Gilmore To Read: Lynn Painter Is First & Forever A Jess Girl

0:11 [SPEAKER_00]: Hi y'all, welcome, or welcome back to Go More to Read. [SPEAKER_00]: I am your host, Haley, and today is none other than June 3rd. [SPEAKER_00]: Do not save the date, because lookin' the way I are not getting married, but it was actually kind of funny because I went to the dentist on June 3rd, and they texted me after I made the appointment save the date, June 3rd.

0:28 [SPEAKER_00]: And I was like, literally, no one is going to think this funny except for y'all and my bestie is like, obviously I had to tell you about that. [SPEAKER_00]: But I am really excited about today's episode because what June 3rd might be the least romantic and kind of heartbreaking date in the Gilmore fandom.

0:41 [SPEAKER_00]: Today's guest knows a lot about romantic gestures and heart-mending, and that would be Lynn Painter, an icon in the YA and adult romance space who is here to chat with me about her upcoming adaptations, all things go more, why the start to her writing career reminded me of Lorelie, and of course her latest released, first and forever.

0:59 [SPEAKER_00]: First and forever is an adult romance centering around Duffy, who made a splash in the community after an incident involving her favorite football team's mascot. [SPEAKER_00]: This gets on the radar of star player Connor Cunningham and from there, the team's PR rep thinks this might be a good way to get some good press with a fake relationship because of the immediate chemistry between Duffy and Connor.

1:18 [SPEAKER_00]: Now, Duffy also has a close relationship with her father and her gang of rough housing but [SPEAKER_00]: There's also this charged current in their family after the loss of Duffy's mother. [SPEAKER_00]: The way this weaves into the comedy in the romance and the family dynamic feels so impactful and important as Connor makes himself a part of the family.

1:38 [SPEAKER_00]: What will happen when Duffy finds out his team put him up to dating her? [SPEAKER_00]: Well, you'll have to read to find out, of course. [SPEAKER_00]: And there is nothing lend painter does better than feat kicking, giggling as you turn the pages banter. [SPEAKER_00]: Every time I open this book, I knew I was getting a lighthearted refresh in my life.

1:54 [SPEAKER_00]: It's exactly the kind of book you want to read as we head into warmer days this summer. [SPEAKER_00]: Now, a bit about Lynn, Lynn Painter is the number one New York Times bestselling author of romantic comedies for teens and adults. [SPEAKER_00]: When she isn't reading or writing, she can usually be found binge-watching rom-coms or shotgunding energy drinks.

2:10 [SPEAKER_00]: And maybe that says a lot about Lin and her energy that she brought to this conversation because I cannot say enough good things about her. [SPEAKER_00]: She is such a delight to talk to and absolutely hilarious and of course because of the humor in her books. [SPEAKER_00]: But she was even better than I imagined.

2:24 [SPEAKER_00]: And I'm still crossing my fingers, she'll let me read more about her take on a ranch in Texas. [SPEAKER_00]: And I'll leave you with that little come of a detail to find out more. [SPEAKER_00]: Now, without further ado, here is Lin Painter. [SPEAKER_00]: So, today, the date of this airing is June 3rd, for those of you who don't remember looking the way light are not getting married today, which is quite sad, but quite happily I have you here with me today, Lynn.

2:50 [SPEAKER_01]: Hello! [SPEAKER_01]: I'm so excited to have you here! [SPEAKER_01]: I'm so excited to be here with Gilmore Girl Expert. [SPEAKER_00]: Well, I do want to dive into some of your like June 3, Luke and Laura life thoughts in a bit, but I cannot tell you the amount of authors who in like pre or post interview have been like have you had Lynn Painter on?

3:07 [SPEAKER_00]: I can't believe Lynn Painter has it been on your podcast. [SPEAKER_00]: She is such a Gilmore Girl's fan. [SPEAKER_00]: You need to have her on. [SPEAKER_00]: You've been highly recommended by your peers. [SPEAKER_01]: I love that. [SPEAKER_00]: I think that you have a bit of a reputation for loving Gilmore Girls.

3:20 [SPEAKER_01]: You know, I feel like it always comes up, especially like in Q&A's at events. [SPEAKER_01]: People will talk about like comfort reads, like things you reread. [SPEAKER_01]: And Gilmore Girls is always my like comfort rewatch. [SPEAKER_01]: Like when you're like, I need something on on the background.

3:33 [SPEAKER_01]: That's always a go-to. [SPEAKER_01]: You have to turn it on, right? [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_01]: I feel like it always comes up. [SPEAKER_00]: I end up makes sense to give in your books, which we'll get into in a second. [SPEAKER_00]: But yesterday you had some really exciting news that made you write in the caption, I shall now perish, can you tell us more about your imminent demise?

3:50 [SPEAKER_01]: Um, better than the movies is going to be a movie on Netflix, so exciting. [SPEAKER_01]: It's unbelievable. [SPEAKER_01]: It's one of those things where it's like, you know, these things happen where you're like, oh, it's been optioned, which, you know, basically, it just means somebody kind of reserve the right.

4:05 [SPEAKER_01]: And a lot of times, books will be optioned, [SPEAKER_01]: for years and nothing happens, you know? [SPEAKER_01]: So it's just kind of been whatever kind of quiet. [SPEAKER_01]: And now all of a sudden we have a director and a producer and they are like done with the script and they are amazing and life is just bonkers.

4:22 [SPEAKER_01]: I feel really lucky because the whole time I've been really scared because I'm so excited for it to be adapted, but you're always like, you know, what if it's some like motion picture dude bro who doesn't like get it or, you know, you get really scared because I don't want to disappoint readers.

4:38 [SPEAKER_01]: So I'm so incredibly happy that Julia and Jordan, the writers and directors and producers of this, are so incredible. [SPEAKER_01]: They're so like detailed and oriented and thoughtful and they're just amazing. [SPEAKER_01]: So I feel like it's just landed in the best hands. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, have you gotten to read the script for it?

4:57 [SPEAKER_01]: Not yet. [SPEAKER_01]: Like, I read an initial draft and now they've kind of read on the whole thing. [SPEAKER_01]: It's funny because I constantly, I'm like, we text back and forth where they're working on the script and then they'll send me a message and be like, when you wrote this, was this your intention?

5:10 [SPEAKER_01]: So it's really been, coolly collaborative, like, they really open to conversations. [SPEAKER_01]: So it's been really, really kind of special already, where I'm like, I love them so much. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I also feel like that's really rare for someone to take a project, especially an adaptation from a book and like want to be as invested in like what your intentions were as you wrote it.

5:30 [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I'm shocked. [SPEAKER_01]: Like I mean, one night I was like laying in bed and I get a text from them and they were like asking about like on the prom puzzle, you know, Michael asked her to prom and it's like via like he draws a boggle board, you know? [SPEAKER_01]: And they were like, so what is the boggle reference?

5:45 [SPEAKER_01]: And I start talking about what it was initially referring to and didn't even realize till I talked to them that when you do all the editing in your book, that the flashback to the way Michael played boggle when he was little, actually never made it into the book. [SPEAKER_01]: So I was like, oh my gosh, how has it never come up?

6:02 [SPEAKER_01]: How has no one ever asked me, like, why would he draw a boggle board? [SPEAKER_01]: You know, but they honed it on that. [SPEAKER_01]: And they're like, does this have some childhood reference? [SPEAKER_01]: So then we talked through it and they're like, well, we definitely have to put that in the movie.

6:12 [SPEAKER_01]: So it's like, they are so mindful of how important the story is of Western Liz's whole arc of no each other as a poet and her with her mom as opposed to it just being a romance about two teenagers. [SPEAKER_01]: You know, so I'm... [SPEAKER_01]: I'm just thrilled by everything they do honestly.

6:29 [SPEAKER_00]: That really gives me chills because that feels like they're so committed to not only you and your work, but like the readers who love it so much because like that's how readers are reading your books. [SPEAKER_00]: They're underlining, they're annotating, they're like circling all of their favorite parts.

6:44 [SPEAKER_00]: And that's like so hard with adaptations is like not every single one of your favorite parts of a book. [SPEAKER_00]: is going to end up in the movie, but like they're so clearly careful and so considerate of that experience, which I love. [SPEAKER_00]: But again, that's so rare for that to be the case.

7:00 [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I'm so happy with it because I don't even understand, you know, a lot of people would be like, are you doing the adaptation or would you want to? [SPEAKER_01]: And I just said, I am a word, vometer. [SPEAKER_01]: Like I have trouble getting it paired back to like 350 pages. [SPEAKER_01]: And a screenplay is taking, you know, a 350 page book.

7:16 [SPEAKER_01]: And I think it's supposed to be like under 110 pages. [SPEAKER_01]: And that's an art form finding a way to do that. [SPEAKER_01]: And so I love that they are taking so much care to think about the readers. [SPEAKER_01]: I think it's also really special for YA readers, specifically. [SPEAKER_01]: It's like, I get DMs all the time where people will, you know, be holding on on like, when Liz's birthday is or knowing like what star science she is and I'm like, I don't even know that.

7:42 [SPEAKER_01]: You know, it's like they're so, so into all the, the minutia and the details that, that it's like, I love that they are recognizing that and respecting that because I don't want to disappoint readers. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_00]: It's also so cool that it's gonna be at Netflix because like, oh yeah, it just feels so fun because I know that you have so many readers already but like being at Netflix feels like you're just going to expand that discovery of Lynn Painter and all of the people are that I know on the journey of your books which is just even more exciting.

8:09 [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I'm just over the moon, just can't believe it. [SPEAKER_00]: I'm also excited because fake skating has also been optioned by Will Gluck, which I got really excited about because one of my favorite movies is ECA. [SPEAKER_01]: Oh my gosh, we too! [SPEAKER_01]: What a perfect movie.

8:22 [SPEAKER_00]: So like when I realized that was like who was potentially like behind that and like I know that it's much further behind than better than the movies is. [SPEAKER_00]: Like you were talking about like optioning versus like everything is ready to go. [SPEAKER_00]: That one really was exciting for me.

8:37 [SPEAKER_01]: Actually, you know what's so strange is the way it works at fake skating. [SPEAKER_01]: I think we'll be probably come out before better than the movies really they are so like we like signed contracts. [SPEAKER_01]: I don't know late last year maybe beginning this year, but I mean they are the script is almost done.

8:52 [SPEAKER_01]: They are ready to rock on this thing. [SPEAKER_01]: They are so like moving forward that it's it's super exciting. [SPEAKER_00]: Oh, wow. [SPEAKER_00]: Are you there if I'm going to have a theatrical release or is it going to be streaming? [SPEAKER_00]: They're skating is theatrical release.

9:05 [SPEAKER_00]: Oh, yes. [SPEAKER_00]: I hate them so excited. [SPEAKER_01]: I know. [SPEAKER_01]: I'm like beside myself and all my kids, because I have five kids in the oldest four or like in their twenties. [SPEAKER_01]: And they're all like, do we get a cause of premiere and I'm like, [SPEAKER_01]: Technically, I think I'm just allowed a plus one, but maybe when it comes closer, I could beg somebody because, yeah, I mean, theatrical release means premiere.

9:27 [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, we've got to get in on that, right? [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_01]: How many times is that going to happen in our life? [SPEAKER_00]: If anyone can get a plus five, it has to be the author, right? [SPEAKER_00]: I hope so. [SPEAKER_00]: Or you're like picking favorites, like it's like, it's actually going to come down to it, because like, I'm one of four.

