid
and the story is that I lovedscience when it was a story and
then once it was like eighthgrade physical science and they
brought in the math and it waslike dead to me forever.

(20:20):
Or at least I could never.
Do it.
I can never understand it in thesame way.
Yeah.
So it was always story first,and then research was like the
rule.
I don't hold myself to thestandard of I need to understand
everything there is tounderstand about being an
astronaut.
But if I figure out, okay,there's in a previous draft

(20:40):
there was like a NASA Christmasparty.
So I realize this isn't ascience example once I say it,
but I was like, okay, I'm gonnalook at all these YouTubes of
the decoration contest at,Johnson Space Center, do all of
the research, like for thatthing that has already appeared
in the story, but I'm not gonnaget into the textbooks.

Sure.
A little bit of reverseengineering.

Yes.
And then a little bit of otherpeople check your work.

sure.
Sure.
And then say, okay, this is howit would actually happen, or
this is the sciencey portionthat you're missing.
Yeah.
Yeah.
That makes sense.
It's so interesting to hear yousay that you understood science
best when it was story, It wasstory because when you said you
wanted to be a sign languageinterpreter, I took sign

(21:26):
language in college and it cameso easily to me.
And I, I think part of it isbecause I gen I generally talk
with my hands and I have abackground in theater and in
movement and needed to learnchoreography.
And so there was this sort ofsynchronicity of like brain and
body moving together.

(21:47):
And it came naturally.
So it is, it's interesting thatI don't know that we as humans
lean into that enough, thatthing where we're like, oh, this
is.
I'm so good at this because howmy, of how my brain works.

I really like that.
And I've been when you said thething about.
Indian country being like acousin book just in, in the last
few months I've been thinkingabout about fiction and
nonfiction.
I'm reading more nonfiction nowthan I did before.
And how much fun it is to like,link those two together, figure
out what you're interested in afictional way, and then move
from there.

(22:23):
Yeah.

It's, so I was just talking to an author friend
of mine and I was, and longstory short, I was sharing that
some of their, the work oftheirs that I liked the most was
their fiction that is truest tothem.

Yeah.

And I was like, really?
I think the answer is you needto be writing nonfiction.
And that it was this interestingunlock, I think for both of us
to be like, oh, we need to wecan't we shouldn't be fitting
ourselves into the thing that wethink we're supposed to be
fitting ourselves

Yeah.
Absolutely.

It's letting the storytelling of science come
naturally to us, because that ishow, that is who we are.

Yes.
Yeah, I really like that.

Speaking of metaphor, I say speaking of
metaphor as though you just saidthe word metaphor.
You said it like four minutesago, but speaking of metaphor
the word alien comes up a coupletimes in the book, and I, it
feels like one of those thingswhere it happened naturally as
you were writing, and then uponreflection you're like, oh, this
holds such a deeper meaning nowthan it did when I was putting

(23:26):
it down on the page, but Right.
The idea of obvious like space.
Alien, Also alienating as ayoung person or in general being
new, different is a sort oftheme throughout the book.
Are you, how do you relate tothat?
What does that, what does thatmean to you To fit in a space

(23:48):
where you perhaps don't feellike you're supposed to fit in?

I think it's a, it's fun answering questions
about other people's, like innerlives.
'cause you don't really knowwhat's going on.
But my assumption is that'ssomething that, that like a lot
of people, maybe most people Idon't know, also feel and I talk
to a lot of writers who, whofeel it and talk about it and

(24:13):
even if that's something thatwas a bigger thing in childhood
or, even if they've come intotheir own in a different way as
adults, that's something thatthey're still interested in for
themselves, for other realpeople, for other fictional
characters.
And I think my experience ofthat was this is in, I think
this is in a previous draft init, and I don't remember if it's
still there, but my experienceof it is something where I

(24:39):
always had like a smaller groupof really like really close
friends, but the, like a smallergroup when I was growing up.
And especially when I went tocollege, I had this like
self-consciousness and thisfeeling of everybody is like
being cool without me.
And then you realize after thefact, whether that's like

(25:00):
through, going back for areunion or just getting older
and experiencing the world moreyou realized, or I realized that
that was in my head.
There were so many times whenpeople outside of my, like
immediate friend circle, so manypeople had invited me to be in
their lab group or come to lunchwith them or people.
People are kind and they'reeither just not thinking it, it
just doesn't, they're no one'strying to be mean.

We're all just trying to survive.

we're, yes.
Yeah.
And I think it's a youngerperson.
Oh, that's not nice to youngpeople everywhere.
Okay.
That's an Eliana as a youngerperson thing

Honestly, I think more adults try to assimilate or
To fit in a way that we don'teven realize.
And did you watch the TV showOvercompensating?
I,

No, but it sounds already like the title.

yeah.
So upon first initial watch,you're like, oh, this is a
little cringey.
Because all the characters areovercompensating and it's these
college students, but the moreyou watch, the more you're
seeing everybody isovercompensating.
The cool kids, the nerds, theparents, the teachers.

(26:14):
Everybody, we are all justtrying to figure it out and fit
in and be liked and all of that.
And so it's so interesting, likejust thinking about the idea of
alienating and thinking about,alienating and isolating are two
different things, but I think asan author, writing is such a
solitary experience and now tobe talking about your book and

(26:37):
coming into the come, coming upfor air, coming up to the light.
It's gotta be such a jarringexperience that you can connect
dots with plot points in yourbook as well, which for you in
particular is very specific.
But so I'm just think that'swhere my brain was also.

yeah.
It's, no I agree.
It's so the book is not even outyet, and it's already so strange
to me that you have it.

I had it, I read it.
There are things that areunderlined and things marked in
the margins.
Yeah,

And it's not about the author, but it also
feels so personal because it's Igrew up writing this,

was that like for you?

Writing it while I was growing up.

You, it's funny you just changed the phrasing.

I did.

up writing it and writing it as I was growing up
are two different things becauseI think,

it.

Because it, I think the first way you said it
makes it sound like it taughtyou.

