Gilmore To Read: Sasha Peyton Smith Loves A Love Triangle

0:00 [SPEAKER_00]: Five, six, seven, eight, Ivy. [SPEAKER_00]: Hi y'all, welcome or welcome back to Gamertoreed. [SPEAKER_00]: I'm Haley, the head book lover around here, and I'm so glad you're here today. [SPEAKER_00]: My bestie is I am positively obsessed with today's guess. [SPEAKER_00]: She is so funny, so thoughtful, so smart, has such fantastic insight into Gamertore's and books in general, and that is my friend The New York Times by selling author, Sashapetan Smith, who I invited onto the podcast because I wanted to talk with her about love triangles, [SPEAKER_00]: Love them or hate them, we've all read them or watched them play out.

0:41 [SPEAKER_00]: All of you have definitely watched one if you saw season two and three of Gamma girls which I know that you have, Sasha certainly loved the love triangle as we saw in her book The Rose Bargain, which was one of my favorite books last year. [SPEAKER_00]: It's really the perfect book if anyone who is interested in fantasy is curious about historical romance because it really toes that line quite well, but it's also a great book if you really love contemporary romance and your kind of curious about a historical.

1:06 [SPEAKER_00]: Because her writing style as well is the banter that she includes feels quite modern and funny and warm. [SPEAKER_00]: I just think that if you have similar book tastes to me, you're really gonna love this one, and it's quite good timing for you if you're just not discovering this book because the sequel to this doology came out yesterday as of this episode being aired today.

1:24 [SPEAKER_00]: That book is the Thorn Queen where we finally, after a year of agonizing, just waiting in deep anticipation over the fades of our favorite characters. [SPEAKER_00]: can finally know peace. [SPEAKER_00]: So if you love the Rose bargain, it is our time, it is time to lock in, but if you've never read this book, it is absolutely the perfect time to dive in because the story has been completed and we do finally know peace.

1:47 [SPEAKER_00]: Thank God. [SPEAKER_00]: Bit about Darling Sasha Payton Smith, she is the New York Times bestselling author of fantasy novels for young adults, including The Witch Haven and The Rose bargain. [SPEAKER_00]: her work has been translated into more than a dozen languages worldwide, she lives in a 100-year-old house in the mountains of Utah with her husband and allegedly two goes, though she has yet to see them.

2:05 [SPEAKER_00]: Our friend Sasha is an OG lover of Gilmour Girls and gives us some insight into whether she was a Rory in school, spoiler, she was not. [SPEAKER_00]: How fandom led her to her writing career and a lot on what makes a good love triangle, what we hate about them, what we love about them, and why do [SPEAKER_00]: You have to promise not to cancel us for any of the opinions we have about your favorite love triangle's near the end of this episode, but I would love to know your thoughts on them.

2:31 [SPEAKER_00]: But without further ado, here is the darling Sasha Patensmith. [SPEAKER_00]: Sasha, I'm so excited to have you here today. [SPEAKER_00]: I've been looking forward to this for like four or five months since we started talking about having on the podcast. [SPEAKER_01]: I'm so excited to be here.

2:47 [SPEAKER_01]: This is my dream. [SPEAKER_01]: I want to talk about Gilmore Girls way more than I want to talk about my own books. [SPEAKER_00]: Okay, this is great. [SPEAKER_00]: We'll have to do a little bit of both, but don't you worry, we have Gilmore Girls questions, but... [SPEAKER_00]: I actually discovered your book one of the most dangerous ways to discover a book which is just picking up a random book on a table at Barnes & Noble and just hoping that it's good.

3:05 [SPEAKER_00]: But the reason I picked it up is because like truly the Rose bargain was like one of the most beautiful books I had seen. [SPEAKER_00]: And I was like even if the inside of this book is just meh, the beautiful book will set on myself. [SPEAKER_00]: But that was not the key to it all because I was absolutely obsessed with it.

3:17 [SPEAKER_00]: I could not explain how quickly I devoured this book. [SPEAKER_00]: It was thrilling and romantic and fantastical, but while at the same time still so warm and funny, and I just absolutely loved it. [SPEAKER_00]: And so did everyone else, because it was not a one, but a two-time Newark time specialer and hard-back and paperback.

3:35 [SPEAKER_00]: How did that reception feel after working on it for so long? [SPEAKER_01]: Pretty bananas, I mean, writing is such a solitary task. [SPEAKER_01]: Click you are alone in your office or your bedroom or your couch, with your characters in your own head, and you don't know how people are going to react to something until it's out in the world.

3:50 [SPEAKER_01]: And the Rose Barkin was actually born from a period of failure in my life. [SPEAKER_01]: I had my debut novel The Witch Haven and its sequel The Witch Hunt. [SPEAKER_01]: Did well, and I was very pleased with, you know, [SPEAKER_01]: The way it went, like I earned out my advance, and it was also when you're terms bestseller.

4:05 [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, the hit of the century. [SPEAKER_01]: But I was really, really pleased. [SPEAKER_01]: I felt like I was a straight-a student that I was a pleasure to have in class, and then that's the only dream there's ever been. [SPEAKER_01]: Exactly. [SPEAKER_01]: And then I went to sell my next book to my publisher, which was not there as bargain.

4:17 [SPEAKER_01]: It was another book, and they didn't want it, which is really common. [SPEAKER_01]: And I know that now, but at the time it felt really devastatingly personal. [SPEAKER_01]: I felt like I had failed, and so I was at home for the holidays, having the pity party of the century, and I really didn't think that I would ever write professionally again.

4:36 [SPEAKER_01]: I felt like the door had just been slammed in my face, and nobody was interested in what I had to write anymore, which, again, was like a very dramatic reaction to a new normal substance. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, he sank down in that spiral. [SPEAKER_01]: A hundred percent. [SPEAKER_01]: This was a me problem, not a publishing problem.

4:50 [SPEAKER_01]: but I was in my childhood bedroom, my parents' house, and all of my childhood books were still on my shelf, and so I looked up at these books that I loved so much when I was a teenager. [SPEAKER_01]: And I'm in my early 30s, and so I was the perfect age for the YA Renaissance of Twilight and the Hunger Games, and the Learyham and Natch, and these books that I read until 2am, hoping my mom didn't notice.

5:11 [SPEAKER_01]: And I decided, if I was going to write something that was just for me, I wanted to try to write something the way those books made me feel. [SPEAKER_01]: And I wanted to throw every single most self-indulgent trope into them, and so I decided to write the most self-indulgent book I could possibly write, because I really thought that only people who might ever read it were going to be me and my little sister.

5:31 [SPEAKER_01]: And so the fact that anybody has read it other than the two of us is like the greatest surprise of my life. [SPEAKER_01]: It feels so cliche, but they always tell you like right what you want to read and be your own first audience. [SPEAKER_01]: And I really took that to heart when I read, or when I wrote The Rose Bargain.

5:47 [SPEAKER_01]: So also to connect with so many other people in the world who have a weird brain like me that like, yeah, things I like is so fun because the Rose Bargain then did that being such a personal project. [SPEAKER_00]: I love that I honestly have chills you saying that because after I purchased it was kind of when I went searching for what other people were saying about it over thinking about it.

6:05 [SPEAKER_00]: And I kept seeing people have like vlog reactions to, I don't want to split it, but there is a moment in this book. [SPEAKER_00]: where things take place that you did not expect to take place. [SPEAKER_01]: I love a twist. [SPEAKER_00]: I love a twist and I don't think it's a spoiler to say there's a twist because I knew it was a twist and I could not have anticipated what the twist was under any circumstances and so like hearing you say that like you had like your huge pity party like you wrote this book that was just for you that like you wanted to have that feeling that other books gave you and see like remembering seeing those reactions and that was what like really was pushing me to like

6:41 [SPEAKER_00]: it just like it makes me like so happy and so proud of you like to like have that book that feels so like I sink into this book and I did not want to leave it like all of those books that you were mentioning it really did feel like that feeling because like I was up until like one A.M. multiple nights trying to figure out what was going on in this like strange Victorian England that I was just so obsessed with so congratulations so proud of you.

7:06 [SPEAKER_01]: That's a [SPEAKER_00]: And we are now celebrating the release of the sequel, the duology of the Thorn Queen, which if you've read the Rose Bargain, which we can get into more of that in a moment. [SPEAKER_00]: But I went into this book like, please no, no one's hurt. [SPEAKER_00]: Everyone's okay.

7:22 [SPEAKER_00]: This is just 350 pages of everyone just having a party and no one's hurt and nothing's wrong and nothing's bad. [SPEAKER_00]: Would you say that is true of the Thorn Queen? [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, for sure. [SPEAKER_00]: Everybody's fine. [SPEAKER_00]: Um, it's never there. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, they're having a party.

7:34 [SPEAKER_00]: No one cries. [SPEAKER_00]: I'm not going to sit here and make you answer to your cry. [SPEAKER_01]: I'm because I would be spoilers, but the opening prologue is someone getting thrown down the stick. [SPEAKER_00]: That, that might be true, and I read that, and I was like, Sasha, why would you do this to me?

7:50 [SPEAKER_00]: And I just had to continue, but it's fantastic. [SPEAKER_00]: Like, of course, I'm not going to say anything that happens in there or like any hints towards it, because I feel like it would spoil too much if it's going on in the Rose Bargain. [SPEAKER_00]: For anyone who hasn't read it, but it is excellent.

8:03 [SPEAKER_00]: One of the reasons I wanted to pick it up was because you and I had been talking that we were like in a Bridgeton depression, and I was like, oh my gosh, let me cure my Bridgeton depression [SPEAKER_00]: The Thorn Queen, I finished it last week and now I'm in a Thorn Queen depression and so hopefully the care to it is talking to you about it now because like I think like the ending of it I think people are going to feel really satisfied at least I did as someone who was like a huge fan of the Rose bargain.

8:28 [SPEAKER_00]: I had no theories. [SPEAKER_00]: I had no idea when we were going with the Thorne Queen, but where we ended up was much better than anything I could have imagined. [SPEAKER_00]: So if you did love the Rose bargain, I feel like you're going to love this one. [SPEAKER_00]: And if you have not yet read the Rose bargain, you're lucky because you don't have to wait a year to find out if your favorite characters are okay because the answer is [SPEAKER_00]: No.

8:48 [SPEAKER_00]: No, they're not. [SPEAKER_00]: They're not okay. [SPEAKER_00]: And not a single one. [SPEAKER_00]: They need you to find out what happened to them. [SPEAKER_00]: But the Rose bargain feels like a historical romance, like just straight up to me because I'm like, yeah, of course in Victorian England there was a fake queen.

9:02 [SPEAKER_00]: Various were there. [SPEAKER_00]: And like that just makes sense for me. [SPEAKER_00]: But anyone who hasn't read them, read it, give them like a taste of what the Rose bargain, like what's happening in the Rose bargain. [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, because you and I are both historical romance girly.

9:14 [SPEAKER_01]: Yes, and so I mean in the spirit of writing what I wanted to read during the pandemic, the only thing I read was historical romance novels. [SPEAKER_01]: I read just like hundreds of Lisa claypass and tessadare and Beverly Jenkins and when I sat down to write, I think the only thing that came out was like scandal in a carriage.

9:31 [SPEAKER_01]: Um, but nothing truly nothing better, but the pitch for the Roseburgin is it takes place in an alternate history 1848 England, so kind of this fantasy version of Victorian London, and in the 1400s during the war of the roses, a fairy queen tricked her way onto the throne. [SPEAKER_01]: So she's now been ruling England as a desperate for 400 years, and each citizen has the opportunity to make one fairy bargain with her.

9:55 [SPEAKER_01]: Our high society, kind of Bridgerton, Asked W. Tons, are expected to make [SPEAKER_01]: So, a more beautiful singing voice and exchange for a toe or a prettier face and exchange for all of your childhood memories, those kind of, you know, fairy tale fairy bargains that I love writing so much.

10:13 [SPEAKER_01]: Our main character, Ivy Benton, has been recently disgraced by her sister scandal and her marriage prospects are looking rather bleak. [SPEAKER_01]: So, when the fairy queen announces that this is the season, her son, the fairy prince, will take a wife. [SPEAKER_01]: Ivy enters the vicious competition thinking that it is her [SPEAKER_01]: But she's quickly approached by the prince's human stepbrother Emmett, who has a bargain of his own.

10:31 [SPEAKER_01]: He will help make Ivy his brother's dream girl if she helps him to take down the queen. [SPEAKER_01]: So I think the pitch has been Bridger 10 meets the selection, meets the cruel prince. [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I just really threw all of my most favorite YA fantasy tropes into the scaffolding of a good classic Victorian reference novel.

10:47 [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, and I think that if you love historical romance, like this is like exactly like maybe if you don't love fantasy, like if that's not your vibe, I still think that you're absolutely going to love this because like all of those like like you said like tropes in like favorite moments and scandals carriage rides like it's all there with this kind of like dark ominous presence evading ivy.

11:10 [SPEAKER_00]: And yeah, that's what makes it so like intriguing. [SPEAKER_00]: Like honestly, you sang the pitch of it. [SPEAKER_00]: Like I know how much I love a book when someone like retails what the book is about to me. [SPEAKER_00]: And I'm like, oh my gosh, I need to read it right now because it's so, it's so fantastic.

11:23 [SPEAKER_00]: I can't say enough good things about this doology. [SPEAKER_01]: Thank you so much. [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, my hope is that it's accessible for maybe romance readers who don't always gravitate towards fantasy or that it makes fantasy readers more curious about historical romance novels because I could talk about those like an academic way for us.

11:41 [SPEAKER_00]: And I feel like this is really like the perfect marriage of that. [SPEAKER_00]: No pun intended. [SPEAKER_00]: That just feels like this is like if you are a fantasy reader wanting to read historical if you're a historical reader or the curious about fantasy, this is like perfectly for you and that definitely extends into [SPEAKER_00]: The Thorne Queen, but, of course, we're here on a Gilmore Girls podcast, and with Amy Schermellgene's lore about Gilmore Girls, it's quite cemented that, like, in the back of her mind, she had the story about a mother and a daughter, and here we see that explored as Gilmore Girls.

