Latest / Inspiring Stories / M M De Voe the Fictionista Who Helps Writers Find Their Way While Caring for Their Children

Transcript

M M De Voe the Fictionista Who Helps Writers Find Their Way While Caring for Their Children · Inspiring Stories

0:04
Speaker 1: Thank you for listening to the picture of the radiant rat.
0:28
Speaker 2: You readything to me? Oh well, well say, oh well.
0:57
Speaker 1: Not a bad.
1:01
Speaker 2: Stop. I just need so call Nash stop day.
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Speaker 3: All right, welcome back, and while you are gathering up
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that last minute snack your favorite beverage and get her indy.
1:47
Sit down and listen to our next interview with mm Devout,
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a internationally published fictionista who once stands for the Pope
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and later ran away with a group of jugglers. She
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has two editor prizes at Shirley Jackson Award, a Hugo nomination,
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two children, and several writing conferences later. Mmdbo has published
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in various internationally and co wrote a book of science fiction.
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She has had a musical produced off Broadway, and she
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graduated from Columbia University with a Writing Fellow and she
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has received her MFA under Michael Cunningham. And in twenty
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thirteen she founded a nonprofit pen har Reece Parentista to
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help writers maintained their careers after having children, a process
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described in her on Fiction guide book, which also brought
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won an award for Writers who are Parents, is called
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a book and the The guide won a one Award
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for Next indie books in a category of writing guides.
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Her first book of fiction, A Flash of Darkness Collected Stories,
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was called a ominous masterfully crafted psycho fiction and as
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an inauurgural member of the Lithuanians Writers of the Poor
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Us Forum, M M. De vaux As traveled to Lithuania
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every three years to keep her finger on the pulse
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of the international fiction while she lives in New York City,
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where she is excited to release her new novel, The
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Boy Loved Trees, which its release is in October twenty
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twenty six. So we're going to bring her back just
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before the book launches so that we can talk more
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about this particular writing because it has an interesting premise
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and story. So why don't we get to it and
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let's in the meat and in the bout and find
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out why she loves writing so much.
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Speaker 1: So, MM, welcome to the show. I love that as
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a pen name though. That's got to be really cool, mm, devo.
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It's got to show a lot of books just from that,
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so I can hope. So, how did you find out
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that did you love writing so much? Though?
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Speaker 4: Well, I will tell you that writing came kind of
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naturally to me when I was in college. I was broke,
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as college students are, and I had gotten myself into trouble.
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I was two hundred dollars in debt and it was
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terrifying me. I was afraid of bills. I was freaking out.
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And I walked past a bulletin board sign that just
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said National Poetry Contest win a thousand dollars, and me,
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being a I was like, oh, that's a great way
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to make money. I just had written a villainell for school,
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like it was an assignment for my poetry prosidy class,
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and I liked it. I thought it was really good.
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I was like, I'll just send that off and win
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the money and then I'll be fine. And in fact,
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I sent it off, I won the money, and I
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was fine. And that changed my life because that gave
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me this illusion, which I believed wholeheartedly, that it was easy,
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that I was so talented that I could just any
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time go back to writing as my career, and that
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it would be easy. And so with this delusion in mind,
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I wrote a lot of poems and sent them out
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and got paid for them. Because back in the day,
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people paid a lot for poetry. Now they kind of
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do again, but in the beginning, like in the middle,
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there was a lot less yeah, and then I kind
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of went away from writing because I was actually a
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voice major in college, was a music major, and that
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was probably part of why my writing is good, because
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I hear it as well as see it, so it
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is both. I'm bilingual, so I have a love of
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language that is from puns, from multi multi lingual translations,
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like I really love words that only exist in one
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language and not necessarily an English I am a I
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don't often remember them, but I love discovering them. When
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somebody will say, like, oh, in my language, there's a
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word for you know, the sadness that comes about when
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the sun goes behind a cloud, I'm like, oh, that's amazing,
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a great thing, you know. And so I've always loved language.
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I've always been pretty good at it. And then there's
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this musicality that goes with it. And then I believe
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in communication. I think the most important thing that we
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can do as human beings is to connect with each other.
