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Psychological Thrills with Lori Brand · WriterCon

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This week on the writer Con podcast, it would be to write a crappy
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first draft. Just check it out, get it done. Welcome to writer
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Con, a gathering place for writers to share their knowledge about writing and the
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writing world. Your hosts are William Bernhardt, best selling novelist and author of
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The Red Sneaker books on writing, and Laura Bernhardt, award winning author the
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want lnd Files book series. Thank you, Jesse Ulrich, and hey,
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they're writers. Thanks for joining us. As this episode is released, we're
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only a few weeks away from the writer Con Retreat, which this year is
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at the Cane Break luxury resort that's not far from Tulsa. That's July seventeen
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through twenty one. I believe Laura excited yet, Oh yes, Oh my
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gosh. I'm always excited when I have the opportunity to connect with and work
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with authors. Hopefully we'll get some new ones too, but I hope we
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have some familiar faces coming as well. I love getting to work with other
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writers. Yes, me too, Jesse. It's not going to feel right
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if we have some kind of writer kind event and you're not there. It's
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true, you think, could you and Michelle you come back we could do
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a live recording of something. I don't know. I think actually, I
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think actually I am running a leadership institute for teens during this retreat. So
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yes, I know I have to shape shape the minds of our youth.
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But otherwise I would happily be in a place that has a hot tub.
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As our listeners know of my love of the tube, that it's hot.
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All right. Our interview today is with Lori Brand. She's the author of
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a fascinating new novel that touches on many important issues. The book is called
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Bodies to Dive or. We'll talk to her about this book and much more.
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But first the news news story number one. There's some new research or
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report commissioned by Harper Collins that indicates that more than a quarter of the readers
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of YA young adult books are actually over the age of twenty eight. Not
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only not young adults, not really even all that close. And the report
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attributes this to behavioral changes that they describe in terms like emerging adulthood or delaying
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adult life. So here's what I mean, not really a news flash that
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there are some adults spying and reading young adult fiction. That was certainly true
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of the twilight books. I think I read at one point more than fifty
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percent of those we're selling to adults to be read by them, not the
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daughter they claim they were buying it for at the sales counter, but for
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themselves. And I think young adult is the genre which indicates that the protagonist
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is going to be a teenager, but that doesn't mean that the reader has
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to be so. According to this study, more than a quarter of the
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readers are over the age of twenty eight, even though the protagonists of the
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books are going to be like seventeen or eighteen, something like that. The
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research was commissioned by publisher HarperCollins, as I said, in collaboration with Nielsen
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Book, who is a major book industry data provider. And it suggests that
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it didn't start yesterday. Get this, seventy four percent of why A readers
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were adults, meaning over twenty one or over, and then twenty eight maybe
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a third or so of that number or over the age of twenty eight.
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So seventy four percent of the readers of these young adult books are not young
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adults themselves. The report says that this association may come because of, like
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I said, emerging adulthood delaying adult life feelings of instability in between. This
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that causes people of that age to seek solace in young adult fiction, and
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the books become a source of comfort as they grow older, which is not
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the worst thing I've ever heard of. According to the report, the association
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between reading for pleasure and well being is reflected in the growing number the growing
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popularity of young adult books, with readers of all ages quote increasingly turning to
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YA as a source of comfort, nostalgia, and self care and quote Laura,
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does surprise you. I feel so seen right now. This As a
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very young child, I discovered that if I wasn't feeling well, going off
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by myself and reading helped me. So that was the way that I self
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soothed when I was a child, and this is something that I've carried with
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me. You know this, It maybe is even minorly irritating to you,
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but to this day, I still read myself to sleep, and that's something
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that I have been doing for as long as I can remember, and I
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think it stems from that that was a way of calming myself, calming my
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mind, putting me to sleep. I think finding out that other people are
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turning to reading actually, just is it surprising. Probably not that they're reading
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YA. It's probably a larger number than I would have guessed. I read
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a lot of YA when my kids were younger. When when the kids were
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growing up, I did tend to read them aloud. Twilight is an interesting
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example. You mentioned that I was working in a library at the time and
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tweens were asking for this book. And then the next thing I knew daughters
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were asking for it as well, So I wanted to see what it was,
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and I did wind up reading them as well once they would fit.