12:11 [SPEAKER_00]: What was like the very first idea that you had for the Rose bargain, and then what did you do with it after that? [SPEAKER_01]: So the very first idea that came to me was what if the Queen of England was a very, which kind of struck me like lightning, which is not the way book ideas usually hit me.

12:25 [SPEAKER_01]: Oh yeah. [SPEAKER_01]: It just popped into my head. [SPEAKER_01]: And again, I was at home for the holidays, very sad. [SPEAKER_01]: And I felt like that was kind of a silly idea. [SPEAKER_01]: But what if I really gave in to this silly idea? [SPEAKER_01]: And I knew I wanted to write a book about sisters.

12:40 [SPEAKER_01]: My first doology has a sister in a brother. [SPEAKER_01]: But I am the middle of three sisters. [SPEAKER_01]: And there's nothing. [SPEAKER_01]: I think more complicated on earth. [SPEAKER_00]: than a sister relationship. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I'm also the middle of three sisters. [SPEAKER_00]: Oh my gosh, but like, we also have a brother.

12:52 [SPEAKER_00]: Where's he? [SPEAKER_00]: He's my, he's old-est and then that's okay. [SPEAKER_00]: Oh, so it's my older sister brother and then the two of us. [SPEAKER_01]: Oh, I love that. [SPEAKER_01]: So I love my brother very much, but the dynamic is like, he's kind of floating above it all and then my sister's an eye.

13:04 [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, we feel that way too. [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, yeah. [SPEAKER_01]: They really get away with a lot of those brother. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, like, and he's off like being, he's like a surgeon, so he's like off and me and my sisters are just like doing our little kitty jobs. [SPEAKER_01]: Oh, my brother.

13:16 [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I feel like there's like a guest character. [SPEAKER_01]: It's great. [SPEAKER_00]: We love it. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, special guests. [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, yeah. [SPEAKER_01]: So I knew I knew I wanted to write a sister book and I knew I had this idea for this. [SPEAKER_01]: What if the Queen of England was a fairy?

13:28 [SPEAKER_01]: And then the part of fairy lore I find most interesting is fairy bargains. [SPEAKER_01]: So from there in, like I said, I'd been reading all of these historical romance novels, and so I wanted it to feel like this kind of [SPEAKER_01]: Berkeley fake version of Victorian England. [SPEAKER_01]: And I think that Victorian England and fairies have a lot in common.

13:45 [SPEAKER_01]: And if there's these shiny even years hiding something much more rotten beneath, so it makes sense to me to pair that. [SPEAKER_01]: And then, and then from there, the roast bargain was born. [SPEAKER_01]: Oh, [SPEAKER_00]: I love that so much. [SPEAKER_00]: I also love that like being influenced by like your own siblings because like that's something that is not as explored in Gilmore girls is sibling relationships Like that's the thing that I always like to like because one of the things I try to do with Gilmore to read and specifically our book collaborating A sexy is finding things that feel like the show But maybe exploring it in different ways like an example like strong family complicated family relationships But maybe like finding some siblings to explore that with because they weren't

14:22 [SPEAKER_00]: that wasn't something that really exists. [SPEAKER_00]: Almost no one on Gilmour Rolls has a sibling, and if they do, it's a sister. [SPEAKER_01]: It was in a saying, Dean has a sister in Logan has a sister, just kind of as a sister. [SPEAKER_00]: I guess eventually. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, everyone has a sister.

14:34 [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, I guess like the character is the brother, but like everyone has a sister. [SPEAKER_00]: And so I like having kind of that, let's explore sisters through sisterhood here. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_00]: What sort of research did you do for Victorian [SPEAKER_01]: I did, so I am in London a couple of times a year, just, it always ends up late at the it's ever planned, but my family is English and it's a direct flight from Salt Lake City.

15:01 [SPEAKER_01]: It's really easy to get me on a flight to London. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_00]: Don't let me see your arm. [SPEAKER_01]: Listen. [SPEAKER_01]: So I usually end up in London two or three times a year anyway. [SPEAKER_01]: And yeah, so I went to Kensington Palace three times during the writing of this book.

15:15 [SPEAKER_01]: And that there was an exhibit on Queen Victoria's childhood, her like weird lonely childhood that inspired a lot of the things I said about Emmett's childhood. [SPEAKER_01]: I think there's a line in the book that says something like a group and a drafty palace, but only toy soldiers for company.

15:29 [SPEAKER_01]: And that I think could have been taken off one of the plaques. [SPEAKER_01]: It like Queen Victoria's doll house. [SPEAKER_00]: You'll see it fall to kind of like get to [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, and so that was really fun. [SPEAKER_01]: Obviously my Kensington Palace has like fairy frescoes and tunnels that lead out of the city and yeah, it is not a true true to life version of Kensington Palace.

15:46 [SPEAKER_00]: Hey, maybe they're just not telling you. [SPEAKER_01]: Maybe one of the coolest things I got to do for this book is when it came out. [SPEAKER_01]: I got to do a UK tour and my UK publisher arranged for a private tour of Kensington Palace the morning the book released in the UK with me and a bunch of journalists.

16:01 [SPEAKER_01]: It was truly the one of the wildest moments of my life. [SPEAKER_01]: My mother was with me on that tour. [SPEAKER_01]: And I was like, well, we're going to Kensington Palace and we showed up and it was just us. [SPEAKER_01]: And she was like, what do you mean it's just for you? [SPEAKER_01]: And I'm like, I don't know.

16:14 [SPEAKER_01]: I'm going to cry. [SPEAKER_00]: I don't know. [SPEAKER_00]: My queen for a day. [SPEAKER_01]: They had me sit. [SPEAKER_01]: I don't think it's the real chair, but it was the real place in the room. [SPEAKER_01]: We're queen Victoria sat down at a teen and addressed her council of lords for the first time.

16:25 [SPEAKER_01]: The dosent was like, you have to sit. [SPEAKER_01]: And there's a picture of me like shaking. [SPEAKER_00]: I love that you have to sit down. [SPEAKER_00]: You are doing it. [SPEAKER_00]: It was here. [SPEAKER_00]: That's what they're so cool. [SPEAKER_01]: It was really, really cool. [SPEAKER_00]: Especially on the release day, I feel like so many emotions are already bubbling up, and they're like, okay, we'll now sit in Queen Victoria's chair, and you're like, oh.

16:43 [SPEAKER_01]: And my beautiful editor was like, leading me up the Grand Staircase being like, Sasha, tell us what happens in the book in this staircase, and I felt so silly. [SPEAKER_01]: And it's like incredible real historical sight being like, okay, well, then they go up to the make they make their fairy bargains, and then the fairy queen.

16:58 [SPEAKER_00]: It was really amazing. [SPEAKER_01]: that's incredible though because like there's just like there's something that like you feel like you're indulging yourself but it's like you really did write like them going up this staircase like that's that's it was wild it was one of the coolest moments of my life but as far as the research went like I said the the fairy queen tricks her way onto the throne during the war of the roses so it is ostensibly real England and so pre-1471 I couldn't change anything [SPEAKER_01]: And so it was really fun to do research as to what was that old.

17:25 [SPEAKER_01]: So Parliament and the Prince of Wales title and the magna carda in certain palaces like those were all satin stone. [SPEAKER_01]: And it was really surprising to me to find out how old some of those institutions were. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_01]: And then post 1471 I could have some like hand wavy fun.

17:40 [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, and that I got to be like this one looks like a Victorian England, but I had a little bit of leeway on, you know, what I could change and what I got to and view with a little bit of magic and I got to think about the way making fairy bargains would affect the economy. [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

17:58 [SPEAKER_01]: And that was really fun. [SPEAKER_01]: It was like a fundamental exercise. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, that's quite fun thinking of it. [SPEAKER_00]: Like I didn't think about it in like the full scope of like thinking about it in terms of the government. [SPEAKER_00]: I'm thinking in terms of like she lost her child in memories and like how is that now impacting her and her relationships with her family.

18:14 [SPEAKER_00]: But like yeah, it's gonna affect you caught me. [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, it kind of like Ivy's dad canonically gives up his childhood memories for more land for his tenant farmers and in this childhood memories it's that land is not very good for farming and so the land is mostly useless and it makes him kind of an outcast with his peers because all of a sudden he can't like chat with his school charms and it does kind of ruin their family's fortunes and so it was fun to think through the consequences of these kind of silly bargains.

18:40 [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I know. [SPEAKER_00]: I love that. [SPEAKER_00]: What was influencing you other than like you were talking about how like you had your historical romance But were there fantasies that you were pulling from that like really inspired you while doing this? [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I really am so inspired by people who've been writing life and I see for you to so long I think we all exist in the footsteps of Cassandra Claire and stuff of Barbara and Kira Cass [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, it was those books that I read in high school and college that I could not put down that I feel like kind of worm their way into my soul.

19:11 [SPEAKER_01]: And I was trying my best to imitate those great YA romances. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I love that. [SPEAKER_00]: I love that so much of what you've said about like what went into writing this was like not necessarily reading the books and like wanting to like recreate the [SPEAKER_00]: plot or recreate any of that but it's recreating the feelings and like how you said like it gotten to your soul because that's definitely how I felt about reading this is like as I was reading it like I just had like that absolute dream of a reader feeling where it's like I can't put this down I forgot in where I am.

19:44 [SPEAKER_00]: am I not really in like this alternate Victorian England know because now my mom is calling down the phone and like this doesn't fit with the world. [SPEAKER_00]: This isn't like fit into where I'm at now. [SPEAKER_00]: I have to decline this call and I love that you talk about how much like just trying to make it feel like that.

19:58 [SPEAKER_00]: Is that something that you think about when you're drafting is like how it will feel to a reader or is it more of like how does this making me feel right now? [SPEAKER_01]: I think I have to be my own reader, so probably some combination of both, but mostly me, and fairly clinical about my writing, I'm not somebody who cries when I'm writing, I'm not somebody who gets, and not somebody who even gets particularly attached to my own characters, I know a lot of writers that are like, they talked to me for years and [SPEAKER_01]: I'm trying to plot and they want to go their own way.

20:24 [SPEAKER_01]: Like my characters aren't real to me in that way. [SPEAKER_01]: I love my characters and I think deeply about them. [SPEAKER_01]: But I process them very much as like extensions of me. [SPEAKER_01]: And then also what I'm trying to accomplish and say within the bounds of a novel. [SPEAKER_01]: But I think a lot about how books that I love make me feel.

20:41 [SPEAKER_01]: I am one of those readers that like I will shove a book in your hands and do like it's my favorite book. [SPEAKER_01]: I love every minute of it and people do it great what happens and I'm like, I don't know. [SPEAKER_00]: Or it's like you have to find out. [SPEAKER_00]: I can't tell you because I didn't know before I went in and now you can't know anything You know I forget like I literally have like no was great.

20:57 [SPEAKER_01]: It's my favorite book Like I could tell you like I don't know I think her name is something. [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I don't remember a lot of pop points But I remember like kicking my feet under my covers that to I am yes squealing trying not to wake anybody up [SPEAKER_00]: Which I always think that is a better recommendation.

21:14 [SPEAKER_00]: Like, if someone tells me the plot of a book, I'm like, okay, well, now I know what is going to maybe happen. [SPEAKER_00]: But like, were you crying? [SPEAKER_00]: Were you laughing? [SPEAKER_00]: Like, like you said, like, were you, you trailing your hair? [SPEAKER_00]: Well, you were reading the two of them talking.

21:27 [SPEAKER_00]: Like, is that the vibe that we're getting from this? [SPEAKER_00]: Because like, I can, you could tell me what it's about. [SPEAKER_00]: But like, how did you feel? [SPEAKER_01]: Exactly. [SPEAKER_01]: And so I knew in this book how like just I wanted to make it really tropey. [SPEAKER_01]: And I knew my favorite romance tropes that I wanted to put into this book.

21:40 [SPEAKER_01]: So things like the just one bed in the end and a brother love triangle and I kiss in a garden and longing from across the crowd at ballroom. [SPEAKER_01]: And those scenes that in other books that I loved made me squeal. [SPEAKER_01]: And then it's my job as a writer to make sure that's earned.

21:54 [SPEAKER_01]: Like if you don't care about these characters, why would you care that they're in a rainy end would just one bed? [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, or why would why are you intrigued by them being in a carriage together when exactly shouldn't be exactly that's not the etiquette is it So yeah, I can know those high points that I want to hit yeah, but I love as a reader and then it's my job clinically as a writer to make sure that those are earned [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.

22:18 [SPEAKER_00]: That's probably actually a very healthy way to write to like not get like to attach to these characters that like you can't cut them out because you're like so emotionally attached to them. [SPEAKER_00]: Does that make editing easier? [SPEAKER_01]: It does. [SPEAKER_01]: I'm very clinical when it comes to the book.

22:32 [SPEAKER_01]: And I'm my own worst critic. [SPEAKER_01]: I turn in my books with a full edit letter. [SPEAKER_01]: So I will turn in a manuscript and then a second document being like in here all the things that I know are wrong. [SPEAKER_01]: And my editor's like, I wasn't even gonna say, I'm obsessed with that.

22:45 [SPEAKER_00]: They're like, I'm gonna just tell you that you don't like it before you can decide that you don't like it. [SPEAKER_01]: 100% and my editor and my agent are always much, much, much kinder to me than I am myself, which I love because like usually you could let it let her back. [SPEAKER_00]: You're the one who's receiving it.

22:58 [SPEAKER_00]: And like I feel like your editor's like, this is new. [SPEAKER_01]: My edit letters are the past. [SPEAKER_01]: We'll say I'm turning in a book like maybe today. [SPEAKER_01]: But my edit letters in the past have been my bullet points of list of everything that is wrong in my editor responding [SPEAKER_00]: I love it.

23:12 [SPEAKER_00]: You're like, I know that this isn't good, but we're going to fix it together. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, teamwork. [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, yeah, she's lovely to work with. [SPEAKER_00]: I love working with her. [SPEAKER_00]: I love that. [SPEAKER_00]: That's like one of the most important relationships you can have when you're writing a book is making sure you're like your editor wants to feel the same things that you do.