I agree.
I think it did teach me a lot.
And the biggest thing it taughtme, I think, yeah, I think the
biggest in terms of theexperience of writing it so
worked on and worked on it.
Went to grad school, worked onit, finished grad school stopped
writing for two years.
And I think.

(28:01):
I came back to it for a lot ofdifferent reasons.
But the short version of thatexperience of going back to it
was an understanding of okaywe're planners, or I'm a
planner.
It would be nice to all of thoseyears.
It, I was like, I'm, I'm workingtowards something.
I'm planning something.
And then not giving up on thatplan, not writing for two years,

(28:22):
realizing how much it meant tome like the actual writing, how
much it meant to me, andrealizing how much I wanted to
tell this story and I wanted tolike, see these characters
through and see it through formyself.
It was like my, because it wasmy first time not writing, it
was my first experience of ofthis is what I want to be doing.
Just like this act of writingwith no one reading it.
This is what I want to be doingwith my life.

That's major.

I am glad it, it was hard not to write for, that,
that part before was hard, butI'm glad it happened.

Yeah.
The beginning of the book,knowing like your age and
knowing just a little bit aboutyou maybe this is accidental,
but the beginning of the book isvery little mermaid coded.

How?
Wait.

I should have first asked you what was your
favorite Disney movie as achild?
Because that would've beenhilarious.

It was a problematic phase.
It was Beauty and the Beast.

Oh, but I love you.
Beauty the Beast is so good.
The whole Stockholm Syndromething.
Big

Mermaid.

And parent not wanting the kid to follow the
dreams, wanting to be the worldout there is scary.
And they think that, king Tritonthinks the way to protect Ariel
is to not let her go.

You're right.

That's the beginning of your book.
Sorry.

Wow.
Wow.
This is my favorite reading ofit.

So basically this is a retelling of Little
Mermaid.
You're like, I want people toread my book.
So I'm going to just like withElla Enchanted when I was a kid,
I'm gonna rewrite The LittleMermaid.
Yeah.
What does that mean?
Hearing me say that to you?

Very fun.

Yeah.

Yeah.
And I have a lot of empathy forthe mom character in terms of
that like journey I was talkingabout earlier, of like just
focusing on my energy on Stephwhen I was younger and then
expanding.
So I think even as a youngperson, my King Triton reaction
was like, you manie and I getit.

Yeah.
It's like I see memes these dayswhere it's like Mrs.
Doubtfire and everyone was like,as a kid, you're mad that the
mom was a spoil sport and waslike mad that there was a pony
in the house and the birthdayparty was a mess.
And now as an adult, you'relike, no, I totally side with

(30:36):
the mom.

Definitely.

Yeah, that's what that feels like.
Going back to the researchcomponent, you, talking about
science, but also a big part ofthe book is the Indian Child
Welfare Act.

Yes,

can you share a little bit about what that is,
what that means?

sure.
It is a really important federallaw and it establishes standards
for the removal and theplacement of native children.
The like, easiest way I can saythat as a non-lawyer is that
like when there's a native childwho is being placed with another
family, then it's like step one.

(31:16):
That placement would be with amember of their family, step two
with someone from their sametribe, step three with someone
who's from a tribe, like who'snative, but who's not from their
same one.
And step four is then we go towhat would happen in a non Iqua
case.
And it was passed in, I believe,1978 but not passed like just

(31:37):
for kicks like passed because itcame out of this really long,
really dark history of nativechildren being removed and not
just from their families, butalso from their nations.
For a long time without any sortof check on that.

Yeah.
So much of the book too is aboutthe sort of dynamic and
relationships of being nativeand what that means to some of
these characters.
What is, what's yourrelationship like with being a
member of the Cherokee Nation?

my relationship it's just a fact of my life as
I've always known that I'mCherokee Nation citizen, that's
what my family is.
We also don't live in likenortheastern Oklahoma where
Cherokee Nation is also themajority of Cherokee Nation
citizens today don't live there,which is not to say that that's

(32:32):
an insignificant place, or thatmost people, or that a lot of
people don't live there.
It's more to say that when I waswriting this I think I was just
as interested in.
What does it mean for someone togo to space?
As I was in the question of whatdoes it mean for like us and
other tribes, but I'll justspeak to ours.
Like for us to be a people who,at first there was some

(32:53):
understanding of who we arebased off of like Cherokee,
homelands, and then we haveremoval.
So now there's like anunderstanding of you're in this
jurisdictional area I was justtalking about on a government
level.
And now not only what does itmean for me to grow up in
Nashville with two other nativestudents in my high school, one
of them Cherokee, one of them adifferent tribe but also like

(33:15):
Cherokee's on Mars.
What do we do with that?
I don't think that the tribe isdefined forever by location.
Location is really important, sois language.
So all of these differentthings, but to me it like boils
down to connection.
And belonging and story and allof these things that are just so
hard to define that it was like,I guess we're just gonna spend a

(33:37):
few hundred pages thinking aboutthat in this novel without
answering it for anyone.

Sure.
And it's interesting'cause whatI'm hearing you say is we all
don't have to be, how do I wannasay this?
We all don't have to be definedby the things that we think
define us, and yet we also arenot who we are without the
things that define us.

Yeah.

That's

that makes sense.

does that make sense?

Yeah.

Right?

Mm-hmm.

Because I think there can be this ex exploration
of Cherokee ness, as I wassaying earlier and being in
Oklahoma.
But what is that doesn't have toquote unquote define steps
aspiration.

Yes.

And so how can, and she could redefine it by
being the first Cherokeeastronaut on the moon.