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And to be able to connect without fighting or misunderstanding
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means you have to be able to communicate well, and
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sometimes I just means touching, like which is so hard
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after COVID, there's not a lot of putting your gentle
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hand on somebody's shoulder to show that you are there
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for them. It's not a natur I'm you know, I'm not.
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I mean, I am with my friends and my close people,
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but I don't I don't know how strangers unless I
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don't know, unless it seems appropriate, I tend to do
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what is I feel like there is an appropriate way
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to interact with somebody, and that's the way that makes
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them feel most comfortable. So I haven't. I don't know
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what it's called. It an empathy, a psychic I don't
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know what it is. It's something well, I see somebody
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and I instantly sense like this person doesn't want to
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be touched, or this person does want to be touched,
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or this person is so lonely, or something like. I
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just know that it's weirdose I don't know it. I'm
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I'm a normal person.
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Speaker 1: Yeah. For purposes of this show and our particular audience,
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it's okay to use empathy and intuition because because most
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of us believe in that sort of stuff, that there's
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some sort of energy between us that we can can
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tap into. A visualize and everything. But I have an
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interesting question for you. Sure, what language do you think?
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Speaker 4: In English?
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Speaker 1: Okay?
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Speaker 4: I think in English unless I choose to think in
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a different language. I can also choose to think in
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Lithuanian or German. I am not very talented at German,
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but I am possible. I can do it. And sometimes
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images I'm thinking about, like, what are the different ways
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I think? I don't, but there's like black and white images.
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They're not color, but I can. They're like shapes. Weird,
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it's bizarre. Thank you for asking that cool questions. Ask
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me more cool questions.
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Speaker 1: I try to keep the cool questions going. So you've
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you've written poetry, which I don't think was actually in
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your bio, but you wrote a writer's guide for parents
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who wanted to get back to writing.
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Speaker 4: Yes, yeah, that's an awards's Yeah, it's yeah, the one
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first prize I was really proud of myself for in
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books about writing. Yeah, it's like a Writer's Guy, one
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first prize in the Indie Book Awards the year it
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came out. And uh, it's it's organized by the age
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of your child, so that if you have an infant
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or a toddler or a little kid, a big kid,
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grown up, like all the way up to grown and flowing,
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and it lets you know sort of what what you
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can It's like a what you can expect to have
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and what you need to have a writing career when
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you have a child is time, energy, and money and
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what you tend to not have a lot of is
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those three things. But it's different depending on the age
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of your child. So like the different sections will tell
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you kind of like if you have a toddler, this
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is what you can expect in terms of time, energy,
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and money, and here's how you can balance it out.
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It's always giving you many options for solutions. This book
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was written about It's really a book about the first
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ten years of the nonprofit that I started, which is
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called Penn Parentis and is out there to help writers
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stay creative after they have kids, which was a problem
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that I faced when I had kids and a novel
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in progress. It was like, how do people do this?
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And at the time it was around two thousand and
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nine that I was I had just graduated from Columbia,
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I had this novel and I had these two kids.
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They were you know, like six and full two, sorry,
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and they were just like all over the place, and
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I didn't. I just I didn't have a role model.
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And when I went to my MFA, people either they
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didn't have kids yet or they had kids, and they
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were of the opinion that it was impossible, like they
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would just say, like, don't have that's your answer. And
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I thought, that is the stupidest answer ever, because that's
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like in any other profession. If you said, oh, how
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do you be a chemist without while having kids? And
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your answer is don't have kids, that's something wrong with
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the industry. Like if you can't be a human being
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and do the profession right, that's wrong. And I'm not
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like a birther. I don't think that this is like destiny.
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You have children, that's not the point. The point is
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if you do have kids, it shouldn't interfere with your
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career like that. The industry is wrong if it interferes
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with your career. And so I went about analyzing, like
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what is the problem here, and I discovered even know
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way discovered I have I have an answer is that
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people equate. Yeah, it's because people after mommy bloggers started
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making six figures and after Instagram made made parenting a
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trending thing, that you could get advertising for. They turned
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parenthood into a kind of career, so that you raising
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your kids isn't a career, but you profiting off of
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raising your kids is a career. And too many people
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don't separate that. They equate that, especially if you're a writer.