23:26 [SPEAKER_01]: for sure. [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, and that they understand what you're trying to do and say, yeah, which in the midst of a first draft is not always easy to communicate. [SPEAKER_00]: It's yeah, like you said that you're turning in a book today. [SPEAKER_01]: Yes. [SPEAKER_00]: I won't ask any questions here.

23:39 [SPEAKER_01]: It has not. [SPEAKER_01]: I don't think it's been announced. [SPEAKER_01]: Well, I know it's not been announced yet. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_01]: So hopefully so. [SPEAKER_00]: Okay. [SPEAKER_01]: I think like my hope is like a matter of weeks. [SPEAKER_00]: Okay. [SPEAKER_00]: So yeah.

23:48 [SPEAKER_00]: Well, in a matter of weeks, I guess for our listener, it will have been [SPEAKER_01]: but another another YA romantasy with a historical band to my existing team. [SPEAKER_01]: It's not going to be like a shocking departure, but it is a first standalone, which has been very fun to write.

24:06 [SPEAKER_00]: I remember you posted like a series of emojis kind of like preview of what was going on in it, and I was like, I think I took a screenshot of it, and I was like, let's look at all of these. [SPEAKER_00]: See what she's up to. [SPEAKER_01]: I posted a very blurry picture of my laptop screen yesterday, and I thought that I'd blocked out everything as mostly posting Because my dog was laying on my keyboard and somebody responded with the character's names.

24:27 [SPEAKER_01]: They were like, oh, so and so and so and so and so and I was like, how did you even see that? [SPEAKER_00]: And like you have some sort of technology that is beyond me. [SPEAKER_01]: It's like the same as eye technology. [SPEAKER_01]: They're running in hands and hands. [SPEAKER_00]: Oh my gosh.

24:39 [SPEAKER_00]: She can't post anything ever anymore. [SPEAKER_00]: That's insane. [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, I'm flattered people are interested. [SPEAKER_00]: I know, as well to say, like, I love that people are so invested that they're like zooming in as far as way better than the alternative, which is people who are like, oh, I got another one.

24:50 [SPEAKER_00]: Oh, God, Sasha posted it again. [SPEAKER_00]: Never. [SPEAKER_00]: But this is a YA, which really fits into thematically into Gilmour calls because a lot of worries story in the beginning is very much a YA. [SPEAKER_00]: So I have some questions for you about you being a young adult. [SPEAKER_00]: Roy kind of kept her herself at school.

25:07 [SPEAKER_00]: Would you say that is true of you? [SPEAKER_00]: Were you very focused in school or were you someone who was a chatterbox? [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I was more of a chatterbox than Roy, but I don't think that's hard. [SPEAKER_01]: I wanted to be Roy in high school. [SPEAKER_01]: Same. [SPEAKER_01]: But I think like all girls who wanted to be Roy in high school, I was per scalar.

25:28 [SPEAKER_00]: Oh my god, maybe that's true of me, too. [SPEAKER_01]: I was absolutely a paraskeller. [SPEAKER_01]: I made multiple people cry and I scored. [SPEAKER_01]: We played in my, I did some like global politics class my senior year and our final project was we played this like big game of risk.

25:46 [SPEAKER_01]: And so we were all randomly assigned a country. [SPEAKER_01]: And I was assigned, I don't remember, it was like a small middle Eastern country. [SPEAKER_01]: So I had very little power. [SPEAKER_01]: I had very little economic power and my goals were very muddy. [SPEAKER_01]: And make sure you're kind of took me aside after what I'm really sorry for like a bomb I was hoping that you would be trying out America like it's going to be harder for you to ace this and I know it's fine.

26:07 [SPEAKER_01]: And then I heard that the kid who was America had called me a bitch behind my back for me earlier and I spent the entire game plotting to buy a nuke from Russia and I ended the entire game by nuke of America and he failed. [SPEAKER_01]: Zada, that he ran into the hallway crying instead of why are you like this?

26:26 [SPEAKER_00]: Well, why are you so rude? [SPEAKER_00]: You kind of deserve it, wait. [SPEAKER_00]: You are so parents. [SPEAKER_00]: You want to see me be a bit? [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, so you called me and I thought that's what you wanted to see and that was really to your past. [SPEAKER_00]: I am like [SPEAKER_00]: We should do that some more boys who say about things, which I mean, I laugh, I laugh now.

26:43 [SPEAKER_00]: I had a big trip on my shoulder at 18. [SPEAKER_00]: I'm obsessed with that, though. [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, to be fair, I was not that I was not that level of Paris, but like I kind of think that maybe more more girls who wanted to [SPEAKER_01]: person they realize. [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, it is, it is my theory.

27:00 [SPEAKER_01]: It looks like the theory that I actually don't agree with, where she if you think you're a Joe March, you're an Amy March, which is not a theory I agree with. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_01]: But I do think that maybe if you think you're a Rory Joe March, you're a very scholar. [SPEAKER_00]: My gosh, a little bit.

27:13 [SPEAKER_00]: I will say I for a long time thought I was a Joe March, but I was an Amy March. [SPEAKER_00]: Like that's so true. [SPEAKER_01]: Maybe it isn't even, but I am like, I'm like flipping tables. [SPEAKER_01]: Look, I am Joe March. [SPEAKER_00]: If you were to say otherwise, that's you burning the manuscript.

27:28 [SPEAKER_00]: It's maybe true. [SPEAKER_00]: It's maybe two. [SPEAKER_00]: It's even maybe even more true because he did not. [SPEAKER_00]: 100% like I'm not her. [SPEAKER_00]: No, I couldn't have been a better answer. [SPEAKER_00]: Like quite possibly, but on that same vein lane, she keeps her secret dream of being a drummer a musician from her mother.

27:45 [SPEAKER_00]: Was there anything as a teen that you had a secret interest in that your mother didn't know about? [SPEAKER_01]: No, I had parents that were very difficult to rebel against because they supported everything we did. [SPEAKER_01]: Okay. [SPEAKER_01]: My parents think that, yes, I want to for, that all four of us are like the most talented, interesting, coolest people in the world.

28:03 [SPEAKER_01]: And they supported every single dream we had. [SPEAKER_01]: If anything, I think we all ended up with like much more practical lives. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_01]: Then they anticipated. [SPEAKER_00]: They were the dreamers and y'all were like, no, we gotta... Yeah, we gotta save them because we need to be stable.

28:18 [SPEAKER_01]: But now they didn't care about my grades. [SPEAKER_01]: It was like, you know, if you succeed, that's amazing. [SPEAKER_01]: We'll celebrate you if you fail. [SPEAKER_01]: Then that's on you, buddy. [SPEAKER_01]: They gave us all the support in the world to travel and explore interests.

28:29 [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, talk about books. [SPEAKER_01]: If there was an unlimited budget for books. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_01]: We were never denied a Barnes and Noble run. [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I'm trying to think of all the things I was doing because I was a big ballerina, and then I quit in my later years of high school, which again, like my mother could not have cared less, and then I took a lot of sewing lessons.

28:46 [SPEAKER_01]: I decided briefly that I wanted to be a fashion designer, I'm almost like a great revolve in there. [SPEAKER_01]: Oh, yeah. [SPEAKER_01]: I was like, what I was like, and Sandy, you talk. [SPEAKER_01]: What? [SPEAKER_00]: You're like, it's me, it's me, that's probably the kind of way it's not in good.

28:59 [SPEAKER_01]: Yep, yep, and then I wanted to be a doctor, which, again, think I'm not a doctor, I was made a very bad one. [SPEAKER_01]: But yeah, there's really nothing that I didn't feel supported in, which was such a gift. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, that's fantastic. [SPEAKER_00]: I think that that's something that I take for granted, because my parents are very much the same, that they were kind of like the ones who are like, you can do anything.

29:17 [SPEAKER_00]: You're starting to podcast great. [SPEAKER_00]: You're going to be the best at it. [SPEAKER_00]: They had no doubts, like where I have doubts. [SPEAKER_00]: They're like, no. [SPEAKER_00]: There's none, which I take for granted all the time that how supportive they are, especially looking at lane, I'm like, wow, very different.

29:29 [SPEAKER_00]: But like my favorite show in general, I feel like all the parental relationships are quite complicated, which I imagine they are for the both of us as well, in very different ways. [SPEAKER_01]: And having parents is inherently complicated. [SPEAKER_00]: It's yeah, but we all have to have them, but yeah.

29:42 [SPEAKER_01]: I said in one day my children will talk about me in therapy. [SPEAKER_00]: Exactly. [SPEAKER_00]: The Billy Barkin. [SPEAKER_00]: My, oh, my, yes. [SPEAKER_00]: Her golden. [SPEAKER_01]: And I'm sorry if you guys are hearing my golden. [SPEAKER_00]: She was asleep again. [SPEAKER_00]: I also would love to hear from her.

29:54 [SPEAKER_00]: I would love to hear her. [SPEAKER_00]: She's got a lot to say. [SPEAKER_00]: She's a lot of thoughts. [SPEAKER_00]: My name is she's Barkin. [SPEAKER_00]: You know, she's complaining about how she's being parent. [SPEAKER_01]: A hundred percent. [SPEAKER_01]: She's ignored and tortured all day long.

30:04 [SPEAKER_01]: Because I guess I need treats for any attention. [SPEAKER_00]: So where's the worst life? [SPEAKER_00]: The worst golden retriever of a young adult woman. [SPEAKER_00]: I call you young adult. [SPEAKER_00]: 30s is standard all right. [SPEAKER_01]: I was I swing of therapy. [SPEAKER_01]: I was like walking in the therapy is like the other client was walking out and she was probably like 20 and I walked into my therapist office And I have all the young girls today, and then I was like I'm I'm not that young.

30:24 [SPEAKER_00]: She's she's making temporary. [SPEAKER_00]: Yes I reminded me I think it was when I think it was when Robert Redford died That's who it was he was 89. [SPEAKER_00]: I forget exactly who who it was, but maybe he's Warren Beatty. [SPEAKER_00]: There was recently there was an older man Redford died recently.

30:39 [SPEAKER_00]: It's a little young [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, and he was 89, this man who died, who I forget my grandma goes, oh, he was so young. [SPEAKER_00]: And I was like, that's actually quite an interesting take on that. [SPEAKER_00]: And now that I'm 33, I'm like, I'm so young. [SPEAKER_00]: If he's young, so you're a young adult woman.

30:56 [SPEAKER_00]: Oh, yeah, it's so like she's like, oh, he was just too young to die. [SPEAKER_00]: And I was like, that's so fair. [SPEAKER_01]: struck and down in his prime. [SPEAKER_01]: I love that. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, but I guess time traveling back a little bit. [SPEAKER_00]: Gilmore girls came out in October 2000.

31:11 [SPEAKER_00]: What were you for starting to write in the year 2000? [SPEAKER_01]: Oh gosh, I would have been eight. [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, and 92, baby. [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, look at us. [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I think that was the year. [SPEAKER_01]: I was in first or second grade and my secondary teacher, Ms. Larson, put me up for the Utah Young Raiders Workshop.

31:29 [SPEAKER_01]: And for one day, I got to take a bus with my friend Sarah and his other boy named Brian to the Utah State Capitol and we did writing workshops all day with kids from other elementary schools. [SPEAKER_01]: And I remember being shocked that Mrs. Larson picked me for this writing thing because I didn't think of myself as a good writer.

31:46 [SPEAKER_01]: And it's those teachers and those things about yourself, the shape you, because then for the rest of my schooling, I believed that I was a good writer, and whether or not I was, who knows I was a child, but she instilled in me this belief in myself, and so we went for one day and I think we wrote like, a poem and a short story, and then an author came and they read a suboc, but I remember so vividly being on that bus and feeling so special, and I was like, I was like, I was like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like,

32:09 [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_00]: Do you remember who the author was? [SPEAKER_01]: I don't. [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_00]: That would be quite fun now. [SPEAKER_01]: It would have been the local Utah author. [SPEAKER_01]: I bet. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_00]: Well, it could be you now. [SPEAKER_00]: You could be me.

32:20 [SPEAKER_01]: I find school because it's very intimidating. [SPEAKER_00]: Really? [SPEAKER_00]: Honestly, I find anyone under the age of 20 quite intimidating. [SPEAKER_00]: Yes. [SPEAKER_00]: It's kind of like between the ages of like 3 and 20, like that really, that really kind of scares me. [SPEAKER_00]: It's tough.

32:35 [SPEAKER_00]: But that is so important like I feel like things like that like those are like so foundational like I feel like reaching back to the beginning when you're talking about things touching your soul That feels like one of those things that like you remember so clearly you were with your friend Sarah and boy Brian maybe he wasn't your friend maybe he was just a boy Like you're my neighborhood.

32:53 [SPEAKER_00]: He was so designed Sarah and I are still friends Which is so fun. [SPEAKER_00]: Oh my gosh. [SPEAKER_00]: I love I thought that like you were saying like my friend Sarah, but like then this boy Brian was with us [SPEAKER_01]: It was in my neighborhood. [SPEAKER_01]: I don't know what he's up to now.

33:03 [SPEAKER_01]: I'm sure. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_01]: You're living a lovely life. [SPEAKER_01]: I don't remember anything that about him. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_00]: Being loved to you, Brian. [SPEAKER_00]: But I just like, this lesson, doing that, like, changed so much of like what you were going to feel about yourself for those of the year.

33:15 [SPEAKER_00]: And like, all the other kids who weren't selected, bad writers. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_01]: And I, and I still say that, and that's just the way of it. [SPEAKER_00]: But that's so, that's so cool. [SPEAKER_00]: I love that that was like instilled in you from that. [SPEAKER_00]: But from that moment, did you continue writing?

33:30 [SPEAKER_00]: Or did you see it as like a career path? [SPEAKER_00]: Because I know that you had a career before you started writing. [SPEAKER_01]: I did. [SPEAKER_01]: So yeah, not really. [SPEAKER_01]: I think most of my friends were writers and new from the minute they got to a pen. [SPEAKER_01]: It was the only thing they wanted to do.

