[SPEAKER_02]: Five, six, seven, eight.

[SPEAKER_00]: Julia.

[SPEAKER_02]: Hi y'all, welcome or welcome back to Gilmourn to Read.

[SPEAKER_02]: I'm your host Haley and I'm so glad to have you here today.

[SPEAKER_02]: If you're listening to this episode the day it comes out, it is my birthday and what better way to celebrate my birthday than talking about Gilmourn girls and books two of my favorite things, which is what we do on every episode of Gilmourn to Read, but I'm even more excited to be bringing you one of my favorite guests ever today, and that is the [SPEAKER_02]: Positively Darling, Susan Lee, she is here to talk about her USA today bestselling novel, Julia Song is Undatable, which was our book club pick for November for Reading a Sexy, which is our Gilmore in Clined Real Man's Book Club.

[SPEAKER_02]: As you will soon discover from listening to this episode, Susan is just an absolute beam of light and I enjoy talking to her so much.

[SPEAKER_02]: And before she came on, I messaged her to see where her interesting Gilmore girls was, and her response was that she bought her house because of Gilmore girls.

[SPEAKER_02]: I know, my mind went in like a hundred different directions when she told me, but she does answer to all of those questions in this episode.

[SPEAKER_02]: And if you haven't yet read Julia Song, this episode is spoiler-free, so feel free to listen to me and Susan talk until the end of the episode.

[SPEAKER_02]: But let me tell you a bit about Julia Song is undatable for those of you who have not yet gotten a chance to dive into one of my favorite reads of the year.

[SPEAKER_02]: Julia Song, CEO of Starlight Cosmetics is at the height of her career.

[SPEAKER_02]: Why does she feel like such a failure?

[SPEAKER_02]: Maybe because she's 30 in single with a terrible track record at dating.

[SPEAKER_02]: And in the eyes of her Korean family, that is just unacceptable.

[SPEAKER_02]: And never really bothered her.

[SPEAKER_02]: That is until her beloved grandmother drops the bomb that she is sick and her dying wish is for Julia to get married.

[SPEAKER_02]: impossible.

[SPEAKER_02]: So, in a moment of weakness, Julia asks her family for help.

[SPEAKER_02]: Set her up on three dates to help her find the one, but it will never work.

[SPEAKER_02]: Julia is undatable.

[SPEAKER_02]: If only there was a coach for that, take him, knows about the way a familial expectation.

[SPEAKER_02]: He's currently unemployed, living in his parents' basement to care for his old father.

[SPEAKER_02]: Sure, he's become somewhat of a fixate man for the Korean community around town, but that's not a real job, and the pressure to get his life together is getting to be too much.

[SPEAKER_02]: So, when Lee Julia's song, his childhood crush asks for his help, it may just be the distraction he needs.

[SPEAKER_02]: He'll do whatever it takes, even coach her for these three dates.

[SPEAKER_02]: Problem is, the more time they spend together and the closer they get, the more Tae wonders if anyone is good enough for Julia, including him.

[SPEAKER_02]: Reading that synopsis back gave me chills and I already want to reread this book because I just loved it so much.

[SPEAKER_02]: It's positively joyful and hilarious.

[SPEAKER_02]: You're going to love Tae who is just the most competent and kindest man content with living a small life, much like your favorite [SPEAKER_02]: Julia, she sort of reminds me of that one scene in the beginning of season 3 of Gilmore Girls when worrying Paris are a way in DC before Paris goes on that date with Jamie and she's freaking out because she says she's like not genetically set up for dating.

[SPEAKER_02]: That feels a little bit like Julia, but I will say Julia is not quite as intense as that [SPEAKER_02]: But some of her experiences are probably something to recognize if you've ever been single at Thanksgiving or some family gathering.

[SPEAKER_02]: Or if your mother is the Emily Gilmore of Winwheel, you get married.

[SPEAKER_02]: I also wanted to include this book in the club because I wanted a Korean American family at the center of the story.

[SPEAKER_02]: Hilled with laughs, drama, meddling, and an overwhelming amount of love, which all perfectly described Julia's song is indatable.

[SPEAKER_02]: It's just such a good book.

[SPEAKER_02]: And after hearing from Susan in this episode, you can see just how much she shines on these pages.

[SPEAKER_02]: Now a bit about Susan herself, [SPEAKER_02]: Susan Lee is a USA today by selling author of both young adult and adult romantic comedies.

[SPEAKER_02]: Her work has been featured in National Outlet, such as Buzzfeed and PR, People magazine and pop sugar.

[SPEAKER_02]: Carcass reviews caused Susan's voice on his fresh and thoughtful.

[SPEAKER_02]: A graduate of UC San Diego, Susan built a career as an HR executive at some of today's hottest companies until she realized that writing love stories was a more impactful and powerful form of resistance and change.

[SPEAKER_02]: Now she channels her energy into publishing happily ever afters for those historically underrepresented in romance.

[SPEAKER_02]: When she's not writing or painfully procrastinating from writing, Susan can be found on the rabbit holes of her many obsessions, including listening to K-pop, binge-watching K dramas, collecting sneakers, building mechanical keyboards, and obsessing over her diva chihuahua, buttercup.

[SPEAKER_02]: And I just cannot say this enough, Susan is just an absolute bundle of sunshine.

[SPEAKER_02]: I had such a fantastic time hearing about her history and storytelling, which might not always be books, [SPEAKER_02]: When she got started writing, how Gilmore Girls influenced her to buy a house, and of course, everything that went into writing Julia songs and data ball.

[SPEAKER_02]: I also got to meet her on her book tour the week after we recorded this, and I swear she is even more magical in person.

[SPEAKER_02]: If you ever get an opportunity to hear her speak in person, I recommend jumping on the chance.

[SPEAKER_02]: And I'm just so excited on my birthday of all days to give you all the gift of hearing from Susan.

[SPEAKER_02]: So without further ado, here is Susan Lee.

[SPEAKER_02]: So when this episode airs, Julia Song is undetable.

[SPEAKER_02]: We'll have been out for a little while, but at the time of recording this, it's about to come out.

[SPEAKER_02]: You're about to leave on your book tour.

[SPEAKER_02]: Why are your expectations for a book tour for your first adult romance versus a YA romance?

[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, I hope it's pure chaos.

[SPEAKER_00]: No, I love going on tour.

[SPEAKER_00]: I love meeting my readers.

[SPEAKER_00]: I think what will be fun is actually being introduced to an entirely new set of readers.

[SPEAKER_00]: I think some of my obviously some of my YA readers will follow along, but I think that I'm new, which really as long as I dateable, I think I'm new to many people.

[SPEAKER_00]: So it'll be fun to be meeting some new people.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'm with some of my same friends that I I love to travel with my other friends that are always so kind and supportive and come on to earth me.

[SPEAKER_00]: I fear that they will not let me get away with not talking about myself.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, but I think that it's going to be so much fun.

[SPEAKER_00]: Also, I'm a big adult romance reader.

[SPEAKER_00]: So I'll kind of be amongst my people.

[SPEAKER_00]: So I'm really excited.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, and I love your YA romance.

[SPEAKER_02]: The romance rivalry, if y'all haven't read that one, I feel like Amagos fans would really eat that one up because they're in school and it's like enemies to lovers.

[SPEAKER_00]: I think that she's a reader, like Roy's, so yes.

[SPEAKER_02]: Of course, I love that one so much and she has like very specific goals for her life.

[SPEAKER_02]: So I feel like that one's a great one.

[SPEAKER_02]: So you were talking about how like you're a big adult romance reader.

[SPEAKER_02]: What was the transition for you from writing romance to writing adult?

[SPEAKER_02]: Like what made you want to do that?

[SPEAKER_00]: Honestly, I had never thought I was going to be a writer in the first place.

[SPEAKER_00]: I was just a real prolific reader.

[SPEAKER_00]: I was working in corporate America.

[SPEAKER_00]: I was an executive and human resources for some pretty prominent companies and reading was my joy.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I have always found that when you make your joy into something that's either commodified or [SPEAKER_00]: So maybe it comes your job, but it's always a little risky, so yeah, and I've got been like a writer growing up, but I had a real passion to tell stories and that's kind of how I got into it.

[SPEAKER_00]: In those first stories that I just happened to gravitate to were for younger people.

[SPEAKER_00]: I think I always thought that I would eventually write adult romance.

[SPEAKER_00]: In fact, when I signed with my agent, that was kind of the understanding is that I would dabble in both.

[SPEAKER_00]: But it feels both.

[SPEAKER_00]: like the stakes feel really high because I care very much about the readers of adult romance, but at the same time that the level of joy also is really high because I know that, you know, we're all just here to have a good time and I think that this book actually delivers on that.

[SPEAKER_00]: So yeah, yeah, no, I totally agree.

[SPEAKER_02]: I was like honestly like laughing out loud, gasping at this book.

[SPEAKER_02]: There's some of these scenes with her family that I'm just like completely tackling at them.

[SPEAKER_02]: singing at the table.

[SPEAKER_02]: I was like, I can visualize this so clearly.

[SPEAKER_02]: I need to see this as a movie, this would be like an excellent Netflix film, because you can just so see it clearly.

[SPEAKER_02]: It's just such a good time.

[SPEAKER_02]: I think that if you are someone who likes to have fun and you like joy, I think you really like this book.

[SPEAKER_02]: that.

[SPEAKER_02]: What's the, I guess, the mentality behind approaching a YA story versus an adult story, because now that you've done both, because I feel like Gilmore Girls kind of aligns in both of those ways.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, right.

[SPEAKER_02]: Telling kind of a young adult story alongside an adult story.

[SPEAKER_00]: Especially as a season's progress, you know it.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_00]: I would really hope that from my readers, especially the ones that [SPEAKER_00]: very much see themselves in my books that they will also grow as they're growing in their lives so they'll move along to and be able to find within my books things that relate to them.

[SPEAKER_00]: But I think with YA, there's a big responsibility to, okay, I want to say this in a way that is not controversial, but there are a lot of gatekeepers in YA.

[SPEAKER_00]: You know, there are parents and there are adults, teachers, librarians and then there are people who have nothing to do with children, but have very strong opinions about what children should and should be reading and for me, I really want to tell an authentic story for young people and it worries me when people aren't listening to what young people are trying to say and what young people want to read and the lives that they're living and the experiences that they're having.

[SPEAKER_00]: authentic to this and tell true stories that young people can relate to, all while being able to get around the gatekeepers of that makes sense so that these books can finally get in the hands of young readers.

[SPEAKER_00]: I also unapologetically, [SPEAKER_00]: Hope that my YA books will like cross over and transcend age and that there are you know there are many adults who love to read YA and I hope that this will also kind of just feed the things that they loved about reading like serides in and yes like back like as they were growing up I hope my adult readers who still love reading YA.

[SPEAKER_00]: you know, we'll find some joy in that too.

[SPEAKER_00]: So there's just a level of responsibility that comes with YA.

[SPEAKER_00]: In adult, I really, I think that there is so much more freedom in what we write, but at the same time, there are not many Korean-American romance writers right now, and so I want this to be for Korean-American women, but I also wanted to be for all women, [SPEAKER_00]: This is one of the things about Julia Sangas and Dadable that I found just so lovely as readers have been finding this book is I always say it's about the Korean immigrant multi-generational family and people will tell me, oh no, I'm not cream, but that's exactly how my family is to.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, the pressures to have it all and the pressures to get married by a certain age that's something that feels very universal for a lot of women.

[SPEAKER_00]: because society has put on us what they believe, the expectations of success look like.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so I really wanted to touch on that.

[SPEAKER_00]: And that's why I really have loved about the writing and don't romance.

[SPEAKER_00]: Just the freedom to explore these things that ultimately have become very common and universal truths and experience for women out there.

[SPEAKER_00]: I think you absolutely nailed that would be great.

[SPEAKER_02]: Thank you so much.

[SPEAKER_02]: Thank you so much.

[SPEAKER_02]: There's just this balance of, like you said, like I can see a lot of my own family and these people, who are like just so well-meaning, but just metaphors, but at the same time really respecting that this is very different from how my family is, and loving them all the same, and just seeing such, like, it's just such a warm, funny, invasive experience.

[SPEAKER_02]: I love to like be around their family and I just love it so so I'm actually so you you did that so well But I want to go back a little bit to what you were saying about like that you didn't expect to be a writer Gilmore girls came out in October 2000 what were you writing in the year 2000?

[SPEAKER_00]: I was not writing in the year 2000.

[SPEAKER_00]: I started writing in [SPEAKER_00]: 2018.

[SPEAKER_00]: Really?

[SPEAKER_02]: You so you weren't writing anything.

[SPEAKER_02]: No, no, no, never.

[SPEAKER_02]: But even like entire family family.

[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, I mean, okay.

[SPEAKER_00]: So fanfic.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yes.

[SPEAKER_00]: I was writing fanficion from a young age.

[SPEAKER_00]: But back when I was young, you know, fanfic.net, all of those things did not.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, they didn't exist.

[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, I think the really the most, when it finally kind of hit online was live journal was [SPEAKER_00]: I know.

