Our conversation and her new book, The Nobodies, is a little bit about being uncomfortable and learning new skills: if you’re doing it right, as you level up it gets harder, not easier.
We talk about failing, and about feeling lost, in terms that might sound like depression or remind you of it, so if that’s something that’s not ideal for you right now, it’s okay to skip ahead to the next episode on your playlist.
The Nobodies is on sale now as of 10 September, so if you’re curious, you can get yourself a copy.
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Here are the books we discuss in this podcast:
You can find Liza Palmer on her website, LizaPalmer.com, on Twitter @LizaPalmer, and on Instagram @LizaPalmer.
We also mentioned:
- My recent podcast episode with Nalini Singh: 361. Playing Verbal Poker with Nalini Singh
- Schitt’s Creek
- Fleabag
- The Surrey International Writers’ Conference
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This Episode's Music
The music you’re listening to was provided by Sassy Outwater, and you can find her on Twitter @Sassyoutwater. This is a band called Sketch, and this is “Shedmau5” from their album “ShedLife,” which I’m still enjoying.
You can find it on Amazon, iTunes, or wherever you buy your most excellent music.
Podcast Sponsor
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Transcript
❤ Click to view the transcript ❤
[music]
Sarah Wendell: Hello to you and to your eardrums! Welcome to episode number 368 of Smart Podcast, Trashy Books. I’m Sarah Wendell from Smart Bitches, Trashy Books, and today I’m talking with Liza Palmer. We are going to talk about the re-release of her first book, Conversations with the Fat Girl, and her newest novel, The Nobodies. We talk about writing, about 4 a.m. anxiety, and writing Carol Danvers for YA novels and reading the script for the movie early, which is a thing she got to do, and I did not know that.
Our conversation and her new book, The Nobodies, is a little bit about being uncomfortable and learning new skills. At one point, Liza says that if you’re doing it right, as you level up, it gets harder, not easier. We also talk a lot about failing and about feeling lost, in terms that might sound like depression or remind you of it, so if that’s something that’s not ideal for you right now, you might want to skip ahead to another episode on your playlist.
The Nobodies, her newest book, is out as of the 10th of September, 2019, so if you are curious, you can get yourself a copy right now, and of course I will have links to it in the show notes.
This episode is brought to you by Deceived by Desire by Marie Force. From New York Times bestselling author Marie Force comes the second in her USA Today bestselling Gilded series, a glittering tale of star-crossed romance set amid the lavish mansions and decadent lifestyles of early 20th-century Newport, Rhode Island. But even in an age of great fortune, the heart has its own idea of true riches. With Marie Force’s knack for creating unforgettable characters, this romantic upstairs, downstairs romance will appeal to readers of Lisa Kleypas, Eloisa James, and Sabrina Jeffries. Deceived by Desire by Marie Force is on sale now wherever books are sold, and for more information you can visit marieforce.com.
Hello to my Patreon community. Thank you for being part of the show Patreon. You are helping me create the transcript for this episode, and I am very thankful for your support. If you would like to join the Patreon community, if you like the show, that would be wonderful. Patreon.com/SmartBitches: monthly pledges begin at one whole dollar a month, and every pledge makes every episode accessible to everyone and helps me keep the show going. And again, hello, Patreon community. You are wonderful! And you look fabulous today!
And speaking of compliments, I have one for Michelle D.
Michelle, if everyone suddenly developed superpowers, you would already have yours, because everything about you is powerfully superb, so you’d probably get to pick whichever superpower you wanted.
If you would like a compliment of your own, have a look at patreon.com/SmartBitches.
I will have links to all of the books we talk about, and I will have information about the music you’re listening to, a preview of what is coming up on Smart Bitches, and an utterly awful joke that was so bad I had to stop walking on the treadmill and interrupt my husband’s workout to tell it to him because it was that delightful. It was way before I was caffeinated, which even, which makes it even better, right? Right. So if you would like to annoy your friends and workout neighbors with a bad joke, I hope you stay till the end of the episode.
And speaking of episode, let’s start the episode! On with the podcast and today’s interview with Liza Palmer.
[music]
Sarah: It has been so long since you and I have seen each other, and I think it was the last Surrey International Writers’ Conference I attended, which was at least two years ago.
Liza Palmer: Yeah, it, it, the, the, pretty much the best writing conference I think there is. Yeah. I guess that was about 2017? Lord. Yeah.
Sarah: 2017 maybe, yeah? I know, I, I remember very clearly getting off my flight –
Liza: Yep.
Sarah: – in the airport, wait-, waiting with all these other people, and I see you, and I’m like, oh my God, oh my God, that’s, that’s Liza Palmer, oh my God.
Liza: [Laughs]
Sarah: Okay, keep it cool. My inner thirteen-year-old was not cool about meeting you, and I barely kept her in check. I was so excited to meet you in person.
Liza: Of course, I was doing the exact same thing, which is like, play it cool, play it cool, play it cool.
Sarah: [Laughs]
Liza: That, and kind of wandering around –
Sarah: Yep.
Liza: – the Vancouver airport like, why is this airport the nicest airport I’ve ever been in? Which I think it’s, that was shocking, but the other thing was that we arrive –
Sarah: It’s –
Liza: – and then we had that hour-long drive –
Sarah: – beautiful!
Liza: – to the conference, where it was, like, trying to bring out –
Sarah: Yep.
Liza: – my best witty, just, like, my A game, ‘cause I was like, please don’t screw this up with Sarah. Please, God.
Sarah: [Laughs] I remember, I remember the, two things about the Vancouver airport. One –
Liza: Yeah.
Sarah: – that it is gorgeous, and two, you get off a flight, you come through international customs, and then you come down this really long escalator next to this gigantic waterfall, and if you have to pee, it is the worst –
Liza: Right, and it’s empty. It’s an oddly empty airport, and you have to walk five football fields to get anywhere, so –
Sarah: Oh yeah.
Liza: – passing all of these nice water features where you’re just kind of having to pee escalates with every –
Sarah: Where’s the ladies room?
Liza: Yeah, exactly. Yeah.
Sarah: Yep.
Liza: Agreed.
Sarah: I miss, I miss hanging out with you; I miss Surrey; and I’m really glad we get to do this –
Liza: Me too. I’m glad that it’s actually focused and orbiting around the Vancouver airport, which is what I think all podcasts –
Sarah: Yeah!
Liza: – should really kind of center on, is, you know, the Vancouver airport.
Sarah: Wait, is – maybe the Vancouver airport has its own podcast, and it’s just waterfall sounds.
Liza: [Laughs] TBH, would follow. Would absolutely follow. Yeah.
Sarah: Right?
[Laughter]
Sarah: So this is the only awkward part: would you please –
Liza: Yep.
Sarah: – introduce yourself, now that we’ve been hanging out, and tell the people who will be listening who you are and what you do!
Liza: I am Liza Palmer. I am, my first book came out in 2005, which is Conversations with the Fat Girl. Since then, I have written, oh my God, nine other novels, so – no –
Sarah: Wow.
Liza: – so it’s eight, eight novels, standalones, and then two novels for Marvel. I wrote the Captain Marvel YA, as well as Destiny Arrives, which is the Infinity War – infinity award, as, as it’s known now – Infinity War for, both for Marvel, and then eight novels around women who are trying to figure out who they are and then being that, which is usually my theme.
Sarah: And it’s a good theme –
Liza: Yeah.
Sarah: – because it happens in different ways to everybody.
Liza: Exactly, and I think it’s, you know, you can kind of look at the content of, you know, the kind of settings and the different things and, and think that they’re very different, but I, I do think – you know, we talked about this, I think, a little bit at the conference, where it was like, you know, you can kind of, in romance you can kind of see what, what a writer’s kink is, and I do think you can see –
Sarah: [Laughs]
Liza: – you know, it’s like, for some, all they, you know, you have, all of a sudden there’s the same kind of thing repeating, and I think you can see that in anybody’s writing, what your thematic kink is, ‘cause it kind of repeats and, you know, if you think about F. Scott Fitzgerald it’s kind of like the outsider looking in, and every single novel kind of is him working that out, ‘cause as much as we hate it, books tend to know what they are about before we do, and they tend to be working on stuff that’s deeper than we understand.