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They were independent readers by then, they would read those, and then I
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took them to read them to see what it was that they were reading,
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I think, and that was books. Yes, I read the Hunger Games
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books as well, that was decades ago. The Twilight the decades ago.
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I find at this point in my life I probably don't connect as well with
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a younger protagonist. And yet, a good story is a good story is
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a good story. If it's a good story and it's written well and you
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can get into it. I just don't think that it matters. And reading
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is such a benefit to the readers in general. I've written papers about this
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it's it's so critical that we encourage reading and if hy a is where people
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find comfort and joy, go for it, right, all right? News
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story number two, and this has to do with the idea of you something
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some of you may have seen in the theater or you may have read the
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book before. Is it fan fiction? This is a hard topic for me
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to address because I know for many years I was telling people at conferences and
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whatnot, don't write fan fiction. That can't help your career. You're not
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going to be able to sell it anywhere. I remember having lunch with this
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sweet guy who had written all these Indiana Jones novels and was shocked when Lucasfilm
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didn't want to print them, and you know, it was, what else
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can I do? Well, there's nothing else you can do unless you change
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enough that he doesn't really look like Indiana Jones anymore. But we know that
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Twilight was originally I mean backwards fifty Shades of Gray? Was there originally fan
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fiction for based on Twilight? And Ana Todd did all those books that became
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movies After ever After, Happily ever After? Is that right? I think
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that's right? Our daughters, Yeah, that was the first one. Yeah,
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but there are three now anyway. So in the idea of you,
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the dreamy protaganist of this rom com appears to be based on pop star Harry
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Styles, who was also apparently the basis for The After series by Ana Todd.
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But here he's called Hayes Campbell, which sounds absolutely nothing like Harry Styles.
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But he is in a boy band with a lot of Ardentine female fans,
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and they look a lot like One Direction that was Harry Styles band.
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And the guy is British like Harry Styles. And he quits the band and
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starts making more soulful solo music like Harry Styles. And he likes to date
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older women, which is what sets up the plot of this movie, which
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is I said, is basically a rum com where he's dating a character played
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by Anne Hathaway, who is obviously significantly older than he is, so he's
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Harry Style her. Perhaps he's a Harry Styles type. I don't know,
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Laura, Is this making you think you should stop writing serious novels and just
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do something with Harry Styles In a word, yes, or at least maybe
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add that add that to my Harry Styles. He's a ghost maybe or I
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just something something It's obviously the path of success is Harry Styles and writing books
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with characters patterned after him. And that's that's where I've been going wrong.
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That's it? Does it? Does it have to be Harry Styles? You
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think I could pull off a ro a rum com with a thinly disguised Taylor
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Swift because like that would sell? I bet you could. Yes, Yeah,
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despite all our success, it turns out what she really wants is just
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a quiet country life where she reads poetry and plays with her cats. And
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you can sell that to Hallmark right now? You think so card again?
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But who is he? Yeah? Just just it make at Christmas time?
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Boom Hallmark movie. I think, Jesse, will you write this with me?
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I think we've got a winner. Oh for sure. You also write
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some like Timothy shallow May fan fiction. You know that's a good idea,
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right, We're onto something here. Yeah, okay, Jesse Genre, you
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up the music. Let's talk to Lori Brand. Lorii Brand, welcome to
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the podcast. Thank you for having me, Oh, thank you so much
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being here. All Right, our traditional first question, if you could offer
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writers one piece of advice, what would it be. It would be to
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write a crappy first draft. Just check it out, get it done,
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you know, because it's very easy to like go over and over and over,
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you know, each each chapter to sweat it out, and too you
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know, you kind of muddle down in it intil you can lose that forward
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momentum. Also, having now my book coming out, I can tell you
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that there were some beautiful, beautiful passages that ended up on the cutting room
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floor. You know, you kind of got to finish that whole manuscript to
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be able to look at it as a whole and then go back and see
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what serves the story and what is sort of extraneous. And that's why I
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just I don't think ever again I want to get bogged down in particular passages
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in case, you know, they might be beautiful, but it might end
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up getting cut up it doesn't serve the purpose of the story. Excellent advice.
