The Half of It - Unveiling Juliette Fay's Literary Journey - Women of Wayland - The Podcast

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:01):
This episode is brought to you bya phenomenal realtor, Peace When from England,
Volker's real state. Welcome to thefirst episode of season four. I
wanted to name this episode after ourguests recently released novel, The Half of
It, because before interviewing her bringingher on this show, I was researching

(00:23):
and listening to her other podcast interviewsand articles written about her, and then
it struck me, you all probablydon't know the half of It, the
part where we see her personal lifeas a wife, mom, lover,
and most importantly as a writer,writing process, retreats, tips for publishing,
AI plagiarism, and so much morein this episode. This is Women

(00:48):
of valent podcast where we celebrate womenand their incredible journeys from our small neighborhood,
Whalen in Massachusetts. This is yourhost, Yamani. I am super
excited to introduce you to our firstguest of the season. Let me take
a long breath, because I'm sureI'm going to miss out on some of
her incredible work. Juliet's debut novel, Shelter May, earned recognition as one

(01:14):
of the top ten fiction works bythe Massachusetts Center for the Book. It
also made it to the Indie NextList and targets Bookmarked Club in two thousand
and nine, while being featured inGood Housekeeping. Her book Deep Down True
was shortlisted for the twenty eleven Women'sFiction Award. The Shortest Way Home was
named among the top five best booksof twenty twelve Women's fiction by Library Journal.

(01:42):
The Tumbling Turner's Sisters became a USAToday Besselo and Costco Penny's book Club
pick in January twenty seventeen. Subsequentworks, including City of Flickering Light in
twenty nineteen, Catch Us When WeFall in twenty twenty one, and The
Half of It in twenty twenty tecontinue to showcase her literary prowess. Julie's

(02:04):
novel has been translated into various languages, including Polish, German, Portuguese,
Hungarian, Italian, Turkish, andSlovak. Hello and welcome to the show,
Julia. This is such an honorand pleasure to have you here.
Of all the places you could bethe best seller author from write these books,
you know, raise a family,why whaland Well? First, I

(02:28):
want to say how happy and honoredI am to be here and for you
to want to interview me. Youknow, you have such an interesting story
yourself, so I'm thrilled to behere chatting with you. And in terms
of Whalen, I just love Whaland. I you know, I grew up
in Lexington, my husband grew upin Needham. Whalen was sort of in
between. We both eventually decided thatit was best to sort of pick a

(02:50):
new town to be in. Whalenwas kind of in our price range.
And this was this was nineteen ninetytwo, so we've been here thirty one
years, and you know, GreadeSchools beautiful town just felt like just a
very not sort of a designer suburb, not like a high powered, you
know, something where we felt likewe could just really feel at home.

(03:14):
Yeah, like a village, likea close Yes. Yeah, we like
how small it is. I likebumping into people that I that I know,
you know, my neighborhood is veryneighborhoodye and you know, you take
a walk around, you're going tosee somebody, know, And I just,
you know, I think that communityis so so so important. I
like being part of ours. Okay, before I delve into Valain being your

(03:38):
inspiration for writing, which I hopeI assume that it was, and I'm
going to take you back to howyou met your husband Tom, And for
the audience, I just want tolet them know that Tom tom Fay is
one of the select board members,a very big community person, a very
big breakfast person. How did youmeet Tom? So I tell this story

(04:05):
sometimes in connection with my latest book, The Half of It, which is
a story about sort of, youknow, a domino effect of how things
can happen. One small, littledecision can make a big difference. So
I was living with my sister.I think it was twenty five. My
sister and I were living together.I knew about a party at a bar

(04:25):
that I wanted to go to thatI knew some people would be there from
where I went, you know,we went to school and that kind of
thing. So I said, I'mgoing to this party. Do you want
to go? And she said no? And I said, all right,
well I'm going to go by myself. And she said, well i'll go,
but you, I know you andyou're going to want to talk to
everybody and I'm going to be bymyself and you can't leave me. You

(04:46):
can't. You know. I'm theextrovert. She's a bit of an introvert,
so I said, I will deal. Yes. So I was like,
Okay, the deal is I cannotleave our which I get. So
I said, I won't leave you. We go to this party and there's
a bunch of people there that Iknew and she people too, and then
by the end that we were dancing. By the end of the night,
we're dancing with these two guys,Matt and Paul, and I could and

(05:06):
these were guys that I knew,not well, but I knew them from
college, and so I could tellPaul kind of had his eye on my
sister. And at the end ofthe night he he said to me,
you should invite me over for dinner, knowing that we lived together. And
I said, okay, you're invited, and he said, well, you