33:44 [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, it wasn't that way for me. [SPEAKER_01]: There were a lot of things that I enjoyed and I felt like I wanted to be a fashion designer and a lawyer and a doctor. [SPEAKER_01]: And I think that I was afraid to let myself dream something as big as wanting to be writer that felt like a dream for other people.

33:58 [SPEAKER_01]: And I was always at a reader, I loved reading, but I didn't identify as a writer. [SPEAKER_01]: It always came fairly easily to me, like in school, writing an essay, it was not, you know, they'd like to create a writing class, my senior year of high school, and I liked writing poetry about boys who didn't like me back.

34:13 [SPEAKER_01]: Okay, Taylor Swift. [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, listen, she and I, and they were just as good. [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_01]: But it felt like a very, very big, very scary dream. [SPEAKER_01]: And I kind of fancy myself a practical person. [SPEAKER_01]: And so I studied biology in my undergrad.

34:30 [SPEAKER_01]: And then I went to DC to do my grad school in public health. [SPEAKER_01]: So my master's degree in public health. [SPEAKER_01]: And I really liked it. [SPEAKER_01]: Like it's not that I had some career that I was like trying to claw my way out of. [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_01]: But I think that I thought everybody was going home at night and secretly writing tons of thousands of words of fiction.

34:48 [SPEAKER_01]: Oh my god, I was like everybody wants to do this. [SPEAKER_01]: This is a secret that everybody has. [SPEAKER_00]: Oh, I'm obsessed. [SPEAKER_00]: I'm obsessed with that. [SPEAKER_01]: And it was only during grad school that I started to write what became my debut novel that would shave in.

35:01 [SPEAKER_01]: I was like a loan in a new city in this apartment. [SPEAKER_01]: I didn't have any friends. [SPEAKER_01]: And I had just read a series of books that I thought were bad. [SPEAKER_01]: Just like I had like a couple of duds in a row. [SPEAKER_01]: And I thought, well, how hard could it be if those just got published?

35:11 [SPEAKER_01]: Turns out very hard. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_00]: That's like such a common thing of like how hard can it be and how hard to be this is halfway incredibly difficult. [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I have this stubborn streak and once I started I wanted to prove to myself that I could do it and it wasn't even writing thinking like this is gonna get published and this is gonna be my career and I'm gonna get to leave this all behind but I loved books [SPEAKER_01]: and I, I think I wanted to be the kind of person who could write one.

35:35 [SPEAKER_01]: And so I kept it secret for a long time. [SPEAKER_01]: It wasn't until I had a full main use script that I even started telling people that I was writing. [SPEAKER_01]: And then through a great stroke of luck, I heard about this great mentorship program. [SPEAKER_01]: I applied. [SPEAKER_01]: I got in.

35:47 [SPEAKER_01]: It was through that mentorship program that I was connected with my agent. [SPEAKER_01]: I'm still with another like one of the greatest lucky strikes of my life, signing with with my agent. [SPEAKER_01]: And then from there, all of a sudden I had a book deal. [SPEAKER_00]: And I was [SPEAKER_01]: 27, and I was working at the hospital as a public health program coordinator and I felt like Hannah Montana, you were like what a topical reference the 20th anniversary here.

36:09 [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, you've got the best of both worlds. [SPEAKER_00]: Let me know out front. [SPEAKER_01]: Yes, it's I wasn't writing, you get a lot of of us. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, absolutely. [SPEAKER_00]: You had to do your part. [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, yeah, yeah. [SPEAKER_01]: But now I am living like this much bigger, more creative life than I ever even let myself hope for.

36:26 [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I think writing and creating art publicly requires a lot of vulnerability and I'm not very good at being vulnerable. [SPEAKER_01]: And I'm not being very good at being vulnerable on a public scale. [SPEAKER_01]: And so I look back at myself in my 20s and I'm really, really proud of myself that I was scared and I did it anyway.

36:41 [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, because I fear can stop you from doing so many things. [SPEAKER_00]: And it's, I think that it stops you before you start, but I love reflecting back on you as a teenager, not really feeling like you were heading towards writing, but I at least, because I very much relate to you and like your teen years of like having all of these ideas, like fashion designer definitely wanted to be a doctor at some point, wanted to be a journalist, which was not at all related to where you go more.

37:08 [SPEAKER_00]: I just had that idea. [SPEAKER_00]: completely on my own, like I want to do a Yale, like I've never seen that before, but like I had all these ideas and like reflecting on it now is like being 33. [SPEAKER_00]: I'm like, oh, you like telling yourself stories about what you could be and what you could do.

37:23 [SPEAKER_00]: And like I feel like that's so foundational to you. [SPEAKER_00]: It's like you're starting to tell yourself stories about your own future, but like now it feels like it's all coming out as like being a writer. [SPEAKER_00]: Like I feel like that the foundation of that was you having stories about your own life.

37:35 [SPEAKER_01]: I think like talk about being a pair of scalar, when I was a teenager, I really wanted people to think I was impressive. [SPEAKER_01]: And I think that's the thing that probably appealed to me than most about Rory, is that every single person in her life this entire town knew that she was impressive, that she was the smartest, coolest girl in town.

37:55 [SPEAKER_01]: without trying, without trying. [SPEAKER_01]: And I think I was desperate for people to think that I was special. [SPEAKER_01]: And I had to let go of that in order to make art and in order to be vulnerable in order to be bad at something. [SPEAKER_01]: Because I think writing a book requires being a beginner and you write books because you love books and then you sit down to write your first book and it's bad.

38:15 [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_01]: And that's a really uncomfortable feeling. [SPEAKER_00]: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, the first time I read back because like I've been writing my book for a couple of years now But the first time I went back and read that first draft. [SPEAKER_00]: I was like what the fuck is that?

38:28 [SPEAKER_00]: Who wrote this? [SPEAKER_00]: This is embarrassing. [SPEAKER_01]: It is like this feeling of a shame that you're like, oh no. [SPEAKER_00]: Yes, knowing that I had let someone read that I'm like, oh my god, like they think I'm an absolute raging idiot for having written this book because it's so bad [SPEAKER_00]: because I feel like you and I have very similar like teen years were just like a gifted student like you didn't have to try that hard like it was just going from that into your 20s were like no one is going to tell you you did a good job no one is going to give you a star on your paper and adults always like to be more than other [SPEAKER_00]: And you're like, but now that you're in adult, you're like, wait, where is this prey?

39:03 [SPEAKER_00]: It's like, how's this coming from? [SPEAKER_00]: And so like being a burnt out gift to kid is quite hard until you get on connections that day and you have like four groups, no mistakes. [SPEAKER_00]: Like that's like the like new sort of like A plus plus that you have for the day, but then going in, having to like some days like when you're ready, you just have to fail that day.

39:20 [SPEAKER_00]: Cause like you're like the ideas they weren't manifesting. [SPEAKER_00]: I wrote a really bad paragraph today and I just have to keep trying. [SPEAKER_01]: I see that most today is writing. [SPEAKER_01]: I feel uncomfortable. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_01]: It is very, very rare that I feel like I am nailing this.

39:34 [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, which I feel like is a quite hard feeling to go from like having that drive and that determination as a teenager and like having to sit in that uncomfortable feeling. [SPEAKER_00]: Takes a lot of therapy, honestly. [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_01]: And being learning to be proud of myself for the effort.

39:48 [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, too, absolutely. [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_01]: Especially when you're right, like I didn't have to give that much effort in school. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, and just kind of came naturally. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, well, speaking of Rory, and at all coming naturally, she's of course a bookworm, and we see her in her teens, her 20s and her 30s, do you have a book that would like to find each of those decades for you, like maybe a book that you read then, or maybe a book that you've read since, and it feels like very encompassing of that time?

40:15 [SPEAKER_01]: Oh, that's so interesting. [SPEAKER_01]: My teens is easy. [SPEAKER_01]: My favorite book of all time is I [SPEAKER_00]: We that's so weird. [SPEAKER_00]: I just looked at that book yesterday. [SPEAKER_00]: I had not heard of you and it like literally came up on Pinterest And I like because a quote from it came up and I literally just like put that to my TBR yesterday.

40:33 [SPEAKER_01]: It is my so weird favorite book of all time I read it for the first time when I was 16 [SPEAKER_01]: It is told in the form of the diary. [SPEAKER_01]: So it's Doty Smith, who's other big work was 100 million Dalmatians, which is so funny. [SPEAKER_01]: She's an English author. [SPEAKER_01]: And she wrote, I captured the castle in the 1950s in England.

40:47 [SPEAKER_01]: And it takes place in this like crumbling castle in the 1930s. [SPEAKER_01]: And it's the 6th-century family. [SPEAKER_01]: Talk about a good sister book. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_01]: It's Sister's Cassandra and Rose Mortman. [SPEAKER_01]: And Cassandra, it's her diary. [SPEAKER_01]: And so it's told in the form of a diary.

41:01 [SPEAKER_01]: And she is the most charismatic protagonist I've read to this day. [SPEAKER_01]: I still feel like she's my friend. [SPEAKER_00]: now I have to read it. [SPEAKER_01]: It's incredible and it's quick. [SPEAKER_01]: It's, you know, told in the form of a diary that basically her father is this, this writer who had one big hit.

41:14 [SPEAKER_01]: It was enough to buy this castle and he has not written anything since. [SPEAKER_01]: And so they are living in like the ruins of this castle with no heat and no food and Rose knows that her way out is marrying Rich and Cassandra wants to be a writer and two rich American brothers move in next door.

41:29 [SPEAKER_00]: don't they just? [SPEAKER_01]: And it is. [SPEAKER_01]: It is like I feel every time like I'm returning to see like my old friends. [SPEAKER_01]: They feel so real to me. [SPEAKER_01]: But I read it at 16 for the first time and I think it opened my eyes to what, you know, character could be in a book to what voice could be in a book, but I also felt myself so reflected in Cassandra.

41:49 [SPEAKER_01]: I think for the first time in books that it wasn't just something that was entertaining me. [SPEAKER_01]: It was something that was helping me learn about myself in a way that felt [SPEAKER_01]: And then my 20s is hard. [SPEAKER_01]: I'm trying to think of the books I was reading in my 20s.

42:01 [SPEAKER_01]: My 30s I want to say maybe Margo's got money troubles. [SPEAKER_01]: Oh, yeah, which I loved in its 20 because she's much younger, but she's like 20 in that book. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, are you excited about the show? [SPEAKER_00]: I hope that curious to see what they do with it. [SPEAKER_01]: I love the fanning sisters.

42:13 [SPEAKER_00]: I know. [SPEAKER_01]: But the way she writes about, you know, family and self-sacrifice in motherhood, I found so, like, lovely and interesting and relatable, and then as a writer, I thought it was really interesting craft-wise that it's still kind of ultimately in first and third person.

42:26 [SPEAKER_01]: Talk about a voice. [SPEAKER_01]: I remember that I read the second page and was, like, finally, some good fucking prose. [SPEAKER_01]: Like, it was so, like, I just wanted to dissect every sentence. [SPEAKER_01]: It's so delicious, yeah. [SPEAKER_01]: And then my 20s, I was reading voraciously, honestly, maybe Akatar, because I think it helped me to discover my love of fantasy novels.

42:43 [SPEAKER_01]: I was a pretty early Akatar adopter. [SPEAKER_01]: I read the first one. [SPEAKER_01]: Like a couple of months after it came out, then I read a quarter of Mr. and Fury, like the week it came out. [SPEAKER_00]: Oh my gosh, that's crazy. [SPEAKER_01]: I was on the ground floor. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, see we did a long time.

42:55 [SPEAKER_01]: I was going on a break. [SPEAKER_01]: But I was always a resand lover. [SPEAKER_01]: I was really hoping that that was the direction she was going to go in. [SPEAKER_01]: So reading that in real time after having thought Tamlin was kind of a boring love interest for the entire first novel was a lecture.

43:09 [SPEAKER_01]: You were like, I'm here. [SPEAKER_00]: She's doing it. [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, I just want someone to capture me from my house and take me to a castle. [SPEAKER_00]: Oh my gosh, right? [SPEAKER_00]: I was like, well, this seems great. [SPEAKER_00]: But yeah, my sister actually, so she has two kids.

43:21 [SPEAKER_00]: She has, she loves fantasy. [SPEAKER_00]: And I've been trying to get her to read it for so long. [SPEAKER_00]: She hasn't read a book in like 10 years. [SPEAKER_00]: And now she's a gateway drug. [SPEAKER_00]: Like, she's read all five of them. [SPEAKER_00]: And like, in the past like three weeks.

43:34 [SPEAKER_00]: And now she's on the throne of glass, because she just loves that. [SPEAKER_00]: and it's like helped her like find more time for herself. [SPEAKER_00]: It's like healing her relationship with herself with her kids and I'm like wow There is something so accessible about this book because it is magic I think it is brought so many women back to reading in a way that I really love Yeah, and so much because of like the mental health journey too [SPEAKER_00]: that like I feel like a lot of people relate to, especially like with Nesta and like there's like all a complicated pregnancy in that one, not only anything, but like, but my sister she had that too and so like, I think that that like helped her and she never said as much, but I'm like, I think you're going to like, so she's like, that one was my favorite.

44:09 [SPEAKER_00]: No. [SPEAKER_00]: So. [SPEAKER_00]: I like that was so much fun to like bring her back in and I was like your book is on my list of like ones to like slide across the table once she's read like the 200 SJM books that are yeah yeah she's got a mile ago she's got a mile ago but like I'm like making a little stack of them because she just like has never been interested in reading which is like blows my mind but like I'm trying so hard for years to get her to read and then just like one night she's like now I have a Kindle send me anything that I need to read and I was like [SPEAKER_01]: It is my belief is if you don't like reading, it's because you haven't found the books for you.

44:37 [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, it's true too. [SPEAKER_00]: That's, and that's so much of what I'm trying to do with this book club is like showing you that this like, okay, you love gummar rolls. [SPEAKER_00]: You're obsessed with gummar rolls. [SPEAKER_00]: That's why you're listening to a gummar rolls podcast.