[SPEAKER_00]: But when I was really good, I guess what I kind of found a groove in personal writing.

[SPEAKER_00]: I was writing Fick for Merther, which is Merlin and Arthur, and also Sherlock and Watson.

[SPEAKER_00]: So John Locke is another ship that I really loved.

[SPEAKER_00]: And then ultimately, I think where I found true joy and writing Fick for romance was six of crows, a casual marriage.

[SPEAKER_00]: Like I just, I love them.

[SPEAKER_00]: I was also a pretty big blogger of romance blogger, so I did a lot of romance reviews.

[SPEAKER_00]: In fact, I was reviewing and had a blog around the same time that Adriana Herrera had a blog as well.

[SPEAKER_00]: She was a little bit of your tour.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, and so we knew each other back in the days of reading her own bloggers.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I know that's so fun.

[SPEAKER_00]: I would say that was around 2012.

[SPEAKER_00]: Because when we were doing that, yeah, the boat neither of us had been writing yet.

[SPEAKER_02]: So, but you were like thinking about it.

[SPEAKER_02]: It was simmering.

[SPEAKER_02]: You were writing about romance.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_02]: See, you've been writing, thinking.

[SPEAKER_00]: I think some of you have been early on from the 2000s is that we're storing stories in my head.

[SPEAKER_00]: Like, we might be funny if or, you know, one of the things that is so wonderful about Gilmore Girls and I'm sure we'll get into it is, it was actually one of the first representations of a Korean-American family with Lane's family that were like kind of like stereotyped Korean.

[SPEAKER_00]: They were actually very, it's just very refreshing to see.

[SPEAKER_00]: And when you could see something like that [SPEAKER_00]: In my mind, I was like, oh, I could think of 10 other stories.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'd love to tell about families like this.

[SPEAKER_00]: I found real inspiration.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I was storing stories in my head of things that I would want to be writing down the road.

[SPEAKER_02]: I think that's writing, though.

[SPEAKER_02]: Like, as a writer myself, I'm thinking about writing.

[SPEAKER_02]: I'm like, I wrote today because I thought about it.

[SPEAKER_02]: Thank you for that.

[SPEAKER_00]: I think you two are invited to that, because I do a lot of thinking.

[SPEAKER_00]: A lot of my friends are thinking.

[SPEAKER_02]: What is writing without thinking?

[SPEAKER_02]: So it's like, I can't sit at my computer until I've had my full thought process.

[SPEAKER_02]: So you've been a writer since the end of the sentence.

[SPEAKER_02]: When you started writing in 2018, it was YA.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yes.

[SPEAKER_02]: And what was the story that came to you that was like, oh, this is definitely through the perspective of a teenager.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, my first book that I wrote that did not sell.

[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, I don't even think I finished this book.

[SPEAKER_00]: It was called Sweet 16 Superhero.

[SPEAKER_00]: And it was about a girl who turned 16 and everything that she, a Korean girl, everything that she had kind of been made fun of as a kid turned into a superpower for her.

[SPEAKER_00]: So, Koreans get a lot of Koreans get made fun of or I did when I was growing up for having a flat nose.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so she had extra centuries of, like, you know, for smell.

[SPEAKER_00]: And she was short with short legs, but she, her when she turned 16, she could suddenly run at like superhuman speed.

[SPEAKER_00]: And it was just, she didn't know what was happening.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I think I was like trying a little too hard.

[SPEAKER_00]: Ultimately, I was trying to, obviously, write a message that the things that we were teased about as kids that doesn't mean just Koreans, any kids.

[SPEAKER_00]: things that ultimately, you know, they mean nothing as children and it's something that we can totally own and be empowered by as we grow up.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so that was like kind of the original stories.

[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, in the beginning, the only reason I wanted to get into writing is because I ultimately was thinking, [SPEAKER_00]: I want to change the world like I just I want to change the way that the world is and I was working in corporate america and this is one of the things I write in my have written in my bio I was working in corporate america and I just thought I had like all these best intentions of making the jobs I worked at the best place to work for people where people, you know, if you're going to spend eight, ten hours a day somewhere that it was going to feel worth it.

[SPEAKER_00]: but around the time of 2018 and really when COVID hit and Black Lives Matter and I was really the world was on edge, I just realized that the amount of impact that I could make in corporate America was so much smaller than I believed to be true.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I wanted to tell stories that we're going to change the world.

[SPEAKER_00]: And that could simply be through representation and love.

[SPEAKER_00]: It didn't have to be these epic fantasies, which I just didn't know that it was capable of writing.

[SPEAKER_00]: It could just be people who'd never seen themselves on public covers, or people who'd never been the main character of a love story, or tackling things that we don't normally see in romance.

[SPEAKER_00]: That's kind of what really inspired me to move in that direction.

[SPEAKER_00]: and the kind of books that I wanted to be writing.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I love the perspective of like when you were in corporate America that you wanted to make it the best place.

[SPEAKER_02]: That's like you were perfect to be an HR, like I feel like that's exactly where you were at.

[SPEAKER_02]: But you're so right that like sending the message through like means of joy is such like a big...

[SPEAKER_02]: effort of that that I think that like my world has expanded through reading romance.

[SPEAKER_02]: Like I of course was like so invested in people and like the books that I was reading were really serious but I think that reading romance really is what has helped me to be more empathetic to be more understanding and like going into that that was like the best decision that I could have had.

[SPEAKER_02]: It was to read romance and I feel that about yours too.

[SPEAKER_00]: I love that.

[SPEAKER_00]: Thank you.

[SPEAKER_02]: Was this like a pre-COVID that you, because I know the lot of people in the COVID times, the pandemic, the lockdown, if you will, was when they started getting serious about writing, because we had all this time.

[SPEAKER_02]: Was it you had started just before that?

[SPEAKER_00]: I had started before, as I said, I was a blogger, so I was really into the romance community online and I was meeting other authors and other readers and [SPEAKER_00]: At the time, they really weren't, you know, it was, it was just as we were starting to have these really difficult conversations about representation and diversity in publishing as a whole romance specifically for the ones that I was engaged in and it's at that point.

[SPEAKER_00]: where I'm like, oh, I just would really love to try this.

[SPEAKER_00]: I've never taken a writing class, I've never thought of myself as a writer, but I want to see what this could be like, and honestly for a good maybe year or two, I took a lot of courses, like online courses, I went to some [SPEAKER_00]: and learned about writing.

[SPEAKER_00]: But the whole time, fully the main message was, you can't prepare yourselves in the way that you think you can, you've got to just get in and start writing.

[SPEAKER_00]: So, I had decided I will just start.

[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know what a story looks like, I don't know what beats are, I don't know what craft is, but I've read a lot, and I know what kinds of romance books like.

[SPEAKER_00]: interest me and are compulsive reading for me.

[SPEAKER_00]: So, you know, I think probably the first few things that I started writing might have even felt like fan fiction of books I love.

[SPEAKER_00]: You know, it's like romance books I love because I was just kind of following the way that I feel when I was reading like Susan Elizabeth Phillips-Romcoms or the way that, you know, Kristen Ashley books the way her characters made me feel and so that's kind of how I approached starting to write and it was really just dabbling but I don't do anything half asked to be honest [SPEAKER_00]: Like if I'm gonna do this I want to be successful and you know, I just kind of like dug my heels in and Went about trying to finish a book and really the first book I finished was the book right before soulmates So I finished a book got an agent from this book and then we went on and sub the book did not sell But while I was waiting I wrote soulmates and soulmates was my first book and once I got that book tale I was like okay, this gives me permission everyone says don't quit your day job [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, so it gave me permission to do this.

[SPEAKER_00]: And yeah, it's been the best choice I've ever made.

[SPEAKER_00]: I feel very lucky too.

[SPEAKER_00]: And they do say that about publishing a lot of it is the right timing and a lot of it is luck.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I just got very lucky because it was around the time, especially in YA when we were having these diversity conversations.

[SPEAKER_00]: And we wanted to see more diverse characters on covers and in books, and BTS was just starting to hit big worldwide.

[SPEAKER_00]: So it was just really good luck in timing that I think that when I sold so much I sold it in 2020 and it released in 2022.

[SPEAKER_02]: That's amazing and I love going back to that you were feeling like you were writing fan fiction of your favorite authors and I think that that is something that I've heard from so many writers that like that's how they found their voice and that's how they found like they're like matching their taste to their style.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yes of like as you were writing you were like well this definitely feels like someone else and this isn't me.

[SPEAKER_02]: Girl, I was way before my time, ready for the next time, apparently.

[SPEAKER_02]: I know, and I was like, when you were describing that, I was like, wait, did they steal us from you?

[SPEAKER_02]: Because like, my niece and nephew who are for and to, like, forget Frozen, they are K-pop demon hunter obsessed.

[SPEAKER_02]: And I'm going to see them next week, so I needed to be like, indoctrinated into this.

[SPEAKER_02]: So I knew to know the characters and the songs in order to converse with them.

[SPEAKER_02]: And so when you were describing that, I was like, wait.

[SPEAKER_00]: I am pretty amazed how that has really transcended age and background and like just honestly sometimes coming coming from like a cream perspective like when I first watched I'm like, oh, I love it.

[SPEAKER_00]: But I was actually surprised that this was the one like I always try to wonder, I'm not in like archeologist or anything.

[SPEAKER_00]: I don't think about society as much, but I do wonder what it was about [SPEAKER_00]: this one movie that resonated so deeply and so broadly across age, ethnicity, background, culture.

[SPEAKER_00]: I used to think this about BTS too because there were have been many K-pop bands before BTS and I'm like, why that?

[SPEAKER_00]: Like, you know, I just never understood and don't get me wrong.

[SPEAKER_00]: I love BTS.

[SPEAKER_00]: I love K-pop demon hunters, but like I'm always so curious and amazing.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, what?

[SPEAKER_00]: Like, makes people love it so deeply that they're willing to [SPEAKER_00]: into something that is nothing like that they usually watch or listen to.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I mean, saying because of my niece, she was like completely obsessed with let it go, but she has sensed let it go.

[SPEAKER_02]: If you turn on a song, she says play golden.

[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, golden.

[SPEAKER_02]: And she'll just say it over and over again until you play golden.

[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know if you know the story, but the woman who sings golden behind him, she actually is, she was what we call a K-pop trainee, someone who wanted to be in K-pop.

[SPEAKER_00]: never made it.

[SPEAKER_00]: She wrote songs for some of the biggest k-pop bands.

[SPEAKER_00]: She just never had her moment.

[SPEAKER_00]: She never was chosen to be in a band that was going to break out in debut.

[SPEAKER_00]: And the fact that she now has like a number one single and from the black and the color.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I just feel like it's such [SPEAKER_00]: a big, it's just in her thirties, it's like such a thing to celebrate.

[SPEAKER_00]: I just, I love her story.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, but when you were talking about that, I immediately was like, oh my gosh.

[SPEAKER_02]: So maybe I was actually preparing for this.

[SPEAKER_02]: Bye watching this last night.

[SPEAKER_02]: Which is so perfect.

[SPEAKER_02]: But you were talking about being like a romance reader predominantly.

[SPEAKER_02]: Rory shelves were filled with classics.

[SPEAKER_02]: What was your reading journey like from your younger years to now?

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, you know what's so funny is I love gumma girls, but I never related to Roy.

[SPEAKER_00]: I was not here.

[SPEAKER_00]: I was not in Roy is not my favorite character by any means either.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, and it's funny.

[SPEAKER_00]: I know so many people feel so deeply about her journey.

[SPEAKER_00]: You know, both in her life and in her romantic journey, I was just never as interested, but I it's mainly because I did not relate to her.

[SPEAKER_00]: I was not a reader growing up and I think partially that is an immigrant experience, you know, it's like my parents never were, you know, readers of like classic things that I would find and like where kids were reading like.

[SPEAKER_00]: babysitter's club or sweet valley high.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'd never read any of those things.

[SPEAKER_00]: In fact, like when I was younger through my teenage years, I, my free time was taken up by soap uppers.

[SPEAKER_00]: I was watching like, oh, oh, I like to live general hospital days of our lives, young in the rest, less like I watched everything.

[SPEAKER_00]: And for, you know, a good decade plus of my life, those stories were so ingrained in me and my kind of experience as a youth in America.

[SPEAKER_00]: And the background, my parents were always watching K-Dramas.

[SPEAKER_00]: So it's kind of funny, I think that my books are kind of over the top and wacky and zany in a way that, like, sometimes, like, people will say, oh, this is not relatable.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's too, like, you know, cringier, whatever, and I'm like, look, I watched some of the craziest stuff on TV.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_02]: No one feedback from the dead in this.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yes.

[SPEAKER_00]: This is not crazy at all.

[SPEAKER_00]: Exactly.

[SPEAKER_00]: And that is, like, not the on the realm of what I did.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_00]: The next book.

[SPEAKER_00]: so that really kind of started just my interest in the a story arc.

[SPEAKER_00]: It wasn't until I was well into my late 20s.

[SPEAKER_00]: I moved away from home to San Francisco where I did not know a single person moved for a job.

[SPEAKER_00]: So I'm living by myself.

[SPEAKER_00]: I had no friends.

