Hello, and welcome to Something to Talk About the Stella Podcast. I'm Sarah Lamarquin, your host, and every week I sit down with some of the biggest names in the country because when Australia's celebrities are ready to talk, they come
to Something to talk about. With eighteen books to her name, a cult beauty brand she sold for big bucks and brought back for a steal, not to mention, a household featuring two children, a gold Logie winning husband, and a couple of Instagram famous cats, the life of Zoe Foster Blake is not exactly calm, which is why her new book, her first novel in ten years, is called Things Will Calm Down Soon, because as anyone who finds themselves saying
just that several times a week knows chances our things almost certainly will not calm down soon. Zoe joins me in the Something to Talk About studio today to discuss the cost benefit juggle of multi ventures, how going into business quote knowing nothing unquote turned out to be everything, the reality and importance of failure behind the public success, and how her art often imitates her life. Zoe Foster Blake, Welcome to the Stellar podcast.
Oh thank you for having me.
It's lovely to have you here. Congratulations on your new book. I have to talk to you about the title. These will calm down soon. Okay, So I say this at least five times a week. Thank you five times a day? Actually, what am I saying? How many times a day do you say it? Or you were reformed? Things will calm down?
So sayer it's my It will be in my gravestone. It is the best lie that I reel out all the time, to the point where my husband does rolls his eyes because of course it will, he goes, Do you understand that this is just the life now? This is the beat of your life. But particularly when I was writing this character and these moments in my life, when I was as busy as her, I just had to It was almost like I had to keep telling
myself that just to get through. You kind of get into that survivor mentality when you're super super slammed and knowing that it will calm down eventually. Is the carrot? Isn't it a dangle? But most women I know say this on the rig It's just how we live our life, not things will come down soon. Things come down soon, and I guess what it doesn't.
It's so interesting what you say because you really do believe it.
Well, yeah, because what's the alternative is going this is how my life will always be. And I think if you were in a state of business that was, you know, break down adjacent, that would be quite demoralizing. So I think you have to tell yourself, oh no, this is
just a moment in time and it will pass. And it does, you know, and for me, especially at ebbs and flows, because I have big, big moments where I've got four projects in the go and then they're finished, and then I do actually have a bit of calm and then it will kick off again.
So it's you know, your character in Things will calm down soon. Kit our main protagonist. She's a single mother navigating the complexities of establishing a beauty product business while managing personal responsibilities. It's your first adult fiction novel in a decade? What was it like reentering that world?
Long overdue? But you have to wait for the good idea, the one that really persists, and it's almost like a bug in your head. Until you work it and do it, it's not going to go away. However, I really hadn't had that idea because I'd had young children and I was so focused on the business. So I was doing nonfiction,
which felt a lot easier, and picture books. I've written seven in the last five or six years because they're small, intense projects, but a big novel is like deep focus for a really extended period, and I just didn't have that concentration. So it wasn't until my youngest went to school last year that I finally had a breather. But also the of the book, I had some big business moments that really made me feel like, oh, oh, now you have your content. Now you have the thing that
you need to write about. Go do it while it's fresh.
Because in some of the background notes to the book, it talks about how it's quite an authentic portrayal of a founder's journey. I have read it and I have not founded a business of maybe founding a magazine is part of it, but it feels very real but also very illuminating to of course those of us that definitely
haven't had that experience. I imagine in of course your nonfiction books, there's a lot of research in fiction, there can be a lot of research that authenticity is that because that helps you unplug to a way where the storytelling flows a bit more naturally. Oh, let's be honest, because you are busy, Is it just to cut down on the need for research.
I'm not a researcher, hand on heart, like it's it's not my wheelhouse. I'm very good at creating worlds and characters and stories, and fiction is for me really fun and liberating and playful. When I get tied down to research, I feel like I'm back at UNI and it feels
like a big, arduous task. So I really the essence of this book was that I went through a really big thing when I sold half of my business, and that world of mergers and acquisitions and selling and all of these this business world that I hadn't known about or been part of, was sort of thrown at me, and I had to really get my shit together very quickly.
And I learned so much because of the brilliant people around me, advising and lawyers and my chairperson and my team, that I felt almost like it was my duty to pay that forward and pay it on because I went in knowing nothing. I was a creative and a writer and an author who started a business because I wanted to write copy and make good things in correct community.