(05:27):
should invite Matt too, and Isaid, great, Matt want to come
over for dinner. He was likeyeah. So we set up this dinner
and I was talking to Matt abouthow I was really having a hard time.
I had just moved back to Boston. I was having a hard time
sort of finding a religious community,a church that I felt really good about.
And he said, well, actually, I think that's a big problem
in Boston, and I'm trying toget together a group of people young adults

(05:49):
too, sort of do some programmingand events and that kind of thing for
you know. And I said great, and he said, do you want
to come to this first meeting?Are going to have us? Absolutely?
So I go to this meeting.Everybody's sort of casually dressed, except for
this one guy who's got a suiton and he's got red suspenders and his

(06:10):
Atta shay case next to him.And that was Tom Fay. And I
thought it was so interesting because heis so much who he is. Everybody
was going around and talking about,you know, their feelings and all this
stuff, and Tom's like the manwith the plan. Well, here's what
I think we should do. AndI remember thinking to myself, strangely,

(06:31):
nice Irish Catholic lawyer, he'll makesomebody a good husband some day. He
didn't think it was going to beme. Never, Never that thought popped
into my head, which I've alwaysthought is kind of strange. And then
he, you know, he waschatting with me and eventually we started dating.
How nice and I because I've youknow, it's like whenever I've seen

(06:54):
Tom, I've never seen him inhis you know, even in a suit,
right, yes, yeh suit.I I don't know if he goes
jogging in that suit, but he'sthat man. He is that guy.
He's And the funny thing about thatstory is if my sister had decided not
to come to that party, andshe had stuck with her original decision,
would I have you know, wouldMatt have come over for dinner? Would

(07:15):
he invited me to this group?What I have met Tom? What I
be with Tom? Now? LikeI don't know? Yeah, yeah,
yeah, Destiny, I'm grateful.That was a lovely story. And you
have four kids. I do,and I know that we were chatting up
before and you told me about beingthe empty nester. Now yes, to

(07:39):
live with all that that is aroundyou and having kids and work in all
of it. How did writing comeinto well, you know, it was
not something that I ever really expected. I've always you know, since I
was a little kid. I wasa voracious reader, always had stories kind
of going in my head, upstories to entertain myself. And I never

(08:03):
I thought, maybe someday I wantto, you know, maybe see if
I could write down one of thesestories. But I didn't. I just
you know, I thought, well, maybe when I retire or something.
And Tom knew that I was agood writer, and he used to always
say to me, you know,you should write a book, and I
would be like, how am Igoing to do that? We got all
these kids running around, and youknow, I said, say to him,
you write a book. And Iwas inspired by a neighbor of mine

(08:31):
was getting rid of some books andshe gave me a book and said,
yeah, this is a beach read. You should you read it on vacation.
And I was horrified by how badit was. It was the worst
book I've ever read. I'm goingto be honest, but I was fascinated
by, like how the dialogue wasso bad. Like I kept reading it
because I just was so fascinated byits badness. And then I this is
what happens to me? Is likeI think, well, that's an interesting

(08:52):
premise to people are trapped in anelevator. Who would I put in that
elevator? And so then my brainstarts spending a story. And it was
the first time, you know,I had written stuff before, but at
the first time I really sat downto write long form a story. And
when we got back from the vacation. I started putting it into a file
and it was just it just feltso good to me. You know,

(09:15):
when I talked to high school studentsabout writing fiction, you know, I
say, you know, it's likegetting to kiss somebody you have a crush
on, Like, it just feltso exciting. Wow. So I kept
doing it, and I really didn'tthink I was going to get published.
That was not the goal. Itwas just to have this thing that was
mine. Did you have network whereyou were connected with the publishers or or

(09:37):
you had this you know, Ihave I know some people you know,
or let me just start writing andlet's see. Yeah, you know,
it was just something that I wasdoing. And then I got I hooked
up with a friend who is,you know, also a writer, and
we started reading each other's stuff.And again it was really more the process
of it more than the product.But when I was done, she especially

(10:00):
said to me, you know,this is publishable. You should think about
that. I had no idea whereto begin. What was she talking about
your first book, Shelter Me.No, she was talking about the first
book that I a novel that Iwrote before Shelter Me that never got published.
I did get an agent. Theydid try to publish it, is
it unpublished till now it is unpublished, and I'm grateful for that because I

(10:20):
don't feel like it was my practicenovel. It's not that good, and
so I'm grateful now that it's notout there. Many many writers have what
we call the book in the drawer, and it's the one that wasn't good
enough, or we pooped out on, or we just got bored with,
or all your novels what draw Sothere's seven there's four of them are contemporary,

