Laurell K. Hamilton On Starting A New Series

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 a a guest.

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Mindy: We’re here with Laurell K. Hamilton, the best selling author of gosh, let's see how many books at this point? 

Laurell: Well, I'm writing my 41st, so 40 novels.

Mindy: Wow, that is, that is seriously impressive. I'm on 12 and that feels good. So I can't imagine 40. 

Laurell: My goal is to have the same amount in one series that the Nero Wolfe books by Rex Stout, which is 70 something. 

Mindy: Your newest series is coming out for the first time in 20 years - a new series, which begins with A Terrible Fall of Angels, is the title of the first one. It deals with angels and demons and angelology, which just draws me in immediately because I am a huge fan of angelology and just kind of got pulled into that when I was in college actually. So if you'd like to talk a little bit about the new series and about the new book, A Terrible Fall of Angels.

Laurell: A Terrible Fall of Angels is set in modern America. It's all over the world. But this book is set in America. The main character is detective Zaniel Havelock who is a member of the metaphysical coordination unit, also known as the Heaven and Hell squad. If you have a crime that has angelic or demonic overtones, that's who you want to call. Especially Daniel because Daniel is an angel speaker. He was trained at the College of Angels to be able to communicate with the highest order of angels, not everybody can train up with the highest order of angels and survive intact. He was one of their shining stars as a pupil, but something tragic happened and he felt he could no longer serve there. He left at age 20. And he lived there since he was seven. It's like a cloistered order. So he left. He could speak with angels and do all sorts of wonderful mystical things. But he'd never seen a computer, didn't know how to fill out a job application. 

So six ft three walks past a recruiter station for the Army and the recruiter goes, young man, may I speak with you? So he joined the Army, did a tour there and now he is a police detective, but he can still speak with angels because this is a world where everyone knows that heaven and hell have a treaty. They have agreed not to do Armageddon and destroy the world. But there are rules, how many demons can come up, how much tormenting can they do. There are ways both sides can break the treaty, but it's primarily on hell's shoulders, what will break the treaty and what will not. And if the treaty is broken, then literally the end of the world happens. So the metaphysical coordination unit and other units like it around the world helped keep this from happening. But Zaniel was the only angel speaker to be fully trained and to leave voluntarily to go out in the larger world. 

That old saying you don't know you're in a cult until you leave? Well, Zaniel didn't realize that the College of angels really is a cult, or that's how other people see it. There's been a tell all documentary on people trying to get their Children back. It's very interesting to have him be my eyes on the world. One of the other detectives, she says - you say things like you're in all old fogey, like you should be somebody's grandpa. And he says, well, I was raised with people saying things like that. Because working with the angels lengthens your life. So some of the people teaching have been up there for a very long time and nobody talks about it. Nobody talks about it much at the school. You're not supposed to talk about it outside the school that dealing with the angels and living at the College of Angels actually lengthens your lifetime a great deal. If you look at the old testament, you have several people that are living over 100 - that's mentioned more than once. 

Mindy: And so what brought you to this idea of working specifically with angels and demons? Because you've obviously worked in those areas before in the realm of the paranormal and the urban fantastical elements. Why this time angels and demons specifically? 

Laurell: You know, I've been asked that and I don't have a good answer because literally the idea for this book - I was, to my knowledge, I was not reading, watching or studying on angels. I had like one book, one or two books on it, but it wasn't an area of study. I'm not into angelology, I wasn't raised Christian or any of the other religions of the book. I really didn't have a background in it. But suddenly out of nowhere, almost 10 years ago a line came to me - there were angel feathers in the dead woman's bed. I thought, wow, that's a great first line. So I wrote it down on a sticky note and I put it up on my wall in my office. And what I find is that if I put something in a note and put it on a piece of paper and I put it in a file, if I don't periodically go through the files, I forget about it. But if I put it up on my wall where I pass by it every day -  if I pass by too much, I don't see it anymore. So you have to move it around a little to make sure every once in a while that it refreshes. 

But this one I kept coming back to, I thought it was a short story. In 2014, I was still actively writing the Merry Gentry series and the Anita Blake series. But this idea wouldn't leave me alone. So I thought you know what, I'll sit down, I'll write it. Maybe it's a short story I can get out of my mind and the creative logjam will be undone. I almost wrote the first chapter At one setting and I thought this is a book, not only this is a book of a series and I think I cannot do three series. I want to, but I cannot do it. Please. 

So I put it in a file and then I wrote the ninth Merry Gentry book, A Shiver of Light. And then in 2020 I picked it back up. I thought I'm finally ready. I've done Suckerpunch, which was the 27th Anita Blake novel, and finished it up. Now I can go to it. And then 2020 happened. And I've never had a book so interrupted partly because of everything that was happening in the world, partly because I sent Suckerpunch off to be edited just as lockdown happened. And my editor and everybody at my publishing house was barred from their building. Everything changed, the edits took longer. 

So it interrupted the book and I had to put it aside for A Terrible Fall of Angels. And then I went back to it and then I had this great idea because one of things all the fans told me is one of things that was helping them through lockdown was reading my books, giving them a refuge. It gave them a place to be when they couldn't leave where they were. I contacted my editor and said, can I do an extra book, like a small book like Micah or Jason? She says, well can you? Can you do that and then meet your other deadlines? I suppose I think I can, that's how we got Rafael. Unfortunately, or fortunately Rafael ended up being long enough, it could have been a main book. It was not short like Jason and Micah , the way I was hoping it would be, I loved Rafael, I love the world building with the where rats and Rafael has been a character from the beginning. He deserved a bigger book. It was great. But again, delays. Went back to A Terrible Fall of Angels then had to stop for edits on Rafael finally sat down with it. The world is still in chaos. 

And I believe that all the stops and starts and all the delays helped make this book a much lighter book. It's a dark book. I mean, you have demons and you fight demons and everything, but you also have the angels and the angels are very present and positive magic, not just the angels, but positive magic. In Wiccan you have spirit guides and you have totems and you have all this positive spiritual help that is around all of us. And it's this idea that we are not alone. We are not isolated. There's help at hand and that you know, the deity, the universe, they really do want us to be happy and to feel positive and to be uplifted instead of down with this heaviness that we all seem to be fighting against lightly. 

Mindy: Very, very true. I know that a lot of writers really struggled over Covid. I think I discovered that when I am moving out in the world and interacting with people, I'm drawing energy from them. And when I come back to sit down, that energy is coming back out in the form of my writing. And when I couldn't go out and move among people and draw energy, I would sit down in front of my laptop already drained, unable to produce something. Motivation wasn't necessarily a problem. I would just literally sit down and be like, I am too tired to do this. 

Laurell: I think that a lot of us, even those of the introverts, have found that that little exchange of just going out and doing errands and exchanging with real people really is more of a social exchange than we thought it was. I didn't have any trouble writing at the beginning. But then I had just finished like I said about 27 and I brought book 28 and this is a series I've been writing for for decades. So that helped. But then in writing A Terrible Fall of Angels, you know, the impetus of the deadline helped light a fire under me. And also exploring a new world was both very much harder than I remembered it, and also energizing at the same time that it's hard and I was doing pretty well. I was giving people extra stories and I wanted to do that. I was reaching out to people through my writing. And I also edited my first anthology during all of this Fantastic Hope with my co editor, William McCaskey. And you know, there's an original Anita Blake story in it and there's a lot of great stories and boy did we need an anthology of hopeful stories. 

And then it's now. Now I'm having more trouble. I'm writing the next Anita Blake novel, book 29. I've never had so much trouble writing Anita in my entire life. I thought we'd be out by now. You know, I thought we'd be back to some semblance of normality and now I am drained, now because all the things I normally do between books I haven't been able to do. I usually go and visit certain friends that I haven't been able to because of where they are. I go to the ocean and I was able to go briefly. But then well where I was, it was like - get out before the airport's closed! It wasn't that bad. It felt that bad. It felt that kind of urgency. As much as I love my house, my office and my beautiful garden and yard. And may I just say the garden and the water garden has been a godsend because I'm beginning to understand why people had walled gardens and spent some time with it. Because most people for most of history. If you traveled 20 miles away from home, that was a long way. Your garden really was a refuge, a place where you could go and relax. 

