Caroline Kepnes on Loving Joe... Even If You Don’t Want To

April 24, 2023 Mindy McGinnis

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Mindy: We're here with Caroline Kepnes, who is the author of all of the You books featuring Joe Goldberg, who is just about one of my favorite people which makes me feel somewhat guilty, which is what we will talk about quite a bit. First of all, the next book in the You series comes out on April 25th - For You and Only You. The You series is the basis for a very popular TV show on Netflix. Pretty much everyone I speak to I have told to read these books. Let's just start by you telling us a little bit about the new one and what Joe is going to be up to next in For You and Only You.

Caroline: Yes. Well, thank you for having me here, Mindy. I love your podcast, and I appreciate being here. And I think it's wonderful that you say that you love Joe and that it says something about you. I feel like that's what started me with this, of finding this voice and wondering why it put a smile on my face. And every book is like this journey into his problems, but also the problems with our society. So it's like a kind of pick your poison thing where I'm like... the first one, of course, starts in New York with these Ivy League elites who think they're better than him and the girl caught in the middle of that. And in every book, like that's the deal that he sees the world mistreating a woman who he loves and he goes and tries to fix it. So this time around, we have Joe at Harvard University. He was very good with the pandemic, with the lockdown. He wrote a book and pulled off a kidnapping and did his little online sleuthing and managed to get himself a spot in a fiction writing fellowship. He's in this fellowship. It's supposed to be for undiscovered writers. That is what it said. But that is not the case. And everyone has a life and some success. And if you know Joe, you know that that's kind of not fair. There is a girl in the class named Wonder who is from Boston and didn't go to college and works at a Dunkin Donuts. I'm not going to start speaking in an accent, I swear. Instead of dealing with his own insecurity and his ego issues about writing, I mean, how convenient that he gets to project all of it onto her.

Mindy: Like I said, Joe is somebody who... I think all of us have those darker instincts and some of us are more in touch with our shadow selves than others. I'm pretty deeply in touch with mine. There are things that I don't do either because they are immoral or illegal. It could be one. It could be both sometimes. But you know, there's something that stops me from doing some of the darker things that I want to impulsively do. Joe doesn't have that problem.

Caroline: For me, there's something liberating about that. I like going into that space of like, especially the way he's obsessed with calling everyone entitled... It's like, how could you be more entitled than if you just go breaking every law and every social code?

Mindy: But he doesn't see that. Which has a little bit of a charm to it in a way, because we all have our blind spots.

Caroline: Yes. Oh, do we. Yes. Part of this book... Wonder does a lot of reviews on Goodreads, and with every book too, I'm exploring some form of social media. And in this one, he learns about her through her Goodreads reviews that are very revealing about herself, but in a way where she's very intelligent. But it's part of my basic fear. I grew up in the 80s and I just basically have been taught to be afraid to tell people things. And it fascinates me the way we all joke and we all get into rabbit holes and we can know a lot about someone. But it's like, you really can. I guess I just love going into that fear of when you put yourself out there, sometimes Joe is watching. You probably are the same way with that overactive imagination and taking everything as evidenced in your work to a very dark potential place.

Mindy: All day, every day. I want to talk about that. That's really interesting. It's an odd mind space to live in where most of the time, because I live in the country, I live very much rurally in Ohio, but I travel a lot. So I'm in big cities a lot. And because of my fairly cocooned life that I have out here, I generally feel safe all the time. And so when I'm out in the general public in a larger place, I mean, most of the time I'm not in any danger. But because of my imagination...

Caroline: Yeah.

Mindy: Everyone. Everyone is potentially going to kill me. I am always looking for the exit in whatever room I am in. I'm identifying possible weapons in case I need them.

Caroline: I am sitting with my back against the wall. Yes. You live in that space - an open space. I in some ways am more afraid. There's this place I like to go hiking where I grew up. On the one hand, you're totally isolated. For whatever reason, there's no one ever there. And you're, like, deep in this marsh. And then in the back of my head, I'm like, "This is the most dangerous place in the fucking world. I am alone. My cell phone barely works. Anyone could be here. Anyone could jump out from those dunes." And in some ways in the city, I always feel safer, and even if I'm walking around with headphones on, I just feel like, "Well, there are all these witnesses everywhere." And like you said, the majority of us are okay.

Mindy: I had a friend who got married and, you know, went to live in the city, and she had a very difficult time adjusting. And she kept telling me, "I don't feel safe. I don't feel safe." And I knew the part of the city she was in, and I'm like, "Dude, you're fine. Like, nothing's going to happen to you." Really if you think about it, living out in the middle of nowhere like we have our whole lives is actually more dangerous because there might be less people, so there's less of a ratio of people that could possibly hurt you, but if only that one person decides to, you can scream your head off. Nobody can hear you. You're done.

Caroline: It's the In Cold Blood of it. I read that in high school. I read it over and over. I feel like I did two term papers because I was just like, I will only read and write about this book and the possibility that whether it's random or intentional, you're a sitting duck and you're an isolated duck. There's a reason the ducks are in a group together in the lake, you know?

Mindy: So off topic. You brought up ducks so I just have to follow up with this. Are you familiar at all with the duck penis?

Caroline: Oh, very familiar. I've watched many videos. I don't remember how I originally learned, but every once in a while it's a really good Google. Some new tidbit to learn when you go back to it.

Mindy: I'm so glad that I'm not a female duck.

Caroline: Yes. I mean the violence with them, and there's a spot near where I grew up where they kind of gather and you can see them together, like working things out. And I just feel like the nastiest courtship rituals and the possessiveness and the violence.

Mindy: Pretty often, if it's a water based sports that they're enjoying, the female will get drowned.

Caroline: Yes. Yes. I mean, and the way that that's like just built into their system. What a world. What a world.

Mindy: So I just ended up learning about duck penises, and then, you know, it was one of those things where all of a sudden duck sex was like everywhere. I listened to a podcast and there was supposed to be like hunting and trapping and stuff, and they ended up just like really going into explicit duck sex. And I was just like, "Oh my God!" It was a... It was a real day. I had to turn it off. Like I was going through the drive through, and I'm like, "Dude, I got to turn this off."

Caroline: But then again, like the person at the drive through, maybe they learn about it and get turned on to it. Not turned on. Wrong word. But you know... but yeah, it is one of those things that it's like when you're trying to find shoes. So everywhere you go, you see shoes.

Mindy: Yep.