9:42 [SPEAKER_00]: So like, we're always joking with my mom, like, I'm your favorite. [SPEAKER_00]: That's so cool though. [SPEAKER_00]: I'm so excited because like it seems like they're in like such good hands, especially hearing about how like collaborative that they've been I just can't wait. [SPEAKER_00]: I'm yeah, I'm sorry for you.

9:58 [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I just feel so fortunate so far. [SPEAKER_01]: I mean everything could blow up tomorrow, but so far Both of you terrible are amazing. [SPEAKER_01]: Right, it's gonna be the worst, but I'll stop right now. [SPEAKER_00]: No, it'll be great. [SPEAKER_00]: It'll be great. [SPEAKER_00]: Only manifesting good things.

10:12 [SPEAKER_00]: But speaking of the screen, Gilmour Girls backing up just a little bit, like EZA, that was like in the early 2010s, which was such a big deal for me. [SPEAKER_00]: I think I watched that on DVD like every night of the week. [SPEAKER_00]: I was in love with that. [SPEAKER_00]: In the same way that I watched Gilmour Girls in the 2000s, like every single night of the week, Gilmour Girls came out in October 2000.

10:31 [SPEAKER_00]: What were you writing in the year 2000? [SPEAKER_01]: Oh my gosh, in the year of 2000, I was, I didn't start writing until right around then, honestly. [SPEAKER_01]: That was when I was, because I get asked a lot, you know, people would be like, oh, you know, what was your writing journey?

10:46 [SPEAKER_01]: I was an idiot. [SPEAKER_01]: Like growing up I loved, like I was a voracious reader. [SPEAKER_01]: I read all the time and like English and composition classes were my favorite and came easier to me. [SPEAKER_01]: But I didn't ever have like an aha moment like, oh, it should be an author.

10:58 [SPEAKER_01]: It wasn't until I was married with kids that one day my sister came over and she had seen on like [SPEAKER_01]: Ellen or some talk show, an author, and she's like, I just saw this famous author as much as you read maybe you should try writing a book. [SPEAKER_01]: And it's such an, just like little comment, like, oh, you like pills, you should be a doctor.

11:13 [SPEAKER_01]: Like it's just such a whatever. [SPEAKER_01]: But I started writing. [SPEAKER_01]: I don't know why I listened to my sister that day. [SPEAKER_01]: But I started trying to write a book and just found my favorite hobby. [SPEAKER_01]: Like I just fell in love with writing stories. [SPEAKER_01]: So it's like I wrote a lot.

11:25 [SPEAKER_01]: So back then, when those were coming out, I was writing just a lot of terrible stuff. [SPEAKER_01]: I have a little bit of romance books about like ranchers even though I'd never been in a ranch and it took a long time You know, better than the movies came out in 2021. [SPEAKER_01]: That was my first book.

11:40 [SPEAKER_01]: So there's a wide span of years between Gilmore girls coming out and me just starting to write and actually adding a book [SPEAKER_01]: I ingested Gilmore girls a little differently, like you were in the age, right? [SPEAKER_01]: Like you were all over it. [SPEAKER_01]: For me, I had little kids running around and I started watching Gilmore girls when we had cable, you know, before streaming.

12:01 [SPEAKER_01]: And it was on every morning. [SPEAKER_01]: I think for like two hours on some channel, like a TNT or something, for two hours they had Gilmore girls. [SPEAKER_01]: So every single day, I had Gilmore girls in the background. [SPEAKER_01]: So I watched them out of order, [SPEAKER_01]: And then eventually I bought all the DVDs and you know, got caught up and became normal.

12:18 [SPEAKER_01]: But I started watching it just as like putting out on the background for a couple of hours every day. [SPEAKER_00]: So yeah, no, that's actually very, very different but very similar to I watched it because I was watching it like on the WB and on ABC family and on the DVDs of like my favorite episodes.

12:33 [SPEAKER_00]: So I never like saw it all the way through until like like 2008, 2009, 2010. [SPEAKER_00]: Like I don't remember exactly what year it was. [SPEAKER_00]: But like when I watched it, I was like, well, that's a really good show. [SPEAKER_01]: You're like, I don't know when Luke and Laura actually get together because I've seen a million different iterations of it.

12:51 [SPEAKER_01]: I don't know where it is in the overall part. [SPEAKER_00]: They break up versus when they get together, it could be back to back. [SPEAKER_00]: Who knows? [SPEAKER_00]: Who knows when that all of this actually happens? [SPEAKER_00]: So when you were writing in 2000, you talked about how you had no intention to be an author.

13:04 [SPEAKER_00]: What were you dreaming about then that you did want to do? [SPEAKER_01]: Okay, you know what, I hate to admit this because I feel like I never really had, like, you know, you go when you are in high school and all your friends going away to everybody's going away to college everybody knew what they wanted to do and I never really found anything where I was like this feels right like I remember I think I was, you know, like, oh, I'll major in elementary education because it sounds like a job, I would like okay, but probably not be good.

13:31 [SPEAKER_01]: You know, then I had kids and I stayed home with them for a while. [SPEAKER_01]: I just didn't really ever have a pull for exactly like what career I wanted to do. [SPEAKER_01]: You know, I worked. [SPEAKER_01]: But it wasn't, I mean, I worked as a like a Lisa Administrator facilities coordinator at a heavy equipment dealer.

13:47 [SPEAKER_01]: Like at a caterpillar. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, that's not for the rancher novel. [SPEAKER_00]: It's coming from right. [SPEAKER_01]: like paying leases and things like that, but I didn't really have some connection to a vocation or career dreams. [SPEAKER_01]: Like I was like, I don't really connect with anything.

14:04 [SPEAKER_01]: And it wasn't until I started writing that I just fell in love with it as a hobby. [SPEAKER_01]: And then I did that for a lot of years. [SPEAKER_01]: And you know, like tried, you know, sending it out to agents, got rejected a lot. [SPEAKER_01]: And then I went back to the University in Nebraska and studied in the writer's workshop.

14:16 [SPEAKER_01]: And then I kind of had that moment where I was like, [SPEAKER_01]: This feels right, like this feels like something I might want to do. [SPEAKER_01]: So that's kind of when I started getting a little more series about it. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, no, you mentioned that you felt like in any way, not like embarrassed to say that.

14:30 [SPEAKER_00]: I actually think that's so perfect and that's so inspiring. [SPEAKER_00]: Like, there are so many people in high school. [SPEAKER_00]: Like, I'm sure you think about this a lot as like a YA writer that like, you leave high school and like you're supposed to know what you want to do at 18.

14:42 [SPEAKER_00]: Like, who knows? [SPEAKER_00]: Like, especially because like what I wanted to do when I was in high schools, [SPEAKER_00]: Obviously, actually, this is maybe what I did want to do when I was in my school. [SPEAKER_00]: And it wasn't a job that was available to me. [SPEAKER_00]: But like, the things I wanted to do then were not what manifested.

14:56 [SPEAKER_00]: But I feel like it's so inspiring because so many people got caught up in like the 30 under 30. [SPEAKER_00]: That, like, you have to know exactly what you want to do. [SPEAKER_00]: You have to be so determined and... [SPEAKER_00]: like rigorous about what you're doing in order to make that list and be successful by 25.

15:11 [SPEAKER_00]: So I kind of love that you took your time that you weren't really sure what you wanted to do, but you found this passion and like exactly where you were meant to be and exactly what you're meant to be doing. [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, because it always, it feels like everybody else knows. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.

15:24 [SPEAKER_01]: Like, I mean, I remember my best friend in high school. [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, to this day, I'm in awe of her. [SPEAKER_01]: Like, she's a water engineer. [SPEAKER_01]: Oh. [SPEAKER_01]: Like, she went into engineering and like, designs, like, dams and watershed management, which I don't even know what that means.

15:36 [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_00]: And it's like, everybody's just, right. [SPEAKER_01]: Everybody seems to know what they want to do and I was just like, I don't know, jobs just all sound like jobs. [SPEAKER_01]: I couldn't think of anything that I really wanted to do. [SPEAKER_01]: So it's wild that it took kind of a long way around the corner, but then it just sort of found me.

15:54 [SPEAKER_01]: I guess you would say so. [SPEAKER_01]: I feel so fortunate. [SPEAKER_00]: It does feel a little bit like lower lie because like so much of like her like time and her 20s was spent being voice mom and just providing for her and making sure she had the life she wanted which slowly became until like her dream of having her own in so I feel like that is thematic.

16:14 [SPEAKER_01]: You just made me feel cooler than I've ever felt in a life. [SPEAKER_01]: I did it more a life's way. [SPEAKER_01]: I raised my children and then I found through raising my rorees that my sons would be like, did you just call us your rorees? [SPEAKER_00]: The raising my rorees, I figured it out.

16:31 [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, let's see. [SPEAKER_00]: And like I think that we talk about on the show that like lanes passion is because we compare lane and lore life recently. [SPEAKER_00]: Lane's passion is music. [SPEAKER_00]: and Lorela's passion was rory, and it wasn't until she got a little bit older that she was able to like, it's almost seems healthy as she starts to go her own business because she's separating herself a little bit for morey in that regard.

16:51 [SPEAKER_01]: And then it's, I do find, I always find that interesting in the show, because Lorela is such a juxtaposition in that her personality, she's so not the type of person to be an obsessive overbearing parent, like she's the opposite of Mrs. Kim, but yet she also is so completely [SPEAKER_01]: obsessively parental to Rory, that it's an interesting juxtaposition.

17:12 [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, because I think that like the idea of like mother and best friend can turn toxic so quickly, because we talked about earlier in May, we did a mom card episode. [SPEAKER_00]: We're like, Laura is always her best friend until she has to play the mom card. [SPEAKER_00]: But the amount of times the mom card kind of comes out, it's kind of controlling.

17:29 [SPEAKER_00]: And I think that sometimes having that closeness can when it comes to like maybe an interesting situation come out a little bit controlling. [SPEAKER_01]: You're right, you're right. [SPEAKER_01]: And honestly, I feel like sometimes those are my least favorite lore lie moments, not when she's being parental, but you know, like with the whole just thing.

17:45 [SPEAKER_01]: And after like the accident, the way she is and like with the whole Dean, you know, when Dean is married and, you know, it's like those, just somehow don't feel right. [SPEAKER_01]: And it probably is because you're still used to her coming from the best friend place. [SPEAKER_01]: But obviously, and you're like, what's happening here, Laurel?

18:02 [SPEAKER_01]: I don't know, I like you with this moment. [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, like it's like almost like your warrior, like wait, you're supposed to be my friend, and I almost never not love Laura, like she's the greatest. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, well speaking of Laura, let's talk a little bit about. [SPEAKER_00]: Lori, so Lori's favorite thing of the show is of course reading is books.

18:20 [SPEAKER_00]: And we see her in her teens for 20s and her 30s. [SPEAKER_00]: If you could take Lori's love of reading and apply a book that you love to your teens, your 20s and your 30s, [SPEAKER_00]: whether it's books that you read at those times in like those times in your life or like books that you want to like retroactively apply there, what through books would you pick for those decades.

18:40 [SPEAKER_01]: What a great question. [SPEAKER_01]: Any time anybody asks me questions about books, I'm always like, what is book? [SPEAKER_00]: What is book? [SPEAKER_00]: I've never done. [SPEAKER_00]: I can't read exactly what I don't have ever. [SPEAKER_00]: That's everyone's response every time. [SPEAKER_00]: Like, I've never actually read a book.

18:53 [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, my 10 years, I feel like now looking back, I would have been so bent into all the Hunger Games books. [SPEAKER_01]: Like, I wasn't then, you know, they weren't a thing yet then. [SPEAKER_01]: But when I think about what I like to read back then, [SPEAKER_00]: Are there any of your YA books that feel like they encapsulate that time period?