Mindy: Yes. And I've always felt that way about my own, my own home. I live in Ohio. I live in the middle of nowhere. Just put a deck on before Covid hit. Have a good place for a hammock and I have a pond and I have all these wonderful little nooks and crannies all around my property where I can kind of go to recharge. But when I can't leave my property, it starts to all look the same and feel, like you were saying, when you walk past something that you see every day you don't see it anymore. I love my home. I love where I'm from. I love living in the middle of nowhere. But I had already experienced true isolation by choice. And when it’s enforced isolation... I haven't been on a plane since March of 2020. It's hard. I'm used to traveling a lot, traveling for school visits and library visits and talks and speeches and keynotes and that's, that's all gone. And that has really shown me how much of an extrovert I actually am.

Laurell: Under normal circumstances for A Terrible Fall of Angels, I would have been traveling all across the country.  But I made the choice. They didn't let me, but I made the choice for, I love my fans. They are so devoted. I've had people come straight from the hospital after abdominal surgery, one woman was in labor and she insisted on coming and oh my God, I have fans that I know are immunocompromised. I have fans that I know are ill. I'm not going to tempt them. I am not going to tempt them to a large group gathering under these circumstances. I just made the call for safety and caution for everybody that I would meet. Not just for me. 

We tried to go to theaters as much as we can because I'm afraid they're not going to make it. And I love going to the movie theater, the whole shebang. I love getting popcorn and soda and sitting there in the space. I don't care how big my big screen is. Just like we try to, you know, get out and support our local restaurants. We were doing take away during lockdown. 

Mindy: I had a book come out right at the beginning of March in 2020 and I was supposed to be gone the entire month of March, and like half of April I was not going to be home and of course that all got canceled. Good reason. We didn't really know what all was going on at the beginning. It was just like having your candle blown out. I was like, oh. I came home and kind of tried to launch a book from home, which it did fine. I think the reading has really come back. I think a lot of people have rediscovered reading. A lot of people that I know are usually big readers actually had trouble reading during COVID. 

Laurell: I did too. I have trouble reading for a lot of reasons. If I'm in the middle of writing a book or editing. Oh my God, if I'm editing a book, that's where I'm at, I can't read because I edit and everybody's books I'm going well that I'd have done that differently. I can't get out of my editor mode to be able to read. If I'm writing a book, I have to be careful because I would rather read what I'm writing. So it's hard to settle, or I don't want to get up from my computer and read exactly the same kind of thing I'm writing. Every book I write pretty much is genuinely a mystery, genuinely horror, genuinely fantasy. It is genuinely magic. It is genuinely all these things. I write all my favorite genres. So it's like, what, what's left to read? I'm trying to get back to finding fantasy that is different enough from what I write that I can read it without feeling like it's a busman's holiday. 

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Mindy: I have a Dalmatian who is very high maintenance and I love him very much. But he has to have a run every morning. 

Laurell: Gus.

Mindy: Yes, Mr. Gus. I never used to be a runner. I started running during the shutdown because I knew it would get bad if I didn't. 

Laurell: Congratulations. 

Mindy: Thank you. It was a smart move. It was a good move. I was lucky enough to live isolated so I can and it's not a problem for anyone. 

Laurell: I've wanted a Dalmatian since I was 12. I love the Disney cartoon, but it is so much better in the book. I read Dodie Smith's 101 Dalmatians 20 plus times. I'm not joking in the summer, one summer when I was 12. I wanted a Dalmatian from that time on. But I did my research. I'm not a runner. I'm not a jogger and it's over 100 degrees here and we're on pavement. It's too hot for the dog to run on. I am not a good owner for a Dalmatian. I know that I have to accept that the dog would be miserable. And in the right hands. I believe every breed in the right hands and the right family is a great dog. So many people, they treat the choice of a family member that is going to be with you, hopefully for at least 15 years, they treat it with less concern, less research, less thought than they do picking out an outfit. 

Mindy: It's pretty, I want the pretty one. 

Laurell: Yeah, I know. All puppies are cute. 

Mindy: Oh, they are, They're all adorable. I had done the research too and I had decided I did not want a Dalmatian. Well, I didn't even want a puppy. I was like, I'm adopting an adult from the pound. All my dogs have been pound dogs before. Well, this was during Covid and everybody had gone and adopted a dog and literally the only dogs left were like, has killed will kill again. Like there was nobody else. And I actually tried, I brought a dog home and one of my cats attempted to jump out of a closed second story window. It was just like, no, I'm, I'm just doing it. I'm leaving here any way I can. 

And then my sister was, she was buying pigs from a farm family in the next county over. And they were like, we also have free kittens and Dalmatian puppies. My sister sent me pictures of the puppies and I was like, oh God, I don't think I can do it. I got him at eight weeks and we started running at eight weeks and he is so dang smart. When we're running he runs to my right side and when a car comes, he breaks his stride and goes single file behind me and then comes around and goes up to the right and like never clips my heels. Never, I don't have to break stride at all.

Laurell: Wow, that's impressive. He's so smart. I always say wonderful things about dogs. So I love my Japanese chins but they were never really jogging companions. I keep thinking maybe adopting an older Dalmatian. But we have small dogs and we have cats and some Dalmatians can have a very high prey drive. We rescued one of our cats when she was at least six and the vet thinks she may have been 10. So she's getting up there and I'm not going to bring anything into the house that could be potentially dangerous for her. She's a grizzly bear. Griselda is her name but she has a really deep throaty purr. Had she not answered to her name, I wanted to name her Eartha Kitty. She has this great throaty torch singer purr. But she answered to her name. 

Mindy: Yeah, I mean if you are still interested in a Dalmatian at some point, I can tell you that Mr. Gus is very laid back. Yesterday I watched him run down like a bird that wasn't quite flying yet and it couldn't take off. But then it's like he caught up to it. He was just like mom, there's a thing over here, he was not going to put it in his mouth. Hey mom! I feel like there's no violence in this animal. There's none. 

Laurell: You just never know though. Prey drive is a natural thing. You can work around it and train around it. But how much prey driving an animal has? That's natural. So you lucked out.

Mindy: Yep, I did. He is a perfect boy and he knows it. He's looking at me right now when I say the phrase perfect boy, he's just like, yep, that's me. 

Laurell: Well you and Gus are meant for each other. Now, he's been raised with you not traveling. It's going to be really hard on him. 

Mindy: It's gonna be super, super hard. I was actually gone two weekends ago. I had a ComicCon and then this past weekend I spoke at a library conference. So I was gone the past two weekends and he was devastated. But he stays with my mom, he has a second home, he has 2nd and 3rd homes actually, so he does okay. Last thing, why don't you let listeners know where they can find you online and where they can find the book A Terrible Fall of Angels?

Laurell: Well, A Terrible Fall of Angels is available pretty much everywhere. My website Laurell K Hamilton dot com and I am Official underscore K Hamilton for Instagram. Twitter, I’m L K Hamilton, L. K. H. Underscore official is also for Tiktok, I'm pretty active online. With the lockdown, everything online is now part of the job. It's like the business has changed and I really think this is going to be a permanent change. A Terrible Fall of Angels is out everywhere bookstores and online. I'm getting a lot of love from fans and new fans and a lot of people said they were intimidated because they Anita Blake series was like 28 novels so long, so big. They're saying, oh, thank you for starting a new one. It's like, okay, trust me, the water is fine, come on in. 

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.

Harper Collins Editor Ben Rosenthal On the Editor / Author Relationship

Mindy: Welcome to an exclusive editor featured podcast here on Writer, Writer Pants on Fire. I'm your host, Mindy McGinnis. Today's editor guest is my own editor, Ben Rosenthal of Katherine Tegen books where he is a senior editor. Ben acquires mostly middle grade and YA fiction with select nonfiction graphic novels and picture books. He's worked with such award winning authors and illustrators as myself, Tiffany D. Jackson, Elliot Schrefer, Armand Baltazar and Frank Morrison. Prior to joining Katherine Tegen, Ben was an acquisitions editor at Enslow publishers where he edited nonfiction and middle grade fiction and created a teen fiction imprint, Scarlet Voyage. 

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Mindy: We're gonna start with the basics - what you like working with. I know obviously middle grade and YA but talk a little bit about what kinds of projects you really enjoy working with, and anything in particular that you're looking for at the moment or you would like to see more of.