That goes.
Into this story that was like, Ithink of as like the first spark
of the book.
Even if it wasn't the first daythat I started writing it.
And it was that I was soDartmouth College has it's where
I went to undergrad and it has areally great native student
program, native studies program,like all of the, that it's just

(34:55):
a great place to go if you'renative.
And so we were all in, in thisroom as freshmen talking about
research projects.
It was like an extracurricularindependent study thing.
And one day all of ourconversations over the whole
session of just freshmen withtwo sophomore mentors, all of
our conversations were set inthe past.
And it was this like tone in theroom of each of us had maybe

(35:17):
decided, there's a point inhistory where there's, nobody
was using the word purity'causethat's gross.
But there's some point inhistory of tribal purity.
And then all these bad thingshave happened and it's just like
you get farther and farther awayfrom what it means to be
whatever your tribal nation is.
So like a definition of selfbased off of loss.
And so I was a, I was 18 andthat was like freshman fall

(35:41):
really early.
Not only into like me leavinghome, but also me being not only
just with like other Cherokeepeople or people I'm related to,
but like all of these nativepeople from all of these
different tribes with differentexperiences around the country.
And one of them was a sophomoreand he stopped the conversation
and was like don't, you guys arelike, don't keep thinking of

(36:02):
your your tribes as what theywere at what point in the past.
Like why are you choosing 1850instead of 1720?
There's no like point at whichyou could choose that.
And so his next step of thatequation was like he actually
said if one of you were tobecome an astronaut, that would
become a part of the story ofyour people.

Oh my God.

yeah, thank you.
Winter Fox.
So none of us became astronauts.
But it was so cool that he wasone year older than us and felt
like he had something to teachus on such like a kind of
vulnerable level that just thatsentence just kept, like playing

(36:42):
over and over until we got theastronaut novel.

I love what a good story.

I'm, yeah.

you could write a little nonfiction article about
that.
Thinking about my own life andhow that relates to being

Hmm.

I see so many parallels with sort of elder
gays who are alive now, who arenot anti-gay marriage, but who
don't see the necessity and theway that a younger person might
because to them gay history issomething else.
And being gay means somethingelse.

(37:21):
And to your point, why are weonly thinking about what it was
like to be gay in the sixties,seventies or eighties, or,
particularly pre HIV and aids.
And it being this likeunderground and subversive
lifestyle in quotation marks.
But why are we not thinkingabout what it was like to be gay

(37:42):
in the 15 hundreds or in the 13hundreds, right?
So there is our history is long

Yes.

or the history is long and our memory is short.

That's so true.
And Steph, the main character ofthis character, of this book,
she's gay, born 10 years beforeI was born.
And

She was living a very Gail life at a time where I
was like, good for you girl.

but it's like astounding to me to, in terms of
when what is this likehistorical point of gayness that
we would think of like even just10 years off on the timeline
from my own experience, we'retalking about her having a very
different childhood than I did.
And so it's what's exciting isall of these different
experiences of that similaridentity.

yeah.
Okay.
Related, but unrelated.
And this is leading somewhere.
So not to put you fully on thespot.
What?
What was your dating life likewhen you were Steph's age when
she was going on so many dates?

Oh.

You don't have to get into too many details if you
don't want to, but What was your

When she was going on her, like Tinder
rampage,

Uhhuh?
Yeah, what was your Tinderrampage?

I never had a Tinder rampage.
The, yeah, I got married when Iwas 20 and to someone very kind.
And then when I was maybe 28 wegot divorced.
And then I did a few more datesand then I got married, no
Tinder rampage.

I am.

And when I say a few more dates, sorry, I don't
mean I like met someone and wenton three dates.
I mean that like,

I am not gonna lie.
So I'm a little disappointedonly for my follow up question
to that, or what I was hoping,and maybe this was a fantasy
experience for you, and I'mcurious, and we could talk about
this.
There is, I don't wanna say myfavorite section of the book,
but I,'cause I loved so much ofthe book, but there is a moment

(39:45):
where Steph shares, or onSteph's Tinder profile, she
includes quotes and reviews fromprevious people she's been on
dates with.
So I was gonna ask you what doyou think in both ways, what are

(40:06):
some reviews that you think youwould've received and what are
some reviews that you wouldgive?

Oh my gosh, man, I'm, this is so disappointing
for you.

I am so disappointed.
Okay.
You went on a couple days.
What are some reviews that youwould give those people?

That's a great question.

Here's one for me.

Okay.

You were super nice wished you'd brushed your
teeth after you had dinnerbefore we made out.

Hard agree.
Yeah.

Remember where I was.
I remember exactly who it was.

Oh, I'm sorry you had that experience.

That's okay.

I think that ev any review of me would be too
colored by how, and any review Ihad for someone else, I was just
like very, I was not, the reviewwould be like, not enough
Tinder, rampage, just

go on the rampage, right?

Our before, a long time before we got married,
like our first, one of our earlyconversations had to do with oh,
you want children?
I also want children.
Let's let's have thatconversation on the first date.
And that's not in, in terms ofthe thousand ways that like my
life and Steph's life are notthe same.
It's not her path.

Yeah, no, that's not her path.
She couldn't let anything get inher way of her dream.
So that, like the dream was thepriority I, when I was dating.
I never wanted to waste my time.
So even if they weren't gonna bemy forever person, I wanted to
know that there were enoughsimilar interests, enough

(41:38):
similar trajectories or dreamsor aspirations for it to be
worth my while to con, to go onmore like dates with those
people.

Yeah.

But to have a little fun is a different thing.
To go on my little, to go on arampage is a different thing.

Exactly.
Every rampage is very fun towrite about.

Uhhuh.
Oh my God.
You need a substack called theRamage rampage.
You're welcome.
That was free.
That was a free idea.
There are so many like bigquestions in the book that like,
break your brain and it justmakes you feel small and at the

(42:18):
end of the day, we are all justteeny tiny specks of dust in
this galaxy, in this universe,and what is it all for?
This is ridiculous.
And the question of what if weget hit by an asteroid comes up,
what wa Did you face any of thatthinking bigness while you were
writing the book?

Yes.

Yes.

yes.
No, I've thought about itforever.
There, I think there's twocategories.
So I've thought about it foreverin terms of the choice of
optimism or sim cynicism.
The where are we headed?
Like just on our, too muchtalking with my hands.
So I've thought about it foreverin terms of what are we doing
just left to ourselves on thisplanet?

