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Emily Liebert - From Journalism to Novels · She’s Smart

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Hey, everybody. Welcome to She's Smart. I'm your host, Maria Robotham.
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Each week, we sit down with incredible women to talk about life,
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work, and everything in between.
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Today's guest is a USA Today bestselling author whose career has taken her from
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the world of journalism to the universe of fiction.
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Welcome, Emily Liebert, to the podcast. Born and raised in New York City,
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Emily studied English at Smith College before launching her career at ABC News.
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From there, she stepped into the role of editor-in-chief of The WAG,
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a luxury lifestyle magazine covering Westchester and Fairfield counties,
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where she wrote hundreds of articles on everything from celebrity profiles to
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travel, fashion, and culture.
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But Emily always knew she wanted to write books.
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She first made waves with Facebook Fairy Tales, a non-fiction book exploring
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real-life connections made through social media.
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Since then, she has gone on to write multiple novels, including You Knew Me
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When, When We Fall, Those Secrets We Keep, Some Women, Pretty Revenge, and Perfectly Famous.
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Along the way, she's also built a fascinating career as a celebrity ghostwriter
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and collaborator, helping high-profile figures tell their stories while mastering
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the delicate art of writing in someone else's voice.
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Emily's work has been featured everywhere from The Today Show,
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Rachel Ray Show, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and People.
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But at the heart of all of it, she's a storyteller who is endlessly curious
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about people, relationships, and the secrets we keep.
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Today, we're talking about the writing life, how characters come to life,
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what it's really like to ghostwrite for celebrities, and why sometimes the best
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stories begin with just a tiny nugget of an idea.
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So get cozy as we connect, learn, and laugh together on She's Smart with today's.
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I love having everyone come and sit down with me. And I'm sorry.
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I'm like disheveled. Stop. I went and got my Botox this morning.
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Oh, my God. She took off half my makeup when I got my Botox done.
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But you're young. So I'm good. It's fine. I love it. How old are you? I'm 47.
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Okay. Oh, okay. I'm 49. Not that much younger. I'm right there.
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But you look young. Thank you. That's genetics, I think. And also Botox.
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Like, it helps. And Elvina, who does my facials. Oh, okay.
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I think we get to the point. There was, I had a client. I was a stylist for
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15 years and I had a client in Westport and she was like, Maria,
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your face is the only one you have.
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Good point. Take care of it. Yeah. Put money into it if you can.
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You can work out your body. You can take supplements on your face.
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True. So I was like, you're so right. So I found, you know, I'm going to keep
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it young and as long as I can.
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Yeah. And then. I mean, for sure. I'm just going to grow old and wear a caftan and live in St. Barts.
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That's like the dream. That's my dream someday. My husband's like, okay, whatever.
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I'll follow you there. So thank you for coming on today. I'm always very intrigued
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by women who live in our area, but that have done so many things in their careers.
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And being a writer and I've read your books, I'm like, this will be so much
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fun to just kind of delve into the writing part of it.
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I was reading your bio and you've done so many things. You were like,
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what, ABC News, magazine editor, ghostwriter, spokesperson. I can't wait to hear about that one.
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And novelist. At what point were you like, I want to write fiction,
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like I'm going to write my first book?
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I was a magazine editor and I knew that I always wanted to write a book.
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And I, at the time, was reading like Bridget Jones' Diary type books.
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That was when that came out and was very popular.
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And I thought, I feel like I can do this. I feel like I can write something like this.
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So I did. I wrote a book which never saw the light of day.
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Okay. It was called One White Picket Fence. It was not directly autobiographical,
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but there was a lot about what had gone on in my life.
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It was based on what had gone on in my life to that point.
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And I got an agent, a literary agent with that book.
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And while we were editing that book,
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I started to feel that I didn't actually want that book to come out and see
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the light of day because I was moving on from that part of my life that I was writing about.
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And I just didn't think that there was any sense in putting that stuff out there
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and people maybe recognizing themselves in the characters.
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And I was trying to put something behind me. And so I just, while I was in the
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editing process of that, I came up with the idea for what ended up being my
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first book, which was Facebook fairy tales, which was not fiction.
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It was narrative nonfiction.
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Then it was 25 amazing stories that came from Facebook connections.
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And it was right when Facebook was exploding in the media and people were joining
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and, you know, it was becoming more than just a college social media platform.
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And I got lucky to get an interview for the foreword with Mark Zuckerberg,
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who I think at the time had only been interviewed by, I think, Oprah and Diane Sawyer.
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And they said he wouldn't write the foreword because he probably was quite busy. It's great.
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And Facebook, not financially, but supported the book in that they allowed me
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to use their logo on it and they just filtered some of the stories to me.
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They sent me some stories that they had received through their platform, some amazing stories.
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And I found most of them on my own, but I maybe used a couple of the ones that they had given to me.
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And then by the time that came out and got a lot of publicity,
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I had written You Knew Me When, which became my first novel. And then there were...
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I've written seven books under my name, so Facebook fairy tales and six novels came after that.
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Did they just start coming at that point? You wrote that book,
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and then did the next one, the idea, just came to you?