Ben: I think about this a lot because I feel like my list as a whole is very eclectic because I have pretty wide ranging taste. I'm always worried if people feel like I'm too scatterbrained. For middle grade, I tend to like more fantastical adventures, epic stories where there are big worlds and sweeping adventures. My middle grade list is more fun basically, whereas my YA list is more fun in a different kind of way. And YA, it tends to be a lot more contemporary, dealing with some very serious ideas and distinct perspectives. I really like giving teens books that they can really sink their teeth into and explore, both individual ideas like things that affect the human condition, but then things that are talking about society as a whole. 

I'm really looking for distinct point of views. People of color, people from marginalized backgrounds where their stories haven't been told as often or as certainly as often as we need. I was thinking about this yesterday because I had an author in my office, Justin Reynolds whose book is coming out next year. And he was talking about his book, which is this YA novel that's kind of like Before I Fall meets Everything, Everything. It's like a time loop romance, which is sort of different I guess from my YA list. But it's amazing. It's about these two black characters. One of the things he was talking about how he really wanted to show a black family and just have it be about these kids. Race always informs the character's point of view. So they're black characters, but it's just a love story. I really like what he had to say about that. What I'm looking for now? I have no idea, frankly.

Mindy: It’s okay that way you're open, right?

Ben: I feel totally full. I am kind of open because I need to be head over heels in love with something to even really feel like I can take it on. I'm having a hard time nailing down exactly what it is I'd like to see because I - in addition to having a full list - I feel like I have a lot of different things. I have graphic novels. I have non fiction. I have a picture books, biographies. I'm just looking for something with a really strong voice that can either make me laugh or make me interested. 

Mindy: I realize that agents may not approach you with things they know you don't want. But what is something that you have seen too much of or something that just turns you off why

Ben: Fantasy? I mean, I don't read it, so that's part of it. It's something we publish a lot of at Harper and we publish a lot of it very successfully. I just feel like we already have a lot of really great editors who are seeking it out and publishing it really well, and a lot of brilliant authors. If I found something I was enamored with, it's not like I would eliminate it, but I don't need to add that to our list because we're already doing it really well. It's a really crowded area. There's a lot of it partially because there's a demand, clearly. Although recently I was having lunch with an agent and I said you know, what would be kind of cool is I’d love, like a really funny YA fantasy. I always feel like YA fantasies are so dark and heavy and don't tend to be funny. I don't know, I just think that that would be kind of refreshing.

Mindy: Like The Princess Bride. 

Ben: Yeah, like I feel like that would be pretty cool. 

Mindy: It's the hardest thing to do, right?

Ben: Yeah, it is hard. I mean you do it pretty well. But yeah, it's hard. It is not easy and it's funny too because even people who I'd say are actually good at it often still don't even make me audibly laugh a lot. It’s definitely always something I look for because as you're saying, it is so rare. I have a YA coming out in August called Heretics Anonymous, that's really funny and made me audibly laugh. I'm excited about that. I mean it's tough. Absolutely.

Mindy: Well, humor depends so much on delivery, facial cues and body language and you don't have that. You just have the text that you're putting in front of your reader. And I think that's a huge challenge for writers and I think specifically when that is your niche, you know, it doesn't matter what's going on in your life personally, if you are expected to deliver humor. you better be funny. 

Ben: Especially consistent humor, too. It's like some people can get a couple of good jokes in a book. Minor characters provide some comedic relief, but like to make a book consistently funny, chapter by chapter. It's really difficult. The book I mentioned is Heretics Anonymous, Katie Henry, she's a playwright. She starts her manuscripts with dialogue and her dialogue is just incredible. You know, not that you need to be a playwright to be funny obviously, but it's certainly it's helped her because her comedic timing is just really good. The dialogue feels very natural. I mean with film or tv, like how many truly funny shows or movies are there? Truly funny, where you like, laugh out loud. That's just a hard thing to do. 

Mindy: I will say Barry on HBO. 

Ben: I haven't watched it yet. 

Mindy: Extraordinarily funny. Brooklyn 99 is funny.

Ben: That is funny. Yeah, that's a good one. And with reading too, which is why it's even harder. Like if you watch a show or if you go to a movie and other people laugh, you laugh more. When I've gone to a comedy show I laughed more even if the jokes aren't as funny. It's just something about other people laughing that really helps. But when you're reading you're by yourself. So it has to be really funny for you to laugh because otherwise I don't know you just you don't do it. 

Mindy: It has to be completely spontaneous. It's difficult. If I laugh when I'm alone in a room. I'm just like, oh I just did that.

Ben: It feels weird. It's like, wait shouldn't have done that. What's happening here?

Mindy: I brought some social mores. Make note, Ben likes funny stuff.

Ben: I do. 

Mindy: In order to write humor, you actually have to be funny and not many people are actually funny.

Ben: It can't be forced. There's got to be some kind of organic quality to it where it doesn't feel like I'm trying to make you laugh on purpose. I'm just making you laugh because I happen to be funny. 

Mindy: I think a lot of people have a misconception of an editor's role. I'm often asked, especially by aspiring writers, if my editor ever makes me change things with my books. So can you talk a little bit about what an editor does with the manuscript and how they work with the author?

Ben: It's different from author to author, depending on the style the author wants to work in. When I'm writing an edit letter to an author, what I'm trying to do is ask as many questions as possible, because one of the reasons I'm doing that is because I'm trying to figure it out myself, too. And so my goal is to kind of look for the areas where I feel like we want to work on something, whether it be like this character is not quite working or there's a plot hole or it's not a strong enough through line. Pose questions to help both of us think about it. I do make some suggestions, but I'm very comfortable with an author being like no - I mean you certainly said no to me on many occasions. Sometimes we'll go back and forth because I really think something's important. 

But ultimately, like, I want the author to feel they've come to the decision on their own to do this or not do this because it's that person's book. I want to try to get it to be as best as it can be, as obviously the author does, but there comes a point where they need to be happy with what the words say and what the story is doing. So I always feel like that's my job is to try to get us and the author to really dig as deep as possible into the story, into the characters, into the plot and make sure we're answering all the questions that we want the story to answer. When a reader reads something, obviously they want to be entertained. But a lot of it is they end up thinking and reflecting about something and if something doesn't make sense, then that's always annoying. I write edit letters that way. Oftentimes after I send an edit letter, like we either set up a call to talk about it or just go back and forth on email. So I like to think of it as a dialogue because obviously there are many ways to do something, but it can be the most effective way to do this. I never make anyone change anything. 

Mindy: Right. Right. Well, and I think that's a huge misconception because I hear that a lot. I mean often when I am doing events, at libraries or if I'm at a festival and I'm doing a panel so many times I’m asked - Have you ever had to change anything that your editor made you change that you wish you hadn't changed? And there's this assumption that that has in fact happened and they want to hear that story and I'm like, no. I was like, if anything I buck my editor all the time and it's just like, that's how it works. It's very much a collaboration. I think they have the concept of the buck stopping with the editor and I'm sure that there probably are some editors that operate that way, but I can't imagine that they would be terribly successful. 

Ben: I mean, I don't know the closest thing you ever get to, like for me where I make someone change some things, I just feel really strongly about it. I'm going to present the argument for why. I think this will be a problem if we don't make this change. Usually we come to some kind of agreement about why the change should be made. But I wouldn't say that's making anyone do anything. If I can present a clear argument for why something should be some way and we agree to changing it, hat's a collaborative process. If I'm imposing my will on the book, I feel like that's just a dangerous game.

Mindy: Agreed. And I also think with my experience with you and with Sarah and with Ari my other editors that I've had has always been that if the editor sees something most of the time, honestly, the editors are right. And the author is too personally invested in a scene or a twist or a character quirk or whatever the case may be and they're just not seeing the issues or why it's a problem. Most of the time, my experience has been that the editors will say this isn't working, this is why I believe it's not working. And then they offer a solution. Usually I reject their solution, but I come up with my own and we parry back and forth until we have a solution that wasn't necessarily mine, it wasn't necessarily yours. But the initial issue of - this wasn't working for me - most of the time, I'll come around to seeing it. Not always, but a lot of the time and usually we come to a fix that is a result of mutual brainstorming. 