(10:41):
so sorry. Five of them arecontemporary fiction and to our historical fiction
that I want the audience to knowso that they can go for their own
pick. I'm taking a back.I don't remember when exactly was your was
the launch of Catch Us When WeFall? I was twenty twenty one.
It was in the middle of COVIDand had gotten better because people were starting

(11:01):
to get vaccinated and stuff. Butthere was a big resurgence that fall.
So suddenly all my events that Ithought were going to be able to be
in person except for that launch,and everybody wore masks and all that.
Isn't that amazing that it happened inValen in arts gallery and I was like,
oh my god, finally I'm goingto go and go out and do
something, do something, especially cometo your book launch. And I had

(11:24):
been wanting to meet you for along time. I was in the book
launch and I was sitting in theback, and you were answering questions and
I was the one and I knowthat you don't remember me, but I
was in the bag asking you ifValen somehow inspired you to write some or
any part of your novels. Wouldyou say that are books that actually have

(11:48):
references where we can see Valan.Absolutely, First of all, I do
remember you, And second of all, yes, so that that second book
that I wrote, the first onethat's been published, shelter me. You
know, I'd I didn't know ifI would ever get published, and it
was really more something to sort ofentertain myself that I decided that I would
set this story in a town thatwas very much ripped off from our beloved

(12:11):
Whale And and I didn't want tocall it Whalen because I wanted to be
able to change things. One ofthe character zones bake shop that we don't
in, a coffee shop that wedon't have here in town. I wanted
to be such a tempting though.It would be wonderful, so I wanted
I wanted sort of some freedom toplay with it. But then I also,
you know, I like took placesthat people in Whaleen would recognize,

(12:33):
and I sort of, you know, change the names a little bit or
but you know, people from herecertainly know what I'm talking about when I
say, you know, the DudleyPalace instead of the Dudly Chateau. Yeah.
So, okay, til you werelaunching a book and you were talking
about something you were that was alreadyin writing, I have never seen a

(12:54):
fast writer like you in the audience. There would be listeners who would be
like, yes, I know peoplewho you know write book after book.
But twenty twenty one you were launchingcatches before we Fall. Then comes twenty
twenty three, and here we arewith the half of it and you are
already onto your third book. Yes, I have to ask you, how

(13:18):
what are you doing? Well?So, give or take, I've got
a book coming out about every twoyears. So is that planned? No,
it's not really planned. It's sortof the way it works out.
I generally takes me about a year, you know, a year to get
what I feel is a very solidfirst draft for a book. And then

(13:41):
I'm going to send it to mywriting group and they're going to have things
they think I should change, andmy agent and then how many people are
there in the writing group, fourother authors, And they're awesome, They're
amazing. They're they're so smart,and they write differently for me, but
they just bring in these great perspectivesand they really understand craft, and they

(14:03):
they give great and you know,and they're honest. You know, they'll
say, well, this is thepart where I got all bored, or
this really doesn't make sense, orwhy would she decide to do that?
But they do it in a kindway. So so I'm very grateful that
I have. You need that constuctivefeedback, you really do. I just
think my books are always so muchbetter after they have a look at them
and all that kind of thing.So I go back and I revise.

(14:26):
My agent will have ideas. Ialso have a couple of you know,
what I call civilian readers, ofwhich Tom is one, who will read
the book. They're not craft people, you know, they're not authors.
They just are readers who can haveI want to hear what that reader response
is. So I have a coupleof people that I sort of trust with
that, and then you know,it's going to go to an editor and

(14:50):
she's going to have thoughts. Sothe writing process is about two years with
all the writing revising and then thepublishing. You know, it about a
year and a half, two yearsfor the publisher to get it where they
want it and to you know,the cover and the you know, it
seems I still to this day can'treally describe to you why it takes them
so long. And it's very frustratedbecause, like, you know, I've

(15:13):
already written another book, you know, so it's sort of you know,
you want it out there, butthat's traditional publishing. That's what it takes.
Do you take writing retreats or doyou write all your books here?
So I used to do a lotmore writing retreats because the kids were little,
and it was like the only wayI could get like a solid,
you know, shunk of time away. And Tom's great. I would be

(15:35):
like I got to go check intoa hotel somewhere and he'd be like,
okay, you know, and Iwould I always joke that I would have
to call that you know, thepizza places in town and say, like,
stock up because I'm leaving and thephaser going to need pizza. So
and I would sometimes go with afriend, you know, writer friend and
check into a hotel for a dayor two and just do nothing but write