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Were you separating them out? Did you have other ideas as you were going through the first process?
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The first idea came to me, which all of my ideas come to me as sort of a nugget
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of an idea. And then they kind of branch out from there.
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So, no, they all came to me individually.
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And I think along the way, there were other ideas which probably got scrapped
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or put to the side for later and developed in a different way.
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I have never been someone, and I really envy this in other writers.
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Who thinks of an idea and then the entire idea just flows from my brain onto
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the page and the book just writes itself.
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That's never been my process. I would love for that to be my process, but it never has been.
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It's always been a, the idea is there,
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but then it takes me time to really flesh it out on paper in the form of some
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kind of outline, which changes along the way, but there's some kind of basic
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outline for the plot and the characters.
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Once you outline and you see it, are you like, all right, I'm in it?
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Do you sit in one place and you just do the whole thing? Or like you said,
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you just kind of piecemeal it in as you go? Of all of the books I've written
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for myself, the six novels, all but one of them was outlined in advance.
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And I would say of those six, the first four had a.
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Sort of general outline that
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I mostly followed but
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veered from in certain cases because
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I don't think you really know your characters
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until you start writing them and sometimes you'll get to the middle of the book
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and you'll have outlined something for a character and then you'll think to
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yourself I don't actually think that character would do that anymore that doesn't
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feel like something this character would do now that I quote-unquote know this character.
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The fifth of my sixth novels, I did not do any outline for,
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which ended up being a massive mistake because I ended up writing the entire
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book and then overhauling it, like truly overhauling it, probably two to three times.
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Whereas when I have the outline in place, my editing process is much shorter on the back end.
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So I kind of reversed it with that one. And that was out of my comfort zone, but not in a good way.
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And then with the seventh book, Six Novel, Perfectly Famous,
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I learned my lesson and went far in the other direction and outlined everything to a T.
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And that book was one of the only books I've written, which I would say,
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as people like to say, wrote itself because that outline was really,
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really thorough and set in stone until the.
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Ending, and then I changed the ending at the very last minute as I was writing it.
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Yeah. So that was the only little piece of it, which was a big piece of it because
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it was sort of the surprise at the end.
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But everything else stayed intact for that book. So that one was the one that
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wrote itself the fastest.
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So you came from journalism magazines. What was the hardest adjustment when you started writing?
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Either the Facebook stories, which came from actual things that happened.
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But then into fiction, you're coming off of facts and, you know,
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interviewing other people.
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Now you're creating this new world. Like, what was the biggest struggle there?
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Like, the challenge? It's completely different. What's interesting is I had
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sort of come from this journalistic style background, which was starting at
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ABC News and then working as a magazine editor.
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And also I was a travel writer for many years.
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I was writing luxury lifestyle, celebrity profiles, travel, fashion,
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beauty, food for many, many years.
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And so that was sort of where I began.
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And then I transitioned into fiction and.
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And I think the most difficult piece of it was clearly that I had to make everything up.
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I had to make sure that the plot was sort of paced in the right way,
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which I think is one of the most difficult things about writing a book.
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Some people are great at writing settings and writing plots and not as big of
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a fan of dialogue or character development.
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I happen to be the opposite. it.
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I am someone who's given toward character development and dialogue,
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and I hate describing the scene and the room and the setting that they're in.
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I do it, obviously, because you have to, but that's not what I enjoy.
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I enjoy the character interaction and the sort of personalities of the characters.
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So the adjustment for me was really learning how to plot a book.
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Where does the climax of the book come, where are the surprises in the book,
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beginning, middle, and end, literally, and making sure it's paced properly,
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and also making sure that it's layered.
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Fiction books need to be layered. It can't just be one plot line.
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There need to be subplots and
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different things going on that all culminate in the end in one, you know.
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I read Pretty Revenge, and as I was reading it, whenever I read,
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I love, let's call them quote unquote, beach reads or stories that I can, I love to get into it.
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Life is just too much that I like to escape as much as I can.
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So I read these books and I was reading Pretty Revenge and I was envisioning
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the characters because there is a ton of dialogue, which I love because it's
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almost like you're writing a screenplay.
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When you, do you ever think about that, that there's a screenplay in that or
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how you're writing it could be played out? Do you see it as you're writing it?
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You know, that's an interesting question, and I do get asked that a lot.
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I try very hard not to think about things as a television show or a movie while I'm writing them.
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I think that you can get yourself into a trap when you do that.
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So I really try to concentrate on the story in book form. I think anyone who
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writes a book always has an idea of like who would play this character or who
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would play that character, of course.
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But something that's so interesting to me, especially in describing characters
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in my own books, is as a reader, when I'm reading someone else's book.
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Oftentimes, they will describe a character to me, blonde hair, blue eyes, short.
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And regardless, when I'm reading the book, I see the character in a different way.
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So I always sort of think, do those descriptions really matter?
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Is someone really holding on to exactly those character, you know,
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descriptions like eye color and hair color?
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Or are they just picturing the person the way they want to picture them?
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Because I find that I do that sometimes. But yeah, no, I don't.
