[00:00:00] Jane: Hey everyone, welcome to Historical Happy Hour, the podcast that explores new and exciting historical fiction novels. I’m your host, Jane Healey, and in today’s episode, we welcome author Brooke Lea Foster to discuss her latest novel, All the Summers in Between, which just released. Set in the dual timelines of 67 and 77, it’s been called a mesmerizing portrait of a complex friendship, a delicious glimpse into a bygone Hamptons, and a powerful coming of age for two young women during a transformative era.
Welcome, Brooke. Thank you for coming
[00:00:34] Brooke: on. I’m so excited to be here.
[00:00:36] Jane: Thank you. I’m going to do a quick bio and then we’ll jump right into questions. Brooke Lee Foster is an award winning journalist whose articles have appeared in the New York Times, the Washington Post Magazine, the Atlantic, the Boston Globe Magazine and People among others.
As an alumna of the Writing Institute at Sarah Lawrence College, she is the author of three non fiction books and the novels Summer Darlings, On Gin Lane, and All the Summers in Between. Thank you again for coming.
[00:01:04] Brooke: No, I’m so excited. I love hearing that because I’m like, oh my gosh, I actually wrote a third novel.
I know, number three. Congratulations. You know that feeling. It’s just it’s crazy when you hear multiple books, right?
[00:01:16] Jane: Yes, I know. I know. And it’s awesome. So congratulations on the latest. And we were just talking before we came on because we both have some main connections and you came up with the premise for the story while you’re on vacation in Maine.
Is that right?
[00:01:30] Brooke: Yes, we were. So it was a couple summers ago we were up in the Booth Bay Harbor area and we were staying in one of those like quaint New England inns where they offered this service where you could take a little Boston whaler into town for dinner. So I had, yeah, it was really fun. So of course we were doing that.
So my husband and my kids, we got on the boat and we were just puttering across the Harbor around maybe dusk. And I looked up and I saw this very charming, but modest gingerbread Victorian house up on a grassy Hill. And there was a young woman outside. And it was just such an old fashioned image, like I want to say she was wearing an apron, even though I know she wasn’t because that’s exactly what I saw.
I just was immediately, transported back in time. And right as I was looking at that it was just like a second and imprint. Another boat, a boat came by into the frame and it was this really glossy teak powerboat. No, sailboat. Sorry, it wasn’t a powerboat. I was in the Talented Mr.
Ripley for a second, but in my mind, it was the, it was an actual sailboat. And I just had this vision of these two women. I knew I wanted to write about friendship, but I had no idea what my way in was. And at that moment, I just saw these two women and that was it. I knew one would be rich and one would be a local beach girl.
And then as we were driving back from that vacation and we were going over the main, the bridge in Maine where you come into Portsmouth, New Hampshire. Oh yeah. Bird. Yeah. That spot ? My, I turned to my husband and I was like, oh my God, I think I have my next book idea because the women just started developing in my mind, and of course the kids are in the backseat saying they have to, these women have to be kidnapped by aliens and robots have to be involved. And I’m like, that is not happening. This is, we’re going back in time. I didn’t know when in time I was gonna go back. I just knew I wanted to, I always set my books in the.
The 70s. So anyway, when I got home from that trip, I started working on this book. And the two women started to form and get clearer and shape in my mind. And that’s the beginning of the book.
[00:03:30] Jane: So interesting how different people’s processes are. So the characters came first.
[00:03:35] Brooke: In this instance, it sounds like in this instance, the characters came first.
[00:03:38] Jane: Yeah. And how do you develop characters? Like I know some authors do like playwright essays, you know that the characters write like in the characters voice or do they have like profile sheets? Do you do any of that? Or you just feel your way along?
[00:03:51] Brooke: Okay, so I wish I was one of those writers who did all of that because I write because I think it would make you such a more efficient writer.
But I always. And if anyone on this podcast has heard me, before you all have heard me say this, I always write really rough, really dirty, really messy, I just don’t care that it’s going to be bad. And I find out a lot about my characters just through discovery, just through writing and putting them in different situations and seeing where the story is going to go.
And I think I can do that because of my years as a journalist, for many years I was reporting and, getting information and figuring out how to shape it and writing really fast on deadline and knowing that I was going to go back in and carve it and shape it and turn it into something that was ultimately going to be very readable.
And so I know even though I, of course, I’m a writer that always feels somewhat lost in like you’re in the dark with a flashlight trying to figure out your way when you’re writing a draft. I just know that I’ll get there because I’ll get there in revision, which is what I love. I feel like the first draft and the, Figuring out these characters is really just birthing them on the page.
And it’s a really, for me, it’s the absolute hardest part of the process and somewhat the least enjoyable for that reason. But I love going back and rewriting and revising and really figuring out who they were. With these particular characters, they were a little more clear to me than some of my other characters from the start.
And I think that’s just because of the the class divide between them. I knew I wanted one. To be a wealthy city girl who summered out so by the way, everyone, I transferred this story from Maine to the eastern Long Island, which is where I grew up and where I spend my summers. And that’s mostly just because I know it so well out here.