(43:02):
This is us.
What are we, where are we?
What direction in whichdirection are we headed?
What is our responsibility toone another big theme of the
book.
And then interrupting that Ihave had the occasional fear of
asteroids after watching themovie.
Don't look up.

Oh, I didn't watch it.

I don't think you should.
'cause it was too upsetting.
So I've quieted part two in mybrain.
I think I've partly quieted itout of more focus on part one
and when we go, if we go back tothe coming of age stuff we were
talking about earlier the older,especially like in that leaving

(43:43):
high school era in the twentiesyou start to read the news more,
you start to understand more ofthe terrible things that, that
not just are happening in theworld, but that like we are
doing or we are allowing tohappen.
And so it gets harder and harderto ignore that there's a
decision to be made there.
Are you gonna have this bumpersticker that like was one of the

(44:03):
sparks for the book where I waslike driving around and I saw
someone, it was like I was inthe middle of the book, but it
was some someone's bumpersticker said it was an election
bumper sticker and said likegiant meteor, giant asteroid
now, or something like that.
Instead of this candidate orthat candidate, it was like,
just kill us all.

was like calling for the asteroid.
Oh,

Which is funny.
And I immediately hated it.
And so I think this book waslike, the characters in it.
And I, as someone growing uphave to be like, okay, like we
are going to continue to readthe news.
We are going to also make achoice to stay hopeful.
Stay engaged, not like hopeful.
It's all fine, but like active,hopeful,

What is, how do you define active hopeful?

Not ignoring things that are happening.
So not being like, I don't know,like things are fine and like
this house so not, beinginformed, being engaged with
what's going on.
And also whatever.
Ways there are for each personto improve the world, to like,
be aware of what those ways are,know that they're always
changing.

(45:05):
Choose to do them.
Choose to think that even ifthey are small, they are worth
doing.
And so in this book, Stephthinks that the way to do that
is to become an astronaut sothat we can be an interplanetary
species.
And like the one, those of us onMars will continue.
And then Kayla, her sister,thinks that the way to do that
is to be like a native activistslash social media influencer.

(45:29):
And really lean into to whateverhappens with this planet, like
our land and our traditions mustbe protected.
And those are two reallydifferent, equally and
legitimate things.

Yeah, I steph is basically the world is fucked.
Let's jump off while we can.

Yeah.
I guess when I say equallylegitimate, I don't mean that, I
think that like just some of usshould survive on Mars.
I'm not pro.

No.
In terms of no, I, she is oh,let's.
If we're gonna make change, likethe change can't happen here.
It has to happen elsewhere.
Let's, it has to be bigger thanwhat we know.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And she gives herself space for ambition,
Which as we were talking aboutearlier, like there's a line
between ambition and selfishnessand just how are you using your
power?

Yeah.

the book is interested in, in.

The book is about big questions of the world and
the universe and the galaxy, andit's about small questions like
just family and siblings and,you joked not just in this
house, but in, in the world orin the universe at large.
And I think the book reallycovers the ground of both this
house and the universe.

(46:44):
And so it's I think part of.
Part of why this conversation isso difficult for me is because I
don't wanna spoil anything inthe book.
And it really covers a lot ofground in the, how many pages is
it, barely 400 pages, under 450pages.
And I think I am on my ownjourney of figuring out how to

(47:10):
be, what did you say?
Actively hopeful and I think,yeah.
Yeah.
So I'm surpris surprised at howhard this conversation is for
me.

I think it's hard for a lot of people and it's
hard for me and it's, it, Ithink it's almost it's a daily
question, especially now.
Yeah.

It's rare that I finish a book and I'm like, oh,
now I have to talk to the authorabout these things.
And I am.
And I am hold and I'm sittingwith a lot of it myself.
So I don't know, it's just very,it's interesting

and I think

took me by surprise.

I appreciate that.
I think the world kinda takes mesurprise by surprise and I.
The, that ev everything.
I'm like, remember what wetalked about an hour ago?
So to go back to that like thingwhere I was younger and you're
like, figure, like getting olderand like understanding that
other people have like innerlives.
So a friend was texting me thismorning about, something really

(48:12):
hard that was had just thismorning happened to her
personally.
And, I was talking to her aboutwhat had happened to her
personally, and she was like,yes.
And also, I, the thing that Ilike can't get out of my mind is
like, what's going on in thenews?
And she's it's ongoing.
And also right now it's likereally, it's like extra hitting
me now and.

(48:33):
It made me think about how oftenthese conversations are either
like really happening, like thisis a conversation that actually
happened between friends and howoften it's like, it's just in
your head that maybe you're likefiguring out your own ambition
or you're like just trying to goto work, you're trying to do
whatever it is you're trying todo.
And then there's that constantchoice of how much do you

(48:55):
actively engage with the outsideworld.
If that's like in this book,it's like Family, tribal Nation,
world, universe.
It's a lot to hold on, whateverday it is today.

Yeah.
Yeah.
It's all so big and I think it'scool and the book makes you
think, and it makes you want tocall your sibling if you have

Mm

And, take care of your community and remember
where you came from, evenwhatever that means to you,

Yes.
landing on that every time Italk about this as like it's a
book about families, I'm likefamilies.
Whatever that means to you, orlike kids, whatever that means
to you friends, whatever thatmeans to you.
It I feel like I as I got older,writing this book, just
everything it has just gotten,it's just expanded life and the

(49:55):
book.
And I think queerness is a partof that too.
I came out when I was writingthe book and that changed
things.
cause in, in one, I mean in alot of ways, but one of the ways
it changed things, it was justthis understanding of that when
you write a book about familythat there, there's just so much
possibility for what that canmean.

(50:16):
And so it was like helpful andaffirming and joyful.
Like it was all of these goodthings for me to get to figure
out what belonging and whatfamily meant to each of these
different characters.
Particularly'cause this is bookwith a lot of queer characters.