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I think once they're written, then sometimes I do think like,
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how would this, you know, and I have had books that have been optioned.
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And incidentally, Pretty Revenge was the book that had no outline that I had
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to overhaul multiple times.
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Well, it was so good. That book was a labor of love. I really loved it.
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Glad I got to the finish line and got to read it. So you've been in so many
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different rooms, right, in your career.
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You were in a newsroom. You were sitting at a desk doing magazines.
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Do you think being this close observer of people has kind of shaped the relationships in your books?
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For sure yeah i am definitely someone
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who studies people who can
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sit quietly at a table full of people or in a room and just be an observer and
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watch people's mannerisms and watch how they react to things just sort of take
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bits and pieces of those personalities for my characters for sure Yeah,
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I never it's very, very rare.
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I don't even know if there's ever been a case where I've fully based a character
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on someone. But I will say that invariably, anytime there is a mother in any
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book, my mother thinks it's her.
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Without a doubt. Any mother character, no matter who she is,
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she will call me and say, I've never done that.
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And I'll say, I know that that character's not you.
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Just because she's the mother in the book doesn't mean it's you.
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I know, but I mean, Emily. That story did sound a little familiar.
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And I said, well, yeah, you know, maybe I do pull from my life and I do pull
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from things, but no one is any.
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And I've also had various friends say, is that character based on me?
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Or, you know, I've been in relationships where someone will say,
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I had that exact conversation with you.
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And I'm like, I don't remember that.
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Did we really? It's not you in the book. Fascinating. It's definitely not you. Right.
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When you outline it and you're thinking about these characters and these relationships,
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do you find that once you're in it and you're doing the actual writing part
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of it that you have the outline, but do the characters sometimes take over?
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Like you're thinking about how this person would interact with this person and
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then it just she or he becomes something new or something different or evolves
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as you're writing them. Oh, for sure.
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Definitely the characters evolve as I'm writing them. And I add things all the
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time, add different personality traits or different situations that I put them in because I think, oh,
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you know, this will test that person's character in this way.
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So yes, for sure, I would say the...
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Biggest thing that evolves throughout the book writing process are the characters, less so the plot.
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The plot is usually more defined, but the characters are really what evolve
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throughout the process.
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So can we talk about this ghostwriting process? How does that come about?
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Can you tell us about the process of that? Do they reach out to you?
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I'd love to know more about that. Ghostwriting is when someone is a celebrity
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or an expert is the author and you're writing for them in their voice. Oh, okay.
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Initially, how I got into that was a good friend of mine is a ghostwriter.
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And at the time, I was just writing novels. This was in, I want to say maybe
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2017, during the Pretty Revenge writing process, which was taking so long.
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And I would send it in, and my agent and editor would have it for like a month
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or so, just trying to edit it and figure out how we were going to get it into the right shape.
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Because everyone loved the idea and the story, but we really wanted it to make
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a big splash. because it was also my first sort of foray into domestic suspense
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or thrillers. The other had been more women's fiction.
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And The Pretty Revenge and Perfectly Famous were a little more thriller-esque.
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And I was switching publishers as well from Penguin Random House to Simon & Schuster.
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And that was going to be a hardcover. So we wanted to make a big splash with that book.
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And during that process, a ghostwriting friend came to me and she said,
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I just got asked to do a ghostwrite for one of the Real Housewives of New Jersey.
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I'm busy with other projects and I don't watch The Real Housewives,
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but like I thought you'd find it funny because I know you sort of like know
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some of the housewives in that world.
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And I'm not actually a big TV watcher, but I knew of The Housewives more than she did, certainly.
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And I said, oh, well, who is it? Which one is it? And she said,
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oh, it's Teresa Giudice.
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And I said, well, that sounds really fun. I would totally write that.
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I'm like in the middle of writing this novel, but it's going so slowly.
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And I was used to writing a novel every nine or 10 months.
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And it was just like such a quick turnover that I never really had any chance to branch out.
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But this book was a slower process because we were switching publishers and
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it just was taking longer.
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And the Teresa book needed to be written in six weeks. Holy cow!
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Which is very, very quick. But I had this random...
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Little window where I thought I could get it done. And my friend said,
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well, you're not really a ghostwriter.
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And to backtrack, prior to writing my own novels, I had collaborated and edited
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a book for Carrie Kennedy,
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who's Robert Kennedy's daughter and Robert Kennedy Jr.'s sister, JFK's niece.
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And so I had I wouldn't call that a ghostwriting project because it was a series
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of interviews that Carrie had done and then I had edited.
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But I knew what it was like to work on a book with someone else and act in sort
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of more of like a backseat role.
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And I had also written a nonfiction book already. So I knew what that was like.
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So they needed someone. And I thought I've interviewed a zillion celebrities
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before for long-form articles.
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I can definitely do this. I know how to write a book.
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So I got that job. My friend put me in touch with Teresa's lawyer at the time,
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and he was the one who—and I met Teresa—.
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I would say like a week later and the next day I was at her house and we were
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starting writing the book and we wrote it in five weeks.
