[00:00:00] Jane: 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 special episode, I’m fortunate enough to interview two terrific historical fiction authors who share the same publisher as me, Lake Union Publishing. Sara Goodman Confino is here to discuss her latest novel, Behind Every Good Man, which released in early August, and Jennifer S. Brown, is here to discuss her latest novel, The Whisperer Sister, which comes out September 3rd. And it’s there’s a Goodreads giveaway right now on Kindle. For Kindle copies of it, right Jen? Yeah. Yes. Okay. Awesome. Welcome ladies. Thank you so much for doing this. Thank you. Thank you. So I’m going to do brief intros and I have a ton of questions and I will, I won’t take up, we try to do this like 45 minutes or so.

[00:00:48] Jane: I don’t like to take up too much of your time. Sara Goodman Confino is the bestselling author of Don’t Forget to Write, She’s Up to No Good, and For the Love of Friends. She teaches high school journalism and creative [00:01:00] writing in Montgomery County, Maryland, where she lives with her husband, two sons, and two miniature schnauzers.

[00:01:06] Jane: Jennifer S. Brown’s debut novel, Morrow Girls, was a USA Today Bestseller, a Massachusetts Book Award Must Read, and a 2016 Goodreads Choice Semi Finalist for Historical Fiction. She teaches writing both in person in the Boston area and online through the Loft Literary Center. The Whisper Sister is her second novel.

[00:01:25] Jane: Jennifer has two mostly grown children who occasionally grace her with a visit, like when they’re turning 21 years old two, two beagles and a husband who pretends not to hear her once she says she wants to adopt more dogs. Welcome, ladies. Thank you so much for doing this again. Thank you. Thank you for having us.

[00:01:42] Jane: So I want to, I’m going to hold up Jenny’s book and Sara, if you could hold up yours because the covers are beautiful. So let’s dive in. Jenny, why don’t we start with you? Tell me about the premise of The Whisper Sister and how you came to write it.

[00:01:55] Jennifer: All right. The problem of talking about the plot of The Whisper Sister is there are a lot of [00:02:00] spoilers along the way but I will say it takes place, it covers exactly the years of Prohibition.

[00:02:06] Jennifer: So it starts in 1920, it ends in 1933, and it starts when Minnie our hero arrives in the United States from the old country, and her father is working for a mobster, Arnold Rothstein. He’s already been in the U. S. for seven years. It’s about her growing up in New York and getting used to things.

[00:02:27] Jennifer: Her father ends up opening a speakeasy. It’s actually really a bar. It’s like a bros kind of blind pig bar. But when circumstances for the family change, It’s Minnie takes over the bar and she actually turns it into a really lovely speakeasy. So that’s, there’s, there are gangsters there are family issues.

[00:02:46] Jennifer: They’re the bar issues, it’s illegal. That pretty much covers it. And, where it started from, I know that Woody Allen is on the outs, but if anybody’s seen the movie Midnight in Paris, and it’s about [00:03:00] romanticizing the past. And, I I was definitely guilty of that before I started historical writing.

[00:03:06] Jennifer: And I’ve always thought like the 20s were so glamorous. How many people have you heard of oh, flappers and martinis, and it’s all so great. And I wanted to dig beneath that figure out what it was really like. And it was, There was a lot that was not glamorous. There was a lot that was pretty ugly.

[00:03:23] Jennifer: And I just, I’ve watched so many things, and you have a lot of pantsers come on, or plantsers, and I just jumped in. And so it developed as I got this idea of like speakeasies, immigrants, And then I just went with it.

[00:03:37] Jane: Excellent. It’s an excellent story. And I love the 20s, and I think you captured a different side to it.

[00:03:42] Jane: And Sara, you, talk about your, the premise of yours behind Every Good Man. Different era, different plays and time, but but like I said, there’s some similarities between the two main characters that I want to discuss later. Behind

[00:03:54] Sara: Every Good Man is set in 1962 and follows the story of Beverly Diamond, who is a [00:04:00] 27 year old wife and mother.

[00:04:01] Sara: Her husband is running a Senate re election campaign for a sitting senator in Maryland, and she catches him cheating with his secretary. The ultimate cliché. And he tries to brush it off and is oh since the kids were born, you haven’t been paying attention, and she is not having that, and kicks him to the curb.

[00:04:17] Sara: And he’s we’re going to have to downsize. I can’t afford that big, fancy house. If you’re, I’m not going to be living in it. And she’s Nope, I’m getting a job. He says, what are you going to do? You didn’t finish college. Her father’s a retired congressman and she realizes the one thing she knows is politics.

[00:04:30] Sara: So she goes to the opposition candidate and says, if you want to win this thing, I’m your new campaign manager. And it is a ton of fun. This one for me grew out of my previous novel, which also grew out of the one before that. So She’s Up to No Good was set half in the 1950s and half in the present.

[00:04:47] Sara: And if you ever told me I’d be writing historical fiction, I would have laughed at you. I did not think this was where my career trajectory was going, despite loving to read historical fiction. But I had a lot of fun with the earlier timeline. And when it came time to [00:05:00] write Don’t Forget to Write, my editor wanted something in that same kind of vein.

[00:05:04] Sara: She wanted a similar, a character with similar vibes, but not a copycat character. And I had no clue what that meant, but decided to figure it out. And so I wrote Don’t Forget to Write, which was set in 1960. And I loved that era. Part of the inspiration for that, a bookstagrammer, the day that She’s Up to No Good came out, had called me the Marvelous Mrs.

[00:05:22] Sara: Confino on Instagram. And I loved that. I was like, I’m going to put that on my classroom door, which I totally did. And I had that idea of Mrs. Maisel, and I loved that idea of the early 60s, when everything looked so bright and happy in these pastel colors. But there was a lot going on beneath the surface, and a lot of it is still relevant today.

[00:05:41] Sara: So some of the women’s rights issues are still very much relevant today. And there was a lot that I wanted to play with that. And it was a way to almost get political without being political with it, which is such a weird way to describe a book about politics. But it was really a fun, deep dive into what the world [00:06:00] was like and how much further we still need to go today to get to where we want to be.

[00:06:04] Sara: I had a lot of fun writing it,

[00:06:06] Jane: and I hope readers are having fun reading it. Excellent. Excellent. There’s already some really kind words about it in the chat, if you can see that. It’s really nice. From Linda Feldman in New York. Aww. Yeah. I want to talk about I love author’s notes, of course, and research notes in the back.

