You're listening to I Choose Me with Jenny Girl.
Welcome to I Choose Me, the podcast about making choices, even when they're hard, sometimes dangerous, or even necessary to keep you safe. Today I'm talking to a compelling novelist whose stories navigate the consequences of choices people make, sometimes mysterious and dire, many times for love. Laura Dave has written a handful of incredible books, but her most recent The Last Thing He Told Me, and it's sequel The First time I saw him have taken the world by storm.
I'm so excited to welcome Laura Dave.
Hi, how are you good.
I'm so happy to meet you. I'm such a longtime fan.
Oh my gosh, thank you.
I actually have your memoir and yes, and I unpacked my library. We just moved home and I was trying to find it to show you because I loved it.
So thank you, thank you.
Yeah. Wait, I heard this this crazy thing happened to you, because I've been hearing it a lot that you had an experience with a podcast scammer.
Yes, what the heck happened?
So someone reached out and said that they worked with you and that they wanted to you want to have me on the podcast, and so I was so excited, and then they did a check with me, like like they tech check, and when they got on, I referred to a couple of specific things that you have said like on shows like that I was such a big fan. I'm like, I can't. I thought it was your like your manager, your and his response, he like wasn't nice
in response. So that was like my first red flag, Like he didn't say, like, you know, someone would say like, oh, that's so nice to hear that you like that episode, or that you love this in her book or whatever. There was none of that. And then I couldn't, because I'm me and a luddite, figure out how to work my Apple password. He was like trying to get into my Apple.
Account, Oh my god.
And he's like, because I have to be able to do something with a live with with with Jenny, and and I couldn't do it, and he got progressively angrier. And so then we got off the phone and Liz, who I work with, I had texted her, I'm like, something feels really off about this, and then she got on and she's like, we'll be handling this from here on out. And then she texted me later and was like, it's a scammer.
Oh my god.
Okay, first of all, I'm so sorry that that happened to you. I feel like it's my fault, but it's not. Honestly, it just sucks that it's like because I think that happens to a lot of podcasts unfortunately, but I keep hearing about it from my listeners and it just makes me feel so terrible and also.
What a jerk.
I mean, what a jerk. But what's so crazy is he doubled down and reached out to me again and then so that was wild. But you know, as a writer, it happens to me too, and people take advantage of young writers. I get notes from readers all the time that say, oh, someone reached out and said you're willing to read my book for a manuscript fee, and I'm like, that's not me. I would never reach out to someone.
You know, they just take advantage. People are just the Internet allows you to take advantage of other people.
Really easy to do.
I'm so glad that we're talking about this, so in case anybody that's listening out there has had this experience or.
Is in the middle of having it.
Just really listen to your instincts because it's a scammer.
It's a scammer.
Yeah, I cannot tell you.
I read your almost entire new book on my plane ride yesterday.
Oh my gosh, I went right through it. It was so good. And I had never read the first one.
Oh wow.
And I had never seen the show.
So that's great to hear. I love hearing that.
Oh yeah, I was already like into these characters because just skipping to the second book. So then last night my family and I I was like, guys, we have to watch the show. I want to watch the show. And we all sat down to watch one episode and we end up on episode four before we were We've got to go to bed.
I love it. I love it. That's the best.
Yeah.
So this the first time I saw him, Yes, is your most recent book?
Yes?
And then the last thing he told to me, Yes. This is confusing for me because it's confusing. It feels like it should be the other way.
It should exactly. So the last thing he told me was the first book in the series, and then the second one is the first time I saw him. I don't know why I did that. If I could go back. I would call the second book like windbreak, like I don't know what I think.
Oh man, I hate when it's too late to make changes.
Yes, it's confusing for me though it was.
It really came down to the characters, Like especially not having seen the show, I was able to just use my own imagination, which is such a lost skill.
Oh you know if you.