Sarah: Yes, and I did an interview with Nalini Singh recently –
Liza: Oh!
Sarah: – and she said something in the interview that has – it was incredible; my, also, my thirteen-year-old did not keep herself cool –
Liza: Yeah.
Sarah: – and I’ve known her for a really long time! Was I cool? Nope, nope, not at all.
Liza: Nope.
Sarah: Nope, not a chance.
Liza: Nope.
Sarah: But she said something really interesting that has sort of been ping-ponging around in my brain, that every reader reads a different book, so –
Liza: Ooh!
Sarah: – what she thinks she put into a book and what a reader sees in that same book are two very different things –
Liza: Oh, I love that.
Sarah: – and it’s, and it’s so true, especially because, like you said, a book knows what it’s doing on a level before you as the writer do?
Liza: Yeah.
Sarah: It means that –
Liza: Right.
Sarah: – everyone’s going to see a different representation of figuring out who you are by figuring out who they are in the book.
Liza: Exactly. Oh, I love that. Of course she said that. ‘Course it’s, like, nuanced and cool and – that’s great.
Sarah: I don’t know, dude; books knowing what they are –
[Laughter]
Sarah: I don’t know, dude; books knowing what they are before you do is pretty nuanced. I mean, that’s kind of, that’s going to bop around in my, my brain ping-pong for a while. My brain is like a giant pinball machine: lots of lights and rattles, and things bounce around in there. It’s how it is.
Liza: Yeah. The great thing is, when that ball tends to bounce around at four o’clock in the morning and be like, hey, let’s, let’s talk about mortality! Let’s think about –
Sarah: Yeah!
Liza: Let’s do that! Let’s make at an appointment at four o’clock in the morning to think about money. [Laughs] It’s like, why? I started actually –
Sarah: Yeah.
Liza: – doing this thing where I’m like, I get up in the, I, if I wake up with, like, nervous kind of anxiety thing at four o’clock, I actually set a thing for my, on my, my phone and say, if you want to think about this at 9 a.m., we’ll, we’ll actually put it in the calendar so you can actually do that. We’re not going to talk about this right now. And it’s like, it’s totally worked, by the way.
Sarah: Wow!
Liza: Yeah.
Sarah: Seriously?
Liza: Yeah. Because it’s like, it, it gives your brain something to kind of lock on, which is like, oh, okay, good, we’ll talk about it at 9 a.m. Of course it doesn’t want to talk about it at 9 a.m. It’s the same thing as, like, when, like, at, when you’re trying to put a, a, a kid to bed and they’re like, I want to talk about all this stuff. It’s like, great! Let’s, let’s talk about it tomorrow morning at breakfast. And they don’t; they just don’t want to go to bed, you know? So it’s the same thing with your brain at four o’clock in the morning.
Sarah: Wow, you can defer your brain marbles!
Liza: Exactly. Yeah –
Sarah: Oh my God.
Liza: – your brain marbles. You can say, go to sleep, little pinball machine. This is good for you.
Sarah: Wow. I’m going to have to try that –
Liza: Yeah.
Sarah: – the next time my brain is up at three in the morning like, let’s think about all the things you’re worried about. Great, sure!
Liza: Yeah, exactly. Remember that dumb thing you said in that meeting? Let’s, let’s, let’s run it through, shall we?
Sarah: Remember that one thing you said when you were twelve? Let’s replay that in Technicolor glory.
Liza: [Laughs] Exactly. I actually do think you started your period that one time, and you did walk down the bus. I, I think that, let, let’s, let’s play that through.
Sarah: Yeah! Let’s think about –
Liza: Yeah.
Sarah: – all camera angles on that moment.
Liza: And those people still talk about it to this day, when they’re like, you know Liza?
Sarah: [Laughs]
Liza: Oh my God! She was the one started – yeah, that’s a thing that actually doesn’t happen. [Laughs]
Sarah: I read, and I can’t, I don’t remember the name of the author, but I believe the book was something along the lines of The Art of Doing Nothing?
Liza: Mm-hmm.
Sarah: Or How to Do Nothing? But one of the things it said which I adore is that no one pays as much attention to you as you do?
Liza: Oh. God, it’s so true!
Sarah: It’s so true!
Liza: It’s so true. And it’s actually, like, one of my favorite – I don’t know if you were watching, one of my favorite TV shows of the last era was Schitt’s Creek. Do you watch that at all?
Sarah: You are the third person to tell me about this show and that I –
Liza: Yep.
Sarah: – that, that – you are also the third person whose brain I admire who loves this show, so I think that’s like, it’s like –
Liza: Oh –
Sarah: – all right, this album has three number ones –
Liza: Right.
Sarah: – and I love them all; I just have to buy it.
Liza: You, you kind of watch the first season thinking, oh, I know this thing, and then by the second and third season, you’re so invested that it’s become your favorite show, but it does have kind of a slow burn.
Sarah: Yeah?
Liza: But Alexis, the, the younger, the daughter in there basically is trying to tell David, who I, who I definitely respond to, no one cares, when he starts doing this kind of thing, and I actually think about that all the time: Alexis says, no one cares! And it’s totally true. No one cares.
Sarah: Really, no one –
Liza: Not in that way. People care, but not about the dumb shit you said in a meeting.
Sarah: Totally. Now –
Liza: Yeah.
Sarah: – I am sure that many, many, many people have asked you this question, but I’m going to ask it too, because I have no chill. Oh my gosh, you wrote Marvel novels! What was that like?
Liza: I did! It’s exactly as magical as you think it is. Yeah. It’s, it’s the first time that you actually say, Carol says.
Sarah: [Squees]
Liza: It’s like, my name is Carol Danvers, and all of a sudden you just, you, it’s, it’s a dream come true! It’s an absolute dream come true. It’s, you know, it’s, you know, the book that I wrote was the prequel to the movie, so I got to read the script before anybody.
Sarah: [Gasps]
Liza: I was in a windowless room. I, I went to Marvel, saw all the Iron Man suits. It’s, it’s as magical as you think it is. There’s no chill when it comes to that, and I think, I’m so happy that I never, never got over it. ‘Cause then they brought me back for Destiny Arrives, which is incredible, because you’re, you know, Cap says –
Sarah: [Laughs]
Liza: – Tony says. It’s, it’s incredible! It’s incredible. It’s, it’s a dream come true. It’s something that I still can’t believe; it’s absolutely surreal. Yeah.
Sarah: That’s – okay, first of all, congratulations; that is in- –
Liza: Yeah, thank you.
Sarah: – -credible. Are you writing more?
Liza: Yeah. I hope so. I mean, I’m still thirsty. I’m like, hey, guys! It’s not even chill. It’s not like –
Sarah: [Squeaks]
Liza: You know, we always talk in our little writers groups about how kind of, what young writers don’t know is that there’s, like, fifty percent is writing and kind of pitching and ideating and all that kind of – the other fifty cent, percent – fifty cent, hilarious – the other fifty percent is the art of the breezy email, which is basically like, hey, guys, before the craziness of the weekend, I wanted to just see if you’d check in on that thing? That’s literally fifty percent of this business.
Sarah: It really is.
Liza: It is, and so, with Marvel it’s not even, there’s not even a breezy email. It’s like a shrieking owl email, which is like, hey guys! Just checking! It’s, I’m just so, they’re literally the coolest people to work with; they’re so lovely. The editors there are incredible. It’s a joy to work with them, and I, I’m anxious to work with them again.
Sarah: So what were your favorite parts –
Liza: Yeah.
Sarah: – of hanging out in Carol Danvers’s head?
Liza: ‘Cause it’s the same thing where, it’s like what we talked about. She’s just another human being who’s trying to do the best she can.
Sarah: Yep! That is your catnip!