19:15 [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, I feel like in a way better than the movies, because I was very much like Liz, like not like Liz organized in music and stuff, but very much a daydreamer about love. [SPEAKER_01]: Like, you know, I was staring into space, which shocker, it's become a job for me now, staring into space, dating about love.

19:33 [SPEAKER_01]: I was very much, you know, like you have a crush on somebody and I could waste three hours daydreaming scenarios where this person who doesn't know exist is actually falling in love with me, sort of a thing. [SPEAKER_01]: So I feel like better in the movie so if it wouldn't have come from me, it would have been why jam back in those days.

19:50 [SPEAKER_01]: And interestingly enough, when I found out I got to talk to you and I got all excited because the doover was my second YA book, and that is very much in a way for me, kind of like a [SPEAKER_00]: This is what I've heard. [SPEAKER_00]: I haven't read it yet, but it's like maybe my most excited book that I have the read this summer because I had no idea someone was like, oh, you have it laying on.

20:12 [SPEAKER_00]: You should talk about the doover and I was like, tell me more. [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, it's it's not anything related to Gilmore girls, but it's one of those things where. [SPEAKER_01]: A lot of times people ask, like, do you fan cast in your head a character before you start writing them?

20:24 [SPEAKER_01]: And most of the time, I don't. [SPEAKER_01]: They're just like a blank face, something in my imagination. [SPEAKER_01]: But when I started writing the do-over, I just immediately picked your Jess Mariano. [SPEAKER_01]: And it's like, he spoke to me through my keyboard. [SPEAKER_01]: Like, I just heard his voice.

20:36 [SPEAKER_01]: So, I don't know if I pulled it off and I wasn't trying to intentionally make him like Jess Mariano. [SPEAKER_01]: But for me, he was Jess Mariano. [SPEAKER_00]: Well, I feel like he can be a little bit of an archetype at this point, like in the way that Laura like can is just like that type of guy and I have found that the main type of person who is obsessed with just Mariano are writers and authors like the amount of like authors I talked to her team Jess is just astronomical compared to team Logan and definitely compared to team dean.

21:05 [SPEAKER_00]: And I think it's just that book in the back pocket. [SPEAKER_00]: Love's no one, but you, you guys swap book recommendations. [SPEAKER_00]: And it's just, he becomes a writer. [SPEAKER_01]: The banter, yes. [SPEAKER_01]: The sarcastic little look in his eyes. [SPEAKER_01]: Like, that's all we want to write.

21:20 [SPEAKER_00]: And he's my love in Tamalia. [SPEAKER_00]: Like, what are we supposed to? [SPEAKER_00]: Even if you're not Tamalia, you can't ignore it. [SPEAKER_00]: Right? [SPEAKER_01]: Fan casting team Milo, right? [SPEAKER_01]: You have to be Tamalia. [SPEAKER_00]: Absolutely. [SPEAKER_00]: Like, anytime I have someone like, I'm reading a book and he's like, now a little bit older and has to our care.

21:34 [SPEAKER_00]: I'm like, it's my love in Tamalia. [SPEAKER_00]: Does it fit perfectly? [SPEAKER_00]: It doesn't, but he has dark hair. [SPEAKER_01]: I could be reading about a blonde person with blue eyes and I'm like, nope changing it. [SPEAKER_00]: I've been changing it in my mind. [SPEAKER_00]: The author was wrong.

21:44 [SPEAKER_01]: Exactly. [SPEAKER_01]: By the way, have you ever had anyone on who says their team Dean? [SPEAKER_01]: Who? [SPEAKER_01]: Is anyone team Dean? [SPEAKER_00]: You know, we actually sell merch that says Dean Sachs on it. [SPEAKER_00]: So I don't know if anyone has ever been afraid. [SPEAKER_00]: I've been doing this for like four and a half years now.

22:03 [SPEAKER_00]: So I don't remember. [SPEAKER_00]: It doesn't jump out of me that someone said that. [SPEAKER_00]: I think that there was someone but they had like a very like it was much earlier, like the like season one. [SPEAKER_00]: Like where he felt like a YA novel that kind of vibe, but no. [SPEAKER_00]: not that I would want to tell them as at the moment, but like it's usually, it's just a look and yeah, yeah, that's funny.

22:28 [SPEAKER_00]: Do you have one for your 20s or 30s of books? [SPEAKER_00]: Oh, you would pick. [SPEAKER_01]: And I feel like maybe in the sounds so cliche, but like pride and prejudice, because I feel like when you get older, you sort of, it's fun to revisit the classics that you kind of hated when you were younger because it was forced upon you.

22:44 [SPEAKER_01]: And then you watched the 2015 adaptation and you're like, [SPEAKER_01]: Maybe I need to revisit Jane Austen and you read it and you're like, oh, there's a reason why it's cliche that everybody loves it because it's so good. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, and like your frontal lobe is developed and you're like, yeah, I love this.

22:58 [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, right? [SPEAKER_01]: Like this is good. [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, absolutely. [SPEAKER_00]: So what like we're talking about, a lot of your books get compared to Gilmar rolls, whether it's because you have that kind of like shining person in your mind, like Jess and the doover. [SPEAKER_00]: or because there is a writing style that feels very familiar or a setting.

23:16 [SPEAKER_00]: What do you like about getting that comparison to Gilmour rolls? [SPEAKER_01]: Well, it's the ultimate for me because I do think of it as the ultimate comfort watch. [SPEAKER_01]: Like, I'm such a big, like, my husband's always like, how many times can you re-watch friends? [SPEAKER_01]: Like, but it's like, I'm a big, I find comfort in throwing on an episode that I've seen a million times and then Gilmour girls you throw in the star's hollow vibes.

23:38 [SPEAKER_01]: and the autumn piece of it and lore lies banter and it's just the ultimate comfort for me. [SPEAKER_01]: So it's like the idea of somebody tying my books to that is like such an honor that it would be like kind of like a comfort thing. [SPEAKER_01]: And I hope it's because you know you try to throw in like funny little characters and things because that's what makes Gilmore girls so perfect.

23:58 [SPEAKER_01]: I mean the main characters are amazing but it's also because of the townsfolk, all of the absurdities, [SPEAKER_00]: Is there something about it that you don't like, that you like to separate yourself from it? [SPEAKER_01]: I don't think so. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, I suppose if somebody started comparing things literally, like, Oh, this is too much like this because of this, maybe I would feel uncomfortable, but now you can compare it to go more girls all day and I would just be happy and like, thank you so much.

24:28 [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, because I feel like there's such a, and maybe it's just because I have a Gilmore Girls podcast and a Gilmore Girls book club that I feel like I end up on the receiving end of so many books that use Gilmore Girls is a comparison. [SPEAKER_00]: Like it feels like such like a shift in publishing to kind of market towards that fandom.

24:46 [SPEAKER_00]: Do you think that people are writing towards Gilmore Girls fans because of like the excitement of the show or is it just like a really easy comparison to make? [SPEAKER_01]: I'm sure there's some of both. [SPEAKER_01]: I'm sure that there are marketing people who are like, this is brilliant.

25:00 [SPEAKER_01]: Totally right, something Gilmore Girls ask. [SPEAKER_01]: Pitch it is Gilmore Girls. [SPEAKER_01]: Those readers will love it. [SPEAKER_01]: But I do feel like there's a lot of us bookgirlies who are just that's our headspace. [SPEAKER_01]: That's where we like to be. [SPEAKER_01]: So we tend to write that way because it makes us happy.

25:14 [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, absolutely and I feel like so so many like people in like the TV industry talk about how Gilmar girls would never get made today. [SPEAKER_00]: Like it's just a seven-season show about a mother and daughter in a small town. [SPEAKER_00]: We're like nothing really happens. [SPEAKER_00]: Nothing too much happens.

25:30 [SPEAKER_00]: That it probably wouldn't make it past her for season. [SPEAKER_00]: But my response to that is like it feels like those types of shows actually ended up in the publishing industry in books in literature. [SPEAKER_00]: we've kind of like transitioned that story into books because almost feels like that show raised so many writers whether or not like from a young age or like you just wanted that comfort in books and you wanted that banter and like the small town but also the melodrama of course.

25:56 [SPEAKER_01]: I think that's so astute. [SPEAKER_01]: I think that absolutely it has happened. [SPEAKER_01]: Like I wouldn't have put my finger on that, but I think that's true. [SPEAKER_01]: And I think it's obviously television has changed the way we digested is different, so it has to be more action-packed.

26:12 [SPEAKER_01]: And [SPEAKER_01]: have all this stuff thrown in it, but I feel like there's, you watch an episode of Gilmore Girls and you could say it's about a small town and it's about a mother daughter, but there's so much else going on. [SPEAKER_01]: I was having a conversation about, well, it was with Julian Jordan about writing the script on better than the movies, but we were having a conversation about the fact that there's a difference between romance and heart.

26:33 [SPEAKER_01]: Like, like, there's [SPEAKER_01]: but it's what makes it work isn't necessarily the romance between Western Liz. [SPEAKER_01]: It's the heart between their childhood, how well they know each other, what they're trying to make happen in their lives. [SPEAKER_01]: There's so much more to it.

26:49 [SPEAKER_01]: And I feel like Gilmore Girls is absolutely kind of like a testament to that. [SPEAKER_01]: It's not about just a mother and daughter. [SPEAKER_01]: It's about all of these external and internal things that come into play to make a life. [SPEAKER_00]: Absolutely. [SPEAKER_00]: And I think that when it comes to like having like a Gilmore Rolls comparison, it doesn't just have to be small town or, you know, like a terminal cover, which we can talk about your very fun a terminal cover later on.

27:12 [SPEAKER_00]: But it feels like it has to have so much more to that. [SPEAKER_00]: Like, as to have a little bit of like the melancholy, the melodrama, but also the banter. [SPEAKER_00]: And I have to say, the first book of yours that I read was the Love Wager, and any time that anyone wanted a book that had like good banter, that like that kicking your feet, just so excited that these characters are having a conversation, I always recommended the Love Wager, and then when I was sent first and forever, which is your new book that came out earlier in May, I was like, okay, we're back in.

27:40 [SPEAKER_00]: We're back in Lin Painter with this like, like, banter that just feels so good, so comfortable, so familiar for people who love gomore girls. [SPEAKER_00]: And I think that, like, if you're making the comparison, I think that that's where it fits the most for me, but truly the thing that always stands out to me is the banter and your books.

27:56 [SPEAKER_01]: Oh my gosh! [SPEAKER_01]: Thank you so much! [SPEAKER_00]: But I think that my favorite part of this book has to be the father-daughter relationship. [SPEAKER_00]: Because of course with Gilmar Gauls we get a very close mother-daughter relationship, but in this we have Duffy who is living with her dad for reasons that I'll leave a little vague at the moment.

28:14 [SPEAKER_00]: But I just feel like again it's so endearing, melancholic at times, but just exactly what people need right now. [SPEAKER_00]: It's very lighthearted, very fun. [SPEAKER_00]: What are you most [SPEAKER_01]: I don't know. [SPEAKER_01]: I think just the fun of their relationship. [SPEAKER_01]: I love rom-coms.

28:31 [SPEAKER_01]: I get asked a lot like people will be like Are you ever gonna write like a different genre and it would be fun to explore but I love rom-com because There's such a comfort in you know people will say oh, it's formulaic like you know from page one that these characters are gonna end up together But that's what's so great is that you know they're gonna end up together [SPEAKER_01]: You know, there's going to be cringe all the way through and conflict and you can relax and enjoy it because you know they're going to end up together.