[00:06:20] Jane: I’m such a nerd with that stuff. So I want to talk about your research for these very different stories. Jenny, I loved your author’s note. It was so so detailed. Talk about your process and your sources and any surprises that came up along the way.

[00:06:36] Jennifer: There were a lot of surprises that came up along the way.

[00:06:38] Jennifer: I start out by reading more general books, like I knew I wanted to write in the 1920s. And then I start to narrow it down. I keep a notebook with me at all times. And I jot down things like Oh, I like this name or, Oh, I like this. I never thought about this profession before.

[00:06:55] Jennifer: And so that’s really helpful because, names are a big deal. I use the social security database a [00:07:00] lot to figure out what names they would have. But I really, I. I’m a little bit of a overspender when it comes to my research. I’m like, oh, look at this magazine from 1923. I need to have that.

[00:07:12] Jennifer: Or, oh, I need the original cocktail book that, Minnie’s going to be using. So I do a lot of that and I keep a timeline. I keep, I have a timeline program and I put in the historical facts along the way. Just because. I don’t like to fudge those, right? It’s historical fiction, creative, totally created characters, but, it’s still in a time period.

[00:07:34] Jennifer: I I do that, and then I slot in as I’m writing what’s happening where just so I can be aware, right? You wouldn’t want to have a story taking place in 1941 and not even mention, Pearl Harbor or something like that. And then I just, my research takes me in all sorts of directions watching movies made in the time period.

[00:07:58] Jennifer: I love doing that to get the feel for the [00:08:00] language. Or reading stories that were written then because, a lot of the slang, it sounds like it might be real. It might not be real. So that’s a good way of doing that. But I lose myself. I lose myself in the research and and I have a lot of things I’ve thought that I really enjoy.

[00:08:15] Jennifer: Still looking at it.

[00:08:17] Jane: Love it. Love it. I, Sara, talking about names, I was laughing when the little girl in the book, the daughter is named Debbie. And you never hear little girls named Debbie now. Like it’s such a like, such a 1960s name. I thought that was yeah. And I do the same thing with okay, if this character was born this year, what were the most popular names and things like that.

[00:08:37] Jane: So Sara, you said this was inspired by family history and figures like Kay and Phil Graham of the Washington Post. I read an autobiography or memoir, I think it was of Catherine Graham years ago, and she was such a fascinating person. Talk about your research and inspiration and process.

[00:08:55] Sara: First of all, Jenny, I’m going to need that timeline program because I’m the least organized person on the [00:09:00] planet these days.

[00:09:01] Sara: And I I’ll tell my story about why I need that in a second. I will say for don’t forget to write. I was on the most insane time crunch ever. I had to write the book in about two months and my editor was like you can’t do that. And I was like, Oh no, I can spoiler. I did not know that I could do that.

[00:09:17] Sara: But if my editor says she wants something, I’m basically like how high, what? Let me jump. Okay. So I actually used my aunt and uncle for a whole lot of the research. My uncle grad, he is 91 now. My aunt is a little younger than him. I’m not allowed to disclose her age or under, yeah. But yeah, they were a significant portion of my research, which was a lot of fun because I could literally text them for both of these books and be like, Okay how did you do your hair before you had a hairdryer?

[00:09:43] Sara: How did you get from here to here before they built this road? What did you do for this? And it was really fun being able to use them for that. For example, in Behind Every Good Man, I was giving the elevator pitch to my aunt and uncle. Before I even sold the book, I had the idea. I’m trying to plot this thing out.

[00:09:59] Sara: And my [00:10:00] uncle goes, oh, you should have her catch her husband at the Colonial Manor Motel. Now, I’d never heard of this place. It was torn down before I was born. And I was like where is that? What is that? And he’s explaining like where it is. Like when I was growing up, there was a Chili’s on that spot.

[00:10:13] Sara: So I know where it is. I drove by the site the other day. The Chili’s is long gone. And he explained, you would go and you’d look through the log book. And it was a lot of George Washington’s and Abraham Lincoln’s and stuff like that, because people would go and use a fake name to cheat on their spouse there.

[00:10:27] Sara: And when I told my mother that, my mother moved down here from Connecticut in 67, she was like, we stayed there for a night. Oh my God, like what was going on in that motel? But the scene at the Colonial Manor actually became my favorite scene in the book. And so I actually dedicated this book to my aunt and uncle because they were so instrumental in me writing this.

[00:10:46] Sara: Although my dad and my uncle got into a fight over what the best deli in the would have been at the time. So I wound up using not the one that my uncle picked entirely because there was a story that my great uncle took my dad [00:11:00] and his cousin out to eat at Hofburg’s Deli and apparently they had squeezed bottles of mustard on the table and my great uncle turned around for a second and my dad my cousin got in this massive mustard fight like the mirrors were all covered they were never allowed back and my great uncle never took them out to eat again so that did make it into the book as well.

[00:11:20] Sara: Some of the research though I really stumbled on some of this. So K. Graham, for example, I was a journalism major in college. I taught journalism for 21 years. I’m actually not teaching this next year, which is terrifying, but I’m going to try to make writing full time work because I’m stressed so thin that I am see through right now.

[00:11:37] Sara: But K. Graham was always a hero of mine. I wrote papers on her in high school. I think every time we had to do a bio, it was usually her. And I just loved her. I loved Meryl Streep’s portrayal of her in The Post. I thought she was such a cool figure. I didn’t want to use her directly, because I know the Graham family is very picky about some of that.

[00:11:56] Sara: But growing up a DC girl, she was just this icon. She was [00:12:00] everything. And I loved the idea of using her. But the other person that I found who was super cool, who I can’t believe I had never heard of growing up in Maryland was this woman, welcome. She was the first Black female state senator. And she was seriously cool.

[00:12:17] Sara: I stumbled on her because I was trying to find a term for black that would have been not offensive back then and not offensive now, which, spoiler, there isn’t one, anything that would have been used back then. I’m not using today. So that was difficult. But as I’m looking for this, I came across some Baltimore newspapers and her name kept popping up.