Liza: Yeah, it is, and I think it’s like, so, you know, I was able to kind of pitch the whole outline and, and basically I just needed to talk about a female friendship, which is my favorite thing to talk about, ‘cause it’s the, the focus of the novel is how she meets Maria, Maria, who is a key point in the movie and one of the, my favorite characters as well, which is where Monica Rambeau comes from as well, and she’s coming up in the universe as well, but it’s, that idea of, I love Carol because she’s intense, she’s fierce, and she is smart, and I like all those things, but also the underbelly to those things is that sometimes you don’t let yourself learn, which is the theme of the book, which is like, you need to, you need to be bad at stuff. You need to be, try new things where you can be bad at stuff, and you need to –
Sarah: Yeah.
Liza: – let yourself learn, and that was such a cool theme to kind of pull through that novel. And plus it’s Carol Danvers, come on.
Sarah: It’s Carol Danvers. I mean, yeah, exactly. Your first book, as you said, Conversations with the Fat Girl, came out fourteen years ago. I –
Liza: I know, can you believe that?
Sarah: No, ‘cause I remember –
Liza: So weird.
Sarah: – I remember –
Liza: Yeah.
Sarah: – that it was one of the first books that –
Liza: Yeah!
Sarah: – was sent to me as a blogger! My site is –
Liza: Oh wow!
Sarah: – about thirteen and a half years old. I remember –
Liza: [Laughs]
Sarah: – and I had to look this up. I remember Conversations with the Fat Girl, and I remember that book you wrote where that girl is pulling off her tank top on the cover.
Liza: I know. And by the way, that was the second cover for that, for Seeing Me Naked.
Sarah: Seeing Me Naked, thank you!
Liza: I call it the yellow one.
Sarah: The yellow one with the tank top –
Liza: Yeah.
Sarah: – yeah. This is my whole brain.
Liza: The yellow one, because that was the cover they went with that was less risqué than the first cover that Barnes and Noble said they wouldn’t carry, by the way.
Sarah: Really!
Liza: So a girl pulling her tank top off was A, A, good, yes. Two little meringues with cherries on it that kind of looked like –
Sarah: What?!
Liza: – boobs was, like, hard pass. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Yeah.
Sarah: Now, I like the cover as a, whoa, that’s –
Liza: Yeah.
Sarah: – something’s happening, but it’s so funny to me –
Liza: Yeah.
Sarah: – that that is the one that I remember so clearly, and it’s fourteen years ago. I don’t remember –
Liza: Mm-hmm.
Sarah: – what I was wearing yesterday. I don’t remember what year it is. Do I –
Liza: Right?!
Sarah: – remember this cover? Absolutely!
Liza: Exactly! [Laughs]
Sarah: So –
Liza: Well, they did their job then.
Sarah: Yeah, right?
Liza: They did the work. Yeah, I love the color of it. I think it’s great. I love, I love a yellow cover. I think that’s, it’s the only one I’ve ever gotten, so.
Sarah: And now Conversations with the Fat Girl is being re-released with a, with a very –
Liza: Yeah.
Sarah: – slick, black cover with a cutout like a silhouette.
Liza: I know. I know.
Sarah: When you learned about the new release, the re-release and the new cover, what did you think?
Liza: It’s complicated, right, because I think it’s like, it’s two things, which is like, I’m still overwhelmed because I, it’s, you know, the, the editor at Forever is a, a fabulous young editor named Lexi Smail, who’s just wonderful, and she brought the book back because she was a fan. I, I don’t even want to know how old she was, ‘cause it’s probably very young and very younger than me, but she brought the book back, and so once she became an editor at Forever, she was anxious to kind of bring it back. But you know, that book is incredibly vulnerable for me. It’s a book that I wrote, and I think in a fugue state. Debut novels –
Sarah: Yeah.
Liza: – are usually like that, right, where they kind of tap into a more vulnerable version of yourself because you don’t, you’re not a jaded, surly warrior yet –
Sarah: [Laughs]
Liza: – like I am now. But at the time I was young and gooshy and wrote everything that I, you know, came in my head, and so Maggie is very vulnerable, Maggie is very exposed and raw for me, and there was a certain aspect of that that I kind of liked in my rearview mirror, that I liked that I, I got to – but of course, bringing her back is just so wonderful, and she’s one of my favorite – I, I don’t mean to tell the other kids, but I, she’s one of my favorite characters; of course she is.
Sarah: Well –
Liza: And it’s making me kind of come to terms again with all the wonderful, vulnerable gooshiness, goodness of Maggie that I, I kind of had forgotten! I, I had gotten jaded; I had gotten hardened; and she just doesn’t let you do that.
Sarah: She is all in her feels!
Liza: She is! And it’s like, and it’s wonderful, but it does make you uncomfortable as kind of, as you grow up a bit. You, I don’t know, I, I, I think I had lost touch with that, of course.
Sarah: Mm-hmm.
Liza: And she’s just wonderful, so I’m happy to have her back. It, it’s making me embrace that side of myself again, which is long overdue.
Sarah: And it’s your first book, which you probably wrote –
Liza: It is.
Sarah: – thinking no one was ever going to see this.
Liza: One hundred percent. One hundred percent. It’s, it’s the book that I wrote, you know, it’s, you know, this, I, I never went to college; I barely graduated high school; I worked at In-N-Out Burger instead and was like, this is a great path. And it is, actually; working at In-N-Out’s a great job, just enough – [laughs] – they’ve got great benefits, family owned. But not quite the path to literary fame, so when I went back to Vroman’s Bookstore, which is a fantastic independent bookstore in Pasadena, they were having these little kind of weekend workshops, and I was like, oh, I actually want to be a writer, and I put this away for a long time because it’s such a dream that nobody thinks is going to happen, and that summer I wrote Conversations, the summer of ’03, and it was awful, nine hundred pages of sh-, just absolute terribleness –
Sarah: [Laughs]
Liza: – and then, but I got it down to five hundred pages, which should tell you something about how awful it was, that four hundred pages was painless to edit, by the way.
Sarah: Ouch!
Liza: Yeah. And then it was sold by December 22nd that year.
Sarah: Wow!
Liza: Still surreal, quite frankly. I mean, it never really gets real.
Sarah: How do you think, in addition to giving you the vantage point from which to re-access a more vulnerable and emotionally –
Liza: Yeah.
Sarah: – emotionally vivid part of yourself –
Liza: Right.
Sarah: – how do you think your writing and your perspective on writing have changed since Conversations with the Fat Girl came out? I mean, would you be able –
Liza: Well, it’s so interesting –
Sarah: – would you be able to go back and say to yourself then, listen, you’re going to write Carol?
Liza: Ugh, God!
Sarah: [Laughs]
Liza: I don’t, I, it wouldn’t even – you know what’s so interesting is, this kind of dovetails into what The Nobodies is about, because I think it’s –
Sarah: Which is my next question!
Liza: – I wrote Convers– –
Sarah: Thank you!
Liza: They’re connected. So Conversations was written in this kind of vulnerable fugue state, and then – back in ’03, ’04, and it came out in ’05. By the way, that should tell you how, what a mess it was, because it did go through eight rounds of edits –
Sarah: Wow.
Liza: – because, once again, I didn’t, I never went to college. The voice was there, but Amy Einhorn, who was the editor of that, worked hard for her money on that one. So I wrote that one in a fugue state, and then I, I don’t think, I think I spent, from, from what I know now, I think I spent the next few years trying to kind of replicate that without getting curious, without kind of honing my craft.
Anyway, what happened was, in 2014, by, I was pitching book seven, and they didn’t want it, so they were like, hard pass, and, and usually when that happens they’re like, hey, can you pitch us something else? They didn’t say that either. So what I had to realize, and that’s when I got the day job at BuzzFeed, and that’s when I was like, oh, this day job is temporary, like I’m, I’m one email away from being saved. I’m, I’m going to be – no.
What I didn’t realize, and now I know kind of, now I’m four years later and having written The Nobodies, was that my writing had become incredibly shallow, because I had become, I didn’t want to, once again, books know what they are before you do, so I wasn’t digging deeper past this top layer because I didn’t want, I, I didn’t think I was good enough. I had complete impostor syndrome, all of that stuff.