28:58 [SPEAKER_01]: So it's like I love writing it and Connor and Duffy just kind of exploded for me because I feel like it started out as the idea of, okay, a normal girl in a football guy, you know, where did that come from, you know, I don't know. [SPEAKER_01]: But it's like you start with that, and then I remember, I don't know, it's probably a couple years ago, but the whole Andrew Garfield and a Melda on the chicken shop dates, like their vibe where she's kind of roasting him at the same time she's flirting with them and we all kind of [SPEAKER_01]: eight of that whole like what is happening here you know and so that was like I wanted to try to capture that where you're like is she insulting him but charming him at the same time sort of interesting you know right that is such a perfect comparison more people need to know but that's where that came from people are gonna lock in

29:49 [SPEAKER_01]: But I had so much fun with that. [SPEAKER_01]: And then exploring her dad, like in my head, I was picturing, like, I don't know if you ever saw silver linings playbook. [SPEAKER_01]: But it's like I Robert Deneer, even though his character was such a train wreck, you know, I just kind of hear him in my head when I started writing Duffy's dad and just [SPEAKER_01]: I just love writing the messiness, the happy messiness of families, you know, just the the banter you have with, you know, you, you know, I mean the lower lie and worries and the Duffy and her father, just the whole when you grow up with somebody, the things you can say to each other lovingly that might not sound loving to somebody else and just how well you know each other, that banter is just so much fun to write.

30:26 [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah and I love her with her brothers too. [SPEAKER_00]: I felt I felt my family in that because if you're ever around being my sister in law like you feel like oh my god these girls hate each other like they like absolutely cannot stand each other but it's because we love each other so much that like people are like whoa that was too much and we're like no no it's okay like we're fine but no one's feeling so hurt [SPEAKER_01]: I just have one sister and we're pretty low key and quiet but I have three sons and I mean I have two daughters but the youngest one is only 10 and the oldest one is 29 but my oldest four kids you know they're they're each two years apart and growing up it's like Cassidy's brothers oh my gosh I just could hear my obnoxious sons when I was writing Duffy's brothers so it was like a labor of love and the banter came so easily because it's like I could just I was surrounded by it for their whole life so

31:14 [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, oh that is so fun. [SPEAKER_00]: I also love that because like my family is reverse where like we have there's three of us and then my brother So I feel like that's like a but like a perfect sort of flip, but like it's kind of like reading stuff He's brothers is kind of like me and my sisters It's like just like the reverse of that which I love.

31:32 [SPEAKER_00]: I love sibling relationships and books That's like always something that I gravitate towards so seeing that there was great [SPEAKER_00]: But how did you craft Connor for Duffy? [SPEAKER_00]: Because Duffy is just such like a girl's girl so strong, like just going about life. [SPEAKER_00]: And once to a rough house, a mentally rough house of a pope player.

31:51 [SPEAKER_01]: You know, Connor kind of made his own way. [SPEAKER_01]: Like when I started, I don't know, it was a struggle for me in a way because it's like you want to write this 65 NFL wide receiver. [SPEAKER_01]: but I also hate a lot of toxic things that you see in like the athletic world. [SPEAKER_01]: So it's like trying to write him where you don't want to make him too much like, oh, go the retriever boy where he's just like too nice.

32:15 [SPEAKER_01]: But I also in my head when I'm writing a rom-com love interest. [SPEAKER_01]: There are just certain things that they just can't do. [SPEAKER_01]: You know, they have to be respectful. [SPEAKER_01]: you know, I mean, in a fun way. [SPEAKER_01]: So Connor just kind of found his own way. [SPEAKER_01]: I think I started writing him thinking about that, you know, and being inspired by the Travis Kelsey's and the Andrew Garfields and all of those like banter situations that pop culture was feeding us for a while in a row, then he just sort of became his own thing.

32:44 [SPEAKER_00]: Those two characters together just seem to fit so perfectly because like a kind of seem shocked at first that she's roasting him and he like eventually [SPEAKER_00]: But you were talking about how something that feels really comfortable about reading romcoms is that you kind of know that by the end of it, everyone's going to be happy and everything's going to feel safe, which I like.

33:05 [SPEAKER_00]: That's always something that I really loved. [SPEAKER_00]: But there is an element to it that there was like this anticipated nature, especially with fake dating, especially with one of the parties of like a fake dating, not knowing that they were [SPEAKER_00]: hold to be in a relationship sort of situation.

33:21 [SPEAKER_00]: My anticipation is always like, if I found out that someone was told to date me, I would be like, oh my gosh, that's so funny. [SPEAKER_00]: We have such funny lore. [SPEAKER_00]: Like, I'm like, I'm not gonna be mad about that. [SPEAKER_00]: Like, that's always my thought. [SPEAKER_00]: And every single time when we get to the point and it's revealed to her, I'm like, leave him.

33:35 [SPEAKER_00]: Leave him, like, why has why has this happened? [SPEAKER_00]: And like, every time I'm old, but like, whenever I hear the synopsis, I'm always like, no, like, I would just find it funny. [SPEAKER_00]: And then you have tricked me time and time again that when we get to that point, then I'm like, no, go.

33:49 [SPEAKER_00]: When she finds out, every single time, I'm like, you have to leave him. [SPEAKER_01]: Okay, that makes me really happy because I struggle as a writer so much with conflict because I just want everybody to be happy because it's like my first drafts, usually I get back from my editor and they're like, you know, they can't just be, this can't just be a book full of happy scenes.

34:07 [SPEAKER_01]: And so it is hard because, you know, you come up with this plot and you, you know, you outline it and you do all this stuff, but you still, there is that little question in your head where [SPEAKER_01]: Like, if we're in love now, would I be that mad that somebody told them to date me? [SPEAKER_01]: So you have to work really hard to pull it off, I guess?

34:26 [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, because I think that's just kind of like anticipated nature of like that sort of book. [SPEAKER_00]: That like pulling that off, I always find to be quite hard because like I wonder if you have written this like beautiful sort of relationship with this guy that's as caring as he needs to be.

34:42 [SPEAKER_00]: Like it's like, why, why do you use it a problem now? [SPEAKER_00]: But you pulled it off. [SPEAKER_00]: You nailed it because I could tell which direction it was going to go in because maybe she would be the kind of person that was like Yeah, that's funny. [SPEAKER_00]: Like we'll talk about that at a wedding or you can go in the other direction and I was like deeply anticipating where we would go with that And I was like well [SPEAKER_00]: Lain got me.

35:01 [SPEAKER_00]: She got it, got it, got it, got it, got it, got it, got it, got it, got it, got it, got it, got it, got it, got it, got it, got it, got it, got it, got it, got it, got it, got it, got it, got it, got it, got it, got it, got it, got it, got it, got it, got it, got it, got it, got it, got it, got it, got it, got it, got it, got it, got it, got it, got it, got it, got it, got it, got it, got it, got it, got it, got it, got it, got it, got it, got it, got it, got it, got it, got it, got it, got it, got it, got it, got it, got it, got it, got it, got it, got it, got it, got it [SPEAKER_00]: It's just a lot of fun, and so if you want to have a lot of fun, I definitely recommend diving into first and forever.

35:28 [SPEAKER_00]: It's a sports romance, but it's the exact amount of sports that I want in it. [SPEAKER_00]: You know, she loves sports, they go to games, but you know, we're never getting too much into the nitty-gritty of what's happening in the game. [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, that's always kind of the in sports romance that you have to put enough in there to make it realistic and I love like I love football so it's like that part was fun.

35:48 [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, my family were all big sports fans. [SPEAKER_01]: So I enjoy it, but you don't want to put too much in there for the people who don't love sports being. [SPEAKER_01]: And you need just enough. [SPEAKER_00]: So yeah, and like honestly, it's my favorite part of sports is the spectating part of it.

36:01 [SPEAKER_00]: So like the, I'm not gonna get down and do the playing. [SPEAKER_00]: So like when we get to the degree of that, I'm like, no, but I love what the experience is. [SPEAKER_00]: Like the mascot, if you will, as we learn defy is not into. [SPEAKER_00]: But there's just so much fun that you can do with something like that.

36:16 [SPEAKER_00]: It's not romantic sports, you know? [SPEAKER_00]: We're not diving into the sport aspect. [SPEAKER_00]: It is the romance, but absolutely excellent. [SPEAKER_00]: So I have a couple of questions that this question series is called a person forever. [SPEAKER_00]: It's duos of your firsts and your forever's.

36:30 [SPEAKER_00]: So what was the first thing you ever wrote? [SPEAKER_01]: First thing I ever wrote, I think I titled it Beyond Texas and it was a romance about like um, a rancher's daughter and a ranch hand. [SPEAKER_01]: And now I look back and I just think what was I doing? [SPEAKER_01]: I had never like, I'd never meant to Texas.

36:48 [SPEAKER_01]: I was going to have a ranch. [SPEAKER_01]: I'm allergic to everything with first so I've never been on a horse like like my asthma I would probably die if I wrote a whole so I'm not sure what I think I was just reading a lot of like cowboy romance at the time It was like I should write this I still have like a paper copy and a box somewhere [SPEAKER_01]: Never should see the light of day.

37:08 [SPEAKER_01]: Not good writing at all, but I will always love it because it's the first thing I tried and I fell in love with writing I love I would love to for it to like come up maybe in like the background of one of your books Maybe someone's reading it or like there's like an author character who maybe is coming out with that book Okay, or somebody reading a dreadfully awfully terrible terrible romance novel And it would be beyond taxes.

37:32 [SPEAKER_01]: I kind of love that. [SPEAKER_01]: I would do that [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I kind of like the idea of it being excellent though, like of like you like rewriting history a little bit and being like that's true. [SPEAKER_01]: It could be like the world's best selling romance novel ever. [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, and all the man does is men defenses all day because that's all I knew that ranchers did.

37:48 [SPEAKER_00]: And the rancher's daughter has asthma. [SPEAKER_00]: She's got her in a halo. [SPEAKER_00]: She's worse back. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, he has to he keeps one when he's prepared. [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, he's got his own beautiful. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, for sure. [SPEAKER_00]: That's so romantic. [SPEAKER_00]: So for forever, do you think you'll write romance forever?

38:04 [SPEAKER_01]: Yes. [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, I would ever people bring up other genres. [SPEAKER_01]: I think like it would be real. [SPEAKER_01]: Like I'm very unserious. [SPEAKER_01]: So I can't see myself ever writing anything. [SPEAKER_01]: Not fun. [SPEAKER_01]: But like a cozy mystery. [SPEAKER_01]: Like if two people in love stumble over a body and have to figure out who killed it.

38:20 [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_00]: That could be on that ranch in Texas. [SPEAKER_01]: There you go! [SPEAKER_01]: Somebody stole somebody's inhaler, which ultimately resulted in their demise. [SPEAKER_00]: I like that everything can come back to that. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, for sure. [SPEAKER_01]: We need to draft this.

38:34 [SPEAKER_01]: You need to do this together. [SPEAKER_00]: Well, we'll do this together. [SPEAKER_00]: The new Christina Lauren. [SPEAKER_00]: Perfect. [SPEAKER_00]: So when it comes to first and forever, the novel, what was the first idea that you had for it? [SPEAKER_00]: That you felt like, oh, this is something I want to move forward with.