Don't, if you're not a reader and you wait for the book to come out, I mean to the for the show or the movie to come out, you're really doing yourself a disservice because the book is always better, and you know, you just get lost in. It's so much easier instead of having the imagery kind of fed to you.
Yeah, I think that there's something very sort of immediate and intimate about, you know, the experience between when you're reading a book, when you're coming to it yourself, and it all comes to That's why I always say that I don't have any two of the same readers, because everyone brings something to it that's a completely different thing. You're bringing yourself in a different way, and as a mother of girls, it must have hit you in a
different way, you know. Then it would hit someone who does not have that lived.
Experience, right, or just someone who's this gutsy. This character Hannah, she's so gutsy and like she just does whatever it takes to get to the end of this ordeal.
Yes, which I don't.
Don't tell me the end because I'm still I want page let's see, I want page two fifty seven, so close.
I want you know. It all started for me with her. I heard an interview in which Gloria Steining was quoted as saying how important it was for women to watch other women become the hero of their lives, And I thought, well, what if there's this completely normal person who's just living a normal life and all of a sudden her experiences amp up everything she needs to do to like the highest volume, Like, how does she become a hero in that case?
She's not a no, she's just a what is she a wood.
Or wood turner? She's just an artist. And then all of a sudden she's in this impossible situation in which the people she thought she knew and trusted she can't and so she's left with herself.
Yeah, and having to figure out every little piece on her own. Which now going back and watching the first book in the Apple Show. I it's like, I'm like, oh, that makes sense, And yes, I see the connection between the first book and the second book. And I don't know why yet because I haven't gotten to the end of the first season. Yes, but I know it's all going to come together, which is really fun to watch. It's so fun to watch out of order for some reason.
Yeah, I love that. I mean I think that, you know, because I tried to write I really don't like a sequel that spends like one hundred pages retreading old territory. So I'm like, for myself, it was an exercise and how am I going to get people in quickly without them having to read the other book? And so something that we did when I was writing the book was I gave it to like twenty readers who had not read the first book to say, like, where are you lost?
Where are we not following this? So that they could read it as you can read it as a standalone. Was the idea.
You will.
You accomplished it, that's for sure, And that's so interesting as an author to you know, do those sort of tests to make sure that it's landing. That's really interesting because I felt like I knew the story. I felt like I knew the characters, and you know, Ohen wasn't even in it that much. Yes, so until you know, until he was. But then you know, I just I loved it.
Loved it. That's all I'm going to say.
I love hearing that.
Thank you.
Your novels often explore like the secrets within close relationships, like her finding out this huge secret about her husband and what what kind of what would you say? Draws you to that sort of tension between the intimacy and the deception, and that those two living in the same space.
I think often, you know, the question that really drove these books was can we ever know the people we love? And I think that you can live with someone for five years or ten years or fifty years and wake up and somehow that person can either feel more known to you if you're really lucky that you really have this soul sort of understanding, or if the coins turn in a different fashion you don't recognize each other anymore.
And how does that happen? And it does it happen because you never knew each other to begin with, or because you grew apart, or because someone kept the secret. There's so many different ways you can come to that. And I've always been interested in this idea of not only the secrets we keep from each other, but I think they often start with the secret we keep from ourselves.
So what is the story that we don't want to tell ourselves about our own life that make an intimacy with another person compromised or impossible because we're not acknowledging something to ourself or that person isn't acknowledging something to himself. And that's where it all starts for me, that initial secret.
Yes, and most importantly, that relationship with yourself. Yeah, I love that. Well, yeah, I was definitely thinking, like, what about my husband, don't I know, Like laying next to him last night, I was curious and I didn't, you know, he was sleeping so I couldn't ask him.
But maybe tonight I was.
I was. I was listening to one of your episodes in which you were I think it was with Molly Simms, and you were talking about how your husband's a Gemini. Yeah, yes, is that right? Yes, I'm raising a Gemini, and so I'm always thinking with a gemini, there's always two beautiful sides. But what I actually think is that My experience of geminis is that they're so authentic to each part of themselves, so you probably do know him the truth.