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They expect at the time in two thousand and nine,
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when I was having my kid, like my early kids,
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people expected you as a writer to be a mommy
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blogger because that's where the money was. And I was
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so against that, Like every fiber of me was like,
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that's not what I do. I don't write about my children.
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I don't write about parenthood at all. I write about
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big ideas. I write about humanity and yeah, sometimes there
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are kids in there, but it's about large things and
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philosophy and looking at the world with an outsider. I like,
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it's it's completely not mommy blogging and so yeah, and
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so I was like, well, you can't equate your parenthood
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with your career. Why do people do that? And it's
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because people envision scales of justice when they envision balance.
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And what they need to do is realize that the
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things your career, your relationship, your relationship with your child,
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your relationship with your significant person, your child, your pet,
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your best friend, your knitting stuff, your side gig. All
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these things are all hanging on the same mobile, like
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everything you love, not just your job and your child,
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but also all this other stuff. You're gardening, you're cooking,
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the fact that you need a shower, Like, all these
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things are vying for your time and your energy and
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your money, and they're all on this humongous Calder mobile.
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They're all on this baby mobile over your head, and
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you have to They can choose what's going to be
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closer to the center and stay balanced all the time,
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what's going to be far away and go up and
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down as the time, energy and money shift. And that's it, Like,
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that's the mental image that lets you have a very
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balanced life because you have all your stuff, it's all
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up there. Anytime you add another child's like adding another
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bowling ball, so it's going to shake everything around, but
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you can still get it all balanced. You can have
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ten bowling balls on a mobile. It looks amazing. It's hard,
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it's hard to get anything else on there. But once
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you do, once you have all those balance, now you
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can add all kinds of things like I don't know.
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I love that mental image and that's made me succeed
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and it's made a lot of the people that you know,
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I help, and the nonprofit really helps a lot of
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writers get sort of stable that we help them create
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their own creative practice. And then we present writers that
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do have kids that have strong careers. We present them
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as successful you know, career your writers, and then they
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just talk about how they do it. And we always
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put them in groups because there's no right way to
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do this. There's only lots of ways, and one of
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them might work for you, so go try them all,
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like until one works. That's yeah.
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Speaker 1: So I like advocating for find your own path and
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then walk that path and ignore asayers and like just
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keep going down your path.
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Speaker 4: Yeah, go down your path, but also be aware enough
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to know when your path is taking you down a
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dark and terrible plate, Like you need to be very
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aware of your surroundings, be aware like, oh, this path
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is terrific. Wait, here's another path. Do you think that
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path is better? I'm not sure. Let's think is it. No,
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my path is better. I'm going to keep going down
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my path. But that constant kind of questioning openness to
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possible other things and just listening to what other people
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are doing without feeling like that is making you make
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a different choice. Keep your own truth. Yeah, like yeah,
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ye reckless.
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Speaker 1: So I mean it's social question today is is how
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many people actually decide that, oh, well, what's his name
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the Amazon, the creator of Amazon, Well he did this
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or this, so I should do that that do the
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same thing, and then I'll find my success when it
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doesn't necessarily work that way, right we do.
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Speaker 4: I think as humans we have an Instagram because that's
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how we learn as children. We watch what we see
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and we learn from other humans. Right, That's that's how
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we learn. And so we are now with social media,
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we are exposed to all the humans and Jeff Bezos
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is the word you're looking and it's okay, and uh,
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the fact that we are not only in a dated
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with celebrities who accidentally act as role models for us,
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but also horrible people on TikTok and wonderful people that
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we don't get to see enough of. But I really
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think that because we're our instinct is that childlike instinct
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of oh that person is doing something, I wonder if
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that's for me? And then if they're very successful. And
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of course I don't know. In America, man, success is money,
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that's all. There's nothing else. What you have to hurt people,
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that's okay, you're gonna make money. You can make it
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up later. Like the whole idea, that whole concept that
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you can it's the same concept that what was the church?
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Was it the Catholic church that was like you can
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buy off?
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Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. What was that called?
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Speaker 4: There was like a word for that that later churches said.
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Speaker 1: I should indulgences.