I’m, I had done a lot of historical fiction reporting out here, which I’m sure we’ll talk about at some point. And Maine, it just, I love Maine and I want to set a book in Maine and I know I will. But it’s not in my blood the way it is for you Jane. It’s not that I grew up summering there. I’m a new, I’m a new, a total newbie to Maine.
And while I’ve gone there the past five years, it’s just not, I didn’t grow up there. So it doesn’t come as instinctually close. So anyway, so I moved it to the Hamptons and but I forgot my way. Oh, the characters. So I knew that I wanted it to be in a town that was very much a, the the difference between the people, the haves and the have nots basically in the town.
So I wanted one of the young women to have these very illustrious city parents and I wanted this local hardscrabble girl to meet this other young woman and just think she has it all. And as she gets to know her and gets closer to her, realize that she really doesn’t have As much as she thinks she’s actually struggling him as brokenhearted as my local character Thea And I knew very early on that Thea was going her mom was going to have passed away and she was going to carry this baggage in her family so those Were early defining characteristics and I do think that really helped shape them As I went along because I knew one was going to be a little more selfish and one would be very you Know wear her hotter in her sleeve and be much more vulnerable and giving And with that dynamic and then deepening and playing with.
It was where I went,
[00:06:52] Jane: so interesting. So you so Margo and Thea This takes place in 1967 and 1977. And I’m super curious like why did you choose those? Those time periods for the story and the girls are quite young when they first meet in 67. And then it’s they’re inching towards 30.
When they need to get when they reunite. Yeah, so it was such an interesting. It’s such an interesting time period to write about. And I’m curious about your choice.
[00:07:20] Brooke: So I, okay, so when I was trying to figure out where in time to set them, where in time to set them I considered my other timelines, that time periods that I’d worked on.
So I had set a book in 1957 and I had set a book in the early sixties and both of those time periods are somewhat similar. Those were the period, the fifties is come, women were coming off of world war two where they were working outside of the home and suddenly in the fifties, they’re You know, back there’s all this pressure to be in a nuclear family and they’re click clacking through the local markets dressed fabulously with their hair done and having, drinks ready at supper and we see all these like really sexist hilarious Cosmo articles from this time where you know women were told how to keep their husbands happy by rubbing their feet when they got Home and having a fire crackling in the fireplace and making sure they were all beautiful.
And so it’s this very glamorous time on the outside. But what we know is that women were really struggling on the inside, from Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique coming out in 1962 or 61. And know, us seeing how much women at that time really relied on the mother’s little helper pill.
And I knew that I didn’t want my girls then. That wasn’t the right time period for them. But when I started thinking about the late 60s, I love this idea of being at a point in time where women were riding a tide of optimism, they had this sense that things really were going to be different.
Singers are singing about change, you’ve got the National Organization for Women has been formed. In Congress, they’re talking about adding a singer. And so I just love this idea of like women popping political buttons and really thinking about their futures in a really empowered different way.
And then I chose to reunite them in the late 70s rather than the 80s or the 90s because the 70s were so fascinating because all of this, these marches and this change and Grace Slick singing about, we’re the parents, your people warned you, your parents warned you about us versus them and young versus old.
We get to the late 70s and all of that just falls flat. Like a big hangover. I always say it’s like a big hangover because that’s really what it felt like and women in the late 70s found themselves actually living a life very similarly to what their mothers had lived. They found themselves still taking on the bulk of housework.
If they were working outside of the home, which more of them were doing, they were making 62 cents on the dollar compared to men. So I love the idea of having these two characters in this really optimistic time of change and thinking about their lives and their futures together and daydreaming about all the possibilities.
And then losing touch because they grow estranged for 10 years, but reuniting and realizing that they haven’t quite, attained those dreams. And there’s a lot of disappointments and regret. And, when friends come back into our lives from our childhood, I think there’s a piece of us that is reassesses where we’re at, how far we’ve come.
And when they’re suddenly thrust back together, that’s, they end up doing that. Thea thinks why didn’t I? Follow this, passion I had for art. And, Margo’s God, how did I just get lost in this marriage? And there’s just a lot of thinking back on their lives then and now.
And I just, I love that idea. So if I would have set them in the forties or the fifties or the nineties, that storyline wouldn’t have worked. And that was really ultimately what I decided to go for in this story.
[00:10:31] Jane: Got it. Yeah. And that makes total sense. I loved all the cultural and historical references in 67 and 77.
I loved all the musical references, especially what was your research like? What sources did you use to research those eras?
[00:10:46] Brooke: Okay so to research, what it was like out in the Hamptons at that time, I talked to all local historians and went to the library and looking at images.
So that was covered through a lot of interviews and whatnot. A lot of what we do is figuring out, what people were talking about at the time and what movies they were watching and what music they were listening to. And I decided To kind of flesh out the time period somewhat by putting the girls in a record store working because I felt I feel as though music in that time period was so influential in people’s lives.
I think music has always been influential, right? But during that point, there was just so much singing of change and protest and empowered youth having that as the backdrop and I put in 35, I think it’s like maybe 37. I don’t know songs in this book where they’re pulling from all these songs that you know, you and I really know from even just our parents, and the Beatles and I actually I think I started with wanting to write a scene at Shea when the Beatles come play in 1963.