So The Nobodies is about failure, is about a failed writer having to go back to work at a tech company. Sound familiar? It was a year into BuzzFeed, and I was like, I pitched a book. So The F Word was the book that got me back into, you know, F Word is the sequel to Conversations. It was wonderful to kind of go back into that world again, and I think that that started the little embers burning of once again dipping back into that world, as we’ve talked about, kind of dipped me back into the old me of Conversations world, and then I pitched book eight, but The Nobodies in the beginning was about kind of more of a, you know, a hard-boiled mystery about this journalist in a, you know, in a tech company trying to find out the story and stuff like that, and I pitched that, and they, they, they bought it, but then when I got into it, it clearly became about identity and failure and second chances and starting over, being bad at stuff, being literally the oldest employee who works for BuzzFeed in the history of BuzzFeed, which is a very short history, but it’s all of that stuff, and so I think the way that I’ve changed as a writer is that I failed. Like, I didn’t change as a writer. I stagnated; I was paralyzed; I was so afraid of not getting sold that I did whatever it took to get sold and to be in that club besides be curious and stay connected to myself and be engaged and ask important questions and, you know, write what I wanted, for Christ’s sake. So when The Nobodies came around, it became that book, and so I think what’s so interesting, and I’m, I talked to my mom about this, which is – The Nobodies is the only other vulnerable book, so them coming out back to back is like – [laughs] – I want to just rock in a corner, I think, and be like –
Sarah: Oh no!
Liza: – this is too much. This is – ‘cause they’re the both, the most vulnerable books I’ve ever written. And they both came out of the same very, very gooshy, real place that’s so beautiful about writing, but it’s, it’s just so tender. It’s just exquisitely tender.
Sarah: Now, I know from the description of The Nobodies that it is part mystery, part leveling up, possibly romance as well.
Liza: Right.
Sarah: What else you got in there? Tell us all about it, please. Tell me all the things.
Liza: Yeah, I mean, I think if it’s, it’s a book for people who have struggled. It’s a book for people who got pushed off the conveyor belt and needed to start over and needed to – it’s a book about somebody who got pushed down, and it’s that, it’s that part where you’re just starting to get up, and I, and, you know, Brené Brown talks about it a lot in her book, Rising Strong, which I think everybody should read, which is a lot of people kind of, she calls it gold-plating grit, which I think is fantastic, which is everybody wants to hear about, like, a, so I didn’t get picked up by my agent and, and then I fought my way back, and it’s this whole thing, and then they tell this kind of glorious story about the success that happened out of this failure, but they never talk about how hard those months and years are when you’re just, you’re not sure if it’s going to work out for you –
Sarah: Yeah.
Liza: – and that’s what my life has been, and that’s what The Nobodies is about. It’s about that moment in time when you’ve lost everything, and you failed, especially at something that you believe identifies you, that defines you, like writing or anything. It could be a marriage falling apart; it could be whatever it is that you’ve lost, and you’re not only trying to find – you have this level of homesickness about you where you’re trying to find a version of yourself that unfortunately doesn’t exist anymore, and you need to kind of forge a new version of yourself, and I think – so because I completely defibrillated my life and now I work at BuzzFeed, my writing is sharper, deeper, more confident.
Sarah: Mm-hmm.
Liza: It’s all, it’s, it’s vital, it’s back to life again, and it’s all because I literally was defibrillated by failure and had to kind of do something new, and I was around all new people. I’ve been bad at stuff for a very long time, but that’s made me curious and sharper? It’s so screwed up, but failure is literally the best thing that’s ever happened to me.
Sarah: When you started writing The Nobodies, did, was this another book that you sort of started for yourself?
Liza: No. This was a book that I was like, oh good! Finally something can come out of this failure.
Sarah: [Laughs]
Liza: I’ll set a book there and talk about tech and be all edgy, and then it was like, the book, once again, knew what it was about before I did, and it was like, oh no, honey, we’re, we’re, we’re digging, we’re going down. We’re, we’re, we’re going to, we’re going to take you to a really, really uncomfortable place. And of course the book is much better because of it. It’s, I think – and this is, writers don’t say this: it’s the best book I’ve ever written, and it’s because it’s the most real, it’s the most honest, and that feels the best for me, because it’s been a long time.
Sarah: And, and I mean, to be honest, if you’re going to tell me that it’s the best thing you’ve ever written, I absolutely believe you. Like, there’s no question, because you’ve always had –
Liza: Right! [Laughs]
Sarah: – I mean, even when we were talking about workshops we were giving at Surrey and how we talk about writing –
Liza: Right.
Sarah: – I mean, not only do you have an exceptionally low bullshit threshold, but you’re also unfailingly honest about your own work, so if you’re going to say –
Liza: Right.
Sarah: – this is the best thing you’ve ever written, I two thousand percent believe you.
Liza: Right! It’s, and it, you know, of course that will be the thing that I’m like, I can’t believe I said that on that podcast, it was the best thing I ever – four o’clock in the morning, I will then make an appointment with myself to talk about it at 9 a.m., but –
Sarah: [Laughs] You can call me back and I’ll tell you, no, you were totally right. It worked!
Liza: [Laughs] Exactly!
Sarah: Be your own hype person!
Liza: But I think it’s that – right? – but I think it’s that thing where you want, I want to inspire people with what, with what I, my story, because I think it’s like, you think failure is going to end you, but it doesn’t. It, you, it really is a phoenix thing: you do rise from the ashes, and I want to let people know, if you are brave enough to really dig deep and to really get real and authentic and tell the story that scares the shit out of you, something great will come of it, and I think that’s why I have to talk about this book in that way, because it, God, we, we have to just get, face stuff, we really do.
Sarah: Yeah!
Liza: And be brave. Yeah. And not be ashamed! Not be ashamed of failing and struggling and needing help! You know, women especially are like, everything’s fine! Nothing to see here! Because we’re so worried about taking care of everybody else, but –
Sarah: Mm-hmm.
Liza: – you know, I, I, I think sometimes we need to give that gift to ourselves.
Sarah: And at the same time, we tell ourselves, nobody cares; it doesn’t matter.
Liza: Oh, one hundred percent.
Sarah: It’s also important –
Liza: Right.
Sarah: – to tell yourself, yes, but I care about me.
Liza: Mm-hmm!
Sarah: I need help, or I need some assistance looking after myself in this particular arena. I need some assistance –
Liza: Right.
Sarah: – I need some help here.
Liza: Right. Right!
Sarah: We have to care about ourselves while also –
Liza: Right.
Sarah: – downgrading the amount we give a shit of what other people think of us.
Liza: One hundred percent.
Sarah: Which is hard!
Liza: And I think it’s –
Sarah: Not easy!
Liza: It’s so hard. No, it’s so hard. And I think it’s like, I think what really chilled me about this whole thing was that I didn’t know. I honestly didn’t know how shut down I was, and I don’t think we know that. I think you’re so shut down that you’re just trying to get to the next day, and you’re just trying to kind of, you’re just trying to live your life and do the best you can, and I think that’s the piece where I’m like, oh my – how did I not know? Like, and I think that’s – you think that there’s going to be some moment where you’re rending your garments and, like, staring out into the middle distance at something, being like, I’m so lost! But it doesn’t look like that. Failure is incredibly quiet, and it’s painless, and I think that’s the part that nobody really understands, is that it’s a very quiet, boring, actually, existence, where you just kind of slowly turn off the lights in your house and just go to bed. And it’s, it’s, it’s not, it’s not what people think it is.
Sarah: It isn’t, and it’s –
Liza: No.
Sarah: – and it’s also, it’s also hard to come to terms with the situation that changes around you that you can’t do anything about that has, is completely outside of your control, but also –
Liza: One hundred percent.
Sarah: – the part that’s you! Like, it, it sounds like you really hit a big period of burnout.