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Yes, thanks, all right. Tell us about your new book,
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Bodies to Die For? All right, So the tagline is the body image
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war is moving off line and big girls are dying. So that's the tagline.
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I can just read the flat copy if you'd like. The flap copy
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is popular fitness influencer Gemma has transformed herself from a before into an after,
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complete with washboard abs, thriving business, and gorgeous husband. But social media
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can be deceiving. Offline, the cutthroat world of bikini bodybuilding just may eat
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her alive. That's if she's not first devoured by the secret nemesis that lurks
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beneath her polished surface, waiting to destroy her. Software engineer Ashley is bad
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and frustrated, frustrated with failed diets, with a world that wants her to
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shrink, with bias doctors, online trolls, and even her own mother.
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Until Ashley falls in with a mysterious and radical sect of activists who are fighting
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back by any means necessary. She's never felt so alive, so full of
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purpose. She'll do whatever it takes to ride this high, destroy diet culture,
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and win the approval of her charismatic leader. Gemma and Ashley are on
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a collision course headed for the Olympia, the bodybuilding competition where features are made
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and lost. But when Jemma's toughest rival turns up dead and more fitness girls
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fall like Domino's, it's beginning to look like the body image war has gone
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too far with its breakneck pace and keen insights, Bodies to die for.
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It takes a hard look at social media, the seventy billion dollar diet industry,
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and the war on women's bodies, the wars we engage in with each
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other, the wars we wage on ourselves. So that's that's a fun copy.
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Interesting, that's great. Now, I remember the release date is soon.
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When's the release date? Junior eleventh, Okay, so it's already out
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people, You can order this book right now. This seems to have a
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lo to say about social media. You mentioned that a lot of few times
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already. So what was the what was the purpose of that? Intentional?
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Very much? I went to show you know how, you know how the
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online world is a very curated world, and you know, most people are
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preventing presenting a very polished surface of themselves, a polished picture of themselves.
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But it's hard to know what's going on offline, and and especially in that
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in that fitness world right where where people are presenting you know, follow me,
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you know, and you can look like I do, and but you
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know, you might not be aware that this person who who looks really great
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online might like mentally be like in a really bad place and then's and that's
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really what it is for For Gemma, the the woman who's got a fabulous
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body. Offline, she's tormented by by fat Gema, the secret nemesis that
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like lurks inside of her because she used to be happy and she lost a
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bunch of weight and she's just terror by that fat general is going to come
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roaring back and destroy her life. Her marriage is crumbling despite that. You
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know, she posts pictures of herself and her husband online and she makes everything
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look really good, but you know, offline is not. And then also
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about how people can fall into following. You know that the the other character,
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Ashley, the one who's overweight, she falls in with a group of
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fat activists and they start, you know, tearing down diet culture. But
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it becomes kind of they kind of get whipped up a bit and they start
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they end up sort of dragging down other people for their bodies, which is
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really what the opposite of what anybody should be doing. You It's just how
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we're all judging each other on each other's bodies, and nobody owes anybody else
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their body, you know, nobodys she have to answer for that, Well,
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you have my attention here. I write women's fiction, so women's issues
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are always very important to But also when I was working on my master's degree,
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anytime we had some leeway and what we were writing about, I found
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a way to tie it to social constructs and then sometimes and sometimes body images.
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So I'm curious, why did you take on the seventy billion dollar diet
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industry and the war and this this the war women's bodies over women's bodies.
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Yeah, yeah, okay, So so I think before I get to the
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impetus that actually made me write this book, I'll just say this is.
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This has been on my radar since I was ten years old. I've been
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so I've been like on stage, like dancing or whatever since before. I
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can't even remember, Like, I don't even really remember the first time I
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put on a leetard and was like on stage. But when I was ten
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years old, my dance teacher, in an effort to lose weight, had
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her jaw wired shut. And I will never forget it. My mom was
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driving me to dance and she says, oh, you know, by the
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way, Barb's not going to be teaching for the next few months. Jill,
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that's her assistant, right, Jill's Jill's going to be teaching. Barb
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will still be there, She'll be staying off on the side with like a
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little notebook, but she she won't be able to talk to you because there's
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jaws warre shut. I said, well, why why is her jawware shut?