Ben: Yeah, exactly. And I think that's all, that's the goal is to make sure you can get to a place where the change feels very organic to what you wanted it to be. Sometimes it isn't what the editor suggests and it isn't exactly what you suggest, but it's something in the middle, somewhere on the spectrum of whatever that change is going to be. I think that works pretty well. Trust is such a big part of it. The more you can get on the same page as author and editor, usually the better you can work together.

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Mindy: Now as a former librarian, people often told me they were jealous of my job because I got to sit around and read all day, which was totally not the case. I'm sure that you do a lot of reading as part of your job, but it's only a single element. I know often you tell me that you read on the train to and from work. So what is your day like at the office? How much reading is actually done at the office? Take us through the day of an editor, basically.

Ben: I don't get to do a lot of reading at work. The morning is usually spent reading submissions on my phone because I get motion sick. So I have found that my phone is actually the best way to combat that on the train. The day, obviously it depends. There's usually some like amalgamation of meetings and emails, which is a lot of the day, frankly. You know, meetings with design to talk about covers or meetings with marketing, meetings with publicity. Think of it as kind of like a film director because you're at the center of everything and you're communicating. Like we talk to everyone. So we talk to management, the copy editors, we talk to production, we talk to design, we talk to marketing, publicity, sales. Within the company we’re the center of the project. You kind of need to be aware of every moving piece so that we can communicate that to the author. And so that the author can communicate that to us. I mean a huge part of the job is communication, verbal or written. I spend so much of my day talking to people. Probably it’s not what you'd imagine for an editor because it seems kind of like a sit at your desk, reclusive kind of job, I guess. And certainly there are parts of it like that. But it is amazing how much you spend your time talking or writing to people. 

Mindy: Lots of take home, I'd imagine then. 

Ben: So most of the editing I do is either in the evenings, on the weekends or I work from home one day a week and that is a very important day for me. 

Mindy: I’ll be writing while I'm traveling. I'll be promoting one book and writing another and people will say, how do you do that? How can you work like that when you're on the road and you're constantly moving? This is actually the best time for me to work because I have no other duties. Like, I can turn on the outside persona where I go and I'm doing the promotion. But I don't have to clean a house, I don't have to make any food, I don't have to mow a yard. Everything is taken care of for me. I can literally pick up a phone and have food brought to me. I'm being waited on hand and foot like in a hotel. This is the perfect time to write, when I'm on an airplane for 4-6 hours. People aren't talking to each other. This is the perfect time to write, this is the perfect time to get it done. For me, when I'm traveling, I actually find that to be some of my most productive times because I don't have other demands on my time other than email. Emails always. I mean, I answer email for 2, 2.5 hours every day, so I can imagine that yours is even worse. 

Ben: Yeah,it's a lot, it's a lot of email. One of the things I've been doing the last few months is when I do work at home, I get up at my normal time and I get to this coffee shop in our town by like, 6:30 and by 9:30 I feel like I've done a full day's work because it's just so rare to get, like, three hours totally uninterrupted. And I leave feeling like I've conquered the world because I found much I've accomplished in such a short amount of time. I was never a believer in like, people who went to coffee shops to work always felt kind of like, performative to me. But now I'm taking that back because it has really worked.

Mindy: One time in my life, I worked in a coffee shop. I was on the road and I was with a fellow author. I was with Liz Coley and she always works in coffee shops and we had three hours downtime in between appearances and we were already out of our hotel. We checked out. She's like, well, we'll just find a coffee shop inside. I was like, oh God. And then I'm like, yeah, ok, sure. I got my coffee and my little doughnut or whatever, and we sat down and by God, I kicked out a short story. 

Ben: Yeah, this works. That's why you should never judge anything until you've done it. 

Mindy: No, I've learned my lesson. People outside of publishing are always surprised when I tell them it takes 18 months to two years for a book to go from contracts to publication. They are just shocked. They're like, well, isn't it finished? And I'm just like oh, you don't understand. So what's the lifetime of a manuscript like from when it crosses your desk to publication day? 

Ben: The acquisition process at Harper, is pretty formal. When I get a submission that I love. I'll just send it to my boss, Katherine Tegen. And assuming she likes it, I bring it to an acquisitions meeting and that's where different people from the heads of the various departments are there and they've reviewed the material and we have a conversation about it. And depending on what the situation is, If I end up getting the book, it could be like a long time before you actually work on it, because you're balancing your own list. You're balancing the list at large. Well, we think about our own imprint list, and then we think about the Harper Children's list as a whole. Other kinds of factors you might think about for a book, like, if you're doing a series that would really have great Halloween promotion, like All right, well then it has to be on this particular season. Yeah, it could be three or 4 or 5 months before you actually sit down to edit the book. 

You know, the editorial process is a couple of months, sometimes three months, it depends how much work needs to be done. But that's just the back and forth we were talking about already. And then once a manuscript is done, you submit it to copy editing, there's the copy editing stage. And all while this is happening, like while we're working on it, having the cover designed and talking about that. You launch the book which is like this big meeting where editors get to present their titles to the whole division. The author gets to review the first past pages. Kind of get your last look at the designed interior. The book is proofread and marketing and publicity are working on their plans and you have galleys made and those get sent out and yeah, it's a long road. There's a lot that goes into it. Sales, they go on their sales calls. 

I mean that's part of the reason there is so much lead time is that sales needs time to sell into the stores. I believe publishing is still a little bit too slow. It feels like we could be a little bit quicker than we are now because it is such an old business. It still functions in a lot of ways, the way it used to and there's something kind of nice about that. But there's also something a bit frustrating about it because change is good. Even if it's hard. I'd say two years is a long time to go from contract to publication. But there are a lot of necessary steps that help get a traditionally published book into the right hands. And the way we're currently set up requires a lot of time.

Mindy: How many people would you say ballpark are involved in an individual title and the promotion of it from the editor down to the sales team?

Ben: It's a good question. I mean it's a lot. Editor, copy editor, managing editor, production editor, designer. And then often our design team is fantastic. And they usually find outside artists a lot of times, it's outside artists that they work with. You have potentially one or two or three design people, one marketing director. But usually they're helped by their whole team. You have a publicist. The sales is a team because you have your independent bookstore sales reps and they're kind of region by region. And then you've got B&N sales rep and your Amazon sales rep, and your Books A million sales rep, and your Follet, Ingram Baker and Taylor sales rep. And then you've got school library marketing and so yeah, there's a lot of hands on your book at various times. One of the reasons it does take so long is because we take a lot of care in making sure we publish the best possible book or product because so much goes into it. We want the art to look right, we want obviously the story to work, right? And it takes a lot of time.

Mindy: I think it's worth it as a writer. I actually enjoy, in some ways, that length of time because by the time my book is out, I am somewhat emotionally recovered from the book, if that makes sense. I'm no longer emotionally attached to it. It's not my brand new baby. It's got its own legs now. It can go walk itself out into the world. So I'm able to read reviews, professional reviews and I'm able to process things like that a little differently then when it's very, very fresh to you. It's like a wound in a lot of ways. Got to close a little bit. 

Ben: I kind of agree with that because sometimes when the book comes out, if I'm at a an event and I hear the author reading it or, I don't know, if I happen to just look at it myself. I'm like, oh yeah, I remember that part! I have to like, almost dig in again and it's kind of nice too because it's just like, oh man, this! I forgot about this, this is pretty awesome! This is exciting. 

Mindy: Absolutely. I feel the same way. Well, you know, I wrote the bulk of A Madness So Discreet, very fast in like three weeks. And I picked it up one time at a conference where I was on a panel and it was a big panel. There were like 10 or 12 people on the panel. So it would take a long time for things to come back around to me and I happen to have Madness in my lap. So I just kind of opened it and I was looking at it and I would read something, like that's pretty good, you know? And just be kind of taken aback and be like, oh, I completely forget writing that. I forgot that that happens. It's kind of fun to rediscover something that you yourself wrote. 

Ben: And there's a kind of fatigue when you work on something for so long. You're so deep into it, trying to make it as good as it can be. It's hard. It's hard work. Obviously, if you don't love the work, you probably wouldn't do it. But just because you love something doesn't mean it isn't hard. So it's that distance is helpful because it can kind of reignite the joy, allow you to take some pleasure in it. I mean, that's even hard still. Like it's hard sometimes to not be like, oh, we should have done that.