It's the truth either way, either.
Character they're playing in that moment.
Yes, And with this I really did want to the conclusion I came to here and I won't ruin the end, but the conclusion I came to very early on when I started writing this first book. It was before before I became a mom, and it was it was a love story with the idea that even if the details change, even if you learned that the details you thought you knew were different, you can know someone's soul, you can know who that person is, and then that can be
this sort of rewarding journey. And then when I had my son, my little Gemini, I realized that this was the primal story of someone becoming a mom. And what does that love story look like? And why does supersede all the other love stories in our life? What about that it's true?
And even in this experience where it's a stepmother stepdaughter relationship between Hannah and Bailey, that really brings, you know, the heart and the empathy to the story in general. And I mean I can understand even though I'm not a stepmom, I can really relate to Hannah's like longing to be liked by Bailey and all her teenage angst. And you never had a stepchild either, right, Am.
I never had a stepchild, but I have several godchildren,
three of whom were teenager teenage girls. While I was writing this, and I think, you know, it's this really weird thing where I think there's something when a girl is coming into that age and you're close to her, like you walk into a room and you still see yourself as that age in some way, and you're like, wait, and then you see yourself through their eyes and you're like, but I'm not and I'm so not cool and I just want their approval and how did I get here?
Like how am I the grown up in the room. And when Hannah starts with Bailey, you know, I think that this thing is going on for her where she's trying so hard, but she's trying in all the wrong ways. And someone can sense that from you if you are being an authentic, if you are being not the version of yourself that someone needs, because it's not really you.
And then her movement to their movement toward each other, because I had seen so often on TV or in books that there's an antagonistic relationship between a stepmother and a stepdaughter. But what I wanted to do here was suggest that they were distant because they didn't understand each other, but that they have something in common. As opposed to which you often see the husband or the step and
the husband slash father you're competing for him. What they shared was the knowledge that he would do anything for both of them, and that in forging that understanding together, they found their way to each other. So it was almost his love that binded them together. And then you know, they had this relationship they didn't anticipate.
Yeah.
I loved how you wove into to make the Hannah character, the depth and understanding why she was a little bit more reserved or why she was treading so lightly with Hannah and that relationship. Learned that her own relationship with her own mother was so incredibly twisted. Yeah, that she had a lot in there going on about that being a mom, having a mom?
What is a mom?
Yes, because how do we do anything if we don't have a model. It becomes impossible or it becomes a different kind of challenge, and so I like the idea that they became each other's key in Locke, a mom who was never mothered herself and a girl who lost her mother way too young. Yet somehow they're each other's key and lock they were able to find their way there.
Yeah, what was the backstory in your mind that made you made Hannah trust Owen so implicity? You know, without any spoiler, she always believed in him.
Yes, I think for me, it started way before I even started writing the book. I saw do you remember the Enron trial in Houston with the there was that terrible embezzlement at Enron, And I saw an interview with Linda Lay, the wife of Kenneth Leigh, on the Today Show, in which she said, my husband's done nothing wrong and
I didn't putting aside whether she actually believed that. I started to imagine, what if your love for someone was so real and felt so lived in And Hannah comes to Owen at a moment in her life where she's fully formed, She's in her late thirties, she knows who she is, and then, but what if you feel that kind of love for someone and the world is telling you they're someone else do you believe yourself or do
you believe the world? And so I wanted to create a character who is so seeped in her own understanding of herself. She didn't have a mother to guide her. She guided herself. She totally self made in every way, and so what she's her own guiding light, she's her own sort of true north. So when she finally meets him, and she's and I talked about this in the first book. She almost got married before, and she didn't. And she was never the person who wanted to just be with anyone.
She was the person who was worried about picking the wrong person, and so she waited. And then when she met Owen, she was sure. And how do you hold on too that certainty in the face of so much evidence to the contrary? And does that make you a fool? Or does that make you someone that is sort of the grown up in the room who understands more than everyone. And that was sort of the tension of the book.