[SPEAKER_00]: I was starting a career in HR.

[SPEAKER_00]: Nobody wants to hang out with you to our person.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_00]: I just started [SPEAKER_00]: reading, I think I picked up books that we would now call women's fiction, but back then was called Chicklet, and I was reading like all the shopaholics books and books by Beth Harbison, and all of these books were about these single women who were finding themselves in their lives, and there was a romance that was interesting, actually probably the most interesting part of these books, but they resonated with me in this time, and [SPEAKER_00]: that kind of ultimately led to me being open to reading more in my free time and then my sister, my older sister who is a prolific romance reader.

[SPEAKER_00]: She reads hundreds of books a year and really has for for a very life.

[SPEAKER_00]: She's an early reader.

[SPEAKER_00]: She started recommending some romance books to me.

[SPEAKER_00]: and we started reading them together.

[SPEAKER_00]: She was, I had ultimately moved to New York.

[SPEAKER_00]: She was in California, and this was kind of our way as adults of connecting.

[SPEAKER_00]: We were reading books by this author Christian Ashley.

[SPEAKER_00]: They were like motorcycle club books, and all these things are good.

[SPEAKER_00]: And we were just, she was just getting me into, she was getting me really into dystopian and just really into romance until I became a 200-book a year reader to romance.

[SPEAKER_02]: Did she love that, like, digital, does your sister, like, thrilled?

[SPEAKER_02]: Because, like, thinking of, like, if my younger sister, like, introducing her, that to her and she got to the level that you did?

[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, yeah.

[SPEAKER_00]: Well, she is my biggest supporter as a writer for sure.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_00]: But yeah, when I first started reading, it was just fun because we could talk about things.

[SPEAKER_00]: She was so passionate about it.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I get, like, I'm lucky when you guys were talking about K-pop, demon hunters and your family.

[SPEAKER_00]: When I get into something, I don't do anything.

[SPEAKER_00]: Like, I am, yeah.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so we were just reading and sharing like recommendations.

[SPEAKER_00]: We had a blog originally where the two of us were talking about the book that was we'd share a book and we'd read it would talk about it together.

[SPEAKER_00]: And yeah, so we she's what who really got me into romance.

[SPEAKER_00]: And it's funny because we've kind of taken with separated in that she very much reads like paranormal fantasy romance now.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I'm really a contemporary romance reader.

[SPEAKER_00]: So sometimes we'll talk about books.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'm like, yeah, never read that one.

[SPEAKER_00]: But everyone's in a well, we'll connect, you know, it's like, yeah, so.

[SPEAKER_00]: That's kind of how I mean, I did not get it into reading into it well in my 20s and then in my 30s I was just consuming romance at like it's just an epic pace and that's how robots readers are you know, we're so voracious that was that was me from then till now.

[SPEAKER_02]: Now, I love that so much.

[SPEAKER_02]: I find that that's really, really common because I was reading a lot as a teenager.

[SPEAKER_02]: I was reading like YA romances, like you mentioned Sarah Dessent.

[SPEAKER_02]: She was like my idol now that she's releasing like another book next year.

[SPEAKER_02]: I'm like so so excited.

[SPEAKER_01]: I did.

[SPEAKER_02]: But like I stopped when I went to college because I was like, I have to be a serious reader now.

[SPEAKER_02]: I only read Pulitzer Prize, like Book Award winners, [SPEAKER_02]: They have to be like the best of the best, but then like I was just feeling kind of sad during the pandemic And I just picked up a romance book that someone on TikTok I was like, it was B-tree Rameleon, Riosic love it.

[SPEAKER_02]: What don't what don't strive to lose?

[SPEAKER_02]: And then I read a hundred books a year because I just love it So much and it's so joyful and like people are like how do you do that and I was like what do you do with your time that you don't like Yeah, I it's just boggles my mind like I mean there's plenty of people who don't read like no judge [SPEAKER_02]: But it's like, it's not like I feel like superior because like, oh, I read.

[SPEAKER_02]: It's just that like I don't understand how you don't is my my mentality about it.

[SPEAKER_00]: And now that I found like audiobooks and I listen to audiobooks at like two X.

[SPEAKER_00]: Like I can't see a book so fast and I can't stop it.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I'm just like, it is, yeah, I mean, I just, I feel like there's so much to offer and be had from the reading experience.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I wish I wasn't earlier reader, but I'm really glad for my journey because I also know that, you know, I, when I first saw my, it's my first book, one of the things that I said is I want this book to be for people who read a hundred books a year or for people who this is the first book they've ever picked up, I wanted to be so easy, I wanted to be easy read and I ultimately had a lot of readers, especially youth readers, young readers who had never read a book before or [SPEAKER_00]: were never read something outside of school.

[SPEAKER_00]: And they had picked, in it, that to me felt very satisfying because I was that person too.

[SPEAKER_02]: My next question is, Roy's main obsession is a teenager was getting to Harvard.

[SPEAKER_02]: Lens was becoming a drummer.

[SPEAKER_02]: What was your main focus as a teenager?

[SPEAKER_02]: What were your obsessed with?

[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, good.

[SPEAKER_00]: OK, so this is going to just sound so cheesy.

[SPEAKER_00]: Because I didn't have a profession that I wanted.

[SPEAKER_00]: I wanted to change the world.

[SPEAKER_00]: That was like, I have a tattoo.

[SPEAKER_00]: I have a tramp-stamp-tap-tap-tap.

[SPEAKER_00]: on the back of, you know, my lower back is a globe and there's a sword through it.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I got this tattoo and I was 18.

[SPEAKER_00]: And honestly, I just believed, and I'll tell you a little bit of the back story, but I just really believe I was made to take the world.

[SPEAKER_00]: And it's funny because I'm the first person in my family, my immigrant family to be born in America.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so [SPEAKER_00]: So in my dad's eyes way back in the day is that I was the only one who could be president of the United States because I was born here.

[SPEAKER_00]: I, there were just so many things that only I, as a member of our family could do.

[SPEAKER_00]: So my parents have always just spoken life into me.

[SPEAKER_00]: They've always spoken like possibility into me.

[SPEAKER_00]: Now they wanted that possibility to be me being a doctor or first that they've always got to be good at.

[SPEAKER_00]: Or the president, it seems.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_02]: Which I actually think he would be much better.

[SPEAKER_00]: This is ultimately why became the type of person that like, if I'm going to do something, I'm going to give it everything and I want to reach a level of success.

[SPEAKER_00]: I did it in my career and I kind of reach the pinnacle of what I wanted to be doing or how far I could go in these roles.

[SPEAKER_00]: And where that no longer served me or no longer felt like I was making an impact.

[SPEAKER_00]: I pivoted in my life.

[SPEAKER_00]: And even as an author, I just, I feel like I want to be telling stories of possibility.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I want to reach as many readers as possible who that will resonate with.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, and you know, especially with the romance rivalry, when we were going through just what, you know, what we are going through today is just really hard times in our world.

[SPEAKER_00]: my one desire for that book was to bring joy to people and the amount of people saying that they just had so much fun reading it.

[SPEAKER_00]: Like to me, like yeah, I'm hitting like the pinnacle of the things that I want to be doing and I want to keep challenging myself.

[SPEAKER_00]: So ultimately I just wanted to be a world tanger as a kid.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_00]: What happened to me?

[SPEAKER_00]: Yes, I would.

[UNKNOWN]: Who wants to be like that?

[SPEAKER_00]: Who wants to be like that?

[SPEAKER_00]: Who wants to be like that?

[SPEAKER_00]: Who wants to be like that?

[SPEAKER_00]: Who wants to be like that?

[SPEAKER_00]: I love that friend.

[SPEAKER_02]: That is absolutely not true.

[SPEAKER_02]: But I just love hearing with your parents like we're so like motivating because I feel like that could have gone like one of two ways where it's like so much pressure.

[SPEAKER_02]: Like you're like, oh my gosh.

[SPEAKER_02]: Like, do I need to be like the first president who is a medical doctor?

[SPEAKER_02]: Like, you know, like, [SPEAKER_02]: But I just love that they put that into use that you could do anything because like I told you before we got on I feel like your presence on social media is just so joyful and supportive and uplifting because I like found authors through following you on social [SPEAKER_02]: like I'll go through your stories.

[SPEAKER_02]: You'll share someone I'll click in and I'm like, I love this person.

[SPEAKER_02]: Follow them, get their book, read them.

[SPEAKER_02]: And I just feel like you as a, I guess like, as a peer in publishing, you are always so supportive, everyone.

[SPEAKER_02]: You just seem like just such a bright light.

[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, it's so kind.

[SPEAKER_02]: Thank you.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, of course, because we're reflecting back on to like you and HR, like I'm thinking of like the energy that you give off now in that I'm like I bet like some of those conversations were really hard to have but having season on the other end of it was just wonderful more that's very nice thank you [SPEAKER_02]: So I have a little game as a loose term before we get to talking about Gilmore Girls.

[SPEAKER_02]: Okay.

[SPEAKER_02]: I'm dying to hear about your house.

[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.

[SPEAKER_02]: Everything keeps on about that.

[SPEAKER_02]: I thought of nothing else.

[SPEAKER_02]: But it is called dateable or undatable.

[SPEAKER_01]: Okay.

[SPEAKER_02]: Give you a scenario from your book or from Gilmore Girls about a date.

[SPEAKER_02]: And you're gonna tell me if that is dateable or undatable.

[SPEAKER_02]: I love it.

[SPEAKER_02]: Your date sits on the same side of the table as you.

[SPEAKER_02]: Uh, not first dateable, but dateable.

[SPEAKER_02]: Dateable.

[SPEAKER_02]: This was happened to Rory on her first date and season four.

[SPEAKER_02]: And this was like, oh, no, go.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yes, only that's it.

[SPEAKER_02]: It depends on the, at the pants on the vibes.

[SPEAKER_02]: Your date orders for you without asking your preference.

[SPEAKER_02]: And dateable, absolutely not.

[SPEAKER_02]: Absolutely.

[SPEAKER_02]: When that happened to Julia, I was like, no, not.

[SPEAKER_02]: No, absolutely not.

[SPEAKER_02]: Your date insists on picking you up instead of meeting you there.

[SPEAKER_00]: Um, well, and this is a weird world.

[SPEAKER_00]: I don't mind it, but if I said no, and he said no, I will, then I'm like, yeah, no.

[SPEAKER_02]: For me, I like need a way out.

[SPEAKER_02]: So like, I'm like, don't trap me there.

[SPEAKER_00]: Also, I don't love awkward car conversation.

[SPEAKER_00]: I hate small talks.

[SPEAKER_00]: So like, that also would kind of like, oh, I don't want to get stuck in a car there.

[SPEAKER_02]: You know, your date sets up an intro to K pop school in his backyard for you.

[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, honestly, I would, I would go.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, dateable.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, yeah.

[SPEAKER_02]: It depends.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_02]: It depends on, I think it'd be dateable, questionable, until it rifle.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_02]: The situation in the book ultimately on dateable.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_02]: But like if he was like, you know, a mystery, like suddenly we're in a fanfiction.

[SPEAKER_02]: He's basically famous.

[SPEAKER_02]: You get there.

[SPEAKER_02]: It's BTS.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_02]: Sure.

[SPEAKER_02]: And it's one of those.

[SPEAKER_02]: I'm like, oh my gosh.

[SPEAKER_02]: your date reveals they've saved a horoscope you gave them eight years ago because they've always been in love with you.

[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, I'm indatable.

[SPEAKER_02]: Borderline stalker, but we talked about that on the podcast recently that it's like, is that that's dateable because I am also attracted to him and be find that very endearing.

[SPEAKER_02]: But if this was like someone who was like on the fence about, I think I'd be like, [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, for eight years.

[SPEAKER_02]: Eight years.

[SPEAKER_02]: Wow.

[SPEAKER_02]: I don't know anything about that.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_02]: Wow.

[SPEAKER_02]: Exactly.

[SPEAKER_02]: Your date.

[SPEAKER_02]: Remember that you don't like vegetables.

[SPEAKER_02]: It helps you try to find something you like.

[SPEAKER_00]: So dateable.

[SPEAKER_02]: I underlined that I highlighted that.

[SPEAKER_02]: I put a heart next to it.

[SPEAKER_02]: I was like, hey, what a little dream you are.

[SPEAKER_02]: I'm so good.

[SPEAKER_02]: He's such a good guy.

[SPEAKER_02]: Your date leaves the date when they say I love you.

[SPEAKER_02]: And you don't say it back.

[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, Dean, I look, I am, okay, I find this slightly attractive because, like, I kind of love the notion of him liking me more.

[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, but I don't want to feel like he's going to make me feel a certain way.

[SPEAKER_00]: Like, I have to lean out.

[SPEAKER_00]: So, [SPEAKER_00]: I honestly feel in this particular situation, I felt very sad for Dean, so I'm going to say date of all.

[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_02]: I know.

[SPEAKER_02]: I know.

[SPEAKER_02]: We go back and forth on that because it's like he's a teenage boy.

[SPEAKER_02]: Like what is he supposed to do?

[SPEAKER_00]: He's still so cute.