Mindy: I don't do readings very often because of the fact that I'll open up one of my books and I'll find a section and I'll start reading it. And most of the time I'm actually editing it as I read it, people would not be able to follow along because I'm changing words, I'm dropping things, I'm skipping paragraphs. Like why did I leave that paragraph in there? That's dumb. You know? And so people, aspiring writers ask me all the time, how do you know when a book is finished and it's like it's never finished. I could read a finished book of mine right now, I'd find things to change. 

Ben: I know. Yeah. It's affected the way I read in general. Like I was having this conversation just the other day with Katherine and another editor at Harper, talking about how reading for pleasure has become a challenge. I've had that really, had fallen into that plight. Especially I like to read middle grade and UA because obviously I like it, that's why I work on it. But also because I like to just see what other people are doing and read those books for fun. But also just to get a sense of, you know why it's working or why people love it so much when I read it, I can't help but kind of evaluate it. That's just annoying. I'm getting really annoyed with myself doing that because it's like I just want to read this for enjoyment's sake and kind of having a hard time I can't anymore.

Mindy: I actually had the same conversation with Adriann when I talked with her because I have that experience as a writer. Adriann has that experience from the point of view of an agent because she'll be reading something and she said she'll even think I wouldn't have sold it to that house, I would have taken it to this house. I think that editor would have done a better job. As a writer when I'm reading it, I'll catch echoes, that's my big thing. I'll be like, you just use that word, why are you using that word again? You're better than that, you know? And then always, just dialogue. I'm pulling apart dialogue. I'm assessing. I'm looking at pacing, I'm not just reading the book. A book has to be extraordinary to actually transport me at this point because I am no longer just a reader and it is a very frustrating thing because this is one of my hobbies, this is something that I do for fun. This is a huge element of who I am and it has been contaminated in some ways by work.

Ben: You know, It's so true, so true. One of our editorial assistants, she's a big comics and graphic novel fan and I acquired a graphic novel like a year ago or something. And I've read them a lot as a kid, I read comics a lot as a kid. I had been away from them for a long time and I I really like them and I read them sporadically. But it was fun. I actually really got to read this because I want to really kind of understand the craft of graphic novel. She was like, well you should read Saga. I think it's incredible. It's pretty high sci fi fantasy which isn't necessarily my thing, but it's hilarious. Like it's really funny. 

Mindy: I found myself watching more tv than reading because it's not a medium I can really pick apart because I don't know anything about It.

Ben: I think too, I just get fatigued from reading in general. I do it so much for work that when I get home. I mean there are times where I really do want to read a book, there's something I'm excited to read. But I'm usually so tired that I'll read like 10 pages and I’m done.

Mindy: I actually get migraines now. I'm at this point in my life. Well I started getting them in college because I had to read so much but I just get eyestrain and I get migraines from reading too much. And that's one of the reasons why whenever I'm asked for a blurb I always ask for an ARC or a bound galley instead of an e book because when I am scrolling and I'm tracking with my eyes and I've got the backlight, I'll go to migraine within an hour if I'm not super careful. Even the paper white and all the things that Kindle has tried to do to make it better for your eyes, I can't do it. 

Ben: And because I read on my phone and the print is pretty small. I don't really like to read on my Kindle either when I read at home, it's always a book. 

Mindy: What about audio books? Have you tried audio for pleasure? 

Ben: I used to do that a lot actually, I found that I did not realize I had stopped paying attention and so I would have to either go back or just be like, all right, well, I missed something. Hopefully it won't be a big enough deal for me to know what's going on. So, I had an Audible account for a while. You know, I did enjoy it, but it felt like a chore. It became a chore to me because like, all right, well, I gotta listen to this book in a month because then I get my next credit. Do I want a long book because then I have to really make sure I listen to the whole thing and if I do a short book, is that really worth the credit then? And I don't know, it became annoying. I really like podcasts and that's much easier. So I cancelled my account. I mean, I like audio books and the media might kind of be enjoyable but I wanted it to be an enjoyable experience. So once it started feeling like a chore was like, yeah, this doesn't work for me. 

Mindy: I will say the one thing with audio books that happens to me is that I will, you're talking about zoning out if I'm on a plane, I'll fall asleep. When I'm driving, obviously I can't fall asleep, but when I am on a plane I will fall asleep and I will wake up and one time I don't remember what book I was listening to, but I had fallen asleep and I woke up and I looked at my phone and I had been asleep for about half an hour and I didn't really miss anything and I was like, oh this pacing is pretty off.

Ben: You’re judging it again, right?

Mindy: It’s hard to still be able to participate in a hobby that you enjoy when it's your job as well. So yeah ups and downs of truly loving your job. I guess. 

Ben: I was listening to Jerrod Carmichael, the comedian, he was asked what comedians do you like? or  what are you watching? And he was saying, nothing really. He wasn't saying like there's no one funny, similar to the kind of what we're talking about, like that's not what he gets his enjoyment out of. He's evaluating it and I feel like any time you're really immersed in something so deeply and it's the work you do and it's not just the work you do, but it's your passion. Like you really care about it, you really want what you're making to mean something. Mean something to kids to really have an impact on them. It becomes such a big part of your life that doing that thing for pleasure, obviously it's going to become a little bit more difficult because you're just so immersed so you can't just turn off that part of your brain and be like, no, no, no, this is - remember, this is for fun right now.

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.

Saumya Dave On Writing Mental Health, Family Relationships & Debuting In A Pandemic

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 a a guest.

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Mindy: We're here with Saumya Dave, author of What A Happy Family, which is available from Berkeley and it features mental health in a very large way. Talking especially about families from a humorous edge and pressures of internal family mechanisms. I know that my family in particular has a lot of their own little jabs and jibes and things that we all kind of assume about each other as the family member that has a certain role. So for example, I'm the youngest, so my role is to always be wrong. 

I would just like to talk a little bit about first mental health because you are also a practicing psychiatrist, so it's a fascinating coalescence of two different journeys, your career, but then also your writing, coming together and bolstering each other. So if you could tell us first of all what the book, What A Happy Family is about and then if you can tell me a little bit just about the mental health in fiction narrative and what it's like to be exploring that also from your profession. 

Saumya: Sure, well, I love the way you described What A Happy Family with that idea about mechanisms in a family, I think that's such a perfect way to think about it, but in short it's about a family that settled in Atlanta. There are five members of the immediate family and then one member Zach, who is married to the eldest daughter in the family. And the book really goes through how each member of this family navigates mental health in their own ways and the ways that all of these family members hurt each other and then hopefully how they help learn to heal each other. 

So I'm a psychiatrist like you said, and I have been reading fiction for my entire life, so when I was a little girl, I wanted to be a doctor and a writer. And it wasn't until I was in high school in college when people said to me, you're going to have to pick one, you can't do both, not a thing, people don't do that. And I saw that reflected in the community and then the greater world at large around me. So I thought, okay, I do have to pick and I picked the pre-med part of it and thought, okay, I will write later, I will write in my free time. And I learned very quickly that it doesn't always work that way. I know there are a lot of disciplined people out there who can put in their time to all the things that matter to them. But I learned about myself that if I didn't block off hours and if I didn't commit to writing the way I committed to this other career that I was going after, it would get lost eventually. And that was something that really scared me. 

So I, from a young age, turned to fiction to teach me about life. As the daughter of immigrants, as someone who felt like an outsider many, many times growing up. And as I started writing more and more and my debut came out during the pandemic of course, which is great. I've had two books in a pandemic When my debut out in July of 2020, I learned by going to a lot of virtual book clubs that a lot of people turned to fiction to teach them about life, to comfort them, to entertain them. And during my residency training, when I was learning about the ins and outs of psychiatry I realized I wasn't finding very much fiction that explored mental health.There are books out there that do that and they do it really, really well. I just couldn't find one about a family and about the things they do and don't tell each other. 

The roles that they put on each other in the way they may be regressed back into those roles when they're together and how those roles impact their own selves when they're not even with their family members. So in their workplaces and their romantic relationships and their friendships. So, after my debut came out, I thought, what if this is what the second book is about? What if I put together some of the insights I've learned through my psychiatry training and through seeing patients and and put it through fiction and see how that comes out as a story, the kind of story that I always hope to read. 