And then suddenly I'm in a room seriously fifteen men in suits selling and defending my business against people who are hardwired and trained to cut you down and NEGGI because they want a better price, for example. So I had to I had to grow very quickly and learn a lot. And I thought, if I knew the things I knew now, like I'm twelve years into business, if I could share that with young founders or new founders. I feel like that would be a generous thing to do.
But I did want to write a business book because there are a lot of business books out there and they're really great. I have the privilege and luck to be able to write fiction, so why not create a fictional world that you can if you're interested and if you're in that world of founding And I'm ef when they're looking at my friendship group, I reckon maybe eighty percent of them have their own business. And that could be they have an osteo business, or they're selling clothes
or whatever it may be. But a lot of them are in this world where they're like, oh, I was thinking about taking investment, but should I don't know how, And so from the whole gamut of startup right through to exit, I feel like there's something you can take from it. But if that's not of interest, you still get a good story.
When you're writing, do you filter or preempt what some of the reaction will be, because I imagine, of course every write, every creative deals with that. But then you're also very high profile, so you know that there'll be people thinking, well, is this memoir?
Is this kit your character?
Or is this Zoe? And then you know there's people in media. I mean, you're the sort of person where if you post something on social it could be like a clickbait story two minutes later. It's a question for every writer, of course, but everyone brings their own story and their own profile to it, and you've got a very complicated part to work through there in terms of reception. How much of that do you let in or lock out during the process?
A great question, and it's really really at the forefront of my mind, and that is exactly where I write fiction, because fiction gives you the chance to really go for it and take maybe character essences or you know, a lot of the people in the book are the amalgamation
of five or six people. And that's my favorite part about fiction is becoming a magpie for the two years writing and writing down little notes or idiosyncrasies from people or conversations, and you know, being in those boardrooms with private equity, just sort of taking notes on what they're wearing, what they say, and how they behave. So it is hand on heart fiction. However, lived experience obviously informed the project, and there is that through line of wisdom and business
acumen that I wanted to impart. But yeah, I feel like it's a pretty safe book in terms of I'm not, you know, going out there with any strongly held views. It's a one person's trajectory and it's not mine. It's not how my business life went. But there are a lot of similar experiences, so yeah, my family can read it and go, that's not us, for example. You know, it's that sort of thing that you're like, no one's reading that, going, oh, yeah, I know, that is what's.
Your actual day to day writing process about if I can ask about that, because you explained why you thought maybe the timing was right the youngest had gone to school, but you do as we've just touched upon you've got an awful lot going on, do you sit down and do you have that being of setting a timer like I tried to set the tim up before we started chatting. And if so, I hope you're a lot more a debt. So at using a time in the meat or is it something that you do late at night? Is it daily? No?
No, I'm not a night bird at all. The biggest hurdle I had was that I finished our first deal, which was selling half of the company, and then signed the book deal and I was like, great, you know, it's all fresh, I can write it now, I've got time.
And then, unfortunately the people we sold it to and into administration last year, so very quickly, I went from writing about a deal to being back in a deal at a time when I really hadn't allowed the bandwidth to be back on phone calls and zooms and in meetings, you know, every week a week, So that certainly added
a complication. It was helpful because I was back in the language and back in those boardrooms, but also it was confusing because I was trying to write a fictional deal while work out what I was going to do in my real life deal and it was too much. It was really confusing and hard and having those two
streams running at once. But the way I would write, and the way I've always written well since having kids, is that fresh in the morning with coffee, that's the only way it's going to get done, because as soon as I start doubling an email and or even going for a walk, my brain just changes and it's like, oh, okay, we're doing the day now. So even if it's only forty minutes, ideally it's ninety, you know, an hour and
a half, two hours. I feel like I get more done in those first furious hours than if I sat at my computer and said, I'm going to write till three o'clock pickup, and I'm going to get so much done, Because I know my brain. It gets bored, it gets distracted then. And that's partly why I run a business. I write books in various veins, is because I like switching between projects. That's when I met my best I think.
I can't imagine that you could have created the life and the career that you've had if you weren't good at that, because of course there would be a bit of a learned skill and time management and wearing different hats, which is something I wanted to ask you about. Is something that you can hone, but there must be a very strong, innate part of you that is able to compartmentalize and set yourself sort of achievable bite sized goals if you like.