Caroline: And with duck sex... I heard it, there was something about it in a TV show or movie, I'm not going to remember what, a few weeks ago. But I remember thinking, if you didn't know about that, it would just go over your head. It was just like part of the dialogue. It wasn't a whole thing, but it's out there. People know.

Mindy: People know. I mean as soon as I saw a duck penis to you, you were like, "Oh, yeah, I know."

Caroline: And I love that moment of like, you tee it up and I'm like, "I'm not going to know what she's talking about." And then, "Oh! Duck sex! I know about that."

Mindy: We can absolutely converse about duck sex. So speaking of just like, sex in general. I read recently Penn Badgley, who plays Joe on the show, gave an interview where he said he doesn't want to do sex scenes anymore because he doesn't feel that it is appropriate within the context of being a married man and it's a way that he wants to show his fidelity to his wife. And for one thing, my first thought was, "Man, you must be the best actor in the world. Because you feel that way, and then you play Joe."

Caroline: Yeah. Yes. I mean, I think that's a personal choice thing, right? It's so personal. That's where acting freaks me out. Even in season one, I remember being on the set. He has to do everything twice because the voiceover acting with his face and his body and thinking all those sick thoughts and standing there. Anyone can use that moment to say, "You know what? This doesn't work for me. I don't want to do it." I think it's just good for the world because so many jobs in life are the exact opposite... Where you feel like you can't express your personal feelings about them, your preferences, or if you do, you might not be in that position anymore. I say, this is good. You know, like, what do you think?

Mindy: I thought it was awesome. I don't think that monogamy is cool in our society. Anybody can do whatever they want. It doesn't bother me at all. Like everybody has their own ways and they should go about that.

Caroline: That's you. I think that's the best thing to take away from it, because I can just as easily imagine a couple, whether they're both actors or one is, and they're good with it. It's such a thing between you and your partner and also your personal comfort zone. And it's an interesting thing too, because it's part of the age of hyper communication and just so much knowledge, you know. You figure years ago, there were probably actors that had this policy, or some degree of it, that we didn't know about because we just didn't have so much information thrown at us every single day. That's the thing that blows my mind about living the way that we live now. That's just so overwhelming when you think of us being a kid and waiting for Sassy Magazine to come out once a month.

Mindy: Oh yes, my Sassy and my 17. If I can just get one more glossy photo of Christian Slater, I will be so happy.

Caroline: Yes.

Mindy: It's really interesting what you're saying about the amount of media that we have in our faces all the time, because I was not even looking for information about you, about the show, about Penn Badgley. Nothing like that. It was on the front page of CNN.

Caroline: Oh, my God! I didn't know that. Wow! For the writers doing the show, it's like having a new circumstance and twist to deal with in storytelling. You and I can do whatever we want in our book. Have anything happen because no one has to use their physical form to bring it to life. The reader does that in their head.

Mindy: Then talking about the media. Like I said, that story was front and center for me on CNN, and I wasn't even searching for it.

Caroline: And that's fascinating because like, I love that that's news.

Mindy: Let me tell you, I scrolled past everything else and I read that. So... You were talking about how each of your books also in some way is kind of about or focusing on some form of social media in a way that is a little bit darker... A darker shade. And of course now everybody has their favorite podcast. Has someone else's voice in their ear constantly.

Caroline: Yes.

Mindy: I'm just curious if you could talk a little bit more about how you approach that because You, the You series, very much is social commentary.

Caroline: Yes. It's a commitment that I made in the first book. I remember the day that Lou Reed died, and I put it in the book. I didn't intend to write a series. Toward the end, when I wanted to do another, it was like, "Oh, boy. These take place now in this world right now." When the pandemic happened... Oh, this is an interesting conundrum because, yeah, like the way as a writer, you have those choices. You can write a world where it doesn't happen. You can mention it, or you can full on tell a story about it. And I loved the idea that we were all kind of living in this and figuring out how to deal with it in our stories and as we deal with it in real life.

So that's what got me started with this book where I had ended You Love Me with him in Florida in this place of mourning. And I had thought a lot about Florida Joe. I was alone. I'm like to me... Everyone was in some situation that is not the way they intended for their life to be right? If you're married and you love someone, you never meant to be together 24 hours a day. I like to be alone, but I never meant to be alone 24 hours a day. My first draft was... I started doing it with him having the fellowship over Zoom. Him using all of these new tools to get to people. And then it was like, "No, this is a book." And we're still, especially at that point I was like, "I can't write about this at length yet. Not that much." You know what I mean? So then it was like, okay, I'm going to send him to school. And he's going to be in the room smelling all the people and seeing them and eating with them. And yeah, it was, it was exciting because it was living vicariously through him, you know?

Mindy: It sounds like there's going to be a lot of inside baseball as far as writing and publishing goes in this one.

Caroline: It's his perspective on it, and he's very sure of himself. You know, he wrote this novel and I feel like in the way of living vicariously... oh God, to have his ego for an hour. What we could do with it! And then to see him be around these people and slowly realize that these people have done their work, and that if he shares his work with them, they're going to be allowed to say bad things about it. Which of course requires that he find a way to kind of one by one, discredit, find every flaw, so that they can't affect him. And then that was the fun suspense for me with it. Because there's such a difference, right, between sitting alone and drafting it out and looking at your pages and exposing yourself to the world. I loved him sitting there with this bomb, with his book, in the sense that, like, what's going to happen if someone doesn't believe in him? And what's going to happen. And in that way, the girl that he liked, the books, the way they're always kind of talking to each other. Wonder writes, and Wonder is very sure of her process. And she is in no rush to get published. He takes it upon himself to change her approach to writing. Which is, in part, because he cares about her, but also because, of course, it allows him to avoid dealing with his own insecurities. It was very fun to give him a new job. Yes. To put him around other people who can handle their shit.

Mindy: That's the best place to put him.

Caroline: Yes. It just did feel like tingly good, right? Like I'm excited for you to read it. It's a good way to feel before a book comes out, right?

Mindy: Oh, yeah. It's an amazing way to feel before a book comes out.

Caroline: I had so much fun naming the other writers and their books. And now when I go into a bookstore, I'm like, "Wait a minute. They don't have one book by Sarah Beth Swallows?" And I'm like, "She's not a real person!" Like, of course they don't. They're all fake.

Mindy: It's a good example of how real your characters are to you. Something else I wanted to bring up. A book that I just love that I think probably gets lost a little bit because of the fact that You is just so amazing and so popular. But you wrote a novel called Providence. I love that book! It's really good. I wish people would talk about it more.