Mindy: Everything that you're saying about learning through fiction...I think that fiction and reading in general are the quickest path to empathy and I don't know about you, but a lot of people that I know that are also creatives have struggled during this pandemic, to both read and write, definitely want to talk to you about having two books released during a pandemic - what a lovely experience for you. But first I would like to talk about something you mentioned - wanting to be both a psychiatrist and a writer. Those are two huge goals. And first of all, it's amazing to me that as a child you were like, I want both of these things that I'm going to get them. That's awesome. I love it. 

I myself always just knew that I wanted to be a writer. However, what I want to point out about your path that I think is super smart and a wonderful thing to share with my readers is that you did two things that I love here. You made the decision to - in essence - be practical and go the pre med route. If anyone were to ask me, hey, what do I do? Do I become a doctor or a writer? I'm like, you become a doctor and then you write on the side because I can say as someone that worked in the public schools. I was the librarian, but I worked in the public schools for 14 years and I think I had published my fifth or my sixth book before I was able to actually live off of that income. So it is a lovely dream. It is a difficult thing to attain and an even more difficult thing to actually make a living from. 

I love that you instinctively seemed to know that. But then also just had that little, niggling - no, I want to write. And that's so beautiful because it should never be ignored. I always tell people, if you get a flash of inspiration, you grab it, you take it, you go. If you have a dialogue or scene or a title or whatever it is, lightning doesn't strike twice. Once you have it, you grab it, you write it down. If you have that urge to write, in the moment, you need to sit down and do it. 

Saumya: Oh, I love that so much because I think there's so much to be said about keeping our passions alive and present no matter what they are. And all the writers I've met over the years, they feel as though it's this core part of who they are. So when they don't do it for very long periods of time, they want to return to it. And of course that time they vary, because life happens and so many things might be going on. But I've always found that you know, whether it's a week, a month, a year, whatever it is, people who love words want to return to words. 

Mindy: So I love what you said because there's so much power in keeping those things with us and close to us and nurturing them and it's so much a part of who we are like you said, I think you're ignoring a very strong sense of self purpose and drive if you just try to put it in a box and set it aside for now. You lose it. Which is something that you did mention earlier and you run that risk of losing it. But I also think you run the risk of losing part of yourself. 

Saumya: That's so, so true. One thing that was going through my head a lot when I was in college and I was completely focused on the premed path was, is my future self going to be resentful? And that question kept coming up again and again and I realized then, you know, I was in my early twenties at that time that I don't want to be resentful when I'm older, I don't want to be resentful. So what can I do to prevent future resentment? And that question has helped me in a lot of daily and longer term decisions. 

Mindy: That is really cool. I like that a lot that you are asking questions of your future self and saying, you know, what do you want? How do you want to feel? Uh I really like that I actually had a conversation with my boyfriend about future selves and how we thought of ourselves when we were younger, Not necessarily what our goals were, but what we pictured ourselves as when we were children and whether or not our core ourselves have changed. So interesting that you bring this up about yourself and knowing this about yourself at a young age.

I had a similar experience. We're a very midwestern family. I'm from Ohio, I grew up on a farm, that's what we do. We are farmers, we are farmers and teachers, that is what we produce. That is who we are. I come along and I don't want those things, I want to be a writer and I knew that from a very young age, but I didn't necessarily have that phrase. I didn't know that that was what I was doing. What I was doing even when I was a very small child was inserting myself into the narrative. 

So, I would be reading a book and I'd be like, well, if I were in this story, this is what I would do, and I would write a scene with myself and it as a child. So I would be, you know, rewriting Bridge to Terabithia, you know, with me in it and kind of fan fiction in a way, is what we would call it now. But I always took tv shows that I loved or stories, books, cartoons, whatever it was. I would insert myself in it, like, as a new character, create storylines for myself and for these other characters. I didn't know that I was writing, this was just what I did. This was myself. 

I think I must have had the assumption that this was a child enterprise, this was what I did as a very small child and that I would essentially grow out of it the way you grow out of your toys. I get to be 6th, 7th, 8th grader and I'm still doing it. This is what I do in my spare time, is writing stories and now they are usually entirely my own creations. I'm no longer inserting myself into tv shows I'm writing and doing these things in my head, this is how I go to sleep as I'm laying down and creating these narratives, and because I don't know anyone else that does this, and because it is very much a different, a new thing in my family, I was worried that there was something wrong with me, I was worried that there was some sort of mental health issue because I wasn't living in the present and I wasn't living in reality, and I was actually very concerned for my mental health, not knowing that what I was doing was creative, and essentially I was writing all the time. 

Saumya: How did that go from then on? How did you know, okay, I'm a writer and this is what I need to do?

Mindy: I think that eventually I bridged that gap, but as a 13, 14 year old, sitting down with my parents and having this big heartfelt, “Guys, I think I'm insane.” You know, and they were like, oh no, you're not, honey, it's okay, you're just creative and you're imaginative, and this is a good thing. My parents are wonderful people and they've always supported and pushed literacy and reading. And they were like, no, this is good. You're just a very creative person and that's okay. You know, the people around you aren't so you're not seeing it. So you think this is weird. I just needed someone to say this is okay, you're not weird.

Saumya: There's so much power in getting that. And I imagine especially in your teens, to hear that from your family must have felt so comforting to you to know that There was not only support, but there was an explanation for what made you, you. 

Mindy: Yes. One that meant that I was not going down an unsafe route. I think that was my concern was that I wasn't spending enough time doing, quote unquote real things. So yeah, I was worried that I wasn't grounded enough in reality and kind of, operating off of a very 1890s mental health standard for women. 

Saumya: Yeah. That somehow still finds its way into things today too. So I hear that.

Mindy: Yeah, somehow, even as a child, as a teenager, I knew this, I knew that someone somewhere would point at me and tell me I was wrong. Speaking about that support then that I had from my family and bringing it back to your work and especially the novel, What A Happy Family when we're talking about family roles. Those are so powerful. Just in my example, I needed my parents to say this is okay, this is acceptable. And of course I was young enough that that was a huge boon to me to have that grant of permission to continue in this vein. So then, speaking about your novel and some of the different family interactions inside of it, what are those, I don't want to call it power struggles - although it can become that - those different dynamics, how do they play out within the novel? 

Saumya: The novel really explored exactly what you said, you know, how our families receive us or how they maybe don't. And the latter is really what comes out through all of the characters, or at least that was my goal in writing it. And what I wanted to show was how each child, there are three Children in the Joshi family there are, Suhani, Natasha and Anuj and Suhani is married to Zach, so he's also a pretty big part of the story and each of those children. They have the same parents Deepak and Vina, but they turned out so differently, even though they have the same parents. I wanted to explore how that can be possible and how a parent can be different with each child.

So even though the child is of course different, they have their own personality and their own experiences and preferences and all of these different things, they also get different parents with each round. So, Vina you know, comes from such a different background than her husband and she comes from parents who really cared about image and her making something of herself and having something to be proud of for a cause that was purely her own and they felt very disappointed in her for marrying someone and not being an actress the way she had been primed to for her entire life. 

So she takes a lot of that unresolved ambition and it goes into her oldest child, goes into Suhani and she tells Suhani, this is what you have to do in life, this is how you're happy, and this is how I'm looking out for you and what she doesn't realize is that that makes Suhani really count on external measures of success to to be equated to happiness. 

She sees a lot of herself as a woman in Natasha as the second child in the family. And so she acts out of fear a lot in the hopes that Natasha doesn't go through the struggles that she does. But a lot of times that fear comes out as criticism, it comes out as complaints, it comes out as them arguing with each other and really butting heads. And so, you know, I really wanted to show how this woman coming from a loving place, and really just loving being a mom and being a member of this family can have such different impacts on her three children. And then of course how that affects her marriage and how her husband may not always have the same perspective when it comes to their kids as she does.