Yeah, that's true, and this is a big one like this. I came in at about one hundred and thirty words, which was thirty thousand too many, but those wondering, But it does flow from me. When I'm writing. I write too much, and I'd rather have too much and trim it down find the gems, rather than not have enough and be squished squeezing and pushing and trying to find something else. So I'm an overwriter. I'm a waffler even
when I speak. And so I have a brilliant copy editor and team and publisher who helped me get it
really tight and good. So yeah, for me, writing is actually a joy, and it gets towards the end when I have to start writing four or five hours a day to get it to meet deadlines, and then I feel, like I've always said, it's like I have an illicit boyfriend in the office and I keep sneaking away to hang out with him, because I just I'm like, put the kids in and down in the next snake up and just do ten minutes more and it becomes obsessive. Almost even the edit is like that. So yeah, it
doesn't feel like work. It's a true joy and I can't wait to start again.
Honestly really, So yeah, you're already thinking a little bit about maybe the next fiction project.
I am, and I'm actively telling myself to stop because I have to, you know, I want to promote this one properly and give it everything. I have a children's book out as well at the moment, and go To is on their verge of some really big and fun things. So I've got to just stop and not undertaking new project as yet. But a good novel idea part of the job, and so much of it actually is the marinating of the idea, and that can take my life months.
You write down little notes and you start to conju the idea, and you meet different people and you're like, oh, that could be a good character, or that you hear a little bit of gossip and you're like, oh, yeah, that would be good. And then to the point when I start writing next year, I will just be like, Okay, most of it's there, just spit it out.
Yes, it's amazing, isn't it. I'm sure a lot of people relate to that whatever project they might be working on, even if some of us discover that when we're at school or university or haven't started, haven't started. Sometimes the sensible professor or best friend will say, I think you've got more of it in your head than you know. You're just sort of circulating it around.
Very generous way of looking at it. There is actually a name for it. I can't think of the name, but it's this idea of like it's not too much procrastinating for a lot of creatives, where the artists, musicians, writers, it's actually a huge part of the process is building the idea mentally to the point where you get down to your tools and it just comes because sitting there like I can't really work without a deadline, A bit useless. I always say, I'm not getting a deadline in this project.
I just want to write when I want to write. But if no one's over me, I won't do it well.
One of your, of course, first professional incarnations, was as a beauty editor on a magazine, and anyone that works in media knows deadline is incarnate. And I remember one of my first editors saying to me, it's like all the kids that were at high school and left their homework until the very very last minute, all sort of meet again in the newsroom. So magazines or whatever it is that is like a deadline operated industry.
Oh yeah, I'm absolutely useless without a deadline. My team at go Too knows that all too well, and I asked them to give me fake deadlines too, So I'm like, when do you really need it? And I'm like, lie to me, tell me it's a week earlier.
Does that work though, because you're a smart woman, so do your brain well.
Then I forget about that. And I also set my watch a little bit off too, so that I've always got a fake deadline there because I need that extra ten minutes.
I find also sometimes as a parent, it's always interesting
seeing different characteristics manifesting in your children. What it despite often your best intentions to steer them in another direction and at the risk of boring the listeners with homework stories from my fascinating household, but I will just say that my son had an assignment due the other week, and I actually knew about it a week in advance, and I was doing that reminding sort of it's coming, nagging thing every night, and of course it wasn't going
to happen. And in the end he's just turned thirteen. He actually said, I just can't do it until the very last minute, Mum. That's when I crack it. And I was like, oh, that's happening again. Another one by.
We can't judge right because we're like, we're exactly the same.
That's why I wanted a different part. But I'm like, I just don't know if I can fight nature with nurture in this instant.
Because Hamish and I are exactly the same. We laugh about how we've had a month to do it, and then we do it in the last twenty four hours. It's terrible. So I've set this thing up with our kids homework. I'm like, it's you know, eminem Monday. So on Monday after school we get home and we try and get all the homework done in that one or two hours, and I give him treats to get them through because I don't want to be the nager for the rest of the week. And I know they'll do
it Thursday night if they've give them the chance. So I try and instill that in them that get it done early. Then you can chill it's not really working.
And coming up the mental load of being Zoe Foster Blake. I wanted to talk about specifically with the fiction that you've written over the course of your career and the different chapters of your life, if you'll forgive the pun
that you've drawn on at different points, Zoe. So, your first novel, for instance, Air Kisses was about a magazine beauty editor, funnily enough, working as a beauty editor at Cosmopolitan, and of course, as we've talked about and things will come down soon, it's about the founder of a beauty company. We've talked a little bit about unpacking the fact and fiction and how much you draw from your own life.