Liza: Oh, full stop! But the thing is, you don’t know you’re burnt out. You think you are – especially women – we think we’re being lazy? We’re think, we’re, if we could just, if we could just Marie Kondo our houses and clean out our closets, then we’d be able to sit down, and it’s because of our inherent, we don’t want it hard enough. We don’t, you know, all, all we need to do is, you know, all these inspirational memes tell us that we just need to, and it’s like, you’re burnt. Your tank is on empty, and the first thing you need to do is actually think about filling that tank up first with taking in beauty; with, you know, writing stuff that you love, or just not writing stuff. Go and take a pottery class and get filled up. It’s all these other things that are not, like, task-based checklists which make us feel a lot better than going to a museum by ourselves, which is something that we don’t allow ourselves, but that’s exactly what’s going to get you out of that thing.
Sarah: Yeah. And also –
Liza: Yeah.
Sarah: – the part where you stop trying to do the thing that hurts.
Liza: Oh! Nope. That’s, God, that’s exact-, that’s it exactly. That’s it exactly. It’s so hard. It’s so hard not to just keep showing up and doing it exactly the way – it’s very hard to change. I think that’s why sometimes it takes kind of ex-, an external push, is that we won’t really make ourselves that uncomfortable. We’re still going to kind of push ourselves a little bit, but it’s still going to be – it’s, we, we’re writers, right? It’s Act Two. Like, in Act Two, your character does everything within their comfort zone to make the big change –
Sarah: Yes.
Liza: – and then what finally changes in Act Three is that they go outside of their comfort zone.
Sarah: Yes.
Liza: It’s the same thing. It’s that we are just following our st-, what we know is a good story, you know?
Sarah: So what is it that you do at BuzzFeed? Can you talk about that at all?
Liza: Yeah, yeah. I am the supervising writer of BuzzFeed. So we, in the, we do, I do all the shows? So –
Sarah: [Laughs] That doesn’t sound like failure, friend!
Liza: I know.
Sarah: That sounds fucking awesome!
Liza: But this is, like, I know. It, it is, but that’s, that’s, but that’s what’s so great is it’s four and a half years later, right?
Sarah: Yep!
Liza: I started out, they were building a scripted team, and I started out literally – and this is, I put all this in the book because it’s, like, for the first six months of this job, I’ve never eaten more shit! Like, I’ve actually, I was nev-, I’ve never been so bad at something! Like, so bad, and I’m, I’m a smart, capable person, and literally, I hadn’t really been in the job – like, you know, I’d been writing novels for ten years, so I didn’t even know the culture anymore, the open, open floor plan, Slack, the fucking Slack! It’s like –
Sarah: [Laughs]
Liza: Like, just everything, everything has changed. The entire, I was an entirely new generation. Like, there’s a new generation that I’m working with now, and it’s, I was bad, and I thought I knew stuff where I was like, I was like, you’re welcome! And I literally was writing videos for the internet that were so bad that after six months my manager, who was twenty-four years old, said, we’re going to start you at the bottom rung, and thank God she did. She was like, we need to take you all the way down to the front where basically it’s like, you need to write what’s called a moments inventory, which is essentially like, there’s a certain identity, and you need to write five moments which is all show-don’t-tell. It’s so elegant; it’s so – like, five moments in the life of one of this identity, so it’s a girl that always thinks she’s right, and here are five moments that show, without dialogue, a moment that can be relatable to an audience watching this on their phone. And what that sounds like is dumbing things down, but what it actually is, is absolutely deconstructing the writing process in a way that is really hard, and –
Sarah: Yes! Holy crap!
Liza: – we started there, and a year, we did that for a year of me really building these moments inventories, writing these scripted content for identities, building out these incredibly simple scenes which I then was able to deconstruct things, and once again started thinking about writing differently and getting invigorated, being bad at stuff, learning, letting myself learn, which is where the Carol stuff came from, and it’s like from there I became head writer because I could give notes, ‘cause I was very good at giving notes, ‘cause I, and I’m, it’s something that I really, really value about myself, is I’m able to tell you how to change something, not only that something isn’t working, but give you pitches for what could solve it?
Sarah: Yeah.
Liza: And so because of that, I, I gave notes on something, and they never really did notes at BuzzFeed before, because I think it was so run-and-gun that, it was so fast that nobody really had written anything that went through a drafting at all. And so I started to rise through the ranks because I was able to do that. And then I was able to run the room, and I think because it was age, it was because of experience, so all of this stuff, but I had to eat shit first before I started thriving and letting myself learn, and so then I rose up the ranks and, and now I just am, I work with a team of, there’s seven of us, and they’re smart and wonderful and just, have just invigorated my life. Like, I, I just, I, I feel alive for the first time in a long time.
Sarah: And it sounds like you really like what you do!
Liza: Oh, I love it, I love it. It’s, it’s like, you know, I’m part of these shows that, you know, I, I work a lot with the food people here, and so a lot of shows for Tasty, and it’s just, it’s talking about food in this really cool way, and everybody here is foodies, and it’s just, it’s, it’s, it’s wonderful, and I work with the, the team that does, like, Unsolved and Worth It and all this kind of stuff, and, and they just absolutely defibrillated me in every way. And my music is different. My, my playlists are different. They’ve got new music on them. I’m reading different books than I’ve ever read. It’s, it’s, I’ve, I’m uncomfortable as hell and loving it, you know? It’s –
Sarah: So it’s a –
Liza: – the best thing that’s ever happened to me. Yeah.
Sarah: Liza, Liza 2.0.
Liza: Ex-, exactly right. Exactly. Bigger and better.
Sarah: So how do you show without telling a moment in someone who thinks they know everything?
Liza: Right? One of the best examples I’ve, I talk about with people isn’t, isn’t an example with that, but it’s, it’s a, a moment where you’re trying to write two people falling in love. (A) The second season of Fleabag is the best I’ve ever seen at that? She writes two people falling in love so beautifully I can’t even tell you? But one of the, when I, when I talk about writing for the internet, it’s all about those incredibly small moments, and it’s not a long piece of dialogue. It’s, you have a crush on somebody; you’re looking at something on your phone; you show it to the person you have a crush on; and then you show the person, like, look up at some, at the person who’s looking at their phone in a way that is so intimate; and they’re so close –
Sarah: Mm-hmm.
Liza: – and that’s all you need to do. And that’s a moment where you’re like, oh, he likes her. You know? And it’s stuff like that, about finding those little, tiny moments that are so relatable and so intimate, instead of these big, kind of grand dialogue –
Sarah: Gestures.
Liza: – Sorkin – yeah, exactly.
Sarah: Yeah.
Liza: Yeah. So it’s like the – and I always talk about, like, people waiting in line at Starbucks and stuff like that. Like, what, what are your characters, how would they react if somebody couldn’t order – like, build out that moment, ‘cause that’s going to be defining for that person. It’s about seeing your character in a no-dialogue, put them out in the wild. Where are they at the party? Are they petting the dog? Are they the one in the kitchen who’s asking if you need any help –
Sarah: Right.
Liza: – because they’re uncomfortable in a social situation. Like, it’s all that stuff. Like, think about your characters in a far more three-sixty way. It’s, it’ll, it’ll really screw you up. It’ll really screw you up. Like, do a moments inventory. If your character is somebody who knows everything, build out five moments with them in the wild that are completely without dialogue.
Sarah: And it’s the part where you’re not talking where you’re the most in your own head –
Liza: Mm-hmm.
Sarah: – and, and in your own auto-pilot.
Liza: Exactly. Right. Exactly.
Sarah: That’s hard!
Liza: Yeah. Yeah. It’s really hard. And it’s really hard because, as writers we’ve been told to do, you know, character worksheets, and we build out their backstory, and we know everything about their mother, and we know everything about their education, but this allows you to actually see them. To actually see them in this very 3D kind of way, where it’s like, what are they getting at Starbucks, and what are they look like when somebody in front of them isn’t ordering fast enough? Like, that’s what you want. That’s the girl who knows everything. Somebody in front of them is ordering a cappuccino but wants it with extra milk. What she wants to say is, that’s not a fucking cappuccino; that’s a latte, right?