I like wanted so bad to write that scene. I was like, how can I get them in 1963 but I had to let go of it. I do have the mentioning that they were at Shea at that concert, but not together. But I find just the way everyone was so I was so obsessed with music and the Beatles and the, the Beach Boys and then Mick Jagger and, the Rolling Stones and it just, it’s, it was so neat to have the characters connect over that.
And even Thea with her her boyfriend at the time who then becomes her husband, music is such a part of them and their identity. So yeah. So what was I doing? I was listening to Oh my God. I was listening to Beatles nonstop. I was listening to Ruby Tuesday. I was listening to Bob Dylan. I grew up, my parents, I wouldn’t necessarily call them hippies, but they were definitely products of the late 60s.
And I grew up with my dad as a musician. You too? Yes. Exactly. So my dad was playing paint it black in my living room growing up and I’m dancing around, music was just such a part of our lives. My mom has taken me to a couple Bob Dylan concerts over the years, where I’m dragged, but also in all of him.
But I also loved writing about the seventies in part because I was born in 75. So here I am a little bit pushing in, unlike when I write about the fifties, where I really am researching, what their clothes were like, and what mannerisms people were saying. I didn’t have to do that quite as much because I can pull a little bit from historical memory myself.
So in this book, they go, I think Jaws is playing at the movie theater. No, it’s not Jaws. Sorry. It’s that’s my next book. It’s Star Wars is playing at the movies. And they were all talking about that. There’s like underoos. There’s all these fun things that I remember.
Wheaties cereal, right? It’s like pushing into the late 70s and early 80s comes into my mind somewhat. But my parents also left me with all of these great stories from that time. Just really glamorizing and fantasizing what that time period is like, which I think ultimately is really glamorized.
I think it wasn’t that great but I, because they were caught up in it. But they would tell me stories of my dad’s band, maybe allegedly playing Andy Warhol’s epic party out in Montauk, and my mom staking out the Rolling Stones when they stayed in Montauk at the Memory Motel.
So there’s, there’s a lot of them more than my other books. I would say my other books have family members who are like a grandparent or a great aunt. You hear their voices or I heard their voices. You wouldn’t hear them. But in this book, I really had a lot of influence. From my aunts and my uncles and my parents and looking at photos of like my aunt and uncle with like crazy hair and, coats with that look like Sherpas standing outside VW buses like that was this time and so a lot of that does end up in this book.
[00:14:20] Jane: Oh cool, how cool for you and how cool for them have they all read the book yet because that’s a neat thing you know to have a family connection.
[00:14:28] Brooke: I think especially for my mom, because her stories really do flesh. Like they really have stayed with me. And I think growing up, you’re just like, yeah, mom got it.
But then you get older and you start pulling from it. It becomes really fascinating. It’s Summer Darling’s my first book. I had this idea that, as historical writers, we’re always trying to say, Set the book in a real moment to help readers get there with us. And so there’s this point in Summer Darlings where Marilyn Monroe dies because she really did die that summer in 1962 when my characters are together in Martha’s Vineyard.
And my mom had told me all these stories, like hilarious to me, where teenage girls were all crying when Marilyn Monroe died and falling into each other. And it was just this deep, Devastating moment for young women, which I found so fascinating. So of course, in summer darlings, you’ve got like the women all Oh, bowling, Marilyn Monroe dying.
So some of these stories that we tell our kids, I’m frightened by whatever’s going to stick with my kids, but some of these stories we tell our kids end up making their way out at some point.
[00:15:25] Jane: So funny. That’s so good. I, so back to the dual timeline I’ve never written a dual timeline novel. Was that always the plan?
Do you find that difficult? Did you find it easier? Like I just, the weaving in and out, like how? I,
[00:15:42] Brooke: okay, so I am totally with you. I, my first two novels were not dual timeline, and I was determined to write dual timeline only because so many books I love and so many of my favorite authors do write with dual timelines, and I love reading them I just think like it’s so fun to have all the Easter eggs and have the characters deepen when you’re going back and forth in time, but writing it, holy smokes, it was a blast.
beast. It was so hard. And what I realized early on is that it’s really writing two completely different novels, or three, depending on how many timelines you’re juggling. I just read Beatrice Williams’s new novel and there’s so many timelines going on. Like, how did she do this? But, so I broke, I started writing the The 1977 sections first and I remember getting three chapters and feeling a rhythm of okay.
It’s time to go back in time. And I wrote three chapters in the 1967 timeline. And then I started to move forward with 1977 and I realized, Oh my gosh, I can’t even write this. I need to go back in time and figured out what is going on between them. And what happened in the first place. So I actually started a completely new Word document and took the original first three chapters from that timeline and just wrote it in.
The entire arc of that story, and didn’t do anything on the later timeline. And it was way too long. I think it was like, probably 80, 000 words in itself. Just for anyone listening, a novel shouldn’t really be more than 90 95 as historical fiction, right? We do push a little longer in historical, so that was okay, but still.