Caroline: I know. Thank you so much. And that's like... It moves me so much when people say that because, exactly... Like You. I feel like it's like a middle school bully situation where not only are there now 4 You books, right? So Providence is just on its own out there, and it's its own thing. And it makes me so happy when I learn that someone has found it and enjoyed it, and I have such a soft spot for them in my heart.

Mindy: I love that book. I listened to the audio. It is quite good. I just loved it. I loved it so much, and I ran it down because I had... I had read at that point I think the first You book. And I was in a slump, and I could not find anything I liked. It was one of those weird times, and I was like, "Hey, I'm going to go see if Caroline Kepnes has written anything else." Then I was like, "Oh, she has." And I listened to Providence and God, I just loved it so much. So I was wondering, as a person that has had just a tremendous amount of success in this one arena, and you kind of already answered the question, but is there a part of you that is just like, "Man, I wish more for this other book."

Caroline: First of all, I want to go back to something you said about the moment for a book, because I love that so much. And something that makes me crazy about book culture is that like, here are the books to read this month! Here are the books to read this week! Here are the books to read today! And it's like the beauty of a book is that it never goes away. Sure, even if it goes out of print, you never know what you can find in a clearance bin at a used store like anywhere. And so I love when we're reminded that we can go find books. That there is no expiration date. Yesterday, I did a podcast and they were talking about Providence too. And the woman started out with like, "I am the biggest fan. I love it so much." And it's such a nice surprise that, yes, it just makes me happy because I would love for more people to find that book. And especially when it comes from readers, and especially author readers, who have that reaction to it, it's just a very good feeling. So right, you just always want more people to know that there's this other thing that I did that you might also like.

Mindy: You said, author readers... I wrote a book called Be Not Far From Me. It's about a girl that's lost in the Smoky Mountains. And she's out there for like a month, and she has to survive with just the clothes on her back. I started working on it, and as I was writing it, I was so pissed at myself because I had never thought about the fact when I pitched this idea that my main character is alone for 99% of the book. Alone. She has nobody to talk to. There's nothing for her to bounce off of. The environment isn't changing. She's in the woods alone for 99% of the book. And I was like, "Mindy, you fucking idiot. You have done this to yourself, and you are stuck. And you are in the woods with her." But the best thing that happened with that book is I would get, you know, texts, emails, DMs from fellow writers that would say, "How did you write a book where the main character was alone pretty much the whole time? That is incredible." And I was just like, "Thank you. Thank you for understanding how hard that was."

Caroline: That gave me such a good feeling to hear you say that, because that's my favorite part of writing once you're through it. But you know that moment when you're... You said it like, "What the fuck did I do to myself? What did I do?" Because I think that's where the best of us so often comes from. When we screw ourselves over, both in the way of deadline and also procrastinating and writing fast go together. You accidentally paint yourself into a corner and that just like you... Then you have no choice but to get out. Like you can always eventually feel that in the writing. In the pages.

Mindy: Absolutely. Absolutely. My panic is inside of that girl who's trying to get out of the woods. Last thing. Why don't you let listeners know where they can find you online and then, of course, where they can get For You and Only You which will be out on April 25th.

Caroline: Yes. Well, you can get For You and Only You at your local bookstore. You can find it online. Hopefully, if they don't have it in your bookstore, you can go in there and be like, "Hey, you know what book you should have?" You can find me on Twitter for my wonderful retweets. Like, that's the bulk of what I do when I go on there and participate. You can find me on Instagram with book pictures, and I do have a Facebook page. And then there is kind of a secret place on Facebook that is called Caroline's Cage, and that's run by some readers who have been there ten years because it was 2013 when they got advanced copies of You. So yeah, that's a good group. Is that it? Are those the places?

Mindy: I think you got all the places.

Mindy: Writer Writer Pants on Fire is produced by Mindy McGinnis. Music by Jack Korbel. Don't forget to check out the blog for additional interviews, writing advice and publication tips at Writer Writer Pants on Fire dot com. If the blog or podcast have been helpful to you or if you just enjoy listening, please consider donating. Visit Writer Writer Pants on Fire dot com and click “support the blog and podcast” in the sidebar.

Natasha Preston on The Island: Writing A Large Cast, and the Time Suck of Social Media

March 6, 2023 Mindy McGinnis

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Mindy: We're here with Natasha Preston who has had a really interesting and amazing career. We're gonna be talking about The Island, which is her newest release coming on February 28th. But first, I wanna talk to you specifically about the beginning of your career because you have a very interesting career path in that you got started on Wattpad. And Wattpad was really something that launched you in a pretty big way. I think your name is probably the one that comes up the most whenever people talk about Wattpad and success in that arena. So, if you could talk a little bit about that and how that was so integral to your beginnings.

Natasha: Completely. I didn't even start writing before I found Wattpad. So I wouldn't be here at all today if it wasn't for that. It was about 2010, and I was just scrolling through the app store and I came across Wattpad. So I downloaded it and started just as a reader for quite some time before I decided that actually I have some ideas inside of me as well, and then I started to upload chapters.

Mindy: And Wattpad is one of those things where it really is driven by word of mouth. It's driven by readers really liking and engaging with that content and then telling other readers about it. For me, I really think it is just one of the best examples of true word-of mouth grassroots fan-based readership.

Natasha: Yeah, definitely, and I met a lot of people through Wattpad. Some of them I'm still in contact with now. So you build a lot of friendships as well, and these people recommend you and you recommend them.

Mindy: I know that you had such great success there on that platform. Did you then decide to move out of that realm and look more into the realm of traditional publishing? Or were you doing so well, the agents and editors approached you?

Natasha: My friend, who was also on Wattpad, Kirsty Moseley, she self-published her first book, and she encouraged me to do the same. So I actually self-published first, and then my publisher, Sourcebooks, in the US, they picked up The Cellar. So then they traditionally published that one.

Mindy: Yes, and The Cellar was your first book that came out in the US. Ridiculously popular. So, I was a YA librarian. I worked in a public high school for 14 years. So, The Cellar came out in 2014, and I just remember all of my students were so in love with it. I couldn't keep it on the shelves. Colleen Hoover before TikTok. That's kind of what The Cellar was like, and then your subsequent titles as well. Something else that I wanted to talk to you about was your cover art. In the US, they're very stark, and they're very striking. Very much look like thriller covers almost even for adults. Your covers are amazing, and I think that that has been part of the appeal. Of course, just getting the eye drawn to get people to pick it up. Are your covers the same in the UK?

