[SPEAKER_01]: Hi y'all, welcome, our welcome back to Gummer to Read.

[SPEAKER_01]: I'm your host Haley and I'm so glad to have you here today.

[SPEAKER_01]: I feel like it is time to start getting into Snowfield holiday books.

[SPEAKER_01]: And either your response to that is yes, my pencil is up already.

[SPEAKER_01]: You're like, no, no, no, no, we're waiting till Thanksgiving.

[SPEAKER_01]: But I think that it's time to get into holiday books because so many of my favorite ones include Thanksgiving.

[SPEAKER_01]: And it's just nice to start getting into the holiday spirit now, plus it's getting darker earlier, so let us have some joy in whatever form we can get it in.

[SPEAKER_01]: Now, of course, this is a Gilmore Girls Bookish podcast, so today's guest wrote a book that I think is absolutely perfect.

[SPEAKER_01]: If you were looking for a Gilmore Girls inspired holiday novel, like truly this is the one that you should read.

[SPEAKER_01]: And I know a lot of you really loved reading Love Light Farms by B.K.B.B.B.B.B.B.B.B.B.B.B.B.B.B.B.B.B.B.B.B.B.B.B.B.B.B.B.B.B.B.B.B.B.B.B.B.B.B.B.B.B.B.B.B.B.B.B.B.B.B.B.B.B.B.B [SPEAKER_01]: Either you had read it before, or you've read it since, and if you have a read it, it is really so perfectly aligned for that snow-covered, small-town vibe we all love.

[SPEAKER_01]: And as I mentioned today's guess, has a book that feels like it exists in the same cozy world as Love Light Farms, and that is holiday ever after by Hannah Grace.

[SPEAKER_01]: It all takes place in the darling, snow-covered holiday-obsessed town of Frager Falls, plenty of warm-loving community, quirky nosy towns people and the charm of the slow, small town life.

[SPEAKER_01]: What I love and think Gamarko's fans will really love about this one is that beyond the small town, the family struggles feel very familiar.

[SPEAKER_01]: Claire Davenport is from a very wealthy family, works for the toy company her family founded, but has a softer touch than all of them.

[SPEAKER_01]: I think a fur is a bit of a lore lie without a teenage daughter if you found herself in a small town.

[SPEAKER_01]: after having followed more of the plan her family set out for her.

[SPEAKER_01]: And Jack Kelly, our male main character, is a hot, grumbly carpenter who's everyone's go-to guy in town.

[SPEAKER_01]: I think that he feels like a Luke if Luke's skull was to be the most dependable guy to every person in his town in Fraser Falls.

[SPEAKER_01]: But let me give you a little bit of the synopsis of holiday ever after if you have not yet read it.

[SPEAKER_01]: Clara Davenport wants to solve Fraser Falls's biggest problem.

[SPEAKER_01]: According to Jack Kelly, Clara is Fraser Falls's biggest problem.

[SPEAKER_01]: All Clara Davenport has ever wanted to do is climb the ladder at Davenport innovation creative her family's toy business.

[SPEAKER_01]: Everything was going according to plan until the company was accused of stealing a doll design from an independent toy maker, creating a flurry of bad publicity.

[SPEAKER_01]: With a promotion dangled in front of her like a carrot to a reindeer, Claire is tasked with charming locals of the small town to solve the PR nightmare by any means necessary.

[SPEAKER_01]: Jack Kelly would be happy to never hear the name Davenport ever again.

[SPEAKER_01]: Less than a year after a guy in a fancy suit appeared on his doorstep with a slay full of promises, the company that once falsely claimed they wanted to sign him to their small business program has copied his design.

[SPEAKER_01]: So when Clara prances in the town hoping to convince Frazier Falls that her company is not the enemy, Jack is determined not to be fooled by Davenport twice.

[SPEAKER_01]: But Clara has a plan to win over the community only to realize that beneath Jack's frosty demeanor lies the key to the town's heart and may be her own.

[SPEAKER_01]: I will apologize to Hannah Grace here and to all of you for the amount of times in this conversation I accidentally call the book Happily Ever After Hannah did tell me that her husband does the same so I was grateful for that reassurance but it is a play unhappily ever after during the holidays holiday ever after is the name of the book holiday ever after not Happily Ever After Haley.

[SPEAKER_01]: But genuinely, I think this is the perfect book for Gilmore lovers as holiday season that you need to put on your TBR before the year is over.

[SPEAKER_01]: But before I get into my conversation with Hannah Grace, let me tell you about her.

[SPEAKER_01]: Hannah Grace is an English author, writing adult contemporary romance between characters who all carry a tiny piece of her.

[SPEAKER_01]: When she's not describing everyone's eyes, 10,000 times a chapter, accidentally giving multiple characters the same name, or Googling American English spellings, you can find her oversharing online or occasionally reading a book from her enormous TBR.

[SPEAKER_01]: Hannah is the number one New York Times bestselling author of Icebreaker, Wildfire and Dagerie, and a proud parent to two dogs.

[SPEAKER_01]: I didn't mention it in this interview because I didn't want to jinx it, but I spoke with Hannah Fior's before the New York Times bestseller list came out, and I really thought that she would be on it in holiday ever after is another New York Times bestseller for her so congratulations to Hannah on that.

[SPEAKER_01]: And her career has been absolutely fantastic to watch her first novel, Icebreaker, was independently published, which is when I read it back in 2022, which will talk a little bit more about in this interview.

[SPEAKER_01]: But it went on to be traditionally released, [SPEAKER_01]: her first novel.

[SPEAKER_01]: Can you believe that?

[SPEAKER_01]: So incredible.

[SPEAKER_01]: We've covered a bit of that in this episode.

[SPEAKER_01]: We talk about the pressure that that created for her as it would for just about anyone as they go to release their second book.

[SPEAKER_01]: What sort of community led her to writing novels?

[SPEAKER_01]: And of course, we've got her Gilmore-Golf's hot takes, her favorite characters, her favorite story lines.

[SPEAKER_01]: But most importantly, she shared the watching Christmas movies in February to suddenly writing a holiday novel pipeline as we talk about holiday ever after.

[SPEAKER_01]: There are no spoilers for the book in this episode, so feel free to dive in if you're curious.

[SPEAKER_01]: If you have read it, you'll understand the plot points we are vaguely referring to in an effort not to spoil it.

[SPEAKER_01]: The conversation's kind of if you know you know, but if you don't, [SPEAKER_01]: You'll find out, honestly getting to talk to Hannah was such a treat.

[SPEAKER_01]: She mentioned that she loves just staying at home, so y'all know she's just like me for real.

[SPEAKER_01]: I think that you're going to like this one especially if you're an aspiring writer, but I'll let Hannah herself tell you more about it.

[SPEAKER_01]: So without further ado, here is Hannah Grace.

[SPEAKER_01]: I wanted to tell you and our listeners a little funny story because your episode, I think that there's one episode after this one, and then I'll be posting my episode with B.K.

[SPEAKER_01]: Borsan's about her book Spirits, because I got your arc in the mail, and I opened it up, and I saw that it was dedicated for Bax, my Christmas girl, and I was like, there's no other way that this is not B.K.

[SPEAKER_01]: Borsan, so I sent her a little text message with the picture, I was like, oh, that's so cool!

[SPEAKER_01]: And she sent back, she said, what is this?

[SPEAKER_01]: and I was like, what do you mean?

[SPEAKER_00]: I didn't realize that was you.

[SPEAKER_00]: She texted me and she was like, all right, because it was super close.

[SPEAKER_00]: And she texted me and she was like, I'm going to sound so obnoxious if I'm wrong.

[SPEAKER_00]: But is this me?

[SPEAKER_00]: And it never occurred to me like that I should have told her that I dedicated the book to her.

[SPEAKER_00]: I was like, oh, she'll just, she'll just, I don't know, she'll just know.

[SPEAKER_00]: She'll just know.

[SPEAKER_00]: She'll just know when else they're at, like, she'll just know.

[SPEAKER_01]: I was like, so worried though that you were like going to do something special, like, maybe give her the final copy or something.

[SPEAKER_01]: And when I told her that, I was like, this is from this is from Hannah's book.

[SPEAKER_01]: This is her new holiday book.

[SPEAKER_01]: And your seems like this is you.

[SPEAKER_01]: And she was like, text me back.

[SPEAKER_01]: She was like, this is me.

[SPEAKER_01]: I'm crying.

[SPEAKER_01]: I had no idea.

[SPEAKER_01]: And I was like, how?

[SPEAKER_00]: What, what, and I do have to, like, someone had to tell her, and apparently it wasn't going to be me.

[SPEAKER_00]: So back to Reddit, I don't know, I think she read it when I only had like 19 chapters.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I got myself in like a bit of a, like, a whole in terms of not knowing which kind of avenue.

[SPEAKER_00]: I had like a couple of ideas that I didn't know what to do.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I was in Australia.

[SPEAKER_00]: And obviously, [SPEAKER_00]: and two young children and she is always, you know, she's here there and everywhere she's so busy and as I was in Australia and we worked out the time zone and we sat on zoom for an hour and she just listened to me.

[SPEAKER_00]: We go on and on and on about this book and love like and well I would say good spirits is my favorite holiday book now.

[SPEAKER_00]: but it was like I read good spirits last October.

[SPEAKER_00]: So I've had a really long time to wait for everyone else that kind of read it and enjoy it as well.

[SPEAKER_00]: And it just made total sense to me that this book would be dedicated to her because she really is like the most Christmasy person like I just associated I associated most holidays with her but like especially Christmas.

[SPEAKER_00]: But yeah, I was just saying thank you so much for telling me because apparently I did not have the sense to do that myself.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, was it just because you like didn't want to tell her or you were like nervous to tell her you're just like the universe will deliver this to her.

[SPEAKER_00]: This is gonna sound so rude but I forgot.

[SPEAKER_00]: As I always do my dedication and my acknowledgements last, which is such a mistake because what I should do is I should have like an acknowledgement notebook or something and then people who help me through the book.

[SPEAKER_00]: You know, jot down their name and what they've done so when it comes to kind of type it up for the book like I know and not going to miss anyone out what I actually do is I get an email for make sure that is like, hey, we need this now and I'm like, oh no.

[SPEAKER_00]: I can't remember anyone I've spoken to or has helped me in months and as I say with the dedication usually I know who I'm going to dedicate it to as I'm right in it.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's one of those things.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's like the book has to feel right for that person so like my first book is dedicated to my friends that would just like in the trenches with me while I wrote the second book is dedicated to me.

[SPEAKER_00]: Whereas I love that.

[SPEAKER_00]: The third book is dedicated to eldest daughters, which is kind of like my assistant is an eldest daughter.

[SPEAKER_00]: I have an older sister.

[SPEAKER_00]: So it's not just a case of I've got a list of friends and I'm going through them.

[SPEAKER_00]: It has to feel right to kind of dedicate the book to a person or a theme or a group of people, whatever it may be.

[SPEAKER_00]: So it just made me told [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, and when you send my, my Christmas groves like there's no one else like it's definitely to be her.

[SPEAKER_01]: But I like that chills when you're talking about like dedicating books to people, especially dedicating to you.

[SPEAKER_01]: I'll just daughter.

[SPEAKER_01]: Shout out to Taylor Swift's sweetest song.

[SPEAKER_01]: Well, I love that so much, especially because she's going to be coming up on the podcast you're talking to.

[SPEAKER_01]: I'm going to experience which one of my favorite books is fun to stick.

[SPEAKER_01]: But talking about favorite books, we are, of course, talking about the dedication of your latest novel, Holiday Ever After, which is quite literally, I know you were talking saying the good spirits is your new favorite holiday novel.

[SPEAKER_01]: It is.