And then I did the later timeline, and then I ended up cutting a lot and splicing them together, finding the right rhythm, figuring out what Which storylines were going to stay and subplots were going to stay and which ones were we’re going to go So like I said, i’m a really inefficient writer, but it’s the only way I know how to do it I have to get it all out and then figure out what exactly what my story is gonna chisel and become but yeah, I found it really hard and here’s the most hilarious part So it’s like we’re always trying to you know, at least for me I’m always trying to challenge myself and get better as a writer.
But so my next book is You Dual timeline and also dual POV. So that was like another beast. I was like, oh my god
Yeah, but it was fun I do have to say I love doing the dual timelines now that i’ve done two I, even though they’re beastly and my head feels like it’s going to explode, I do think you come away with so much more as the reader and even as the writer you can have a lot of fun with the characters in the two timelines and make things pop up that were, a secret in the past that suddenly become known in the future or there’s even just a t shirt like the husband in this book all the summers in between he’s always wearing his ramones t shirt because he’s a huge ramones fan and it’s who he loved in the past you know it just all ends up coming around so
[00:18:28] Jane: yeah no i think that you did it so well and it’s so difficult in my opinion and i’m just like very Yeah.
I can understand why it’s a beast just as a, cause you read as a writer and I’m like, Oh God I don’t know how she did this. It just seems very
[00:18:42] Brooke: hard.
It’s so hard. And now when I read other dual timelines, I’m like really impressed. Cause I can see just how much work it is for us to pull these things off.
And when you’re doing it, you’re just lost in it. We just chug through and push. But I say, I finished it. And I remember being like, That was really a nightmare.
[00:18:59] Jane: That was really hard. It was not easy. The best part is
[00:19:02] Brooke: when you’re like, Whoo! Done. At least for now.
Yes. It’s like that, that instinctive feeling when you write the end. You know you’re not really done, but you’re done. You got it out, right? And it’s there. Yeah, at least for this draft. Yeah.
[00:19:14] Jane: Yes. So on that note, I have a few writing related questions that I ask every author that comes on and then we already have some questions in the Q& A or people can put questions in the chat and I will field questions for Brooke after the, after these last few.
So I think I know this answer based on our conversation. Are you a plotter or a pantser? And it sounds like you’re more of a pantser, right?
[00:19:36] Brooke: I’m definitely a pantser. I am not a plotter. I try to always know generally obviously where I’m going to write to. I need to know somewhat the end.
It doesn’t have to be crystal clear, but I need to know somewhat. I was talking to Natalie Jenner recently, who I know most of your listeners probably know her work too. She wrote the Jane Austen Society and then her latest one is Every Time We Say Goodbye. And she was saying that sometimes So I’m going to talk a little bit about how I came up with the idea of writing to the middle, and I thought that was actually great advice because so often I do write to the end, but writing to the middle, that sort of climax in the middle where you’re figure out, how to push harder and through the challenges.
Is actually really smart and I’m going to do that with my next book because with the book I just finished I didn’t have that advice then but I was thinking that’s actually smart So I think as that’s about as far of a plotter as I get is knowing You know what the beginning middle and end is going to be But all the rest of it is really in discovery and I think that’s okay I like that I found that when I tried to outline my second novel on jen lane You know with bullets and here’s chapter one.
Here’s chapter I completely ditched that outline and it became such a waste of time. I actually found like it was just like procrastination to write that outline because ultimately I had to sit and figure it all out on the page. I could say in chapter two, she’s going to go to the store and run into her old beau, but until you’re writing it, you’re like, actually she can’t even recognize him.
She can’t even know it’s him. And they’re not even going to talk yet. And that’s going to happen in chapter five, when he pops up in the garden, whatever it is, I’m making this stuff up, but yeah, no, total. Total panther. Love it.
[00:21:10] Jane: Yeah, no, it is. It’s just so it’s always so interesting to me because it’s like whatever gets you through like everyone has an absolutely different process and I have, I always talk about Hank Philippi Ryan is a friend and she’s I just sit down every morning and I start writing and I’m like, what are you doing that makes me want to break out in high.
So I just I fascinates me like you’re a plodder. You’re more
[00:21:32] Brooke: of a plotter. Oh yeah, I
[00:21:33] Jane: am.
[00:21:33] Brooke: Yeah,
[00:21:33] Jane: I’m a total plotter. I would love
[00:21:35] Brooke: to be a plotter. I think you are so much more efficient. You don’t waste time the way I’m wasting time, I’m going in a million directions, but.
[00:21:41] Jane: Yeah that’s not to say that I don’t double back and check it’s, I plot, but then I every four or five chapters, I’m like, okay, where is this going?
Am I still going in the right direction? Yeah, totally what year is it? Yeah yeah, I’m not, it’s not a perfectly seamless process by any stretch. So I know we always have aspiring authors in the audience and you have been at this for a while now. What is the best advice you can give them about writing and about getting published?
I know those are two very different things, but.
[00:22:12] Brooke: Yeah. Okay. So I always say, and a lot of this comes from my journalism years too which is I heard Ann Hull, who’s a famous Washington Post reporter she won the Pulitzer Prize at the Washington Post when she was there. And she ran a journalism conference once that I was at, and she wrote on the whiteboard, rewriting is a gift.