You dropped such an interesting factoid at the
literal one hour mark of ourconversation.
Can you unpack that a little bitmore?
The book is so Queer, queer in avery cool and exciting way.
What can, do you feelcomfortable talking a bit about
what that journey was like foryou?

sure I can.
I think I'm most comfortabletalking about my takeaway from
it because I was I used to saythat I came out like later in
life.
I don't know when people comeout.

Yeah.

So I think.
That my, the biggest part ofthat for me was what I was just
actually saying about family.
I think it stood out to me assomeone who, like when we think
about ambitions, picture me asI'm like seven and I know that I
want to, in, in addition to allof these other crazy things.
I'm like, I wanna write and Iwanna have kids.

(51:22):
And so a, I think the most themost important, not important,
that's not fair.
The most unexpected.
Maybe that's not fair either.
I don't know.
Let's insert an adjective.

sure.
I don't know what you're tryingto say, so let's, we can, let's
reverse engineer it.

something.
The way in which queerness likemost shows up in my life today
is queer family building.
It's what does it mean to be aqueer person with a queer
family?
And this understanding thatlike, I didn't have when I was
younger, that like, when.
Not everyone wants to have kids,which is also something the book
is interested in.
But if you do know from an earlyage that you wanna have kids and

(52:00):
you come out, then nobody givesyou they're not like,
congratulations.
Here's the handbook on like, howdo we define family?
In terms of like kids and wherethey come from and chosen family
and friendships and I don'tknow, like stepparents and the
many different kinds of familiesthat this book is like gathering

Champions and showcases.
Yeah.

yes, champions and showcases.
It's just not an understandingof that journey to family is not
what I thought queerness was.
It's not that I didn't think itwas what queerness was about
when I was a kid.
It was more just that I justdidn't think about queerness in
that way.
Like queerness to me.

(52:45):
The way I saw it with otherpeople is that my mom would
always take us out of schoolonce a year for like the day on
the hill at the Tennessee StateCapitol Building.
And we would go from office tooffice and be like, please, gay
marriage.
So I knew about that.
But what does family mean wasthe part that was like the
closest to, to my particularqueer experience.

Yeah.
Thank you for sharing all ofthat.
I think that's so cool and soimportant, and I think a good
reminder to.
Both queer and non-queer peoplein general for queer and non
queer experiences, right?
Like we are as a society, sostuck in what we believe is

(53:35):
quote unquote supposed to be.

Yeah.

And it just isn't true for anyone.

Yes.
Yeah.

And I am like, I'm such a champion of humans
living life truthfully andauthentically in a way that
works for them.
And they don't even know.
Maybe they need to write a bookto untangle some of those things
just to realize, oh, I waswrong, or I misunderstood, or I

(54:07):
didn't even think about that.

Yeah.
There's just more out there.

There's more out there.
The universe is vast.

You were so fast.

Yeah.
What a beautiful way to end thisconversation.
Eliana Ramage, thank you so muchfor being here.
To the moon and back is out now.
Everyone go get your copy.
I'm so excited for you and havea great rest of your day.

Thank you so much for having me.

ML Rio, welcome to Gay's Reading.

M.L. Rio (54:40):
Thank you so much.
I'm delighted to be here.

I am delighted to have you.
Thank you for being my guest gayreader today.
I I'm trying to, I'm just, I'mdebating on the order in which I
want to talk to you aboutthings.
But I guess just to kick us off,I just have to know what are you
reading?

M.L. Rio (54:54):
so right now I am reading two things.
I usually read fiction andnonfiction at the same time.
'Cause I like being able to.
Jump from one world intoanother.
And I'm usually readingsomething for research, for
whatever I'm writing.
And right now I am reading ahistory of gunpowder.
cause that's the rabbit holethat my brain is going down

(55:15):
right now.

Is it for a project or is it just because
you're curious?
Oh

M.L. Rio (55:18):
both.
It's a little bit of both.
I'm a history nerd.
I did a PhD in literature, butit was partly a history degree.
And so I

YI can't handle it.

M.L. Rio (55:30):
But it's funny, I'm like such a dad in the way that
I read.
I read like histories ofgunpowder and like books about
geology in my spare time, likejust for my own enjoyment.

That's so interesting.
Are you typically drawn more tononfiction in general?

M.L. Rio (55:47):
Ooh.
It actually really depends onthe format.
Like I'm learning to get moreinto audio books because I spend
so much time in the car now anda lot of driving on tour and for
research.
I have a really hard timelistening to fiction as audio
books.

Me too.

M.L. Rio (56:02):
I don't know why.
It's just like I, I want to hearthe writer's voice in their own
voice, which is what I feel likeI get when I'm reading on the
page.
But when I'm in the car andsomeone else is reading it to
me, it just doesn't click in thesame way.
But nonfiction just feels likelistening to a long lecture.
And if it's something I'minterested in, I can do that for
hours and hours.

Okay, so you're reading about the history of
gunpowder.
This is your nonfiction rightnow.
You said you readsimultaneously.
What is your fiction that you'rereading?

M.L. Rio (56:29):
So I'm also reading John Ray's book, gone to the
Wolves.
I am doing an event with him atThe Strand for my own book
launch, and I have to just shoutout this book because it is one
of the best books about fandomand music and live music in
particular that I've ever read.
And I'm a music writer, so Ispend a lot of time reading that

(56:50):
sort of stuff.
But John really gets it, whatit's like to be a young person
in a bad situation, and for yourlove of a certain kind of art or
music to become your wholeidentity and how that can be
problematic when you become anadult and you're like, oh,
that's the only identity I have.

Oh my God.
Yeah.
As I get older, I both feel sostuck in my ways.
But also like I need to expandmy identity because I don't want
to be stuck in who I've beenforever.

M.L. Rio (57:24):
Yeah.
And you're a theater person.
I'm also a theater person.

I know.

M.L. Rio (57:29):
I feel like when you grow up in that environment and
just learning to be a newcharacter every, like six months
or whatever it is, I'vedefinitely co-opted that in my
adult life in that my entirepersonality shifts with whatever
I'm working on creatively.
But I think that's fun.
It doesn't bother me to be alittle bit of a chameleon.