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Right? And my mom said, because Barbara's still lose some weight.
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And I was just like, what, like, how is it even like
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what's going on? Right? And then my mom's pulling up the curb and
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like dropping me off, and I'm like, but wait, but wait,
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and she's like, don't go in there asking questions because you're gonna embarrass far.
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And so I go in there, and I think probably one of the
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most harmful things about this. And I was a very I was a slip
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of a girl, right, I was very I'm skinny as could be,
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and so we're a lot of my friends. But all all the other moms
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are dropping their daughters off too, and nobody was freaking out, Right,
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this was just like another day. Like the fact that like nobody freaked out
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about this, I think was potentially one of the most harmful things that ever.
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It was accepted, right, how important is it to be thin important
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that that that a grown woman would have her jawwared shut, you know.
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And yeah, I watched over a number of months. Well, well,
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she shrunk and she shrunk and she shrunk, and at one point I was
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probably misbehaving, I don't know what, but she pointed at me and she
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kind of curled her finger. So I had to go over there. And
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because she went to say something to me, and in particular, I don't
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remember what she had to talk to me with her jaw ward shot. But
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when she was done, I thought, well, you know, I'm going
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to ask because I'm the only you know, nobody, nobody's going to wrap
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me up to my mom here. So I said, did you really have
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your jaw wearing shut? And she nodded her head, and I said,
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can you show me the wires? And she hooked her finger in the side
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of her mouth and she pulled her lips back and I could see these silver
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metal wires zig zagging up and down between like her upper and lower teeth,
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and they looked like bangs or like sharp teeth. And it left, it
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just left a huge imprint on me. So that that that's kind of I
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guess how the stage was stepped From that point on, I was probably really
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interested. And you know how what what women did to to be thin anyone
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to say in high school and to be beautiful? Yes, yes, yes,
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to hit those societal constructs right and all it is, you know,
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it's to try to always be chasing what society tells you is is the approved
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stamped image. I mean, it's it's very elusive, right, you know,
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you can you know, it's everybody's got a different you know, I'm
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fifty four right now, right, so I've lived through it all, and
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you know, I mean it changes over time, it changes between different groups
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of people, between you. If you're constantly striving to hit somebody else's definition
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of beauty, you'll probably never be happy. And so my book, at
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the end, the realization is that rather than trying to shrink, to be
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small and to try to hit that external metric, I guess that instead if
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you focus on getting strong, right, that that that's empowering, right,
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that you can you can eat to nourish your bond. You could say,
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I want to do a push up and you can do it, right,
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you can work on it, you can do it. You know, I
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want to walk a mile, I want to do this, I want to
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do that. But those are things that you can hit. It can make
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you mentally strong. And that The other thing at the end of my book
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is that just a realization that we as women need to quit tearing each other
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down, right, We need we need to so often we say, you
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know, society, this, society that, But who is society, right,
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it's us and we need to quit being our own worst enemies and being
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unkind to each other. So that's a message. And you managed to get
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that in the book, which is yeah, oh yeah, yeah, yeah,
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yeah. I have to point out, you know, your your book
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describes itself in the pr describes itself as a psychological thriller. It is,
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And of course, since I write thrillers too, I think, well,
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what makes one as psychological thriller or mind unpsychological thrillers or what's the distinction in
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your mind? So I think I think in psychological thrillers there's like the mental,
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the mental anguish, like the fear. I know, a lot of
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it's psychological. You know, Gemma has Gemma is the bodybuilder. You know,
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she has not only the fear of fat Gemma, but as as some
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of these fitness girls start to fall. She starts to become concerned that that
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she may be next, and that I don't want to say too much else,
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but she starts to also wonder she's going crazy, you know, partly
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because of this this uh nemesis that works inside of her, but she starts
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to even question her own her own sanity. Man on a different subject in
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real life. Yeah, I'm going to tell you something. I think you
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already know that you're a major athlete, right, You've written articles for fitness
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magazines and teach yoga and fitness classes. Yeah, how does that play into
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your writing, into the writing for the book? I think, or in
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writing for fitness magazines are both really your novels? How does that okay?