And I always I like wrote that down on an index card and popped it on my desk when I was working at the magazine and I keep it near me even today, because I think so often we get bogged down in the rewrites and we think oh we’re never going to finish but there’s really very few jobs where you get to do over and you get to keep trying and you know make it better every time and so I don’t I try not to see revision as this horrible thing and instead see it as a gift because it really is in many ways.
A lot of other writers will say this too, but it’s just get your butt in the seat. Sit down and try to work on your pages a little bit every day. If you’re not able to sit and work on the story every day, I always say and I think it’s really important that when you sit with a notebook at lunch and daydream for 10 minutes and jot down something about the characters, just try to keep your head in it because I think that when every time you let go of the story for three or four days or three or four weeks, it’s so much work just to ramp back up and figure out where you were in the writing, rather rhythmically or in the voice of the character.
And last, when I was writing for so many different publications, I got really used to writing in the voices of those publications, you get used to knowing how to write a story for a women’s magazine versus the New York Times versus a blog post you can be a chameleon in that way.
And when I became a novelist, it was really the first time I heard my own voice as a writer and figured out what I wanted to say. And so I often say to people, don’t be afraid to really listen to yourself and let your voice shine through, we want to hear what you have to say. People are going to want to read your stories.
If you’re interested and you’re very passionate about the story, it’s going to come through. So I know that’s a little idealistic and not as I was doing a panel recently with a friend who’s So much about the nuts and bolts and her advice was that, but I really do think there is something to be said for believing in your voice and that you have a story to tell, because I think that does help, in the end, get you through to the end.
[00:24:21] Jane: I think that’s, yeah, that’s all excellent advice. And regarding get, having passion I’ve started projects and put them aside because I didn’t feel the passion and excitement for it. So you, and I know that readers will immediately pick up on that because I do, I can when I’m reading something.
Yeah, I completely agree.
[00:24:39] Brooke: Yeah, and I feel like a lot of novelists will say this, like, when you’re really in the story and in the zone, you just start hearing the characters talking to you. They’re talking to you when you’re on the grocery line. You’re seeing a scene while you’re laying in bed, falling asleep.
You’re, it’s pumping within you, and you want to work to get to that moment, right? Because that’s when the story has really taken hold of you, and that’s how the pages will get written, I think. Don’t you think?
[00:25:02] Jane: Yeah, I totally agree. Yeah. And when I’m on deadline, it’s true. It’s like before you go to sleep at night when you’re in the shower, you have to the juices are flowing.
You can’t turn that off or I have to I find to I have to dictate into my phone or I’ll totally forget the next morning.
[00:25:18] Brooke: I know my husband was like, put a pad and pencil next on the nightstand so you can write it down when you have ideas in the middle of the night and I did that I woke up it was like chicken scratch.
I had no idea what I
[00:25:26] Jane: wrote. It was nonsense.
[00:25:28] Brooke: Yeah.
[00:25:30] Jane: So funny. So I love the cover and I’m always interested because covers are hard, and this is so summery and it’s like a painting, and how Do you have any say in the cover? Do they just tell you it’s your cover?
[00:25:42] Brooke: Okay, so my publisher gallery, they’re like the dream team because with every single one of my covers, they let me weigh in on them.
So with this cover, they said to me, do you have any ideas for this particular novel? And I said, look, there’s this artist named T. S. Harris, I have three of her paintings hanging In my house. I love her artwork. She sells her prints on. She’s a Laguna Beach based artist, but she sells her prints on One Kings Lane, Artfully Walls, all the standard places we would buy art.
And she calls her artwork sunshine noir. So she writes, she paints all of these very moody mid century women in bathing suits or in really cool period dresses, sun hats, they’re either on the deck of a boat or they’re, Sunning themselves at a pool. And so my art director looked into it and they went to lease three images and one of them had just been snapped up and they came back with two.
And one was the picture you’re seeing with the white bikini. We immediately jumped on it. It’s just, she looked the perfect age. It was the right bathing suit. We love that there were all these shadows on her, even though it’s a really like carefree image of someone sitting at the pool, you can tell that there’s some darker threads in the book.
So we just completely fell in love with it. And then I think there’s something to be said for the typography being amazing. It’s so period. The 1960s kind of typography, I thought was great. And then came to find out that the license that had just got picked up Beatrice Williams husbands and lovers book.
[00:27:09] Jane: Oh, no way.
[00:27:09] Brooke: Also a T. S. Harris cover. Yes. So Beatrice and I did a podcast recently, which I can’t even believe I’m saying, cause she was my favorite author of all time long before I became an author. So doing a podcast with her is like a dream come true. We were joking that we have the two best looking covers on the, in the, in, in bookstores right now, because they’re both TS Harris paintings and then coincidentally Rowan Baird’s the Divorcees, which came out in March is also a TS Harris painting, so she’s having this moment in publishing, which is really cool.
Yeah, it’s really Oh, that’s
[00:27:37] Jane: so cool. Yeah. Beatrice is coming on next month as a matter of fact. Oh, she’s, yeah. That’s funny. That’s
[00:27:44] Brooke: so funny about the cover. But yeah, if, yeah. Her cover, you’ll notice it’s a completely different vibe, different body, different woman, you, you’ll see it’s very, similar.