Mindy: So powerful. I know that all of my boyfriend's throughout high school and onward, when you're really interacting with the entire family would always say, oh my gosh, you get mad at your mom so fast! Why? Your mother is so sweet and so loving and so caring and you just get mad at her so quickly! And she is, she is all those things and it's always coming from a positive place. But it's also like my entire life has been correction, not in a bad way, but always towards her and who she is, which is more quiet, more kind, more for lack of a better word feminine than I just naturally am and it continues on. I'm 42, and as soon as there is any hint of course correction, I'm like, no, don't talk to me. 

Saumya: It's so interesting how that is such a universal thing. I'm the same way with my own mom, with my own dad and you're so right, it doesn't matter how old we are, those dynamics just stay, they stay forever. 

Mindy: They really do. We go back into our younger selves with our parents and it's not always negative, always, it's just a cycle. And uh, that's, these are the roles that we play and I love what you're saying about there being different roles for the parent with each child. I have an older sister and I see how my parents are different with her than they are with me. They're always handling me a little more carefully. I'll just put it that way. Always with the, please don't make Mindy mad. It is not worth it. But then also, it's also hilarious when she's mad. So maybe we should poke her a little. So there's always, there's that back and forth that oscillation. 

Saumya: That's so true. I was also so interested in how Family members who are part of the same memories, the same events, the same trips. They can look back on those and have very different perspectives. So that idea actually came from, I was at home for all of 2020. My husband and baby and I lived with my parents and grandparents for the entire first part of the pandemic. And my siblings and I were talking about this vacation, we went on 15, 20 years ago and I thought the vacation was wonderful. I thought we had a great time and I only have happy memories when I look back on the vacation till this day. So I was telling them that they said, you know, we didn't have a good time at all. You were really bossy, telling us what to do and it was miserable. And I didn't know that until I'm here in my mid thirties that they have a completely different view of that same trip that I continue to have very good feelings about. So, I also got very interested in that idea, that we as family members can be part of the exact same events and have such different takeaways from those events that stay with us. 

Mindy: It's so funny that you say that we had this saying when I was a kid, “Mindy is being a butt,” that was what was often said. I hated family trips, I hated going out into public and now, like as an adult, I know why I don't like being in large crowds. It's not necessarily a fear. It really comes down to identity. I have a very strong feeling of who I am, and when I'm in a very large crowd, I'm surrounded by all those identities and it just strikes a sour chord within me. I don't know why I feel a little bit last. I feel a little bit overwhelmed as a child. That was very intense as an adult, I know how to handle it. Of course, I have a better sense of my own identity. So it's a little different, but as a child, I was literally overwhelmed by personalities, having too many people in one place was too much for me. So when we would go to the zoo or we would go to an amusement park and it's supposed to be a big fun time and I am psychologically miserable and just very unhappy and usually it's hot. So, you know, I'm physically uncomfortable surrounded by people and strangers. I'm also scared of heights so I couldn't ride rides. And then everybody was giving me a hard time for being difficult. 

Saumya: That must have all been so overwhelming.

Mindy: So much, too much of everybody wants to take pictures. And even as a child I had this like, real grip on irony and everybody's like, everybody together and have a happy family picture and I'm like, fuck this. So I would literally turn my back to the camera. They would be like, we're taking a picture of all the Children and the cousins together and I'd be like, no, and I would just turn and show the camera my back and everybody would, you know, uh say, “Mindy's being a butt.” Her butt is what's in the picture. So to this day as an adult when we're in public, they'll be like, “Mindy don't be a butt.” 

I'm like, listen, I’m in a better place mentally now and I know my roles, but it was also I I learned that I would get in trouble then if not, I mean quote unquote trouble, everyone was always fairly kind and understanding, but I would be grumpy and angry and fearful in many ways. So I would be lashing out and then I would get in trouble for being rude or having a temper. So I learned to just shut down emotionally mentally, physically, whatever make myself as small as possible. And just this was how I was quote unquote, being good. Then I get in trouble because I'm not happy.

Saumya: You can't win. 

Mindy: No, I couldn't win. Being an adult and moving through space, and like how to handle myself a little bit better, but also being around other people that function in that same way and seeing their discomfort and how it affects other people and you know, can be the wet blanket. I'm like, okay, I understand how I was being interpreted but also God I was so unhappy and so miserable. And so you know, you're right, those roles, they remain the same. That is essentially still my role in the family. I'm the loose cannon. I'm the one that needs to be controlled or tamped down and mitigated in some way all the time. And as you were saying, it doesn't matter how old you are, this is still who I am within that family system. 

Saumya: Well, I think that what you said about the way you know, when you were at the zoo and how you felt and then how you then learned to present yourself, even if that may have been different from what you were feeling inside. It's such a powerful statement because I think as kids, we can learn even if we don't consciously process it, we learn what parts of us are acceptable socially and what parts are not and so we learn how to adapt in different ways and when you said the part about shutting down, I thought, yes, that must be so common. I can't imagine how many kids there are who feel that shutting down is the safer option and it's the more acceptable option. 

Mindy: Absolutely. And I see it. I still work in schools as a substitute. I ended up going in and working as a substitute in a long term position last year because of Covid and I was with fifth graders and that was the youngest range of Children I'd ever handled. And I knew from my own experiences, especially with youth, you know, once more than one person is correcting them. It's a tidal wave of social unacceptability. The kids they want, especially the helpers. You know, they want everyone in the class to be good and respectful to the teacher. And so if I correct someone, there's immediately four or five little ones going, Yeah, David, you know, it's like, no, no, no, you guys, I'm the adult in the room. You don't get to jump on David, the person being attacked shuts down or lashes out usually shuts down. And I know that feeling and it's so devastating because you are, you're just like, okay, I'm not acceptable. I won't interact and that's so painful. 

Saumya: It is, it's so painful. And you know, I just did a virtual book club last week and one of the members asked, do you think that the family is happy by the end? She was speaking to the title and I told her that I don't know if happiness is always the goal, whether we're talking about the beginning, middle or end of the story. What I hope for any family, any community, whatever group we're thinking about that's connected is that there's more honesty and there's more of a belief that each person can show up as themselves and they feel like they can authentically do that. So just being a holistic person and being comfortable with oneself is maybe more of the gold and happiness, because happiness might not always be there, no matter what the dynamic is that we're talking about. 

Mindy: Absolutely. And I think happiness to people, I love what you said, happiness may not always be the goal. Happiness essentially should be fleeting. I don't think it is, much like anger, it's not a sustainable emotion. 

Saumya: That's such a good point. And I think we don't say that enough. 

Mindy: No, we don't. I always tell people contentment is underrated. 

Saumya: I love that and I love that distinction also between contentment.

Mindy: Happy couple, happy family, happy marriage because of the phrases we use. I don't know those things exist. 

Saumya: Yes, it's so true. And I don't know if, like you said, that should be the ultimate goal, maybe we should change all of those to contentment. Contentment. Friendship with contentment, parent with contentment, all of those roles. 

Mindy: If you were happy all the time, then I think you're probably ignoring something. 

Saumya: That's so true. I was hoping when Natasha goes through a lot of her own journey with her own mental health in the book, she's very hard on herself, but her family and members of the south asian community that she's growing up around there also hard on her too, so it's not all in her head when she thinks that what she brings to the table is not completely acceptable and what she wants to do with her life. She wants to be a stand up comedian, it isn't always well received and it isn't always celebrated, but my hope is that she also sees her strengths. And I remember once when I was learning about anxiety during my training, my professor actually said, well, people who have anxiety, they also are very, very good at planning. They're thinking ahead, it's a future oriented state because you're always anticipating and there's some strength to that, there are a lot of good things that come from that. So the idea is to make sure that it's in an amount that's not hurting someone and it's not maladaptive to what they want to do, but we also should celebrate our full spectrum of whatever it is, we're bringing to the table. 

Mindy: Yes, absolutely, learning yourself, being aware of yourself, those are powerful tools.

Saumya: They’re such powerful tools and I wish that those were encouraged from a young age because I think we learned so many other things in school, which is great. But I hope that whether it's in classrooms, or wherever it is that we just have that encouragement and support to learn about ourselves and to accept ourselves and each other because I think the world would be in such a different place if that was encouraged from the start. 

Mindy: Yeah, I agree completely.