44:47 [SPEAKER_00]: But here's a book that's going to make you feel those same things. [SPEAKER_00]: It might not be exactly like a good comp, like I'm saying. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_00]: Victorian England with fairies is not exactly a perfect comp for small town Connecticut, but there's so many overlapping themes and feelings that you get from it like syncing into this world that I feel like readers would really like.

45:06 [SPEAKER_00]: And like a lot of the ones I recommend, they are really similar comps, but I think ultimately it's about like a really strong unique voice, fun banter, complex family relationships. [SPEAKER_00]: And maybe a little friend of me or two. [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, well, you know, say, like, if you love Gilmore girls, then you love, I think, like, existing alongside somebody and feeling like you're falling back into a familiar world.

45:25 [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, which the best books also make you feel. [SPEAKER_00]: Oh, yeah, which I would say is true of the Rose bargain. [SPEAKER_01]: Oh, thank you. [SPEAKER_00]: Speaking of Gilmore girls, we have a lot of thoughts that we've said already that I like, and, like, trying to save in my brain of things that you've said that, like, that's fascinating.

45:41 [SPEAKER_00]: I need to know more. [SPEAKER_00]: But I want to know what your history of watching Gilmour Balls is. [SPEAKER_00]: Like, did you start with the ABC Family WB or you a later adopter? [SPEAKER_01]: No, I was an early adopter. [SPEAKER_01]: I remember watching Gosh at least season three in real time.

45:54 [SPEAKER_01]: So I would have been like 10 or 11 with my mom. [SPEAKER_01]: The first two seasons. [SPEAKER_01]: I wonder if I started watching it late and then went back to the early seasons. [SPEAKER_00]: That's what I did. [SPEAKER_01]: On DVD. [SPEAKER_01]: I don't even remember. [SPEAKER_01]: Like in my head, it's just something that I always was watching.

46:06 [SPEAKER_01]: But I don't know if I would have been watching it at like eight or nine. [SPEAKER_01]: I'm open. [SPEAKER_01]: Like I'm about being like one of the youngest in a family. [SPEAKER_01]: Like the TV was just odd. [SPEAKER_00]: I know. [SPEAKER_00]: And like that's like the thing about being younger is that you end up with this like situation where like maybe you shouldn't be watching this.

46:21 [SPEAKER_00]: Like maybe 100 for this. [SPEAKER_00]: Like why am I watching Grey's Anatomy a 10 years old? [SPEAKER_00]: Like is that right, but like I feel like with Gamark also it was quite different, just but it was also an EDC family too, like every after school. [SPEAKER_00]: So I feel like you kind of get caught up, but it wasn't until like 2009 to 2010 that I actually saw the entire show all the way through from beginning to end.

46:41 [SPEAKER_00]: And I was like, that makes sense in that order. [SPEAKER_00]: Um, oh. [SPEAKER_01]: I think in my head it's just something that I was always watching like I watched it in real time at least starting in season three and then I would watch it after school on ABC family and then we owned all the DVD sets and so on like a rainy afternoon it's what I was watching with my sisters season three was my favorite because I'm a jess girl and we watched we watch those those DVDs so much they broke like the season three DVDs were like they're like they're like [SPEAKER_00]: Like, we get it, like, Jess, that's just going to task it when you've seen it.

47:15 [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_00]: Well, that was my question. [SPEAKER_00]: Is like, do you have like a favorite, do you prefer early seasons or later seasons, and it seems like early season? [SPEAKER_01]: Early seasons. [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_01]: I think all of their merits, but yet the first three are very special to me.

47:27 [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_00]: Do you have a favorite app? [SPEAKER_00]: Is it a Jessica to task it? [SPEAKER_01]: I know it's, I mean, I think this is like a classic favorite up. [SPEAKER_01]: I love they don't shoot Gamers. [SPEAKER_01]: Do they? [SPEAKER_01]: Yes. [SPEAKER_00]: The dance marathon is just so, like, we ranked like our top 25 episodes on the podcast last year.

47:41 [SPEAKER_00]: That one was our number one. [SPEAKER_01]: I think it's a popular pitch in so good. [SPEAKER_00]: And it's because that's when Dean and get them out of there. [SPEAKER_00]: Get them out of there. [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, anything like all, I think any just girl probably has the same.

47:53 [SPEAKER_01]: So it's just gonna task it's up there. [SPEAKER_01]: Brace Bridgeter is up there. [SPEAKER_01]: The one where he shows back up in Yale's at Logan. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, let me hear your rallying guys ringing out. [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, fight max. [SPEAKER_00]: Oh, yeah, that one's rough. [SPEAKER_00]: That one's hard.

48:06 [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, because we always were always so sad at the end of season three because it feels like we just kind of like do away with this like excellent character for the sake of his little like spin off pilot that they were trying to do with it. [SPEAKER_00]: Doesn't go anywhere. [SPEAKER_00]: Having him come back on the rival though, like I mean.

48:22 [SPEAKER_00]: I have a lot of revival thoughts and which I don't know if this is the forum for. [SPEAKER_00]: This is actually if you've ever had thoughts about the revival, this is the forum. [SPEAKER_00]: This is the place. [SPEAKER_01]: I've like rewritten it in my head and I wish. [SPEAKER_01]: Tell us in a way that I'm like, okay, so my rewrite.

48:38 [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, when you know more, I think behind the scenes stuff that I do, so you can tell me whether or not this is true. [SPEAKER_01]: So maybe the rumor that I've heard is that Amy Sherman Halidino said she did not watch season seven and that the revival was largely her plan for season seven.

48:52 [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I don't know how much about like the plan versus, but I do know that she had like people other people watching season seven. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, like this actually cannot take place because this would have happened. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_01]: But to me, the [SPEAKER_01]: There were a lot of problems with the revival, but the problem with the revival is everybody felt kind of frozen in time.

49:09 [SPEAKER_01]: Yes. [SPEAKER_01]: And it was very weird to me that like, Laura Lyon, Luke weren't married, that Rory was struggling so much. [SPEAKER_01]: There were even jokes that I feel like I see where this worked when it was season seven. [SPEAKER_01]: So her being like, it's the 30s club and we're all home from not having jobs in our 30s.

49:22 [SPEAKER_01]: Like, that's not a thing. [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_01]: People coming home in their 20s after college, you're going to avoid that's very much a thing. [SPEAKER_01]: The idea that there's this like roving group of like young, single and employed people in their 30s. [SPEAKER_01]: I think that's not a cultural phenomenon.

49:36 [SPEAKER_00]: I wouldn't say so either. [SPEAKER_01]: And her trying to convince us that it was. [SPEAKER_01]: It's felt like there were very clear remnants of a post college where she wanted to write that no longer made sense. [SPEAKER_01]: And he grew up even struggling so much in her career. [SPEAKER_01]: It would have made a lot of sense for like a 24 year old Rory that made less sense.

49:53 [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_00]: for someone on her third. [SPEAKER_01]: And I think people are allowed to struggle in their 30s. [SPEAKER_00]: Of course. [SPEAKER_01]: So like weird and selfish and a more didn't ring true to me. [SPEAKER_00]: I feel like she had too much privilege to have let herself flounder that much.

50:07 [SPEAKER_00]: And like maybe it's true that she like which was never a dress, but like maybe she never owned it. [SPEAKER_00]: Because like that was something that she struggled with a lot in the series was like not wanting to take over the privilege that she was a former. [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_01]: And it's like what made me kind of sad as we had watched her struggle and get over it.

50:22 [SPEAKER_01]: And life is complicated. [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_01]: To be like, it's been what 12 years and she still hasn't figured this out. [SPEAKER_01]: And he made it for way made me really sad for her. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_00]: And I also felt it was unrealistic that like the editor of the Yale Daily News, who had as many connections as she did, like who was, [SPEAKER_00]: Like you had to at least acknowledge that she was going on Barack Obama's like presidential campaign like that was like a big deal That like I felt like something that would have been a lot more true to like the time period was like finding out that you're in a job that like you thought you would like But that's my right.

50:55 [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, me too. [SPEAKER_00]: Like she was miserable there and couldn't handle it [SPEAKER_01]: So my rewrite is she's like a reporter at the New York Times living in New York City and like Kyu Olivia Rodrigo. [SPEAKER_01]: I got the things I wanted to just not what I imagined. [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

51:06 [SPEAKER_01]: She's miserable. [SPEAKER_01]: She doesn't see her friends. [SPEAKER_01]: She releases her mom. [SPEAKER_01]: Like, Laura Lyle come up for a lunch in New York City, but that's all she gets. [SPEAKER_01]: And she's just burned herself out and Laura Lyle and Luke have been married, but they did an allotment and Luke wants to surprise Laura Lyle with a big wedding party for their [SPEAKER_00]: And so she just said that we just rewatched fall on Monday and we were like wait, they should have aloped and then like the whole plan was them getting having their marriage.

51:34 [SPEAKER_01]: And then she takes like her first medical for work in nearly a decade returns to star's hollow. [SPEAKER_01]: She ingest helped plan be a lope man and she realizes how important like local news is and then on her own decides that she's going to revive the star's hollow newspaper. [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

51:52 [SPEAKER_01]: And if, like, then you can still explore so many of the, like, fun town things and, like, get deeper into these relationships. [SPEAKER_01]: But yeah, everybody felt, like, kind of sad and unlikable. [SPEAKER_01]: I don't know. [SPEAKER_00]: And, like, that was, what's it was on? [SPEAKER_00]: I think it was Carly Fortune, because she's a huge girl, more girls fan.

52:08 [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_00]: That she was saying that Laura, like, felt really sad in their revival, which is, like, not like her. [SPEAKER_01]: Even then, like, talking about having kids. [SPEAKER_01]: I'm, like, if you've not addressed, like, [SPEAKER_00]: You haven't talked about this in nine years?

52:21 [SPEAKER_01]: Nine, it's, yeah, everybody felt sad. [SPEAKER_00]: Everyone felt sad. [SPEAKER_01]: Except Dean was thriving. [SPEAKER_00]: Is that what a man, like, what a great job. [SPEAKER_00]: Like, literally the villain in the story, and he's doing fantastic, and he gets a great set off. [SPEAKER_01]: Like, one of the funniest things that has happened to me through my writing career is I've become friends with Jared and his wife, Jen.

52:42 [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I'm going to make you bring it up. [SPEAKER_00]: Oh, are you? [SPEAKER_00]: I don't know. [SPEAKER_01]: Of course you need to talk about it. [SPEAKER_01]: I don't want a named rock, my good friend, Jared, but I like it. [SPEAKER_01]: But no, his wife is a big book girl. [SPEAKER_01]: So I've become friends with her, with her, with the book world.

52:56 [SPEAKER_01]: Then we're on best friends. [SPEAKER_01]: I don't want to like overstate it. [SPEAKER_01]: No, no, no, no. [SPEAKER_01]: They're just like the loveliest people and sitting in his house. [SPEAKER_01]: Like, I did have like a moment where I was like 14 year old Sasha. [SPEAKER_01]: It would be like sobbing, right?

53:07 [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, because I remember you told me about that and I was like, unfortunately, you're going to have to tell the story again to all of our besties, but I loved that the circumstances of it that you didn't know what was about to occur when Jen, his wife, like, was like, oh, come back to the house and you kind of had to be told what was about to happen to you.

53:25 [SPEAKER_01]: So the story, which I think I told I did, Jen has a book club. [SPEAKER_01]: So I think I told this publicly already, like, with Jen Garrett. [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, but I was at a book event with my best friend in Austin, and I was chatting with this woman after the event, and we just like hit it off.

53:39 [SPEAKER_01]: She was so fun and funny, and we're just like gabbing away. [SPEAKER_01]: And then I get in a car to go to the after party, and my friend's publicist was like, that was Jen Petalaki. [SPEAKER_01]: And I was like, whew, what? [SPEAKER_01]: What? [SPEAKER_01]: No idea, or she was, and we get to this party, and she shows up.

53:53 [SPEAKER_01]: And again, we're just like, gab in the night away. [SPEAKER_01]: She's the lovelyest woman. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_01]: She's just like really fun and fun and interesting. [SPEAKER_01]: And she loves books. [SPEAKER_01]: She's a real genuine book lover. [SPEAKER_01]: And so she was like, how much longer you guys in Austin?

54:03 [SPEAKER_01]: I would love to see you tomorrow, like you should come into the house, and my best friend Casey and I are like, well, we leave it like noon. [SPEAKER_01]: Like, we don't have that much time, but like, it's been so lovely getting to know you. [SPEAKER_01]: And she was like, well, then come for breakfast.

54:13 [SPEAKER_01]: And we're like, oh, [SPEAKER_01]: Oh, okay. [SPEAKER_01]: Wow. [SPEAKER_01]: What a dream. [SPEAKER_01]: And so we go to to breakfast at, you know, predictably like this beautiful Austin ranch. [SPEAKER_01]: And it was me and Casey and Casey's partner and my husband and our other friend Leah just like descend on the paddle like he's house.

54:31 [SPEAKER_01]: And we were not expecting Jared to be there. [SPEAKER_01]: We just thought we were going to like have a pastry and a coffee with Jen and then get out of her hair. [SPEAKER_01]: We also were like, is it that thing where you're like really hitting it off with somebody to party and then you wake up the next morning and you're like, [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, we didn't want to overstay our welcome.

54:46 [SPEAKER_00]: Exactly. [SPEAKER_00]: Like was I drunk last night and I made friends with people and not like a whole day house. [SPEAKER_00]: I'm a drunk plans maker. [SPEAKER_01]: And so we should all go to make a movie together. [SPEAKER_00]: Like, yeah. [SPEAKER_00]: Like, we should all get married tomorrow.

55:00 [SPEAKER_00]: Totally. [SPEAKER_01]: I am that person. [SPEAKER_01]: And so we show up and it's Jen and then Jared walks downstairs and he puts his arms out. [SPEAKER_01]: He goes, I'm a hugger and we're like, oh, hey, man. [SPEAKER_00]: Wow, like I have like 16 things I need to process before we can hug and he was the sweetest and he was like Jen Love you guys.

55:17 [SPEAKER_01]: She was so excited to meet new friends last night. [SPEAKER_01]: We're like just just want to be our friend That's like how you know is like when they go home to their partner and they're like I mean new friends And we were like, we're so sorry that we just like showed up your house at 8 a.m. Like it was Yeah, like he was you know like he was they were just they're just lovely.