It’s that same sunshine.
[00:27:54] Jane: Okay. Very cool. And okay. So you alluded to what you’re working on now. Do you want to talk a little bit more about it?
[00:28:01] Brooke: Yeah, so my next book comes out next summer and we just named it. It’s called our last vineyard summer and it takes place on Martha’s Vineyard. So I go back to Martha’s Vineyard.
I had enough of Eastern Long Island. No, I’m just kidding. But I actually really wanted to go back to the vineyard. I, my husband and I started going there many years ago when we lived in DC and it’s very popular place for people, living and working in DC. And that’s oddly how I ended up going there, even though I.
Rew up going to block island and all different new england beaches. We had never gotten to martha’s vineyard but anyway, it’s about a family. It’s more of a family saga and it’s about three sisters who are grown they reunite at the beach house in 1978 their mother calls them home because she’s this glorious steinem like iconic figure And she calls them home because their father, who was a longtime United States Senator, had passed away a year ago, and there’s some financial trouble, and they think they, she thinks they have to sell the house.
And when the girls come back home, there’s a lot of kind of tension that sisters have, that fun sister kind of thing. I don’t know, ups and downs. I’m one of three sisters, so I get that. And and all these family secrets are revealed and take them back in time. Actually, no, sorry.
It doesn’t take them back to time, but the story goes back in time. So that’s through one of the sister’s points of view, the 1978 timeline and the 1965 timeline is told through Virgie, the mother. And it’s Sort of the girls are young and they’re on the vineyard and it helps you understand how she became this Gloria Steinem like iconic figure So her husband’s a senator by then and yeah So it’s this washington political family beach house in peril sisters unite in the later timeline But the sisters have all this stuff going on.
So it’s honestly, I love this book. I think it’s really beautiful really fascinating to read just because of this character that’s this Gloria Steinem like figure and what it’s like to be a mother and it’s asked the question like what if Gloria Steinem was your mother like what would that actually be like if you were getting that messaging at home and maybe some of you eat it up and some of you reject it so that kind of gets it a little bit what it’s about.
[00:30:04] Jane: Very cool. And you’re thinking next summer for that one? When do you publish it? Yeah,
[00:30:08] Brooke: next summer. We don’t, I don’t have the exact date, but I think it’s June 2025, right? Am I, do I have the year right? Yeah.
[00:30:14] Jane: Yeah. Yeah.
[00:30:15] Brooke: Too many book events. I’m like, what year is this? You’re busy, I know. Okay.
Right now I’m in the mode of coming up with a book for, if I can, the following summer or the summer after that.
[00:30:24] Jane: That is an ambitious schedule. God love you. That’s amazing.
[00:30:28] Brooke: Yeah. Yeah. Who knows? We’ll see, right? I’m not making any promises here.
[00:30:32] Jane: So before I take these questions from the audience how best can readers stay in touch with you?
[00:30:37] Brooke: Oh, okay. So I’m on Instagram, brooklyfoster. I have a great fiction based sub stack about my books, but also lots of other books called dearfiction. substack. com. I’m on Facebook, brooklyfosterwrites, and I am on TikTok, but I’m not very active there, but brooklyfoster there too.
[00:30:54] Jane: Awesome. Perfect. Yeah. And okay, so questions.
Who was the hardest character wr to write in this story and why? That’s from an Anisa. Excuse me.
[00:31:04] Brooke: Oh, hi, Anissa. Hi Anisa. Hi Anisa. I would say, one of the hardest characters to write, believe it or not, was Felix, who is the husband of Thea. And I think that’s because when he, when I first wrote him, I don’t know why, because I did not intend for him to be a jerk.
But he came off as such a jerk in the book. And my editor read it and she was like, why is he a jerk? Like he’s saying supporting things, but then he’s contradicting himself with his actions. And I just didn’t even see it. This is why I love editors. And so I went back and I really thought about what it, what their marriage was going to be like.
And what, what had happened between them? Cause I think it’s really a loving marriage. There’s not a, it’s, there’s no big problem. No one wants to get divorced. No one wants to live without each other, but there’s just this sense of abandonment, I think, on Thea’s part, where she feels as though her husband has really looked out for his own career and he hasn’t really thought about the fact that maybe she even wants one.
And that’s the time period, right? That’s really realistic. And I think that also happens a lot today, even with women who are figuring out, how they’re going to work together. Putting together their family and their jobs. So I would say I had to really spend a lot of time with him, believe it or not.
Margo, of course she’s selfish. She’s so many people dislike her. She makes so many bad choices. She’s not always nice to Thea. But I could really empathize with someone like Margo. I’ve had friends like Margo whose parents, really are very lonesome in their home and they, all they want is to be loved by the people around them and they get the attention in all the wrong ways.
So that was hard to make her, to make the reader still find a shred of empathy for her and still care about her. So I spent a lot of time working on that, that, that one as well.
[00:32:43] Jane: Oh, yeah,
[00:32:43] Brooke: that was the most natural to me. I feel like I’m a local beach girl. I can get that girl, local beach girl with problems that was so I can write back that kind of character much more easily.