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The novel? Yeah? So I think I have a pretty good grasp overall
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of the fitness industry. I've been in the fitness industry for a long time.
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I Uh, I have seen, you know, I like, when
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teaching like strength classes and things, I've seen women who are say, oh,
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let's just say, somebody might be like say fifty five, sixty years
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old, five foot two and one hundred pounds, and and they'll they'll they'll
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want to start taking a strength class, and they'll say they they'll say to
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me, but I don't want to get too bulky, you know, I
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don't want to get too big, right, And it's going to be everything
23:51
that somebody can do at that age, right to put on to put on
23:53
muscle, right, It's it's very hard putting on muscles. A glacial a
23:57
glacial thing. It's it takes a lot of effort to put on muscle.
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But I will frequently see like a fear of getting too big, too bulky.
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I also see very much a focused on or I hate I should say
24:15
very much, but you know, sometimes you know, you see people who
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are uncomfortable or ashamed of their bodies and what they look like. Like.
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I've had people come back to my class after the pandemic, you know,
24:26
if I, you know, if I hadn't seen them for a couple of
24:27
years and like apologize for what they look like, which is like, you
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know, you know, you just you just hate to see that, right,
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Nobody should have to apologize for what they look like. Being able to
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come to yoga, to do things like this, you know, it's a
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it's a privilege. It's a wonderful thing to be able to move your body
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and in a way that you take pleasure in it. And you shouldn't have
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to be ashamed to to come to yoga. You shouldn't have to be uncomfortable
24:57
wearing maybe a pair of leggings or something like that because you're worried about about
25:02
people judging you. So I've seen that. I'm just I'm just pretty keenly
25:07
aware of of how how women will view themselves. And sometimes sometimes, you
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know, sometimes it's somebody who's looking like very much like the part of what
25:18
society expects, you know. I also have a background in bodybuilding, right,
25:23
women's bodybuilding, And one of the things that really got me is I
25:29
would be sometimes, you know, like this would be like a day before
25:33
competition, like when you're all at the hotel or something like, like the
25:36
day before the competition, when everybody's looking really good, right, I mean
25:40
you're looking really, really, really really good. You've dieded down, you've
25:42
got your you know, you you've spent a long time, you know,
25:47
really perfecting what they call your package, right, what kind of package are
25:49
you going to bring to the stage? And you'll, you know, I
25:53
would see women with these phenomenal physiques look in the mirror and see nothing but
25:59
flawed, you know, like like see see you know that they they they
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still feel that they're not shredded enough or you know, or they're dissatisfied with
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like the their shoulders or their glutes or just you know, and so just
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maybe you realize how it affects everybody, right, Diet culture affects everybody.
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You can have a phenomenal body, and it still affects your even even if
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actually you acknowledge that, you know what I think I do look look good
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right now, it's still the fear that you have, fear of potentially gaining
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weight and that you know that you have to do everything that you can to
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hang on to this this body because you don't want to to lose weight and
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have that they have society frown upon you, you know, and and it
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is true that society does judge people for it. So it's it's absolutely it's
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a real fear. You know. It results in Yeah, body body image
26:53
is a big deal. Body dysmorphia is a big problem. Absolutely, we're
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all affected by that. Yeah. All right, well I'm gonna go ahead
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and bring this up. It's in your it's in your bio. Yeah,
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I go ahead, so I assume it's okay. Oh knock yourself up.
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Yeah, you mentioned that you were a playboy model. Yeah, I was
27:11
in I was in non play by book of lager Rae. This is like
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decades ago, by the way, but I want to add to it.