[SPEAKER_00]: Oh yeah.

[SPEAKER_02]: Like a a 32 year old would probably handle it a lot differently.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_00]: True.

[SPEAKER_02]: Like if you really loved her, you'd probably just like wait till she was ready.

[SPEAKER_02]: But like [SPEAKER_00]: I get it, we get it.

[SPEAKER_00]: If it was a temper tantrum, no, it does red flags everywhere.

[SPEAKER_00]: If it's hurt feelings and he just doesn't, he's got deep feelings and not sure how they'll like deal with them.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_00]: I would give him some space.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_02]: Going on to Gilmore Girls, I've been so excited to talk to you about this.

[SPEAKER_02]: Because when I mentioned this, you were like, I love Gilmour Girl.

[SPEAKER_02]: It's like, as why I bought my house and I was like, back up, back up.

[SPEAKER_02]: We've skipped so many steps here, but before we get into that, I want to know what your history is with the show.

[SPEAKER_02]: Like, when did you start watching it?

[SPEAKER_02]: How'd you get into it?

[SPEAKER_00]: So, you know what's funny is, I've watched it all along, but I don't think I realized that I was like, [SPEAKER_00]: what it meant to be a fan of Gilmour Girls until much later in my life when people were.

[SPEAKER_00]: You know, when podcasts were happening and when everyone was, you know, saying their book was a Gilmour Girls, and I was just like, wow, people really, the same thing with Gossip Girl, I'm like, wow, people really love this show.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I was like, well, I must have loved it, because I watched the whole thing.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I clearly have opinions about stuff.

[SPEAKER_00]: So I watched it.

[SPEAKER_00]: Probably, I don't know if I watched all in succession.

[SPEAKER_00]: I think I probably watched the later [SPEAKER_00]: At least the first four or five seasons I watched as it was on.

[SPEAKER_02]: Did you watch it like on WB or like, yeah, see family?

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, WB.

[SPEAKER_00]: And then me, I think the later seasons I caught up with on a basically family like on Saturdays and Sundays.

[SPEAKER_00]: Like I would just watch Marathons.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I felt like I had strong opinions, obviously, about like all the characters.

[SPEAKER_00]: But I just never would have said, oh, it's my favorite show or that I'm a fan.

[SPEAKER_00]: But it has had a big impact in my life as we will talk about.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, and I have very strong opinions on every guy that Roya is dated.

[SPEAKER_00]: I obviously feel strongly about Lurela and Luke.

[SPEAKER_00]: It meant a lot to see Lane's family, you know, and honestly as an old as I've been older, I feel really the most strongly about Emily.

[SPEAKER_00]: I think I just feel like, yeah, like a Lurela.

[SPEAKER_00]: Lurela is parents.

[SPEAKER_00]: you know, I misunderstood them when I was younger or watching it earlier on and really I'm not it's parent now but I just as just as an adult I just feel strongly about them being more even killed than everyone else on the show.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, no, we agree because like obviously when I was watching this year, when I was younger, I saw a watching it was like 12 and it became obsessed.

[SPEAKER_02]: Like I wanted to be Rory, like that sort of thing.

[SPEAKER_02]: And I was obsessed with her storylines.

[SPEAKER_02]: But as we as I've gotten older, I'm like, oh, more or less a lot more unreasonable.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_02]: As for rewatching it, we're like, oh, we're not team Lorelie in this.

[SPEAKER_02]: Like we're team Emily.

[SPEAKER_02]: Like Emily is approaching this issue.

[SPEAKER_02]: Have her faults.

[SPEAKER_02]: She does.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yes.

[SPEAKER_02]: Does she go a little too far all the time?

[SPEAKER_02]: but there's sometimes when Laura is talking to her, I'm like, my gosh.

[SPEAKER_02]: Why are you being like this?

[SPEAKER_02]: Like, you should be more reasonable.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, yeah.

[SPEAKER_00]: I agree with that.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I think I'm definitely older than you are.

[SPEAKER_00]: And when I was watching Gilmour Gers originally, I was already like kind of [SPEAKER_00]: in my adulthood, so I think this is also what Rory didn't resonate with me as much, and in fact I thought she was really a little petulant at times and it would frustrate me and it would make me want Laura like to be like a more strong-handed mother, and I think maybe, I think it's really the combination of Laura's mom and dad together that kind of create a really well-balanced character.

[SPEAKER_00]: has her own issues, but like I think just where you are in age and your stage in life typically I think probably will drive who you're relating to the most in the show and I love that they have someone for everyone so yeah I think so too because like just really just depending on who I'm talking to or who you're watching it with I know a lot of like married couples who start watching it together they're immediately like drawn to Emily and Richard and they're like [SPEAKER_02]: That will be us in the future, or like me when I was younger, obsessed with Mori, obsessed with her boyfriend, was like team Logan so hard that I was like, I was like, I'll ask you who you were.

[SPEAKER_02]: That was like my world when I was 14.

[SPEAKER_02]: Wow.

[SPEAKER_02]: I was Logan Hansberger.

[SPEAKER_02]: I like, like Averyne, she released a book called Poison Divey, which is basically like Logan Roy, like in their college years, and I was like, I like had a panic attack.

[SPEAKER_02]: I was like, oh my gosh, this is everything I would have wanted when I was 15.

[SPEAKER_02]: in fan fiction of course.

[SPEAKER_02]: But like as I've gotten older, like recently we've had episodes talking about like in the revival and in season 7, we call him a loser yaka, because he just he becomes kind of a loser.

[SPEAKER_02]: But like if you had told me that when I was younger, would have fought against death.

[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, when you're younger, don't you want the rich boy who can kind of like, you know, so charming.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, that's funny.

[SPEAKER_00]: I was kind of like, I was, because I do remember Marty, boring Marty.

[SPEAKER_02]: Of course, boring Marty.

[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, boring Marty is like, oh, [SPEAKER_02]: Really?

[SPEAKER_00]: I'm like, you know Roy should have been with Boring Marty.

[SPEAKER_00]: See that I think that she would have broken him.

[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, yeah.

[SPEAKER_00]: That's that's fair.

[SPEAKER_00]: That's fair.

[SPEAKER_00]: I also obviously love matured Jess later.

[SPEAKER_00]: Jess revival Jess.

[SPEAKER_00]: I know.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_02]: It's like what those like huge arms and I just love emotionally.

[SPEAKER_00]: Well, it just became that man.

[SPEAKER_00]: I love that.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I mean, all the younger guys, I mean, obviously they're, they're perfect YA characters, but at the end of the day, it's like, who would I want her to be with, like, you know, in the long run?

[SPEAKER_00]: I would just want more stable.

[SPEAKER_02]: You would hope that someone more stable would help stabilize her in some way.

[SPEAKER_02]: But like, yeah, like, I think that like by the end of the series, like obviously we'll always be team Logan in my heart because I couldn't do that to teenage me, like a feeling to be betraying her.

[SPEAKER_02]: But I think ultimately at the end of it, I'm just team Rory finding someone like a therapist.

[SPEAKER_00]: Mm-hmm.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's kind of like catniss in hunger games.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's like, you know, we can say Peter Gale, but I think to the day, catniss needed to be by ourselves.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, she knew to the trauma fair, but yeah, exactly.

[SPEAKER_00]: So it's kind of like, you know, that's the same with Rory.

[SPEAKER_00]: That girl needed just to find herself.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_02]: You talked about having really big opinions about Luke and Laura lie.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_02]: What is what's going on there?

[SPEAKER_00]: Well, I very much love them.

[SPEAKER_00]: So, you know, I mean, I love them.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I will always ship them.

[SPEAKER_00]: I feel like Luke could have done better.

[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, it's the more life was just not, you know, she, her world is Rory and I don't know that she ever really kind of grew up like, I don't know.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I mean, she's just a complicated character, but I love what he offered her just in terms of stability really like a good foundation.

[SPEAKER_02]: I think that sometimes with Luke, he reminds me a little bit of Tay in the sense that like, it's like the competency.

[SPEAKER_02]: Of like, he can come over to her house and assess it for us, termites.

[SPEAKER_02]: He can like fix the oven in the kitchen.

[SPEAKER_02]: Like why can't he do that?

[SPEAKER_02]: I don't know, but he can.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I bet you Luke has really good our veins, too.

[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, he's got, he's got him covered up with the flannel, but like, I bet that he does.

[SPEAKER_00]: He rolled those in a couple times.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_02]: He's, he's making the hop-ah, like, of course, he's got to be.

[SPEAKER_02]: And I think that something that him and Sam and Common is like, they want the best for other people, put themselves second as a result.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_02]: Don't always communicate that very well.

[SPEAKER_02]: True.

[SPEAKER_02]: And so like, as I was reading it, I was like, I really see this connection between the two of them.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_00]: Also, I feel like both of them are very satisfied with the simple life.

[SPEAKER_00]: they're not the types that need more, you know, like they, they can really have happiness in a, in a, in a simplistic way.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I love that.

[SPEAKER_00]: I find that very attractive to be honest.

[SPEAKER_02]: We were of course we're talking about Lane and like seeing her and the representation of her was that who you immediately were drawn to when you start watching it.

[SPEAKER_00]: No, because I was nothing like Lane, but what I love about it is it was like equally stereotypical, but also a little bit irreverent.

[SPEAKER_00]: Like it was like in a sense that like of a Korean American family, I actually love that it was very much representation of a Korean American family versus a Korean family.

[SPEAKER_00]: So like, you know, not to get any political or religious here, but her family is [SPEAKER_00]: known to go deep into like faith and religion like to the point where it's like their whole identity It's I just thought it was so funny when they first wrecked like introduce them a 7th day I've had just I just laughed.

[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know.

[SPEAKER_00]: It was just funny that they were a religion that they really you know Related themselves to and I love that she was kind of like yeah [SPEAKER_00]: I am not going to do what everyone expects me to do.

[SPEAKER_00]: I want to be in a band and very, you know, like, my band made.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I'm just like, I loved her like that.

[SPEAKER_00]: But yeah, I just, uh, I just loved seeing that.

[SPEAKER_00]: In fact, it's better, despite the fact that they're none of them are Korean, it's actually better representation than even something like fresh off the boat, which also none of them were, I mean, I think maybe just a couple of them actors were Korean.

[SPEAKER_00]: But I loved seeing the way that Gilmar girls showed a Korean family, just thought they were really funny.

[SPEAKER_02]: You said that you did some preparation for this, which was like my dream, you said you brought out some of your favorite episodes.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I did.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_00]: So I went through and I was like trying to go through all the different episodes and remember what my favorite ones were.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so one of my favorites was it's titled at season three episode nine titled a deep-fried Korean Thanksgiving.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's when they had to go to all the different things, giving.

[SPEAKER_00]: I just thought it was so fun because it just shows you that everyone is different.

[SPEAKER_00]: You know, it's like one's holiday and it's just vastly different and it was just really it hit me as we're hitting the end of year holidays and like that was a really fun when I loved season four episode 22 raincoats and recipes Yeah, with yay Laura lion Luke.

[SPEAKER_00]: It was like their pivotal moment, but it was also what I call my breakup with Roy in this episode.

[SPEAKER_00]: It was like where I was just like I'm kind of [SPEAKER_00]: over her.

[SPEAKER_00]: Well, what could she have done that would have made you break up with her?

[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, I you know, it's like I feel like I don't know.

[SPEAKER_00]: I think we tolerated a lot from her up until this point and also it's so interesting the dynamic of them having her misbehaving this way in the episode where it was Luke and Laura lies like you don't even mean it was a moment.

[SPEAKER_00]: Laura couldn't have their moment because yeah [SPEAKER_00]: And so that was, yeah, so I call it my break up with Rory, but also yay little rely on Luke.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I think that that's that's probably your soap opera days coming forward.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yes, that's like you love that.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yes, and my last one is season six episode 13 Friday and it's all right for fighting, which I just think is just such a wonderful reminds me kind of of the family dynamic in Julia song, but it's like it's so good watching family drama play out.

[SPEAKER_00]: And they did a way that was both angsty and hilarious.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I've actually seen this episode multiple times.

[SPEAKER_00]: I think I've rewatched this episode before.

[SPEAKER_00]: And as I said, I really leveraged an Emily.

[SPEAKER_00]: So I loved seeing an episode kind of circled around them.

[SPEAKER_00]: But I loved it.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, they're Friday night dinner.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, this one was fine at the end.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, so good.

[SPEAKER_02]: So good.

[SPEAKER_02]: Two of your favorites were they were directed by Kenny Ortega.

[SPEAKER_00]: Kenny or, hey, are you serious?

[SPEAKER_00]: I didn't know that.

[SPEAKER_02]: Well, we just did an episode on him and like he actually directed 12 episodes of the series.

[SPEAKER_02]: He directed a deep fried Korean Thanksgiving and Friday and it's all right for fighting.

[SPEAKER_02]: So like all that camera work.

[SPEAKER_02]: Can you take that?

[SPEAKER_00]: I'm going to go back and want to listen to this podcast episode.

[SPEAKER_02]: Oh, yeah, but those are just like all I feel like such great episodes.

[SPEAKER_02]: You nailed it.