[SPEAKER_01]: But if you are a Gilmore Girls fan looking for your next favorite holiday read, it has to beat this one.

[SPEAKER_01]: 100%, like I absolutely loved this one.

[SPEAKER_01]: There's so many things about it that I love, which we will get into in a minute.

[SPEAKER_01]: But before we do, I wanted to travel back in time a little bit, so our listeners can get to know you a little bit better.

[SPEAKER_01]: So I want to go back to the year 2000, specifically because Gilmar Girls first aired on October 5th, 2000.

[SPEAKER_01]: What were you writing in the year 2000?

[SPEAKER_00]: I was seven, so I'm like, I'm much in alphabet and practice words and math homework and things like that.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, nothing fictional.

[SPEAKER_00]: No, so this is, is this anything I have to kind of like be ashamed to admit every single time I didn't want to be a writer when I was younger?

[SPEAKER_00]: That's okay.

[SPEAKER_00]: I wanted to be a lawyer from like a very young age, wanted to go into law.

[SPEAKER_00]: I've got an uncle who is a barista and I assume the desire came from that.

[SPEAKER_00]: So how it wasn't really writing anything?

[SPEAKER_00]: I read a lot.

[SPEAKER_00]: I was really into reading our local library.

[SPEAKER_00]: It was like next to the Alster which is like our Walmart and my mum would just dump me in the library and go and do the monthly food shop.

[SPEAKER_00]: So I spent a lot of time reading verses writing, I didn't start writing [SPEAKER_00]: No, I feel like that makes a lot of sense though, as everyone says, the best writers are readers because of how much they've read and like the stories they've consumed, what were you reading while your mom was asked.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, of course.

[SPEAKER_00]: So the Princess Diaries, the Media Series, I've actually just made a cupboard today, like a charity auction thing, where she'd done signed copies of the Princess Tyreus.

[SPEAKER_00]: But it was only US shipping.

[SPEAKER_00]: So this isn't in the reason backskirts of book dedicated to her, as I'd text her, I was like, can I please use your address to ship something that like, won't ship to Europe?

[SPEAKER_00]: And she was like, care, of course, and I was like, okay, it signed Princess Diaries books.

[SPEAKER_00]: And she was like, you do not need to explain yourself to me.

[SPEAKER_00]: I couldn't even understand that.

[SPEAKER_00]: I love that so much.

[SPEAKER_00]: When I got a bit older, I got really into Twilight, who didn't, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: Well, that is the question who didn't.

[SPEAKER_00]: I had a friend that was very into reading, but her reading was more like Stephen King when we were like 13.

[SPEAKER_00]: And she would always like push me onto the good box.

[SPEAKER_00]: So Twilight and all the other Twilight books.

[SPEAKER_00]: And then when we were a little bit older, like Hunger Games was really below.

[SPEAKER_00]: We're not when I was about 18 or 19.

[SPEAKER_00]: and there was, did you ever watch the film?

[SPEAKER_00]: I think it's on Netflix.

[SPEAKER_00]: Angus, thongs, and perfume.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yes, not again.

[SPEAKER_00]: So that is based on a book called Angus Thongs and Full Frontal Snogging.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_00]: And it's a, it's a book series.

[SPEAKER_00]: I devoured all of those as a teenager.

[SPEAKER_00]: I don't, I think it's probably like 10 books or something, but yeah, I was read anything that was kind of very tingle, you know, kind of, coming of age, finding, I think, of or partly vampires.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, they were coming of age.

[SPEAKER_01]: And anything along those lines, I would read it.

[SPEAKER_01]: That makes a lot of sense for where you landed in terms of writing.

[SPEAKER_01]: I don't.

[SPEAKER_00]: It does.

[SPEAKER_00]: I could have been reading like Percy Jackson and I'm very complex fantasy books and maybe my career would look different now But I very much fell in love with telling stories of like women.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, and I think that you could have been telling complex fantasy stories But I think that you were meant to be doing exactly what you're doing because I love your books I think that you have such a good [SPEAKER_01]: grasp on where to take a romance because before we get into the book later, I kind of had no idea where Clara, the main character of Happily Ever After, where she was going and what was going to happen.

[SPEAKER_01]: And I was like, how is Hannah going to hurt me through this character?

[SPEAKER_01]: And I just felt like to say that like you could be writing different books.

[SPEAKER_01]: So that's neither here nor there because the books that you're writing are great and are completely meant for you.

[SPEAKER_01]: But what was it that turned you from being reader into being a writer?

[SPEAKER_01]: Like you said a couple of years ago?

[SPEAKER_00]: So I, like many, many people, had kind of put reading to one side for the majority of like my early 20s.

[SPEAKER_00]: I was busy at work, like I got married.

[SPEAKER_00]: I had dogs to look after.

[SPEAKER_00]: Like it was one of those.

[SPEAKER_00]: I would pick up a book in the airport and read it on holiday, but I wasn't really prioritizing reading for a really long time.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I spent the majority of my early, well, uh, [SPEAKER_00]: I say it like I've got over it now but particularly in kind of my like early to mid 20s, I was very very very anxious and going anywhere I was anxious to get there and that I had kind of found that music, listening to music, you know, on the boss on the train in the car, was like a very helpful thing to me and it kind of stopped working.

[SPEAKER_00]: So I started reading on my phone so I was going through books so quickly and obviously it can be very very expensive if you've [SPEAKER_00]: So I then started looking into like reading online for free.

[SPEAKER_00]: Now I completely missed the what padfares of life.

[SPEAKER_00]: I did not know existed.

[SPEAKER_00]: I did not know what it was when I'd found it on love to them in the time layer of your life.

[SPEAKER_00]: But no, I don't know why it just was not on my radar whatsoever.

[SPEAKER_00]: I only found it 2019 and I'd found it because I was reading on a different [SPEAKER_00]: And essentially I would read, I would pull up my fur and I'd find a chapter of something to read any time I was anxious.

[SPEAKER_00]: And then it just became, I got that love for reading back.

[SPEAKER_00]: And it no longer was like a distraction.

[SPEAKER_00]: It was like a, I can't wait to do this again.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I became friends with an author on there and she one day I was like talking out her books with her, she wrote fun to see.

[SPEAKER_00]: And one day she was like, why don't you write?

[SPEAKER_00]: I was like, I could never write a book.

[SPEAKER_00]: and it kind of just spiral from there.

[SPEAKER_00]: I mean it's like a lot more also friends and it just became this real like safe space community where we all had this love we would read each other's work.

[SPEAKER_00]: That's my friends who my first book is dedicated to.

[SPEAKER_00]: And now we all publish so it's like we've kind of like left writing a line behind us.

[SPEAKER_00]: I've just had a friend who's moved from self-publishing to traditional publishing and I get like tagged in pictures of us.

[SPEAKER_00]: on the band's noble table together and things like that.

[SPEAKER_00]: So we've come a long way in a really short period of time.

[SPEAKER_00]: So like that's what I kind of associated with my, like I wouldn't have started doing this if it wasn't encouragement from like really good people around today.

[SPEAKER_01]: I love that so much.

[SPEAKER_01]: I love hearing like, oh, I'm never going to write a book.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, I say that every day.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'm like, I can never write this book.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I just, I do eventually do it.

[SPEAKER_00]: You do every day.

[SPEAKER_00]: You have several books.

[SPEAKER_00]: Is this going to be the day where I just lose the ability to sit in right in two thousand words?

[SPEAKER_00]: And it hasn't happened yet.

[SPEAKER_00]: Think of it.

[SPEAKER_00]: It still feels like a surprise and like I say, it was never on the cards.

[SPEAKER_00]: I think I spent maybe like one year when I was about 16 or I was like, I'm going to be a journalist and then I went back to part of the law.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I ended up in a completely different career and this was kind of just like, I loved being able to sit and write and get feet back in have.

[SPEAKER_00]: I always say like, it's the instant validation.

[SPEAKER_00]: When you've got people who immediately jump on a trip with the you've just posted and like, that's what.

[SPEAKER_00]: really kind of made me continue, made me push through any kind of like bent-all roadblocks when writing a book.

[SPEAKER_00]: And then obviously now he's just on a slightly different scale than my little corner of the internet that I had.

[SPEAKER_01]: Very very different scale, but I do want to mention that [SPEAKER_01]: One of my favorite things from Icebreaker, which I have to tell you, I've been reading a book called Signs by a psychic medium for research that I'm doing for my own book and I wasn't really buying into it.

[SPEAKER_01]: Until I looked back, I had read Icebreaker a long time ago when it was indie published and I wanted to look back this morning to see exactly when I had read it.

[SPEAKER_01]: And I gasped because it was October 8th, 2022.

[SPEAKER_01]: So it was like literally today, three years ago, I was reading Icebreaker on my iPhone.

[SPEAKER_01]: on the Kindle app.

[SPEAKER_01]: So I was like, oh, okay, I didn't want to buy into science.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I was going to say that's a bit hard to look for.

[SPEAKER_00]: I am very much a science person, like you could convince me anything.

[SPEAKER_01]: It just felt very fateful.

[SPEAKER_01]: I was like, oh, it was, it was my eyes.

[SPEAKER_01]: And it was like, this was the only time, like in my schedule that I could have like put you in anyway.

[SPEAKER_01]: So I felt like my calendar was in good suits with the universe.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_01]: Making making this moment happen.

[SPEAKER_01]: But icebreaker.

[SPEAKER_01]: In that one, I love hearing you talk about your friendships and how that really pushed you into writing this book because my favorite thing from that book and the takeaway that I had about you as a writer is that you had such a good grasp on found family and community.

[SPEAKER_01]: Like when I left that book that was like the impression that I had and like my [SPEAKER_01]: mean, take away was just that you wrote that so fantastically and it seems like it was because you had that in your life to reflect into the book.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I think I don't wrong.

[SPEAKER_00]: I have a great family but the majority of my kind of time and conversations and things like that happen with friends.

[SPEAKER_00]: And then, you know, I've friends who, like, we would be friends if we didn't write books.

[SPEAKER_00]: Those hooks are the people.

[SPEAKER_00]: And that's how I feel about the people that I've got around me.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's like, our friendship would exist even if we didn't have this shared thing, you know, what, where we've got this career in common.

[SPEAKER_00]: Like, we would still be in each other's lives, we would still support each other.

[SPEAKER_00]: So that's really nice.

[SPEAKER_00]: I think I accidentally [SPEAKER_00]: Anything that's probably going to be a theme, I really like the kind of notion of you picking your own village and that it doesn't have to look like everyone else's and you can have people in it and you have people around you that are very supportive of, you know, all your endeavors and it makes me laugh because I've had people be like 21 year olds would not act like this and I'm like, yeah, but how much happier would everyone be if they did?

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I think it's fiction.

[SPEAKER_00]: It doesn't, it doesn't necessarily need to be representative and it's just like I keep seeing TikToks where it's, I've recently gone back on to TikTok on my personal phone I still don't go on it for work, not interest, literally anything book really is But I've gone back on it on my personal phone and I keep seeing things where it's like, you know where men have don't know anything about their friends and there was a video where it was like, [SPEAKER_00]: I had a huge break-up this year and had to move out of my place and move to like a different area.

[SPEAKER_00]: And the guy was like, uh, I didn't know that's why you had to move.

[SPEAKER_00]: Like, didn't know where to go.

[SPEAKER_00]: You know what I mean?

[SPEAKER_00]: Like, it's my best decision.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_00]: Do not ask other men questions.

[SPEAKER_00]: And my husband's the same like I, he's got a friend who has a girlfriend now after being single for a while and I'm like, what does she do for a book?

[SPEAKER_00]: Does she have any of her own kids?

[SPEAKER_00]: Like all these questions he's like, oh, I don't know.