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Then this isn't in the bio. I was also a stripper when I was
27:18
in college, and so I think I think that that's yes. I think
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I think I think it's worth pointing out though, because because you know once
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that you monetize that right, once that you monetized, if you ever had
27:30
any doubts about about what you looked like, you know, the almighty the
27:36
mighty dollar is going to let you know. And when I worked and when
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I worked as a stripper, and I look back on this and I'm shocked.
27:41
I used to call out probably about once a month. I used to
27:45
call it fat. On Wednesdays, i'd call it bat And like my managers
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they're all really nice, nice people actually, but they'd been my station with
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Tracy. They'd be like, Tracy, I just saw you on Saturday.
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Right, it's Wednesday. You didn't get fat and four day And I would
28:00
be like, no, no, I have. I'm not even making it
28:04
up, right, Like I genuinely was was terrified to come in, and
28:10
and it wasn't even like I've been like binge. You know, it's probably
28:11
just like you know, pmsing or something, or maybe I had something salty
28:17
you said once a month. I mean, yeah, yeah, yeah,
28:22
but I remember I remember calling out like and being being terrified to come in,
28:26
you know. And so I think, and so I'm able to look
28:30
back on this now and be really really surprised. Right Or when I when
28:33
I saw when I saw the pictures, I'll never forget when I saw the
28:38
pictures that ended up in implay Bay book lagerie. I hated them, right,
28:42
I thought I thought they were just awful. I couldn't I couldn't even
28:45
believe that they that they published them. I was horrified that they published them.
28:52
But you know, you know, looked fine. But I mean,
28:56
you know, I look back on it and like, like all, you
28:57
know, how how harshly I judged myself, And I'm just I'm really surprised
29:03
by it. So it's it's not just overweight people who are who are judging
29:06
themselves, right, I think we're all judging ourselves and that's you know that
29:10
That's one of the reasons why I think I was kind of on the fence
29:14
while putting that in the bio and my agent we were going to take this
29:17
book on on proposal. I was explaining to them why why I wrote this
29:19
book? Right, He's like, I think you should keep that in,
29:22
right, and so so we kept it in because it is a talking point
29:25
that you can you can you can hit that societal ideal and you can still
29:30
be affected by this, you know. And so that's that's really why I
29:34
wanted to to to explore. I wanted to hit it from every angle possible.
29:40
Well, you have a lot of life experience to draw from, I
29:42
do. I think it's important. So you mentioned an agent, can you
29:47
tell them about your So you have all this life experience, now are you
29:49
ready to put it into the book? What was your past a publication?
29:53
Like, how did you get started? Okay? So I actually this is
29:56
my second book, right. I wrote an entire other book about ten years
30:02
before this one about something completely different, and I finished that whole book.
30:07
I queried it I got several or not several, I maybe had like I
30:11
don't know, maybe eight or something requests for foals, maybe seven or maybe
30:17
some partial some fols. But I remember I started getting feedback back on that
30:22
first one, and I realized that it was going to need to rewrite.
30:25
I started to realize, you know, I had some happy lifting to do,
30:30
and I just didn't really feel like it, you know. I like
30:34
it's like I kind of like worked through it, Like that book was like
30:38
a book I had to, I think, write for me. There's like
30:41
something I had to work through. I had to just do it. And
30:44
right about that time, i'd gone back to you, I had raised my
30:47
kids, I gone back to school and gotten a master's and I got a
30:51
job as an engineer, and so I was getting really busy. So I
30:53
kind of set the I kind of sat writing aside, and and I just
31:00
kind of, you know, set it aside for a number of years.
31:03
And then in twenty twenty, there was some there's something in the news.
31:08
We could talk about it later if you want to, but there's something the
31:11
news that just really grabbed me. It really intrigued me. I had actually
31:15
been starting to write another book. I was about twenty thousand words into the
31:17
other book when when this book hit me, and so I wrote this book.