38:46 [SPEAKER_01]: You know, it's funny. [SPEAKER_01]: The first idea I had for it was going to be like a kiss cam situation. [SPEAKER_01]: Like the idea I had for it was like a girl and her boyfriend were on the kiss cam and he does something and she like punches him and goes viral because of that. [SPEAKER_01]: But then at the time there was like another book that was just like coming out that had a kiss cam.

39:06 [SPEAKER_01]: So my agent was like, we can't really do a kiss cam book. [SPEAKER_01]: But then I was all in on the idea of the famous athlete, [SPEAKER_01]: seeing the viral moments and somehow like them engaging. [SPEAKER_01]: So that's kind of what started that idea rolling. [SPEAKER_00]: What felt important about the story to have a written down forever?

39:23 [SPEAKER_01]: I think just the idea of finding that person who is right for you. [SPEAKER_01]: I feel like a lot of times people will talk about romance. [SPEAKER_01]: And the word romance will bring up ideas of like big gestures of you know like flowers and and all of these romantic things and I always joke that like my husband and I are the most unromantic people.

39:42 [SPEAKER_01]: But he's so thoughtful that ours is just stupid versions of like don't send me flowers, I'll kill them, but like give me money to buy a shirt, you know, and like those people well enough to be like, okay, here go buy a shirt, I'm like, oh my god, I love you so much sort of thing, you know.

39:58 [SPEAKER_01]: And so I feel like Connor and Duffy kind of have that like he sends her like a beer bouquet, you know, of like craft beer instead of flowers and just that idea of finding that person who gets you that that was kind of my favorite part about the story like the zombie paint ball and you know, [SPEAKER_01]: course.

40:15 [SPEAKER_00]: I feel like it's like it's not like just dating. [SPEAKER_00]: It's dating specifically. [SPEAKER_01]: Exactly. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_00]: What was the first book you remember reading? [SPEAKER_01]: Oh my gosh. [SPEAKER_01]: The first book I remember reading and loving was tales of a fourth grade nothing.

40:28 [SPEAKER_01]: I just remember it was such a silly book that I just I think before that you know a lot of us when we're in grade school you try to embrace reading and you just don't like it. [SPEAKER_01]: It feels like homework and then when you find that book that's your kind of book [SPEAKER_01]: And I fell in love with it, and I don't know that I ever looked back.

40:47 [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, oh, I love that. [SPEAKER_00]: And especially Judy Bloom, like, has to say, oh my gosh. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, what is one book that you could read forever? [SPEAKER_00]: Like, if you could only read one more book. [SPEAKER_01]: Oh my gosh, that's a great question. [SPEAKER_00]: I wrote it down then I was like, I have no idea how I would answer this.

41:00 [SPEAKER_00]: I was quite a mean question. [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, I feel like you almost have to layer it because it's like catching fire. [SPEAKER_01]: I always say it's probably one of my favorite books of all time. [SPEAKER_01]: So guys, so good, such a good book that like any time like if you find it and you read one page an hour later, you're like, oh, I just read three more chapters.

41:18 [SPEAKER_01]: So I feel like all of Suzanne Collins books are like that for me. [SPEAKER_01]: But then there's also like the books you were forced, the classics. [SPEAKER_01]: to read like the great gatsby as much as that one is cliche. [SPEAKER_01]: I've probably read that book more than I've read any other book in my entire life.

41:31 [SPEAKER_01]: Like read it, reread it, explore it all the characters for classes that I feel like I intimately know that book. [SPEAKER_01]: So my heart's always connected to it. [SPEAKER_01]: So that one is also kind of out there forever for me. [SPEAKER_00]: Catching fire in the Great Gatsby really runs the gambit, but it's like really Catching fire might be hard though, because you'd always end on a cliffhanger.

41:51 [SPEAKER_00]: You could never move forward. [SPEAKER_01]: You're right! [SPEAKER_00]: That's like my clothes and I first thought was like, no, I'd have to go to MockingJ and I would never move into it. [SPEAKER_01]: And then MockingJ changes the trajectory of a whole thing. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_00]: But I feel like those are like perfect books that like, [SPEAKER_00]: The top is favorites.

42:06 [SPEAKER_00]: I love those. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, very different, but I feel like you need you need a couple of different types of books up. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah I'll let you take two because I imagine in my mind it was like desert island You're taking two books. [SPEAKER_00]: These are the books you're reading forever.

42:17 [SPEAKER_00]: Okay, you can take the Gatsby which could be which could be the sequels of catching fire, you know [SPEAKER_00]: Absolutely, like a big capital party, right? [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, really, the ending is all the rich people are terrible, right? [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, in both books, it's the same.

42:32 [SPEAKER_01]: The rich people are awful and destroy the poor. [SPEAKER_00]: So, well, they're basically the same book. [SPEAKER_01]: I feel like I could write a paper now about similarities. [SPEAKER_00]: When you get off here and catching fire, it's where you're going to go. [SPEAKER_00]: You probably don't have any deadlines at all.

42:45 [SPEAKER_00]: No, absolutely not. [SPEAKER_00]: You first wrote YA with better than the movies. [SPEAKER_00]: Will you switch between YA and adult forever? [SPEAKER_01]: Probably. [SPEAKER_01]: I don't think I get to. [SPEAKER_01]: Like I think my heart loves YA a little bit more. [SPEAKER_01]: One of my kids teases me that my frontal lobe has never closed.

43:02 [SPEAKER_01]: And like I should donate my brain to science someday and and prove that and I think that's absolutely accurate So that could be why but I just love that space like the book I just finished and turned in I'm like I want to move on from those characters. [SPEAKER_01]: Can I just stay and keep writing things here forever?

43:17 [SPEAKER_01]: But I also love writing adult because it it just feels like the YA books take a lot more emotion out of me and the adult books are a lot more fun when I write them somehow [SPEAKER_01]: So I feel like it's a good kind of place for me to ride both. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, do you think the emotion comes from like kind of having to revisit that time in your life and like think about those emotions that teenagers are feeling or is there a reason behind that that you can think too?

43:44 [SPEAKER_01]: probably and I also think I get asked a lot like people or not asked a lot, but people adult a lot of times like to say like oh those years you're so emotional you know when you're a teenager and it's true but I also think one thing that happens when we're teenagers is that we lean into our feelings so much.

44:03 [SPEAKER_01]: Like, your heart is broken and you go home and you listen, you make your sad girl playlist and you revisit every sad moment a thousand times and you roll around in it and it seems like at the old you get the more for, you know, survival. [SPEAKER_01]: You learn to shut off your feelings.

44:21 [SPEAKER_01]: We're now. [SPEAKER_01]: It's like, if something, if I hear a song and it makes me sad, I turn it off. [SPEAKER_01]: I don't want to focus on that. [SPEAKER_01]: So I feel like when I write those, I really get lost in all of that, and it's very cathartic. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, do you feel that difference in your readers?

44:39 [SPEAKER_00]: Because I actually, I talk to Sarah Desson recently, and she was talking about what she loves about writing for teenagers is like the excitement and enthusiasm and like the all capital letters that comes along with that. [SPEAKER_00]: Do you notice that difference between your like younger readers versus your adult readers?

44:54 [SPEAKER_01]: Oh, a thousand percent. [SPEAKER_01]: I can't believe like I have a PO box and I get letters like handwritten letters every week and exclamation points. [SPEAKER_01]: Talk it. [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, I got a letter the other day telling me I needed a write a book about the anti hero in fake skating and this person enumerated all these reasons why he needs like his arc and his story like like they are so enthusiastic and and they throw themselves into it and it's more than just a book.

45:18 [SPEAKER_01]: It's [SPEAKER_01]: characters who means something to them and it's beautiful and I love it. [SPEAKER_01]: Like I love writing for teenagers so much. [SPEAKER_00]: I feel so much like a teenager a lot of the time with this podcast because like as much as like the administrative business side of it has been adult me.

45:33 [SPEAKER_00]: All of like the lead-up to it was like me as a teenager watching it, like getting her box that's taken away like all the research. [SPEAKER_00]: So I feel like sometimes when I'm talking about Gilmore Girls, like I have to like split off my teenage mind from my like, [SPEAKER_00]: I guess analytical understanding logical brain that like there's always a person inside of me though who is like just stealing screaming over good morals.

45:54 [SPEAKER_01]: I get totally see that. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah and I feel like you have to have that too to some degree to like be able to write that for two majors to like just be excited. [SPEAKER_00]: It's fun to be excited about things. [SPEAKER_01]: I love it. [SPEAKER_01]: I feel like it's such a gift that for a job, I get to do this.

46:09 [SPEAKER_01]: I get to sit in daydream all day about imaginary characters doing these things that will seem really cool. [SPEAKER_01]: And it's no different than when I was a teenager sitting in daydream about these things happening to me. [SPEAKER_01]: And I just get to do it now for work. [SPEAKER_01]: It's unbelievable.

46:23 [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, you were always meant to be a romance writer. [SPEAKER_00]: We waited a long time back, really, really long time to figure it out. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, to get hands on the keys. [SPEAKER_00]: But you've always, you've always been right in your mind. [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, absolutely. [SPEAKER_01]: What was the first trope you wrote about?

46:35 [SPEAKER_00]: Do you remember, I guess this would maybe be in Beyond Texas? [SPEAKER_01]: I can't believe that somebody besides me knows the title of it. [SPEAKER_00]: Well, a lot of people are actually going to know now. [SPEAKER_01]: I'm trying to think, I mean, it was a hardcore miscommunication trope.

46:50 [SPEAKER_01]: Like one of those like, I think the like prologue, like they were supposed to get married. [SPEAKER_01]: And she overhears a phone call and assumes the wrong thing. [SPEAKER_01]: And, you know, like runs away to another state for 20 years. [SPEAKER_01]: Like something absolutely absurd.

47:04 [SPEAKER_01]: So I think it was miscommunication and then close proximity when they come back together. [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, should have been fake dating. [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, that's always my move now. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, well, if you ever want to revisit it, I'm first in line to read this book. [SPEAKER_00]: That's the second person to know about it.

47:20 [SPEAKER_00]: I feel like I can be first in the first person knowing being you. [SPEAKER_00]: If you could write one trope forever, what do you think you would write? [SPEAKER_01]: It would probably be fake dating. [SPEAKER_01]: And I think that's so funny because it's such an absurd thing that we all write about because it doesn't happen in real life where you're like, I need you to pretend to be my boyfriend.

47:38 [SPEAKER_01]: But there's just so many ways to spin it that are so fun. [SPEAKER_01]: You know, you get to see somebody behaving in a different way. [SPEAKER_01]: You're like, wait, he's nice. [SPEAKER_01]: I thought he was an awful human and he's doing something nice. [SPEAKER_01]: And then you're like, he's holding my hand.

47:51 [SPEAKER_01]: Is this part of the gag or does he want to hold my, like, it's just limitless in all of the little morsels. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, especially because I feel like it draws on like force proximity and the mass of miscommunication really well, because it's like we're holding hands for this bit, we're doing.

48:08 [SPEAKER_00]: And I feel something now, but like I'm not going to be the one to be like, oh, I have feelings and we're like, this was actually fake. [SPEAKER_00]: We were both faking this, like, what are you doing? [SPEAKER_00]: That it feels like the most realistic reason why you wouldn't communicate your feelings.

48:20 [SPEAKER_01]: Absolutely. [SPEAKER_01]: And then of course you do all the like convincing yourself, like, oh, I don't feel any things. [SPEAKER_01]: I just was falling for our own bit. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I'm like your doctor's mind, yes, yes, I have been tricked myself. [SPEAKER_00]: The last question I have for you on version forever is what was your first impression of Just Mariano?