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Speaker 4: Indulgences you could buy it in advance and be like
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I'm going to go and do something terrible. I'm just
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gonna pay you off. And everybody thought the Catholets were
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so terrible for this practice. But just take a look
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at I don't know if Canada does this, but America
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does it where you're like, guess what, you We're gonna
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plant a tree because we're cutting down this old tree,
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We're gonna plant five trees. That is buying an indulgence
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from the planet. That is like, that's not equal, Like
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just I can't shoot your grandfather and then have five babies.
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That doesn't it's not the same. Sorry, I have a.
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Speaker 1: Thing and they do that here in Canada.
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Speaker 4: With your car, and like people are like, well, I
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have a I have an energy saving cars, so it
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doesn't really matter that I'm doing this, you know, polluting
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or the companies that pay to ameliorate their terrible pollution
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of the world. Instead of fixing the pollution, they pay
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for something else over.
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Speaker 1: Here here in Canada is oh they had, uh they
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have a tax on pollution. Okay, okay, So so.
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Speaker 4: Is that used to fix the pollution that they are
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making or somebody else's.
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Speaker 1: Pollution was supposed to fix. Its supposed to be a
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tax to fix all the pollution.
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Speaker 4: There.
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Speaker 1: See. The thing of it is is what it what
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it wound up being, is is that the consumer was
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paying the tax and the corporation that was doing the
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polluting scot free, right Okay, yeah, so they just were
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able to build it straight into the cost of their
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you know, but doesn't that.
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Speaker 4: Remind you of that sort of indulgence, you know what,
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I mean to pay for this and then I'm gonna
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go do the bad thing, like I'm just gonna pay
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when all the weed shops opened up in New York City,
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when when we've got legalized, like I want to say hundred,
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it's probably hundreds of weed chops opened up within feet
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of each other, Like every empty storefront was suddenly a
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weed chop, and most of them were illegal. And one
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of our local papers did a little expose of the
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Lower Manhattan ones. I live in Lower Manhattan and so
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the Lower Manhattan ones, many of them kept fifty thousand
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dollars in a safe that was just to pay the
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fine for being an illegal weed shop. They're like, we
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have the money, we don't care. We're just gonna run
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it because we think we can make a profit even
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with the fine. And now it's much more regulated, but
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at that time it was crazy, like people were just
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like it's okay, I'll just I'll pay.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, of course I'm in British Columbia, the
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province of weed.
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Speaker 4: I think it's kind of global at this point. It
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was like.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, but yeah, when they legalized it is like all
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these pop up you couldn't help a trip over them
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in And then they decided to They thought they were
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all going to get grandfathered in, and they got grandfather out.
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So they actually started arresting people for having illegal weed
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shop because they say, well, you think that you're.
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Speaker 4: Just because you're there.
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Speaker 1: The money did you have in the safe? You think
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it's going to save you from from prosecution?
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Speaker 4: Well here yeah, and also will take your money.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, they see, they seize the money in the safe
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and they and they tried to. Most of them got
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off with some sort of approbation charge. Go find it.
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Go find another business to go into, because you're not
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getting your license.
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Speaker 4: Actually, what's funny is most of the illegal weed shops
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now are snack shops. They are snacks and sort of
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and sort of accoutrem or we like maybe bongs or something,
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but they are but it's like it's mostly.
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Speaker 1: Like Chips ends, a snack shop just in case you
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get the munchies from from all the weeds.
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Speaker 4: That's exactly right, because that was the legal part of
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the shop, and then the actual weird was whatever, and
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it was crazy.
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Speaker 1: It's crazy.
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Speaker 4: Things that happen, things, unintended consequences. You can have a
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whole episode just on unintended consequences stuff.
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Speaker 1: I mean, well, well yours was, uh was, Hey, I'll
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i'll write this poem or deliver this poem. So they
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pays it debt.
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Speaker 4: And then money. Yeah, I have to pay up my
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credit card so I'm going to write this poem become
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a writer.
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Speaker 1: But the cool part is that you created a not
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for profit that actually helps other writers get their career going.
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Speaker 4: And it really does. It actually works. It feels lovely
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that we're taping this on Giving Tuesday, because it is,
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I don't know you in the US, on the second
23:57
Tuesday after thanks get our Thanksgiving. We have different Thanksgiving.