[SPEAKER_02]: You talked about teams.

[SPEAKER_02]: Do you wondering what team I was on?

[SPEAKER_00]: Do you have a team?

[SPEAKER_00]: Now, I mean, like I said, I have a team matured Jess, I did not like high school dress.

[SPEAKER_00]: I do like books about like kind of like the bad boy who's not really that bad, but I felt nervous all the time, like I just always thought he was going to get in trouble and get her in trouble and it just always made me stressed.

[SPEAKER_00]: I think I approached this show.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's funny because I'm actually, I don't have children, but I approach a show almost like from a lens of Roy's mom.

[SPEAKER_00]: Like, I've just always either stressed or disappointed in her or wish she would have made a different, you know, and I wish Laura, I would have treated her differently with this and like, I think it's always from that perspective for some reason, and so yeah.

[SPEAKER_00]: So later, Jess, never Dean, not Logan.

[SPEAKER_02]: I'm telling you, boring Marty, I could do boring Marty, he could have turned things around.

[SPEAKER_02]: I think he was too much like her, because he ultimately wasn't from the society that her grandparents were from.

[SPEAKER_02]: He was smart, because clearly he got into college, not with any sort of legacy attached to it.

[SPEAKER_02]: So we're always just like, he would have been fine until she would broken him in half.

[SPEAKER_02]: But I do want to talk about your book, our book club pick, Julia Song is undetable.

[SPEAKER_02]: Before we go on, are we going to talk about my house?

[SPEAKER_02]: Oh wait, oh my god, she's totally forgot about your house.

[SPEAKER_02]: We can't move on.

[SPEAKER_02]: Okay, when I message you about this When I was messaging you about Gilmour Girls, you were like, oh, that's why I bought my house And I was like, Susan, don't say anything right now because I actually have a million follow-up questions How did Gilmour Girls lead to you in a next house?

[SPEAKER_00]: So basically I had a house in California I moved to New York for a job I was doing human resources for Spotify and my real estate agent Calvour and you said the market is really hot [SPEAKER_00]: I was renting it out at the time.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I guess like the laws of real estate laws, if you have house that's a renter house, you have 45 days after you sell it to put that money into another property or you have to pay like exorbitant taxes.

[SPEAKER_00]: Oh.

[SPEAKER_00]: So this household very quickly in California and I was living in New York City.

[SPEAKER_00]: I didn't want to buy anything in New York or I didn't want to buy a small little apartment where I was also gonna pay [SPEAKER_00]: tons of HOA and fees.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I had never lived on the East Coast ever.

[SPEAKER_00]: I didn't know that East Coast at all.

[SPEAKER_00]: And my boss at Spotify at the time, he's like, well, I live in Connecticut.

[SPEAKER_00]: You should check out Connecticut.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'm like, I've never been to Connecticut.

[SPEAKER_00]: And he's like, well, did you know that Washington Depot is kind of the storybook setting of Star's Hollow?

[SPEAKER_00]: And I'm like, what?

[SPEAKER_00]: So he took me up there one weekend.

[SPEAKER_00]: I visited his family in his home.

[SPEAKER_00]: We went through Washington Depot.

[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, so right, oh my god, and all the little towns around it, Bantam, Lichfield, and I said, yeah, done.

[SPEAKER_00]: This is exactly what I want to live in an area like this, where I can walk to the little downtown area, go into a little gazebo, have one little coffee shop here, a post office, so he recommended a real estate agent here, and she helped me find a home.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, and so I bought a house just like on the outskirts of what was Star's Hollow.

[SPEAKER_00]: Oh my God.

[SPEAKER_00]: And it was, this is gonna sound super bougie.

[SPEAKER_00]: I would just say at the time, I was an executive.

[SPEAKER_00]: I made good money, so it was actually my weekend home.

[SPEAKER_00]: Like I had an apartment in New York during the week.

[SPEAKER_00]: And it was like, I would drive up there on the weekends.

[SPEAKER_00]: So it's a two hour drive.

[SPEAKER_00]: I had two two hours.

[SPEAKER_00]: I would bring my two hours with me.

[SPEAKER_00]: And it was like a big house for just me and I kept thinking, [SPEAKER_00]: Okay, this is going to give you an insight to my personality, how crazy I am, but like I was like, oh my family will come visit sometimes whatever, but on the weekends when it was just me my two two hours I would make coffee and I would pick a new bedroom to go sit in and drink my coffee and because if I didn't drink my coffee in a bedroom it wasn't going to give you as far as I want to, so like for me to like say like, oh I'm making, you know, the best out of the money I spent on a home that was way too big for me for me to only be living in on the weekends I would just like sit.

[SPEAKER_00]: with my dog and coffee in various rooms of the house just to breathe the air in that room.

[SPEAKER_00]: But yeah, it was for about five years and then I sold it to move back west during the pandemic.

[SPEAKER_02]: That is crazy.

[SPEAKER_02]: So like you lived very close to Washington, Deepo.

[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, I could walk down.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I was like, I would tell everyone, I live for it.

[SPEAKER_00]: And if it starts hollow.

[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, it wasn't technically.

[SPEAKER_00]: We just wanted to be stuff up, but yeah.

[SPEAKER_02]: But it was close enough.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_02]: My co-host she lives in Connecticut.

[SPEAKER_02]: And so like, when I went to visit her, and so, or like, she's from Connecticut, rather.

[SPEAKER_02]: And so we went to her grandma's house, and then we took a little road trip to like, New Milford.

[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, my love people.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so we went to all those places.

[SPEAKER_00]: She's a little town called Kent.

[SPEAKER_00]: That has a beautiful little rainbow.

[SPEAKER_00]: I love what's a waterfall.

[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, Connecticut is [SPEAKER_00]: Let me just tell you.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, and truthfully, thank you Gilmore girls because having this house and then having sold it is actually like what gave me a financial kind of support to be able to now be a full-time writer.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, yeah, because like I didn't put that into anything else when I moved out here, so it's like, yeah, yeah, no, it's like kind of like my nest egg, so very grateful.

[SPEAKER_02]: Your star's hello house.

[SPEAKER_02]: I know moved everything for it.

[SPEAKER_02]: I love that so much.

[SPEAKER_02]: I was I had no idea Where the story was going.

[SPEAKER_02]: I thought even like I found a blue house.

[SPEAKER_00]: I liked it because it was lower lies, but like But literally like I it's what gave me the courage to buy a house in Connecticut where I had never been before in my life I'm like sure.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, star's hello dot [SPEAKER_02]: I also love that your boss was like, oh, it starts hollowing his face off and you're like, let's go this weekend.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, let's go.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I was like, why do I know what stars hollows like?

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, now I feel like you're living Connecticut.

[SPEAKER_02]: I feel like we're going to get a little Connecticut novel from you at some point.

[SPEAKER_00]: I feel like I have something to give myself.

[SPEAKER_02]: Well, I'm so excited.

[SPEAKER_02]: But speaking of book, let's talk about Julia Song's indatable witch.

[SPEAKER_02]: I'm really proud of myself I have not said Susan Lee is indatable because I keep doing it.

[SPEAKER_02]: I keep making it.

[SPEAKER_00]: I keep making it.

[SPEAKER_02]: It's a memoir with names changed for the sake of privacy.

[SPEAKER_02]: I love that.

[SPEAKER_02]: But this is our book club pick for Reading a Sexy, which is our Gilmour and Clined book club.

[SPEAKER_02]: I like to do specifically romance because I'm pretty sure everyone would re-bomance if I could find the right introduction for you.

[SPEAKER_02]: And if I can do it through the lens of Gilmore Girls for our listeners, who I know love Gilmore Girls, if you don't love Gilmore Girls, I don't know why you're listening, but I'm really glad you're here.

[SPEAKER_02]: And I feel like it's just like a perfect sort of lens into it.

[SPEAKER_02]: And this one, I just feel like fit perfectly.

[SPEAKER_02]: I like the idea of like this family being for November, for like Thanksgiving family time, but the reasons why that I picked it is like, of course, [SPEAKER_02]: the beautiful community, the meddling family, but lot less hostile than the meddling family on Gamarkaul's.

[SPEAKER_02]: The Korean mother with a love for her daughter that would increase more if she married a doctor.

[SPEAKER_02]: A group of girlfriends that are so supportive, a love interest who is competent.

[SPEAKER_02]: Well, not being a great communicator, but still very competent.

[SPEAKER_02]: And I felt like Julia was a cross of like Paris.

[SPEAKER_02]: Means Lane means lower line.

[SPEAKER_02]: If like the various parts of their personalities were kind of put into one person.

[SPEAKER_01]: Interesting.

[SPEAKER_02]: And so like I started to feel like because she was a men cry.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, Paris.

[SPEAKER_02]: Her mom wants her to marry a doctor.

[SPEAKER_02]: Lane.

[SPEAKER_02]: But like still very stylish and fashionable and funny and warm.

[SPEAKER_02]: more like I just felt like that all kind of fit but like I love that.

[SPEAKER_02]: I just feel like this is a very funny, very warm, very fun book with like this instance where people just keep getting tripped up in their deep feelings.

[SPEAKER_02]: The perfect book to read right now in my opinion.

[SPEAKER_00]: Thank you.

[SPEAKER_02]: So in your own words, what would you tell our Gilmore audience, Julie, as long asundatable, is about?

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, so Julia Savizadeble is about a K-Beauty CEO.

[SPEAKER_00]: She's a founder who, by 30, has his built a company that is doing really well.

[SPEAKER_00]: But in her parents or in her family's eyes, though they love that success, they always go back to, oh, you're still not married.

[SPEAKER_00]: So, you know, there's an interesting conversation about women and what it means to have it all and the expectations of, [SPEAKER_00]: and what is enough and what is success.

[SPEAKER_00]: But in any case, in being swept up in this conversation with her family, she agrees to allow them to set her up on three dates.

[SPEAKER_00]: Knowing her family, it's going to be someone Korean that they know, like, like, leave throat.

[SPEAKER_00]: connected to someone from their community.

[SPEAKER_00]: And she is actually terrible at dating.

[SPEAKER_00]: She has a string of failed dates.

[SPEAKER_00]: So she decides that, you know, she uses coaches for every part of her life.

[SPEAKER_00]: And she's like why not find a dating coach and in steps in her childhood neighbor.

[SPEAKER_00]: Tay, who is home, he is home to take care of his father, who was ill, and No trigger warning his father is actually okay, but he quit his job and moved into his parents home to do this and Tay is the sky He's the one who takes care of everyone and he agrees to be her dating coach and take her on Kind of practice dates before she meets each of these setups [SPEAKER_00]: I think it's a wonderful story about family.

[SPEAKER_00]: Both your blood family and your found family.

[SPEAKER_00]: She's got such a good support system of friends around her.

[SPEAKER_00]: People call it a childhood friends to lovers.

[SPEAKER_00]: I do think it is that it's also like the Sabrina Carpenter's when did you get hot?

[SPEAKER_00]: Because I always thought it was like, I thought of you as a little boy.

[SPEAKER_00]: There's a slight age gap of five year.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, if I very age gap, and she's always thought of him as kind of the younger kid.

[SPEAKER_00]: And that's so perfect.

[SPEAKER_00]: I know.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I think it's also just wonderfully a story about asking for help from people around you and being willing to accept that and both of them have to kind of go on that journey for themselves.

[SPEAKER_00]: And yeah, and I think it's also just really ridiculously funny and zany and wacky.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, and it does have I will say I do feel like it has like the charm of the Gilmore girls kind of one of those real like almost an addictive desire to be near the relationships that are happening on page or on screen it I think it has kind of that level of charm.

[SPEAKER_00]: So I think so too, especially because like any time Tay wasn't there.

[SPEAKER_02]: I was like, okay, we're see at Come on back.

[SPEAKER_02]: And then it's like something happened and suddenly he appears and I was like, oh, I think he's back I just and I just this was one of those books that like you start reading slowly and then just like you finish it within the night because It just is one of those fast pace.

[SPEAKER_02]: You want to find out what happens and then when things start to happen You're like, well, and now I need to know where the scouts.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah [SPEAKER_00]: And if you're an audiobook person, I have not listened yet, but I have just from early readers and listeners, the overwhelming feedback is that the audiobook is really good.

[SPEAKER_00]: So if you're an audiobook reader, I know actually the narrator is a Korean woman, so I've heard she does kind of like all these different accents really amazingly, and so I've just heard great feedback from that.

[SPEAKER_02]: Ooh, I definitely have to reread this on audio because I love audio books.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I heard it's really fun, so.

[SPEAKER_02]: Okay, definitely, we'll definitely check that out.

[SPEAKER_02]: But this is also a CEO romance, but I love that she's the CEO.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, that's the dream.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_02]: What was the first idea that you had for this book?

[SPEAKER_02]: Was it her job or was it the setting or characters?

[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, not to give you any more reason to want to call it season.

[SPEAKER_00]: So it's all an accident and I can just keep messing it up.

[SPEAKER_00]: I don't believe it.

[SPEAKER_00]: I was living in New York and I was doing really well.

[SPEAKER_00]: I was very successful as a toldger.