Natasha: Yeah, they are the same. I love them.

Mindy: Yeah. They are really beautiful. Did that come about through your publishers? Or you had something in mind already? Did they just happen to strike gold the first time?

Natasha: Pretty much gold, yeah. So when it was on Wattpad, I had a flower image on the cover of that one. The characters are renamed after flowers, so it was kind of pretty organic to have a flower theme.

Mindy: It really is. It's perfect. And then your subsequent titles, they match. Your publishers do a great job of branding you. It's kind of like Stephen King or Jodi Picoult's... When you see the cover, I don't even have to see your name to know that it's your book because the covers are so distinctive.

Natasha: Yeah, yeah. They’ve done a phenomenal job of carrying that through.

Mindy: So your next release, your newest release, is The Island. It revolves around 6 teen influencers who have accepted invitations to an all expenses paid trip to a luxury resort and amusement park. And then of course, when they get there things suddenly go quite wrong. I would love to hear more about where you got the idea for this book. I love that you're operating with kind of that closed room mystery in the sense that the room is an entire island and there are rollercoasters on it.

Natasha: Yes, it's pretty much... I think I was flicking through Instagram, and I was seeing like all these influencers. And they are rich! The idea came from that. Putting them all together and seeing what would happen if they are in a place where they can't escape. And I feel like quite a lot of influencers would go to an island if they were invited.

Mindy: Yeah, definitely. It's kind of like the Fyre Festival. Do you remember that?

Natasha: I don't.

Mindy: Fyre Festival... It was a US thing, so it is possible it didn't hit the news so much there in the UK. But Fyre Festival was this really hyped, big party. They had these promo videos made and it was like, "you were going to be hanging out with very rich, very beautiful people. Buy your tickets now. It's gonna be amazing." And then people got there and it was like hot dogs on sticks. Drift wood for your pillow. There was nowhere to pee. It was really bad.

Natasha: Oh no.

Mindy: It was really, really bad. Tell us a little bit more about The Island. What are your characters like? Because influencers in particular... I go back and forth. I'm a difficult person. I'll just say that. I'm a difficult person. Traditional marketing just doesn't work on me. I'm always a little bit cynical, and I'm always suspicious. So whenever someone is trying to sell something to me, I immediately shut down, and I'm just like, "No. I don't like you, and I don't want what you're selling."

Natasha: I don't believe you.

Mindy: Exactly. It also makes it difficult for me whenever I'm trying to think about marketing my stuff, because the traditional stuff that does work, I never wanna do that because it doesn't feel genuine to me. So talk to me a little bit about your characters and where you got the ideas for each of them as individuals because you are writing 6 different characters.

Natasha: Yeah, so the gamer, two beauty bloggers, Paisley, who is like a main character, she reports crime - love her - and then we have Harper who is book reviewer. So they all have very different personalities. Some of them are pretty cocky entitled. And then some of them are a little bit more reserved, and they grow throughout the book. Obviously, when somebody is out there trying to kill you, you have to try and mesh all these personalities together so they can defeat the bad guy together and get through it. And also one of them could be the killer.

Mindy: I think that would be very challenging. I tend to keep my casts pretty small - two or three like maybe four, and then some peripherals. But I think writing six and trying to build them and, of course, give all of them their own layers as well, and still creating a little bit of suspicion so you're keeping that mystery going for each one of them... I'm sure that was challenging.

Natasha: I did kill one of them pretty early so... It took it down a little bit.

Mindy: Did you do much research into influencer culture and what it's like to be an influencer?

Natasha: I did a little bit. It is pretty hard because I think all of them have quite different experiences and how they're perceived and how people react to them. So I didn't want to do too much research. I wanted to be sort of quite organically just writing and then building how I see them. Do you do that? I should really research it, then I get stuck in this "I've researched too much" and it stops being my character. I try to make them something that they never were, if that makes any sense at all.

Mindy: Yes, it does. It makes perfect sense. Absolutely possible to over-research. You could almost get stuck in it, I think, cause you worry so much about getting it right. I write YA as well. But I have an adult book that I would love to get out one day, we'll see. I still have to work on it. But it is set in 1916 during the Spanish influenza. And I was writing a scene... It's set in the US, like in a rural area in a one-room school house. And I was writing a scene where the teacher... 'cause the Spanish flu could drop you very quickly. Your symptoms could just come on and you could become very violently sick and die within hours. The teacher very suddenly - she feels herself getting sick. She knows something's wrong, and so she doesn't want her students to get sick. She runs out of the building as fast as she can, and she's disoriented. She's ill. She also trips and falls, and she rolls down the steps and the kids come out and they're like, "Oh my gosh. What do we do? Should we even touch her?" And in my mind, her shoe had come off, and her shoe was sitting on one of the steps. But would her shoe have come off? What would her shoe have been in 1916.

So I go and I start researching women's footwear in 1916, but it couldn't be like high fashion. It had to be what a middle class rural woman would have been wearing in 1916. So I'm trying to figure all of that out. Eventually I decide no, her shoe probably would not have come off because it would have been a boot, And it would have been the kind that you literally use a crochet hook to finish tying, and it's like "no her boot is not coming off." I mean, I probably did two to three hours of research to figure out if her boot came off. It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter if her boot came off or not, number one. And number two, a reader probably isn't gonna notice or care, and I literally dropped everything and did not write for three hours 'cause I needed to know if her boot came off. And that is an example of caring a little too much.

Natasha: Yeah. Exactly. Exactly. And it's so easy to get pulled into that.

Mindy: It really is. Have you ever had that one thing that you just felt like you had to chase down and then you were like, "Okay. That was not worth it."

Natasha: Oh yeah. So, it was when I was writing The Cellar, and he weights bodies, chucks them in the river, and disposes of them. And I'm googling this for a very long time - getting a little worried that someone was gonna see what I'm doing, and I spent hours, "what weight do you need to make sure that they don't come back up?" And I think, "You know what. I could just write, 'He's weighted the body.' They don't need to know exactly."

Mindy: No, you don't. You're right. But that's exactly the kind of thing that will happen to you. That you just end up going down that rabbit hole of wanting to make sure that you're right, and essentially it doesn't actually matter. You're talking about the things that you Google, and then you have to worry a little bit. As a writer, we do end up looking at some things or wandering into parts of the internet or information that we might not necessarily want to be associated with. I can tell you that my ads that I get or on Amazon, when it's like "based on your recent search history you might be interested in... " and it's like, "No. I don't need that bondage material thing." Have you ever researched something like the weighting of the bodies and just been like, "Oh man. I am a little concerned now about my search history." Or also just... "Gosh, I wouldn't want anyone to stumble across this in my browser."