[SPEAKER_00]: I haven't asked.

[SPEAKER_00]: I was like, what?

[SPEAKER_00]: I'm like, give me the phone.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'll speak to him.

[SPEAKER_01]: I need to have a list of questions.

[SPEAKER_01]: Please, [SPEAKER_01]: She's got this questionnaire.

[SPEAKER_01]: Regina Hall was on Amy Poler's podcast recently, and she was talking about how like men say their wife is their best friend, and if you ask them.

[SPEAKER_01]: But if you ask the wife, she's like, oh, my best friend's name is on the show, they said Lisa.

[SPEAKER_01]: And it's just so, it's so much more common, I feel like for women to have like a solid group of friends around them.

[SPEAKER_01]: But I love a nice breaker is like, it's a mix.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's like, it's not just like your friends, it's like men too like in this college friend group that like, you're right, things would be so much better if we like created friendships like that.

[SPEAKER_00]: If men looked out for people in this like very like emotionally grounded way and not just a I'll pick you off the floor when you drunk like that's a great quality to have in a friend, but also it's like I'm going to show up for you when you can't show up for yourself type of thing.

[SPEAKER_01]: When you're going through a breakup and you're moving, you haven't moved out.

[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, exactly.

[SPEAKER_01]: But that's when you want to show up.

[SPEAKER_01]: But I feel like that's, you might say that like it's something that's coming up a lot, but I feel like that's such a good core story to carry through all your stories, through all of your books.

[SPEAKER_01]: You were talking about like the group of people that got you through writing, icebreaker to publish it in D.

What is the difference now that icebreaker kind of exploded with writing a book before that and then writing a book after that is there?

[SPEAKER_01]: I know you're an anxious person.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yes, yes, it's a completely different experience and like I will be completely honest just for other authors who might be listening to this that have, you know, perhaps a had books take off or had you know moving into traditional publishing things like that.

[SPEAKER_00]: it is so much easier and more fun to write for no one than it is to know that you are going to be judged based on what people assume you're going to write and I to be completely transparent like I got in so far into my head about it during writing my third book day during that like my publication was deleted because I couldn't finish the book it just was not happening so icebreaker [SPEAKER_00]: and I really struggled with the attention from it which is what influenced me to go into traditional publishing to have this team of people around me like professional people around me that can support me and that's great that's what I have and then it hit the New York Times.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, and it is sometimes and I was so surprised and then it just kept doing well and it was getting better and then there would be a viral video and then it would shoot up in sales and I'm thinking more and more and more and more people are reading this but I think I was just in such a panic that I just wrote wildfire.

[SPEAKER_00]: I can have really short period of time and then we went through like the editing process and things like that and it was a case of getting to grip with the [SPEAKER_00]: And then while I came out and spent three weeks on the New York Times at number one incredible and I was like how am I going to loop like how am I going to do this again how and I think that's the problem like there's so much pressure that mostly comes from like your own brain it's not the people around me like I don't have.

[SPEAKER_00]: someone at summer and she used to go in well when you know we're not going to like you as much if you don't do this like that is not the case at all but it's like the inside of my head it's like oh if I don't get number one if I don't sell this many books if I don't sell more books unless I'm like and it just sent me into a spiral and I just I had to drag that book out of me and it went on sale and it did really well and it did great and injured but then I was anticipating it [SPEAKER_00]: And then it's like, one of those are, it's like, okay, now I've got to do it again, and I've kind of got to go into it with the knowledge that I'm going to have all these feelings again, but I just have to move past them like I can't let them consume me the way they dreamed it and they kind of said it's kind of been very on it.

[SPEAKER_00]: I tend to be very honest, I don't know, as a good thing or a party.

[SPEAKER_00]: I think it's great.

[SPEAKER_00]: Personally, being a published author, but I'd been working on something completely different when I wrote, when I started to write, I'd been working on a completely different project nowhere near close to what this book is and I just was so frustrated because I felt like I wasn't getting anywhere with it, I felt like I was constantly going running circles and I was constantly [SPEAKER_00]: rereading and, you know, tweaking and starting again and things like that and I was just driving myself up the wall and I was like, I need to do something like I need to produce a draft my, my personal issues get a draft on.

[SPEAKER_00]: I can edit a book.

[SPEAKER_00]: I can turn like the draft of the holiday or after was diabolical.

[SPEAKER_00]: and I got my earliest back and I turned in a completely different book for four weeks later I'd really turned it around because I can edit but drafting and kind of having that first like their first look for my edit is and things like that I feel so much pressure with it.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, it's also like the blank page is like so hard to confront.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's so hard but it was I got to February and I was like I'm getting nowhere with this like I'm going to give myself the weekend to just stop putting pressure on myself, stop like mentally punishing myself that I haven't finished this draft yet and I watched Christmas films all weekend and I was like I'm doing some in February, honestly like it feels like a cry for help like that's how you know you're spiraling.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, and I had a great weekend and I did a Barnes and Noble blog thing the other day and I'll think it's so funny to me that as an author like you spend, you know, the weekend doing something that's meant to be relaxing in the new tournament I got actually I'd really love to write a hundred thousand words on this [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, and I had, I had such a good time.

[SPEAKER_00]: I was like, this is what I need.

[SPEAKER_00]: I need something light.

[SPEAKER_00]: I need something fun.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I need to just write it and not worry about it and not worry about.

[SPEAKER_00]: If it's going to chart and not worry about if people are going to like it and not worry about, you know, all these other things that are just in your brain.

[SPEAKER_00]: So it's like, I've made being traditionally published on really miserable.

[SPEAKER_00]: I think in the last couple [SPEAKER_01]: I don't think that's coming off that way at all, can I tell you I don't mean this like to like expand your ego but I just mean it I mean this and like a very it feels very similar to the way that Taylor Swift talks about work Is that like you reach a level of success that the only person that you really have to compete with is yourself The person who you wake up with and has like the loudest stuff to say about you is you [SPEAKER_01]: I don't think you've been talking poorly about publishing, it's more so I think that you are just in a position where you had a book, explode to like success that people never see, and you were like, oh, on the first one.

[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, no.

[SPEAKER_00]: I think that's it.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's kind of, I won, as I said before, like if all the authors listen to this or perhaps people who have been, you know, [SPEAKER_00]: thinking of going into it and it's like it does change and you do have to adapt and if you had a great time writing your first three box and now it's work for you now it's not just like a hobby and you're feeling different and you don't know why like you're not alone with it like that it's very common and it's kind of like the ugly side of it.

[SPEAKER_00]: it like it's so great to set and bring these coaches to life but sometimes you have to drag them out.

[SPEAKER_00]: They don't when they come out cooking and screaming like they don't want to want to come out and you're such a blessing to have this job but it can also I think be very lonely like I'm very lucky I've got friends around me but there's a lot of people who write you don't and they're kind of muddling through this wondering why things feel different and not quite know why and it's like yeah world a lot of us are in that same bit.

[SPEAKER_00]: The people listen to like I have never struggled with what come out I've ever done or how [SPEAKER_01]: If they know if someone has never struggled to write a book, I feel like it's probably like you probably need some edits I'm in the middle of editing my first book and nothing but struggle I'm nothing she's who ever wrote that book was really bad at writing and now I'm having to add it and it's it's quite rude But no, I feel a lot of like aspiring writers listen to the podcast So I think that that's only helpful because so many people will look at a finished book and it's perfectly formatted It's perfectly edited and you're like I can never write this on the first draft and it's like well [SPEAKER_01]: they didn't either.

[SPEAKER_01]: So I think it's very encouraging.

[SPEAKER_01]: You're talking about how like it's like going through this cycle of not feeling like you can, right?

[SPEAKER_01]: Is there ever an instance where you're like, well, that was my last book.

[SPEAKER_01]: I don't want to do this anymore.

[SPEAKER_01]: Like, I don't want to go through that struggle.

[SPEAKER_01]: Or is it like too much ingrained in you that like, you do want to write?

[SPEAKER_00]: I am contractual, I'm like, it's right for the next few years.

[SPEAKER_00]: I would be completely lying if I said that I don't have wobbles where it's like, I don't want to do this anymore.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I do, like I say to my husband, like, we're in the middle of buying a house.

[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know, it was maybe a few weeks ago and I was like, I just, what happens is, I'm such a misery.

[SPEAKER_00]: Like, I, I would just draw the finisher chapter or I'll feel like I don't really know where things are going.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'd have like, I just cut, it stems from self-doubt, it doesn't stem from, like, not enjoying writing as such.

[SPEAKER_00]: It just comes from self-doubt of, like, I don't know I can do this again.

[SPEAKER_00]: Like, I don't know whether I can get it from start to finish and get this book out and go through people, you know, perceiving things.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, and he's just simply wobble and normally my mum has been super sympathetic and he's like I understand and you know I don't want you to be unhappy and then I like I just snap out of it and it's like you know what I'm just in this kind of mood But he more recently was like, I know I understand but we need to pay for the heart You're like so I get back to your computer, Hannah.

[SPEAKER_00]: I was like, yeah, so like let me get that word count off [SPEAKER_00]: I don't know, I have so many book ideas and I have book ideas that are outside of romance and I can imagine me reaching a point where perhaps.

[SPEAKER_00]: I can't remember, I'm just assuming like I may grow tired of writing romance but I don't imagine myself stopping racing, I imagine myself just pivoting to one of these new ideas because I've got, you know, I don't know, let's just say like [SPEAKER_00]: a mystery idea.

[SPEAKER_00]: I have no idea how to write a mystery book.

[SPEAKER_00]: Like I don't know how to put one.

[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know how to plan like the actual mystery side of the mystery.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I wouldn't know where the story beats are and things like that.

[SPEAKER_00]: So I would actually have to sit and learn how to write it because it's so different for a month.

[SPEAKER_00]: But I can't imagine a time where I'm like, no, I'm going to let all of these kind of ideas in my notion, sit and fester, and I'm never going to talk to any of them.

[SPEAKER_00]: I think I would just perhaps pivot.

[SPEAKER_00]: I just think like I look at one of the authors that I mentioned earlier, a Jacqueline Wilson, who's just like, she's like a brocician national treasure.

[SPEAKER_00]: I think I'd bring a rope on every, like interview and plot.

[SPEAKER_00]: I was like, I find a way to bring a rope.

[SPEAKER_00]: She wrote these books when I was a kid and she is, I think she's in a rave, she is.

[SPEAKER_00]: And she is now writing adult books.

[SPEAKER_00]: It was like her first adult book came out last year.

[SPEAKER_00]: And it's the adult book of the character's grown-up.

[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, so there was a series where she called girls out late and it was about these three 16 year olds basically getting up to no God.

[SPEAKER_00]: And now she's done a book where they are adults like with their own kids and the room responsibility and things like that.

[SPEAKER_00]: That's so cool.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I'm like, Jacqueline Wilson's still writing books, you know, as I said, I think she's in her 80s.

[SPEAKER_00]: I may have just aged her.

[SPEAKER_00]: But you know, you have to have like a real love of [SPEAKER_00]: right in my herbrice, so have that.

[SPEAKER_01]: So I have a little game for you, less of a game and more of a this or that style where I pulled things from your book to kind of see where you feel in these and some of them are also Gilmore Girls and it is called Ever After or Never After and you are going to tell me if these would be in your happily ever after, ever after or never after.

[SPEAKER_01]: One that I pulled from the book that I thought was absolutely [SPEAKER_00]: Never after.

[SPEAKER_00]: I don't like shampoo.

[SPEAKER_00]: I don't like shampoo.

[SPEAKER_00]: I don't like per se.

[SPEAKER_00]: I don't really drink alcohol to be honest with you, but I like dark to stuff right in it.