It's interesting because I imagine as an actor
you're shifting from project toproject, and as a writer you're
shifting from project toproject, whereas a podcast host
I am.
I'm leaning into more sort ofbig picture books, like My Life,
what My Personality Was,theater.
Now my personality is books.

(58:09):
So it's there's it's lessspecific than maybe what you're
talking about, but I I amjealous of it

M.L. Rio (58:15):
So I have to ask, do you have a podcast persona that
is different from yourpersonality off the microphone
or is this just unvarnished you?
Because I know different peopledo it different ways.

Yeah, no, this is a hundred percent me.
For better or for worse, Idunno.

M.L. Rio (58:30):
I think it's absolutely for better.
I definitely have to put on mylike author persona hat when I'm
gonna do events.
'cause I think my undilutedpersonality is far less.
Charming.

interesting.
What do you need to do to turninto that or to turn that part
of you on?
I.

M.L. Rio (58:48):
It's honestly a lot of costuming.
I really like to dress the partjust'cause, and this was a thing
that I learned actually when Iwas an actor.
I spent many years in drag onstage because I did a lot of
Shakespeare.
I did a lot of shows where therewere a lot of male characters,
but not a lot of male actors.
I'm tall, I have a relativelylow voice, so I think I went
four years playing men on stagewithout ever playing a woman.

(59:12):
But I actually didn't mind that'cause I got to play a lot of
cool parts.
I wouldn't have gotten to playotherwise.
And when I was first gettinginto this, when I was like 16 or
17, I figured out that the thingI really needed was the shoes.
I like, couldn't find thecharacter until I had the right
shoes because it actuallychanged the way I walked.
And literally stepping into acharacter that way became like

(59:35):
my starting point.
So when I'm gonna go on a bigbook tour, like I'm about to do,
I try to stay on theme with thebook.
'cause that makes it fun foreveryone.
Plus it's a book that's aboutvintage clothes.
So

So what are your shoes?

M.L. Rio (59:48):
I, so I have a couple of different pairs of shoes.
I have.
A pair of vintage Mexican snakeskin cowboy boots that I wear
all the time.

Okay, those are gonna be your hot wax shoes.

M.L. Rio (01:00:00):
those will be one pair of my hot wax shoes.
Yeah.
I did also, my, my treat tomyself was I bought the
sluttiest pair of boots I'veever owned.
They're Steve Madden, likebright red leather.
They're gonna be real fun.

Jason Blitman (01:00:14):
Amazing.
That's so fun.
You mentioned history ofShakespeare.
And I'm obsessed that we bothhave a background in theater,
but also Shakespeare is scary tome and I think a lot of other
people too.
So in fact, my first job out ofcollege and my first
professional job in general wasat the public theater in New

(01:00:35):
York City,

M.L. Rio (01:00:36):
Oh, that's amazing.

and I worked there for three and a half
years, and I almost didn't evenapply because their official
name is the New York ShakespeareFestival.
And I am like, I don't wannawork at a place called the New
York Shakespeare Festival, whichof course the public theater is
how it's colloquially knownproduces free Shakespeare in the

(01:00:59):
park.
They're also the home of, andthe birthplace of Hamilton, the
musical and fun home and,incredible plays that have
withstood the test of timeforever.
But, yeah, I almost didn't applybecause of the Shakespeare in
the name.
So I'm very curious, like if youhave a, if you were trying to
convince a person who's afraidof picking up a Shakespeare play

(01:01:22):
or going to see one, what wouldyou say to them?

M.L. Rio (01:01:26):
I would say go see a play before you try to read one.
Because these are, these playsare not really designed to be
read sitting down and throughoutthe early modern period, they
did start publishing plays thatwere designed for reading.
Which is partly why sometimesyou'll get scripts of plays.
Like the uncut Hamlet would takefour hours to perform, but

(01:01:46):
nobody ever performs Hamletuncut.
And seeing Shakespeare performedby actors and directors who
really know what they're doingmakes it so much more
accessible.
Like I did my master's degree atKing's College, London and the
Globe across the pond, which wasreally lovely.
And they do a thing every yearwith Deutsche Bank.
I think they still do it.
Where they do a Shakespeare playcut down to a tight 45 minutes

(01:02:08):
for like the equivalent ofeighth graders.
And it's always very much, it'sgreat.
It's so much fun'cause it's verymuch geared towards that
audience.
And it is fun.
It's so much fun.
Like one that I often will startpeople with if they've never
been to a Shakespeare play andthey're like, I don't think I'm
gonna enjoy this.
The Bridge Theater did aproduction of a Midsummer

(01:02:29):
Night's Dream.
That was one of the bestproductions.
I've ever seen.
It's so accessible.
It's so delightful.
There's Beyonce, there's, it'sjust like you can't not enjoy
it.
So it's a great like gatewaydrug.
But I think the thing thatpeople get scared of with
Shakespeare is thinking, oh myGod, I have to understand all of
it right away.
And you really don't.

(01:02:49):
It's like learning a foreignlanguage because the grammatical
structure is different.
The poetic meter is differentthan what we're used to.
You don't need to know all thatto enjoy a Shakespeare play, but
I think we scare people awayfrom it, particularly when we
teach it like in high school, inmiddle school, because what we
do is we teach the plot, weteach that in Hamlet, spoiler
alert, a Danish prince dies.

(01:03:11):
We don't teach how to actuallyread the language the way you
would if you were in a Spanishclass or a French class.
And that actually makesShakespeare, I think, so much
more fun because it becomes likea little literary treasure hunt.
Like when you learn something assimple as the difference between
you and thou, when those wordsget used you like the formal Ted
in Spanish is a much morerespectful way to address

(01:03:34):
another person who's a higherrank than you.
Whereas thou is someone who isusually of a lower status or
someone you have an intimaterelationship with.
So as soon as you know thatlistening to which characters
are using those words on stagejust makes it that much more
interesting.
So it's I think of it as like adelightful kind of literary
treasure hunt.