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Wow. And I loved doing it so much that I thought, you know what,
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I can do both of these things.
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It really appealed to the journalistic side of my brain, and I liked the idea that I could,
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in one world of mine, make up stories, in another world of mine,
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the stories would come to me and I could just write someone else's story.
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It seemed just like a different, interesting exercise. And it also.
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Being a novelist is a very isolating, solitary kind of job.
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And I thought, well, this will be nice because I can at least interact with other people.
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So after that, sometimes the jobs came to me through word of mouth.
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And sometimes I would be thinking about somebody and say to myself,
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this person should write a book. Why haven't they written a book?
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And I would reach out to them and then we would write a book together.
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So they've come to me both ways. They've come to me through,
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I'm with William Morris Endeavors, so they come to me through William Morris
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because that's a big talent agency.
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So sometimes they'll come through that. And sometimes I'll say to myself,
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why hasn't this person written a book?
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For example, Mauricio Umansky, who is Kyle Richards' husband from Real Housewives
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of Beverly Hills, if they're separated.
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But more noteworthy is that he is the owner of the agency, which is a huge real
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estate agency, and he's a massive real estate mogul and businessman.
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And he, at the time, in addition to being on Real Housewives as Kyle's husband,
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was also launching his own show on Netflix called Buying Beverly Hills, which I believe had...
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I think it had two seasons. And
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that was coming out right sort of the time that the book was coming out.
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And I quite literally sent him a personal email that I found on the agency website
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as if he was going to be my realtor.
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I just reached out to him and I said, you know, here's who I am.
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Why haven't you written a book? You need to write a book.
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And he emailed me back within 20 minutes and said, can you talk on the phone
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right now? And I said, I can. And he said,
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got on the phone, and he was like, let's do it.
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I've been approached about books in the past. It was never the right timing.
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Lucky for you, you hit me on the right day, the right timing. I'm ready.
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I'm not someone who wants to talk to a million writers. You obviously are accomplished,
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and you come with William Morris.
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And my agent at William Morris wanted to represent him on the book,
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so she became his agent as well.
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And that was that. Wow. And we wrote a book together.
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Wow. Yeah. Just like that. I have an idea.
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Let's do it. Yep. That is some, what's the word for that?
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That happened also with another real estate person, a real estate agent slash
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reality star, formerly Mary Fitzgerald, now Mary Bonet, who's on Selling Sunset.
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Okay. And so I also reached out to her and said, why haven't you written a book?
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You should write a book. And she was like, I should. And I found her a wonderful
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agent named Jane Distall, who is a very, very accomplished agent.
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She's actually Colleen Hoover's agent. And she represented Mary,
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and I wrote her book as well.
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So how many have you done now? Oh, goodness. Let's see. Books I've worked on.
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So Carrie Kennedy, Teresa Giudice from Real Housewives of New Jersey,
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Margaret Josephs from Real Housewives of New Jersey.
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Mauricio Umansky, a fashion designer named Stacey Eagle, who's the designer of Boy Meets Girl.
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I did some work on Melissa DeRosa's book.
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She was the secretary to Andrew Cuomo, not his secretary, but secretary of the
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governor, so his second in command when he was governor of New York.
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Oh, goodness, who else? Sheena Shea from Vanderpump Rules.
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I'm certain that I'm forgetting some, but there have been, I don't know,
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probably as many ghostwrites as there have been novels.
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So I think there have been 15 or 16 books now in total.
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And I'm currently, I probably can't say who I'm currently working with.
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So I am writing three, I'm working on a minimum of three ghostwrites right now and my own next novel.
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I am not someone who just wants to turn books out just to turn them out.
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I took a little time with the ghostwriting because I got to sort of wrapped
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up in it and they were just coming my way.
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And there were so many of them at once that I took a little break between my
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last novel and this novel.
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And I also had a lot of life changes, and I really wanted to write something
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that felt organic to me because I did have another book idea.
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I wrote, I want to say, 50 pages of it, and I couldn't go back to it because
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I just didn't see where the story was going.
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I liked the chapters. I sort of liked the writing, but I wasn't feeling the
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story and it didn't feel right to me.
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And it was the first time ever, aside from that first book that I wrote that
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never saw the light of day, it was the first time I really wrote something later
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into my career that I completely just scrapped and started from scratch.
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Does it feel good to let it go? Yes, it does.
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So I now have another book, novel, which, you know, is on the way,
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and a bunch of ghost rights, which I wish I could say who they were,
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but they... When they come out, you can let me know and make it.
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I can definitely let you know.
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I can say that a couple of them are...
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In the reality space. And one of them is a famous plastic surgeon,
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a celebrity plastic surgeon. Oh, that one's going to be good.
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Yes, who most people's name will recognize the name of, certainly in the New York area.
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Oh, how fun. She does a lot of celebrities, so.
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I'm always very curious about the plastic surgeries. All my friends,
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my wives, they all follow the top plastic surgeons, and they're always sending
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all of us through Instagram, like, look at this transformation,
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look at this transformation.
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And believe me, it was tempting to say, You don't have to pay me. Just give me a facelift.