48:39 [SPEAKER_01]: I don't know that there was ever a time that I didn't love him and think he was the greatest and it's funny because when people Talk about the whole like team Jess versus team Logan or all of this the older I get in the more I look back in episode She like just was not a great guy. [SPEAKER_01]: He was not a great boyfriend.

48:56 [SPEAKER_01]: I would have couldn't he was but he was so great. [SPEAKER_01]: Like just his quiet smurks his attitude. [SPEAKER_01]: He just I I always love him. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, is he your forever favorite [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, for sure. [SPEAKER_01]: For sure. [SPEAKER_01]: The only thing I ever didn't like is I I never liked the tension between him and more lie because I love Lorely so much and I never liked that and and of course you need it for the show.

49:20 [SPEAKER_01]: It's perfect It's the conflict is what has to be there. [SPEAKER_01]: It's why I struggled to write conflicts because you're like Kempel just love each other [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_00]: Like, come on, Jess, you know that she's really nice. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, she's similar. [SPEAKER_00]: They like, that friction against each other.

49:34 [SPEAKER_00]: Mine was always like his tension with Dean after he got together with for you. [SPEAKER_00]: I'm always like, are you guys on a love triangle now? [SPEAKER_00]: Because like it seems like you guys might kiss. [SPEAKER_00]: It any given moment. [SPEAKER_00]: Like, that was always, that was always of like, that was great.

49:50 [SPEAKER_00]: Not sure about that side of it, but no, I, as we were watching, because we did rewatch on our Patreon with our Patreon members and going through like season two and season three as a team Logan girl. [SPEAKER_00]: I was just like, there's just something about them. [SPEAKER_00]: There's just something about it and a lot of our listeners are like, you guys are being hypocritical because of the things that you criticize Dean for, just as doing, but you find in queue and we're like, right, I sue us.

50:14 [SPEAKER_01]: Right. [SPEAKER_01]: It doesn't make sense. [SPEAKER_01]: Like there's so many things where I'm like, he's a red flag. [SPEAKER_01]: He's bad for her in many ways, but I love him and I want them to live happily ever after. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I wanted to. [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, even after the reunion, I'm still like, how can we make this baby his?

50:30 [SPEAKER_00]: It has to be a scene we didn't see. [SPEAKER_00]: A lot of people do the fan fiction of like, it is Logan's baby, but like, Luke helped rates lower life rates. [SPEAKER_00]: Rory, that that's what Jess is gonna be. [SPEAKER_01]: I don't know, like, why not? [SPEAKER_00]: Like, just shirt it out there.

50:44 [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, let's see if a meal come back and give it to us. [SPEAKER_00]: See if my little has any movies lined up lately. [SPEAKER_00]: Like, let's just get it done. [SPEAKER_00]: But talking about Gamarko's, what was, when did you first start watching it? [SPEAKER_00]: Do you remember like, what year it was?

50:55 [SPEAKER_01]: Oh, like I said in my 30s, that's all like it feels like one year, um, of a million little kids running around. [SPEAKER_01]: So I just started watching it all the time, because I seriously think it was like a two-hour span, like every morning between like 10 and 12 on whatever it was. [SPEAKER_01]: And I feel like it was like mom relief, like my kids were running around.

51:13 [SPEAKER_01]: And it was like my sanity was that as they were running around, I was able to watch Gamarko's. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, do you remember like what season it was I imagine now that it probably all just runs together now? [SPEAKER_01]: No, and I feel like I watched him so out of order that it's like all the seasons.

51:31 [SPEAKER_00]: I saw all the seasons. [SPEAKER_01]: Like sometimes in one day. [SPEAKER_01]: Like you're like, oh, they're starting over. [SPEAKER_01]: So I just saw this and now it's season one again. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, like you watch the finale and the pilot in the same day. [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, exactly.

51:43 [SPEAKER_01]: But it's funny because I remember my my 10 year old, which is way later, you know, because my big kids are all in their 20s and now I have a 10 year old, but I remember when I was on maternity leave with her watching them on whatever I watched them on streaming and I just remember like rocking her in a rocking chair when the theme song and beyond and I remember one day she woke up and I just felt like she recognized the theme song and I was like, oh, like this emotional moment.

52:07 [SPEAKER_01]: So it's like so dialed into my kids' childhood even though they don't really know it. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, no, that's so sweet. [SPEAKER_00]: Like a mother daughter show, Carol King singing, you're rocking your daughters. [SPEAKER_00]: That just feels so emotional. [SPEAKER_01]: Are you going to introduce it to her when?

52:22 [SPEAKER_01]: Uh, yeah, I'm sure. [SPEAKER_00]: I feel like that'll be so much fun to like have a show that like your other kids just kind of like played too. [SPEAKER_00]: It seems like that they were just like running around and like have for sit down and actually watch it with you. [SPEAKER_01]: And my oldest daughter, when she got older, she watched it with me.

52:37 [SPEAKER_01]: So my oldest daughter, Cassidy, I think she's seen all of Gilmore girls. [SPEAKER_00]: Is there one of the Gromark girls that you gravitate more towards Lorelie, overweight, or even Emily? [SPEAKER_01]: I'm a Lorelie person. [SPEAKER_01]: Like, when I wrote Better in the Movies, honestly, her Liz is step mom.

52:53 [SPEAKER_01]: In my brain, I was just hearing Lorelie's banter. [SPEAKER_01]: Like, I wanted her to be like Lorelie. [SPEAKER_01]: I love her. [SPEAKER_01]: Except for a few moments, she's always my favorite. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I think that that's that's healthy though to have a few moments with someone you're like, you've disappointed me.

53:07 [SPEAKER_01]: Right. [SPEAKER_01]: Right. [SPEAKER_01]: Like I don't like this episode. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_00]: Is there a favorite storyline that you had as a viewer versus a writer? [SPEAKER_01]: I think writing, I don't ever think of myself as viewing anything for the lens of a writer, but my favorite storyline obviously season two with Jess.

53:24 [SPEAKER_01]: But then I also loved Lane and what's his name? [SPEAKER_01]: Dave Fragowski. [SPEAKER_01]: Yes, I was just about to say, the one she should have ended up with. [SPEAKER_00]: Absolutely, like that's love that. [SPEAKER_00]: All right, don't be Adam Brody leaving Gilmore girls because that was excellent.

53:41 [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, we've all, we can just hear that sound, but you know, when he shows up and talks to her mom, oh my gosh, so yeah. [SPEAKER_00]: When he reads the fight, like, yes, why the fuck is there anything better? [SPEAKER_00]: There's not. [SPEAKER_00]: No, like, I honestly, that's like really what I need an author to lock in on is like the Lean Kim, Dave Verkowski story.

53:59 [SPEAKER_00]: So I can get like the full novelization of that. [SPEAKER_00]: Oh my gosh, or maybe you're the right person. [SPEAKER_01]: Okay, now I get a waste in afternoon doing things. [SPEAKER_01]: What I'm on deadline. [SPEAKER_00]: It doesn't sound like I wasted afternoon to me, Lynn. [SPEAKER_00]: Just email me when you're done today with whatever you get.

54:16 [SPEAKER_00]: I'm here for it. [SPEAKER_00]: Okay, okay, see this is this is what actually my dream is is just I'm just going to pitch to all of the things that I needed to have happened. [SPEAKER_01]: And you're like, can you please write these? [SPEAKER_00]: Pretend like it's for someone else. [SPEAKER_00]: And like really, I'm just pitching you book ideas and written like just for myself.

54:33 [SPEAKER_00]: I love it. [SPEAKER_00]: Is there anything about this show that your opinion has changed as you've gotten older like as you've since you've watched it in your the early days to now? [SPEAKER_01]: I suppose it's more of social commentary I've ingested since then where you're like status quo was Roy's great, Roy's the perfect kid and then you you're on TikTok and you watch things and you're like [SPEAKER_01]: did have her issues here and you know this they did have this happen so there's a lot of things where it's like discourse will make you go yeah she could have been better here across the board with lots of characters.

55:10 [SPEAKER_01]: Rory, Lorely, it's made me appreciate Emily more I feel like when I used to watch the show I thought the parents you know you're just like a rich-study parents and now you're like Emily's kind of bad-ass though I can't love Emily [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I feel like especially a someone with like older kids that like now that you have like now You're getting to that relationship age with them that you're like, well, what do you really She had some ideas here.

55:35 [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, she would get right like I don't want to take any of them because he seemed toxic But right, she she was thinking something she's on to something. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, she had something like the best lines. [SPEAKER_01]: Oh my gosh. [SPEAKER_01]: She's so did [SPEAKER_00]: Of course, we're talking about that today is June 3rd when Luke and Lower Life should have gotten married, but they didn't, so instead of talking about a wedding, we're going to talk about a collapsed relationship.

55:58 [SPEAKER_00]: I'm sure your favorite topic, given that you write romance, because Gilmore Girls ends obviously very differently than the work that you write, the work that I love, which is the guaranteed happily ever after. [SPEAKER_00]: in gomergirls is kind of almost the opposite of that every season when it ends.

56:14 [SPEAKER_00]: Like no one's happy, everyone is ending in like a place where it's kind of agonizing because they're trying to sell themselves for another season so we can't end things too happily. [SPEAKER_00]: Does that like change your view like when you're I guess of course you love like you've talked about in this episode like not wanting too much conflict in your writing that like you're kind of [SPEAKER_00]: on Gilmore rolls or in shows in general like that you want, you want them to work their shit out basically.

56:43 [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, but you know what? [SPEAKER_01]: It's funny is the older I get the more I realize. [SPEAKER_01]: It almost just takes me a cooling off period after I'm tortured. [SPEAKER_01]: So appreciate that a lot of times like that's the good writing move. [SPEAKER_01]: Like we've been talking a lot lately about Lala land because Jordan Horowitz, who's one of the producers of better than the movies, he works on Lala land.

57:06 [SPEAKER_00]: Oh, that's, oh, that makes even more excited for you. [SPEAKER_01]: I was right, but the first time I had a call with him in Julia about that in the movies. [SPEAKER_01]: I was like, you destroyed me because that was, I'm kind of like, you were talking about Gilmore Girls. [SPEAKER_01]: I'm a spoiler person.

57:20 [SPEAKER_01]: Like, I want to know going into it. [SPEAKER_01]: Like, tell me what's gonna happen. [SPEAKER_01]: And then I'll watch it and I can be calm. [SPEAKER_01]: I don't wanna, you know? [SPEAKER_01]: Well, I didn't ever have level and spoiled for me. [SPEAKER_01]: So when I finally watched it, when it goes to that five years later, [SPEAKER_01]: Oh, who's the baby?

57:36 [SPEAKER_01]: And then you're like, wait, who's that guy? [SPEAKER_01]: You know, and you have the whole thing. [SPEAKER_01]: I was like, you destroyed me. [SPEAKER_01]: But then we had a whole conversation about how technically, he's like, but isn't that movie a happy ending for their dreams? [SPEAKER_01]: Like, they both got their dream?

57:51 [SPEAKER_01]: And I was like, okay, yes. [SPEAKER_01]: But yeah, sometimes you look back and you're like, okay, a lot of land if they would have ended up together, would it have just been a cute rom-com? [SPEAKER_01]: Or, you know, now you think of it as just a cinematic, kind of masterpiece that destroyed you.

58:07 [SPEAKER_01]: So I'm like, I think maybe they knew what they were doing, and that was the right move, even though I hated it. [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, so sometimes you know a lot of those shows like that like Logan if he would have proposed and she said yes And they got married and the show ended would it have been as I don't know monumental as the way it went when you were tortured No, and like sometimes I do like to be tortured like I like to be tortured through something, but I think feel like as someone who is like [SPEAKER_01]: Per preference is reading romance I like to torture for like a good payoff.