55:32 [SPEAKER_01]: They're the best and if it's a supportive [SPEAKER_01]: And yeah, I was like, really not at not a bad word to say about him. [SPEAKER_00]: Like, what truly is a play people heard about them is like it really is unfortunate that like his characters like maybe one of like the suckiest men on the show because I've only ever heard like the nicest thing about him.

55:49 [SPEAKER_01]: And you said to get really to have the like kindest also like really unfair that they're like kind and cool and smart and both of that beautiful just beautiful. [SPEAKER_01]: I don't think I could look directly at his face it was like looking at the sun it was like looking into the surface of the sun.

56:02 [SPEAKER_00]: I get that. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, yeah, that's the vibe he gives off. [SPEAKER_00]: I'd have hard. [SPEAKER_00]: Me and I contact would have a hard time with him. [SPEAKER_01]: It was like a little surreal. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_01]: And you'll want to be weird. [SPEAKER_01]: You're like, in some ways.

56:11 [SPEAKER_00]: You don't want to be like, I mean, Jared, yes. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_01]: And I wasn't a supernatural watcher ever. [SPEAKER_01]: But I also know, I mean, they told, like, there's a lot of, like, people feel very strongly about the supernatural show to that they were both on. [SPEAKER_00]: Which his brother's name is Dean and that.

56:25 [SPEAKER_00]: right? [SPEAKER_01]: Isn't that funny? [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, but like truly just like so so gracious and kind and like genuine book lovers, which is so yeah Cool, it's always fun to hang out with other people who love books and find books. [SPEAKER_00]: I know. [SPEAKER_00]: I remember Because like we've wanted to have Jen on just because like she's like a big book lover.

56:39 [SPEAKER_00]: She's the best [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, but I loved what was it. [SPEAKER_00]: It was him and her we're interviewing Emily Henry about how he plays and I give first I was like oh you brought your husband to the book club. [SPEAKER_00]: He reads everything and he loves it like this questions he was asking her I was like oh my god you read you read and loved this book and I know that it was like so like I was just like making assumptions about him because like you know like [SPEAKER_01]: Here's my, here's my Hugh husband, and now he's my sweet husband reads a lot, and my husband is not going to be able to handle it, right?

57:11 [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, exactly. [SPEAKER_00]: So I was like, okay, like she had him like go over, they went, they talked about this book for him. [SPEAKER_00]: And he was like, no, he was asking questions that were like really intent, like not tense, but like really thoughtful. [SPEAKER_00]: And I was like, [SPEAKER_00]: Oh my god.

57:23 [SPEAKER_00]: How do I get this? [SPEAKER_00]: So I order this on Amazon gen patolaki? [SPEAKER_01]: Like what are they both? [SPEAKER_01]: They have a they both have a quality you can't fake and that they're both genuinely interested in other people. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_01]: Like and I think that's why people connect with them so much even through a screen because there's nothing fake about their interest in stories and in like everybody they meet.

57:45 [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I'm really fascinated to hear what he would think about what our fandom and like our listeners, like our fandom and Gilmour Girls and then like our listeners being of the podcast. [SPEAKER_00]: Like we sell merch, this is Dean Sachs on it. [SPEAKER_00]: Like we are not fans of his character, but I'm interested to know if you are like knowing like when you watch Gilmour Girls, knowing that you have like a relationship with Jared, but then watching his character, like what do you feel about Dean on screen?

58:13 [SPEAKER_01]: I was never a dean fan. [SPEAKER_01]: I said I was a dress girl as a bit of a dean, hey, or, oh, that makes me sad that the first season and the second season are so different, you can tell the first season she was trying to make him kind of this like cool dream boyfriend. [SPEAKER_01]: And he's a very, very different person.

58:26 [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, we call him in season two. [SPEAKER_00]: We call him big small town boy. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, even though he's from Chicago. [SPEAKER_01]: And even in season one, he's like reading books and he's a bunch of movies with them and making interesting observations and they take away his intelligence by season three.

58:41 [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I think it's like necessary for the plot. [SPEAKER_00]: But there's a lot of just came in. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, and they had to make him a foil to dress. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, just had to be the interesting one. [SPEAKER_01]: But, you know, I guess where she's in for, oh my gosh, the plot line is so devastating.

58:55 [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, that's it. [SPEAKER_01]: Going back to your high school boyfriend, so real, having to be married, unforgetless, less real. [SPEAKER_00]: I have more questions about that as we continue, but I have some like more general gummergirls questions for you. [SPEAKER_00]: So this one is like kind of like Rose bargain slash.

59:10 [SPEAKER_00]: Should stars hollow? [SPEAKER_00]: Okay. [SPEAKER_00]: Who do you think from stars hollow would be most likely to make a bargain with the queen? [SPEAKER_00]: And what do you think the bargain would be? [SPEAKER_01]: Um, immediately Ms. Patty, um, Ms. Patty would make a bargain to like be the most beautiful answer in the world.

59:25 [SPEAKER_01]: I have shoes that the, make her feet not her, or like, yeah, be a star. [SPEAKER_01]: Like Ms. Patty would make a performance based bargain. [SPEAKER_01]: And it would work. [SPEAKER_00]: Not a husband based bargain. [SPEAKER_00]: Oh, absolutely not. [SPEAKER_01]: Ms. Patty is a set of deputy partners, Patty is a star.

59:38 [SPEAKER_01]: That that has made a husband based bargain. [SPEAKER_01]: And she, she snipped more. [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_01]: What is she trading? [SPEAKER_01]: Bob, that is trading. [SPEAKER_01]: Oh gosh, like Oliver fingernails or something. [SPEAKER_01]: And more he doesn't care. [SPEAKER_01]: He thinks she's so beautiful.

59:52 [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_01]: And then Miss Patty has traded like her sense of smell. [SPEAKER_01]: So she can't smell all the flowers that are getting delivered to her dressing room. [SPEAKER_00]: Oh, okay. [SPEAKER_00]: I could totally see that for her. [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_01]: But I feel like Miss Patty is like first in line.

1:00:03 [SPEAKER_01]: She's like, I know what I want. [SPEAKER_01]: And what I'm willing to give up, and I'm going to be a star. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, she said six a.m. First person in line. [SPEAKER_01]: She accomplishes it. [SPEAKER_00]: My first thought was Kirk, and I was like, I don't even know what he would make a bargain for.

1:00:12 [SPEAKER_01]: I think we clean with, like, not find something like he would be so unknowable to her. [SPEAKER_01]: She built it out of my throat. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, like he's, let me take away his sense of spell. [SPEAKER_00]: I've never smelled anything. [SPEAKER_00]: I'm sure. [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_00]: my childhood memories.

1:00:24 [SPEAKER_01]: I actually, I don't have any of them. [SPEAKER_00]: He's like, I don't like it in the head. [SPEAKER_00]: I've never been a child. [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, like she wouldn't be able to find anything. [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, he would get she wouldn't be in England. [SPEAKER_01]: She would find him so unsettling, but he would be like the first person that she would not make a person.

1:00:38 [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, she might, maybe he is fake. [SPEAKER_01]: Maybe he is like slip through a door. [SPEAKER_00]: You know, I actually, I could see that. [SPEAKER_00]: He's a mortal. [SPEAKER_01]: Otherworldly. [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I mean, there's something about him. [SPEAKER_01]: It's not quite right.

1:00:51 [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_00]: He feels like he would be a mortal, but like in the other world, but like not even they know what to do with him there. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, like you feel like you're from here, but you are definitely [SPEAKER_01]: You want a creature we just haven't figured out which one, which one, you were the first of your kind.

1:01:08 [SPEAKER_00]: Absolutely. [SPEAKER_00]: I love that so much. [SPEAKER_00]: But talking about the boys, like talking about teams, you said you were Team Jess, and of course one of the reasons I wanted to talk about the Rose bargaining in Gilmourkels with you was because of love triangles. [SPEAKER_00]: We have a bit of a love triangle on both of them.

1:01:22 [SPEAKER_00]: Do you think it's a spoiler to say that there is love triangle in the Rose bargain? [SPEAKER_01]: No, I don't think so. [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I mean the pitch is Shantra's a marriage competition to Mary [SPEAKER_01]: Starts falling for his brother. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, like what's a girl to do?

1:01:35 [SPEAKER_00]: But like I said before, like it's not like a perfect calm. [SPEAKER_00]: It's not like the girls are going to like their local diner to talk about the marriage prospects. [SPEAKER_00]: And there's a fairy queen and there's all these things. [SPEAKER_00]: But like there is the like family relationships, the resentment and the adoration.

1:01:49 [SPEAKER_00]: the complex relationships, the frenemies, the exploration of like a sister that doesn't really exist in that world plus like just like I said like the banter like feet kicking like having a great time laughing but then something very dark happens which is also pretty true to what happens on gomark rolls so for our listeners what are they kind of getting into with the love triangle like you said like it's his brother it's his human brother [SPEAKER_01]: So, she enters this competition to Mary Bram, the fairy prince of England.

1:02:16 [SPEAKER_01]: And the deal for the competition is if he does not pick you, you can never marry another, which in this kind of prodo Victorian world spells social-run for these girls. [SPEAKER_01]: They don't really have any other economic opportunities. [SPEAKER_01]: And then he has a human step-rother Emmett, so they are not related by blood, but Emmett's human father is married to the queen, and so Emmett and Bram have been raised as brothers for the past couple of years, and they're very close, but Emmett wants to take a down the queen and put Bram on the throne.

1:02:41 [SPEAKER_01]: He does not want to tell Bram this because Bram is a fairy and cannot lie, and he does not want to put Bram into a position where he would be. [SPEAKER_01]: Admitting sedition against his very scary mother, and so he needs IV's help to help take down the queen, so she ends up in this relationship where she is scheming at night with Emmet to trying to take down this fairy queen and then during the day, courting his brother, Bram.

1:03:04 [SPEAKER_01]: And so I think for people who are cautious about love triangles, it's not a true love triangle that she's not falling for them both equally. [SPEAKER_01]: It is not that she is in love with both Bram and Emmet and Tannot choose. [SPEAKER_01]: She knows that her feelings for Emmett are stronger, and that he is the person that she would like to be with, but circumstances are keeping them apart.

1:03:23 [SPEAKER_01]: And she's fond of Bram. [SPEAKER_01]: Bram is like a lovely person. [SPEAKER_01]: He's kind of my golden retriever. [SPEAKER_01]: Her character and she feels quite guilty for the way she's scheming behind his back. [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_01]: And then I also have Emmett who loves Bram, who doesn't like that he's, you know, kind of stole in this girl in the competition away from him.

1:03:38 [SPEAKER_01]: He feels quite guilty about his own feelings towards Ivy. [SPEAKER_01]: But I love a love triangle and I love a love triangle, especially in YA. [SPEAKER_01]: And I think this is why it's, it's, it's the Compton Gilmore girls is I think that a love triangle is a real exploration of the self in, in young adult characters.

1:03:53 [SPEAKER_01]: You're not choosing between two boys. [SPEAKER_01]: You're choosing which version of yourself you want to be. [SPEAKER_01]: Rory is choosing, does she want to be the part of herself that is, you know, kind of brave and interesting and academic and rebellious, or does she want to choose the part of herself that is safe and kind and we'll live in Star-Solo and make her mom happy with her and Dean and Jess represent those two sides of herself and I think that's so real when you're growing up and figuring out who you want to be.

1:04:24 [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I love that so much. [SPEAKER_00]: I love that like relation to it like in why of the self. [SPEAKER_00]: And I always I actually always call Jocelyn Rory and Dean a love angle because I feel like in the sense of Bram and Emmet and Ivy, they feel like a real love triangle because like there is like a tension between all three of them.

1:04:43 [SPEAKER_00]: Then like they will all lose something if one of the sides of the triangle falls off and I feel like that's really what I love about like a real love triangle because like it feels like with Dean and just sometimes they just like my love and Jared just have a little bit too much chemistry sometimes and I'm like are they going to kiss [SPEAKER_00]: because I get to fix.

1:05:00 [SPEAKER_00]: I'm not reading the fix, but I understand why it's like the end of that one episode when it's like the end of the Thanksgiving episode when Jess is taking the trash out and like Dean comes to like kind of threaten him. [SPEAKER_00]: I'm like, yeah, you know, like that's kind of the vibe that it gives, but it's obviously not, but like I feel like that's like more of like a love angle because it's like [SPEAKER_00]: one of the sides wants to break off.

1:05:22 [SPEAKER_00]: But is there a love triangle that you have that is like your ultimate, like it's like better than all the others, like in something that you've read in books or media or anything? [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, I love the Hunger Games Love triangle because it's such a perfect representation of catnist picking between those versions of herself.

1:05:38 [SPEAKER_01]: I find Gale a very compelling character. [SPEAKER_01]: I'm a bit of a Gale Apologies. [SPEAKER_01]: I think that it's right that she ends up with Peter. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_01]: But I think people are very unfair to Gale. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I mean, I was when I read them as a teenager.

1:05:49 [SPEAKER_00]: I was such a gal girl. [SPEAKER_00]: I was like two and a half set about PETA and at the end of it, she just needed a strong therapist, neither of them. [SPEAKER_01]: A hundred percent. [SPEAKER_00]: But I remember like, that was why Ali Hazelwood got bullied off the internet because she was like, maybe I shouldn't say anything well, you're next.

1:06:03 [SPEAKER_00]: They're gonna find me. [SPEAKER_00]: But like, I was a gal girl and when I was a teenager, I'm not ashamed of it. [SPEAKER_00]: Like reading is an adult because I reread it when sunrise came out last year. [SPEAKER_00]: And I was just like, oh, I see it. [SPEAKER_01]: Oh, I, and I actually think it helped.

1:06:18 [SPEAKER_01]: I reading it as an adult did. [SPEAKER_01]: I think soft and weird so it's Peter. [SPEAKER_01]: I never hated Peter. [SPEAKER_01]: No. [SPEAKER_01]: But I think as an adult, you see that he has his own kind of strength. [SPEAKER_01]: And I love that as representation in YA, is that it's not that she's picking like the burliest, like boy in the YA's Peter's like kind of burly, canonically.