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Mindy: I want to talk really quickly about your publishing journey and publishing in a pandemic. So I think my eighth or ninth book released the week before we went into lockdown and I know how that affected my sales and my marketing and my promotion. And I already had, you know, 7,8 books out. So I had a built in audience. I had a social media presence, I had a platform that I could operate off of as a debut author coming out during the pandemic. I thought about every debut author, I was just like, oh my gosh, these poor writers that had this goal and they attained it and they attained it at a horrible moment for marketing, for promo for everyone. So, if you could talk about that experience and how that went. 

Saumya: Sure. So it was of course jarring. I think the pandemic was trying for people on so many levels, of course. I spent 10 years working on my debut, so I edited it, I rewrote it. I got rejected over 200 times before I found my agent and my publisher. And the book changed from the first draft, of course, all the way to what ended up being the one that got me the book deal. 

But I think that felt especially like a blow because I thought, oh, here's a decade worth of work. I'm going to be able to celebrate it in person with some friends, I'm going to be able to meet readers and none of those things happened. So there was definitely that let down for quite a bit, but I found within a couple of months of it coming out, there were some unexpected silver linings. So I got to meet so many readers through virtual book clubs. I've done about 100 virtual book clubs in the past year and a half. And it's just been so wonderful because some of them have been international, many of them have been out of the New York area where I live. So I felt that I was able to meet and connect with readers whom I otherwise would not have met if we weren't in the pandemic. So that was really great. 

The second part is that I did feel like a lot of people came together, similar to what you were just saying, that people thought, well what's going to happen to these debut authors and even that sentiment and that empathy for us as a group went such a long way. So I had a lot of other established authors reaching out all the time asking, oh, can I do anything to help you? How can I support you? This just must be so tough. And I felt that support the whole way, I think a lot of those people would have been very supportive otherwise, of course, even if I was publishing in the circumstances that I thought I would, but I just really felt such a movement of that for debuts. And I know that a lot of my fellow debuts felt the same way that a lot of people came together to try to amplify our voices and to promote our work and that meant a lot to us. 

Mindy: Yeah, it's a harsh business at any time to come out during the pandemic. You didn't necessarily have to pivot. A lot of us had to relearn how to promote and you just kind of had to say, okay, we're going to create something new and the fact that you did 100 virtual book clubs, That's amazing. And in fact probably even more effective than a traditional approach. 

Saumya: Yes, you know, it's so funny you say that because one thought that kept coming up again and again when I was debuting in the pandemic was - I wonder if this would have been harder if I was an established author because of exactly what you said. The pivoting. This is all I know, I don't know anything outside writing and publishing in a pandemic. I don't know what the other side looks like at all. So I didn't have to relearn and I didn't have to go through those hoops at all. I just walked straight into this. So I think there are hardships no matter what end that you come from. 

Mindy: I agree. I think too that a lot of people had different experiences of the pandemic. I work from home, my life didn't change knowing that the world around me had gone a completely different direction for everyone else and my life was essentially unchanged, which caused some introspection. I can say that, but also reading changed a lot of people that I know that are very avid readers. Suddenly we're having a hard time reading. People I know that I have never read a book in their lives started. The dynamics of the readership, I think changed in some ways because we have people kind of wandering into this world and being like, I never considered reading and now I'm tired of looking at the screen, I'm tired of binging shows, I had this opportunity and I thought I was going to sit down and watch tv for three months and I'm sick of it and I learned something new. I had the opposite where it was like I'm going to roll through this TBR. I couldn't read, I couldn't read anymore. And so many people I know had the similar situation, my relationship with reading changed as soon as I became a career writer as well. So there's been stages of my relationship with reading changing, but one of the things that changed for me was that I had become a very avid audio book reader because I traveled so much that got cut off and suddenly I'm like holding a book - which used to be my preferred method. I'm hearing a voice in my head and trying to match it with a narrator and I'm just like, oh God, like it was making me crazy, this was not what this was supposed to be. 

Things changed obviously for everyone. Creative world changed. Marketing changed. And I do in some ways as you're saying, I envy you and other debut authors that just walked into this and you have those skill sets and I think a lot of the things that you guys experienced are now going to be a new normal, not necessarily because that's how the world is going to be, but Marketing and promotion changed and we found out that you don't have to fly to Florida for a 20 minute book talk. 

Saumya: So true, that's so true. You guys are going to have some skill sets that some of the alumni are going to have to kind of adapt to. 

Mindy: I know myself, I love traveling. I love meeting people. I don't feel like I get the same connection over virtual, but I think it's changed. I think people are learning how to interact with their screens a little more personally like this and it takes out so many risk factors as well as far as exposure, especially with the things heating up again. 

Saumya: Right, right. I also found that some of the magic still stayed for me as someone who just will always love books. So last year when my debut came out, we were in Atlanta with my family and so my virtual launch was with the bookstore here in Brooklyn, Books Are Magic. So I never saw my book in that bookstore and I've been going there pre pandemic for so many events and when we moved back here when my second book came out and What A Happy Family released, we went straight to that bookstore and I signed copies in person and left them there and I thought wow, this is a magical moment. And yes, it's happening a year later. But that magic is still there and I'm grateful for that because I think sometimes when anything becomes a job, no matter what it is, it can be so natural for it to just become work and for it to not feel like there's a sense of wonder around it. And I think with a lot of the things that we've all lost. I've heard people say, oh I will never take this for granted again. I will never take for granted getting a cup of coffee with a friend or seeing someone from afar in a park or being able to just step outside and walk by people and have conversations that are just daily run of the mill ones. I will never take those things for granted again. So I think there are also these newfound perspectives that have come about and will continue to. 

Mindy: I agree. I wouldn't want to say that I had devalued human interaction, but I wasn't seeing the benefits of it. 

Saumya: Yeah, no, that's so fair. I resonate with that. 

Mindy: Yeah, I wasn't acknowledging even just having a conversation. I go to obviously a very small little grocery store market and talking with the ladies that own the store and just having a little chat, you know, you don't get to do that now. And hanging out with people at my gym after the workout and just be like, man, that was really hard. Like do your glutes hurt? You know, and just having these little interactions. 

Just recognizing the value of those friendships and even business friendships and those, those compartmentalized friendships like at the gym or the market or whatever it is, shopping for groceries, walking through and stopping and getting some water and a mother and her very little boy, like maybe four or five were standing there and he was masked and I was masked and the mom looked over and she was like, oh, I really like your shorts. Because I was wearing my running shorts and she was a runner too. We ended up in a conversation about the benefits of different running shorts. And, and then this little boy was like - my tomatoes are doing really well this year! And he started talking to me about his garden and it was so cute and so sweet and you made me smile for like the rest of the time that I was shopping and it was just, you know, it was like a month ago and I'm still thinking about this little kid that just wanted to tell me about his tomatoes, and it was so endearing. I love that. I love that this child is comfortable doing this. And those little tiny moments that I don't get to have when someone is delivering my groceries to my door. 

Saumya: That's so true. Those daily interactions like you said are fleeting and there's a transient nature to them. I think when we all lost those, we realized how much value they have. Being able to say that quick hello or connect with someone in the grocery store. Those things just make us feel more connected. And it's nice to see some version of that coming back in certain contexts. And I also hope that, you know, that of course keeps going and that we get back to a new normal that's safe and where people still keep those connections alive. I was doing some research on burnout actually just yesterday and found that connecting with others has been proven to help with burnout. There's so many interventions out there for it, but really connecting with others and whatever way that might look is a helpful thing. 

Mindy: Yeah. And I did not give enough credit to the energy that others give me when I'm at home and I'm writing it's all output. It's all output. And if I'm not going out and interacting, I draw energy from other people and those moments they give me an uplift, they give me a smile, They give me everything I need to come back home and be isolated again. Hopefully. 

Saumya: Yes. Yes, that's such a good point. Especially when the work you're doing is solitary work. 

Mindy: Yeah, very much so. Last thing if you could let listeners know where they can find the book, What a happy family and where they can find you online. 

Saumya: Sure. So What A Happy Family is available wherever books are sold. I love supporting independent bookstores. So if you have an independent bookstore in your area, they may already carry it or you can request it and they are wonderful and usually get it within a week. Of course online at all of the online retailers. So Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Target dot com, all of those. And in terms of where to find me, I'm at Saumya J. Dave on Instagram and on Twitter with the same username and then my website is www.saumyadave.com. 

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.