(15:56):
for like ten or twelve hours aday. And now was awesome. That
was just so great. Is theresomething that that starts your creative juices flowing?
Is there something that helps you Forexample, I need a de cluttered
space to work. I need acup of chai before I work on my
audios. I will say that I'mnot a fan of clutter. I definitely

(16:18):
want you know, I don't wanta lot of like hanging like, oh
I got to take care of thisor got to email somebody, like I
try to get done with the littlestuff. But mostly I find the most
important thing is just to sit down, sit down, open the file.
Do it. Yeah, just doit. I mean it's if you wait
for it for you know, uh, you know, some big you know,

(16:40):
puff of inspiration that may or maynot come. So I don't I
And I think it was because Istarted writing when my kids were little and
I didn't have time to wait forinspiration, like, oh my gosh,
you know two of them are downfor an app and the other two are
playing happily. Let me just youknow, well, you know, I'd
get up early before they you know, I'd be up late, or it

(17:00):
was like nap time and everybody washappy. I would take somebody to a
haircut and I'd be like writing noteson a pad of paper while they were
you know, or waiting outside topick them up from swim team or you
know. I would do a lotof catches, catchcan and then I would
do I would say to my husband, like, I just need time,
and he would say go ahead,and he would take over for the weekend

(17:22):
or whatever, and I would go. And then as they got older and
they didn't need you as constantly,that made it a little you know,
when they when they were all inschool, Oh my god, that was
heaven because then I was like,you know, cause it's very hard.
I find writing fiction takes an enormousamount of focus, Like you have to
be put yourself mentally in this spacewhere you're like hearing and seeing and smelling

(17:45):
everything and so that you can describeit as you say comes in and says
mom, where's my cleats? AndI'm like pop, the bubble just pops,
Like so I really, you know, I always trying to try to
work when there's nobody in the house. And now is it easy for you
to do? You miss that trustleand bustle around you. You know,

(18:08):
I love my kids and I'm Ilove to have them around, but there's
a way, you know, soyou mentioned that I'm an empty nesser.
This is the first time in thirtyyears. My oldest daughter's going to be
thirty next month. And for whateverreason, there was always somebody cycling.
Especially during COVID, a lot ofkids went back home to live with their

(18:29):
parents. So when the one youngestone went off to college, it was
like somebody had circled back. Ican't even I think it was honest,
but anyway, so it was likea revolving door on the front, on
the front of the house. Andthen finally everybody sort of moved out to
their own places, and number fourwent off to college this you know,

(18:49):
in August, and it was likeTom and I were like, oh my
gosh, the place stays so muchcleaner. We really had to learn how
to buy less groceries, like wedo a grocery shop and you're like,
we can't eat all this book.Yeah. So I like having the time
and the quiet. Yeah, andthe nobody you know, pastoring me for

(19:11):
things I don't. I did itfor thirty years. I was happy to
do it for thirty years. NowI'm okay not doing it. You have
all these degrees, Juliett, andI'm like, they're not connected with writing
now. And most of the timeswhen I'm talking to women of whaland while
you know, recording an interview oreven on a walk on talk, I

(19:33):
realized that a lot of their backgroundand the degrees actually made sense. When
wouldn't that be nice? I wonderwhat that's like? Yeah, and so
Howard graduate, a public policy graduateand in special education and with working with
families and kids. Do you thinkit all makes sense right right now with

(19:59):
you being a writer or not?Does it like that? I do?
You know? I was a humandevelopment and theology major in college, and
you know, I always joke thatthat prepared me to get exactly zero jobs.
And but you know, human development, learning about how how humans grow
and learn and develop, certainly isvery useful for writing stories. About humans.

(20:22):
Theology is the study of God sortof how people think about the you
know, the world outside the world, you know, how they think about
their faith and God and how youknow, the mysteries of the world.
And then public policy is really abouthow you get sort of a group of
people. Basically, it boils downto how do you get a group of
people to do the right thing andnot the wrong thing? And so conflict

(20:45):
is at the center of that,what you know, because people are doing
the wrong thing all the time.We're human and sort of you know,
so so that I definitely do thinkthat that in very sort of peripheral ways
has helped my writing. Now withthe public policy degree I was in.
You know, I worked in humanservices for twenty years before I started writing,

(21:07):
so I used it. It didn'tjust like but it is kind of
funny to say, you know,I have Master's bug palsy and I write
novels. So it's it's fine,who are your readers at home? My
readers in my family? Yeah,well, who is like eagerly waiting for
your like, oh my gosh,this is so Tom is great. Tom