58:40 [SPEAKER_00]: Okay, I like to be tortured. [SPEAKER_00]: Like there's a book that just came out into the blue by Emma Brody. [SPEAKER_01]: She Oh, then it's so good. [SPEAKER_01]: You have to read it. [SPEAKER_00]: It's it's like your tortured like I called that book like a single POV agony that like, but it's a romance.

58:55 [SPEAKER_00]: So like it ends happily [SPEAKER_00]: And so I was appreciative of this because like if I had never been relieved of the agony, I don't think I could have moved on with my real life from these fictional people. [SPEAKER_00]: So like there's that there has to be like a nice blend, but like with Wala Land, that it definitely feels like he's had to think about that a lot about like what is a happily ever after.

59:16 [SPEAKER_00]: And like, at the end of the day, happily ever after is between two people. [SPEAKER_00]: You can say it's with your dreams, but I don't know. [SPEAKER_00]: Like, I mean, that's a lot of thought process there, but I always prefer when it's like them. [SPEAKER_00]: But I do remember that same moment of sitting in the theater and being like, oh, [SPEAKER_00]: they don't end up together.

59:34 [SPEAKER_01]: Right, and then they do that whole little montage of like how it could have been. [SPEAKER_01]: And you're like, you're just going to make it worse, showing me how it could have been. [SPEAKER_00]: You're going to actually, yeah, you've actually made bit worse. [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, yeah, thanks for that.

59:45 [SPEAKER_01]: Thanks for that. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, but it's also like you don't know that that's how that would have been. [SPEAKER_00]: Like you can't, you can never know. [SPEAKER_01]: Oh, that's what's so. [SPEAKER_01]: That's what's beautiful about it. [SPEAKER_01]: But I [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I digress, but yeah, I think that like it's it's quite hard for me to like be like a romance lover and then come up on like the end of season six with Kilmore girls and have Vorolai and Luke break up so dramatically because they're not going to get married.

1:00:06 [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, which of your characters from your novels do you think is most like Luke and Laura live like they don't have to be necessarily Luke and Laura like a couple but maybe different books are Luke and Laura like or maybe they are in the same book [SPEAKER_01]: Now, all I'm doing is hearing Luke.

1:00:19 [SPEAKER_01]: And I'm trying to think of a character like Luke. [SPEAKER_00]: Like maybe like a grumpy grumpy but loves her. [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, you know, almost in Mr. Wrong number, my first adult, wrong comment. [SPEAKER_01]: It's like Colin, the main love interest. [SPEAKER_01]: He's kind of the main character's older brother's friend.

1:00:35 [SPEAKER_01]: So there's kind of that vibe of he knows her so well that he gives her a hard time all the time, you know, almost in a brotherly way. [SPEAKER_01]: And I feel like that's kind of Luke and Laura like hoated in a little bit. [SPEAKER_01]: I love Luke so much. [SPEAKER_00]: Honestly, like when he makes that ice skating drink for her to like heal her relationship with Snow or she's going on a date with another guy so he teaches her how to fish so she will know what to do.

1:00:57 [SPEAKER_00]: Like gosh, what are we supposed to do with that? [SPEAKER_01]: Well, and they make you believe the whole time that he doesn't even know what he's doing. [SPEAKER_01]: Like he loves her so much that he doesn't even know that he's doing these things for her. [SPEAKER_01]: It just happens, like it's magical.

1:01:15 [SPEAKER_00]: Maybe, uh, howly in the love wager? [SPEAKER_01]: I also kind of think Duffy is a little more like, too. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, totally. [SPEAKER_00]: She's got that, like, very sarcastic, very quick-witted. [SPEAKER_00]: Kind of doesn't take anything from anyone. [SPEAKER_00]: She likes to roast them.

1:01:29 [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_00]: I'm still thinking about like your son telling you that your frontal lobe hasn't closed and I'm like, you've got so much roasting going on at home. [SPEAKER_00]: But there's like of course it's going to make it into your phone. [SPEAKER_01]: I know it's so funny. [SPEAKER_01]: I mean it's like, I feel like having children.

1:01:46 [SPEAKER_01]: It's like one-stig girl older. [SPEAKER_01]: It's like, it becomes that where it's like they come over and they just make fun of you and roast you and it's like, they're the funniest people that I know and it's my favorite thing in the world and um, I don't know what happened to me being in charge.

1:02:00 [SPEAKER_00]: that is like the the quite fun thing about we because we were talking about mother daughter relationship recently on the podcast of like with our own moms of like playing the mom card that I can I'm almost like doing that now in reverse for my mom of like year the one who raised me but like now I know more things than you about there's there's things that I know that you don't know that you don't understand and now I'm having to take control of the situation I'm like [SPEAKER_01]: I'm alive today because of you and now it seems like I have to take over and I tell you I hate that when I look at my kids and you're like you're mocking me.

1:02:34 [SPEAKER_01]: I do not like this at all that you know more than this than I do. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, my mom has she's had to put up with a little bit of that. [SPEAKER_00]: What is your opinion on Luke's decision to postpone the wedding because he found out he had a daughter? [SPEAKER_01]: I don't know that whole daughter thing was just so out there and strange that I don't know.

1:02:53 [SPEAKER_01]: It doesn't seem Luke coded. [SPEAKER_01]: Like it seems like something he wouldn't do. [SPEAKER_01]: Like when he keeps it all a secret and everything, it doesn't seem very Luke. [SPEAKER_01]: Like somebody else was writing Luke for that. [SPEAKER_01]: Those episodes I think. [SPEAKER_01]: I don't know.

1:03:05 [SPEAKER_01]: What do you think? [SPEAKER_00]: I go back and forth on it, because I actually think that it is Luke to be a void in of his feelings because like there's a element of he knew her for about eight years before he made any sort of play towards her feelings. [SPEAKER_00]: So he's not the most.

1:03:22 [SPEAKER_00]: proactive or honest or openly communicative person but his reasoning is that he thinks that she would like bore a lot better and he doesn't want to bring her into the relationship yet because he wants to get to know her which I always found to be quite strange that's like yeah well [SPEAKER_00]: Of course, she's going to, like, bore a lie better.

1:03:43 [SPEAKER_00]: You, that go fishing and drop. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, you, you dress kind of like a creepy man, like showing up at the science fair. [SPEAKER_00]: Of course, she's going to think that the, like, the cool, the cool girlfriend is going to be a lot more fun. [SPEAKER_00]: But you're her dad. [SPEAKER_00]: So there's, there's a, there's a lot of conversations about whether or not he was right to, like, prioritize his own relationship with her.

1:04:05 [SPEAKER_00]: First is whether or not it's more important to be honest with your partner and like your partner. [SPEAKER_00]: be your partner in that regard, especially if they're going to, you know, it's like imagine some, you're going through something and you tell your husband like, no, I don't need your help with this because it's impacting me and it is going to impact you, but I'm not going to share it with you at all.

1:04:23 [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, right. [SPEAKER_00]: You're like, oh, I thought that's what we were doing here. [SPEAKER_01]: You're like, no, don't worry about it. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_00]: And you're like, actually, I'm only going to worry about it. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_00]: So I feel like that, that's kind of the, there's like a lot of different camps about how people feel about it based on how they feel about Luke.

1:04:39 [SPEAKER_00]: But a lot of people think that they, he feels very out of character for him. [SPEAKER_00]: But I always think it feels. [SPEAKER_00]: Maybe a little out of character, like in the sense that I think that he'd appreciate Laura, I more, he'd know her more than they lead on to, that like, he would be more aware of her, but I just don't think he's a very forthcoming sort of guy.

1:04:57 [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_01]: No. [UNKNOWN]: No. [SPEAKER_00]: But when Laura Lai found out about April, and ultimately Luke decided to postpone the wedding, that it took like a half a season before they actually broke up, why do you think that she would keep her feelings to herself like that? [SPEAKER_00]: I guess like in a situation like that, like would you be able to keep how you felt about that to yourself for that long?

1:05:21 [SPEAKER_01]: Oh my gosh. [SPEAKER_01]: I don't know. [SPEAKER_01]: I can't imagine me being quiet about it. [SPEAKER_01]: I feel like right away it would just be an ultimate like what's going on here a flight and then it would either be done and we'd work through it or we would be done done. [SPEAKER_01]: Like I don't feel like it would go on for half a season.

1:05:36 [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_00]: That's like the hard thing is like we have to talk about our lives and like this problem in our lives happened for 12 episodes, which is not how we talk about real life. [SPEAKER_01]: Right. [SPEAKER_00]: Which of your heroines do you think is most likely to not voice how she is feeling?

1:05:53 [SPEAKER_01]: Oh, probably I can, my YA the doover. [SPEAKER_01]: The main character Emily is very, um, she's very type A and she's a people pleaser. [SPEAKER_01]: So she tries to do what makes everybody else happy. [SPEAKER_01]: So she would probably just be quiet and hope it would work itself out. [SPEAKER_00]: What do you think would have helped them to get to June 3rd?

1:06:11 [SPEAKER_00]: Like, if there was a thing that you could give them some, if you could give them some relationship advice to actually get married, or do you think that maybe they shouldn't have gotten married on June 3rd? [SPEAKER_00]: Because the reason that they did is because Laura, like, presented, like a completely planned, finished wedding with the date to Luke.

1:06:28 [SPEAKER_00]: And he was like, this is what's happening. [SPEAKER_00]: This is where it's at. [SPEAKER_00]: And it's happening on June 3rd. [SPEAKER_01]: I don't know. [SPEAKER_01]: They should have just pushed through and done it. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, how to conversation. [SPEAKER_01]: They should have just had a conversation.

1:06:38 [SPEAKER_01]: Powered through God Mary. [SPEAKER_00]: What would be the Lynn Painter effect to get them a happy ending? [SPEAKER_00]: Would you have had the work through it sooner so that the cliff hangar on season six is that they're back together and she doesn't sleep with Chris? [SPEAKER_00]: Or would you have like a third act?

1:06:52 [SPEAKER_00]: Break up. [SPEAKER_01]: I could never have her end up with Chris at the end of that season. [SPEAKER_01]: I just couldn't. [SPEAKER_01]: Anything but that. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_00]: That's another being anti-crisis feels like it's like a vibe jacket you have to pass to. [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

1:07:07 [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_01]: Like I, ugh. [SPEAKER_01]: Why did you remind me of that? [SPEAKER_00]: I'm so sorry. [SPEAKER_00]: I, like, can't believe it. [SPEAKER_00]: You're not going to get me on Texas now. [SPEAKER_01]: Trust me, you don't want it. [SPEAKER_01]: I don't know. [SPEAKER_01]: See, I struggle with conflicts, and I love Luca more light, so I feel like I would have put them together a lot sooner, and just had them deal with life together, but that wouldn't have been nearly as exciting as the way it was.

1:07:35 [SPEAKER_01]: So, Lynn Painter would have totally fumbled the bag. [SPEAKER_00]: No, no way. [SPEAKER_00]: I feel like they would have had like a nice happily ever after. [SPEAKER_00]: Chris isn't even around. [SPEAKER_00]: He's going through different punches. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, yeah. [SPEAKER_00]: He's not here anymore.