[00:12:36] Sara: And I finally Googled her to see what her deal was. And she was like the coolest person on the planet. If she was around now, she would be running for president. Like we’d be seeing her on a national stage. When Baltimore decided to build a convention center in Druid Hill Park, which was the only integrated park in the area, so the only park that Black families in Baltimore could go take their families to, she sued the city of Baltimore and the convention center people [00:13:00] and won in the late 50s, a Black woman doing this.

[00:13:03] Sara: She’s incredible. So I totally wanted to use her. I couldn’t find descendants to get permission and I really, somebody who I admire that much, I didn’t want to. upset anybody. So I did change the name and used inspiration instead, but I made sure to link in the back of the book to a site that has a lot of info on her, including some interviews with her speaking, but she was just incredible.

[00:13:23] Sara: Like I was so blown away by that. And then the last thing that I. stumbled on, which is why I need this timeline program desperately, was I have a scene where it looks like my characters are going to win. And they’ve got to have, something that’s set back this dark night of the soul situation.

[00:13:41] Sara: And it’s happening in October of 1962. And I am not so bright, apparently, because I started googling big news events, October 1962, and hit the jackpot on, the whole Bay of Pigs and all that. So Cuban Missile Crisis. Oh, look, cool. Okay, that will knock this out of the news cycle perfectly, because [00:14:00] nobody’s talking about anything else for the next 10 days.

[00:14:03] Sara: So that worked out well completely accidentally, and it really made me start thinking about how I need to be looking at more of that in my writing as I get started. And I’m hoping that with not teaching this year, I will be a little bit more able to go a little bit more in depth and not be flying by the seat of my pants quite as much.

[00:14:23] Jane: Excellent. Yeah, Jenny, what is the timeline program? Is it? What’s it called? It’s called the Eon Timeline. Okay. And

[00:14:29] Jennifer: I, so I have, I started on the very third NaNoWriMo, like in, I don’t remember, 1999, 2000, something like that, someone said, Hey, there’s this thing going on. And I’ve done it on and off over the years.

[00:14:41] Jennifer: So for people who don’t know it, NaNoWriMo is national Novel Writing Month, and it’s a challenge to write 50, 000 words during the month of November. And I find it’s a really good way to start the process to get just like the bad draft down on the page. And after you complete it, there are discounts.

[00:14:58] Jennifer: So there was a discount for Ian [00:15:00] Timeline. I was like, I’ll try it. And it’s been a real Big help.

[00:15:04] Jane: I’ve heard of it and I feel like I’m just intimidated to try something new. I don’t know if either of you use Scrivener, the word processing program. I use Scrivener and I’m like, I feel like I only use 10 percent of its capabilities.

[00:15:16] Jane: So I don’t know if I could like ramp up on another thing at this point, but but I’ve heard great things about that software, about that app. Very cool. Yeah, it’s good. Yeah, I’ve heard. Yeah, one of these, one of these books. So I want to talk about character development specifically your protagonists.

[00:15:35] Jane: Jenny, yours is Minnie, is it Soffer? Is that how it’s pronounced? Soffer. Soffer. And her, we know her, she’s in, her story takes place coming of age, 1920s, Prohibition, New York City. Sara, yours is Beverly Diamond, living and working in the political world, 1960s in Washington. Very different characters, but I think one of the underlying similarities is they’re really strong women who were ahead of their time.

[00:15:58] Jane: And so [00:16:00] Sara, if you want to dive in first this time, talk about how you came up with her. care as a character. And is it like, what’s your character development process like?

[00:16:09] Sara: I like to joke that it’s like Zeus with Athena, where I wind up with a character in my head, who just keeps pounding on it until she has to get out of there.

[00:16:17] Sara: And that was how Beverly started. I knew I wanted a strong character who wasn’t going to just settle for what everybody else was doing at the time. So a few people say to her, Oh that’s great. That’s what men do, and she’s not having that when she catches that husband cheating. That is not what men are going to do to her.

[00:16:34] Sara: And I just loved that idea of her setting out on her own, and the political thing came later. I wasn’t sure what I was going to have her do, but it needed to be something where she was making a difference. I later realized I knew nothing about politics in the 1960s and bought some books and that was the first time in my life I ever fell asleep reading.

[00:16:51] Sara: I’ve never done that before, so that didn’t go so well, but I just love that idea. And then the side characters in this book are some of my favorite characters that I’ve [00:17:00] written. Millie, Beverly’s mother, it’s just so much fun. My own mom likes to identify with that. She’s I don’t like sticky fingers or other people’s children, and I’m very picky about clothes.

[00:17:09] Sara: And I’m like, that is true, but you’re not Millie, sorry. And I love that there were some tie ins, so don’t forget to write. I love when authors do that. Actually, my favorite characters in this don’t get mentioned as much. The best friend, Nancy, who is so ahead of her time as well. She’s very hands on.

[00:17:26] Sara: She’s very handy around the house. There’s a great scene Where Bev comes over and like the whole television is disassembled. And she’s Oh, it was broken. And I told my husband, I was going to pay 25 to get it fixed, but I’m just going to pocket that money and buy a new dishwasher. And there’s a scene later when Beverly’s shoes are too high.

[00:17:40] Sara: She’s Oh, do you want me to take an inch off? I’ve got a hacksaw in the trunk and she does. And then the other favorite there was Stewart, the sit in campaign manager, who is not so happy that a woman walks in and wants to take over his job. And. Grumpy with a heart of gold. I had a few people say that they thought that was going to wind up being a love interest because of the whole like enemies to lovers thing.

[00:17:59] Sara: And I was [00:18:00] like, I don’t like enemies to lovers. I’m the weirdo who doesn’t like that. It just doesn’t ring true to me. If I hate somebody, I actively hate them and I am not going to hook up with them at any point in my life. But I had a lot of fun crafting those relationships and I don’t know, I just, I really loved the characters in this, when they send you edits, like there’s that whole joke, write the book you want to read because you’ll have to read it like a hundred times in edits, and usually by that last couple rounds of edits, I’m so over the book, I want to throw my whole computer out the window, and this book, I kept just rereading it, I loved these characters, I loved their world, I wanted to crawl into it and live in it, so I just had a lot of fun with this one.

[00:18:35] Jane: Oh, that’s awesome. I love that. Now, Jenny, what about you? What’s your character development process like? What was it like for Minnie? You started with her at a very young age, too,

[00:18:45] Jennifer: yeah, she was 10 when we started. And I just need to say, I loved Millie so much.