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Can you just do something with this face? Well, and when they do facelifts,
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you get the full treatment.
26:43
You don't only get the facelift, but you get to stay at the really nice hotel.
26:46
The nurse who spends the night with you. It's like you get taken care of for
26:50
48 hours until you have to go home.
26:52
That was something I didn't understand about that whole process of having a
26:56
facelift done was the care that they give you afterwards, like the premium.
27:00
I think the fancy, you know, New York City and Beverly Hills plastic surgeons do do that.
27:05
If I'm going to do it, I want to save up and I want it done the right way. Absolutely.
27:09
Put me in the car like, oh, I'm good. Exactly.
27:12
It is your face, right? I'm not there yet. We'll see. So now that you're writing
27:16
this new novel, are there times of days or moments in the days or specific days
27:21
of the week that you find yourself to be, like, gravitating towards the writing process?
27:26
So I found as I've gotten older, Mondays are mine. I try to schedule work calls.
27:31
Like if I have to, I have to. But I really like that Monday to get my week together
27:35
to get like the kids stuff ready.
27:37
Are you finding that for writing that you have a similar process where certain
27:42
days or times of the week that you're like move towards that?
27:45
So because I write so many books at once, I don't think people always understand this is my job.
27:51
This is my full-time job in the same way as someone's full-time job who goes to an office.
27:56
Certainly, I have more flexibility. So if I want to...
28:01
Go get a manicure at four o'clock on a Tuesday and work from eight to nine o'clock
28:07
that night instead of four to five o'clock because that's when the manicure place is open.
28:11
I have the luxury of doing that if I don't have a call scheduled or something like that.
28:16
Or I can work on a weekend if I have to take my son to visit a college on a Friday afternoon.
28:22
I can make up that time on a Saturday. But on the balance, I am working at a
28:29
bare minimum Monday through Friday.
28:32
I typically, a day for me, will look like I will get up and at some point during
28:39
the day, I will go take a class at Pure Bar.
28:42
So I'm a Pure Bar person. I also, I used to teach there at Pure Bar Westport regularly.
28:48
Now I just substitute if someone is sick or on vacation because I don't have
28:55
enough time to have the regular classes scheduled, but I do love doing it. So I just kind of stay on.
29:02
I moonlight, which is super, super fun, but I always make time for that.
29:07
And sometimes that class is first thing in the morning. So I do that first and
29:10
then I get into my work, which actually will work out better is I'll do like
29:14
a lunchtime class so that I can get up and get in a certain number of hours
29:19
of work before the class,
29:21
have that little break to take the class and then come back to my desk.
29:24
And I also at some point during every day try to get out for a long walk. But...
29:32
It's not easy to make the time to take a full bar class and take a long walk.
29:37
So obviously I can't work during a bar class. But during my long walks,
29:42
I will either have a phone call sometimes for a ghost write.
29:46
I'll just throw in my AirPods and put the noise canceling on because all of
29:51
those calls are recorded. So I do need the person to be able to come through clearly.
29:54
What I will often do is I have to listen to a lot of podcasts.
29:59
A lot of the people that I write for have podcasts or they've been interviewed
30:03
by other people on podcasts and I want that research.
30:07
So I'll use that walking time as work time as well.
30:11
Yeah. I work Monday through Friday and I work when my children are not home.
30:16
So I'm divorced. I have my kids pretty much one week on, one week off.
30:21
My ex-husband does travel a bit more than I do, so sometimes I have them a little
30:27
bit more than just for a week straight, but we always try to balance it out.
30:31
We're very flexible with each other. On the weeks that my kids are with him,
30:35
I have my full day to work.
30:37
On the weeks my kids are with me, it's very important for me to be the one to
30:43
pick them up at school and take them to their activities slash be home when
30:48
they get home and have that touch point in the day.
30:51
And there are times where they'll come home or I'll pick them up and I have
30:54
to go back and still do something. Yeah.
30:57
At that point, it's typically not writing. It'll typically be a call.
31:01
The bulk of my writing time happens when they're in school. When they're home,
31:05
it's nearly impossible.
31:06
I mean, they're teenagers, so it's not like they're bothering me.
31:09
But any kind of interruption to a writing process is challenging.
31:13
So typically, I front load my writing and I back load, like,
31:17
calls and things like that. I'm going into my office.
31:21
I will be on this call. You can't bother me. And when I come out,
31:25
you know that, you know. So and it's obviously it's much easier now that they're
31:28
15 and 16 years old than when they were younger.
31:31
But do you find with the kids, I have two boys, too. They're 11 and 13.
31:35
I find that as they've gotten older, they need me more in a different way.
31:40
Just different scenarios where I feel like it's a deeper conversation.
31:44
It's a deeper connection now than when they were younger.
31:47
Like they wanted to play with you when they were younger. Now my 13 year old's
31:50
like, hey, mom, love you. Bye.
31:52
And he's gone. But if something comes up, he wants you there.
31:55
He wants me in the room. He wants to have a discussion.
31:58
And I didn't realize that was going to happen. Obviously, my first is 13 that
32:03
as they get older, they need you more.