[SPEAKER_00]: I worked at Spotify.

[SPEAKER_00]: I was the head of HR for Warby Parker.

[SPEAKER_00]: So I was working at some really major companies and doing well in my career.

[SPEAKER_00]: I came home for the holidays every year and every year.

[SPEAKER_00]: I would meet my parents and my aunts and it would always be, when are you getting married?

[SPEAKER_00]: Why didn't you bring a boyfriend?

[SPEAKER_00]: And so that actually that dynamic of and and for maybe three or four years, I stopped coming home because I just didn't want it anymore, I was just like I hate this pressure and ultimately the year I decided to come home, I bought my mom like a Gucci purse and I bought my whole family trip to Korea.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so it's like, I did this purposely for their holiday gifts, but also so that my ants would be bragging about these gifts more than focusing on the fact that I wasn't married.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I had brought that out that Julia, yes, so I thought this whole concept.

[SPEAKER_00]: I did not think was unique to me and I that was the first scene that I thought of is what would happen if you know you have this very successful woman and outside of her success her family at family gatherings only brought up her medical status and I'm like and then kind of playing out from there who is this woman?

[SPEAKER_00]: And what does she want?

[SPEAKER_00]: And how does she get there?

[SPEAKER_00]: And how do we find kind of like resolution with her family?

[SPEAKER_00]: And who's the man that will love her?

[SPEAKER_00]: And I love the thought of then playing with the dynamic of on paper.

[SPEAKER_00]: He's absolutely not who she'd be with.

[SPEAKER_00]: He's unemployed living in his parents' basement.

[SPEAKER_00]: Then what then makes him [SPEAKER_00]: the kind of man that is worthy of her, and what makes her worthy of him.

[SPEAKER_00]: So that's kind of where it came from.

[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, I love that.

[SPEAKER_02]: And that I will say, no one's setting me up, but that is a universal experience.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_02]: Thanks, Givings.

[SPEAKER_02]: I used to be, because I used to live in New York as well.

[SPEAKER_02]: When I would come home, they'd be like, when are you moving back to Georgia?

[SPEAKER_02]: And then when I moved back from Georgia, they say, when are you moving back to New York?

[SPEAKER_02]: But then they were like, and who are you dating?

[SPEAKER_02]: I say, no one.

[SPEAKER_02]: I'm like, why don't you have a boyfriend?

[SPEAKER_02]: You know, like, [SPEAKER_02]: Why didn't you ask them?

[UNKNOWN]: Yes.

[SPEAKER_02]: Why does it mean question?

[SPEAKER_01]: Yes.

[SPEAKER_02]: I don't understand that, but luckily, no one has ever tried to force me on to do so tall seems like a good option.

[SPEAKER_02]: Because that was definitely another requirement for Julia.

[SPEAKER_02]: But you talked about like crafting her and who she would be and what she would want.

[SPEAKER_02]: How did you approach her character and like creating who she was on the page?

[SPEAKER_00]: So I have worked mostly in startups, so I had thought about who is the successful founder of a startup that's a woman.

[SPEAKER_00]: So in kind of this bro, boys, clubs, who does she have to be?

[SPEAKER_00]: And then who is that woman when she's dating?

[SPEAKER_00]: So it's like, you know, she had to be someone smart, no nonsense, say it like it is, almost unapologetic about that.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so who is that woman when she's dating?

[SPEAKER_00]: Well, she calls out men and they're clothing choices and the books they write, like, she doesn't know how to sugar coat that.

[SPEAKER_00]: She doesn't know how to do small talk.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so that's kind of how I worked backwards as to this is where she's become so what how was she then in every other aspect of her life and it then it's not until she meets a man who just meets her where she's at, not who she is as a career or a bank account or a title.

[SPEAKER_00]: But, oh, hey, you don't like vegetables, do you?

[SPEAKER_00]: But you're a vegetarian.

[SPEAKER_00]: No judgment.

[SPEAKER_00]: Let's help you figure it's like, yeah, just always met her where she was at.

[SPEAKER_00]: And yeah, so that's kind of how I worked through how the story would play out for the two of them.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I like that it's backwards.

[SPEAKER_02]: I like that we really have to think about her like coming up in like, mastery.

[SPEAKER_02]: It's like a founder as I guess.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, that's really interesting.

[SPEAKER_02]: I didn't think about her like from her background having to like, how that was affecting her dating.

[SPEAKER_02]: No, just went from him on the vegetables.

[SPEAKER_02]: But I am curious about what she eats.

[SPEAKER_02]: Because like when vegetarian no vegetables, I was like, cheese?

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_00]: But I've actually met multiple people who do not love vegetables as vegetarians and they do they eat like 12 year olds.

[SPEAKER_00]: They have like, you know, bean and cheese burritos from like, you know, talk about or whatever.

[SPEAKER_00]: But what I wanted to kind of play on just culturally is how so much of Korean food is vegetarian that we don't know.

[SPEAKER_00]: We, you know, it's like meat actually is not something that a lot of people in Korea eat on on the daily.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so I wanted her to also, like, [SPEAKER_00]: find, oh, I never knew that I liked this vegetable because it's made this way, you know, and so I wanted to kind of give representation for Korean vegetarian food, you know, and yeah, and so, and, you know, in fact, I've had a few DMs of people saying, oh my god, my vegetarian, can you tell me what I should eat at a Korean restaurant?

[SPEAKER_02]: I love that.

[SPEAKER_02]: I love the date where like I guess the pre-date because that's kind of the setup with Tay is that like He takes her on almost like a pre-date for practice and then she goes on the date so that she is like a little bit more confident I love that he's like introducing her to the eggplant and then when she gets on the date He orders for her.

[SPEAKER_02]: He orders me and he was like, oh, this isn't real me and she's like well, it's from Japan I don't know.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, and then her family find out that he ordered brown rice.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yes, off the roster, like, without a second thought, but I love that she was like, I don't even get to eat that eggplant.

[SPEAKER_00]: I do.

[SPEAKER_00]: I know.

[SPEAKER_00]: You know what somebody is like, I know.

[SPEAKER_00]: Like, sometimes people think like, I don't know, I write things that are a little [SPEAKER_00]: unbelievable but like almost everything that happens, it's come from experience for my cream family like literally like my mom will disown you if you don't like a certain kind of thing like when I was growing up I didn't eat vegetables, I didn't like kimchi and my mom it was her life's mission to make me like kimchi so she made me there's a [SPEAKER_00]: Kind of kimchi that's not spicy.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's just made out of kind of vinegar.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's basically like pickled cabbage instead of like, you know, and she would call it Susan kimchi.

[SPEAKER_00]: So she's like, oh, this is Susan kimchi.

[SPEAKER_00]: And now I eat everything quite frankly.

[SPEAKER_00]: I eat it all, but like it's like Korean mothers can be like banana pans crazy and so like I could totally see a Korean lady disowning someone for ordering brown rice.

[SPEAKER_02]: I believed it, like I like totally bought that I was like I knew something was gonna happen and then they were like brown rice and then even like we get to later And the spoilers but like that his ex No kiddo's an eat rice.

[SPEAKER_02]: She's cute.

[SPEAKER_02]: Oh, I'm really [SPEAKER_02]: Like, when she was like, have fun at your hotel, like I just was like, oh, gosh, you have insulted her table, like you cannot do this, but I, I loved that so much.

[SPEAKER_02]: That was excellent.

[SPEAKER_02]: Why did you decide to make her the CEO of Korean beauty brand?

[SPEAKER_00]: One of the things that I, I, I think it's fairly common in my stories across the board, but it's just common for me in life is the, uh, where do I fit?

[SPEAKER_00]: Kind of dynamic of, I'm not Korean enough.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'm not American enough.

[SPEAKER_00]: And actually it's interesting, so I write stories about Korean-American people.

[SPEAKER_00]: I would love to see my mom always says, when is this going to be translated into Korean?

[SPEAKER_00]: None of my books have sold in Korea.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I believe it's partially because they're just two Americans for Koreans, like the Schumer and Koreans are not interested in Korean-American stories.

[SPEAKER_00]: They're interested in like, oh, like, you know, some fantasy story or an American story, or a story about Koreans may be written by Korean-Americans, but my books are squarely Korean-American experience.

[SPEAKER_00]: I thought about like, do I have credibility as a Korean author because I've never sold a book in Korea?

[SPEAKER_00]: So it kind of came to this interesting concept of Julia makes Korean skincare, which is very big right now across the world.

[SPEAKER_00]: But she doesn't hers this Korean-American, it doesn't sell in Korea.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, it's not distributing Korea.

[SPEAKER_00]: So she feels a little bit like a [SPEAKER_00]: And it really comes kind of just from my own background.

[SPEAKER_00]: But I think a lot there are some new Korean American skin care brands that I'm just a really big fans of like a great beauty tower 28 glow recipe peach and lily and I always wonder about those founders like because I see them like it all to and Sephora, but I don't see them at all in Olive Young, which is the Sephora I'm Korea and I want to just meet Olive Young.

[SPEAKER_00]: That's right.

[SPEAKER_00]: That's right.

[SPEAKER_00]: Get on my sunscreen.

[SPEAKER_00]: No.

[SPEAKER_00]: They're going to open in America.

[SPEAKER_00]: They're for lots of stores.

[SPEAKER_00]: Are they?

[SPEAKER_00]: I think they're going to open multiple locations.

[SPEAKER_00]: And it's so great.

[SPEAKER_00]: I love it.

[SPEAKER_00]: I love it.

[SPEAKER_00]: So I kind of thought about them too.

[SPEAKER_00]: And if they ever struggle, if they wanted to get into all of young stuff like that.

[SPEAKER_00]: So yeah, it's just kind of these questions that I was playing around with.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, but no, that's really interesting like to kind of like parallel that in your own life, especially like where that lands with her as like she kind of realizes that like I understand the Korean American market like this is who this is like I'm trying to like reach a consumer that I don't know about but I do know these people yeah who I am and I really love that.

[SPEAKER_00]: There's shameless little plug.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's actually not known yet, but by the time this comes out, it will maybe have come out, but I'm writing a piece for Oprah, and in it is kind of this my own personal journey with skincare and what the Western market had told me about me who had acne prone cystic like [SPEAKER_00]: acne scarring and then how I approached skincare based on the Western lens and then I went to Korea and found something was told a totally different story from a dermatologist there and she set me on a journey with Korean skincare that is absolutely transformed my skin and also my confidence my I would never leave the house without like heavy heavy foundation on and now it's like I don't have perfect skin but it's so much better than it was and I understand it more and [SPEAKER_00]: And now I have a lot more confidence in my own kind of like relationship with beauty and so yeah it's it's a it's a short piece that's going to be about let that journey of the difference of what we're told from a Western lens especially if you are Korean in a Western lens what we're told through an Eastern lens.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, oh, I love that.

[SPEAKER_02]: I'm so excited to read that because I have been like doubling in K-Beauty recently.

[SPEAKER_02]: I love it.

[SPEAKER_02]: Lowshins and things like that, especially because my mom, to her skin, she's like been off and on the same where it's like she's had like a dull acne and not really known what to do with it, but she transitioned all her products to K-Beauty products and her skin has never looked better.

[SPEAKER_00]: Oh my god, she loved that!

[SPEAKER_02]: Like when she goes out with her makeup on, she'll have random strangers be like, what your skin care for.

[SPEAKER_02]: I love that!

[SPEAKER_02]: So, of course, she's described as indatable.

[SPEAKER_02]: That is in the title.

[SPEAKER_02]: How did you approach her being undatable without being unlikable?

[SPEAKER_02]: Because if you feel like that's like a, unfortunately, that is a problem with readers lately is that they can very quickly deem a girl, a female protagonist, unlikable, which is like a hard line to follow because it's everyone's perception of that's really different.

[SPEAKER_00]: when people approach the reading this what they may notice or now can notice that they say it is it's the men that tell her she's undatable so she actually it's like she's called that by someone she's like had a bad day with and men that she makes cry it's like [SPEAKER_00]: Her friends are all like, you're fantastic.

[SPEAKER_00]: Her family, you're fantastic.

[SPEAKER_00]: You know, we just, you're just not married yet.

[SPEAKER_00]: I wanted it to be like, it was about people not being able to handle who she is, but who she is is inherently not bad or unlikable.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's unlikable to those who can't handle it, you know?

[SPEAKER_00]: And the one who could handle it, the ones that can handle it, they then receive deep love from her.

[SPEAKER_00]: Like she has such loyal friends and family [SPEAKER_00]: they can handle who she is and that creates such loyalty and deep affection for her, her assistant, her admin assistant loves her so much to her, you know, take days whole family loves her and they barely, like, they only know her as a neighbor and [SPEAKER_00]: So it's like those who, again, kind of like what I was saying with Tay, meet Julia where she's at, like she gives them back like so much more and it's really those who kind of come with their own ego, like you hurt my feelings, these men that actually are the ones that look at her as undetable.

[SPEAKER_02]: Oh, I love that.

[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, I hate that they're saying that, but I know that everyone around her just has such affection for her.

[SPEAKER_02]: Especially when it comes to her friends, how like they're approaching dating.