1:07:48 [SPEAKER_01]: Go to Paris. [SPEAKER_01]: Bye, Chris. [SPEAKER_00]: Bye, Chris. [SPEAKER_00]: Stay in Paris. [SPEAKER_00]: Honestly, that was good. [SPEAKER_00]: Bye. [SPEAKER_00]: That was treacherous. [SPEAKER_00]: So you can have like season seven. [SPEAKER_00]: Do you have any like feelings about the change in writers when you like get to watching those?

1:08:03 [SPEAKER_00]: Because of course Amy left and it starts to feel like [SPEAKER_00]: The studio. [SPEAKER_01]: It definitely feels different. [SPEAKER_01]: But I tell you I'm so like when you you're such the expert when you're like season seven I don't even think of them in terms of season because of the way I watched it and even now like when I go to turn it on You know, you'll go on wherever it's streaming And I'll just be like what am I in the mood for it?

1:08:27 [SPEAKER_01]: I'll pull up you know like what it is season two or season three, you know So I don't revisit a lot of those that often [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, that's like very common in how rewatch culture works. [SPEAKER_00]: It's either you like or watching seasons like 1, 2, and 3. [SPEAKER_00]: Or like I watch like 4, 5, and 6, but like I stop when they break up.

1:08:46 [SPEAKER_00]: And I'm like, well, that's it. [SPEAKER_00]: Let's see into the show. [SPEAKER_00]: But that's me personally. [SPEAKER_00]: Of course, like for the podcast, I like, I continue on to seven, but we do call it the fanfiction season. [SPEAKER_00]: So I talk about all of it, but it's just interesting how people end up in different, you know, just different patterns of watching, like I just watch like my favorite episodes and I'll just like popcorn around.

1:09:10 [SPEAKER_00]: But I do have to say, I feel like most authors are like a 1, 2, 3, they're done. [SPEAKER_00]: And maybe they'll pop back in in season six when Jess returns and he wrote a book and, you know, like, they'll pop back in for why did you draw out of Yale, but I feel like I feel like so many people are probably very endeared to that about you because they're like, oh, thank God, she's not into the later seasons.

1:09:36 [SPEAKER_00]: We're never going to get any of that. [SPEAKER_01]: Thank God, I can't handle the stress of it all. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_00]: It's like in the earlier seasons, like the most stressful thing is like worry loses her bracelet. [SPEAKER_01]: Oh, no, she's late to class and they're mad, it's she'll be, yeah, they she got hit by a deer.

1:09:51 [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, but then we have like where she gets in the car accident with Jess and it's like it's dramatic but you're like, oh, my gosh. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, this is so bonding for the two of you. [SPEAKER_00]: You have to boil it. [SPEAKER_01]: It's acting like she almost died because her wrist is already.

1:10:04 [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, exactly. [SPEAKER_00]: Which is like a low key that's so how my mom would be. [SPEAKER_00]: Like if I was in a car with a boy and I broke my wrist, she would like act like I was decapitated. [SPEAKER_00]: So, that is a bit about June 3rd, and the reflection on Luke and Laura Lai, but something I'm really excited about in terms of Gilmore girls, in terms of fall is that normally I would ask you what is next for you, but we do know what is next for you, and that is your very atomnily covered book called Trust Fall.

1:10:34 [SPEAKER_00]: Can you tell us a little bit more about that? [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, trust fall is, and I love the cover so much, it makes me so proud. [SPEAKER_01]: So fall, so beautiful. [SPEAKER_00]: Also being called, trust fall is just so cute, so charming. [SPEAKER_01]: And that is such a good, and I'm so bad at titles.

1:10:48 [SPEAKER_01]: Like, I think I titled it new money. [SPEAKER_01]: And then, um, one of my editors, my editor's boss's wife came up with trust fall. [SPEAKER_01]: Wow, we're all like, oh, that's really great. [SPEAKER_01]: But Trustfall is the story of the main character, is Julia, and she's just a Midwestern girl, and one day her family learns that some dead guy has left them a fortune, but they have to move to New York and live in this house they've inherited for six months and go to this very fancy prep school.

1:11:18 [SPEAKER_01]: And then if they do that for six months, they inherit all of this. [SPEAKER_01]: So it's very much fish out of water, a Midwestern kind of normal girl, all of a sudden being thrown into a [SPEAKER_00]: Oh, I love. [SPEAKER_00]: It's also a little chill to me of like, worry, from Star's Hollow, dropping in to the prep school.

1:11:35 [SPEAKER_01]: You know what's so funny is I just finished copy edits. [SPEAKER_01]: And copy editors are brilliant. [SPEAKER_01]: They're the detail oriented people who can read your whole book and they can be like, you call this this on page 571, but I'm page 12, you call this like they so get all the details.

1:11:51 [SPEAKER_01]: And one of the comments was she's wearing her new school uniform and she likes it and she thinks it's very chilton-esque. [SPEAKER_01]: And the copy editor is like, will people know what this is if you don't explain and I'm like, I'm not saying I'm not explaining. [SPEAKER_00]: They will.

1:12:05 [SPEAKER_00]: People will know. [SPEAKER_00]: And if they don't know, they don't need to know. [UNKNOWN]: Right. [SPEAKER_01]: And then the book kind of became my love letter in New York because my husband and I love going in New York. [SPEAKER_01]: And then a few months ago, I was like, I want to make sure every time we go, we always kind of stay in Midtown.

1:12:20 [SPEAKER_01]: And I'm like, this book is all set on the upper west side. [SPEAKER_01]: And I'm like, I need to make sure I'm getting it right. [SPEAKER_01]: So I'm like, we should go to New York. [SPEAKER_01]: So my husband, I went to New York for weekend. [SPEAKER_01]: We stayed in the upper west side.

1:12:30 [SPEAKER_01]: And it's like the house that I'm envisioning is this incredible house that's on 166th and Riverside Drive. [SPEAKER_01]: Oh, gorgeous. [SPEAKER_01]: I used to live on 93rd and Riverside. [SPEAKER_01]: So stunning. [SPEAKER_01]: All those big, beautiful mansions over there. [SPEAKER_01]: And it became like seriously.

1:12:43 [SPEAKER_01]: The weekend we went, the windshield was like 30 below zero. [SPEAKER_01]: So it's like every time we had to leave our hotel, I'm like, we have to go take the subway. [SPEAKER_01]: So I know where I'm going and we would be like, we need to buy warmer hats because it was so cold. [SPEAKER_01]: So we just spent the whole weekend going everywhere that the characters were going to go, walking around the neighborhood where they were going to live.

1:13:02 [SPEAKER_01]: So it truly now, like, it's the book of my heart because when I read it, I'm like, [SPEAKER_01]: I want to go there, I want to go to the Amsterdam Marketplace. [SPEAKER_01]: I want to go eat it, you know, this pizza place. [SPEAKER_00]: We have so funny. [SPEAKER_00]: That's like all the places I used to go to.

1:13:15 [SPEAKER_00]: Like that's like, oh, so excited for Trustfall. [SPEAKER_00]: Like I truly cannot wait. [SPEAKER_00]: I feel like that's so perfectly brimmed for me. [SPEAKER_00]: And I feel like there's nothing better than like an a terminal New York look, YA, like big feelings, private school. [SPEAKER_00]: Like what?

1:13:33 [SPEAKER_00]: I love that. [SPEAKER_00]: I will also say when it comes to like the children ask I actually really prefer when a writer doesn't explain the references in a book. [SPEAKER_00]: I actually really love when it's like if you know you know and if you don't you can look it up. [SPEAKER_01]: That's how I am too.

1:13:46 [SPEAKER_01]: I'm like I don't need a paragraph to be like she loved Gilmore girl. [SPEAKER_01]: Like no you either get it or you breathe past it and don't notice it. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah absolutely so. [SPEAKER_00]: Well, no. [SPEAKER_00]: Me and I'm all listeners. [SPEAKER_00]: Well, no. [SPEAKER_00]: We'll get it when we read this book.

1:13:58 [SPEAKER_00]: I'm so excited. [SPEAKER_00]: This comes out in September. [SPEAKER_01]: September 29th. [SPEAKER_01]: Yes. [SPEAKER_00]: Oh, perfect. [SPEAKER_00]: Oh my gosh. [SPEAKER_00]: Sure. [SPEAKER_00]: Just some time for Gamma Girl season. [SPEAKER_01]: So excited. [SPEAKER_00]: Oh my gosh. [SPEAKER_00]: I cannot wait for that.

1:14:09 [SPEAKER_00]: On that note, unlike the note of book recommendations, I usually ask authors like a book recommendation that they would have for Gilmore Girls fans, but I would love for you to recommend one of your books because you have quite a few a book that you recommend for Gilmore Girls fans of yours and any book that you would recommend outside of your catalog.

1:14:26 [SPEAKER_01]: You know, of mine, I will say fake skating. [SPEAKER_01]: Okay, only because it's kind of the main character. [SPEAKER_01]: She didn't live in the small town before, but she used to stay there every summer with her grandparents and now she's moving there when her parents are divorced So it's injecting her into this big hockey community, so it's kind of like found family and she's living with her grandfather and so there's a lot of a lot of vibes It's setting winter, but there's a lot of Gilmore girlsy vibes, I think [SPEAKER_00]: And like that's one of the seasons of Gilmore Girls, like snowy stars hollow and like I love a grandfather relationship so that feels so so perfect.

1:15:04 [SPEAKER_00]: What's a book that you love that you would recommend for Gilmore Girls fans? [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, falling like leaves by Misty Wilson is a young adult fall book set like a girl from New York moves to a small town and so that would have had some Gilmore girl lives. [SPEAKER_01]: So I'll say falling like leaves.

1:15:20 [SPEAKER_00]: And I love a YA recommendation because like I feel like that's like a whole subset of the show is like Rory in her high school days. [SPEAKER_01]: So I love having a YA recommendation on that. [SPEAKER_00]: Especially because I do it because I know a lot of people, I'm sure a lot of listeners feel this way that like YA isn't for adults because in its name it's young adult and now that I'm an adult.

1:15:39 [SPEAKER_00]: I'm shouldn't read young adult, but I feel like so many of them remind us that like we're always going to have those big feelings inside of us and that we get to [SPEAKER_00]: live them and feel these feelings for the generation of a book like that. [SPEAKER_00]: So even if you have not yet read a white book, I really recommend diving into Lines White books, falling link leaves which you recommended, but also, of course, if you like adult romance, feel the sports romance.

1:16:05 [SPEAKER_00]: first and forever. [SPEAKER_00]: If you like Woody Banner, this is the book for you. [SPEAKER_01]: If you want to fit it. [SPEAKER_00]: If you like feeling good, if you like feeling light-hearted and want something fun, first and forever, it came out last month and I'm so excited for people to be, I'm so excited to read, trust me.

1:16:18 [SPEAKER_00]: I literally can't take of anything else right now. [SPEAKER_01]: I can't wait. [SPEAKER_01]: I successfully pitched it to you. [SPEAKER_00]: But thank you so much, Lynn. [SPEAKER_01]: Oh my gosh, this has been amazing. [SPEAKER_01]: Thank you so much for letting me come on and talk to you.

1:16:30 [SPEAKER_01]: No, thank you for chatting. [SPEAKER_00]: My book Loving Besties, thank you so much for joining me for another episode of Gilmour to Read. [SPEAKER_00]: If you'd like to join the book club conversation, head over to Patreon, we can join for free. [SPEAKER_00]: In June, reading a sexy is reading the open era by Edward Schmidt.

1:16:48 [SPEAKER_00]: One of my favorite books of the year thus far, and my next guest will be the author of one of my favorite books ever, into the blue, and that will be Emma Brody. [SPEAKER_00]: Until then, happy reading friends.