[SPEAKER_00]: Am I friends doing she does like a book club thing and she's going to do like a holiday drinks.

[SPEAKER_00]: And she was texting me about peppermint haters.

[SPEAKER_00]: I was like, you're disgusted.

[SPEAKER_00]: Sounds hard.

[SPEAKER_00]: She was like, you wrote it and I was like, you're disgusted.

[SPEAKER_01]: I wrote it, but it was fictional.

[SPEAKER_01]: You're trying to make it real.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_01]: Watching snow through the window, at the after course, so cozy.

[SPEAKER_00]: So I live, it's very snowy where I live, like during the winter.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I will sit and watch it all day, like I, it doesn't get old to me.

[SPEAKER_00]: And absolutely love it.

[SPEAKER_00]: But I also don't leave the house ever.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_00]: Unless it's an emergency.

[SPEAKER_00]: like I just don't leave the house, so it's very easy for me to love snow because I've never hopped to kind of like trek through it.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, absolutely.

[SPEAKER_01]: I feel like we're very kindred spirits.

[SPEAKER_01]: I'm like very famously known in my very small circle for like, I don't leave the house much.

[SPEAKER_01]: Mastermind plans in your closet.

[SPEAKER_00]: Ever after?

[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, I can see it.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, like I've never done it, but I can I can see I love a little I'm a Virgo.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I love a list.

[SPEAKER_00]: I have a notebook.

[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, to know books at the minute, as soon as I make a spelling mistake, you know, I'm like, I don't want to write in this notebook.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's done.

[SPEAKER_01]: Burn it.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I do love a post it.

[SPEAKER_00]: No, and I can imagine me having some form of like nefarious part in the closet.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I can do that.

[SPEAKER_01]: No, is he neighbors who know all your business?

[SPEAKER_00]: never after I don't talk to my neighbors and they are very nice people but I'm just like my next Renee but is absolutely lovely and she helped me when my husband went away and my heating went off and it turned out I had no oil tank that I didn't know existed.

[SPEAKER_00]: He hadn't even had the oil tank topped up.

[SPEAKER_00]: So she's lovely especially in a crisis but like my husband's like why are you going be friend there and I'm like because she stays in her house and I stay in my house and that's [SPEAKER_00]: how we I would that's our friendship not survive in like a really nosy neighborhood yeah I'd play exactly to be fair I think I would cause more concerns they would literally be like we only see a room for dramas and I'd like would you score these to the bins like the bra hot chocolate that's mostly whipped cream [SPEAKER_00]: ever after.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I love a hot chocolate and it's very much like as soon as it starts to go a bit cold.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'm like, hmm, maybe we should have hot chocolate.

[SPEAKER_00]: Exactly.

[SPEAKER_01]: A real tree instead of a fake tree.

[SPEAKER_00]: never after and I say that with a heavy heart because I would love a real tree but we got one one year and I was still finding pine needles like under the couch in July and I swore never again and then so I moved last year and we didn't bring our Christmas tree with us and we had to go and buy one and I didn't realise the one we bought was covered in green glitter.

[SPEAKER_00]: So I am still finding green glitter on the floor of my house.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's like I turned off fused into my the rock in the living room.

[SPEAKER_00]: And my husband would have like glitter behind his eye and I bet you look like you've been to a strip club.

[SPEAKER_00]: Like people are not going to believe you when you say that it's from your Christmas tree and we're in February because somehow we keep finding glitter in places.

[SPEAKER_00]: I am obsessed with that.

[SPEAKER_01]: It was the glitter that was like inspiring you for this book.

[SPEAKER_01]: I would say.

[SPEAKER_00]: Like it's a green green.

[SPEAKER_00]: my brain through my eyes also, then I don't know.

[SPEAKER_01]: Dye hard, but not as a Christmas movie.

[SPEAKER_00]: Ever after, because I will watch Dye Hard anytime of the year, but as I've proved when I watch loads of films in February, but Dye Hard is a Christmas film.

[SPEAKER_00]: In my humble opinion, it's a Christmas film, but I do not limit Christmas films to only Christmas time.

[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.

[SPEAKER_00]: Like I'll watch the green chandelier, I don't care.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_01]: What Christmas and July?

[SPEAKER_01]: Perfect.

[SPEAKER_01]: Book or TV scenes were one of the characters as hurt.

[SPEAKER_01]: Ever after?

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I just, I think it just fundamentally comes from, like, I want to be looked after.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, conspiracy theory podcasts.

[SPEAKER_00]: Ever after.

[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.

[SPEAKER_00]: So I have to admit, like, the conspiracy things.

[SPEAKER_00]: We tried to super-context for people who haven't read the book.

[SPEAKER_00]: There is a character in the town who is super into conspiracies.

[SPEAKER_00]: And it is how I discovered how many conspiracies my assistant is aware of.

[SPEAKER_00]: and we had to come up with them when we kind of had to tear them so they weren't like super duper serious.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I'm like, oh, what about this one?

[SPEAKER_00]: And she's like, oh, I think I think that's two on the nose.

[SPEAKER_00]: I think we need to come up with others.

[SPEAKER_00]: So I like Lauren news a lot about conspiracy theories.

[SPEAKER_00]: I am not a conspiracy theorist, but I do appreciate other people and there are imaginations.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, and the commitment to making a whole podcast around.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, like, you are very passionate about this.

[SPEAKER_00]: I've never been this passionate about anything in my life.

[SPEAKER_00]: Hosting an ambush intervention.

[SPEAKER_00]: Never after.

[SPEAKER_00]: I was caught those people off so fast.

[SPEAKER_00]: Like, my mom, I live in a different country now to my mom, but when I lived 15 minutes away, like, do not turn up at my house on an outstress.

[SPEAKER_00]: I will not.

[SPEAKER_00]: I will not let you in.

[SPEAKER_00]: I don't care if you literally gave birth to me.

[SPEAKER_00]: I do not turn up what my house and announce.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, you need a written invitation from me.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, and she'll be like, yeah, but if I don't show up, you won't be like me over and I was like, what does that to you?

[SPEAKER_00]: Um, I, I'm just not a, I don't like people in my space and I don't like being ambushed.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_00]: So I don't like surprises at all.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_00]: So no, I am rushing intervention is a hard [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, definitely empathize with the character who experiences that, but definitely say.

[SPEAKER_01]: Playing with dolls is a kid.

[SPEAKER_00]: Ever after, I had a doll.

[SPEAKER_00]: So there was like two main dolls when I was a kid.

[SPEAKER_00]: There was like a baby on a bow or baby born.

[SPEAKER_00]: Because I remember my cousins having one and maybe like, oh, this one eats and peas and mine is just a doll.

[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, I had bodies and things like that.

[SPEAKER_00]: I polypocket, so no, there's types of like little things, but yeah, I love [SPEAKER_00]: I love to doll as a kid apparently.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'm Christmas trees with themes.

[SPEAKER_00]: Ever after, I used to always want to have like a very perfectly curated Christmas tree because my mom's got Christmas decorations from literally when I was like in nursery as like a three-year-old.

[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, I love my mom has everything.

[SPEAKER_00]: There's like this star that is made out of like popsicle sticks that I'm most of made when I was about six, that she still has on Eikers Mystery.

[SPEAKER_00]: Luke's Santa Berger, if you remember that scene.

[SPEAKER_00]: I do, yeah, I do remember ever after.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, that's cute.

[SPEAKER_01]: The last one I have is Jess Mariano.

[SPEAKER_01]: Ever after, I was wondering, ever after, 10,000 times.

[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, I love.

[SPEAKER_01]: I feel like that's why you and Max get along because she once had a very viral video about Team Jess that she says she now regrets posting, because it's gotten so many comments.

[SPEAKER_00]: these are the types of conversations are hard hit in conversations people need to have them.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, truly.

[SPEAKER_00]: Because I imagine being friends with someone and then find out that they're teen teen.

[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, right, can you even trust yourself to make all the friends?

[SPEAKER_00]: Like, yeah, there's something wrong with you.

[SPEAKER_00]: Don't they trust themselves?

[SPEAKER_00]: Exactly.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's a real question.

[SPEAKER_00]: Like, what's happened to them?

[SPEAKER_00]: This is like the Darwinist path that we had a type of intervention that we need.

[SPEAKER_00]: These are ambush interventions.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yes, literally, perfect.

[SPEAKER_01]: Because I bring up Gamarkals, of course, because Gamarkals podcast, you wrote the, like, truly the perfect holiday romance for Gamarkals fans.

[SPEAKER_01]: I feel like love light farms and holiday ever after.

[SPEAKER_01]: They exist in the same, like, [SPEAKER_01]: fictional universe of the United States and so they've got their like shaking hands holding hands perfect book for Gamarko's fans this holiday season but there is a small town in Frazier Falls in this book that feels very Gamarko ask and I want to know more about your history with Gamarko's you were saying that if you said anything controversial in this podcast it would be about Gamarko's and I was like oh let's talk because I would love to know like when you first watched it how you got into it in your history [SPEAKER_00]: So, my friend that I think I mentioned earlier, who was a Stephen King reader and got me influenced different books, got me into Gilmour Girls.

[SPEAKER_00]: So, shout out to her.

[SPEAKER_00]: But I went into house going 2005.

[SPEAKER_00]: So, it was somewhere around, I would say 2006 that I first was introduced to Gilmour Girls.

[SPEAKER_00]: and I've watched it so many times.

[SPEAKER_00]: Like I said, I forget everything.

[SPEAKER_00]: I think when you watch it as an adult you see so many things in it and you like didn't pick up on that when I was a child just before.

[SPEAKER_00]: I just, there's something like I love so much about it and it's such a compliment to have Fraser Falls kind of compared to stars hollow.

[SPEAKER_00]: And whilst it's I'll be honest like it's not specifically set like I wasn't trying to impersonate stars hello like I was I was trying to capture that kind of like slightly chaotic characters more time by it's like in the middle of late.

[SPEAKER_00]: I don't always say in the middle of nowhere, but it's kind of, yeah, it's not kind of like on the door step of somewhere bigger and it just feels like it's own little like pocket.

[SPEAKER_01]: I think that Frater Falls feels very different from Star's Hollow and that the denizens of Frater Falls feel very reasonable.

[SPEAKER_01]: Like, it feels like their quirkiness is like really just guiding them towards their purpose.

[SPEAKER_01]: And they feel a lot more.

[SPEAKER_01]: I would say earnest, definitely, than the citizens of Star's Hollow.

[SPEAKER_01]: I feel like sometimes the people who live in Star's Hollow are a little cookie.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I quite often say.

[SPEAKER_00]: And this is possibly the most comfortable thing I can say in a Gilmour Girls podcast.

[SPEAKER_00]: Like, I quite often say that I hate everyone except for her.

[SPEAKER_00]: And that's not true.

[SPEAKER_00]: I just think when you watch it and you get to certain points of the show, you just like, why are you doing that?

[SPEAKER_00]: Why are you making that decision and what that makes good television?

[SPEAKER_00]: Like, people aren't perfect.

[SPEAKER_00]: People don't always make the right choice.

[SPEAKER_00]: People, you know, and this is why people are still watching Gilmour Girls 25 years after it coming out because they are lovable as frustrating as choices.

[SPEAKER_00]: Some people make it.

[SPEAKER_00]: I think it was last year.

[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, how did that go for you?

[SPEAKER_00]: So I had sads that I was gonna watch the original season start to finish.

[SPEAKER_00]: Now I always stop watching it when April comes into it.

[SPEAKER_00]: Fair, fair.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so because I had a link pushed myself over the lines, like, watched the entire thing from starts finish, it never seemed like a reasonable for me to put the revival on.

[SPEAKER_00]: And then I just put it on without having watched season seven verse.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, that's fine.