And when I'm writing, I never know the answer. I didn't know until I got to the end what I thought.
I even't felt that with the flashbacks of her as a younger girl, I felt that inner strength in her, and you kind of get to see it develop a little bit in those flashbacks. Yes, what she was enduring and like how she was her own Like you said, true north.
Yeah, I think that's becomes a different journey. And I think also when we become mom, we have to inhabit that in a new way, being a true North for these little people that walk into our lives or you know, I always talk about how I felt reborn when I had my son, but I think that was another way of saying that I felt the responsibility shift, like I felt it in the earth, Like everything looked different to
me because it was like a seismic shift. Because I was like, I want to be the person that helps him know he can trust himself, and in order to do that, I have to model that I trust myself even when I don't. So what does that look like?
Yeah?
I mean the characters often choose others first, like so often their partners, their children, their secrets. In this case, what at what point in your writing process do you ask, what does this character need to choose for herself to keep herself or themselves safe and healthy and happy and moving forward.
I think that is such a great question ever asked me that I love that question because I actually think that's the entire motion of a book, is someone figuring out, how do I choose myself? Like what version?
You know?
I always I always talk about this idea, especially when there's some sort of triangulation going on, that you're not picking between two different people, You're picking the version of
yourself that you want to realize. And here Hannah is choosing herself really by figuring out what matters most to her, and what matters most to her is she's not going to leave the child behind even though she was a fifteen year old child when the book starts in the way she was left behind and everything else is going to fall second to that. And that isn't just choosing the child, that's choosing her most upstanding self.
And her truest calling right, and she just knows that she knows in hers that were.
Being yes exactly, that's what she needs to do.
That's so good. Okay, So I love this part too. The listeners that are here with us today that are in Northern California, also Los Angeles, Austin, and even Paris, your novels will make them feel right at home because you choose the most beautiful places to tell your stories. How do you decide where your stories will live? And do the locations become like part of the characters in the story.
I love communities that are on the edge of the world in some way because I think they require something different of their inhabitants and that makes for interesting character choices. Yeah, if you're living somewhere where you're both depends on each other in a different way. And also you can be anonymous in a new way. That is such a weird friction. And so I always try to pick place is that exist in that way, and I don't know what it is, and I do a ton of research though, so sometimes
it shifts. Like in the second book and the book that you were reading, my most recent book, there's a scene in Fisher Island, and originally the whole last third of the book took place in Fisher Island, and then I got there. I went first of all, to get to Fisher Island. For listeners that don't know where it is, It's a little island off the coast of Miami, and
you have to like take a boat out there. You have to know someone out there, so in order to even get on the island, I had to pretend I was interested in buying an apartment for a house there. My poor son, I forgot to tell him, and he's like, what are we doing? Are we moving here? So because he came with me. But when I got out there, I realized that this wasn't right, that it wasn't that this was like the place of a scene, but not
the place of the soul. And all of a sudden I started researching the French Riviera and I came across this town as in which the motto is in death we are reborn. And I got on a plane the next week and I went to the south of France and I spent time doing research, spending time with locals, really learning about it. And it does it becomes like a character. I start breathing into that place and thinking, what is this? How is this informing the story in a way that another place would not?
Right? I mean, I want to go there. I know that.
I know it's fun, it's you know, Saslito was especially fun. Now there's a restaurant there that serves the hannapasta and it's really easy.
Look what you've done, Oh, my gosh.
So we had a lot of fun with that.
I'm curious.
I'm not as familiar with this, and maybe some of our listeners aren't either.
How does this happen?
How did your book become So you got on a list or maybe Reese Weatherspoon's book club selected your book? Yes, and then she bought the rights to the book to make it into a show.
Yes.
And was this your first experience going down that road?