32:05
They definitely need you in different ways. So I am in that phase,
32:10
which I am almost out of right now, where they have very extensive social lives
32:18
but are not yet driving. Yeah.
32:20
So my older son is taking his driving test in March.
32:25
I mean, we are really like at the final in the final stage here with him. He already has a car.
32:30
He's taking his driving test in March. And my younger son is 10 months behind that.
32:35
So I'm very close. But right now, my sole purpose in their lives is driving
32:41
them everywhere they need to go and feeding them. Yep.
32:46
My older son is much more.
32:51
Competent in the feeding himself category. I believe that my younger son is
32:55
also competent. He is just less likely to exercise that competence.
33:01
My older son will say to my younger son, Hugo, you can cut your own apple.
33:05
Mom doesn't have to do it. And Hugo will say, the day she says no is the day I'll cut my own apple.
33:11
As of right now, I have yet to say no. So he's continuing to get his apples.
33:15
I mean, I joke that he will text me from his bedroom at
33:18
10 30 at night and say can you please
33:21
bring me up apple cut up apple carrot and
33:24
cheese and a water and whereas many
33:27
parents would say come down and get it yourself more of
33:30
the room service will be there in 10 minutes would you like a cloth napkin with
33:34
that so which i'm not sure is the right way to be but i only have them for a
33:41
few more years and my inclination is to of course baby them for as long as I possibly can.
33:48
I hear you. Not to. It's hard. Yeah.
33:51
At least it's hard for me not to, especially with boys. Right.
33:53
God knew I couldn't take girls like and I'm a great auntie to all my wives,
33:58
little girls and my sister's daughter, like love them, bring them to me. It was known I could not.
34:04
I think I also is in some way meant to be a boy mom. I always thought I would have a girl, but.
34:10
Being a boy mom feels right for sure. Yeah, and I can handle the crazy and the
34:14
loud and the things being shot and pretended to be shot and weapons everywhere.
34:19
Yeah. I can manage that. On the balance, I think boys are much lower maintenance than girls are.
34:25
And as far as the, you know, them and the writing and their needs,
34:29
we certainly do have needs still as teenagers and, as you say, different needs.
34:34
But there's not as much of an urgency behind their needs as no one's falling
34:39
and starting to cry hysterically.
34:41
I mean, and you're like, oh, my God, I need to get up and move toward this in this moment.
34:46
Yeah. Your toasted bagel can wait 10 minutes until I'm off this call.
34:50
Or you make the toasted bagel and they've forgotten. You could do it yourself. Totally.
34:55
I didn't grow up being like, I want to be a mom. Like, I'm going to get married and be a mom.
34:59
That was never, I think I just always knew I would do it, but it wasn't like
35:02
part of my mindset that I wanted to be a wife and all that stuff.
35:05
But I met my husband and I was like, I need to have your baby.
35:07
So let's make this happen. It did. It worked out.
35:10
But I do find that I'm Italian, Irish and Spanish.
35:14
Food is part of our life. Being with family is part of our life.
35:18
And I think being able to feed them is one of the greatest pleasures.
35:24
I agree. Right? To see them eat, to give them sustenance.
35:28
They're trying to eat a bunch of crap at some point. If I can give them something
35:31
really good that I've made, then my job is done. Yes, I feel the same way.
35:36
I love to cook and I like to feed them as well. Then I'm good.
35:39
I'll take a snuggle if it happens.
35:41
But I know I've given you love through food. So that really works for me.
35:46
I'm with you on that one. So what was your favorite book to write so far?
35:50
Or is it the one you're currently writing?
35:53
I'd say two were my favorite. My first novel, You Knew Me When.
35:58
One of the characters in that, the Luella character, was based on my grandmother,
36:03
who sadly is no longer with us now, but she was one of my best friends in life.
36:09
So I loved that character.
36:11
And there was something about that book and that story that just really felt like home to me.
36:19
And also it was my first novel. So I think I just have this,
36:22
like, holds a place in my heart for sure. And then Pretty Revenge.
36:26
Just because that book was so juicy. It was so good. And so just,
36:30
you know, I like writing dark characters.
36:35
And as you said, you've read the book. The Jordana character was actually darker originally.
36:43
And we pulled back on it a little bit because I think it was just too much of
36:48
a departure from my other. books for her to be that deranged.
36:53
Vengeance was going to be even stronger? I think just her, not that her vengeance
37:00
was so much going to be stronger, but that her,
37:04
personality was going to be more acidic and more less...
37:11
Vulnerable. One thing editors almost always will say to writers is there needs
37:20
to be something that the reader can relate to or feel sorry for the character about.
37:27
They can't just be an awful human being because then you're not rooting for them in any way.
37:34
And I've always been mixed on this. I don't know if you read the book Gone Girl.
37:39
No, I couldn't get I couldn't do it. The main character. Well,
37:42
there you go, because the main character in that was just flat out unlikable.
37:47
And that's the main piece that editors often say to writers is your character
37:52
can't be 100 percent unlikable.
37:55
And my sort of answer to that was always, yes, but there are people in this
37:59
world who are just unlikable.