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There's a nonprofit Day where you just sort of give
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on that day to like all the nonprofits that you
24:06
can imagine. So that's for me today. So it's a
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nice day because people write me notes they say, oh
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my gosh, I helped you help me so much. I
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wouldn't have been writing at all. You gave me hope.
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I never felt seen until somebody's you know that your
24:22
organization really helped. And I think it's really nice for
24:26
people to know that. There are a lot of extraordinarily
24:29
famous writers who have kids. They don't talk about them,
24:33
but that's just like you know, your doctor doesn't necessarily
24:35
tell you that they have three kids at home. Wait, people,
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it's their career and when they're a career writer, they're
24:41
just writing.
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Speaker 1: Well. With that being said, two of my absolute favorite writers.
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My wife and know we actually listened to their audiobooks
24:52
all the time. Jd rob and Janna Ivanovich. They created
25:01
a entertainment corporation around their writing so that their family
25:09
could be involved, and they had their family join in.
25:12
Is like it and I think that's pretty cool also,
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you know, to take your talent to the point that
25:19
you can can involve your family and then you're all
25:23
spending time trying to figure out, well, what's the next
25:25
plotline going to be? Or how do or how do
25:28
I market that the book that's going out, you know,
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or design covers. You hear some of them talk about
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how they actually.
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Speaker 4: An enterprise, family enterprise.
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Speaker 1: Becomes a family enterprise, and I think, uh, Janet van Vich,
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I think Wonderful Kids is also a writer also, but
25:50
don't quote me on that. But but you know, but
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just getting that that first jump with your nonprofit, it's
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that's kind of be like a really cold thing just
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to just to watch people light up.
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Speaker 4: It's wonderful, honestly, like one of the sour our means
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of helping. We do have these meetups that are online
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that allow writers who have kids to get together in
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small cohorts and then support each other with their writing
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and they're very they're actually we have a sort of method.
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We call it the cycle of support, and it's very strict.
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There's an accountability aspect, there's a social aspect, there's a
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resources sharing. It's very it's got. It's kind of a system,
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but it is. It works, and it makes these cohorts
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turn into these friendships. There was one woman who finished
26:48
her entire book. She was writing a non she was
26:50
writing nonfiction, but it was kind of loose nonfiction, and
26:53
she pulled it together. She got herself up together. She
26:56
had the weekly accountability where she was setting her own
26:59
goals that fit in her life, and then she finished
27:02
this manuscript reconnected within the group. There were connections to
27:09
an editor who was thrilled by the subject matter. She
27:12
wrote a book about circus and it's published now by
27:16
a feminist press. It's called Jumping through Hoops. And she
27:20
had this book launch that she lives in Connecticut. She
27:23
came to New York for a book launch and one
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of her cohorts flew in from Mississippi just for her
27:28
book launch. She had never been to New York. She
27:30
just wanted to support her friend in the fact that
27:34
she launched a book. So the friendships that are made
27:38
online are like actual real and then eventually turned into
27:41
like in real life like connections.
27:44
Speaker 1: Real camaraderie.
27:45
Speaker 4: That yeah, well, you know, you have two things in
27:48
common already. One is that you have a child of
27:51
some sort, some age, so you've already got that parenthood
27:54
thing that you can just talk about forever. But then
27:56
you have the writing, which is like, I haven't finished
27:59
this and it's so frustrating because I've got this problem,
28:01
and you can help, you can commiserate with me and
28:05
and help me, and then and then they help each other,
28:08
and then that that's a journey, Like helping somebody through
28:11
a problem is a journey, and it's it's quite lovely.
28:15
It's nice that the a lot of times in parenthood,
28:17
the kids are the problem. Like when you talk to
28:20
another parent, you're like, how do I get my kid
28:22
to sleep through the night? How do I tow the
28:23
train my kid? Like there's all these bumbling blocks, you know,
28:27
let's call them along the lines.
28:29
Speaker 1: You know whatever, But those issues are common common for parents.
28:34
Is like I remember, I remember trying to get my
28:38
kid to be potty trained. And it's like I was like, okay, finally,
28:42
keep bringing me to day and pull up to change you.