1:06:34 [SPEAKER_01]: But he's the baker. [SPEAKER_01]: He's the baker. [SPEAKER_01]: And he's in a strength. [SPEAKER_01]: This is kind of nice. [SPEAKER_01]: and his charisma, like he has these soft scales that I really love. [SPEAKER_00]: It's like why he survives in the capital. [SPEAKER_00]: It's totally all these things that Gale can't do.

1:06:49 [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, and the cows can't do. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_01]: But like, of course, Gale is like violent wants to burn the world down. [SPEAKER_01]: They've like murder his dad and bomb his village. [SPEAKER_01]: And like really simply do so. [SPEAKER_01]: And like still in the girl, he let, like, I, I would, he should be committing more murder.

1:07:04 [SPEAKER_00]: The more murder in my age, 20, 20, 20, 16. [SPEAKER_01]: There you go. [SPEAKER_01]: Now I'm going to get bullied off your head. [SPEAKER_01]: But the thing with Prim bad, we'll not defend it. [SPEAKER_01]: No, no. [SPEAKER_01]: Kale as a character, I think that's the magic of Susan Collins.

1:07:16 [SPEAKER_01]: This, she makes you understand why he makes these very in a tough and in some cases unforgivable choices. [SPEAKER_00]: So yeah, and I think that's what makes me like a character more is characters who make really big mistakes on behalf of what they think is right. [SPEAKER_00]: And like that's how we end up with villains.

1:07:31 [SPEAKER_00]: Totally, but I'm I'm always someone who like even if you can't quite fully explain why they've done it I'm like well You made an interesting choice which makes me like you. [SPEAKER_01]: I think perfect characters very boring very boring. [SPEAKER_01]: Yes, and I find perfect love interests very boring Me too.

1:07:45 [SPEAKER_00]: Oh, I want someone if you especially in contemporary romance, which we can talk about before you guys me and Sasha Yeah, but for way too long before we got on here [SPEAKER_00]: Remember like what we were talking about before and what we've talked about in this episode But with contemporary like I just don't like a character especially if it's from like a female like just single point of view Without getting his perspective.

1:08:05 [SPEAKER_00]: I don't like when he doesn't mean mistakes with her I like to be like feel like we can safely make mistakes together or like if you mess up That's not the end of this. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, even if it's something that feels like it might be the end because it's like that's not true [SPEAKER_01]: And he's got a Joe to earn her.

1:08:20 [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, all exactly. [SPEAKER_00]: I kind of, it kind of bothers me when all the growth happens off page. [SPEAKER_00]: Like in the way that's like before we've even started the book, it's like he's already grown and now he's going to come in her back. [SPEAKER_00]: That's not always my favorite.

1:08:32 [SPEAKER_00]: Like I like a messy man who can fix himself. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_01]: That's what I was going to say, a team dress, like I just as a deeply imperfect character, I think that's why I find him so compelling as compared to a dean who in order to make him justice foil had to have like all of his edges sanded off.

1:08:47 [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, like he wasn't, he didn't have like the books he was reading of hers anymore, like the fun movie references. [SPEAKER_00]: He worked at the grocery store, he was worked as a carpenter. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, he just kind of got a little bit dumber, which was quite sad because like he [SPEAKER_00]: He was pretty smart.

1:09:01 [SPEAKER_00]: He had some anger issues, but yeah, he was smart. [SPEAKER_01]: And then I guess the it'll for me, like a big, a big, a big mistake. [SPEAKER_00]: Deeply a perfect. [SPEAKER_00]: Well, that was a question I had about you about love triangles. [SPEAKER_00]: Do you think that with a love triangle there has to be like an intention from each side of it because like would you call worry and Dean and Lindsay, which he's like emotionally cheating before the physical cheating happens?

1:09:25 [SPEAKER_00]: Is that in any way, [SPEAKER_00]: What we're cost-fying is a love triangle because she doesn't know about it. [SPEAKER_00]: She thinks she's in a love lot. [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I was gonna say think if we were to get a book from Lindsay's perspective Yes, but there's like a carelessness towards Lindsay that I think is probably an element of why people don't always love love triangles Yeah, I love a love triangle where they all kind of love each other and they're all agonized over herding each other [SPEAKER_01]: I think a love triangle like Dean and Wary and Lindsay where they do not care about the harm they're doing to somebody is not as fun to witness or read as a consumer of media.

1:09:58 [SPEAKER_01]: It doesn't make me kind of sad. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, we always talk about how like Lindsay we just had an episode that would like the concept of his blonde or bad. [SPEAKER_00]: But she just blonde and we weren't supposed to like her because she was blonde or what did she actually make mistakes that like made her bad.

1:10:11 [SPEAKER_01]: And what did she ever do? [SPEAKER_01]: I feel like she's nothing. [SPEAKER_01]: Like she just got married at 19? [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_00]: She was just blonde and we were just a writer because the young girl's pet brown hair and Lori wanted her husband. [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_00]: Just a little bit.

1:10:23 [SPEAKER_00]: Just a little bit. [SPEAKER_00]: Absolutely. [SPEAKER_01]: I hope Lindsay went on to look like a really beautiful life. [SPEAKER_00]: I know. [SPEAKER_00]: We always say like we hope that she like listened to all too well ten minute version and just screamed about it and then she went married like a refrigerator of a man who was just a cinnamon roll and treated her perfectly.

1:10:37 [SPEAKER_00]: Talk about perfect love interest. [SPEAKER_00]: She needs one. [SPEAKER_01]: I hope she went to college and halfway through her like sophomore year. [SPEAKER_01]: She's like, oh my god, guys I was married and like all the like Capagame sisters were like, oh my god girl, what? [SPEAKER_00]: What?

1:10:49 [SPEAKER_00]: So I guess house. [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I actually like went on to live like a big beautiful. [SPEAKER_00]: Yes, she great big beautiful life is about her. [SPEAKER_00]: Yes What did I love? [SPEAKER_00]: What was important for you when you were writing love triangle between [SPEAKER_00]: Knowing that, like, sometimes love triangles can't be everyone's favorite.

1:11:07 [SPEAKER_00]: Like, I'm not always like drawn to a love triangle, but this one I was so compelled by what was it that felt important to you while you're writing it. [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I know, and I know that love triangles are controversial, which is funny because I've always loved them. [SPEAKER_01]: So if you're being a bit of other people didn't like them was like shocking to me at first.

1:11:23 [SPEAKER_00]: I think a lot of that honestly comes from Twilight. [SPEAKER_00]: Like, I think that, like, I also love the Twilight one. [SPEAKER_00]: Me too. [SPEAKER_01]: Wait, what team are you? [SPEAKER_01]: Well, I'm already going to get bullied off the internet. [SPEAKER_01]: I'm saying shake up.

1:11:33 [SPEAKER_01]: Sasha, what? [SPEAKER_01]: My favorite Twilight book is in record. [SPEAKER_01]: You know, you were going to get me, like, really canceled. [SPEAKER_00]: Oh, shake up. [SPEAKER_01]: I like, again, I'm not saying, like, defend the things. [SPEAKER_01]: I'm obviously not defending the runes.

1:11:46 [SPEAKER_01]: May thing not defending the losing her without her defense. [SPEAKER_00]: That was quite weird. [SPEAKER_01]: But the first two... That's more of a Stephanie thing than a jiggle listen. [SPEAKER_01]: But the first two books really keys... [SPEAKER_01]: I love a friend still lover, is I think that's it.

1:11:57 [SPEAKER_01]: The first two books where he's his best herbuss friend pining for her. [SPEAKER_01]: I'm such a sucker for that. [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, you're so right. [SPEAKER_01]: And so it's... [SPEAKER_01]: I think it's the pining. [SPEAKER_01]: I think it's like the pining and the being herbuss friend element that I found really, really compelling and I found him really sympathetic.

1:12:10 [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, okay, I will say as an adult I'm a lot more firmly team Edward because like he just seems like the choice but as a teenager I was quite distraught for who to choose. [SPEAKER_00]: So I was a little aggressive about your choice of team Jacob because I Know what's fair. [SPEAKER_00]: There's a lot to critique You're like I'm I am accepting [SPEAKER_01]: And I mean, talk about the roast bargain.

1:12:31 [SPEAKER_01]: Something very important to know about me is I find the concept of immortality, like, completely horrifying. [SPEAKER_01]: To me, the end of Twilight is like a nightmare. [SPEAKER_01]: Like, you know, you're just like married forever. [SPEAKER_01]: Like, you just got a school forever. [SPEAKER_01]: And like, what are the world is going to collapse around you?

1:12:46 [SPEAKER_01]: Like, what do you do? [SPEAKER_01]: And so, yeah, I find immortality really scary. [SPEAKER_01]: I find Edward being old, like, kind of upsetting. [SPEAKER_01]: That's quite old, isn't he? [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_01]: And maybe this, where I should be tempted to come up with, like, I find to be like, yeah, I'm going to make you a vampire than make you immortal, and like, then you're cursed.

1:13:02 [SPEAKER_01]: I have to, like, I kind of agree with those. [SPEAKER_00]: Let her live her life. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_00]: He really is against it. [SPEAKER_00]: That's what she really is. [SPEAKER_00]: I saw someone recently on the internet say she should have chosen Edward during the summer and Jacob during the winter because he's a little bit more warm.

1:13:18 [SPEAKER_00]: And I'm like, perfect. [SPEAKER_00]: Why choose? [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, I actually would have been fine with the why choose for the end of [SPEAKER_00]: Let's remove the baby. [SPEAKER_01]: The baby. [SPEAKER_00]: That would have been way too much for that author to explore the time that the people weren't ready.

1:13:32 [SPEAKER_00]: I don't think they're ready for it. [SPEAKER_00]: I don't think they're ready for it now, honestly. [SPEAKER_00]: But yours is not a way to use. [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, so this love triangle. [SPEAKER_01]: So I knew I knew it was a bit of a controversial choice going in, but I also knew I had the setup of the marriage competition and her falling for the wrong brother, which to me, in the spirit of writing the book I wanted to read was just too juicy to ignore.

1:13:52 [SPEAKER_01]: And so I wanted, I wanted the characters to feel real. [SPEAKER_01]: I wanted you to really feel for them. [SPEAKER_01]: I wanted the reader to ultimately pity Bram. [SPEAKER_01]: I want them to feel really bad for Ivy and Emmett sneaking behind Bram's back like this, and I wanted Emmett, and Ivy to feel bad for sneaking behind Bram's back [SPEAKER_01]: because I don't like when one character is like really left out to dry and I wanted you to understand especially Ivy and Emmett when they're risking this much for each other.

1:14:18 [SPEAKER_01]: I wanted you to understand why they liked each other, why it was so hard to disentangle themselves, why they were willing to risk the future of England because they wanted to kiss that bath. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I guess I want kids. [SPEAKER_01]: Absolutely. [SPEAKER_01]: And so to me, it was like a task of character work.

1:14:35 [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, it really is. [SPEAKER_00]: I feel like strengthening the sides of the triangle. [SPEAKER_00]: It's really all it can do is not feeling like anyone way. [SPEAKER_00]: I had, I had certain preferences while I was reading. [SPEAKER_00]: And I just think you know what they were. [SPEAKER_00]: But like I was a strong emic girl.

1:14:48 [SPEAKER_01]: Like I just, it's kind of surprising to me and people are a team brand. [SPEAKER_01]: And the way that I like, [SPEAKER_01]: But I never meant, I never meant, I think the reader knows that I've even just doesn't feel strongly towards him. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, there were times I will say that I was like, wait, like, come on.

1:15:03 [SPEAKER_00]: Because you feel that for a, yeah, I do. [SPEAKER_00]: He's a sweet guy in that same vein. [SPEAKER_00]: Do you think like a satisfying love triangle that like all sides need to find some sort of happiness with the like struggle that they've had, but the love triangle, because like immediately I'm thinking of like the summer I turned pretty.

1:15:22 [SPEAKER_00]: And like, thanksgiving will never be the same. [SPEAKER_00]: I'll be back from that. [SPEAKER_00]: Had to do you come back from that. [SPEAKER_00]: I don't think you do. [SPEAKER_00]: It's quite hard. [SPEAKER_00]: I think that the one of the brothers, I think the guy who plays Jeremiah, he was like advocating in the movie for his character to die.

1:15:36 [SPEAKER_00]: Recently, like in the news, this came up on my feed and I was like, oh, [SPEAKER_00]: Maybe that is the best way forward, like maybe that's the only way this could happen. [SPEAKER_00]: It also kind of reminded me of Francesca's storyline in Bridger 2, in the books specifically, that like a love triangle kind of existing and one of them has to just go away forever in order for them to be happy.

1:15:57 [SPEAKER_01]: I personally am satisfied when the one who has not been chosen gets their own happy ending and there is this feeling of like, yeah, there's a reason I didn't work out. [SPEAKER_01]: But like that, those two, it was their true love. [SPEAKER_01]: This person had another true love waiting for them.

1:16:11 [SPEAKER_01]: That's when I feel most happy. [SPEAKER_01]: But I'm trying to think of a book that's even achieved that other than Twilight, but the true love was a baby and so I reject it. [SPEAKER_00]: The true love was a baby. [SPEAKER_00]: That's like one of the worst sentences it's been set on this baby.

1:16:26 [SPEAKER_00]: Oh no. [SPEAKER_00]: Oh no. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I am trying to think of something that kind of like fits that. [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, I guess Hunger Games kind of did that because like Gail just was always going to have to shuffle along. [SPEAKER_01]: And I believe that Gail has like found happiness and love.

1:16:38 [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_01]: That was just, yeah. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_01]: But yeah, it makes, it doesn't make me sad as it is a reader or a, or a viewer. [SPEAKER_01]: Like yeah. [SPEAKER_01]: Like I want to believe that like Belly was not Jeremy as true love. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.