(21:32):
reads all of Tom is like thetypo hound. Nobody does typos like Tom
does. He finds everything, andhe's very good at helping me understand the
male characters, like did I getthis right? He's often if there's any
sports involved. Yeah, remember oneof your interviews you speak about Red Sox
and you being the biggest fun right. And in this story, in behalf

(21:56):
of It, one of the maincharacters is plays on the full football team
and I thought he should be awide receiver and Tom was apoplectic. He
was like, he is not awide he is a running back. I
don't remember why. I don't care. I changed it because he wanted me
to. It was like, fine, I can't even remember which is which.
So he's great at that. Mydaughter, Brianna reads almost everything.
She's right now she's in nursing school, so she's not reading as much,

(22:18):
but she's read every other book.And she was especially great when she was
younger at my teenage characters like oh, we wouldn't say it like that,
mom, And I'm like, giveme some good like teenage words, you
know, or stuff like that.She's great about that. My three sons,
the youngest one read one of mybooks. The other two really have
this perspective of like Why would Ido that? Why would I read your

(22:38):
book? I don't like that kindof book. One of them is a
fantasy reader, and one of them, you know, is much more about
current events and stuff. Why wouldwe read your books? Mom? And
I'm like, cousin, I'm yourmom, like I don't you know?
But so I have people who readall my books and people who read none
of them. Let's talk about ourepisode. Sponsor Peace is a licensed realtor

(23:04):
serving Boston and the Western suburbs.Living in Whalen, Massachusetts with her husband
and kids. She understands the localSaint schools, neighborhoods lifestyle. She also
is a big community person, cofounding Women's Business League MetroWest, serving on
the board for Valen Public Schools Foundationand Valen PTO, and now supporting this

(23:26):
podcast in this season's nonprofit pick,Let's Save the Streets International. What sets
her apart well? Besides being agraduate of the Program on Negotiation at Harvard
Law School, She's also got herfinance degree from University of Connecticut, which
is a plus for real state awards. Oh, She's got plenty five time
recipient of the England Workers' Top ProducerAward. Twenty twenty four Who's and Who

(23:51):
in Boston, Real State twenty twentythree million Dollar Guild and more. She's
in the Top Agent Network, verifiedas a top ten person of agents in
the Boston metro West area. Soshe is not just about business. Whether
you are a first time buyer oran experienced investor, She's here to make
your Real State journey seem less.Reach out to peace win at six one

(24:14):
seven seven eight zero five four oneone, or visit www dot pce p
e ace win n g u ye n dot Evrealstate dot com. I
often see that writers write stories withwhat they have around or what they have

(24:37):
experienced, more like an autobiographer writingdo you do that style? Or you
put yourself in a situation and visualizethat situation and then write it. Yeah,
And none of my books are autobiographical, you know. I always say,
like, none of the stuff thathappens in these books really happen to
me. For me, Well,to be honest, one thing, it's

(24:59):
more to me to find out aboutother people and tell other stories. And
you know, my life is fine, but it's not so exciting that I
think a novel would be written aboutit. But it is about imagining what
is it like to be other people? What is it like to have this
problem or that problem, or youknow, what's the conflict in the book
and how you know. So myapproach to you know, sort of what

(25:21):
you're asking me before I come upwith this concept, this idea of what
I want to write about, andthen I start thinking about the characters,
what tech what characters will best tellthis story. So the characters usually come
second, and then the sort ofpieces of plot then they, you know,
sort of then I layer that inso and I and I don't do

(25:41):
it in such a way that Iam like really locked into you know,
I've got everything planned out, everylittle minute of the story planned out at
all, So I, you know, I like sort of being surprised in
some ways by things that happen.You know, I'm working on this book
now, and I had this ideaabout how it would end, and I'm
realizing, no, I don't.I don't want it to end that way,

(26:03):
and so now I got to sortof rethink it. But I I
think a writer's job, a fictionwriter's job, is to imagine what it's
like to be other people. AndI approach my characters the way in which
it's out of biographical is I'm sortof it's like method acting like I'm acting
Okay, it's so Helen the maincharacter in half of it. How would

(26:23):
I feel if this were my situation? How would I be if I were
Helen? I'm sort of acting arole in my head. How would I
be if I were cal and hadhis situation or Francie and her situation?
And I certainly use things from mylife. I had so Francy as she
owns a horse farm and she washorse crazy when she was a kid.