Natasha: Definitely. So when I was writing You Will Be Mine, the killer cuts out hearts. So, I'm googling "how you get to the heart." You ought to get through the rib cage and how you would cut it out. That was interesting.

Mindy: I have definitely searched some things that have skewed my ads. I actually have a friend who writes tech thrillers, and she needed to know how to get a bomb onto a plane. So she just Googled it and tried to figure out how to get a bomb onto a plane. She lived in California, and her husband was a TV producer. He also lived in California, but because of their work, they were at different parts of the state. One of them would fly to the other one every other week. She went to go see her husband, and she had been put on the no-fly list.

Natasha: No. Oh my gosh.

Mindy: Yeah, she couldn't get on the plane. She had a friend in Homeland Security, and she talked to them eventually. And they were like, "Yeah, dude. I can tell you exactly why you are not allowed to fly on planes anymore."

Natasha: Oh no! Did she get off the list though? Is she okay now?

Mindy: She did. She did, but without her friend inside the system to vouch for her who knows how that would have gone? But you gotta be a little bit careful.

Natasha: You do. Yeah, you have to be careful.

Mindy: So, tell me about what you are doing for The Island and press. Obviously, you're doing interviews and you're doing podcasts like this. Post covid... Are you doing much traveling?

Natasha: I haven't very much at all. I would like next year to come back to America. I've been a couple of times. Barnes & Noble events have been so much fun. So this time around, I'm doing an online with Barnes & Noble. Which will be really fun, but it's nice to go to in person, I think.

Mindy: Definitely. I miss being in-person a lot. I have a release in March, and this will be the first time since 2020 that I have done much in terms of actually doing a string of events or tour. I had a book come out in March of 2020, and we shut down over here... Third week of March in 2020 was when the lockdown started. I was touring with two other writers, and we had, I think, five cities right in the middle of March and at our first event, we had people. It was cool. At our second event, we had about half the crowd. At our third event, I think we had four people, and everyone was wearing masks. And at our last event that we showed up to... The book sellers, they were very kind, but they got a hold of us and they were like, "We're closing. There's not gonna be anybody here. Please come, and sign stock. Wear a mask, and go back home." We were like, "Okay." And then as soon as I got home from that tour was when we went on lock down.

Natasha: A similar thing over here. Everything just stopped didn't it? And it's still not picked back up, I don't think. There's still a lot more happening virtually.

Mindy: Yeah, there has been a lot more virtual events and trying to make things work online and doing zooms and Instagram Live. So, is that something that you have found success with? Do you enjoy doing the online stuff?

Natasha: Yeah, I do. It's still nice to connect with people and booksellers and readers. It's just not quite the same as being able to physically see them and you get to take pictures with people and sign a book for them in front of them.

Mindy: Yeah. I agree. I get energy from other people. That's where my energy comes from... Is from drawing off of others. And when I can get them excited, then they're feeding me back, and we just get a nice little feedback loop. And there is so much about that that is organic, but there's also... There's a real presence that is necessary in order to make that happen. I don't know. I feel like it's hard to get that same feeling and to build that same energy when you're doing it virtually.

Natasha: Yeah, when you're just on your own, it's not the same.

Mindy: Yeah. It's really hard to generate excitement for yourself. Well, and speaking of that, generating excitement for yourself... How was it for you writing over covid? I know a lot of writers struggled with being on shutdown, first of all just emotionally and mentally, but also just being creative and finding ways to write or things to write about. Suddenly we had all the time in the world, but we needed to have the drive.

Natasha: Yeah, no, actually, I was great during lock down. I mean, I had my children at home which I had to home school. So that was a little bit of a battle, but... No, it was great. I would get up at six. I would probably write a couple thousand words, and then the children would get up. I was on it. That hasn't happened since... It ended.

Mindy: So, is that your typical approach? Do you have a word count for the day that you like to hit?

Natasha: Yeah. Typically, I try to... 1500-2000 words, and I'm generally happy with that.

Mindy: I always say minimum 1000. If I can get two, that's amazing. 15 is a nice, nice little bonus. Do you write every day then?

Natasha: Every weekday usually. On the weekends I keep my children at home, so... Yeah, every weekday... Go drop them off and come home and just sit in front of the computer until I'm happy with my word count.

Mindy: Yeah, and that's something that a lot of newer writers or writers that are trying to finish their first book talk to me about. Tips and tricks. They're like, "How do you write a book?" And I'm like, "Well, unfortunately, the only answer is you have to sit down and do it."

Natasha: Yeah. You have to be quite disciplined 'cause when you are just at home, there's so many things you could do. You need to make yourself have that time.

Mindy: Yes. And writing is hard. I will do anything other than write.

Natasha: That's exactly what I do. I'll check social media, and I'll do some other things. And I tell myself I'm being productive by doing different posts here and there and answering emails, but it's really just putting off starting writing.

Mindy: That is exactly accurate. Yes. I have been working really hard for three hours, and it's like, No, you haven't... Actually you haven't done anything. So speaking of social media then... What has your experience been like with social media kind of changing? 'Cause you came out right around the same time that I did. The Cellar was published in 2014. My first book came out in 2013, and when we were first out in the world and publishing, social media was very text-based. It was tweets. It was Facebook posts. And then Instagram came along, and it was pictures. But now suddenly, it's videos, and it's music. And it's whatever the trends are. It's just more time consuming than I'm willing to put into now. It's like, I can have a thought, and I can have a one-off. And I could tweet that 10 years ago, and that was good. And people were like, Yes. And they would interact with that. And it's like, now I have to make a video, and I have to be using the right filter, and I have to have whatever song is popular right now. And for me, I've just kind of stepped back from that a little bit because like we were just saying, I can get too sucked into that and put a lot of time into it when I should be writing.

Natasha: I completely agree. My heart is still in 2014 where you could just pop a post up every couple of days, and that was great.

Mindy: Yep.

Natasha: It's a lot of work now. It's more interactive, I think, and I do like that. But you can spend hours where you used to just spend a few minutes, and it does take away from your actual writing time.