Sarah: [Laughs]
Liza: But she doesn’t say it, so you see her literally holding her tongue behind this person.
Sarah: Mm-hmm.
Liza: And that is a moment of showing a character who knows everything, and, but they can’t, they don’t want to be a jerk. Like, that kind of stuff.
Sarah: They know everything, including how not to appear like a jerk in public.
Liza: Exactly right. Exactly right.
Sarah: Right, right, right.
Liza: And it’s such a great, a great exercise. It’s very hard.
Sarah: So now that you’ve been through this experience of working for BuzzFeed –
Liza: Yeah.
Sarah: – reducing your characters down to the most intimate and specific terms –
Liza: Mm-hmm.
Sarah: – now you’ve gone back –
Liza: Yeah.
Sarah: – and you’ve written this whole story about characters that have had similar experiences.
Liza: Yeah.
Sarah: Does writing books get any easier?
Liza: [Laughs]
Sarah: Of course not, right?
Liza: [Laughs more]
Sarah: I know, I know. I had to, I had to ask. I knew the answer was no.
Liza: No! God bless you.
Sarah: [Laughs]
Liza: I, I, I actually, I was talking to one of the kids here, ‘cause I really do like kind of providing a service for a lot of the young writers here who can kind of use me – I’m, I’m a great deadline person, which is like – ‘cause I’ve had to do it myself, which is like, schedule a time with me, and I will show up, and if you don’t have your writing, I will make it very uncomfortable, and a lot of them have taken me up on it, because that’s all you want is for somebody to hold you accountable for your writing? Please make it awkward if I don’t have my pages in. And I was talking to this one lovely kid about his writing, and he was like, you know, I’ve come at this from a video game perspective, and he was like, I don’t know why I thought it was going to get easier, because in video games, as you go up the levels, they get harder.
Sarah: Right.
Liza: And he said, I don’t know why I thought anything different than what videogames have taught me.
Sarah: [Laughs]
Liza: And it was such this moment of beauty from this young, floppy-haired kid who was just such a ray of light, and it’s so true. It’s like, if you’re doing it right, if you keep playing this videogame of life, the levels are going to get harder, because you’re, you’re engaging and you’re learning more skills, and you’re getting deeper, and you’re getting better at the game, and if you’re doing it right, it should get harder. Because, quite frankly, when it was getting easier for me, it was getting worse. I was shutting down, I was burning out, and I was just skiing down the mountain in the same grooves as everybody else.
Sarah: Yep. And the thing about –
Liza: Yeah.
Sarah: – the thing about leveling up, I find, is it’s like, it’s like when my children were very small. Just as I figured out what it is that they need, they turn into a completely different human.
Liza: [Laughs] Right!
Sarah: I don’t remember which baby book it was. My experience with, with books about parenting is that there’s basically one good nugget of wisdom, and the rest of it is superfluous, and if you want to go mining, feel free –
Liza: Yes.
Sarah: – but you don’t have to, ‘cause you’re going to –
Liza: Right.
Sarah: – learn this stuff anyway.
Liza: Right.
Sarah: But one of them said, every day, new baby, and it’s true! Every day, every day my children are different. Every day my, my, my daily routine is different, and as you level up, you move into the next part, where it’s like, oh, I don’t know any of these weapons –
Liza: Yes.
Sarah: – and I have no idea how to refill –
Liza: Right.
Sarah: – and, and something happens to your body as it ages. Like –
Liza: Yes.
Sarah: – what, what, wait, this is a thing –
Liza: Yes.
Sarah: – we do? I didn’t know we did this. Could we maybe not? But no!
Liza: Right.
Sarah: This is, this what happens.
Liza: Right. That’s right. And it’s actually a wonderful, deeper understanding, ‘cause the bottom line is, as you age, you actually have to get more connected to your body, so you understand that it’s like, oh, I didn’t know I use my core in this thing!
Sarah: Yeah!
Liza: I, I just stood up before! You know, and it’s like, well, you can connect to all the parts of your body. It’s a deeper understanding, actually. It’s, it’s far better as you get older.
Sarah: I’ve also found that, much like giving less of a shit about what people think and –
Liza: Mm-hmm.
Sarah: – and caring more about myself –
Liza: Mm-hmm.
Sarah: – I, I don’t get to take my brain out and put it in some other body that adheres to an external definition of, of beauty and health. I don’t get to do that –
Liza: Amen.
Sarah: – so I have to, I have to figure out and – forgive me – I have to hack the house I have.
Liza: Yep.
Sarah: What’s, what’s going to work best –
Liza: Yes.
Sarah: – for the house that I live in, ‘cause I’m not going to get another one?
Liza: God, I love that. I absolutely love that. That’s so true.
Sarah: Isn’t it? And it doesn’t get any easier, but it’s like, all right, what are we, what are we doing now?
Liza: Yes! It, it gets harder because you actually are more engaged and more curious, if you’re doing it right. You know? ‘Cause I think I, I, I have lived the other way. You know, I was completely checked out, and so I do know that it, it does get harder, but it actually gets deeper and more real and more authentic and far more honest, which I think, as you get older, it’s, it’s, it’s the good stuff. It’s, it’s why we’re here.
Sarah: It’s very true.
Liza: Yeah.
Sarah: Now, I also follow you on Instagram –
Liza: [Laughs]
Sarah: – and you and your mom like to go look at houses.
Liza: [Laughs more]
Sarah: Would you tell me about this, ‘cause it is adorable, and, like, I feel like I kind of know your mom a little bit? Like, would you say hi to her for me? She doesn’t know me, we’re total strangers, but I’m kind of curious. You guys go look at houses on Instagram. Like, you, you, you drive by houses.
Liza: We do. So we used to do, for years and years and years, okay, so every Saturday we go and we have lunch together, that’s our thing, and then after lunch we would always just take our little tour. We would just go around and drive around and look at houses, ‘cause we’re both kind of obsessed with interior design, we’re obsessed with architecture, we’re obsessed with Greene and Greene, who are the wonderful architects who kind of did the Craftsman movement, which is wonderful. I mean, if you want to look at some beautiful Craftsman houses, look at the Gamble House, look at the Blacker House, and they’re just gorgeous pieces of modern design, back in the early 1900s – I think I got that right. I always get 1800s, but it’s the 19- – I always get that wrong.
Sarah: I know –
Liza: It’s like, I, I’ve, I’ve missed so many things because I don’t understand next weekend versus this week. I also get that wrong. So we started doing these tours, and then we were like, well, let’s, let’s, let’s Instagram these. Like, let’s, you know, basically we were like, we actually wanted them for our own kind of posterity, hilariously, but so we basically, we’d go around, and we, we have a tour of houses that are being renovated, and we’d, we’d cat-, we’d, we’d catch them up every week. Like, okay, let’s see what’s going on at this one! But we also go to, like, beautiful, ‘cause Pasadena has a ton of Craftsmans. Like, they have all these wonderful, old, gorgeous Greene and Greenes, and so we go and we drive by, and my mom is, like, kind of a, just a genius at design, and she’ll, she’ll break down a house, and it’s just, it’s, it makes me so happy. It’s such a thing of, bringer of joy that I, I love doing it. So yeah, every Saturday, appointment television, we do our renovation tours.
Sarah: Do you ever, like, meet the people whose houses you’ve been checking out?
Liza: No! No, and everyone once in a while, like, we will, you know, are, we’re constantly afraid of being caught, but also, every once in a while we’ll have somebody be like, hey, that’s my neighbor’s house, and we’re like, oh shit! Sorry! But my mom is usually, you know, complimentary, usually.
Sarah: It’s fascinating, though, because what you’re looking at is the structure of the house, which –
Liza: Yes.
Sarah: – unless you’re buying or selling a house, you don’t really pay attention to.
Liza: No, exactly, and she really does break down, like, they need to do this, they should have done this, ‘cause she’s flipped like four houses now, and she just has that –
Sarah: Wow!