(26:45):
And I have this, you know, this little friend from elementary school who
was horse crazy and waste to canteraround her backyard. And so I sort
of steal little pieces of things frommy life, but not really the big
story. When you write, isit a drug for you? Like you
know some people like can't stop writing. It can run the gamut from like

(27:06):
kind of like a drug, likeI can't stop doing this. This is
so feels so good to me tooh my god, how am I gonna
deal with? You know, howam I going to deal with this?
And there are issues that you sortof think this is going to be a
really hard thing. To write about, or this is a piece I need
to get through to get to thisother piece that I'm really excited about.
I'm working on another novel now,and I just really in my head changed

(27:30):
the ending, and I'm thinking,oh, wow, that's going to I'm
gonna have to really change the wholearc of this story. And that just
makes more work, you know,right. So it goes from you know,
hard work to oh my god,this is so much fun. I'm
holding your thought to the last thingthat you said that it's going to change
the whole story, the arc ofthe story. I want to understand.

(27:52):
Do you start with the character's developmentor do you have like a plot in
mind and then you have these characterscome in and have those twits and you
know, I hope I'm clear.Do you come up with that story idea
do you come up with the storybeats first? I come up with the
idea first. So the half ofit is a story about a woman who's

(28:15):
fifty eight years old and her lifereally hasn't turned out its plan. And
I was really thinking about regret alot. So often with the book,
I have sort of a theme,and to me, the theme of the
half of it is regret. She'sgot all these regrets and she doesn't really
know what to do with them,and it really isn't about decision making.
Little decisions she made along the waysort of made life go a little bit
south for her while everything seemed likethe right decision at the time, and

(28:41):
she can sort of track back toa night that she spent in the woods
with a boy she loved who lovedher, and they had this beautiful,
romantic night together and then the nextday everything blew up. And so this
idea of sort of re getting togo back into your past and explore something
that went terrible for you and maybetry to fix it, that was sort

(29:03):
of the idea. So when Iwas reading this book, like I said,
initially I did not relate with theage group, But I see that
you're with this storyline, You're goingon a parallel storytelling. So is that
a trick to connect with the crowdtoo? Like do you keep the audience?

(29:25):
I know that you said you writefor yourself, right, but when
you are doing this, do youalso keep in mind what people like these
days? So the main character inthe half of it is fifty eight years
old, so it makes sense thatyou don't really connect with her because you're
young. And it is so andwonderful. But I was fifty eight when
I wrote it. And one ofthe things that I've learned since I wrote

(29:47):
the half of it is that thereare very, very very few books fiction
with main characters who are in thefifties and sixties. It is an absolutely
forgotten age and fiction. Oh mygod. Yes, So I can't tell
you. I mean, this iswasn't your experience. But I can't tell
you how many readers have said tome, I have never read a book,
and I am that in that demographic. And I love reading about somebody

(30:10):
my own age who's not, youknow, a granny sitting on a racking
chair knitting. Who's you know,she's she's active, she's working, she's
takes a three mile run every day, you know. Because so many of
us are, I feel like theworld of fiction does not describe us particularly
well. So and I did puther to be fifty eight because I was

(30:32):
fifty eight, and I knew sothat you're talking about the parallel story.
So the story she saw us backand forth between current day and her high
school years, and how what ledup to this sort of big disaster that
happened, and I wanted Helen tobe fifty eight because I wanted to go
back and visit. If I wasgoing to visit teen years, I wanted
them to be mine and the musicI remember, and the way that we

(30:56):
dressed and the things that we said, and the movies and so so again
there's me just pleasing myself, youknow. Yeah, and in doing that,
you're actually bringing the relatability factors withso many different demographics, so that
I totally get it. But doyou go back to your books and you

(31:17):
think about the ending and you thinkto yourself, now, today, I
could have written this differently. Yeah, already, what is that? Writers
regret? Yeah, writers regret?Yeah, it's you know, some writers
say they will never reread their oldbooks because they would see things that they
would want to change. And therehave been times and I've seen or I

(31:38):
think and I think back and Igot, oh, I missed an opportunity
to make a connection to this,or you know, there's always but but
if you keep a book until it'sperfect, first of all, it's never
perfect, and second of all,I would never get published. So I
feel like so much of Publishing isabout luck, yes, and there are
so many good books out there thatdidn't reality, yeah, and so many

(32:00):
bad books that get published. Imean, I shouldn't say bad books,
but books that you're like, reallyyou know this, you know, so
made it through the incredible gauntlet thatany author and book have to run in
order to finally get to publication.Is there a desire of you having your
one of your books being picked upby, say, for a feature film.