[SPEAKER_01]: She didn't write it.

[SPEAKER_01]: She didn't really reference it at all.

[SPEAKER_01]: So I think you're okay.

[SPEAKER_00]: I was just like this I'll be honest like it was one of those was like this is not this did not go how was anticipating it was going to go it was very I liked this season format.

[SPEAKER_00]: but I was like, does it, did not go, but so these it sounds like the town felt the same.

[SPEAKER_00]: I think that that was like a really nice part of it.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's like the the environment felt the same.

[SPEAKER_00]: It was the people making really poor choices.

[SPEAKER_00]: They made some really bad choices, but the actual town felt [SPEAKER_00]: kind of like this stable thing in the show when everyone's having that like little moment to make bad choices or make good choices or make crazy choices like the town is very consistent and I think that's what I'd like I'd love to go you mentioned like I guess waiting to watch the revival how did you feel about Rory in the original series and then when she gets to the revival [SPEAKER_00]: So I, as a teenager, like originally watching this, I was like, they have the perfect parent, like, more the door relationship.

[SPEAKER_00]: This is what I want.

[SPEAKER_00]: And now, as like an adult, as someone who is like the same age as Laura like, we've been in like the first years and I'm like, [SPEAKER_00]: She is not your friend, she is your god, so you need a parent, uh, I, like, I'm not going to pretend that I'm not incredibly frustrated.

[SPEAKER_00]: When I watch Rory, we get to the point with Dean with her obviously being like, he's my dear.

[SPEAKER_00]: and it makes me want to like smush the two.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, single times.

[SPEAKER_00]: I think trying to look away logically and obviously remember it that it's a fictional person.

[SPEAKER_00]: I just think someone who has had a lot of freedom because she's not, she's been in this like quite isolated place of stars.

[SPEAKER_00]: Hello, we're [SPEAKER_00]: Everyone's around her and then she's gone into the this environment.

[SPEAKER_00]: Obviously, where she's surrounded by people like Logan and everyone else and I just think like she wasn't prepared.

[SPEAKER_00]: Like she wasn't set up like prepared for how she should and shouldn't behave like when like I think Laura and I always just assumed oh, she's a good kid.

[SPEAKER_00]: She'll always do the right thing and she wasn't necessarily parented to be taught to do the right thing.

[SPEAKER_00]: So as soon as she was outside of her like fish bowl of, I didn't say the phrase of falseer, of the stars hollow, she couldn't make good choices.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, or like when a two choices came her way, she was conflicted and didn't know what to do with it, because she'd all do these.

[SPEAKER_01]: She never really had choices like that before it seemed like.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, exactly.

[SPEAKER_00]: So I think the kind of very simplistic way of me looking at is just like, [SPEAKER_00]: I find it really frustrating as I'm watching the show when she goes to college and then other things she does like her dropping lame as soon as Dean comes in to the picture like I find frustrating but I'm like oh she's 16 yeah like she's so she's so young in it like she's meant to be like this but yeah I have to try and balance that frustration with like not hitting female characters in things [SPEAKER_00]: because I see it with books so much with people just like absolutely obliterate any woman that dares to make the wrong choice.

[SPEAKER_00]: So I'm like really trying to police myself and be like she made wrong choices but then you watch the revival and you're like you know what?

[SPEAKER_00]: You just don't know how to make.

[SPEAKER_01]: Which, yeah, you've actually never made a good choice as it turns out.

[SPEAKER_01]: Because there was someone who was talking, I can't remember those reels, or, but definitely wasn't a TikTok, because I, since left TikTok, thankfully, for my mental health.

[SPEAKER_01]: But they were talking about how, like, there's no more, like, complex female characters anymore.

[SPEAKER_01]: And yeah, someone commented it's like, you guys couldn't handle where we go more.

[SPEAKER_01]: So like, yeah, literally.

[SPEAKER_01]: I can't pull back on that.

[SPEAKER_01]: And she does make a lot of wrong choices.

[SPEAKER_01]: One of my favorite people going back to Twilight is watching Kristen Stewart's journey with watching Gilmour Girls.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_01]: She's obsessed with worry and all the mistakes that she made and feels very connected to her.

[SPEAKER_01]: Which I don't know what it says about worry that she's very connected to and actress and Hollywood.

[SPEAKER_01]: And the mistake she's made in her life.

[SPEAKER_01]: But as a teenager, I was worried.

[SPEAKER_01]: I loved her.

[SPEAKER_01]: She like lived and died by her.

[SPEAKER_01]: It was also a team Logan.

[SPEAKER_01]: I loved her college years when I was a teenager.

[SPEAKER_00]: I do like Logan.

[SPEAKER_00]: I was so, so strongly, teen Jess and I am.

[SPEAKER_00]: We love it.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_00]: Jess is no angel.

[SPEAKER_00]: There was a scene.

[SPEAKER_00]: I remember my friend being like sings like a scene that happens where he's pushing himself on it.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I had blocked it from my memory.

[SPEAKER_00]: Like I had no idea what she was talking about.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I was like, I swear this was not not on the show.

[SPEAKER_00]: Like you just like, like, [SPEAKER_00]: and the more I watched Logan, the more I was like, you, your consistent, yeah.

[SPEAKER_00]: Whereas I feel like Rory consistently makes, in my opinion, the wrong choice.

[SPEAKER_00]: I feel like Logan is very consistent in he is what he is type of thing and he obviously is rich and hot and [SPEAKER_00]: It's hot hot to root for you.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, it's hot to root for you.

[SPEAKER_01]: What's wrong with that?

[SPEAKER_01]: Exactly.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's interesting that you see choice because he is the one that introduced that idea in the U-Jump by John Jackson, where they jump off this building.

[SPEAKER_01]: He said, it's your choice.

[SPEAKER_01]: And she kind of makes not great choices after that.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_01]: And before it.

[SPEAKER_01]: And the end is for it.

[SPEAKER_01]: But he's the one who just doesn't make any either because he just kind of consistently stays who he is.

[SPEAKER_01]: I've really liked that idea.

[SPEAKER_01]: I've never heard it like phrase like that before, which is always fun because I'm talking about gumwork rolls every single day.

[SPEAKER_01]: So when someone introduces like a new way of thinking about it, um, in all.

[SPEAKER_01]: I love, um, but you did see your team Jess, where you team Jess as a teenager as well.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I have hated Dean consistently.

[SPEAKER_01]: Great.

[SPEAKER_01]: Our first episode is actually called Star Cross Lovers and other reasons to hate Dean four [SPEAKER_00]: A dean is like my top people that I just like and basically anyone that is like I don't know encourages Roy's body-haired I'm like no, she's so close to being great.

[SPEAKER_00]: Do you're so close to greatness?

[SPEAKER_01]: You said that you rewatched every September what makes you pull back to it to rewatch a comfort show like that?

[SPEAKER_00]: I just love it, I think it's the perfect time of year to watch it.

[SPEAKER_00]: And it is the type of place that I'd want to live.

[SPEAKER_00]: As much as I said before, like, keep nosy neighbors away from me.

[SPEAKER_00]: Like, I feel like it is the type of place that I want to live.

[SPEAKER_00]: And yeah, I sit and draw Javron's traces.

[SPEAKER_00]: But I also just like celebrate people's wins and, you know, they're going to gather nests for, like, cat funerals and so on and so forth.

[SPEAKER_01]: And that sense of community is really, really nice.

[SPEAKER_01]: And I love Kirk, just give me an entire season of Kirk.

[SPEAKER_01]: I always wanted like when the office did like behind the scenes like extras with like the accountant, they had like little like many series that they would just post online.

[SPEAKER_01]: I needed Gilmore Girls to have done that with like Kirk and like his jobs around town.

[SPEAKER_01]: Like whatever his job was, I feel like that.

[SPEAKER_01]: Just some all of his side quotes.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, it's a Kirk side quest that have been a perfect game for that.

[SPEAKER_01]: We've talked a lot about Star's Hollow specifically.

[SPEAKER_01]: What do you feel about like Emily and Richard and that side of town as we call it?

[SPEAKER_00]: Like why we're saying earlier with, you know, we watch and my views of it changing like my views towards Emily and Richard have changed a lot.

[SPEAKER_00]: As I've got older and I turned it with those good things we're about to think.

[SPEAKER_00]: I don't think that Emily is the enemy.

[SPEAKER_00]: I just don't, I think she's not perfect.

[SPEAKER_00]: I think that she's a product of her generation in a rock-bringon.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I think that she could have changed quicker into the Emily that we see at the end of the revival.

[SPEAKER_00]: and to me the best part of the revival was Emily but throughout the show so it's like little things like obviously if you get the internet installed because raw we need to just go and lower lies like no and I'm like oh my god let him in like let code do his job [SPEAKER_00]: Let him give you a internet and just I would be an annoying parent if I was trying to do good things and was constantly being met with resistance.

[SPEAKER_00]: I don't go me wrong.

[SPEAKER_00]: She's not the perfect parent.

[SPEAKER_00]: There's absolutely boundaries that are crossed.

[SPEAKER_00]: Things that she says, you know, the way she weaponizes giving them money into what you had to come over for dinner.

[SPEAKER_00]: Which is obviously a great vehicle for the story, but in an actual if you put that in real life scenario, it was like, I'll give you this, but you have to, you know, this exchange of your affection, probably, like your attention.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, that's a really great way to put it.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so you know, she's not perfect, but I think the way Laura Liches like she's the Antichrist is just [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, it's on both sides that it's, it gets a little bit too far.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, and what really upset me in the revival was that they went and got married without either.

[SPEAKER_01]: I talked about that.

[SPEAKER_01]: We just did like a recap of a year in the life and that was like one of the things.

[SPEAKER_01]: I was like, I know that like it made sensitive like happened in the middle of the night, but like Emily not being there.

[SPEAKER_01]: That was like her [SPEAKER_01]: the whole arc throughout the show.

[SPEAKER_01]: She wanted to be at Lorela's wedding.

[SPEAKER_01]: It felt like that.

[SPEAKER_01]: So her not to be there.

[SPEAKER_00]: I was like, if it felt to me falling to the final middle thing go towards that.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, but like also trying to be like this really great happy moment and like not intending for that to be the case.

[SPEAKER_01]: But I was like, first of all, she's like, seems like she's still in the in-tuck it.

[SPEAKER_01]: She should be at the end.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_01]: She should be sleeping and start's holiday tonight.

[SPEAKER_01]: I'm very confused with that one.

[SPEAKER_01]: But to not have her there, like, come on.

[SPEAKER_00]: Come on.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, no, I feel like I feel like they same boy Richard is just I don't know.

[SPEAKER_00]: I I always loved seeing him stand up They're like our decision where he stood up for Laurel.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, yeah, I thought you meant like physically he stood up.

[SPEAKER_00]: I guess he's right top.

[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, also great [SPEAKER_00]: massive my yeah but no I mean like the times where I would you know there's a few scenes where he's like that's my daughter type yes you know you know very much like you're not gonna just just write my daughter type energy I think it's when Christopher's parents are over yeah and Christopher turns yeah don't really start on Christopher you can't exactly what you're gonna do everything but I I liked those moments where he would [SPEAKER_00]: You know, remember that he's like the head of his household and he needs to stand up for and not be so quick to be little and kind of dismiss his daughter.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, now I definitely agree.

[SPEAKER_01]: You were talking earlier about that you had some like controversial hot take opinions about Gilmour Rollsman.

[SPEAKER_01]: I feel like you have like pretty, you know, the usual one of the male opinions, but this is me trying to figure out if there are any hot takes that are simmering in that brain of yours that you would like to share with us.

[SPEAKER_00]: I hate Christopher, I hate April.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_00]: Like, I know it's tomorrow.