Mindy: I agree. I feel too that things are more crowded. I was on TikTok for about five minutes. I have an account there, but I very rarely post because I would put together something, and it took me so long to put it together, and then I would put it out there. And it's like if the algorithm doesn't basically choose you, you're not going to get a lot of reach with that. And it's like, man... And granted... Learning curve. I didn't really know what I was doing, and so it took longer. But I would just be like, "Oh my gosh. I just spent an hour making this 15-second video, and 40 people saw it." I say that as someone that definitely has not figured out how to use TikTok. I will say this though. The nice thing about TikTok and booktok... The readers are the ones that are generating the content. There's not so much responsibility on us to generate it. If they can do it, that's great.

Natasha: I mean, if someone out there just wants to do all that for my books, that would be fantastic.

Mindy: No, I agree. Whenever anybody is like, "Oh my gosh. I read your book, and I loved it." I'm like, "Cool. Are you on TikTok?" Last thing, why don't you let listeners know where they can find The Island when it comes out on February 28th, and where they can find you online.

Natasha: The Island is to be in stores in America. So, it will be in Barnes & Noble for sure. Everywhere else, it's going to be online. So yeah, it's where you can get The Island. And you can find me on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook. All of them. Just Author Natasha Preston.

NYT Bestseller Karen McManus On Pacing In Murder Mysteries & Bowing Out of Social Media

September 19, 2022 Mindy McGinnis

Mindy: Welcome to Writer Writer Pants on Fire, where authors talk about things that never happened to people who don't exist. We also cover craft, the agent hunt, query trenches, publishing, industry, marketing and more. I'm your host, Mindy McGinnis. You can check out my books and social media at mindymcginnis dot com and make sure to visit the Writer Writer Pants on Fire blog for additional interviews, query critiques and more as well as full transcriptions of each podcast episode at WriterWriterPants on Fire.com . And don’t forget to check out the Writer, Writer, Pants on Fire Facebook page. Give me feedback, suggest topics you’d like to hear discussed, and let me know if there is someone you’d love to see as a guest.

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Mindy: We're here with Karen McManus, author of so many different highly popular YA mysteries. Her newest is Nothing More to Tell, which just released. I wanna talk about a bunch of different things. First of all, I wanna talk about this book in particular, the new release, Nothing More to Tell. One of the things that I think is so interesting about this is that it deals with the murder of an adult, which I think is really interesting to take that angle in a YA novel.

Karen: Yeah, Nothing More to Tell is, hard to believe, my sixth book. I was interested in exploring the notion of centering a mystery around a beloved teacher. I think teachers can play such an important role in a young person's life. I started writing, in part, because of my second grade teacher who encouraged me, and I always wish that I had the opportunity to thank her for that. So Mr. Larkin is the former teacher of both Brynn and Tripp, my protagonists. And Brynn, in particular, has always felt an affinity for him because he was the first teacher to encourage her and her love for writing and ultimately journalism. And Tripp, of course, can't stop thinking about Mr. Larkin because he is one of the three kids who found their teacher's body in the woods behind school four years ago.

Mindy: Something I run into fairly often when I'm thinking about a plot for a murder mystery or anything like that. The very first thing that you have to think about is why. Why would someone kill this person? What is the motive? And one of the things that I have come upon recently is that while I'm working or if I'm trying to come up with a new idea or a fresh idea, to my mind, the motivations, the reasons why people kill people are sex, power and money. And, to me, I have a hard time coming up with anything that isn't one of those three or a mix. And I had a moment, particularly this summer, where I was like, "Oh no. If you've really only got three motivations in the history of the world for committing murder, how do we keep this fresh and how do we keep this interesting?"

Karen: Right. Those are certainly a big three, and then there's sub-categories beneath that. There's revenge. There's to protect yourself or others. There's fear. There's anger. I think getting to the emotions that lie beneath those big encompassing reasons is what interests me. What was a person feeling at that moment that drove them to this worst point in their life?

Mindy: I agree. Those sub-categories is where you get past motive and you get into character.

Karen: And for me, that's always the most interesting part of the story. I mean, I like a good hook. I like a good high-level concept that I can build around, but ultimately, if I don't care deeply about the characters, I feel like the readers are not going to care that much about the story. So that's where I tend to spend the bulk of my prep time is figuring out who's in the room. Either literally or metaphorically, depending on what type of story I'm writing. Why are they there? What are they afraid of? What do they want? What are they hiding? 'Cause my characters are usually hiding something, and what's gonna happen to them if their secret gets out.

Mindy: I think that that is really insightful for other writers that may be listening. When you are working with a murder mystery, typically, I find it has to be character-driven because plot is going to only take you so far. I believe this is true of any genre. You have to care about the person. That doesn't necessarily mean that you have to care about the victim, I don't think. They can be dead pretty early on, but you have to care about the people in the story, which I do believe that is true of all genres. But I think it is particularly true of mystery because it raises the stakes so much. It goes from being just, "well, who did it?" To "Oh my God, I really hope it wasn't this person." Or "I am so convinced it's this one and I hate them."

Karen: Right, the way that I like to write stories, there's sort of three tracks that I'm trying to send the reader down. And one is the mystery, obviously. It's like, who done it? Why? How? All of those big questions that relate to the plot. Second is the individual character journeys. Why are they in particular involved? What do they need to learn in order to come to a satisfying resolution, whatever that might be at the end. And then the third is the relationship between the characters, and because I write multi-POV, I like to think of that relationship almost as its own character. It too needs to have a growth arc. It too needs to have a beginning, a middle, and an end. And there needs to be uncertainty and tension between these characters, and, I hope, an investment in the reader and how they ultimately come together, break apart, and resolve whatever conflict might be happening between them.

Mindy: One of the things that I think is really interesting, when you're writing a mystery, is pacing. And I've come to really accept, I think is the right word, I have come to accept that I am a character writer, and that my stories are character driven. They are not plot-driven. And that means that you are doing a lot of baking. You're not doing a lot of flash frying. It is a lot of learning these characters and learning to care about them. This has come to a particular head... You and I were chatting before I started recording about our 2024 releases, which we are both currently working on. I ended up in a situation with my 2024 release where the victim is not dead until approximately halfway through the book, and I was like, "Man, I don't know if this will work." I've gotta clean it up a little bit and turn it into my editor here this week. I don't know if this is going to be a function-able structure, but in order for the plot to matter, the way things are set up, you have to care about the victim before she has died because my narrator is in love with her. I needed to show the relationship between the victim and my narrator and how it is kind of beautiful, but also on the end of my narrator, perhaps unhealthy. I run into problems with pacing in a character-driven plot. How do you deal with that?