(32:24):
Absolutely. I don't know any authorwho doesn't want to see their work
translated onto the screen. And I'veyou know, there's some irons in the
fire, and we'll see what happens. You know. It's hard enough to
get a book published, but toget something on screen is just every star
has to align. And you know, there's something that I'm working on now

(32:49):
with somebody in Hollywood, and thenthe writer's strike happened and the you know,
so it's like everything grinds to ahalt. So so we'll see.
But yes, absolutely, I wouldlove that. I would love to see
that too. But if there wasone pick, that one book that you
would choose to send it for selection, what would that be? That's very

(33:09):
hard, but I think in termsof that sort of cinematic dramne yes,
that kind of thing. I thinkthe historical fiction ones would be probably the
ones that would be of most interest. You know, City of Flickering Light
is about early Hollywood. That wasa crazy time. It was so fun
learning about that. You know,what these people and the fact that it

(33:31):
was very speed of women of Whalenwith the women of Hollywood in the early
they were running Hollywood because it wasn'treally making that much money. Men weren't
that interested in the movies early on, and so there were women directors,
and there were women producers and writers, and you know, women were running
things. That was to me whatwas so enticing about telling that story.

(33:52):
I love that when I was researchingthat. You know, your characters are
such empowered women. Yeah, andthen yeah, it just draws you to
read. I'm taking you because youspoke about writers' strike and we all know
about it. It's been in thenews and I don't know where it's going

(34:12):
right now, but I got toknow their wages and what's happening to the
world right now. It's terrible.As a writer. I'm taking you to
the current trends of AI tooled,CHADGPT and plagiarism. Has it affected your
work in any way? And areyou apprehensive of these tools or intrigued by

(34:36):
them for in future? Well,that has affected me already. I don't
know if you've read the news,but there are five AI companies who took
pirated versions of one hundred and ninetytwo thousand bucks. They didn't even pay
for them. They took pirated versions, which is really adding insult injury,
and they fed them into their machinesto teach their AI programs how to write

(34:59):
novel So so you don't and threeof those books are my books, my
goodness. Yeah, so without myconsent or even paying me, they took,
you know, my work so thatthey can teach a computer how to
do it and not me. Andwell there's there's a lawsuit, but you
know, the cat's kind of outof the bag in some ways, and

(35:24):
it's very frustrating. It's it's sortof terrifying. I totally realize that there's
important uses for AI. I getthat, but and there will be novels
that will be written by AI andno one will, you know, I
like to think that a novel thatisn't a cookie cutter that isn't you know,

(35:45):
sort of like that's a little different. Would not be a book that
AI could write, and I liketo think that mine are a little different.
That being said, I don't knowwhat's going to happen in the future,
but did it in g you insome way as a writer assistant?
Do you see that happening where AIcan actually be helpful for writers to I

(36:08):
do. I don't want to useit. I don't feel like I want
something that's gonna kind of put wordsin my mouth a little bit. I
think it's intriguing, and I get, you know, that there are lots
of things that people don't really needto have. One of my kids had
to write a Resugate Nation letter fromwhere he was working, and he said,

(36:29):
Mom, can you take a lookat this letter? And I looked
at it, and I was wayway better than he usually, you know,
and it was kind of flowery,and it was saying things that I
was like, you know, abouthow much he enjoyed the team. I
was like, you weren't really ona team, and so I was like,
I was like, oh my gosh, I said, did AI write
this? And he was like,yeah, you got me and I was

(36:50):
like, okay, but it doesn'trepresent your experience. You know, you
have to so you know, aresignation letter. It's like, that's not
hurting anybody. But and there's certainlyways in which can be incredibly useful in
medicine and all kinds of stuff likethat. AI In terms of the arts,
I don't like it. I reallydon't because I think what happens in

(37:12):
a book, and one of thethings that's the most meaningful to me about
writing is when a reader reaches outto me and says this was meaningful to
me, This moved me, thismade me. I can't tell you how
often I've had people write to meand say this made me feel less alone.
I felt like I had a friendin these characters. And it's so
interesting because these characters are fiction,they are not real, and yet when

(37:35):
another person explains or describes something that'sreally deep inside you, you feel that
connection. True. A computer isn'tgoing to do that, no, no,
and they're not going to have anybodyto reach out to and say,
let's talk about this thing that youwrote. I respond to every email I
get, and people sometimes are like, do you have an assistant no,

(37:55):
you took the time to reach outto me about something I created. I'm
going to respond to you that connectionis going to be lost, which brings
me to this question of your nextbook. And since you talk about connection
community stories, how's your next storygoing to build on that? What is

(38:20):
it about? So you know,it's interesting you were talking about my process
a little while ago and how itstarts with the theme and that kind of
thing that didn't happen this time.I had been sort of making notes about
a new novel, and they weremostly about the characters and a little bit
a little bit about plot, andI just had a really interesting idea for
opening first chapter, and I thought, I'm just going to write it.