Liza: Yeah. You’re, you just get that she sees it, like, and it’s that thing where you’re like, oh, you’re, you’re kind of firing on different cylinders than I am. Like, you see something that I don’t. And she’s able to really break down kind of the, the architecture of a house and the design of a house and how to make it, how to kind of renovate it or what they’re doing or why they’re doing it, and that kind of thing. It’s really, it’s really interesting! And we love it. [Laughs]
Sarah: Well, I mean, it is a, it is a gesture of, of empowerment and confidence and risk to be like, I’m going to change the physical space that I live in and risk –
Liza: Yeah.
Sarah: – risk opening this wall and discovering terrible, terrible things –
Liza: Exactly! Exactly, and I think that –
Sarah: – to make this into the space that I want it to be.
Liza: One hundred percent, and I think it’s like, that’s why I do think it took her so long to kind of embrace that about herself, because I think it is a, it is a very confident pastime. It’s like, I’m going to take that wall out, and you’ve got to trust me, you know?
Sarah: Yeah.
Liza: And I think it took fifty-some-odd years for her to be able to kind of embrace that about herself, and now she’s fully embracing it, and she’s, and she’s, it’s just a beautiful, beautiful thing to see. And it’s, it’s so, also, it’s not only about what you need but what you want and what you like, which women are not, you know, we are not, we don’t allow ourselves often to be so luxurious like that, you know? It’s, it’s no, I, I, this is my taste and I actually like that sconce, and I’m putting it up there. It’s, it’s, and it’s very black and white. It’s not, you know, we also are like, oh, whatever you need. It’s like, no, it’s, this is what I want, and I – it’s such an empowering thing that she does, and I love it. And so I love listening to her when she talks about, you know, just houses and what she would do. It’s just so confident, and I love it.
Sarah: So what are you working on right now?
Liza: Right now I am working on, we’re pitching book nine. I, I’m so excited about it. I want to be let off the leash to write it. I can’t wait to –
Sarah: [Laughs]
Liza: I’m, I’m, I’m pitching. You know, it’s, it’s the same gig, right? It’s like, it’s some version of this cycle of pitching, writing, waiting, you know, hoping, you know, not, not, you know, all these different things that you’re just like, you know, it’s, and, and then constantly kind of managing your expectations about, like, whether or not you’re going to be able to take home any one of these puppies that you just don’t want to become too connected to?
Sarah: Yes.
Liza: So I have several puppies that I’m, I want to take home right now, and so hopefully I’ll get the green light on, well, all of them, but timing, timing, timing. Yeah, I can’t wait.
Sarah: Oh, fingers crossed.
Liza: Yeah, I mean, yeah, agreed.
Sarah: And I always ask this question.
Liza: [Laughs]
Sarah: What books have you read recently that you would like to tell all the people on the internet about?
Liza: Well, I think there’s, I, I read wi-, widely. I am a huge Alyssa Cole stan. I will read everything she writes. I yelped at her, and I, and I use the word yelp because it was more of a bark, and I’m trying to be kind to myself. She went to Surrey, I believe last year –
Sarah: Yes.
Liza: – and I really was like, I, it was not even a human noise that I made when I saw her.
Sarah: [Laughs]
Liza: So that, that’s going to be waking me up most nights. So anything by Alyssa Cole. I also tore through Rebekah Weatherspoon’s Rafe, the buff male nanny, which I think is probably one of the best books of 2018?
Sarah: Mm-hmm.
Liza: I also love, I’ve been really getting into Anthony Bourdain, so I read, actually, his second book first, Medium Raw, and now I’m reading Kitchen Confidential? I’m obsessed with Samin Nosrat, who, she wrote, she did Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat, and her cookbook is incredible. Her writing in that is beautiful, and I’m, I’m reading that as well.
I’m reading Elizabeth Gilbert’s City of Girls, which I love?
Sarah: Ooh!
Liza: And I read a book called Eloquent Rage, which is, I, I can’t remember the writer’s name, but it’s basically about being a Black feminist, and it’s incredible. It’s just fucking fantastic. I, I highly recommend it, so.
I’m reading a ton of stuff right now. I’m also reading Red Rising by Pierce Brown, because I like sci-fi.
Sarah: Ooh!
Liza: So yeah, I’m – ‘cause I have, like, an hour-long commute, so I, I either read, listen to a book on the way, or I’m obsessed with podcasts, so I’m listening to a lot of podcasts as well.
Sarah: That’s a good choice!
Liza: Yeah!
Sarah: So would you like –
Liza: Yeah.
Sarah: – a couple of recommendations?
Liza: Oh, hell yeah!
Sarah: Okay. There is a book that came out – wow, I have no concept of time, so I should never talk about –
Liza: [Laughs]
Sarah: – when a book comes out, because I read it, you know, I want to say it came out in March. Yeah? Oh, wow, good job, Brain! Came out in March. It is called Burnout: The Secret to Solving the Stress Cycle by Emily and Amelia Nagoski.
Liza: Oh shit.
Sarah: It, I interviewed them for the podcast; I’ve spoken to Emily Nagoski a bunch of times. She also wrote a book about the female orgasm called Come As You Are?
Liza: Oh, I’m in.
Sarah: She is a sex educator who used to work at, I believe it was Smith, and now does international work with sex education and women’s bodies, basically.
Liza: Oh my God.
Sarah: And her twin sister Amelia is a choral instructor and choral conductor, and so when I –
Liza: Oh my God!
Sarah: – did the interview with them they just talked about recognizing the physical signs of stress and how to –
Liza: Oh my God!
Sarah: – understand stress cycles.
Liza: I needed this years ago!
Sarah: It’s incredible, and it came – forgive me – out of –
Liza: [Laughs]
Sarah: – the book Come As You Are because there’s a chapter in that book about how physical stress and changes in your body affect your ability to have an orgasm, and –
Liza: Oh!
Sarah: – so many women came up to Emily and were like, listen, that chapter on stress: can you say more about that? I mean, I really appreciate all the information about my vagina and all that other part; that was great. You know, arousal nonconcordance, what’s going on down there.
Liza: [Laughs]
Sarah: That was helpful, but talk to me about the whole stress thing. What is my body doing with stress? And –
Liza: I’m downloading this book literally right now. I literally have my phone out, and I’m downloading it on Audible right now.
Sarah: It’ll blow your damn mind.
Liza: On Amazon. You can’t – why can’t you download on Audible, for Christ’s sake?
Sarah: You can! You just have to, like, tap a few more buttons. They read the audiobook, so if you get the audiobook it’s great.
Liza: Oh my God, I’m so excited about this! Oh, this is incredible.
Sarah: It is all about what your body’s doing when you’ve got stress and how to deal with it. So basically, if you, you know, solve the problem like a grownup and talk to the person who pissed you off, that has resolved the, the, the thing that caused the stress, but it hasn’t resolved the stress that you have in your body.
Liza: Oh my God.
Sarah: And as women, of course, we are taught to just push it down. Down, down –
Liza: Oh yeah. Yeah, keep calm and carry on. I, oh my God, I love this.
Sarah: I’m so excited. I want you to tell me what you think, ‘cause I’m –
Liza: Oh, I can’t wait, I can’t wait. I, I’m so excited.
Sarah: It changed so much about how I run my day.
Liza: Oh my God. I can’t wait. I can’t wait.
Sarah: It’s amazing. It’s, it’s a book I’ve given to so many people. I’m so excited to get to recommend it to you!
Liza: Oh my God, I, well, you’re, you’re, like, the, probably the ultimate book recommender, where it’s like, I’m, like, sitting here, like, waxing rhapsodic about all these weird books I’m reading. You’re like, no, let me give you ten books that are going to literally rock your world.
[Laughter]
Sarah: Well, I mean, I don’t know about literally rock your world, but it’s definitely –
Liza: I mean, this one did! You did one, and you’re one for one! I mean, this is the best book recommendation. This is – [laughs] – I’m so stoked!
Sarah: Oh, I’m so excited for you!
Liza: I love it. Yeah.