[00:18:51] Jennifer: So funny. She is just

[00:18:52] Jennifer: hysterical. I love it.

[00:18:54] Jennifer: You have such great comic turns in there. So Minnie. started [00:19:00] out, I’ve done a lot of, research into the age and read a lot of stories of people who lived during that time. And it’s funny because a lot of them, it’s true, strange and fiction. These were some of these were really dark stories.

[00:19:13] Jennifer: And so I wanted to have a character who embraced some of that. Things aren’t always great for her and I really wanted a character who lived in the in between, meaning she was an old world she came when she was 10, she knew enough, to become an American, but she never was really an American.

[00:19:35] Jennifer: And part of this is the idea of becoming an American and getting citizenship which can be denied or could be denied if you violated prohibition. So that sort of attention there. So that was really important to me. And I thought what would she do? Because she has this love of working in the bar.

[00:19:51] Jennifer: The bar is she’s not meant for the office. She’s tried retail. This is the only thing that clicks. If she gets caught, she could be deported to a place that she doesn’t even [00:20:00] remember. So that was really fun to try to make that work. And she gets into a lot of trouble as an American kid, doing things.

[00:20:10] Jennifer: her way that her mom, who is still very traditional and doesn’t learn English, her mom only speaks Yiddish and doesn’t see the point of learning English because, the butcher speaks Yiddish and, her friends speak Yiddish. So that was really fun. And then, layering on the gangster element.

[00:20:26] Jennifer: She’s a little naive at first and quickly learns what needs to be done. And so that was fun too, making her grow in understanding of what was going on. But, writing a young adult character working in a bar was just so much fun. And I confess, like I said, I bought a cocktail book from the time, it’s actually the same cocktail book she uses in the book.

[00:20:50] Jennifer: And I did a little experimenting, a little research that way, see what, what was going on. But yeah, so I kept layering her, like I went through and then I did, oh, I [00:21:00] can mess her up here or, I can make this happen to her here, which just worked to develop that.

[00:21:06] Sara: Excellent. I’m gonna, I wanted to jump in on that for a second. So there, my grandmother obviously didn’t work in a speakeasy that, but she came here at 14 in the 1920s. And I just saw so much of her in this character, like it was so I felt like I was reading my family’s history. My grandfather did a fruit and vegetable cart very much with some of this going on in the story.

[00:21:27] Sara: And I had a great grandmother named Minnie, actually. I don’t even know what her real name was. Although that Minnie was apparently not so nice to a lot of people. That’s another story altogether. But that living in between, like my grandmother spoke with a thick accent. She, my dad always said she spoke three languages and none of them well.

[00:21:46] Sara: And there was just so much there that was really, I think that a lot of the Jewish immigrants. experience is fairly universal, but I loved the story for that. It just, it was real. These characters, I felt like I knew them. I felt like they used to come to [00:22:00] my grandmother’s house for, the satyrs and stuff.

[00:22:02] Sara: I could picture them. I was living their life. This was a visceral experience for me. It was just, it was amazing.

[00:22:07] Jane: I love that. And I think that’s true about the Jewish immigrant experience. I, this, my first novel, the Saturday Night Girls Club, was Jewish and Italian immigrant women in Boston’s North End.

[00:22:16] Jane: And reading your book, Jenny, a lot of that there’s a lot of similarities in terms of like tenement life and and the older generation only speaking English. The language of their home country and not assimilating, whereas the younger generation were trying to assimilate. And yeah, so I think you captured that so well.

[00:22:34] Jennifer: One of the things that was really nice. My first book, Modern Girls, takes place in 1935. It takes place in a short period. And when I went to book groups, I can’t tell you how many times people said, Oh, this is just like my Greek family, but Jewish, or this is just like my Irish family or Italian family, but Jewish, because I think All immigrants in that time period had very similar experiences.

[00:22:56] Sara: Yeah, I think that’s true. It’s also so nice to see like Jewish [00:23:00] historical fiction that isn’t Holocaust, though, to that, I don’t know if you did the Jewish Book Council, but I it’s this great organization that hooks people up with speaking engagements. And it was like 95 percent Holocaust. And I was sitting here Hi, I write happy books, don’t kick me out, please and so seeing another side of it, and it was just It was wonderful.

[00:23:19] Sara: I really, I can’t sing its praises enough. Every interview I do, people are like, what are you reading? I’m like, you have to read this book.

[00:23:26] Jane: I’m going to hire her. There you go. I know you’re hype woman. I did the Jewish Book Council with the Saturday Evening Girls Club, the Jewish Book Council Network author tour.

[00:23:34] Jane: And I just, I loved it. I’ve met friends I’m still friends with a lot of those authors from that, from, it was like eight years ago now. And it just, yeah so great. Oh, it’s a great program. I was just like, does everyone die? Yeah, I was really worried they were gonna kick me out. It’s nice, a little diversity in stories, yeah, and eras.

[00:23:52] Jane: Okay, so this is a, I’ve started asking these, this question because I just, I love movies too. Sara, who would play Beverly Diamond [00:24:00] in ideally in the movie version?

[00:24:02] Sara: I am struggling with that one. I’ve been asked that a few times and I don’t have a good answer on Bev, to be honest with you.

[00:24:09] Sara: I’m sorry, that is the most boring thing on the planet. I don’t have somebody great in mind. A lot of people have said Rachel Brosnahan, just because it’s got that Marvelous Mrs. Maisel vibe to it. But I don’t think she would want to play a character that kind of felt a little bit the same. And I don’t love this whole thing where they won’t cast Jewish actors and actresses in Jewish roles a lot of the time.

[00:24:30] Sara: So I’d actually like to see somebody who actually is Jewish in these roles. And I don’t have a good clue. I’m sorry. I’m a terrible guest. No. I’m inviting her back again.

[00:24:39] Jane: Because I was going to suggest Rachel Brosnahan, but I know what you’re saying. Like she might not want to like to be typecast in that way.

[00:24:46] Jane: But all right, Jenny, what about Minnie? Because I have thoughts, too. Oh,

[00:24:50] Jennifer: okay. Let’s see. I was actually thinking about this today, because I thought, I was like, she might ask me that. And I think Hailee Steinfeld, she was in the second [00:25:00] Pitch Perfect movie. And her father is Jewish.