28:45
I'm just gonna stuff you in underwear and I'm gonna
28:48
let you crap your pants a few times. They got
28:52
over it funny.
28:54
Speaker 4: Well, I mean, it's so it's so funny because there's
28:57
so many different and it's just like when you just
28:59
talk to a parent about parenting, you're trying to solve
29:02
a problem together and so you know, you crowdsource and
29:06
then as a parent you choose what is the thing
29:09
you might There's like always some parent who thinks they
29:12
know it because they've done it this one way and
29:13
it worked for them, and that parent is trying to
29:16
tell you, like believe, don't just say that it happened,
29:20
it worked for you. And so when we do our groups,
29:24
it's really important to me that people behave that way
29:27
that they say this worked for me. It may not
29:30
work for everybody, but it worked for me, and then
29:34
you can try it or not try it. You can
29:37
you kind of know when somebody tells you something whether
29:39
or not you want to try it, you know in
29:42
your own life. And so that's just kind of how
29:45
our groups work. Like we try to be really kind
29:47
to each other. I also do something really unique in literary.
29:52
So a lot of the arts tend to silo people
29:57
who are established from people who are emerging and anything
30:01
in between. Like there are men, you know, they are
30:03
the classes. It's sort of the school type thing where
30:06
you're a beginner. Now you're a person doing this thing,
30:09
and everybody in the group. It's like a classroom where
30:11
people in the group are all doing the same thing.
30:14
I was raised in the Montessori says, and my mom
30:16
is a Montessori teacher, and so I learned sort of
30:20
inherently from my mom. Like you mix people. Everybody has
30:24
something to learn and everybody has something to teach. It
30:27
doesn't make any difference how established you are as a
30:30
writer when you have your child, you have never had
30:32
a child before, and you don't know what you're doing.
30:35
And writing after you have kids is different from writing
30:39
before you have kids.
30:40
Speaker 1: It just is.
30:40
Speaker 4: And it takes a community to help you through any problem. Really,
30:48
it's always better to do a problem solve in community.
30:52
And so you know that established author who is exactly
30:57
the right person to answer the question of the emergent
31:00
author who has four kids, who are already grown and
31:03
can tell you anything you want to know about a baby,
31:05
but cannot talk, does not know anything about publishing. Like,
31:10
the two of them will just talk and talk and
31:12
talk and talk and help each other so much. And
31:15
that's kind of like how these groups work. They're just
31:18
they're really good.
31:19
Speaker 1: It's just really it almost sounds like an incubator sort
31:22
of thing too.
31:24
Speaker 4: Yeah, I guess so, because then they become authors. They
31:27
publish their books, and then they come to our salons
31:30
and they read at the salons. They sort of do
31:33
the reading publicly and eventually hopefully they'll become a judge
31:37
for the fellowship. We give an annual fellowship also, so
31:40
once a year we give two thousand US dollars to
31:44
a single writer who has a child and they are
31:49
so it's only one winner, but it is a talent base.
31:53
It's a completely blind judging. We don't have any information
31:56
whatsoever about the writing except the short amount of words,
32:00
and we keep the word count under a thousand so
32:03
that it's always We actually try to keep it under
32:04
five hundred so that it's actually doable for a person
32:07
even if they have an infant, they are capable of
32:10
writing this small amount. It's a narrative. It doesn't have
32:14
to be a story. Some people have written nonfiction that
32:18
sounds like the story. Some people have written in poetry
32:20
that sounds like a narrative. We don't care if it's
32:23
experimental or nonfiction y, or if it's genre, that's fine.
32:28
We only care that it be at when you send
32:31
it in. It's fiction, you're sending in a story, and
32:35
then we just judge them. So yeah, so the ultimate
32:39
thing I guess would be to be a judge on
32:41
a contost. But you know it's I don't know, I
32:44
love it. We really keep it to just that stuff.
32:48
And then we have a National Writer Parent meetup where
32:50
there's a conference called AWP which happens in different cities
32:54
in America every year, and we just ask people to
32:58
come and hang out with each other and we provide alcohol.
33:02
Speaker 1: That's the whole point hanging out, right, It is like yeah,
33:06
you know.