So no, So I've written several novels, most of which have been optioned, but this is my first time that it's gone all the way to fruition. And it was sort of this very strange and surreal experience because it was in the middle of COVID, the book wasn't out yet, and they said, you know, we had recent Her production partner Lauren called and said, we want to turn this into a TV show, and my husband's a screenwriter, and they said, and if you guys want to write it,
go ahead and write it. So the first season he and I wrote with a small writer's room, and so it was wild because we were home alone trying to bring this to life. And you don't think it's necessarily going to happen, and then you know everything it feels like everything has to align for that to come to be. And then it was this really wonderful thing of because I do all the research, I already had their houseboat
picked out. I already had all these things. So then when you go back for location scouting and everything, I'm like, no, this is where Hannah lives, and this is the doc she's on, and this is all the things, and it was it was. It was really kind of a surreal, amazing experience.
And then you blink your eyes and you're on the set.
It's wild. That's totally wild. The first day I drove to set, the very first day I got there, and it's really my first day on set. This is such a like And and I drove past who I thought was two police officers. They were extras, And I drove straight into the middle of the first scene. No one stopped me. Jennifer Gardner, who plays Hannah Hall, very sweetly like directed me to a parking spot and then went back to shooting the scene.
It was amazing, of course she did. I mean, the casting is amazing.
Jennifer Garner plays Hannah obviously in the TV adaptation, of your books, and she is that rare combination of kick ass action hero like you. You know she's going to run at some point in the show because it's Jennifer Arner.
And then she's got this I was wondering because she's got a very strong maternal instinct, just having you know, having her children be such a priority in her life, and then you can tell she loves being a mom and then having to kind of like step back a little to have that reserved like stepmom position of and how tricky that is, Like she did such a great
job of playing that. And you it seems like you two have become friends, And I just was wondering, like having adult friendships with women now, whether you meet them through your work or how important is that to you because writing is like a very solitary expense experience, Like, yes, so.
How do you keep your social cup?
I think that is such a good question. I think it's so important. You know, I lived in New York and then I moved When I moved out here, we lived here briefly, and we moved to New York and we moved back and my best friend found me a house across the street from her and that's nice of her, so nice. And then I moved another very close friend
onto the street. But I think that community and women friendships and my best friends, my best friend another since I'm like five years old, and like, you know, I think it is it is so important, you know, have you The way women friendships operate are so different than anything else, And they keep you honest and they remind
you who you are. I talk a lot about this idea in all of my books about having witnesses to your life, and what I mean by that is someone who reminds you of who you used to be and holds you accountable to the version of yourself that is the most authentic and the most honest and helps you
not get lost. And I think making friendships as an adult is in part you know, sometimes you know, I don't know what it is, but in like the last decade, I almost know it immediately, whether it's like a mom friend at school or someone I meet through work, it feels like you're skipping the small talk and you're right to this is some soul.
Connection, Yes, the stuff that matters.
Yes, I love that feeling too, because I hate small talk.
Like, yes, it's like get me out.
I will run if there's a yeah, clothes, I'm like, la la, la, la la. I don't want to do small talk.
I want to talk to some of that stuff that really matters exactly. And when someone can like volley with you on that level, you know you're in the right.
Spot exactly and you feel it. You can feel it. And I do think that's one of the beautiful things about getting older, is you know it quicker. Yeah, if someone's you could you know there's I do think there's an energy exchange when you're with anybody, and you feel quickly if that energy exchange is depleting or invigorating, and it's so it's so unique when it's oh my god, I need to see this person again. I really with everything, I'm gonna make time for that that you know it,
you know. And Jennifer Garner, what's so amazing about her and how she like took on this role or how she is as a person is like I think people think they know her because of the way she is so accessible and lovely, and that's who she is. I mean to me in my experience, like she's so she is who she is. There's no sort of separation in that way, which is why you know that is such a gift. When you see someone who's like that, you get to know someone who's like that.