1:16:49 [SPEAKER_01]: But like Jeremiah, like Jeremiah, like Jeremiah has other love waiting for him. [SPEAKER_00]: And I believe that like yeah after therapy for sure. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_00]: You know, we had to go through some things first. [SPEAKER_00]: I feel like sometimes it's like often what it is is like the other part of the love triangle kind of has to figure some things out first.

1:17:03 [SPEAKER_00]: Yes, how did you feel like as a Jess girl when it came to fruition that the love angle was separating and, you know, Dean breaks up with Vory in the middle of the dance and now, Rory and Jess are going to be together. [SPEAKER_00]: It was not like the Super Bowl for you. [SPEAKER_01]: Oh, yeah, my blood was carbonated.

1:17:20 [SPEAKER_01]: I never been so excited. [SPEAKER_00]: You're failed you to sign your ring jersey. [SPEAKER_01]: Oh, a hundred. [SPEAKER_01]: I was like flipping makeup table. [SPEAKER_01]: Oh, yeah, like an all-time great television moment for me. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, and then how did you feel when they broke up and she went back to the original love triangle with the other side of the triangle?

1:17:39 [SPEAKER_01]: It was so frustrating. [SPEAKER_01]: I'll give it to you, Misha, my paladin. [SPEAKER_01]: I think that's probably fairly true to real life. [SPEAKER_01]: Is you return vent to what's comfortable and who you think isn't gonna leave you and she's just been through this like big emotional turmoil and Dean, even for being married felt so safe that I understood it, but gosh, when Marie makes mistakes, she really makes them.

1:17:59 [SPEAKER_00]: She is fantastic at making mistakes. [SPEAKER_01]: And I don't feel like she's always great on then reflecting on why she made those mistakes. [SPEAKER_00]: Now, something we talk about a lot is that Borlai emotes everything. [SPEAKER_00]: She like will tell us everything that's going on in her internal monologue.

1:18:16 [SPEAKER_00]: But with Rory, we very rarely get that. [SPEAKER_00]: So we never know how she's feeling about things. [SPEAKER_00]: And that's like always one of the questions I wanted to ask Amy. [SPEAKER_00]: Turn Paladino. [SPEAKER_00]: It's like, what, what is Rory thinking in every episode, actually?

1:18:28 [SPEAKER_01]: because she bounces basically then directly to Logan. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, almost immediately. [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I wish as a viewer we'd seen her grapple with it a little bit more. [SPEAKER_01]: And face more consequences other than getting yelled at by Lindsay's mom. [SPEAKER_00]: A great option.

1:18:41 [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, yeah, what she honestly never really has to deal with any emotional fallout from having like a full blown affair. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I think that too about the revival when we get there is like she's like, no, we're just done and now I'm going to go write a book at my grandparents house like I'm like nothing nothing comes from that because I I kind of like controversially I think that a love triangle would have been quite fun and the revival and then maybe there was one because she was with that guy Paul who she kept forgetting about but then she was with Logan and then she's up with the wookie but like that just feels like you're in your 30s and you're just [SPEAKER_00]: a mass just floundering yeah it didn't it didn't feel fun it didn't feel like there was it didn't feel like it didn't feel like it didn't feel like it didn't feel like it didn't feel like it didn't feel like it didn't feel like it didn't feel like it didn't feel like it didn't feel like it didn't feel like it didn't feel like it didn't feel like it didn't feel like it didn't feel like it didn't feel like it didn't feel like it didn't feel like it didn't feel like it didn't feel like it didn't feel like it didn't feel like it didn't feel like it didn't feel like it didn't feel like it didn't feel like it didn't feel like it didn't feel like it didn't feel like it didn't feel like it didn't feel like it didn't feel like it didn't feel like it didn't feel like it didn't feel like it didn't feel like it didn't feel like it didn't feel like it didn't feel like it didn't feel

1:19:44 [SPEAKER_00]: I will say that you're not alone in your feeling about the revival. [SPEAKER_01]: It's pretty common around here to have a negative feeling about a largely maligned, and to me, to me, I think it's frustrating because to me that the story is so clear. [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, all of the pieces were there and all of the characters were there.

1:20:01 [SPEAKER_01]: How is this what we ended up on? [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah and I think it's also harder to reflect because like I don't know how true this is but it's been reported in the past or that Amy has said this that she's like not a big fan of millennials and like it's very clear in that revival but I also think it suffers from its timing like it being in November 2016 that this is when this came out that like it was right on the edge that you're like oh this feels tone deaf like now where it's coming out like it aged terribly [SPEAKER_00]: timeless story to tell, which is one of the more girls really is.

1:20:35 [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_00]: But yeah. [SPEAKER_00]: So you are not alone and feeling that way. [SPEAKER_00]: But a love triangle that I am currently in is me and the Rose bargain and the Thorne Queen and trying to figure out which one is my favorite. [SPEAKER_00]: Oh, because truly I just left them both so much.

1:20:50 [SPEAKER_00]: It's it's really that like harrowing experience of reading advanced copies of books and being like, oh, now I have read the most recent thing this author has had. [SPEAKER_00]: Now I have to wait even longer to get something new from you because I just loved it so much. [SPEAKER_01]: Thank you so much.

1:21:03 [SPEAKER_01]: That means the world. [SPEAKER_01]: The very different books for being in the same series. [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, the Rose bargain is like very sparkly and the Thorne Queen is kind of her darker spookier sister. [SPEAKER_00]: It is. [SPEAKER_00]: I feel like that is kind of like reflected in the cover.

1:21:15 [SPEAKER_00]: Like the Rose bargain is pink and then like the purple, like darker tones of the Thorne Queen kind of makes sense. [SPEAKER_00]: I did wear purple today. [SPEAKER_01]: I don't know. [SPEAKER_01]: I need to get purple. [SPEAKER_01]: It's hard to find purple actually. [SPEAKER_01]: I was looking for dresses for tour.

1:21:27 [SPEAKER_01]: People are not making a lot of purple dresses right now. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I would say that's true. [SPEAKER_00]: Like it's also fine. [SPEAKER_00]: It's hard to find a good shade of purple because you don't want to be like a purple girl. [SPEAKER_00]: You know, it's a difference. [SPEAKER_00]: It's a whole different thing.

1:21:38 [SPEAKER_00]: It's also a whole different journey. [SPEAKER_00]: But I'll send you because I have a couple of say, I've done new [SPEAKER_00]: Please do. [SPEAKER_00]: Please do. [SPEAKER_00]: Send your way. [SPEAKER_00]: Okay. [SPEAKER_00]: Because I feel like you're about to enter your purple era, royal era, if you will.

1:21:48 [SPEAKER_00]: Thank you. [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, and I'm just so excited for you. [SPEAKER_00]: I'm so excited for people who haven't read this book to have a completed duology right there. [SPEAKER_00]: It's unfair that you didn't have to wait a year. [SPEAKER_00]: But like... [SPEAKER_00]: I think that it'll be all the better for you because it's just there's something about it that just like you can't put it down and you're not going to want to even more so in the second one and I'm just so happy and so proud of you and learning everything that I did about you and your journey writing today makes me feel all the more of that way.

1:22:13 [SPEAKER_00]: Oh, but it's so nice. [SPEAKER_00]: We were talking before this that I was like, is Sasha my friend because like before this I was like, I'm delusional and things Sasha's my friend and she was like, I [SPEAKER_00]: I feel the same way, so I think we're friends too. [SPEAKER_00]: I'm glad we've landed there.

1:22:27 [SPEAKER_00]: But in that vein of now the Thorn Queen is out, it came out yesterday, the time of this airing. [SPEAKER_00]: It always feels bad to ask this question. [SPEAKER_00]: But what is next for you? [SPEAKER_01]: So as I kind of implied earlier with my the book I'm turning in, that will be 2027 book.

1:22:43 [SPEAKER_01]: So we are expecting a book, April of 2027. [SPEAKER_01]: So you put one more year for May 9th March, but yeah, it's a standalone, a YA standalone. [SPEAKER_01]: And I don't really don't know how much I can say about it before like the Harper Collins snipers find me. [SPEAKER_01]: I will say it's the childhood friends to a ranged marriage book but I've been wanting to write for a really long time.

1:23:05 [SPEAKER_00]: I am locked in. [SPEAKER_00]: I am continuing to make teenagers get married, and my... You know, as long as it's the 1800s, I think we're okay. [SPEAKER_01]: It's fine, it's fine. [SPEAKER_01]: Yes, so I've had a lot of fun writing it. [SPEAKER_01]: I'm excited to be able to talk more about it, so keep an eye out, and hopefully there will be an announcement shortly.

1:23:25 [SPEAKER_00]: Yes, I can't wait for that. [SPEAKER_00]: Do you have any plans to like move into adult from why are you just like firmly aptly here? [SPEAKER_01]: I mean maybe one day I've had some interest from adult editors, which is always so flattering, who reached out to my agent saying, you know, if Sasha ever wants to rate it, it would be interested in seeing what she has to rate, which again is like a former pariskeller and like I have to jump on every opportunity.

1:23:44 [SPEAKER_00]: I know, it like feels like going back to you, like having your pity spirals, like I need to, I need to talk to them now. [SPEAKER_00]: Well, totally. [SPEAKER_00]: Well, they can bite. [SPEAKER_00]: Totally. [SPEAKER_01]: I feel like I got to like strike where the iron is hot. [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

1:23:53 [SPEAKER_01]: So there's some internal pressure I think, but my honest answer is I just haven't had the right idea yet. [SPEAKER_01]: I am not somebody who has like a million ideas at once. [SPEAKER_01]: I know some authors have notebooks so full that they're anxiety is like I hope I don't die before I can write every book idea.

1:24:08 [SPEAKER_01]: I have I feel like mine are coming to me like one at a time. [SPEAKER_01]: I'm like really telling the garden of my own mind to be like give me something good. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I feel like that's so relaxing though. [SPEAKER_00]: It's so healthy, that's so good because one of the reasons I've been struggling to finish my book is because I have like 14 ideas a day, and I'm like, oh, that's quite good.

1:24:25 [SPEAKER_00]: That's fun. [SPEAKER_00]: Let's go there. [SPEAKER_01]: And I'm like, I think it's good and that I stay focused, but it is anxiety-producing, and that I have the like, what if I never come up with anything good again? [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I thought so once I have an idea that excites me, I'm absolutely open to writing adults, but it doesn't come yet.

1:24:40 [SPEAKER_01]: I also think I'd have to teach myself how to write an adult novel. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, it's a different vibe. [SPEAKER_01]: It's a different vibe, but it's a special adult fantasy. [SPEAKER_00]: It's different spacing in the text in the book. [SPEAKER_01]: Totally. [SPEAKER_01]: But I mean, even just like world-building and pacing and character, like, it's all different than like a very tightly past-wide novel, which is what comes out when I sit down at my computer, because that's what I've been trained in writing at this point.

1:25:03 [SPEAKER_01]: So I think I find it also a little intimidating. [SPEAKER_01]: I think it would keep me more time because if I was gonna do what I wanted to do it, right? [SPEAKER_01]: I don't just want it to be a YA book, but they're 25. [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, absolutely. [SPEAKER_01]: So yeah, I mean, it's a very long way to say, hopefully someday, but nothing on the horizon.

1:25:19 [SPEAKER_00]: I feel like everything I've learned about you is if there is a challenge that you have not yet faced, you are going to put yourself in front of it, regardless of if it was going to face you to become a criminal. [SPEAKER_00]: That's probably true. [SPEAKER_00]: You feel very determined and I feel like I've related a lot to what you have said about your own journey with writing and I feel like a lot of people, a lot of our listeners, like have related to me as well.

1:25:40 [SPEAKER_00]: So I feel like very excited for people to hear about your journey to writing everything that you've [SPEAKER_00]: I know all you have to do. [SPEAKER_00]: Thank you. [SPEAKER_00]: But before you go, the last question I ask everyone is if you have a book that you would recommend for Gilmargles fans.

1:25:55 [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, I talked about it earlier on the podcast. [SPEAKER_01]: Margaret's got many troubles. [SPEAKER_01]: It is a really fabulous tight book that you can read it really quickly. [SPEAKER_01]: It's a good book. [SPEAKER_01]: a really good audiobook in the show is coming out soon on Hulu, but a book that really explores young parenthood, explores a complicated mother-daughter relationship, and that feels so voicing, like you feel like you know them, that the banter and the strong characters that you get in Gilmore Girls, I think that you would really love Margo.

1:26:20 [SPEAKER_01]: She felt so real to me, and the way that Laura Lyon Rory felt real to me. [SPEAKER_00]: Oh my gosh, you're so right. [SPEAKER_00]: I had never thought of me that connection. [SPEAKER_00]: I was like, yeah, it is an exploration of young motherhood and like kind of like the pressure of that's like figuring it out on your own.

1:26:34 [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_00]: That's a good recommendation. [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, because Margaret's wasn't 19 or 20. [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_00]: Great choice. [SPEAKER_00]: So I'm a gosh. [SPEAKER_00]: Thank you a lot. [SPEAKER_00]: It's a great book. [SPEAKER_00]: Don't plot that.

1:26:44 [SPEAKER_00]: Great book. [SPEAKER_00]: Great choice. [SPEAKER_00]: But thank you so much for chatting. [SPEAKER_00]: This was absolutely so much fun. [SPEAKER_00]: And I cannot wait for our listeners to learn more about you. [SPEAKER_00]: And to dive into the rose bargain. [SPEAKER_00]: Oh, thank you.

1:26:53 [SPEAKER_01]: So I've truly had the best time. [SPEAKER_01]: It's been a delight. [SPEAKER_00]: book-loving besties. [SPEAKER_00]: Thank you so much for joining me today for another episode of Gilmour to Read. [SPEAKER_00]: If you'd like to join the book club conversation, head over to Patreon where you can join for free.

1:27:08 [SPEAKER_00]: In April, it is a reading a sexy month, so we are reading great, big, beautiful life by Emily Henry, fingers crossed we can get her on the podcast. [SPEAKER_00]: But my next guest on Gamerture Eat is one I feel so sentimental about that I might just start crying in the middle of recording it, and that is number one New York Times bestseller, and my favorite author as a teenager, Sarah Desson, but until then, happy reading friends.