[00:25:03] Jennifer: But I kind of picture someone like her in that role. I think she’d be really good at it. Yeah,

[00:25:08] Jane: you

[00:25:08] Sara: could totally

[00:25:08] Jennifer: pull

[00:25:08] Sara: off the immigrant look to she could do totally.

[00:25:11] Jane: Yeah, I think you and then you need to obviously a younger actor to I kept thinking Natalie Portman, but she’s too old for the role now, even though I went to

[00:25:20] Sara: preschool with her.

[00:25:21] Sara: So

[00:25:24] Jennifer: that’s

[00:25:25] Jane: so funny.

[00:25:26] Jennifer: I think it’s either Sara Silverman. Would be a good Millie. Or, someone like Christine Baranski. Is that how you say her last name? Yeah.

[00:25:35] Jane: That,

[00:25:36] Jennifer: Sassy.

[00:25:36] Jane: Yeah. Sassy, that’s the word. That’s right. So what attracts you to, like, why historical fiction?

[00:25:44] Jane: Sara, sounds like you, you come later to historical fiction. And what else, like other genres you’d like to write in, you are writing in? Who wants to take, whoever wants to take that first?

[00:25:56] Sara: Okay so I read a ton of historical fiction. I read a lot [00:26:00] of everything. I will say with the 20s, for example, when I was asked to blurb The Whisperer’s Sister, I was like, oh, the 20s Gatsby, give me all the 20s stuff.

[00:26:08] Sara: And then this was a very different story. I’m a huge Gatsby nerd. I used to live across the street from F. Scott Fitzgerald’s grave and go visit him because I’m creepy like that. But that’s, if you ever look up a picture of his grave, there’s like an apartment building behind it. That was where I lived.

[00:26:20] Sara: And I will say that was part of the appeal of living there that in the metro. But I read a whole lot of everything and I didn’t expect to be writing in this genre. My debut book was the fifth book that I wrote and my first four were all contemporary. And actually my debut one was contemporary.

[00:26:38] Sara: It’s a story about a 32 year old single girl who’s in five weddings in the same summer and starts a blog to deal with the craziness and you know exactly where that’s going. I am. In the process, if I ever finish this fifth book, that was the first deadline I ever missed because my life exploded this summer, but that’s a story for another day.

[00:26:56] Sara: Mostly good stuff, but just family, life, craziness, all [00:27:00] that. If I ever finish that one, I have a rom com, a contemporary that I am planning to work on, and we are going to be shopping that one wide and seeing what happens with it. So I don’t want to pigeonhole myself to just historical fiction necessarily.

[00:27:13] Sara: I think I’ve got several different types of stories. I am eventually going to write a horror story, which my husband is like, you can’t set it in our house. He gets scared very easily. And I was like, damn, that was my idea. Okay. Anyways. I am probably going to be a little bit all over the place once I have a big enough audience that I can branch out.

[00:27:31] Sara: Bye. I’m having fun with this early 60s era right now. I just, I love the time period. I’m having a lot of fun with it. If, going back to Midnight in Paris, the 20s are the time period that I definitely idealize, but I would have to do a lot more research than I have time for with a four year old and a seven year old right now to actually write in that era, because I can’t call a family member and be like, Tell me about doing your hair in the 20s.

[00:27:54] Sara: I don’t have anyone for that. So eventually maybe, but right now I’m sticking where I am and gonna [00:28:00] do a little bit more with contemporary as well.

[00:28:02] Jane: Excellent. Very cool. What about you, Jenny?

[00:28:05] Jennifer: So

[00:28:05] Jane: I read

[00:28:05] Jennifer: pretty broadly. I really, I love thrillers. I would love to be able to write a thriller. And I just, I read them.

[00:28:13] Jennifer: I’m just like, how does they make that work? My mind just doesn’t go there. My next one that I’m working on, that’s still a little too new to talk about takes place even earlier. It takes place in 1911. It’s like I’m going backwards in time. And One of the things I’ve done for all three is I’ve made the main characters from the same town in Ukraine, which is a made up town, because if anybody does any kind of genealogy, they know their towns so well, and so I was like, I’m not even gonna, I’m not even gonna do that because people are really happy to tell you when you’ve made mistakes.

[00:28:47] Jennifer: So I feel like that’ll be the last of trilogy. And then I would love to write a contemporary. I actually started playing around with one a couple years ago during NaNoWriMo that I’ve been pushed aside because I was working on historical. But yeah, I like almost [00:29:00] everything.

[00:29:00] Jennifer: Dystopian. I like, just contemporary. Not such a fan of like straightforward mysteries, like the Agatha Christie oh, here’s the cop, what’s going on, but.

[00:29:11] Jane: Very cool. Very cool. You both know this question is coming, I think. Are you a plotter or a pantser? Do you plot your stories out?

[00:29:19] Jane: Do you write by the seat of your pants? Are you somewhere in between? What’s your writing process like?

[00:29:26] Sara: I’ll jump in. I live in the in between, and I’ve been forced to become more of a plotter, which has actually made my writing much stronger. So those first four books that didn’t get published I have no clue where I got this advice, but the best piece of writing advice that I ever got And if I don’t know where I got it, it probably means the Atlantic because I don’t have a subscription and I have to steal from people.

[00:29:46] Sara: So that’s probably somewhere in there. But I read somewhere that if you don’t want to write a scene, don’t write it because your readers don’t want to read it either. And my style used to be, I would always know the beginning and know the end. And I would know some like scenes in the middle [00:30:00] and I would cherry pick what I knew I wanted to write.

[00:30:02] Sara: But then I had to write the connecting scenes and those connecting scenes for what didn’t. work because I didn’t want to write them and be like, Oh, I have to get from the scene that I really wanted to write to the next scene. I really want to write. And those didn’t work. So when I wrote For the Love of Friends, that one was definitely a bit of a tighter book.

[00:30:18] Sara: I was writing that, I knew I wanted to get published. This was, it was time, I was ready to do this, I had a better idea of what to do. But I got a two book deal, which I make that sound like it’s a bad thing. That’s a great thing. But I had no idea what I was writing for my second book yet. And they wanted an outline and I was an English teacher.

[00:30:35] Sara: So I was like, okay, I can do an outline. And I turned in a formal English class style outline with Roman numerals and letters and all of that. And my agent was like, I have no clue what I’m looking at. What is this? And I was like, all right, I’ll try again. Sorry. And I then basically just word vomited everything that was going to happen in that second book into four single space type pages.