[00:32:55] Jane: Very cool. This is a good question. Sharon person. Hello, Sharon asked, Did you create a playlist for this book? I loved all the references to various songs that were popular at the time. Do you have a Spotify playlist?
[00:33:06] Brooke: Okay, so people have been asking me to do this and I actually spent An hour one day before the book came out listing every single song that’s in the book and I’m determined to make one of these playlists.
And if I do, I will put it up on social media, but I have not yet. But I wrote to them to the music endlessly and with every book I always have one song that really sticks with me and helps me write those really emotional scenes. And with this book, it was Yellow Brick Road by, Yellow Brick Road by Elton John, which is really from the latter timeline, not from the earlier one, but it To me, that song, regardless of what Elton John wrote it about, that song is so much about longing and regret and going back and making amends with someone and just thinking of the past in such a nostalgic way.
And I feel like when the friends reunite in that 70s timeline, that’s really what they’re doing. Grappling with if they want to stay friends, but also, holding on to this very golden moment in time they had together before they, this tragic thing happened between them. So no, I haven’t made the playlist yet, but yes, music was a huge part of the book.
And that song is really a good companion song for the novel.
[00:34:10] Jane: Amazing. Now, can you let, this is my own question. Can you write listening to music with lyrics? Like I can listen to music. I just can’t listen to lyrics when I’m writing.
[00:34:20] Brooke: Okay. So I don’t listen to music. Unless I’m writing emotional scenes and then I do them with lyrics So when I’m like getting into a scene and developing it if I were listening to music that whole time I would find it really distracting But when I’m writing a climactic emotional moment where I really want to pull, Dive into their hearts and really pull out the juice of what they’re saying what they’re really saying what the code language Is that’s when I use music and then what I do is and tell me jane if you do this But I then like will reread What I wrote with the beginning of the song and get to the climax of the song as I’m, timing it so I get to that emotional punch of the moment and then feeling the line and then writing a word, another sentence that’s how I’m using music.
I use it really to propel the scene emotionally.
[00:35:06] Jane: That’s super cool. No, I don’t do that. That’s really interesting. You’ll have to
[00:35:10] Brooke: try
[00:35:10] Jane: it because it really works. I do have my last, the book that I just turned in takes place in 1947, and I have, but I have contemporary songs for all the characters they’re theme songs.
Oh, I love that! What? For the main character love story, the Alcott by the national is like their love story song. Yeah. Oh my God. How cool. Yeah. So similar. Yeah. Yeah. So yeah. Just to get the vibe of the relationship and yeah, all of that. Yeah.
[00:35:39] Brooke: But day to day, you wouldn’t listen to it.
But at like writing, but then you listen to it when you’re like thinking about them and thinking about it. Yeah. Yeah.
[00:35:47] Jane: But I can listen to, I have Spotify like study. music playlists and stuff that are all instrumental that’s that I can write to that but yeah interesting
[00:35:56] Brooke: yes like those movie soundtrack music I can write exactly yeah that’s some good stuff like don’t even I just turn it off because it’s like you just want the quiet yeah but I can write to that
[00:36:05] Jane: This is actually another music related question from G.
Spencer. Did you have to get permission to use song references or did you only use titles? Which I think you did. I’m asking because I’m writing a novel set in 1946 and want to use some musical references. I have some, I don’t know if you have any advice on this too, but what about you, Brooke? No,
[00:36:23] Brooke: I was going to say you give your advice because for me, the time that’s reaching further back in time, which I think has different rules.
But for me I did have song lyrics in and I had to take them all out. And I was so sad because you just want to put in a line or two. They say you can put in I think one line, otherwise you have to, it’s right. It’s one line. Otherwise you have to paraphrase. And so I did paraphrase the songs.
And the truth is what I realized, it’s I want to put in the lyrics because that’s what I’m feeling at the moment. But once I let go of the draft and it came back to me from my editor after six weeks or something, I realized that you actually didn’t need the lyrics. All of us know the songs, at least the songs I’m referring to paraphrasing it actually worked just fine.
[00:37:04] Jane: Yeah yeah, that you they’re really strict with with music lyrics unless you’re Stephen King. I know he has don’t fear the Reaper lyrics in the stand. I’m like of course, they’re going to pay for the lyrics, the copyright for that, because it’s Stephen King, but Right, exactly. They’re probably like, take it.
Exactly, like every other, like every book I’ve written, I have music lyrics in for the first draft. And they’re always like, Jane, you’re going to take these out and we like you should know by now, but I’m always like, Oh, maybe
[00:37:31] Brooke: so the 40s isn’t fair use yet. What is fair use then is fair use 100 years. What is fair use?
[00:37:37] Jane: I think fair use is 100 years from copy if the copyright has not. Oh, that’s right. Okay. But also with music, in particular with song lyrics there. They’re more strict in my experience. They’re way more strict than other references. Yeah, I don’t know why or how, but they are. Yeah.
[00:37:58] Brooke: Yeah. My agent was like, you can leave them in, but you really risk it becoming an issue.
And so who’s going to want, no one wants that, she’s sometimes they notice sometimes they don’t, but I wouldn’t do it. I was like, yeah, I’m not doing it.