[SPEAKER_00]: I also hate a child and it takes you to fix my life.

[SPEAKER_00]: She's fictional.

[SPEAKER_00]: We can hate fiction too.

[SPEAKER_00]: She ruined everything.

[SPEAKER_00]: Everyone around Lane is the worst.

[SPEAKER_00]: Like, they destroyed her story.

[SPEAKER_00]: Is my like my big thing every time I see a high thing of his name, I thought I had what I think was a whole thing.

[SPEAKER_00]: Exactly.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's just the worst.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yep.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's just the worst character.

[SPEAKER_00]: Him and April.

[SPEAKER_00]: Indeed, in Christopher.

[SPEAKER_01]: They can go off and start their own new town.

[SPEAKER_00]: Exactly.

[SPEAKER_00]: And bring that Dave.

[SPEAKER_00]: Bring back Dave.

[SPEAKER_00]: But I used to do a thing of the time, and I assumed that um, so I couldn't have to go and fill the ocean.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_00]: Is that what it was?

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, he got cast in the O.C.

[SPEAKER_01]: So he had to go.

[SPEAKER_01]: They like make a joke of it in the show, saying that Dave moved to California.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, well they should have brought him back.

[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, laying should have gone to force them right in.

[SPEAKER_01]: Well that's what we said that should have happened in their revival.

[SPEAKER_01]: Is that like, yeah, we show up, laying's divorced from Zach.

[SPEAKER_01]: She still has her two kids, but she's rocking.

[SPEAKER_01]: And she like runs into David Gowski and then they just take out from there and it's a second chance romance with.

[SPEAKER_01]: laying in Dave because nothing actually really happened.

[SPEAKER_01]: It just kind of fizzled out because of distance and it was what like chosen three seems like a really hard time to have a long distance relationship.

[SPEAKER_01]: So you have two questions for you kind of relating Frazier Falls to Star's Hollow.

[SPEAKER_01]: If you could add a character from Star's Hollow two Frazier Falls, who would you add?

[SPEAKER_00]: Kirk.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_00]: I just think him and Donald the conspiracy theorist would get on like a house on fire.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, they might.

[SPEAKER_00]: And it would be, that's true.

[SPEAKER_00]: And he would be able to do all of Donald's, like, soundproofing and all of this, like, is odd jobs to help him.

[SPEAKER_00]: Definitely.

[SPEAKER_00]: No, stay safe from the government.

[SPEAKER_01]: I feel like Jack would be a lot of, like, going back and redoing things that Kurt could done.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yes, I'd fix.

[SPEAKER_01]: So he would, like, have to do it twice and feel like their interactions would be quite good.

[SPEAKER_00]: I also think the Ms.

Pussy would be a great addition.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_01]: Like having a dance studio.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_00]: I helped her out with the Nutcracker.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_01]: She would be the Nativity.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_01]: She would totally be there.

[SPEAKER_01]: And anytime Jack Kelly walked past her studio, she'd be on him.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, it was fun.

[SPEAKER_01]: If you could add a business from Frater Falls to Star's Hollow, what business would you put in Star's Hollow?

[SPEAKER_00]: I feel like if I pour flows funcies with flow attached next to Taylor's ice cream store, it would either be like the most passionate love affair, or I think the biggest enemies who stay enemies to even more enemies.

[SPEAKER_00]: I imagine them fighting over.

[SPEAKER_00]: who gets from the the town me in things like that and he would have ice cream but she would have like super fancy French like participatory type things and Macron's like I can imagine that.

[SPEAKER_01]: I would love that.

[SPEAKER_01]: I need like a true like enemy for Taylor because Taylor's just kind of like irritated with everyone and to incompetence compared to what he does because [SPEAKER_01]: as we learned when Jackson tried to be the town selector man that it's quite hard job, but I need to have like a true foil for him.

[SPEAKER_01]: Whether that is a romantic interest or like truly just we think they're gonna fight with swords one day.

[SPEAKER_00]: So Lauren, my assistant, when I was writing so it was actually the last chapter of the book but it ended up being taken out to be a burners chapter.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's of them like going to a quiz and Clara gets to meet Donald for the first time.

[SPEAKER_00]: and he's telling a kind of like how he ended up at Fraser Falls and Lauren really, really, really wanted me to write that it was.

[SPEAKER_00]: He'd moved there because he fell in love with flow and I was like, I can't do this and she was like, please.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I ended up doing it that he was following a lead about the Denver airport to like an air bay, snare, Fraser Falls, and there's a big conspiracy about the Denver airport being like a portal to somewhere.

[SPEAKER_00]: As Serri says that he's following a lead about the Denver airport that brought him to an air bay, snare, Fraser Falls, and he basically fell in love with the town, but Laura wanted me to do that.

[SPEAKER_00]: He fell in love with flow and he'd just been kind of like in town waiting for the right moment for them.

[SPEAKER_01]: No, oh my gosh, wait, that would have been heartbreaking, but I know I'm kind of team-worn.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, so that's how Donald Naly and Joe being involved in phrase I love.

[SPEAKER_01]: Where's the bonus chapter at?

[SPEAKER_00]: It was four preorders.

[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, I get said it to you.

[SPEAKER_00]: It'll be after a little while ill girl on my website.

[SPEAKER_00]: Oh my gosh, amazing.

[SPEAKER_00]: I can set it here.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, it's a pop.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's like a pop quiz.

[SPEAKER_00]: Like a trivia.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_00]: So it's like a trivia night at the pop for them to kind of do like a Christmas themed.

[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, that's so crazy.

[SPEAKER_00]: So it takes, it takes place between the final chapter and the epilogue.

[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.

[SPEAKER_00]: So it's just a little before Christmas.

[SPEAKER_01]: that's so cute, like, because like one of my favorite parts, like no spoilers is when he like goes to texture, but he can't because he came to the meeting and like her dream was to meet Donald.

[SPEAKER_01]: So I feel like having that dream realized is fantastic.

[SPEAKER_01]: But speaking of Star's Hollow and Fraser Falls, I mentioned you have a new book out and truly, Gilmore Gross fans, this is your holiday book.

[SPEAKER_01]: It is time to lock in, grab your keys.

[SPEAKER_01]: Take me and Hannah in your car to the bookstore because you are going to go pick up the book while we finish telling you about it.

[SPEAKER_01]: Because, truly, I just think that everyone is going to love this if they love Gilmore Gross.

[SPEAKER_01]: Even if you don't love Gilmore rolls, which I don't know how you ended up listening to his podcast if you're not a Gilmore rolls fan, but I just think that this is just the most excellent holiday book to have this year.

[SPEAKER_01]: Some of our listeners have probably read it, but for those who have not, as they are headed to the bookstore, could you tell them in your own words what happily ever after is about?

[SPEAKER_00]: Holiday ever after has a Clara Davinport who works for her family toy company.

[SPEAKER_00]: It was kind of if you very much think like Mattel, Type, Toy, Empire and that was originally started by a grandfather and they kind of have a mission to be like the biggest toy manufacturer in the United States.

[SPEAKER_00]: and she comes back to her role after spending some time working in another area of the business to find out that there's a huge PR crisis because this small town are accusing the company of stealing their toy design.

[SPEAKER_00]: And essentially, Kara gets sent to this small town which is Fraser Falls to try and resolve the problem.

[SPEAKER_00]: because they posted a video about it that's gone viral and now it's right before Christmas and Thanksgiving and people are saying that you need to stop shopping now and you need to support local businesses.

[SPEAKER_00]: So she goes to town and she meets a really nice guy in a bar and they have a really fun night playing pool together and she gets up the next morning ready to go to a meeting and finds out that he is supposed to be the person that she's going to see because it's his [SPEAKER_00]: and essentially when they weren't take the video down she decides, well I'm going to move here and I'm going to solve all your other problems so that you can trust me and hopefully you'll take this video down so I can get my promotion and finally get respect from my family business and that's what she does she moves to Fraser Falls and ends up falling in love with the town [SPEAKER_01]: So you mentioned that this idea came around from your weekend where you were just watching Christmas movies.

[SPEAKER_01]: What was the first idea that you had for this story in particular?

[SPEAKER_00]: So it was the idea of having this kind of like artisan toy maker.

[SPEAKER_00]: And like I love the big city girl and small town, but like I love it.

[SPEAKER_00]: I just think you can do it as many times and as many different ways as you want.

[SPEAKER_00]: Like I will eat it off every single time.

[SPEAKER_00]: I don't care if it's cheesy, like I don't really care if it's predictable, like I love that kind of predictability of it.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so I had this idea about this on San Toymaker in this small town and her business being like the thing that I'd kind of like screwed him over.

[SPEAKER_00]: and it kind of just rolled from there and I was trying to build up the town like what else is in the town what else is the town doing?

[SPEAKER_00]: Who is there?

[SPEAKER_00]: Flow was like the person that came to me first and then it just like person by person it just kind of all came together and I had to [SPEAKER_00]: at first and I realized like as I was writing out I was like she is she's a good person like she's not going to try and make excuses for them because she agrees that like the company's done something wrong but she's just going to kind of deal with the cards that she's been dealt type of thing and try and fix this anyway and Jack was a lot more [SPEAKER_00]: I think actually it's fine to be both more hard at it and in the beginning and I had to find like a softness in Jack for him to be able to kind of welcome her in because I had him like really angry in the beginning I actually my initial draft had him doing the video the one viral oh okay so that was my initial draft that was [SPEAKER_00]: I didn't have the chapter with them playing pool, and I'm having that first initial meeting, I had it that he'd done the video that was gone viral, like the town has made himself like an account to post, like a particular video type thing, and that he did it, and then she showed upon his doorstep, and was in the store buying a doll for her goddaughter.

[SPEAKER_00]: And she's like, oh, hey, by the way, I'm actually from this company that you absolutely hate.

[SPEAKER_00]: And then it kind of goes from there.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I just realized I was like, no, like, they need to see each of the soft side first.

[SPEAKER_00]: And the more I wrote Jack the more I'd be like, I don't care what has happened to him.

[SPEAKER_00]: There is no way that these people are convincing him to sit and put like a video on the internet he would never.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I'm like, this man is never putting a video of himself on the internet so that's the one that became flows video and it just kind of like I let the characters kind of guide me and when things start to feel like not right and the more I get to know them the more I write them I like learn learn their traits like it comes to me and then I have to kind of revisit the early chapters and be like, well, the know they wouldn't actually do that now that I know them a lot better than I did you know a hundred pages ago.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I love that discovery.

[SPEAKER_01]: I love going back to previous ideas and being like, oh my God, he would never post it.

[SPEAKER_01]: I can't let him know that I had once thought that I thought about him.

[SPEAKER_01]: He would post a video on the internet because that chapter that you said wasn't there, it's one of my favorites because I think that having that softness and being really intrigued by each other, not having that kiss that they both really wanted, but having that tension go into now their professional relationship is just so yummy and fantastic.

[SPEAKER_01]: loved it?

[SPEAKER_01]: What was it like drafting a holiday novel in the off season?

[SPEAKER_01]: What sort of I guess did you do in your life to bring in the Christmas spirit and bring it to life in the novel?

[SPEAKER_00]: I was listening to like Christmas, where I listened to productivity music, which is just like instruments.

[SPEAKER_00]: I was having to listen to Christmas versions.

[SPEAKER_00]: I wrote this book.

[SPEAKER_00]: I went traveling with my husband.

[SPEAKER_00]: I wrote it in Australia.

[SPEAKER_00]: I wrote a New Zealand, I wrote it in Bora Bora.

[SPEAKER_00]: And then we went to Las Vegas and I finished it in LA.

[SPEAKER_00]: So I could not.

[SPEAKER_00]: It was like 35 degrees when I was in [SPEAKER_00]: and I could not have attempted to remain this book in like worst conditions.