Karen: It's important to understand the fundamental structure, obviously, of mystery. Mathematical pace that might be considered ideal, but I think you need to know that in order to break it when you have to. Rules are... they're important to understand. They exist for a reason, a storytelling reason. People unconsciously come to your story with expectations of how it will be paced, and they probably wouldn't even call it that. I would not have before I became a writer. You're expecting a certain flow and you wanna give your readers that for a satisfying experience. But you don't wanna do it at the expense of what's really important in the story. And in this case for your book and often for mine as well, what it's really important is the relationships between the characters. So you just figure out a way, I think, around that and to still deliver that satisfying mystery experience. And maybe that's through smaller sub-reveals. Or maybe that's through setting up an alternate kind of structure from the beginning so that your reader's carried along with that. But as long as you're aware that you're delivering a different type of experience, then I think you can work around that and make it work for your story.

Mindy: I agree, and I wanna touch on something that you said. I don't agree just because I want to feel like hopefully my book actually works.

Karen: Well, I did the same thing in One of Us is Next. The victim did not die until the middle. I think it worked.

Mindy: Nice, I think that's wonderful. And I think it ties into something that you just said about readers bringing an expectation to a book and how you would not have, previously to becoming a writer, have talked about it in terms of pacing... Having an expectation for pacing. As a writer, who is also a reader, because I don't think it works the other way. I don't think you can be a writer and not a reader. Do you find that as a writer who now hyper-analyzes their own work so much, do you struggle to read for pleasure? Is it hard for you to just let go and enjoy a story?

Karen: It can be. I do a lot of reading on my Kindle and sometimes I can't help myself. I'll be reading along, sort of getting caught up in the story, and then I'll think, "Are we at the mid-point?" And I'll have to look and see. Are we at 50% of the book? Because it just feels like we've hit it. So I notice that type of thing. But I love reading romance when I'm writing my own thrillery stuff because it's such a nice change. And romance writers are among, I think, the greatest at our craft in terms of pacing a story perfectly. And you can almost always, if you stop and think about it... This is about 25%. This is about 75%, and I do notice that kind of stuff even when I'm really enjoying a story, just because it's become part of my process now. It doesn't take away from my enjoyment, but it's definitely a different type of reading experience. It's hard for me to get fully swept up in a story and not kind of notice the writer's craft beneath it.

Mindy: Absolutely. I have hit a point where I've discovered that audio books can still transport me but I am not sure what drives that. Most of the time I'm listening to an audio book in the car anyway, so you kinda achieve that almost meditative state.

Karen: The voices and getting caught up in what feels like the character speaking to you might help to that suspension of analysis that sometimes goes along with the reading experience.

Mindy: Yeah, I have definitely found that an audio book will capture me a little more quickly than a print. I read a book a long time ago, and I've talked about it on the podcast before, a few times. It's called The Shallows. It was written like a while ago. I know they've released an updated version, but he was talking about how the internet has kind of rewired our brains for short form concentration. I skim things online. Very rarely do I ever read an entire article. I skim everything. I'm clicking. I'm just reading headlines. I'm not really involved in anything. My brain has been trained for this, and of course now with the rise of TikTok and social media... Everything is little, little little bites, little bites, little bites. His theory, and there was some support for it at the time and I imagine that has grown, was that we're losing the capability to do deep work and focus and thinking. I have seen that in myself. It's pretty scary.

Karen: I mean, if it's that hard to get lost in reading a book by writing one, right?

Mindy: Oh, yeah.

Karen: Having that focused level of attention, since sometimes it is a struggle to get yourself into that head space and just be able to shut everything else out and focus on the story.

Mindy: And do you have a similar feeling then when you're writing as you do when you're reading? Where you just kind of get transported and everything around you is gone? I personally have similar experiences, and just because of my current lifestyle and pace, I find it easier to get lost in work than writing than I do reading and pleasure. But I find the experience mentally is the same - that high level of concentration and the loss of really the world around you and doing a deep dive into an imaginary world.

Karen: Yeah. When it's going well, when the writing is flowing, that is absolutely how it feels. Everything else drops away. The distractions aren't a problem. And I'm just this vehicle being driven by the story and I just have to let it take over and get it out. And it's like a great feeling. And then when it's not flowing so well, that's the time when I suddenly think, "I wonder what's happening on Instagram." I'll do all these little things to let myself be distracted, and it's very easy to do that 'cause it's like, obviously, it's all at your fingertips at the same time that you're working. And that's the point, if I catch myself doing that too much, I have to take a step back and think, "Okay, something's not working. I'm not pulled in enough to the story where it feels necessary for me to keep going with it." And there's usually something fundamental that isn't working.

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Mindy: I think I've just very recently arrived at the idea of dropping social media. Very recently, just within the past maybe two weeks, I have found that I'm going to it more often as a distraction to kill a few minutes, which is how I always used to use it. I think that's fine, just a little bit of entertainment. But this summer, in particular, I have found... I finished the day. I did my work. I went to the gym. I came home. I ate dinner. I took a bath. And what am I gonna do now? It always used to be, I am going to watch TV, or I'm going to knit, or I'm going to read a book, right? Usually read a book was first, and now I will lay down with my phone and I'll lose two hours. I'll lose two hours.

Karen: Right, it's so easy.

Mindy: Yeah, and I'm just like, "Oh, this isn't good." It doesn't make me feel good. I'm not producing anything. And I don't necessarily mean I need to be working all the time, but it's like I'm also not participating in anything, you know what I mean?

Karen: If you're just kind of passively consuming things that are out there, yeah, it doesn't feel great. And I know I used to use social media differently as a brand new author. I interacted a lot more. I chatted a lot more just with other writers, 'cause it sort of felt like our little water cooler on Twitter. And you could just joke back and forth. Twitter has changed, definitely, but also when your audience gets bigger, it's harder to keep up. And you also, I think, you just need to be a little bit more careful about what you say. 'Cause more people are paying attention, and if you think you're making an off-the-cuff comment that is actually a thoughtless comment that could be upsetting to people in a way that it wouldn't have been when you're an unknown. So you find yourself more reluctant to engage and then you think, "Well, why am I even here?" I can't keep up with my notifications. I don't feel comfortable chatting. And it's just ... this isn't really an engaging space anymore. It's a space where I'm just sort of paying attention and liking people's tweets and saying, "Good for you!" And it's just a different kind of medium. So I found myself taking a big step back there. Taking a big step back in social media in general, and just trying to focus more on nurturing those relationships in other ways.