Oh definitely, I think so too. I was wondering about the backpack. Okay, Hannah and Bailey have to run away in an instant and they have a backpack at the ready, just they've prepared.
I mean Hannah hasn't prepared.
I really wondered what is inside of that backpack? And be what would you put in your backpack?
So I love that question because as a person that's like always like my husband always jokes that, like if there's like not even like the whiff of an apocalypse, the whiff of a crisis, I'm like the first one on the plane. I'm like, I'm already gone. I'm already then, So like that backpack. So I actually one of the things I do for research is I speak to like experts in like all the fields, so like here because
organizational crime was such a big part of it. I spoke to this lawyer who prosecuted more organizational crime than anyone else in the country, and I spoke to survival experts. I'm like, what would need to be in that backpack for you to get away and live with that backpack. And then like basically that's how I came to them having a car, because he was like, you need a trunk, Like you need more than just the backpack, which is why we ended up having the car there, but in
the backpack itself. I needed her to be able to exist off the grid but have access to every things she needed to know so that she could follow everyone else. So the first I put in there were devices. She needed a clean tablet, a clean laptop, and several clean phones. She needed passports, I mean, she needed other identification. And the number one thing you need is cash. You need
to have a lot of cash in there. And then I imagined, I mean, like I have this whole answer because I think about this, so I should have this backpack.
I'm I've been thinking, you must have the backpack.
It's like she has a little first aid kit. Like I didn't do anything like food. I asked him, like don't you need food? He's like, she's not like going to the jungle, Like she can get food.
Right with her money?
Get it exactly. You just need the money and you need the identification is huge.
Yeah, So fake ideas or what fake.
So the whole idea is that she would have been organized enough years ago that she would have had access to all of this.
I need to know where I can get these clean computers, these clean phones, and this fake egg I D.
I kind of want to backpack, like I.
Want to backpack. So the clean, the clean computers, and the clean I D. You can just go to that. You can go anywhere and get it. You just never attack. You never put it on the internet before you use it. Okay, went and bought a computer today, Just you set it up, but never give it access to the Internet until you need to, and then no one has your IP address or anything like that.
Okay, you lost me at Internet.
I know. That's how I am. That's why I'm such a like. I mean, but just don't just need you just need a computer you've never turned on.
But do I put stuff in it? Like? Nothing on the computer?
Nothing on the computer.
I'm just going to use it to look on the Internet when I want need to, Yes, okay, yeah, Do I ever send an email from that computer?
Only from another? So the other thing that this expert talked to me about, which I thought was so interesting was and I had a whole section of this in the book and then I took it out because I didn't need it. But if you're emailing, you can never email from like your email address ever again. So you want to create a fake email address at some point, but you never hit send on those emails. So like say, say it was you and your husband, and you each
create a fake email account. You sorry, you have the same fake email account, and you just send drafts to each other. So you both have access to the email account and you write to him. He would check the draft folder from wherever he is, beat that email, erase it, and right back to you and draft. So it's never going out into the world.
Okay, Wow, I'm.
So excited right now, Like there's a chance for me. There's a transfer of freedom.
That's how I had Nicholas and Owen communicate in between, and then I'm like, it's gonna we don't need it, but that's what you do. You just never send the email.
Okay.
Well, I hope you all learn something there, because I sure did. This is really good. Okay, So the backpack. I got to get the backpack. Also, I met the episode where the money is missing under the bed. Yeah, and I'm panicking because that's a lot of cash.
It's a lot of cash.
Wait, what do you do with cash? I mean, nobody uses cash. Isn't that a little suss when you're buying stuff with cash?
Now, well, it's hard at a hotel because now you have to have which is why you need to have the ID. So that's that's more complicated. But besides that, like at you know, most most establishments, you can still use cash. But it's a little suspicious. It's a little suspicious.
Yeah.