33:07
Speaker 4: And that's it. And then and like you know that
33:10
that's we just want people to meet each other, get
33:13
to know each other, and write books, write books, write books,
33:16
right books. Do what you love? Do what you love.
33:19
Speaker 1: Is there a particular genre that you love writing more in?
33:24
Speaker 4: I have written in almost every genre. I have, actually, weirdly,
33:29
and I'm sort of shy to say this, have won
33:30
awards in almost every genre. Like my nonfiction book wont
33:34
to prize. Many of the stories in my fiction collection.
33:38
I Have a Flash of Darkness is my fiction collection,
33:43
and it's like Twilight Zone, Like every single episode is,
33:47
every single story is completely different from the story before it.
33:51
They're all kind of weird in their way, are creepy
33:54
a little bit. Some people call them dark. They're funny
33:57
some of them and they're so there's this kind of
34:00
weird dark fiction and every single one is different. Maybe
34:04
Black Mirror is something that people are more familiar with,
34:06
so it's kind of like that. It's like some of
34:08
it's a little like what and some of it's like,
34:09
oh that's fun, you know.
34:11
Speaker 1: Yeah, it gave me this, this flash of William Shatner
34:17
in uh, Terror in the Sky.
34:19
Speaker 4: Yes, I never find a plane without seeing that. I
34:24
love it.
34:27
Speaker 1: But again, I think, which one do you like more?
34:30
Do you like? Do you like the William Shatner version
34:33
or the John Lithcow version?
34:36
Speaker 4: Hard to say say they're both great, but.
34:39
Speaker 1: But you're you're doing you're comparing it to because there's
34:43
such a great story about this, this one particular person's
34:48
phobia flying.
34:52
Speaker 4: Yeah, and it and then it's yeah and then the question.
34:57
I love those stories that lead you to the bigger question,
35:01
which is like, if you're indulging your phobia, are you
35:06
making it worse or are you making it better because
35:10
it is real? Like? Is that does that show that
35:13
the phobia is real because it actually happened? Or does
35:17
it like was it justified of him to be scared
35:19
of the yeah, slain guy or not? Like that's the
35:24
great conundrum. I like conundrums.
35:27
Speaker 1: Yes, I.
35:33
Speaker 4: Just like thinking. I like stories that make you think.
35:36
I love I love a story that makes you want
35:39
to talk about it with somebody else, that you just
35:42
want to discuss. You want to see what other people
35:44
think about it, like I I any any any piece
35:47
of art that makes you talk about the art is,
35:51
in my opinion, a better piece of it.
35:54
Speaker 1: That's the point of art, right, Yes, yeah, So I
36:00
look forward to reading more and more of your art.
36:03
Speaker 4: I hope to have a novel out. I think I
36:05
told you in October of twenty six, so please, I
36:10
think you can already take a look at the cover
36:12
it's on Amazon if you get I don't know if
36:15
Canada Amazon and US Amazon overlapped.
36:18
Speaker 1: Sometimes it does. Sometimes it doesn't. Love it too, Yeah,
36:25
we did. I did have trouble with a book launch
36:29
with one of my friends who lives in Wisconsin, so.
36:35
Speaker 4: I don't know. The book is called The Boy Who
36:38
Loved Trees and it is a really it's my love
36:44
story to the men of the eighties who were gay
36:47
and couldn't come out or didn't come out for another
36:50
ten or fifteen years, and who lived lives in the
36:53
closet for that long even though they kind of knew
36:56
that they were gay. That story has never really been told,
37:00
and so I told it, and I hope well, I
37:04
mean so far the game and that I've read it,
37:05
have loved it and have felt very seen and felt
37:08
very like happy that that part of the story was told.
37:13
It's a fun romp. It goes It's set in Soviet
37:16
Lithuania on a tour, so it's also about the immigrant
37:19
experience because the main character is a Lithuanian born in America,
37:26
well a kid born to Lithuanian parents in America, and
37:30
then he goes on a tour of the family's homeland
37:34
which is occupied. So there's a whole like, what does
37:37
it mean to be Lithuanian in a if the actual
37:40
country is occupied. You're an expat. You're obviously born in America,
37:44
so you're an American, but also you have a relationship
37:48
with this homeland because both of your parents are Lithuanian.