[00:30:55] Sara: And that apparently was not how anyone else outlines things. either in the industry, but that [00:31:00] worked. And we were able to like, get the approval to write the book on that. And that was a dual timeline. And like I said, I am not organized by any stretch of the imagination. So when I got to about halfway through the book, I realized I needed to actually plan out what happened in each chapter.

[00:31:16] Sara: So I could actually organize this and make this work. And I have a chalkboard in my office and I did sticky notes on the chalkboard. And at one point, my husband walked in and he thought it looked like something out of the scene from A Beautiful Mind where he’s just completely lost it because I’m like, drawing lines between sticky notes.

[00:31:31] Sara: He was like, Are you okay? Should I call your mom? I’m gonna go call your mom. And then the sticky notes all fell off that night. And I cried a lot because I had no clue where anything went. So I started using notecards and I numbered everything, and that, I don’t think I would write a dual timeline again because that was very hard, but I’ve definitely gotten better at outlining.

[00:31:55] Sara: With that said, I know a lot of authors do like these detailed outlines that say what [00:32:00] happens in every single chapter, and I will never be that organized in my life, and I know that. So I still have a little bit of a squishy middle going on in my books. Like I, I know where we’re going. I know some, most of the general points.

[00:32:11] Sara: I don’t know a lot of what’s going to happen until my characters either behave or don’t behave, usually in a fun way. Millie being one of the fun characters and behind every good man, her little scene at the synagogue, that was not in any kind of an outline. That just, she didn’t behave that day and I loved it, but I’m definitely more of a dancer than I would like to be a lot of the time.

[00:32:33] Jane: But whatever works for you, right? It works, and I’m just always so fascinated to hear about other people’s processes. It’s just amazing. What about you, Jenny? What’s your process like?

[00:32:43] Jennifer: My process is more pantser. I get an idea for the beginning, and I think I know the end. But generally as I start writing, I’m like, oh no, that’s not the right end.

[00:32:52] Jennifer: And I use Scrivener, and Scrivener has the benefit of having these little index cards. So I’ll start writing, and then If I’m in the [00:33:00] middle of a scene, I’ll think, Oh, I know what comes next. I’ll just write a note on the index card in Scrivener for the next chapter. So I know what’s coming and through that way, it laying bricks in front of you as you go.

[00:33:12] Jennifer: And then when I go to rewrite or edit the first draft ends up, often very different. I started the Whisper Sister in a completely still speakeasy, still immigrants. But it was a completely different story. And I just was like, it just didn’t feel right. So I went back and then once I’ve had the, this isn’t a sound backwards to most people, but once I have the rough draft and then outline, and I put in what needs to be added, what maybe take away, where, so that way when I go back through it, I have a guide.

[00:33:45] Sara: So interesting. I need to look into Scrivener. I need to be looking into this because I literally will like text myself notes and it just, it’s not, I’m not organized.

[00:33:54] Jane: It’s it’s really inexpensive. Like my husband’s in tech and he’s it’s shockingly inexpensive. [00:34:00] And it’s very, and they have, YouTube videos and tutorials so you can ramp up on the basics pretty quickly.

[00:34:04] Jane: So I highly recommend Scrivener to people all the time. Yeah, definitely. Yes. I have a couple more questions, and then if anyone has questions for the authors, please put them in the chat or the Q& A. One of them, you both teach creative writing, and so I think, what do you find in your students what is the most common challenge that students have when it comes to the creative writing process?

[00:34:30] Jennifer: I don’t, Sara, how old are you, do you do adults or kids? High school.

[00:34:35] Jane: High school.

[00:34:36] Jennifer: So

[00:34:37] Jennifer: go

[00:34:37] Jennifer: ahead.

[00:34:38] Sara: So I spent the last 13 years at a title one school, which I actually, we had the creative writing lasted eight years with me. I started the program and I actually have never taken a creative writing course in my life.

[00:34:52] Sara: Like I said, I was journalism. And so when they tapped me to do this, because I had built the journalism program from nothing, I was like, I have no clue what I’m [00:35:00] doing. So one of the things that I did to try to keep this program afloat, because creative writing in high school is one of the first programs to get cut.

[00:35:08] Sara: A lot of kids aren’t signing up for a writing elective. They want to take something easy. They want to have some easy out. And I wanted to make this thing work, especially for this population of kids who’ve been hearing for years and years that they can’t achieve a lot of things. So what I did, especially because I had no clue what I was doing with this was before I had a publishing contract or anything, I decided that they were going to figure out the curriculum.

[00:35:30] Sara: And so what I did a Google form, every unit, and I put some options on there of things that I suggested, and I’d let them suggest things as well. And if they suggested something that sounded cool, then I would I’d have the class vote again, and then I would figure out how to teach whatever they were doing.

[00:35:45] Sara: The biggest issue that I had with my students, and again, I was working with a fairly poor minority majority population, is that they weren’t reading very much, and you’re not going to be a great writer if you’re not a reader. And that was [00:36:00] really one of the bigger challenges because I didn’t have time to bring in like full length texts of things for them to actually go through if we were going to really be doing writing.

[00:36:08] Sara: So it was more, I had to pull short stories as examples and I had to pull things that were high enough interest they would really want to read them and see these examples. So I had a huge classroom library. My family went Kindle pretty soon after Kindles came out and when my parents cleaned out their basement to redo it for grandchildren, they gave me all their books.

[00:36:27] Sara: So I had A zillion books in my classroom, so I was really good about recommending and I was really good about like pairing kids with books but getting them to actually And I didn’t want to focus on grammar because then they’re going to get bored and the program is going to die out. So one of the more successful things that we did actually was every year, the kids voted to do a horror unit in October.

[00:36:53] Sara: And. I’m not teaching this year so I can to be honest about what I did. I totally brought in non approved Stephen King texts and [00:37:00] we read a whole lot of fun short stories. There were a lot of them that I was like, okay, if you show your parents that you’re reading this, I’m going to get in big trouble.