You know, this has been like twenty years coming for me, probably because when I was writing my first book, my very first book, my father was a lawyer, and he was always like, don't send it over the internet, Like I come by this honestly, apparently like someone could take it now. I'm like, no one's taking it. But at any event, so I never emailed it to myself. I had no record of the first book except you know, I was writing it. I was twenty five years old.
I had written almost the entire book, and I had published some short stories, so I was ready to try to send this out into the world. I spilled water on my computer and I lost the entire because I had never emailed it to myself because there was no record, so all I had was the first chapter I printed out, and I had to start all over again.
Oh my god, I'm so sorry. That sounds terrible. I would give it up right there. I would have been like, I'm not I'm not going to be a writer.
Sorry, guys, there's no books. So I guess I come by not sending things on you. Pretty.
I mean, I never in my life thought about I got to have a plan if I need to run away.
Yeah, now I'm thinking about it. Is this a good thing or path?
I know, I know, I think it's like and I think. I didn't start thinking about it in a real way until I thought, if you're a normal person like Hannah, like us, you know, who has to do this? What do you what does that look like? You don't have the agencies or the water, not.
Like a specialist in ESPIONO, like any kind of training.
So what do you do? How do you like stay close to the highways? How do you how do you you know, keep it? You know, because there's so many ways to get to be under surveillance. Now, Like I love that movie. It came out maybe it's Oh my god, it's probably longer than that. Now, Enemy of the State. Did you see that, Will Smith?
But I don't remember it at all. But are there are cameras everywhere?
Cameras everywhere, so you know, stick close to the to the side of the road.
Sometimes I think that when I'm like doing something I shouldn't be doing, like I don't know, putting my feet in the fountain, or like something like as a pedestrian, that I'm doing that I shouldn't be doing, I'm like, oh no, there's cameras everywhere exactly anyway you forget exactly.
It's oh my gosh, sort of wild if you think about it. I'm like, I'm meant to live off the grid somewhere, Like that's the next step.
Oh gosh, that's going to be so fun.
Yeah, I can't wait about that. You're still you're in La're Yeah? Ever think about leaving?
Oh?
Every day?
Yeah right, I mean I kind of live away from the hustle and the grizzly part of it, but I do. I've always wanted to move since I because I'm not a city girl. Yeah, but I love now. Of course, I'm used to the conveniences of the city and the uber eats and the getting the food delivered every night.
So I don't know what because.
I was just in a really small town yesterday two days ago, and I was thinking, what do they do here all the time?
Where do they get their dinner? It's delivering dinner. You have to cook every night.
You have to cook it every night.
Did you ever see that movie with Robin Wright and she moves off the grid for whatever her reason is?
And I was fascinated by that.
Yeah, so oh that's see. That's the thing. Like I I always say to my husband, I'm like, I like show him farms or I'm like, you know, we were just like we should move to Puerto Rico. They have all these ideas. And then he's like, except that you don't go outside except to like walk around your block. And you are like you're You're not the person who's going to be good at living off the land. Like I'm like you, I'm like, where how can I get
something delivered here at eleven o'clock? Like you know what am I handling that?
We were at a cabin recently and there was a little it was a cabin in Pennsylvania, it was like an Airbnb and there was a little fireplace, and so I said, I know how to start a fire. So I was out there in my bathrobe at like two am because I was working weird hours, and I was like scrummaging around the grounds for twigs and sticks, and I thought, oh, I don't know. This is if people see me right now, they're probably like, what is this city girl doing in a row at two am?
Okay, I have a.
Question because you said that you pick a song that you listen to on repeat the whole time you're writing. Yes, what's the song that you would pick and play if you were writing a memoir or an autobiography about you and your life?
Oh my god, that is such a good question.
That's hard. That's a hard question.
I have to think. I mean, so, it's so it's so interesting because sometimes I don't even know the reason I picked the songs for the like for for the last thing you told me, it was if I should fall behind by Bruce Springsteen in the East Street Band, but it was a specific version that he sang at Madison Square Garden. Everyone in the band sings a verse, and in my mind I imagined it because Owen and Hannah get married at a restaurant in San Francisco. Very
Small got married at city Hall. I imagine it is their wedding song. After everyone leaves it, they're dancing to it, like with nice. So like, I don't know how that came to me. And for this book, it was card Again by Taylor Swift.