[SPEAKER_02]: She's basically like, what if they don't like me?

[SPEAKER_02]: And they're like, that's not what this is about.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_02]: You're not changing yourself for them.

[SPEAKER_02]: They're supposed to like you as you are.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_02]: And you're great.

[SPEAKER_00]: And then they get so excited when they see that tape appreciates her first, she's like, the way that they're like, Oh my god, this guy loves you for who you are.

[SPEAKER_00]: You know, I love that.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I love when his name first comes up when they're at brunch and they're like like listing out all of these things about him about how like perfect he is like adorable he is like his abs and they're like this day and she's like yeah you guys know him and they're like this is your guy and she's like no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no [SPEAKER_00]: It feels a little bit like they're objectifying him.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'm like, yeah, yeah, they want Thank you for understanding.

[SPEAKER_00]: No, they want her to be with someone high because They point out his abs and they've seen him in his jeans and like they've been coming up And they may have had like two or three other ones Yeah, there's like well toned down just a little bit and I'm like yeah, I just I thought it was funny because [SPEAKER_00]: I'm like, heck yeah, she deserves someone hot for sure.

[SPEAKER_02]: He's hot and now we see that.

[SPEAKER_02]: When did you get hot all the sudden?

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, you're signified.

[SPEAKER_02]: I love that they're, your editor is like, let's pull back a little bit.

[SPEAKER_02]: But I imagine like with you and like your girlfriend's who it clearly feels like you have a strong group of friends that like these characters are kind of like rooted in.

[SPEAKER_02]: I feel like y'all would go even harder.

[SPEAKER_02]: So yeah, even worse, most of my closest friends are all romance writers.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, we not only go harder, we go dirtier.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, yeah, yeah, so I feel like it's that like balance of like what's go for the reader experience like, but this is my experience.

[SPEAKER_02]: This is my memoir.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yes, that's exactly right.

[SPEAKER_02]: So then what makes say the perfect love interest for someone who is quote unquote undatable?

[SPEAKER_02]: Like what is it about him that you made sure that he made her feel the complete opposite that all these other guys had made her feel?

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I think for one, Tade doesn't feel like he's asking anything of Julia.

[SPEAKER_00]: Like, he doesn't want anything from her.

[SPEAKER_00]: In fact, to a fault, you know, but like, I think other men that she dated because it was kind of a resume versus a resume, it was a little bit of a competition, like my position against your position, the amount of money I make against your amount of money, my fame versus your, you know, how many people know you and Tade just isn't care about any of those things.

[SPEAKER_00]: like he is not about the money.

[SPEAKER_00]: He is not about fame.

[SPEAKER_00]: He is definitely not about title.

[SPEAKER_00]: In fact, he's trying to figure out what he is about.

[SPEAKER_00]: He's trying to figure out what a happy life is going to look like for him.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I feel like that makes Julia feel very safe.

[SPEAKER_00]: In the flip side, for Tay, that's something he's got to work through because he looks at her and is like, I couldn't even give her anything, even if I wanted to.

[SPEAKER_00]: Not realizing that him just being who he isn't giving her that safety is exactly what she needed, you know.

[SPEAKER_02]: Oh, I love that.

[SPEAKER_02]: I love him.

[SPEAKER_02]: I think that's something that I find really interesting about his arc.

[SPEAKER_02]: Is that, of course, she's the, she's the CEO.

[SPEAKER_02]: She's a six-exful one that, like, in some romances, like, would be the male main character.

[SPEAKER_02]: But with him, he kind of has a trajectory of a typical heroine, who, like, she goes back home to, like, her hometown to help her alien parents.

[SPEAKER_02]: who puts everyone else before them, before that herself, and so that she kind of ends up in the spot, really, she's ultimately gonna break, because she's everything to everyone, and she's not letting any of these people be anything to herself, and so she kind of has to go on this little journey.

[SPEAKER_02]: And then putting it on the flip side, where Julia Song is the CEO, and is trying to grapple with that from the perspective of, [SPEAKER_02]: a female founder, but on his side he's trying to grapple with what he wants to do and ultimately it's be happy.

[SPEAKER_02]: But what does that look like?

[SPEAKER_02]: And so I loved that approach that like he doesn't have that typical, I feel like male protagonists are that he's is a lot more tender and I like immediately was like [SPEAKER_02]: See, is he kind of the heroin here?

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I mean, I do love the thought of subverting typical kind of, you know, roles, and especially when it comes to gender roles and relationships and romance, I think that's super fun.

[SPEAKER_00]: And then the other thing is like, they have a very similar journey in that, Tae also has a lot of loyalty around him, like everyone around him loves him too.

[SPEAKER_00]: And he's got to come to kind of a place of loving himself [SPEAKER_00]: Just like Julia has all this loyalty and she just doesn't feel like there is anyone to love her.

[SPEAKER_00]: He is more.

[SPEAKER_00]: He is also like, you know, I just love how everyone around both of these characters loves them so deeply.

[SPEAKER_00]: and is so deeply like loyal to them for who they are period.

[SPEAKER_00]: And each of them then has to kind of work through their own identity crisis.

[SPEAKER_00]: So kind of purposely did this a version of that, but I also wanted them each to have kind of that similar arc of learning to let themselves.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, letting yourself themselves, I like what you said at the beginning of talking about this about how it's a book about asking for help, that like you can have like the most supportive loyal people around you who like are so willing to like step up at a moment to notice, but you haven't asked for it and so you don't really maybe maybe you don't think you need it, but like they're seeing it and like you need it.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I'm this, I'm very guilty of this, I am not, I do not like.

[SPEAKER_00]: getting help.

[SPEAKER_00]: I don't like asking for it.

[SPEAKER_00]: I am very uncomfortable receiving it.

[SPEAKER_00]: And, you know, without spoilers at the end, Tay, who's especially very sensitive about financial, like his financial place.

[SPEAKER_00]: He, at the end, he ends up, you know, [SPEAKER_02]: Getting some money support from people to do what he needs to do and I think it's such it's just like a one-line thing But it's a very big step for him that I hope it's very subtle But I hope that people catch that because it was like, you know, it's a big step for him Yeah, I felt like it was like in the midst of this grand gesture But like it's like it really is in the details with that So it's like even if you did something really small, I just feel like that would be the biggest part of it [SPEAKER_02]: Julia Moore.

[SPEAKER_02]: I love that.

[SPEAKER_02]: No spoilers, but like I was just like cheering like I was sharing them on in that moment.

[SPEAKER_02]: It was so fantastic.

[SPEAKER_02]: You were talking about you took some experience of their family and their community from your own life.

[SPEAKER_02]: What was that like, did anyone you know read this and feel like, hey, that's a little bit like me.

[SPEAKER_00]: So this book is had a funny journey.

[SPEAKER_00]: So I wrote this right after I wrote soulmates my first Oh, okay, back in 20 I started writing in 2021 and I wrote it like in eight weeks.

[SPEAKER_00]: I had written And yeah, it was it was very fast.

[SPEAKER_00]: I was just like I loved this book.

[SPEAKER_00]: I loved it and I had written it and I'd sent it to some friends because you know obviously this is going to be different than when I had published and so a few friends had read the very early copy [SPEAKER_00]: Then my agent and I kind of discussed my career track, and she was like, I definitely think you should write a couple more YA's first.

[SPEAKER_00]: She wanted me to get into adult for sure.

[SPEAKER_00]: But at the time, especially around that time of kind of the pandemic and everything, adult was really getting inundated with rom-coms.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I think one of the real concerns was that if this is my adult debut at that moment, it would get lost in a sea of many rom-coms.

[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, I was super disappointed, but honestly fair, and it wasn't until I kind of established my career in YA to start, did we just come up with a really fortuitous relationship with my who ends who ended up being my editor.

[SPEAKER_00]: So she bought this book, well, she bought a book, she bought my first romance book, is basically adult romance.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I said, well, I have one.

[SPEAKER_00]: I have one written, would you like to read it?

[SPEAKER_00]: And she immediately was like, yes, this is it.

[SPEAKER_00]: This is the book we're going to.

[SPEAKER_00]: And it's many years later.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's like, people had read it early on early, but no one had read kind of this final iteration of where it ended up in actually between the time that I had edited it with my agent and finally with my editor.

[SPEAKER_00]: The bones of the story is exactly the same.

[SPEAKER_00]: The heart of the story has become so much deeper.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's just a stronger book and I'm a stronger writer now too and so no one in my family is read it.

[SPEAKER_00]: My sister has an early copy.

[SPEAKER_00]: I don't think she's read it yet.

[SPEAKER_00]: So no one is going to ask me if there's a textbook.

[SPEAKER_00]: although the dedication is to my mom saying yes mom this is like it's fired by you but yeah my mom wouldn't read it she will wait till it is one day translated and decree and if that ever happens yeah she'll wait to the movie version comes out and she'll make me is this play about me?

[SPEAKER_02]: fingers crossed let's see you [SPEAKER_02]: I could just associate like there's some books that like as I'm reading them I'm like I feel like like when I go back to this book I should be turning that flex on because it feels like that like fast pace hooky book where it's just like I'm laughing the whole time And I just want to see this family on the screen.

[SPEAKER_02]: Okay singing trot.

[SPEAKER_00]: So I have a theory of why we don't see more of these and that is [SPEAKER_00]: because my entire cast of characters is Asian.

[SPEAKER_00]: They're almost all Korean.

[SPEAKER_00]: And truthfully, they're just that many Korean or even Asian actors out there who speak, you know, fluent English.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so I think that I actually think it would be very hard to make.

[SPEAKER_00]: First of all, I don't think that you can, I think it'd be harder to make if I really was like pushing for a Korean.

[SPEAKER_00]: even Korean American actors, but like even if we're just looking like if you look for any movie that has other than like crazy rotations, which I just don't know why that didn't segue into more.

[SPEAKER_00]: There are very few movies with just all Asian cast.

[SPEAKER_00]: And it almost makes me feel like this is why I keep up demon-hentricid well because it's all animated, but like, it could be.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'm thinking that that could be one of the reasons.

[SPEAKER_00]: The obstacles to it.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_02]: Logistical.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I hope that the obstacle is overcome in some way because I just I think it would be such a good like I honestly think it'd be a great limited series to have them like centered around her dates Oh, they're like each of them.

[SPEAKER_02]: Did you do any research for her dates like as you went into them other than my old horrible dating?

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah Is that what these are pulled from or these dates that you've been on?

[SPEAKER_00]: No, but what's funny is they're kind of the hardest to write because really who wants who wants to write a date with someone else when you just put her to be with him You're just like and then you actually put her on a date with day.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yes.

[SPEAKER_00]: No, I wanted to make their dates almost like just as comical Look, they're really the comic relief and so I wrote them back to back all three of them and even in the book It originally they were back to back and then we kind of edited like we we need to breathe [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, so it was hard because I don't care about anyone else.

[SPEAKER_00]: I want the OTP to be together, but I also was just a good time to just write something Zanie and Ridiculous and yeah.

[SPEAKER_02]: I really felt that there.

[SPEAKER_02]: When you, like, when you brought up yourself, Boba background, I was like, oh, she is so perfectly proud to write a book at this.

[SPEAKER_02]: I see it, I feel it, I get it, I love it.

[SPEAKER_02]: Speaking to that, what was the hardest part about this book to get right, that, like, you really focused on that, like, you really wanted to make sure that it was conveyed in the right way.

[SPEAKER_00]: two things.

[SPEAKER_00]: So I do feel like the book is a little bit of a kitchen sink.

[SPEAKER_00]: There's a lot going on.

[SPEAKER_00]: So this is, it's not a spoiler.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's really in the first couple chapters, but it's kind of a spoiler of how it plays out, but her grandmother says that she's a tardying wish for Julia to get married.

[SPEAKER_00]: And playing that in a nuanced way that is not like a downer, that is emotional, but also fits in [SPEAKER_00]: an ending that is that makes sense as to why this was all happening and that I really struggled with it.

[SPEAKER_00]: In fact, in multiple iterations of edits, I changed it every time.

[SPEAKER_00]: It got changed the most and the way that it ended up with her having [SPEAKER_00]: gone to the doctor and maybe not really understanding is is actually a real life like I went with my mom to the doctor a second time for something and when she had gone the first time she didn't really understand with a doctor saying and so she made me feel like it was a lot worse than it was and it wasn't and so so I kind of played that into it being more like a language barrier so that was very hard and then the other part that was hard is so I am.

[SPEAKER_00]: Aromans enthusiast.

[SPEAKER_00]: I am a third act break-up evangelist.

[SPEAKER_00]: I believe in the third act break-up and I know it's got to break up.

[SPEAKER_00]: I don't understand how that I don't get it.

[SPEAKER_00]: I don't understand.

[SPEAKER_02]: I love it.

[SPEAKER_02]: I want to pine.

[SPEAKER_02]: I want to feel the yearning.

[SPEAKER_02]: I want everyone to gobble.