38:02
And it's funny because there was one book that I was writing.
38:06
And I can't remember which one it was. And there was a scenario and the editor
38:11
came back and she said, nobody would ever do that.
38:15
That nobody would ever do what that character did.
38:18
That's not realistic. And I was like, well, my best friend did that.
38:23
So like, you're wrong. I know that you think that no one would ever do that,
38:29
but that actually happened in real life. So, and that's not Lauren or Samantha.
38:35
That's your best friend, not from Westport.
38:37
So, but yeah, so sometimes they're wrong. And editors also typically don't.
38:44
Like books sort of wrapped up with a pretty bow.
38:48
And I have rebelled against that multiple times because I don't think that that's life.
38:56
Yeah, life's not wrapped up. Life is wrapped up in a pretty bow.
38:58
And especially if you ever want to write a sequel to something, why wrap it up?
39:03
Yeah, there was a book we read. We attempted a book club, but that's very difficult to get together.
39:08
It's difficult to get people to read books. It is. So I have another question
39:13
about that too, about reading books. It was called The Whispers.
39:15
Have you heard of this book? I have not. None of the characters were likable.
39:18
And that was something at the end of the day.
39:20
Maybe that's why I haven't heard about it. Well, that was something at the end
39:22
of the day that we all sat together and were like, I'm not rooting for anyone in this book.
39:28
And that was the one thing. That's tough. It was really tough.
39:31
In the end, you're like, what the hell just happened?
39:34
That was a twist. And then you're like, I don't like anyone.
39:37
I don't care what happens to them. Yeah. Which for me, I really want something.
39:42
Like even if the person was horrible, there has to be something,
39:45
you know, unless they're a villain, you know, the villain's a villain.
39:48
But like the person who you're trying to root for. Even if they're a villain,
39:50
you want to know that they suffered some hardship when they were growing up,
39:53
which made them who they are.
39:55
And that's why they're this terrible person. Yeah. Yes.
39:58
There needs to be a backstory. There has to be. So let's talk about books,
40:01
but let's talk about the spoken books, the audio books.
40:05
How do you feel about the audio books?
40:09
I feel that they're great for people who like to consume via listening to books.
40:18
I have never listened to an audiobook in my life. Really? And that includes my own.
40:23
All of my books have been made into audiobooks.
40:28
I've listened to maybe like the first five minutes of a couple of them and then
40:35
get upset because I don't think the person is reading it the way I would have read it.
40:40
And I don't, you know, I am like, that doesn't, that's not what Carrie would sound like.
40:45
You know, later on, as I progressed in my career, I was able to choose the people
40:51
who read like the voiceover actors, which was nice.
40:55
But you only get to choose from like three options, you know.
40:58
And you only get to choose the main characters. You're not choosing all 15 characters
41:02
in the book. You're choosing like three people.
41:04
But even so, it's weird to hear someone read your words that you've written.
41:12
So I never really... And it's just not my...
41:15
It's not my chosen form of consumption. To me, I want to sit and actually read
41:20
a book, but I do not stand in judgment in any way of people reading.
41:25
But it's funny. I was just listening to a podcast the other day,
41:28
a podcast about books, and it was two people on the podcast discussing whether
41:34
someone – the woman had said, I've read 20 books this year.
41:39
And her husband, who was doing the podcast with her, said, well,
41:45
not really. You've listened to 20 books this year.
41:49
And they were debating whether when you're speaking about reading books,
41:55
whether it's proper to say, I've read 20 books if you've listened to them,
42:00
or if you need to make that distinction to someone when you're talking about it.
42:04
Like, I've listened to 20 books this year. I think there should be a distinction.
42:07
Well, he was saying, I think there should be a distinction. And she was saying,
42:11
what's the difference? I consider if I've listened to the whole book that I've read it.
42:15
Okay, interesting. And I had never really given much thought to that because
42:19
who cares who's trying to prove anything to anybody.
42:23
You read for pleasure. So if your way of consuming a book is to listen to it,
42:30
then great. Money on that also.
42:31
Good. So no worries on that end. But it's just not personally,
42:36
it's not my chosen form of consumption.
42:39
There have been a couple books recently, series that I've been reading that
42:43
none of my friends will read because it's The Fourth Wing and The Court of Thorns
42:48
and Roses and Quicksilver.
42:50
And I'm obsessed and I can't stop reading them. I ignore my whole family and
42:54
they're like, moms, put the book down. But I have found that a couple of them,
42:58
I'm so obsessed with it and I have to take these long drives to Vermont that I can't stop.
43:05
So I will purchase the book and I will get the audiobook version and I'll devour it. I think it's.
43:13
In large part, dependent on your lifestyle. So I am not someone whose days revolve
43:18
around long car rides or long periods of time where I'm doing something and can multitask.
43:25
Well, so I think if you are someone who has an hour drive or more to work every
43:31
day and you want to listen to a book rather than listening to the radio or rather
43:35
than being on the telephone, absolutely. I think that's fantastic.
43:39
I have a friend who listens to her audio books while she cleans her house.