[00:37:06] Sara: So we’re going to just, keep this in here and zip it. And they were not, Always appropriate, but they were some good ones, and I tried to make it as interactive as we could to just really keep that interest going. Literally, in the second month of school, I would bring in a Ouija board, and the kids would run screaming out of my room, which was hysterical, and I’m like, guys, it’s made by Hasbro seriously, it’s not gonna summon a demon, and if it does summon a demon, I got a list of people for it to take care of, so we’re good.

[00:37:30] Sara: I really tried to bring in movies when I could, too. So another thing where I was like, Alright, you tell people I showed you this and I’m getting fired, but we’re gonna watch the opening of Scream for horror because this is how it is done. And just trying to get those connections for them to see that creative writing was really going to be something that did tie into their lives, that it wasn’t Just, oh, an easy A in this class or, oh, it’s not going to be some boring grammar thing.

[00:37:56] Sara: This is actually something that you’re going to want to do. And [00:38:00] that horror unit was what the kids came back for constantly. So like when we’d be voting, they’d be like, can we do another scary story? And, I’ve heard stories about creative writing people being like, no, horror is not a real writing technique.

[00:38:11] Sara: And no, I wanted to do whatever they were going to be most interested in. It was challenging from that perspective, but we have the longest running program in my county, which at a title one school, is really something that was an accomplishment. And it was really fun once I got published to be able to share the publishing process with them, because there are kids in that class who want to write.

[00:38:31] Sara: And, one of the things I joke about the first time I got sent like cold read edits, and it was a spreadsheet and not, an text. And I was like, What do I do with this? And I had to Google hold read edits what do I do? And so I walked the kids through it every step of the way, and they really had fun with it.

[00:38:47] Sara: I was teaching something two years ago and a kid was reading a book and I’m like, Allie, put the book away. And she holds it up. And it was my first book that she checked out of our school library. And I was like, all right, carry on. You’re good. And [00:39:00] I really had fun with that. It was not always easy with high school kids, but I think we did a good job in the end.

[00:39:06] Jane: Oh, I love that. I am a huge Stephen King fan. And some of those, there’s a couple of his short stories from back in the day that Like I’m still they haunted, they traumatized me. My closet door has to be

[00:39:17] Sara: shut at night, every night, because it’s a boogeyman. The ending of the boogeyman is terrible, but the rest of that story,

[00:39:22] Jane: like.

[00:39:23] Sara: That’s a good one. So scary.

[00:39:25] Jane: And Jenny, do you teach adults mostly? With, through the loft? Yeah. Okay.

[00:39:29] Jennifer: One of the, so one of my favorite classes is one I did in person here in the Boston area. And it was memoir for an older crowd. It was specifically feared, and it was amazing!

[00:39:39] Jennifer: The stories were amazing. That came out of it. I was just fascinated. But I think that one of the downsides I’ve had is when I teach historical fiction. I taught historical fiction. I’m actually doing a generative writing course that starts next month. I’ve done dialogue. I actually did a class on pantsing, like how to like, like a one day class on pantsing.[00:40:00]

[00:40:00] Jennifer: But historical fiction, obviously, I love to teach. And I find that a lot of people want to write from something in their own past or their family’s history, which is fantastic, but they are unwilling to move from the truth, right? Because how the story happens isn’t always the best story for others to read.

[00:40:22] Jennifer: And it’s very hard sometimes to, make people understand that. Yes, it’s historical, but it is fiction. And just because something happened, it may not be believable to the reader, or it may not have the same, excitement for the reader as it does for the person or character. So I, I feel like, My favorite moment is when it clicks for people and, they take that scene that was really choppy or stuck too close to the truth and come up with something else.

[00:40:53] Jennifer: They come up with something sticking with the main idea, but really [00:41:00] fictionalizing and really getting in there. So yeah, I love teaching. I just think it’s so much fun. And I learn a lot from other people cause we do readings and sometimes they’ll be like I see this in here.

[00:41:12] Jennifer: And I’m like, Oh, I didn’t. So I really enjoy it.

[00:41:17] Jane: I love it. That this actually is a good segue into the next question. Because we have aspiring authors that I know listen to the podcast or watch are watching tonight. So what is the best advice on writing and or publishing because we know they’re very different that you can give to them to aspiring authors?

[00:41:39] Jane: I’m happy to jump in.

[00:41:40] Jennifer: Okay. I think it’s really easy to postpone writing, right? It’s really easy to say, You know what, I’ll do it tomorrow. Like today I’m just too busy. It’s easy to say I’ve got this idea, but I just don’t know what to do with it. And I actually just started up an accountability group with two friends of mine from college because [00:42:00] every time I was like, what are you writing?

[00:42:01] Jennifer: There would be an excuse. There would be like, oh, the cat just gets all over me and, oh, my place isn’t quiet. And I’d be like, go to the library, oh, my girlfriend is, go to a coffee shop, get out of the house. And when I was procrastinating, I saw, it’s gonna sound so cheesy. I think it had to do with weight loss or some quote, but basically it was a year from now, you’ll wish you had started today.

[00:42:24] Jennifer: And that really stuck with me, right? Do I want to be there next year, still procrastinating still? And, I tell people just. Set a goal, like if it’s only 15 minutes a day, it’s only 15 minutes a day and that’s fine as long as there are words on a page. So I think it’s a matter of doing it and things don’t have to be perfect.

[00:42:46] Jennifer: With my first novel, I sat at the YMCA while the kids were in the pool with all the other parents with my laptop on my lap because that’s what I had. So I think if you’re really passionate about writing, find a way to do [00:43:00] it today. Excellent. Excellent advice.

[00:43:03] Sara: What about you, Sara? Mine is similar, but I definitely steal mine from Stephen King.

[00:43:08] Sara: And on writing, he says that if you needed the money, you would get a part time job and you would go every day, even if you were tired, even if you didn’t feel like it. And you have to treat writing the same or else you’re never actually going to finish a project. I have so many people who say to me, Oh yeah, I’m going to write a book someday when I have time.

[00:43:25] Sara: And I’m sitting here that drives me up a wall that like, seriously, that’s going to be my villain origin story. Somebody saying that to me, because I sold my first two books when I was eight and a half months pregnant with my now four year old, I had to do my developmental edits. Literally, I remember sitting in my bedroom with the now four year old napping in his bassinet My now seven year old not napping on the bed next to me and fighting me on napping.

[00:43:48] Sara: And I’m trying to do edits during that. And I’m like, what makes you think I have time to do this? No. You’ve got to make that time. My first four books, these first four published books [00:44:00] literally happen in the hour and a half after my kids went to bed at night after teaching all day. I wrote, she’s up to no good.