(01:03:54):
And the other thing that I'llsay is people mistakenly, I
think, treat Shakespeare ashighbrow when Shakespeare was
popular.
Entertainment in his own moment.
Macbeth does have all these big,amazing speeches about life and
death and guilt, but there'salso an entire scene that's made
up of knock-knock jokes.

Yeah.
You have, I feel like, havelived many lives, theater
writing, but also likeShakespeare and also like
villains, and also, swaying intohot Wax.
If this chapter of your liferight now had a title, what
would that title be?

M.L. Rio (01:04:33):
Oh gosh.
Go big or go home.
I think it would be, I, betweenvillains and Hot Wax, I went on
such a weird journey with this,with these books when villains
first came out, and a lot ofpeople don't know this, it
actually didn't sell.
When villains came out, itflopped.
Nobody read it.
And my own publisher was like,Nope, we are not interested in

(01:04:54):
anything else from you becausethis is not making money.
And that was really tough.
'cause I was really young.
I was like 25 and.
Experiencing this crushingreality that the lackluster
sales of my first book weregonna make it impossible for me
to ever get published again.
Which is how I ended up pivotingback to academia.
It was like, oh, okay.
Clearly the clearly the writingthing is not gonna happen.

(01:05:15):
And then happily, for usvillains became this like
surprise sleeper hit in 20, 20,like three years after the book
had been published.
And I was at this weirdcrossroads of what do we go out
with?
Because suddenly people werelike, oh, okay, where is the
next novel?
And I was coming out of thedissertation being like, sorry,
what people actually do wannasee a book from me?

(01:05:37):
And the safe thing to dowould've been to write something
very, like if we were villainsbecause it was doing well and
publishing loves a sure thing.
But I was 10 years older.
I'd had some, I'd lived somecrazy life in between.
I was not the same person whowrote that book and I never
wanted to write the same bookover and over again.
So I said to my agent, I waslike, okay, let's take a risk.

(01:05:58):
Let's go out with the rock androll book that already died on
sub four times and see if we canmake some magic happen.
And I just gave it my, all withthat book.
I swung for the fences eventhough it was really risky and
we actually managed to get oneover the wall.
Found an amazing editor who hasbeen so cool to work with, and
especially just like with theway the world is going where

(01:06:20):
everything good feelsendangered.
I'm in a place of, I don't wannaspend a minute doing something
that doesn't feel worth it.

What is your elevator pitch for hot wax?

M.L. Rio (01:06:29):
Yes.
The elevator pitch for hot waxthat I gave to my agent was,
this is Spinal Tap meets Thelmaand Louise.

Do you wanna unpack that a little

M.L. Rio (01:06:37):
yes.

That was like a really succinct, quick elevator
ride.
And now what if someone got offof you and said, let me walk you
to your office.
Tell me more,

M.L. Rio (01:06:44):
Tell me more.
That's always the goal

right?
Yes, exactly.

M.L. Rio (01:06:48):
is leave them wanting a little bit more, show
business.
But yeah, so it is a book abouttwo westward road trips.
It's two timelines.
One in the summer of 1989 andone in the summer of 2018.
And on the first timeline, wehave a 10-year-old girl named
Suzanne who is on a disastrousconcert tour with her father's
rock band, and then 29 yearslater, she is on the run from

(01:07:11):
some stuff in her personal lifeand finds herself kind of
retracing the steps of thatconcert tour 30 years ago and
unpacking a lot of what happenedthat changed her life forever.
Yeah.

So what was this living in your car research trip
like for you?

M.L. Rio (01:07:29):
It was.
It was awesome.
I loved it.
I finished my PhD program in Mayof 2023, and it had been a
really rough couple of yearsbecause graduate school is like
rough period.
I was also living in WashingtonDC during the first dump truck
administration COVID washappening.
I had some real serious personaltragedy.

(01:07:51):
I had a terrible health crisis.
And I was just in a bad place.
And by the time I was done withthat, I was like ready to chew
my own leg off to get loose.
And I had this experience oneday of driving out of dc I don't
remember where I was going.
And it felt like an anvil wascoming off my shoulders.
And I realized with this likelightning bolt of clarity, I was
like, oh, I hate it here.

(01:08:12):
I hate it here and I need toleave and I need to be
traveling.
'cause I've always traveled alot in my life and I didn't
realize how much I was missingthat.
Being in the same place for sixyears.
So I sold most of my stuff, putthe rest of it in storage, and
then spent 18 months living outof a two-door Honda and broke my
leg in the middle of that, which

Oh my God.

M.L. Rio (01:08:33):
a little more complicated.
But I got into this great rhythmof, I, I love a road trip,
especially when I don't have aprecise time that I need to be
in a particular place.
So it was a lot of me justdriving to research locations
and.
Living as much like the peoplein the book as I could.
I unfortunately could not affordto buy a vintage trailer,

(01:08:53):
although I did go stay in acouple for that reason.
But yeah, it was a cool rhythmof like I would get up and get
in the car and drive for fourhours and take weird little
estate and country highways'cause the interstate is where
fun goes to die.
And just anytime I saw somethinginteresting, I would pull over.
There's a circus in town.
There's a weird museum over

ball of Twine.

M.L. Rio (01:09:15):
The giant pistachio in Alamogordo.
I have been to see thatpistachio a number of times.
And then I'd stop at a diner inthe middle of nowhere and sit
and write for two hours and thenget back in the car, drive
another four hours and crash forthe night and wherever.
And just absorbing so much lifearound me in so many different

(01:09:36):
places.
Made it so easy to.
Put that on the page.
A lot of the conversations thatyou see are real conversations
that I overheard.
A lot of the locations that yousee are based on real places I
went.
Just'cause I am a method writer.

Yeah, I see that.

M.L. Rio (01:09:49):
yeah.
Which I think is a result ofhaving been an actor for so
long.

Yeah.
It's so funny that you say thatbecause it goes back to the
shoes, right?
That's

M.L. Rio (01:09:58):
It's all about the shoes.

yeah.
No, really.
So what is the process like thencoming, for lack of a better
term, like coming back to earth?
What is after?
After such an intense.
Time to then let the dust settleand now what's, what does this
feel like?