43:43
Like that's her thing that she does.
43:45
For me, my life is sort of minutes and minutes and minutes and minutes.
43:49
There aren't these long.
43:50
I mean, I guess I could listen when I do my walks, but you're trying to work.
43:55
I'm trying to work. And I also I don't find it goes hand in hand with the TV
44:00
watching stuff for me. It just doesn't.
44:03
Really hold my attention for whatever reason to consume in that kind of way
44:08
and the way that sitting down and reading something on a page does.
44:11
Well, it's very different for me when I'm experiencing the book and the characters.
44:16
I almost sometimes I can't listen to it because that voice that I think about
44:21
in my head does not sound like this.
44:22
That's right. I'm sorry, but that is not who that is.
44:25
So I can't. There was one book I just was listening to.
44:28
Oh, my sister told me about this other book and I started listening to it first
44:32
because I was taking this long drive and I called her and I'm like, this is awful.
44:35
She's like, what do you mean? I'm like, I can't read this book. This sounds terrible.
44:40
She's like, it's the person speaking it. And she's so spot on,
44:43
but it almost ruined the book for me.
44:46
That's what I was saying about listening to my own books. It's like,
44:49
that's not what that person sounds like, by the way.
44:51
In my mind, that voice is different. It's deeper.
44:54
It doesn't sound like that. So I'm with you. It really depends.
44:57
I don't know if I'm ever going to go back to that book, she recommended it to
44:59
me because I feel like it's been ruined or I have to start over entirely.
45:03
I'd also see, at least for me, I could see being drawn more to listen to a memoir
45:10
than I would be to listen to fiction. Yes.
45:13
Like the actual person. Because I think there's a beauty in reading a fictional
45:18
work of art that doesn't necessarily exist if you're reading like a how-to book
45:23
or, you know, someone's life story.
45:25
Yeah. So is there a book that you would recommend right now that's something
45:30
you've read recently and you're like, this was fantastic and we need to all read it? Oh, goodness.
45:36
Because my books are obviously, no one agrees with me on the books I want them
45:39
to read. What have I read recently?
45:44
That I really loved. Jessica Knowles' book, Bright Young Women,
45:49
which came out in 2023 and was inspired by the real-life crimes of Ted Bundy. Oh, wow. His story.
45:58
And there was another fantastic book called Yellow Face.
46:03
Yes. I had friends who read that. It was about the book industry.
46:06
It was about plagiarism.
46:08
Yes. And that was a really... Those two books were fantastic.
46:13
And, you know, I don't know whether it's because I just obviously of the line of work that I am in.
46:22
It is hard for me to really get into a book.
46:26
I don't, surprisingly, I don't read the books that I write.
46:31
So I don't read women's fiction or beach reads. Okay. And clearly I don't look
46:36
down on them. I mean, I write them.
46:38
But I just, for whatever reason, even though that's what I write,
46:42
that's not what appeals to me to read, which is so funny.
46:45
I mean, look, I do read many of those
46:49
books because I blurb them for other authors. So I do have to read them.
46:53
A lot of times they're perfectly great and entertaining.
46:57
And sometimes I will read them just to sort of like know what's out there in
47:02
the industry and what the books are that are doing.
47:04
They're very quick reads for
47:05
me. What really holds my attention are more sort of classic literature,
47:12
or even I have a friend who turned me on to some philosophy books, a little bit of poetry.
47:23
I like to read things where I'm expanding my mind and learning and reading things
47:29
that I sort of like challenge me in a way more than I like to use reading as
47:37
an escape, which I think is great.
47:39
I think escapism through reading is also a wonderful thing, but that's not the
47:46
way I use it, which is interesting.
47:48
It's so interesting that we do it for different reasons.
47:51
I never thought of that. I always thought everyone just did it because they
47:54
wanted to escape reality like I
47:55
do. But it's interesting. I think a lot of people use TV in that way, too.
47:59
I think that's why they watch TV.
48:02
Quote-unquote stupid shows because they want to turn their brain off.
48:06
They don't want to really concentrate on something. Yeah. And I get that.
48:10
Yeah. Oh, I love this. This has been so much fun.
48:14
Thank you. I really want a treat to get to hear all of this knowledge and insight.
48:19
Thank you so much. It went so far beyond what I was expecting.
48:22
I don't know about the knowledge and insight, but I appreciate it.
48:25
It's been really wonderful. So thank you for being here. Do we get any idea
48:28
of when it's coming out? I don't know. You don't know? I don't know.
48:32
When you write your own book, the editing process is forever,
48:37
and then it takes a year plus for the book to come out.
48:40
The ghost rights, you write it and it can come out in three months.
48:43
They just turn it out very quickly.
48:46
But with the novels, I often don't get a pub date for months after it's turned in.
48:51
So truly no idea. But if I did, I would tell you.
48:55
Come back and talk about it. I would love to. I would love to.
48:58
That'd be so fun. Thank you.
49:00
Thank you so much for joining me today on She's Smart. New episodes drop every other Thursday.
49:06
Don't forget to subscribe, like, and share. Stay cozy.