[SPEAKER_00]: This is certainly the arc of a story without that like what is your like black moment you know and but anyways that was [SPEAKER_00]: I knew that was going to happen because that's the romances I write and I wanted it to be in a way that like didn't feel like out of the blue it didn't feel like oh just suddenly neither them are acting the way that they would normally act and and then all the sudden they get back together so ultimately I was scared to go there like lean into something dramatic I like where we ended up and but that was hard to like because I didn't want it to feel disingenuous but I wanted it to [SPEAKER_00]: feel big enough for the two of them to be like, well, then I don't want to talk to you anymore about this, you know, and so yeah, and I, I think you did a really good job.

[SPEAKER_02]: You really convinced me that these two needed a break.

[SPEAKER_02]: Did I want them to take one?

[SPEAKER_02]: Absolutely not at all, but like I love the process that it took to get them to their happily ever after.

[SPEAKER_02]: No spoilers, but the way that this kind of ends, I guess the last message that is sent.

[SPEAKER_02]: I like, squealed.

[SPEAKER_02]: I was like, this is so perfect.

[SPEAKER_02]: This is exactly how this ended.

[SPEAKER_02]: It's really done.

[SPEAKER_00]: That was the last line I wrote when I was writing this book.

[SPEAKER_00]: Like, I didn't, I didn't have that in my pocket waiting.

[SPEAKER_00]: You know, I know.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's like, how do we, as I'm writing this epilogue?

[SPEAKER_00]: How do I want this to end?

[SPEAKER_00]: And then I wrote that message and I was like, oh, yeah, this is it.

[SPEAKER_02]: And if it was the last thing I wrote, yeah, I was like convinced.

[SPEAKER_02]: I was like, oh, well, she started this.

[SPEAKER_02]: And this is like the theme throughout that like this is where she was going to end.

[SPEAKER_02]: And she had that waiting.

[SPEAKER_02]: What did you like stick that on the end?

[SPEAKER_02]: Oh, I got lucky that hopefully enticing to read the book to get to the very last page, the very last sentence because it's chef's kiss.

[SPEAKER_02]: I love it.

[SPEAKER_00]: What are you most proud of with this book?

[SPEAKER_00]: really proud that it's that it got made because it hits some bumps for timing and I think I could have easily moved on to rating something else like I don't necessarily believe I am not personally the type that thinks oh like any of these books or my babies or the book of my heart I think all of them have a piece of me but I I wanted this book to be out in the world and so I'm very proud that that we stuck with it and I think the timing is right actually this is the right time for this book.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I do think that my agent was right.

[SPEAKER_00]: It would have been too soon before.

[SPEAKER_00]: I have a readership now too.

[SPEAKER_00]: That we're gonna get behind this book and that gave it a lot of momentum for other people to find it so far.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so I think it's the right time.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I'm also a better time in my career we're just not everything.

[SPEAKER_00]: I don't take everything so personally.

[SPEAKER_00]: So I'm okay if no matter how this book does and who likes it or not, [SPEAKER_00]: I think what I feel very grateful for is in a day and age and a time specifically right now where it is hard to be a Daverse author.

[SPEAKER_00]: Daverse books really only get sold and read at certain parts of this country and very shunned in others and this is unapologetically Daverse.

[SPEAKER_00]: There's a lot of Korean culture stuff in here that I leaned heavy on.

[SPEAKER_00]: Their names, his name is Tay.

[SPEAKER_00]: Her name [SPEAKER_00]: Like I am proud and actually frankly surprised at the positive reception this book has gotten so far from earlier years.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I thought for sure my readers or people who are kind of into Korean stuff, but I've had so many readers say, oh, I just learned so much about.

[SPEAKER_00]: Korean or like I this was so fun.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'm kicking my feet and I loved the Korean stuff or they didn't even notice the crisp you know it's like I just I feel like it has transcended you know what the limited space I thought this book was going to take up and I'm just so grateful, surprised and proud that it's a story that's resonating and people are enjoying.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I'm really glad too because like I think that was some of my favorite parts of the book is like sitting with her family and absorbing the Korean culture that is being changed between the people like when they end up at hmar and like the Korean gossip network was like hello my favorite part of the whole book like I just I love that so much and I love that that is resonating with so many early readers because at this point the book is not yet come out but by the time this airs it will have and our book club will have read it and hopefully loved it because I [SPEAKER_02]: We'll only bring book club books that I absolutely adore.

[SPEAKER_02]: Thank you.

[SPEAKER_02]: And so that's how I feel about this one.

[SPEAKER_02]: I feel like a little bit of a fan girl here just like nothing but absolute love for you and Julia song.

[SPEAKER_02]: Thank you so much.

[SPEAKER_02]: So I always feel bad asking this knowing that like you were releasing a book right now.

[SPEAKER_02]: But do you have what's next for you already planned out working on that?

[SPEAKER_02]: Or is it all hush hush?

[SPEAKER_00]: It is not announced, so, but I just finished writing adult too, my next adult, which I also adore.

[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, it's like, it's a rom-com.

[SPEAKER_00]: It is loosely said on stuff happening in my life, and it is another my one.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, it's fun.

[SPEAKER_00]: Look, my life is, I don't find it funny, but when I tell my friends, oh, this happened today, they're just like, Jesus, you're alive when I go out, I know.

[SPEAKER_00]: So it has a really fun cast of characters.

[SPEAKER_00]: I think they're very unexpected.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's not who you would expect.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I did not nail it on my first draft.

[SPEAKER_00]: I will tell you that.

[SPEAKER_00]: I turned it my first draft.

[SPEAKER_00]: And as I've turned it in now, I'm figuring it out.

[SPEAKER_00]: And where it's going, I absolutely love.

[SPEAKER_00]: So I think it's going to be really fun.

[SPEAKER_00]: OK.

[SPEAKER_00]: It will be a little bit steamier than this one for sure.

[SPEAKER_00]: And this one is steamy.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, this one's going to be a little bit.

[SPEAKER_00]: more happens throughout.

[SPEAKER_00]: Not just the number, but like different like emotional investments before they even hook up, you know, it's like, and I love it.

[SPEAKER_00]: I think it's going to be good.

[SPEAKER_00]: And it comes out where still deciding that it's supposed to be was supposed to be August of next year, but I think it's more of a late summer early fall book.

[SPEAKER_00]: So we might push that a little bit.

[SPEAKER_00]: And that's [SPEAKER_02]: Okay, so you've got a lot coming up.

[SPEAKER_02]: You have a lot going on.

[SPEAKER_02]: Plus, you have to write the Connecticut.

[SPEAKER_02]: Go more girls books that we will all absolutely love.

[SPEAKER_02]: But I feel like there's just so much of you to enjoy.

[SPEAKER_02]: Like if they have, this is someone's first time reading your books that they can go dive back into your YA.

[SPEAKER_02]: I loved the romance, I will leave.

[SPEAKER_02]: I feel like it's a perfect time for like romance meters to really get invested.

[SPEAKER_02]: It feels like it like really perfectly fits in conversation with female fantasy by the one who gets here.

[SPEAKER_00]: I love that.

[SPEAKER_02]: Just like really just reflective of romance readers.

[SPEAKER_02]: And just readers in general that like, if you relate to Rory, but want someone who's a little bit more practical in her decisions for her life, definitely check out that one.

[SPEAKER_02]: But I feel like until August of next year, when or early fall of next year, when we get another book from you, there's so much to enjoy.

[SPEAKER_02]: Thank you.

[SPEAKER_02]: My last question for you is, what is a book you would recommend for Gilmore Girls fans?

[SPEAKER_02]: Maybe one of your YA books and then just a recommendation that you have.

[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, so I definitely love the romance.

[SPEAKER_00]: So I'm going to bring my wife book that we were just talking about.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's about two rival romance reviewers.

[SPEAKER_00]: And in their first year of college, it has, you know, it's coming of age, but also just a love letter to the genre.

[SPEAKER_00]: And yeah, I love that one too.

[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, so let's see, Gilmore girls, you know what's interesting?

[SPEAKER_00]: I think a lot of books, and this is no, no shade on the books that do this, but I think a lot of books will use Gilmore girls as a comp, and it's actually not Gilmore girls at all.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's just small town or just a ball to get that vibe.

[SPEAKER_00]: But Gilmore girls is really about family, and it's about, [SPEAKER_00]: You know, it's like, if you don't have almost a codependent relationship in your book, I just don't think you can come come more girls like, honestly, like, yeah, I just any time I see you get more girls as a comp, but I'm like, do you mean small town?

[SPEAKER_00]: Do you mean small town?

[SPEAKER_02]: Because with yours, I feel like people are like, wait, this is taking place in California, I'm like, yes, but the family is like, what's what's important?

[SPEAKER_02]: It's like we keep coming back to them for family dinners and like the banter and like the depth of like the emotional arc really fits really well.

[SPEAKER_02]: And so sometimes I have to like convince people being like, it's okay that it's not fall.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_02]: Truly.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yes.

[SPEAKER_00]: So I'm looking at my shelves.

[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, of that vein, it's hard to save it.

[SPEAKER_00]: I just I just finished two books that I love both so much that I don't know that it's even a Gilmore girls company really want to be able to talk about them.

[SPEAKER_00]: So the first is called the Princess and the P.I.

[SPEAKER_00]: by Nikki Payne, I love Nikki Payne, oh my god, she is so smart, so funny, her books are so filled with banter and they're just like all the female characters are just brilliant, so I do love her first two books part and protests and [SPEAKER_00]: Six slides and sensibilities.

[SPEAKER_00]: They're all, they're both Austin retellings.

[SPEAKER_00]: But her recent one, the Princess and the PI is actually her foray into kind of romantic suspense.

[SPEAKER_00]: And it's just so fun.

[SPEAKER_00]: And if we're just going to go on the way that people come, Gilmore Girls has got an orange cover.

[SPEAKER_00]: I don't feel very fall, but it is just a good time and I've just been thinking about it a lot after I read it because it's just smart and fun Yeah, it really would love you to read that and then the other one it just gives the vibes like the feeling the feel goodness of Dilmer girls is and you're going to be able to talk about it soon is Good spirits by Biki Morrison.

[SPEAKER_00]: I love everything backs right so just it's very it's not just sweet.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's like witty and tender [SPEAKER_00]: And sexy.

[SPEAKER_00]: Like she really wraps all of those emotions up in a very sweet bow.

[SPEAKER_00]: I just don't want to just say it's just sweet romance.

[SPEAKER_00]: You know, I think she writes like a whole love like farm series.

[SPEAKER_00]: Let's get real.

[SPEAKER_00]: That's very good.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, it was too.

[SPEAKER_00]: But yes.

[SPEAKER_00]: But her recent one gets birds is just so wonderful.

[SPEAKER_00]: It just came out this past week and perfect holiday book.

[SPEAKER_00]: Perfect.

[SPEAKER_02]: That's actually perfect because that is our December book, [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, and I just feel like I really describe her as books is like soft sexy Like it just feels like the characters like the tension between them, but they're always such like tender people Like broken people who like meet each other [SPEAKER_02]: perfect recommendation.

[SPEAKER_00]: But none of them are like, they're not, they're not assholes.

[SPEAKER_00]: You know what I mean?

[SPEAKER_02]: No, they're just, yeah, they're just trying to figure out life and they run into each other.

[SPEAKER_02]: And well, in this case, the ghosts appears.

[SPEAKER_02]: So they run into each other in that regard.

[SPEAKER_02]: But I have not yet read the Princess and the P.I.

[SPEAKER_02]: but like, I need to.

[SPEAKER_02]: I know you need to.

[SPEAKER_02]: It's super fun.

[SPEAKER_02]: Because I love Nikki Payne.

[SPEAKER_02]: Like speaking of someone who like you [SPEAKER_00]: She's a light.

[SPEAKER_00]: She's a light.

[SPEAKER_02]: I love her so smart.

[SPEAKER_02]: Like she is a PhD.

[SPEAKER_02]: Is that right?

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, such a smarty.

[SPEAKER_02]: I like I want to find a book like a perfect book of hers to do for the book club because I just all over so much, but those are perfect recommendations.

[SPEAKER_02]: Thank you so much for giving my future.

[SPEAKER_02]: It's a perfect segue because the next episode of Gilmour Tree will be with B.

K.

Boys and talking about.

[SPEAKER_02]: good spirits.

[SPEAKER_02]: So are in for a treat?

[SPEAKER_02]: It's such a treat, but it's being of treat.

[SPEAKER_02]: It was such a treat to talk to you and be able to learn more about your books.

[SPEAKER_02]: And I feel like I have such like a deeper love for them after hearing you and your past and everything that went into you having your own home in Star's Hollow.

[SPEAKER_02]: But thank you so much for coming and chatting with us.

[SPEAKER_02]: I can't wait for people to read this book.

[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, thanks for having me.

[SPEAKER_00]: I had the best time.

[SPEAKER_00]: It was so fun.

[SPEAKER_02]: My book Loving Besties, thank you so much for joining me today for another episode of Gilmour To Read.

[SPEAKER_02]: If you'd like to join the book club conversation, head over to Patreon where you can join for free.

[SPEAKER_02]: Right now, in December, we're reading Good Spirits by VK Borsan.

[SPEAKER_02]: My next guest will be VK Borsan, returning for a second episode.

[SPEAKER_02]: But until then, happy reading friends!