Sarah: And you get to, and you get to, like, read it and be like, oh, oh, oh my God! That’s amazing!
Liza: Right? Oh my God, I can’t, I can’t wait.
Sarah: I’m so excited!
Liza: I can’t wait. And I looked up, as I was literally on Audible downloading that one – Eloquent Rage is written by Brittney Cooper.
Sarah: Yes, thank you! I knew it was Brittney something.
Liza: Cooper.
Sarah: I was like, Brittney –
Liza: Yeah.
Sarah: The Britney that comes to mind is Spears; that is not who wrote it.
Liza: I know, which, you know, it should. She really should be.
Sarah: She could write things.
Liza: Yeah. Top of mind for everybody.
Sarah: Oh yeah. All right, and one last book that, one last series that you’ll probably really like? Have you read the Call of Crows series by Shelly Laurenston?
Liza: No?
Sarah: Okay, I recommend these to so many people. All right, so first of all, Shelly Laurenston is a little bit like cilantro: if she doesn’t work for you, it’s okay.
Liza: Tastes like soap? [Laughs]
Sarah: Either it’s soap or it’s, like, the best thing you ever put in salsa.
Liza: Right! [Laughs more]
Sarah: She has a very campy, very, I think, over-the-top, hyperrealistic style. Characters talk like real people, but they’re in situations –
Liza: Okay.
Sarah: – that are completely over the top.
Liza: Oh, this is great.
Sarah: So in Call of Crows, which is a three-book series and begins with The Unleashing, it is a retelling of Norse mythology where there are teams of superpowered humans on –
Liza: Oh my God.
Sarah: – the earth who are the human, earthbound representatives of different Norse gods, and the Norse gods are constantly losing random shit, and they’re like, go find my thing, and so Thor’s, the, the, the Thor people, who are the giant killers, they will have to go do what Thor says, and there’s a group for Odin, and there’s a group for Tyr, and the Crows belong to the goddess Skuld. Skuld was one of the Norns who spun your life into, into being, but –
Liza: Oh wow.
Sarah: – she is also the, the goddess who collected the people who were the slaves of the ancient Vikings. So the, the other, the other clans are, like, really white. Like, white with five syllables: they’re wh-hi-heat-uh!
Liza: Right.
Sarah: Like, they’re like, you know, Magnus and Borsin, Thorsinsonsonsonson.
Liza: Right, right.
Sarah: So they’re all, like, descended from Nor-, Norwegians and Swedes. Skuld selected her warriors from the slaves, and so they are from everywhere and every different background and every different cultural group, and they are the most hated, but they’re also the ones who you don’t ever fuck with.
Liza: Wow.
Sarah: And when you die and become one of Skuld’s warriors, you get a chance at a second life. Your first life is over, and you can do whatever you want with it, and a lot of the women who come into Skuld’s clan are like, wait, what do I do? And they’re like, whatever you want! Okay, I, what? I don’t, I don’t know what that is.
Liza: Oh my God.
Sarah: It’s, and it’s, it’s, there’s, like, massive god warfare between major Norse deities!
Liza: [Laughs]
Sarah: And then there’s, like, people figuring out, fuck, I have wings and super strength! The fuck do I do with myself right now?!
Liza: [Laughs more]
Sarah: It’s so fun, and you come out of it thinking, all right, who are my sister Crows? Who are the women I depend on without hesitation? Who are the people –
Liza: Oh wow!
Sarah: – who always have my back? I love that.
Liza: Oh my God, I’m so in. This is great.
Sarah: I’m such an expensive person to know; I’m sorry.
Liza: No, that’s exactly, you’re, you are absolutely like a, this is bad. Like, I, my, my, my luggage just got fifty pounds heavier, for Christ’s sake.
Sarah: Sorry!
Liza: Good job.
Sarah: [Laughs] Sorry about that!
Liza: ‘Cause I’m not, I’m not a Kindle person. I, I, I’m a, I, I, so I, and I should be, but I’m more of a paper book person.
Sarah: Don’t should at yourself! There’s no such word as should.
Liza: It’s true!
Sarah: Should is not a great word.
Liza: I like, I like, I like the feelings of a book. Yeah.
Sarah: Yeah. Should, should is a word –
Liza: Oh my God.
Sarah: – I try not to use, and I’m a lot happier for it.
Liza: I love that. I, I shall adopt that.
[music]
Sarah: And that brings us to the end of this episode. I want to thank Liza Palmer for hanging out with me. You can find her on her website, lizapalmer.com, and I will link to her Instagram and her Twitter, both of which are extremely fun.
And if you would like to get in touch with me, here is how you do that: you can email me at [email protected], or you can call 1-201-371-3272 and leave me a message, tell me a bad joke, tell me what you’re thinking, ask for recommendations, whatever you want! Just leave us a message or email us, ‘cause I love to hear from you!
Today’s episode is brought to you by Deceived by Desire by Marie Force. From New York Times bestselling author Marie Force comes the second in her USA Today bestselling Gilded series, a glittering tale of star-crossed romance set amid the lavish mansions and decadent lifestyles of early 20th-century Newport, Rhode Island. But even in an age of great fortune, the heart has its own idea of true riches. With Marie Force’s knack for creating unforgettable characters, this romantic upstairs, downstairs romance will appeal to readers of Lisa Kleypas, Eloisa James, and Sabrina Jeffries. Deceived by Desire by Marie Force is on sale wherever books are sold. For more information, visit marieforce.com.
Thank you again to our Patreon community for supporting the show and making sure that every episode has a transcript. If you would like to join the Patreon community you can do so at patreon.com/SmartBitches.
And if there are other ways you would like to support the show I will tell you what they are, but if you listen to podcasts, I bet you know. If you like, subscribe, or leave a review anywhere you listen, like Stitcher or Apple Podcasts – my preferred podcast app, podcatcher app, is pod, Pocket Casts, which – but I’m on an Android device, so I have a lot of choices. However you listen, rating, liking, subscribing, and leaving a review makes a very large difference as well. So however you support the show, including right now by listening to my voice, thank you for that.
The music you’re listening to is provided by Sassy Outwater. You can find her on Twitter @SassyOutwater. This is a band named Sketch, and this is “Shedmau5” from their album Shed Life. There’s a lot of shed in this album. You can find it on Amazon or on iTunes or wherever you like to buy your funky music.
Coming up on Smart Bitches this week, we have the first of our two monthly Whatcha Reading? posts, plus a new edition of Kickass Women in History and a Romance Wanderlust. We also have reviews, so many awesome reviews, including an A-grade book for one of our reviewers that she just adored, plus we have a bunch of new releases and Books on Sale every day and Help a Bitch Out every Tuesday. I hope that you will come and hang out with us.
I will have links to many of the things that we talked about – well, actually, all of the things that we talked about; I try to write them all down while I edit – and I will have links to all of the books we mentioned, because there were many, and all of them are really good.
But as always, I will end with a terrible joke. Are you ready? This is, this is really bad. I like this one a lot. I like to torture my children with it. [Clears throat] All right, serious podcaster voice:
How does Spiderman think of such witty comebacks?
How? How? How does Spiderman think of such witty comebacks?
Because with great power comes great response ability.
[Laughs] It’s so bad! I love it so much! That was posted by KirkSheffler, but I’m told that it’s been posted before.
Either way, I hope that you have great response ability all this week. We wish you the very best of reading. Thank you so much for listening. We will see you back here next week.
[mouse music]
This podcast transcript was handcrafted with meticulous skill by Garlic Knitter. Many thanks.
Thanks for yet another wonderful interview and for the transcript.
I loved so much about this episode!!!!! I came to listen to Sarah and Liza talk about books and writing and it was so much more than that! I felt like I was in a really great therapy session for my writing, my TBR shelf, my LIFE! Failure, rising, writing authentically, all of this!!! I needed this wonderful inspiration. Thank you both so much!!!
Sadly I’ve heard bad things about CWTFG, mostly about it actually being fatphobic.
I needed to hear this conversation about getting to the other side of failure. Very timely!