37:51
So that I think that that experience is something Canada
37:54
does very very well. That there is a connection to
37:57
your heritage, but also ranks in being Canadian without that
38:03
damaging each other. Like, yeah, I don't know if you're
38:06
still doing it as well as you used to, but
38:08
you used to do it really well.
38:10
Speaker 1: Yeah, it it's kind of kind of dependent. But because
38:19
part of my heritage being indigenous American, both the US
38:27
and Canada kind of shy away from that. But but
38:33
other parts, like the Ukrainian part of my heritage or
38:40
the Nigerian part of my heritage. You know that part
38:48
is is like, oh, celebrate all you want, but don't
38:52
go to a power home.
38:56
Speaker 4: I think it's we all have a complicated well, you know,
39:00
it's interesting as kids to become an adult, you have
39:05
to break from your parents, like you got to move
39:08
out of the house. You know, you've got to become
39:10
an adult, right, so you have this some kind of
39:13
break where you're like, Okay, they're humans, they're my humans,
39:16
they made me, but actually i'm me, I'm not them.
39:19
And maybe there's a similar thing that we all have
39:23
to encounter or face with our heritages, where we have
39:29
to say that is me. It's also not me parts
39:32
that are me, Like we're honestly humans are We love
39:37
things to be cut and dried, and so little in
39:41
the real world is cut and dried. So much gray area,
39:44
so much spectrum, so much you know, yes today, but
39:49
maybe tomorrow and know on Thursday. You know, like there's
39:53
We're very changeable and malleable, and we really should embrace
39:57
that more. We like to pigeonhole and maybe computers are
40:01
a problem with that because being binary, there is an
40:05
on or an off. You have to make a decision.
40:07
There are two choices or other or three that's it, yes,
40:11
no other, that's it, and other is so diffuse that
40:16
it does it. It's not helpful, and so you you
40:20
end up making way too many pigeonholes and nobody. It
40:23
doesn't work. You just can't do that. Nature doesn't like
40:26
to be sorted like it likes to be nature and
40:31
just weird mutate, It mutates like it doesn't even stay
40:35
the same itself. Yeah right, what is a dog?
40:38
Speaker 1: Like?
40:39
Speaker 4: Picture a dog? There's like everything I watched that dog
40:41
show on Thanksgiving, like the Little Tiniest Toy Chihuahua all
40:47
the way to like the Newfie Giant Beasts, and they're like,
40:53
they're all dogs like and some of it is like,
40:57
we made it that way because we wanted to have
40:59
a breed that was non allergenic and didn't have hip
41:02
problems and was not aggressive, and so we made it.
41:05
We like forced it, and then some of them are like, Wow,
41:08
that's a cool dog. Let's keep it.
41:12
Speaker 1: I don't know so anywait, we're starting to run out
41:15
of time.
41:16
Speaker 4: Okay.
41:18
Speaker 1: I did look on the Amazon dot CA website and no,
41:25
I cannot find that particular book, but there's a whole
41:29
list of other books for us to follow here in Canada.
41:32
Did you have from good? So I'm going to assume
41:36
when you're when the next book does come out, they
41:39
will appear on Amazon. So for all of you looking
41:42
for a boy who loved the boy.
41:45
Speaker 4: Who loved the boy who Loved Trees.
41:49
Speaker 1: Go to Amazon and get it in October twenty twenty six,
41:54
and please please follow M M. The Voe on Amazon
42:02
and find the whole host of books, because hey, this
42:05
lady really loves to write and she loves helping people write.
42:08
So this is it's great having you on the show.
42:16
I hope to I hope to continue our friendship.
42:19
Speaker 4: That'd be fun.
42:20
Speaker 1: So yeah, all right, thanks for listening. Everybody, see you
42:24
next time.
42:25
Speaker 2: Help gave me this is days.
43:10
Speaker 1: A reason to be.
43:18
Speaker 2: Sad.
43:18
Speaker 1: Me back cho chance.
43:27
Speaker 2: We can't tres s wait.
43:32
Speaker 1: So will. The show has been produced by Depictions Media.
44:52
Please contact us at depictions dot media for more information