M.L. Rio (01:10:18):
I'll let you know when it feels like the dust is
settled, because technically Ihave lived in this in this house
for.
A little over a year, but it'sstill very rare that I'm here
for more than two days in a row.
I'm still not fully moved in.
I'm so glad you can't see thiscorner over here because it's
literally just like boxes ofbooks to the ceiling and I am

(01:10:40):
getting ready to leave on touragain in 10 days, and I'm going
to 40 cities in three, fourcountries in two and a half
months.
So I'm still very in this kindof like on the road touring life
mode.
But I am looking ahead to 2026when I'm ready to like, settle
down a little bit for a littlewhile.
I do have some residencies linedup, which I'm really looking

(01:11:01):
forward to because increasinglyemail is like the modern hydra.
Like you answer one and it growsfive heads.
There are five replies, and youjust can never get away from it.

Yeah.

M.L. Rio (01:11:11):
that cuts into my creative time so much that
unless I actually take dedicatedtime away from my desk, I don't
get anything done.

Yeah.
All right.
So it's very, it's almostcyclical.

M.L. Rio (01:11:25):
yeah.
Very

now you could pay attention to this.
Now it's this, now it's puttingon the costume and doing this
other thing.
Yeah.
Circling back to books for aminute.
Was there something inparticular that really had an
impact on you as a young personor, with a background in theater
to then transition into writing?

(01:11:47):
Was there a thing that sparkedthat for you?

M.L. Rio (01:11:51):
The funny thing is my writing and my theater stuff
moved exactly in tandem.
I started writing really young.
I also started acting reallyyoung.
I think I, the first play that Iwas in was a little community
theater thing.
I think I was like six.
Oh, that's not true.
Actually, I was in a Huggiescommercial as a baby.
'cause my baby.

knew I recognized you.

M.L. Rio (01:12:11):
I've actually been topless on tv.
Fun fact.
Yeah.
When I was a toddler we had ababysitter who like really
wanted to be a movie star andshe used to take me and my
brother to auditions forcommercials and things and
pretend that we were her kids.
But yeah I started writing at areally young age and got serious
about theater at about the sametime.
I discovered Shakespeare byaccident in my parents' library

(01:12:32):
when I was like nine, which Iremember very vividly, and most
of it went straight over myhead.
But something about the languagelike felt really important and
something I wanted tounderstand.
So I got weirdly obsessed withthat.
I was a voracious reader.
I did not have a lot of friends.
I was like, an angry queerlittle punk in Catholic school,
and all of my friends wereimaginary in one way or another.

(01:12:56):
But I think that learningstorytelling in the theater
really did influence the way Ilearned storytelling as a
writer, which is partly why mybooks are so dialogue heavy.
I learned how to tell storieswith almost nothing but dialogue
'cause that's what you do in thetheater.
And all of my stories areensemble stories.
I rarely have one maincharacter.
It's a bunch of different peopleplaying off each other because

(01:13:18):
I've been part of a troop mywhole life in one way or
another.
And I did eventually become aperformance studies scholar and
that informs all of my workbecause rock and roll is every
bit as performative asShakespeare.
It's just a different kind ofperformance and

It's a version of drag.

M.L. Rio (01:13:34):
Yeah, exactly.
Oh, it's like the gender stuffin like seventies, eighties,
rock and roll is absolutelyfascinating the way that gets
negotiated on stage.
And I love reading performancelike that.
So even though I'm not really aperformer in my own right
anymore, except, when I put theboots on and do the author

Yeah.

M.L. Rio (01:13:51):
That vocabulary is always there and that structure
is always there of how I thinkabout narrative and character.

So you say you were a voracious reader when you
were a kid.
Is there something that sticksout as just like a book that
you've always cherished?

M.L. Rio (01:14:06):
Yeah, I mean I, I did get very into campus novels
because I was addicted to thatkind of academic environment
because that was one of the fewthings I was good at as a kid.
I remember vividly reading JohnS's book, a separate piece when
I was in sixth grade and it wasthe first book I read that
really upset me on a deep,visceral level.

(01:14:26):
Just'cause it was so cosmicallyunfair and it's just devastating
what happens in that book.
But I was obsessed with it and Ireread it every year for a bunch
of years and just, it was myfirst encounter with fiction
that.
Felt so real.
I was having a, like a physicalresponse to it.
And I'd had that experience withlive performance before, but I

(01:14:48):
was like, oh, this is the kindof book that I wanna write is a
book that can feel like it justpunched you in the gut.
Or like it just kiss you in themouth.
If it's a good thing.
If you get that like warm, fuzzyfeeling.
Yeah.

you feel something, right?
Oh, I love that.
It's been a very long time sincea separate piece has been in my
universe.
Maybe I should crack it openand.

M.L. Rio (01:15:10):
It's short, it's a quick read.
It's a, it's worth revisiting.
I've revisited it as at a bunchof different ages and I get
something different out of itevery time.

Yeah.
Oh, that's so cool.
I know.
I, at this, in this chapter ofmy life, I don't have time to
reread

M.L. Rio (01:15:25):
No, I don't get that.

It's funny because one of my favorite books
of the year is Broken Country byClaire Leslie Hall, and I am
doing an in-person event withher in a month, and I've had her
on the podcast.
So I, I like read the book along time ago, but now I have to
reread it and to interview herin person.
So I'm like excited that I havean excuse to reread the book.

M.L. Rio (01:15:47):
Yeah.

No, it's, that's.
Really fun.
ML Rio, I am so happy to haveyou.
Thank you so much for beinghere.
Everyone go get hot Wax, whichis out now, wherever you get
your books and have a wonderfulrest of your day.

M.L. Rio (01:16:01):
Thank you.
You too.

Eliana ml.
Thank you both so much for beinghere.
Uh, everyone go check out theirbooks to the moon and back and
hot wax, both of which are outnow, and I will see you next
week.
Have a great rest of your day.
Bye.

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