31:21
I wrote the whole thing. But this time I was smart, right
31:22
this time, I finished the whole book, and I set it aside,
31:26
and I thought about it for a while. I set it aside. Then
31:30
I took it back. I rewrote the book, and then I gave it
31:34
to some beta readers, and this was, this was really helpful, and
31:37
so I gave it to three beta readers. I got their feedback. I
31:41
cleaned the whole thing up, and then I made it as tight as I
31:44
could possibly make it on my own, as I did the very best I
31:48
could on my own, this time, I did the best I could was
31:51
I don't think I did that on the first one. And then I queried,
31:53
and it took only query women, because I thought only a woman's going
32:01
to appreciate this story. But then at some point there was an agent that
32:07
I really admired, Shane Salerno, who he was a guy, and I
32:12
thought, well, you know what, even though I didn't think a guy
32:15
would be interested, I thought, you know, I'm gonna I'm gonna querium
32:16
right just you you missed one hundred percent of the shots you don't take.
32:20
So I queried Shane, and then he got back to me like like that
32:23
that very same day, and he said, you know, he's not taking
32:27
new new clients, but he recommended a newer agent who he thought highly of,
32:32
and that was Jackson Keeler. And so he see Jackson on the email,
32:37
and then Jackson and I exchanged some information and he signed me, and
32:43
then he and I rewrote the book like a million times, like over and
32:47
over and over again. And I was still even though I had made it
32:52
as good as I could on my own, there was a lot I didn't
32:55
know that he was able to really help me. He's a very developmental agent,
33:00
like I didn't somehow I didn't realize that there was like a three x
33:04
toory structure. I had hit most of the beats anyway, because I read
33:07
so many thrillers. But I but we cleaned the whole thing up, and
33:12
then he took it out. We mostly started. Only we know he said
33:19
it to one guy who was an editor, and the others were women,
33:22
because again we thought this would mostly appeal to women. It was a man
33:24
who was an editor who this hit for. And so Daniel Iron half with
33:30
Blackstone and Blackstone Blackstone loved it. Turns out somebody on their marketing team is
33:37
a body Boulder, and she loved the book. Man. She was like,
33:40
she was like, this is this is so true and so so Blackstone
33:45
bought it and and then it took almost two years right from when they bought
33:51
it to when it's going to be a launch cheer on Juniy eleventh, which
33:54
is just it just shows how how long it takes traditional publishing takes, you
34:00
know. But then, what's it? They bought it, right, what
34:01
did we do? We rewrote it a million times with their editor, you
34:06
know, So it's gonna yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah yeah.
34:10
I think this book is gonna be well received, very please. So
34:16
that leads me to ask what next. So I'm working on a new book.
34:22
It's actually close to complete. My agent and I are going back and
34:27
forth in and rewrites with it now. But the whole, the whole thing
34:30
is, the overall manuscript is done, but we're tightening some things out and
34:35
straight and a few a few pieces. It's a book about It's a book
34:40
about an advice columnist and about an Only Fans creator. We're going to tap
34:46
into the topic of sex work because I'm really interested in that space where people
34:52
are again, where people are telling you what you can and you can't do
34:55
with your body, you know, And so we're gonna we're going to tap
34:59
into that and see how how that goes over, you know. Yeah,
35:04
that's what we're doing. Fascinating. Well, thank you so much for being
35:07
on the podcast. I really enjoyed talking with you. Thank you so much
35:10
for having me. Okay, bye bye. Just a few parting words.
35:25
You probably knew. I was going to remind you that you can order my
35:30
brand new novel now called Justice for All. It's the eighth book in the
35:35
Daniel Pike series. And of course, this time Dan is not teaming up
35:39
with this, more like he's in a cage match with or against the lead
35:45
character from my Splitsville series, Kinsey Rivera. So we've got this knockdown,
35:50
drag out courtroom battle shared universe. I never get tired of saying that the
35:55
Bernhardt Shared Universe like nothing you've ever seen before, because I've never written anything
36:02
before. This was a lot of fun to write, and I hope you'll
36:06
enjoy it too. Justice for All, And don't forget about the writer con
36:10
retreat. There is still tire. Come join us, of course, yes,
36:15
please group and one on one feedback on your book is a great environment
36:23
and a great time. I hope you can join us. For more information,
36:28
go to writercon dot com. All right, until next time, keep
36:34
writing and remember you cannot fail if you refuse to quit. Okay, I
36:40
see you next time. Ta