[00:44:06] Sara: Literally in that hour and a half, after teaching virtually all day while wearing my now four year old, it was me and a baby head on Zoom for a year. And if I can do that, anybody can sit down and make that time. You just have to make the time. If it’s going to be a priority for you, it’s never going to, there’s never going to be time.

[00:44:22] Sara: There’s always going to be something else. So that, and the advice about not writing a scene if you don’t want to write it because no one else is going to read it. Those are the two pieces of advice I give everybody. Yeah, so apologies to whoever I stole that from.

[00:44:35] Jennifer: No, I’m not. Go ahead. I was gonna say, speaking of writing pet peeves What I get is Oh, I’m a writer too.

[00:44:41] Jennifer: And I’m like, Oh, what are you writing? I’m not writing yet, but I will be. And it irritates me. They call themselves writers. And on the other hand, there are people who say I’m not a writer. I’m like, are you putting words on a page? I’m like, yeah, half an hour a day. I’m like, You’re a writer.

[00:44:55] Jennifer: If you’re putting words on a page, you’re a writer, and you should be proud of it [00:45:00] and own it and stick it out

[00:45:02] Jane: to the world. And talk about it. Absolutely. Yeah, this is all such good advice. I’m going to do some clips of this on YouTube and stuff because it’s so good and so true. And what, to that, To, to the talk about making time for yourself, I think as like your mom, you’re working, you’re doing other things.

[00:45:18] Jane: So it’s like also just about giving yourself permission, like that, like valuing writing and enough in your life that you give yourself permission to do it because you can prioritize everything else. And that will be on the bottom for years if you don’t actually say, Okay, this is important to me. And I’m gonna give myself permission to do this creative thing, even though I don’t know where it’s gonna go.

[00:45:37] Jane: So yeah completely agree. We’re like totally running over. You guys are amazing. I’m asking way too many questions so I have one more question for me. And then if there’s any questions from the audience, I see a couple how can read this is like a devil question How can readers best stay in touch with you and do you zoom with book clubs?

[00:45:56] Sara: I am moving slightly away from zooming with book clubs, but I do still [00:46:00] do some, just partially because I am so entirely short on time right now. And my husband has been traveling a lot, so my schedule got a lot crazier because I’m on kid duty when he’s gone, and that’s, fun when a lot of book clubs meet at night and my four year old does not sleep, which is also my villain origin story, but that’s a story for another day.

[00:46:21] Sara: In touch with me, I have my email on my website, just Sara at Saraconfino. com and Instagram is usually my social media of choice these days. I know Facebook sells more books, but Instagram has just been a little bit

[00:46:34] Jennifer: I definitely, so I’m an empty nester now. Fairly new, so I am. I am available to zoom for book clubs and if you’re in the Boston area I definitely Go in person, and I love to do that and how to find me, I’m on Facebook and on Instagram, but my website has all the links for that, and it’s [00:47:00] jennifersbrown.

[00:47:00] Jennifer: com, and the S is very important because I yell at my parents all the time, like, why did you give me the most common name in the world, and they’re like, Wasn’t common when we were, when you were born. So yeah, so jennifersbrown. com. There’s a contact form on there, or you can just email me at jennifer, at jennifersbrown.

[00:47:19] Jane: com. And it’s Jennifer with two N’s. Yes. J E N F R O N. Yes. Excellent. So one question here, Sara. Your covers appear similar, and is that on purpose for your brand? That’s from Marcia. Hello, Marcia. She’s always on, which is so nice. Thanks. So I

[00:47:34] Sara: actually did want them to have the same feel to them partially because they all take place in the same universe.

[00:47:41] Sara: One of my favorite things that authors do is when they have characters crossover. So Stephen King does it, Beatrice Williams does it I love that. It’s just like a present for your readers. Readers who read frequently and so Evelyn has appeared in all four of my novels so far. I actually wrote her into a scene the other day Beverly from [00:48:00] behind every good man is gonna show up my next one So I like the idea that there is some continuity to it I did have to fight a little bit on the behind every good man cover the original one They gave me was pale pink black and white and looked like the Valley of the Dolls and I was like We’re not doing that.

[00:48:16] Sara: That’s not the vibe I’m going for. They didn’t want the capital on it. I was like, we need the capital. And they thought that was going to be off putting in an election year. So I think my cover designer absolutely hates me because I am, I have opinions and I’ve. strong opinions sometimes. My mother used to be an art teacher.

[00:48:33] Sara: She has very strong opinions on my covers as well, and we go back and forth a fair bit, but I do like how they all feel like they’re in the same universe because they are.

[00:48:43] Jane: Very cool, and I usually ask about covers, so did you have a lot of say in this one, Jenny? I

[00:48:49] Jennifer: actually did. It came in a roundabout way because I said, I’d rather not just have the historical fiction woman on the cover, in a flapper outfit, I wanted something a little [00:49:00] more just a little different.

[00:49:02] Jennifer: And, of course, the first covers I got were all of women on the cover in that pose. But they were great, and we went back and forth, and they tried all sorts of things. And yeah, I was really excited when we finally got to this one. And originally, the woman in the picture, I thought looked nothing like her.

[00:49:18] Jennifer: And it also, I convinced them to change her so she looks a little bit more like what I had imagined. But yeah, they were great to work with. But yes, I also had very strong opinions.

[00:49:29] Sara: Hey, good. I feel better about being a brat. Oh, no, I

[00:49:31] Jane: do too. Covers are hard and my husband’s in marketing and he has very strong opinions, so they’re like, yeah, there’s some battles when it comes to covers in this house.

[00:49:40] Jane: I’ve taken up way too much of your time. You all were great. Sara and Jenny, thank you so much. Don’t forget September 3rd. Is the Whisper Sister and Behind Every Good Man is already out. Pre orders are always great. I always mention that and there’s a Kindle giveaway on Goodreads. But yeah, thank you ladies so much and I will send you this when I post it on [00:50:00] YouTube and as a podcast.

[00:50:01] Jane: Everyone have a great night and thanks for coming on. Thank you so much. This was really

[00:50:06] Jennifer: fun.

[00:50:06] Jane: So fun. Thank you. Take care. Bye bye. Good night. Bye.