[SPEAKER_00]: It rained a bit when we were in New Zealand, like the New Zealand, whether it's not as like consistently nice as Australia's.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I was so relieved to have like better circumstances to try and write the book in.

[SPEAKER_00]: Somewhat jury.

[SPEAKER_00]: I know, and it was raining, and I was just like remember being so excited about it.

[SPEAKER_00]: My husband was gutted because we driven, like I don't know, five hours in one direction as like a detour because he wanted to see [SPEAKER_00]: then.

[SPEAKER_00]: And the weather was so bad that it was so foggy that you couldn't see it.

[SPEAKER_00]: And it was like we have just wasted so much time and I'm like, yeah, but I got so much job.

[SPEAKER_01]: You're like, this is perfect for me.

[SPEAKER_01]: It really was.

[SPEAKER_01]: I love that.

[SPEAKER_01]: That is so funny that like literally like you were like the hottest places that you could go to, especially like in the US like going on Las Vegas, you're in the desert.

[SPEAKER_01]: Like not, not a drop of snow to be seen.

[SPEAKER_01]: That's not completely [SPEAKER_01]: who just wants everyone's approval.

[SPEAKER_01]: And I love that that's kind of like her wound is that she needs that from everyone, especially from flow.

[SPEAKER_01]: What did you start with when it came to her character and kind of figuring out who she was?

[SPEAKER_00]: I have a tendency to give everybody an evil dot and I'm writing a different book in a minute and I'm like, I cannot do one of the evil dots.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I kind of went through, I'm like, is she someone who needs everyone's approval?

[SPEAKER_00]: And I came to the conclusion like, I don't necessarily think she wants her dad's approval.

[SPEAKER_00]: I think she wants like credit and respect for the work that she puts in, and that she doesn't particularly like her dad.

[SPEAKER_00]: She doesn't necessarily think that he is someone to be admired or anything.

[SPEAKER_00]: I love those lines, but I just think that she wants the credit that she's due, which I think is fair in any pasty, whether you work in a family business or not.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, oh, which is a show or the emotion this year I have and I had to kind of like I had to find a balance between her obviously having no idea what I finally had done because well the bit's family business had done because she wasn't there she wasn't part of it it wasn't her idea she never signed off she wasn't in the meetings where these things were taking place that then led to them doing this bad thing about Jakan's community [SPEAKER_00]: and what I didn't want to do is have it where she was really like super internalising all the guilt of it because it's like yeah if you were a business and the business was something that impacts people negatively then of course you're going to have some guilt I think that's really really normal.

[SPEAKER_00]: but I tried to have it where her thing was like she was disappointed in how the business had gone.

[SPEAKER_00]: After she had such good examples of how to run a business that's where biogram father, that's something that she talks about, of how like he started as a small business, like he would be horrified, kind of see what's happened and it is more the disappointment of like we could be so great and we could get here but we're all the way over here and like that I need to [SPEAKER_00]: and I think she was quite difficult to write in comparison to the other female leads that I've done because I think she's like confident in a lot of ways but it insecure I think she's a lot more.

[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know whether it's just simply that she's in a 30s versus my other characters that are in the early 20s and there's like a lot more layers that kind of comes with moving into your 30s and trying to work out like what are your core values, what is actually important to you, [SPEAKER_00]: I like how she turned out.

[SPEAKER_00]: There's not very often that I get to the end of a book and I go, this feels like where I want it to land quite often.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'll be like, oh I'm happy where I landed, but it's not where I thought I was heading.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I think I think I got to where I wanted to be.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I'm very happy with how she turned out to because I think that like you were talking about the approved slide, I do think it's like this really interesting juxtaposition of her being so confident working so hard and frasier falls.

[SPEAKER_01]: to make things right because she doesn't have as much of a sense of a guilt towards like what has happened as it is towards the people who did this at Davenport that she's angry about it and she cares about these people before she even starts diving into their lives but she wants to not only like have them respect her and trust her she wants to respect them and she wants to sit to be like very apparent and so as she's kind of chasing flow around being like [SPEAKER_01]: what I'm doing.

[SPEAKER_01]: Like, do you like this?

[SPEAKER_01]: This is your town.

[SPEAKER_01]: The only approval that I want is just for you to say that this is I'm treating your town right.

[SPEAKER_01]: And to have that juxtaposed against her dad who is like, well, you actually can't ever do anything right?

[SPEAKER_01]: So yeah, just keep trying, girly.

[SPEAKER_01]: But [SPEAKER_01]: I just love that idea of like she was really finding that in the town and finding her purpose because she is really confident because I think that someone to say that like you always need someone to prove all instantly you're thinking someone who's anxious and not quite sure of themselves but I think that she does that.

[SPEAKER_01]: I feel like it's more multifaceted.

[SPEAKER_01]: She's very complex female character in that regard that there's a lot more to her than just needing someone's approval.

[SPEAKER_01]: She really wants to have their respect because she's working so hard and [SPEAKER_00]: And the thing is she's not, she's not perfect by any stretch of the much enough, you know, I was right in her not having conversations with her brother that she needed to have because she just didn't want to hear what she, I guess, knew she was going to hear, or thought just as strong as expected she was going to hear.

[SPEAKER_00]: and I was writing it going like, grow up, have a conversation with him, but it's so easy to put things off and just kind of be like, oh, I am so heavily into this thing that I'm doing over here, like I can just ignore that.

[SPEAKER_00]: I don't want to hear the answer, so I'm just going to pretend exactly and like you can still do that and then also be an ultra like productive person achieving the goals over here.

[SPEAKER_01]: I love that.

[SPEAKER_01]: I love that, having that little element of it because feel like a lot of people complain about the quote unquote miscommunication drop when usually what they're what they are complaining about is that they are like omniscient in the novel and they're like, it's okay, like, just talk to them, like, just get over yourself.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's like, okay, but would you, would you call your brother if you knew that he was going to tell you something that you didn't want to hear?

[SPEAKER_00]: And I love miscommunication.

[SPEAKER_00]: I love miscommunication and I will give me a miscommunication and give me a third up break up.

[SPEAKER_01]: All the things that people think will communicate the third up breakup event.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, happy that someone overheard a conversation and it all went wrong.

[SPEAKER_00]: Like, I love it.

[SPEAKER_01]: Let's bring it back.

[SPEAKER_01]: So I said earlier, I did not know what Claire was going to do.

[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, ultimately, like, there's like the predictability in romance of like the happily of after love that.

[SPEAKER_01]: That's my favorite thing in the world.

[SPEAKER_01]: But I didn't know what her decision was going to be in regards to work in regards to what she wanted to do and where you were going to take that.

[SPEAKER_01]: So I reached like a point towards the end where I was like, I am like living this book like page to page because I can't quite figure out where she's going to go.

[SPEAKER_01]: Did you know from the beginning of like her journey where that was headed?

[SPEAKER_00]: I told her to spur the book, and then I, so the decision that she makes, as so after she goes to the coffee shop with her brother and has the finally conversation that she needs to have.

[SPEAKER_00]: I knew that was going to happen from the beginning, so I knew that I just had to get them from being in town to going back for the gala and having the conversation where it was kind of prepositioned.

[SPEAKER_00]: I had to lent the net because I was like oh she makes a decision super quick and it was one of my editors caught left comment like she like her job as a life.

[SPEAKER_00]: She needs to really mold this over like she needs time to think about it.

[SPEAKER_00]: So the intervention, yeah, happens.

[SPEAKER_00]: Was in a digital chapter that was kind of like that.

[SPEAKER_00]: Something that wasn't in my original plan, like I knew what Clara was doing, but I kind of jacked with I wasn't quite sure what was going to happen.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, because he can't just be over there crying and Frazier falls because he has a story.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I generally tend to know where the novel is ending up.

[SPEAKER_00]: I just most of the time do not know how we were getting there and that's the hard part of drafting for me.

[SPEAKER_00]: But I knew that Clara was going to cry on top.

[SPEAKER_00]: I wasn't having a scenario where, you know, I think there's the temptation to be like, oh well, she's going to do a 180 and she's actually going to decide that she doesn't care about a career and [SPEAKER_00]: she doesn't care about this and she doesn't care about that and she's going to go be a housewife and live above the store and that would have been great.

[SPEAKER_00]: I would have been happy with that and did but I don't think it would be true to the character and I think you can have a determination and a lot of you know be passionate about work and have you career be important to you and that look like different things and that mean different things and I think that's kind of where we we landed with this book it's [SPEAKER_00]: She's still the same person, but she's, I guess, taking a risk on herself to then go, okay, I can achieve what I want to achieve in this, I'm, I'm talking to even riddles because I'm sure you know, it's no, I, well, I maybe you're not because I understand it completely, but like, she, she's, she's the same, I call, but it's just didn't, this kind of, like, different, different setting now again.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_01]: No, and I really like that.

[SPEAKER_01]: I like that she's definitely had a huge change in her, but the core Clara that we've met at the beginning is still exactly who she is and hasn't given up anything.

[SPEAKER_01]: She can have everything as it turns out.

[SPEAKER_01]: And I really love her, but what makes Jack Kelly, my darling Jack Kelly, the best love interest for Clara, and what was important about getting right about him.

[SPEAKER_00]: He is obviously a secret lover boy.

[SPEAKER_00]: not going to make things easy for her and someone who notices the little things and just kind of like a no nonsense type person.

[SPEAKER_00]: In his obviously a bit on like the quiet aside and he is a bit more like I guess like a grumpy character I guess in the other male leads that I've written.

[SPEAKER_00]: But I often say that like they're the same person.

[SPEAKER_00]: I literally wrote it in the book from [SPEAKER_00]: and you like these two people who kind of do a lot of things for other people and those types of humans and those types of coaches need that support at home from somewhere and they kind of get it from each other which I think is it's really nice and obviously it's a dog dad.

[SPEAKER_00]: and he's a hard worker, and he loves his community, and he loves his friends.

[SPEAKER_00]: And he isn't the closest with his family, which I think, like I always tend to give my courage just like, you know, more than a couple of things in common.

[SPEAKER_00]: Because I think if you're going to be in a relationship with someone that's going to stand the test of time, you can't be always be pull-ups, it's the has to be something.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_00]: That kind of dreams you're on where, you know, he goes to, and at the spot at the end of the walk.

[SPEAKER_00]: He goes to things for her that would be completely out of the out of his normal.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, kind of composer and depth like that is normal, normal environment for her.

[SPEAKER_00]: So they are so very different and yet they have all these things that kind of join them and he's hot.

[SPEAKER_00]: So like I know he isn't real but I can tell you as the person that created him that he's so hot.

[SPEAKER_01]: from home.

[SPEAKER_01]: We gathered that.

[SPEAKER_01]: The hot toy maker, that sounds great.

[SPEAKER_01]: I did the idea of when you said that initially the viral video was from him.

[SPEAKER_01]: I was like, all the comments were about how hard he was.

[SPEAKER_00]: Like, I thought that's literally what happened in the in the story before I was the editor [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, it almost feels like they would ignore the problems that were the town was facing because they were like, what are what problems?

[SPEAKER_01]: You've got a hot toy maker.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, like, no worries about what was it.

[SPEAKER_01]: And it's the room on my way.

[SPEAKER_01]: That would have really solved closed tourism problem.

[SPEAKER_00]: And really would have mixed that.

[SPEAKER_00]: That would be a very short board.

[SPEAKER_00]: I could have done this as a novella.

[SPEAKER_01]: She was like, just takes a picture at the end.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's almost a bonus of both the time.

[SPEAKER_01]: Ah, perfect.

[SPEAKER_01]: I actually, now that you're talking about it, I really love that Jack has what Clara wants, which is like the trust of the town, the town depends on him, meanwhile that's like her dream.