Really because that last.
Verse feels like a siren call to me, Like I read The Odyssey several times when I was working on this book, because it really is a coming This is a coming home story, and that last verse about you'll come back to me, You'll come back to me. I mean, the first thing that comes to mind is I've been listen litening to I've been listening to a lot of boy Genius recently.
Random.
Random, I know, I was, I don't know what my answer is. It might be I don't know what it is.
It's hard. I would never be able to answer that question. By the way.
I want to say, it's it's shake it out, but I don't write to that. But I love that song.
I love it that you love Taylor Swift. It sounds like take it out to Florence and the Machine. Okay, that's a good thing.
So that one, yes, I do, but I do love Taylor Swift. But I love that shake it out. Every time I listened to it, that first line of regrets come back like old friends. There's something that makes me want to sit down and write. So maybe it would be that.
Oh God, a good pick. I love that.
What would yours be? For you?
I told you I cannot possibly answer that question?
Okay, it's so hard.
I can't remember anything. How could I breast song title? I know a spur of the moment. I'm sorry, I asked you that. It's really tricky, but I was just so intrigued by this, the process. I love the idea, and I'm going to do this next time I write my next book. I listen to something like that makes it come to life in my mind.
There's something about it. It creates a rhythm to the storytelling that I think is. I think it helps you stay in the story from day to day because we have so much else going on. It brings you back to the storytelling.
Yeah.
I mean that's important because when I was writing my book, it's impossible to have people stop interrupting you, I know, or.
Just life style you know.
Yeah, and it's really hard to sit down and focus.
For me, that was a big challenge.
Yeah, can you? And this is what I want to do. I bought it, but I haven't used it yet. I bought a do not Disturb signed to put on my office store, like you know what they have like at a hotel.
Yeah.
I don't think it will work.
People not They'll be like, oh what is this.
It's true and we all need to do not disturb sign Like we could wear it like a necklace.
Exactly. That would be a great necklace.
We should make that.
All. I used to listen to my I'm dating myself, but I had a walkman and I had people would call me walk man girl because I would with me everywhere. But it was really because then no one can talk to you. You're wearing your headphones and you're listening.
You're like and.
You're in your own bubble of whatever the song is exactly, no matter how chaotic the world is around you.
Exactly.
My husband is like that.
He listens to a lot of music as his Like it's like medicinal.
Almost, yes, it is.
It really is. It's like a it's like a sedative in some way, but it's cozy.
Well, I mean, this has been so much fun. I thank you so much for joining me. You can find Laura's books everywhere. Pick up her newest the first time I saw him, sequel to the Last Thing he told me. Also an incredible Apple Plus TV series that I am in the middle of right now. But Laura Dave, before I let you go, what was your last I choose me moment?
So I just had a really great one.
Hi, Well, let's hear it.
I choose to remember that at the end of each book that I write. Before I had my family, I used to go to Big Sir. It's my favorite place in the world, and I would finish my books there. So for my first several books, that was like sort of a ritual that I came to almost accidentally. I would go in January for the first couple and then it was the spring, and I go to the same hotel and I give myself like five days and I just do my last read before I turn it in.
Since I've had my family, it feels impossible to do that. And I'm finishing a man in your Scripts, and I just booked myself five days in Big Sir to finish this book. There and go and give that to myself. I choose me, I choose. That's how I finish a.
Book that is so good and so important. To remember things like that that just really nourish you on a level that's kind of indescribable, like that time.
Yes, yes, oh my gosh. I loved our conversation.
I've loved getting to know you, and I can't wait until our paths cross.
Oh me too. I've adored you for decades, so I talk.
To you today, all right, have a great one too. Bye bye,