(38:44):
I don't even know what I'm doingwith this book yet, but let me
just write it. So I startedwriting, and I wrote, I was
I wrote about sixty pages before Irealized, oh, this is about loneliness.
And that really sort of created thatthe context for me to say,
Okay, let's craft the story aroundthat idea. And it has three main
characters and they've all lost their personone way or another, and it's sort

(39:08):
of how they find each other andcreate connection, you know, between each
of them with the others to makethem all feel less alone, lost,
second chances, regrets. All ofthese may not be the most positive words,

(39:29):
but I feel like these words thatmay not look as big are actually
making you think and turn it intostories. And that's incredible. Juliet,
Well, thank you so much.I do feel the need to say that,
you know, so this is abook about loneliness, or you know,
the half of it is about regretor the catches when we follows about

(39:51):
alcoholism recovery, which are all kindof heavy subjects. I put a lot
of humor into my stories because Ilike humor, and I I think I
think life is funny. Even whenhard things are happening, there are also
funny things happening. So and Ido think that actually this new book about
loneliness might be the funniest book thatI've read. I look forward to,

(40:15):
absolutely look forward to the book toall the struggling writers who actually want to
make this a profession, budding writers, and you know the world is full
of sad news right now with thewriters, especially the writers journey, I
really want you to give them somefine tip that they can do to reach

(40:36):
the publisher or you know, somethingthat you learned while publishing these novels to
see more success in getting their storiespublished. You know, it's a tough
one. I you know, Itell people to reach out to anybody that
you know in the industry and say, you know, well you talk to
me. That's basically how I gotin a you know, sort of a
friend of a friend of a friendput me, you know, in touch

(40:59):
with an agent, and you know, I think it's very important that you
do your homework. Sometimes you seesomebody sending, you know, a manuscript
to an agent who doesn't do children'sstories or doesn't do thrillers or whatever.
It's really important to get your homeworkdone and to recognize that these folks don't
have a lot of times. Youknow, you get one shot. You

(41:21):
got to make sure everything is pristine. I think sometimes people send in manuscripts
with a lot of typos or youknow, grammar or whatever. It Really
you've got one chance to get beforethem. So if it means hiring a
professional editor to really go through thisstory with you and make sure it's as
clean and crisp and concise as youwant it to be, it's worth it.

(41:45):
It's a tough business. I mean, one of the things that I
say to when I talk to highschool kids, I say, as a
writer, I want you to write. As a mom, I want you
to have a day job, becauseit is not a reliable source of income
and some years you might you findin some years you don't. Not a
nickel comes in. So I thinkit's important for writers if and most of

(42:07):
the writers I know do have otherwork that they do, or a spouse
who can you help out, orI think it's really important to make sure
that you have your finances in aplace where you can afford to pay rent
and also take You don't need towrite full time. You know, I
didn't write full time for many manyyears because I couldn't. I had kids.

(42:29):
Take the time that you have,put your fanny in the chair and
get to work, you know.Don't wait for inspiration, don't wait for
oh, I've got a whole day, right, Take the time that you
have and do the work. Thankyou so much, Juliet. Those were
wonderful tips. Thank you so much, Juliet. I hope I covered most

(42:50):
of the things that I knew youwanted to ask you. You covered all
kinds of wonderful things that I haven'tbeen asked on interviews before. So this
was really fun. Thank you.Yes, it was fun for me too.
Before we end, where did listenersfind you? So? My website
is Juliat Fay dot com. Youcan reach out to me on my email.
Social media you know, Instagram,Facebook, just got off Twitter because

(43:10):
I kind of don't love what Twitter'sdoing these days. But yeah, absolutely,
I'm happy to talk to people.Thank you so much for listening.
I want to thank you all foryour support, and especially our production sponsor,
Lonin Doun Ashley Memorial Fund, WhalenCultural Council, and our episode sponsor

(43:31):
Piece Win for supporting this podcast andhelping us also support a local nonprofit,
Let's Save the Straights International. Allthe info will be on our episode show
notes, so don't forget to hitthat subscribe button because you don't want to
miss these stories. This is Yamini, your host, and you were listening
to Women Are Whalen Podcast

All Episodes

The Half of It - Unveiling Juliette Fay's Literary Journey

Episode Transcript

Popular Podcasts

CrimeLess: Hillbilly Heist

Crime Junkie

Stuff You Should Know

.css-15opob5{left:0;position:absolute;top:0.8rem;} All Episodes

.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}The Half of It - Unveiling Juliette Fay's Literary Journey