Mindy: I think that that's really smart. And I know that when you and I first started writing, it really was social media, social media, you have to do it. You must do it. You cannot succeed without it. And there's a lot of information out that says that that's just not true. A lot of people that have massive followings will get a book deal sometimes based on that, and they don't sell well. Their audience is not there for a book. The audience is there for their Instagram, or the audience is there for a tweet. And I also find just the content in general has been just more upsetting lately, and I've just been more affected, I think lately.

Karen: Yeah.

Mindy: I'm 43. I'm really self-assured. I have a career and in a good place in my life, and this is making me feel bad. And it makes me wonder about teenagers using this and kids using this. And I'm like, "Oh no. Oh no." If I think about it too much, I'm gonna go down a dark hole of "This is how the world ends." So, I've decided that retracting is probably smart.

Karen: Yeah, taking a step back is probably very healthy. And like anything with writing, I think there's so much pressure on authors to market themselves, but it really is only so much that we can do to move the needle. And so I'm a big believer in doing the things that you enjoy. That you would do anyway. If this were just a hobby and you wanted to engage with other people who liked your hobby, what kind of things would you do? For me, that means I'm not on TikTok because I don't like to make videos.

Mindy: Yeah, me either.

Karen: It's just not my medium. So I'm not there. I actually am there as like a little consumer quietly enjoying dog videos and things like that, but not as an author. I don't do a newsletter because it's just not something that I enjoy. So I think trying to maintain that balance and recognizing that it's good to have some kind of platform for people to find you if they want to. If it's a platform that you like to maintain, then great. Then you just maintain it as much or as little as you're able to do with everything else you have going on.

Mindy: One of the things that led me to this, I went through a pretty upsetting break-up in 2019. I don't overshare on social media. I try to keep my personal life pretty personal. I didn't do a post and say, "Hey, things going on. I won't be around here much. Just wanted to let everybody know." I didn't even do that. I just dropped out for probably like four to five months. I was just like, "I can't do this right now. This isn't part of what I have inside of me." And there was absolutely no effect on...

Karen: Right.

Mindy: I don't think people even noticed I was gone. Why am I doing this?

Karen: If you feel like coming back and doing a little bit of engagement, that's great, and people who have enjoyed your presence before, will enjoy it again. And they're not gonna say, "Where have you been?"

Mindy: So talking then about social media and interacting and getting yourself out there and being in front of people, you just released the new book. And so you have been doing a lot of promotion and a lot of interaction and just raising the visibility bar and doing all of the things that our publishers want us to do in order to make that happen. However, like you and I were talking before I started recording. You do not tour. So talk to me a little bit about what you do, because I know that it can be just as overwhelming as being on a tour and leaving the house. So tell me about that pace, that schedule, what you do, and how you balance promoting something that is out there, while also trying to write the next thing.

Karen: I know it's tricky, right? Because our books that are out there, this book that just came out, I wrote that book two years ago. That's the pace of publishing, and so some of it is just resetting your mind a little bit. Because, like we were chatting before, I'm currently working on my 2024 release. And I was just like heads down, in that zone, really churning out that book and got probably 75% of the way through. But I just had to put it aside, about a week ago, a week and a half ago, I had to put it aside so I could shift gears and get my brain back into Nothing More to Tell. So it's like this disruption thing where you're in your writers cave and then you just... you have to emerge blinking into the sunlight and realize that, "Oh right, I have a whole 'nother book I need to talk about. I gotta put this one aside." So it's that shifting gears thing, and I think some writers are probably good at dividing their attention more than I am. If I'm in that zone, that's the only thing I can think about, so I do have to take myself out of it. You still have local events.

I actually was able to launch this book in person, which is the first book I've launched in person since my third. And this is my sixth book. So there were two pandemic books in between that, that were all virtual. So there's that and just sort of gearing yourself up for the energy of a live audience, which is so different than doing a virtual event. And that part was really nice, honestly, to be back in front of readers and have the energy of a room was really great. And then you're also, of course, doing interviews. You're appearing on podcasts, for example. I have really active international publishers too, and so at the same time I'm doing stuff in the US, I'm also doing things for the UK, in Germany. So there's just a lot of stuff coming at you, and it's sort of hard to remember sometimes what you said you were gonna do which day. But that's where your publicist helps you out, obviously, and your editor is keeping everything track for you. And that it's kind of funny because you do this for two, three weeks, it's like super intense, and then the book is out. And the book is just gonna do what it's gonna do, and you kinda crawl back into your writers cave and say, "Okay, let's get back to that zone."

Mindy: Yeah, it is a hard balance. I find that when I'm promoting, when I've had a book come out... I also have not officially toured since the pandemic. I do feel that that is changing a little bit for publishing. I don't know that that, that the big book tour is something that they're going to continue to do. And that makes me a little bit sad because I do love it. But I set up a lot of events on my own, like you were saying, locally, but I also will travel. I've got a series of visits coming up at schools in Missouri, Arkansas, and Kansas. I'm really ready to do that. It's a grind. It is a small murder. You come home exhausted and spent and an utter shell of a person, but I actually kind of enjoy that experience.

Karen: There's nothing quite like getting out there on the road and getting to talk to people who are passionate about books in real-time. And I do go to conferences, not so many this year, travel in general has been difficult this year. But I'll be going to a couple in the fall internationally, and I'm looking forward to that.

Mindy: Absolutely. I do the same. I'll do conferences and book festivals, and I find them to be really an injection of life for me in a lot of ways. It's a great way to connect with other writers.

Karen: Yes, that's the thing. Our job is so solitary, and it just has become more so in the past few years. And getting a chance to connect, not just with readers, but other writers gives you so much energy.

Mindy: It really does. I'm gonna be in Tennessee this coming weekend for the Tennessee Association of School Librarians. David Arnold is gonna be there. And David is a buddy of mine. I haven't seen him in years. I texted him, "Are you going to be at TASL?" And he was like, "Yeah, are you?" So I was like, "David, I don't think I've seen you for four years."

Karen: Yeah. I mean, time’s kind of lost all meaning, in the past three years.

Mindy: It really has. Last thing. Why don't you let listeners know where they can find the new book, Nothing More to Tell, and where they can find you online.

Karen: Yeah, Nothing More to Tell is available at book stores everywhere. Your favorite indie is, of course, always a wonderful place to shop. My personal favorite indie is Porter Square Books in Cambridge. That's where I had my launch, and they will always do signed copies of my books. If you're interested in that, you can just get in touch with them and ask. And you can find me online on Twitter and Instagram at writerkmc.

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