[00:38:09] Jane: Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Like why put that obstacle, like why create a problem that you don’t have to deal with? Yeah. Yeah. Exactly.
Exactly. It’s
[00:38:15] Brooke: a shame though. Cause it’s, you want to use them so bad.
[00:38:18] Jane: I know. Yeah. Especially. Yeah. I’m, it’s such an influence obviously on your writing and on my writing. So yeah, totally. Oh Joan Barlow asks are you are doing a book tour. You’ve been doing a book tour. Are you still, do you still have events coming?
I do.
[00:38:32] Brooke: Yes. So my, I know most of my events are done, but I do have events on Martha’s Vineyard, Nantucket, Cape Cod Warren, Rhode Island, Shelter Island, and Out on Eastern Long Island, where I’m based, but all my dates in the South and the Mid Atlantic are done. So those, my book came out on June 4th, and so I did that push early on, and now I’m focused on the New England area.
But if she’s, Joan, if you’re from the New England area, please come out for one of those events. All of my tour information can be found right on my Instagram page and also on my Dear Fiction page, awesome. Perfect. I know it’s one of the perks of writing summer beach novels is go to summer beach towns.
Great, beach locales.
[00:39:13] Jane: Yeah, that’s awesome. One last question from Anissa. What are you both reading now? What are you reading right now? If you have time. I know it’s
[00:39:20] Brooke: shocker. Shocker. I just finished Beatrice Williams new novel, Husband and Lovers. I have to always read her books first.
I just did. I’m telling you, I’ve adored her since A Hundred Summers. So I love Tonspins and Lovers. I just finished Before That Sandwich by Katharine Newman, which everyone on earth is reading. Oh, yeah.
[00:39:37] Jane: Is that good? Yeah,
[00:39:38] Brooke: It’s really good. Everybody some people are now panning it. I think it got overblown.
So then people read it late. And they’re like, Oh, it’s not that good. It’s actually that good. It’s just really about nothing. And yet it’s about so much and a complicated family. And it’s really beautiful. It’s her prose is great. She’s gorgeous, and she’s just a very insightful writer. And next up for me is actually a book I bought down in Greenville, South Carolina, which is where Anissa is from, because I have actually met Anissa.
And that is Ali Kandi’s The Unwedding. And I carried it around with me and now I’m finally getting to it and I’m on the first chapter and love it so far. So it’s, I think it’s a Reese pick. It was a Reese pick, but it’s a place in Cal, it’s got that setting and it’s at a hotel. And apparently she goes out to the pool and finds a dead body and she’s divorced from her.
I don’t know. It just sounds, it’s got like all the makings of a good summer book. So I grabbed that one. Perfect.
[00:40:32] Jane: Yeah, and I am reading and this is a good wrap up. Erika Roebuck’s latest, The Last Twelve Miles. I loved it. I’m almost done because she’s coming on Thursday night, so you can all register for her webinar Thursday night.
And then the other one is my friend Marjan Kamali just came out with The Lioness of Tehran. Yes, it’s on my
[00:40:52] Brooke: list. Yeah. Are you reading
[00:40:54] Jane: it yet? Or you’re going to read it? I have it. So that’s next on my list. Cause I, I’m going to read that this weekend and I love her writing and she’s just a delightful person.
Oh, I want to
[00:41:03] Brooke: meet her. So I actually, it’s interesting when I was at a Barnes and Noble event recently, I always asked the bookseller, what’s your favorite book? What do you love? And she said her novel, The Stationery Shop, which for some reason, I just missed, those big books. They’re huge.
Everyone read them, but somehow you just missed it in time. So I bought it and I want to read that one first and then I’m going to read her new one, but there’s so many books. I just want to read that. It drives you crazy, right? Cause it’s so hard.
[00:41:28] Jane: Yeah. Yeah. So hard to get through them. Nevermind blurbs and manuscripts of friends and all that.
I’m sure you, you deal with it too. Yeah. Yeah. Brooke, this was delightful. Thank you so much for coming on tonight. This is so fun.
[00:41:43] Brooke: And I feel so lucky that I’ve, gotten to meet you and get to know you a little bit too.
[00:41:47] Jane: Yeah, likewise, hopefully, we’ll run into each other in person sometime soon.
That would be awesome.
[00:41:51] Brooke: Yes, that would be great. When does your next book come out? I’m sure people on the zoom all know about it. But when does it come out?
[00:41:57] Jane: It comes out, God willing spring 2025. We have, we don’t have a date or anything. Yeah. I’m getting my edit specs any day now and I’m gonna, run terrified from the room when I get home and then I’ll, and then I’ll be okay.
No, because you know what you’re gonna do? You’re gonna say rewriting is a gift. It’s a gift. I know. I think I need that little thing taped to my wall. But thank you again and thank you for everyone for tuning in tonight as always. And and yeah, please keep in touch, Brooke. Thank you. And best of luck with your book.
Everyone should read it. All right. Perfect summer read. All summers in between. All right. Thank you so much, everyone, for coming. And
[00:42:33] Brooke: thank you, Jane. Bye. Take care. Bye bye.