[SPEAKER_01]: She's like, gosh.

[SPEAKER_01]: You've spent so many years being this person.

[SPEAKER_01]: I want to read that and I love that idea about them They're just so complimentary, but at the same time she has this like not jealousy That's the wrong word, but she's like oh my gosh, I want to be you.

[SPEAKER_01]: I want to be you and flow at the same time Yeah, I love but you did mention he is a dog dad how did elf come about and why is he the goodist boy?

[SPEAKER_00]: So Elf is inspired by Lauren Maitison's dog.

[SPEAKER_00]: So they have her now, if you want to have a rescue, he's like a rockwiler pit-boiled type.

[SPEAKER_00]: Like, they don't know what he is.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, he's a thick boy.

[SPEAKER_00]: Terry, he looks like a seal.

[SPEAKER_00]: and he is just like a big chunk and I involve him so much and he's just the goodest niceest sweetest boy and he is basically what I imagined.

[SPEAKER_00]: I mean at the colour so Lauren's dog is like a black colour.

[SPEAKER_00]: We've like brown on him sort of like what you would find with the right wailer and so I made elf like a bit more silvery just so like Laura didn't zoom in more than I can.

[SPEAKER_00]: I love her dog.

[SPEAKER_00]: I think her dog's like this, still in his likeness.

[SPEAKER_00]: And a Lawrence point, it was like, oh, it's how hard he can go on tour.

[SPEAKER_00]: Like he's available for tour dates.

[SPEAKER_00]: Oh my gosh.

[SPEAKER_01]: And that's what you should do.

[SPEAKER_01]: You could be on audio.

[SPEAKER_01]: But he's sitting out where you're going to sit.

[SPEAKER_00]: And he's just on this stage just working his tail.

[SPEAKER_00]: He's so sweet, is literally the most lovely dog.

[SPEAKER_00]: And he had a horrible start in life.

[SPEAKER_00]: And they rescued him.

[SPEAKER_00]: And a lot of him was saying that they keep saying in terms of the books come out.

[SPEAKER_00]: Like, you just go, like, you just don't understand and just go into the box.

[SPEAKER_00]: You're famous.

[SPEAKER_00]: You are famous boy.

[SPEAKER_00]: I love that for him.

[SPEAKER_00]: I know, but yeah, so he is based on foreign stock.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'm always feeling something from Lauren, like, all of Halle's eldest daughter trope, but it's stolen from Lauren.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, well, I feel like she'd seen for that before she's got a number of dogs.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_01]: But I did talk about earlier with Itsbreaker about the community aspect that I just might take away from that I was like, oh, I want to read more of her books because she does found family She does community so well and so pivoting from having like a college like found family into having this community How did you like figure out who was going to be like quirky with just quirky aspects to them and who was going to be quirky But purposeful it [SPEAKER_00]: Sans, so silly to say, but obviously as an author yourself, you'll understand the characters sort of tell you.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, they come to show up.

[SPEAKER_00]: They quite often the hardest thing for me is naming them, but are they with their appearance sorted?

[SPEAKER_00]: They're like personality traits like who they are related to, like it all, they kind of show up in my brain and then I need to work out where they fit.

[SPEAKER_00]: like where I'm going to put them and like you say oh they're going to be a big character and I obviously there are definitely characters that are bigger than others but I would have given if I didn't have word count to kind of contend with I think everyone would have had like an equally kind of starring role.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, because they were just so easy to write and to kind of have them all together in.

[SPEAKER_00]: These spaces like it's most fun, the bonus talk that I was talking about before, where it's like they are at this like quiz together and it's like you see the majority of the town kind of like interacting in one space.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, and it just makes me laugh so full.

[SPEAKER_00]: Some characters are definitely louder than others, so flow came in kind of refusing to be silenced and I sat and typed out ideas ahead of her about her claiming that the Boston Marathon had to change their rules because of her and her like refusing to take off a slant out of her because she wanted to do the son to run a link things like that and her being you know the x, y for an opera singer and refusing to change her name because she knew it [SPEAKER_00]: that literally all came out of me in like a five minute space like she was telling you she was sitting here and she was like yeah my life Hannah.

[SPEAKER_00]: I had more on flu than I was sitting on anyone else and then a piece by piece like as they more characters kind of dropped in and they I just think they all kind of fit in where you could kind of shine and torch on any of them.

[SPEAKER_00]: and I could tell you about them and kind of the hopes and dreams and stuff which is really nice instead of having the scenario where it's like oh I need to fill this time full of people and I don't know where to put people and what businesses to put in and did you have like a map that you were working out with them of like you'd like move their businesses in?

[SPEAKER_00]: So I was doing it in my head and then I had to kind of do it.

[SPEAKER_00]: I didn't come back and I just created like little boxes.

[SPEAKER_00]: It was more so when I was like writing people like walking through the town.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'm like, what business have they worked on?

[SPEAKER_00]: They've worked past this one like five times, but they haven't turned around literally.

[SPEAKER_00]: And my original job had lots of dog walks in it.

[SPEAKER_00]: Like I just kept sending them on dog walks.

[SPEAKER_00]: For some reason, my editor was like, we are a bit dog walk heavy.

[SPEAKER_00]: So dog is tired.

[SPEAKER_00]: But part of that being on Darkwalks when I was taking them out was like they're really the one, they're describing the wrong thing.

[SPEAKER_00]: I need work with that.

[SPEAKER_00]: That's the one that's dropped it.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, you're like who brought this?

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, so I did, I have to do a map and then I had to do a map for like artists and things like that to try and kind of like show where things are and it's [SPEAKER_00]: the not for a good month, so I will say.

[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, why I'm sure they're great.

[SPEAKER_01]: But I'll say about the cover.

[SPEAKER_01]: I love getting it and kind of looking at it before you read the book and just kind of seeing the town and the background of these two gorgeous people.

[SPEAKER_01]: And then when you're finished, you're really kind of like partway through and you've started to get like a better hold on the town and see like bliss and see all of the little, like they're not Easter eggs because it's just the town that's standing there but like having a better understanding and like who's inside them?

[SPEAKER_01]: It's just, it's quite, it's quite beautiful.

[SPEAKER_01]: is there a part of this book that you're most excited for readers to get to and to experience?

[SPEAKER_00]: Anything mentioned in Donald's, I'm favorite.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I quite like this is a chapter where they walk through the woods to find something together and I think that is just the perfect example of [SPEAKER_00]: and Jack just try not to be sort of like to into her yeah type of thing we're trying to just pretend that he's fine but like on the inside he's screaming yeah he's like oh my gosh I'm obsessed with her accidentally yeah I like the final scene [SPEAKER_00]: I like where and that is obviously it's a bit silly to say I will love it when the readers get to the end of the book but yeah I just knew he was going to say that to her.

[SPEAKER_00]: I didn't necessarily know how we were getting at that point in for a lot of different things but I knew where it was ending and I knew the words that he was going to say to her and I like her.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I like that too.

[SPEAKER_01]: I do have to read to the end to get there.

[SPEAKER_01]: My favorite part is the Christmas tree lighting and he's a little bit late and you don't know why.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yes, and when you find a little bit on the small business side, yeah, crying at that, that's yeah, part is there a part of it that you're most proud of that like was hard to get right and you were proud of the way that it turned out.

[SPEAKER_00]: The last thing that I did was the pool scene, because I tried to write that chapter and I just had to skip over and come back to it.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, because they just couldn't get it right and then my friend who was in America was like, oh, I think we play pool different to you.

[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, I was like, what?

[SPEAKER_00]: And that, yeah, I think I think they rules a different and I was like, oh, should I make them play dark?

[SPEAKER_00]: So I was like, it's just like the way it's played [SPEAKER_00]: I don't think so.

[SPEAKER_00]: And then I just spent a lot of time Googling how Americans play pool.

[SPEAKER_00]: So it was just a bit of like a night match, hopped it to kind of get dawn.

[SPEAKER_00]: People have been really nice about it.

[SPEAKER_01]: So I know that this book just came out, but I have two last questions for you.

[SPEAKER_01]: And one of them is if there's anything on the horizon for Hannah Grace, or anything that isn't an absolute secret about your next project.

[SPEAKER_00]: everything is an absolute secret.

[SPEAKER_00]: I think it.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'm so sorry.

[SPEAKER_00]: I can't tell you it's not freezer falls base.

[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.

[SPEAKER_00]: So freezer falls for now is a similar.

[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.

[SPEAKER_00]: I see it for now because so many people have messaged me and been like, [SPEAKER_00]: I hope we get in a Tommy story next.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'm like, Mr.

Bull club, you want to make anything next?

[SPEAKER_00]: Like, it's a standalone, I've been saying since I announced it, it's a standalone, and there I got an idea.

[SPEAKER_00]: So maybe if I run out of book ideas in the future, I can revisit, or people apply enough pressure on a cave.

[SPEAKER_00]: My next project is isn't Fraser Falls rather.

[SPEAKER_00]: I will be making an announcement for it.

[SPEAKER_00]: So I like to get my draft on before I announce anything and it's because we announced daydream before I had like the submitted a draft and then I couldn't really wait daydream and it just has got me for life.

[SPEAKER_00]: So I like to get my draft on so we know there's a book.

[SPEAKER_00]: it's going to come a whole yeah and then we know so I'm finishing up my draft hopefully this by the end of this month okay and then we'll be looking to kind of like start sprinkling in some like announcements and clues and things and I want to tell people now but I will regret it okay we'll find out probably around the end of November first start of December whether whether people you know pay attention to me [SPEAKER_01]: we will be locked in on Yuhana because I'm really excited.

[SPEAKER_01]: I loved this book so much.

[SPEAKER_01]: Again, I'm not just like hyping you up.

[SPEAKER_01]: This is like truly the perfect book for Gamarko's fans to read this holiday season.

[SPEAKER_01]: Non-gamarko's fans for sure, but specifically because I see who is listening, who you are here with us.

[SPEAKER_01]: But the last question that I have for you is a question I ask.

[SPEAKER_01]: All authors that come on and what is a book you would recommend for Gamarko's fans?

[SPEAKER_00]: If you haven't read it already, I suspect everyone on this who listens to this podcast will have done anything by B.K.

[SPEAKER_00]: Barterson.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so the Love Light Farm series is incredible and good spirits.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's not like super, obviously, small town energy in the way that Love Light farms is but that kind of like homey, magic type vibe you get from Gilmore girls in that kind of community.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, you're absolutely love my friend Erin who writes from the E.J.

[SPEAKER_00]: Blaze also has a series called Serenity Runch so it's on a runch it's not like in a small town obviously there is a small town that is, you know, the runch is near but that kind of found family kind of building your own circle is really great she's got a couple of books out in that series and I think if you love [SPEAKER_00]: Gilmogos and if you love, especially the second book, if you love kind of complex female characters, like you'll absolutely love.

[SPEAKER_01]: And I love a ranch setting, so that sounds like that too.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, too.

[SPEAKER_01]: Perfect for me.

[SPEAKER_01]: But Hannah, thank you so much.

[SPEAKER_01]: It was so fantastic talking to you and getting to learn more about your love for the holidays.

[SPEAKER_01]: Thank you so much for having me on.

[SPEAKER_01]: I have book-loving besties, thank you so much for joining me today for another episode of Gilmour to Read.

[SPEAKER_01]: If you'd like to join the book club conversation, head over to Patreon, where you can join for free.

[SPEAKER_01]: For November, we're reading Julia Song is Undatable by Susan Lee, and in December, we'll be reading Good Spirits by B.K.

[SPEAKER_01]: Borsan.

[SPEAKER_01]: My next guest will be Avarani, but until then, happy reading friends!