What I've probably not going to give away what the next book is about, but do you foresee what possibly future chapter of your life could inspire another novel.
I think I'm in that stage where I have a lot of really great mum friends. So from my kids, you know, in whatever year they're in, the parents that are around that, and then I've got some friends of mine who are a bit further down the track, and the difference in the mums and dads at Kinney versus you know, year twelve where like more than fifty percent of divorced, and you know, it's such a different area. So I'm quite fascinated, always have been with relationships and
relationship dynamics, but also friendships. And I think female friendships and the sisterhood is really compelling to me and really valuable as a person as well. So I read this thing the other day where apparently seventy percent of what gen Z are choosing in terms of movies and streamers and books are about friendships rather than romantic relationships, because
that's everything to them. So I really feel like that's an area of interest for me, that real love of friendship, not just and through all of my books often the romance is very very much second or third to the career story and the friendship story, which is what I like.
It's so true, isn't it. And I think so much of the culture that women have resonated with, whether it's some of the most iconic novels of our time through to even really iconic pieces of work such as you know, Sex and the City, just for a very like sort of a media example, is about the beauty, the complexity, the grief, the loyalty that's so unique to friendship, and
particularly female friendship. It's very strangely outside of a lot of these examples, it's not something that we still celebrate and it's still a little bit of that fairy tale ever after, like there's one sort of journey quote unquote for a woman.
And as we all know, it's really not like that in real life, and life is so much more complicated and challenging and fabulous and varied. But I love female friendships and I'm fascinated by them, particularly when you get to an age where you've seen your friends go through horrific grief, as you say, whether it's miscarriages or infertility, or divorce or losing their parents. And I think that area is really fascinating to play. How they support each other.
And of course your partner is number one in family is a whole other level. But what you can offer as a friend, and I love that, And again it's that empathy and just girls are great, women are amazing.
You mentioned in your own friendship circle, like about eighty percent have possibly founded a business. I wanted to talk a little bit. We've discussed your very successful business go To and the role and the insight that founding a business plays. Things will calm down soon, and I just wanted to chat a little bit about that because it
has been Zoe a phenomenal success story. Go To, as you say, gone through very extreme highs and lows with selling and then reselling and things that, to be honest, someone like me that has to be talked very carefully through a spreadsheet wouldn't understand. But that's part of what I really wanted to talk to a.
Little bit about.
When did you discover, if that's the right word, that you actually have this incredible business acumen because you're the origins of your career on paper, I'm guessing wouldn't scream it working as a beauty editor, and as you said, even very recently, you're still in boardrooms where you may be the only woman at the table.
Yeah. Very often, I still feel silly when I'm asked to speak at business conferences or on business podcasts because it's I do feel like a bit of a fraud in that field. I've in my stripes. I'm aware of that, but it still feels like I'm a creative, I'm a writer. I you know, I don't do that stuff. I've done that.
I can do it. We can all do it. There was a really distinct moment actually after I finished breastfeeding my second child, and because i'd launched go to and I had one month old baby on another way around it did launched a month and then I had Sonny, and then I was pretty much in a pattern of babies, birth, pregnancy, breastfeeding for about four or five years, and I finally, you know, when you come out of it after the baby's too or so, I was like, what's going on?
Like I need to get my shit together? And I actually think I say this in the book. It's like I sat around in one of our board meetings and went, you know, classically, i'd be like, oh, numbers, Oh this is where there's always lines out, and I would just start, you know, wrapping away my iPad and I was like, this is not cute anymore. It's really actually it's not respectful of the business, the work that's going into it.
I need to be as a founder, not just the creative and the person setting that jectory for products and marketing and so on. But I need to be able to understand what's going on in the business, even the boring stuff. And so from then on and moving into our process to sell, it became quite the baptism of fire. But it was all due to the advisors around me and even my executive team and my other shareholders. They were no no man's plainning. Everyone was just I just
asked all the stupid questions. And I really encourage that because don't pretend you know, you'll never learn that way. The acronyms I still couldn't figure out, like ibita, like what does But I don't care because I'm like, that's how I'm going to learn. And look, I'm pretty much a vessel. It's coming gone. It's like, that's why to write the book cook, because I'm like, this is not going to stay in my brain. I've got space for nineties R and B lyrics, not this stuff. So yeah,
I felt like I had to learn it. I wanted to learn it, and I wanted to be a respectable and respectful founder and do the right thing by the business and the customer and the staff and the team, shareholders and everybody.
And it's not fair for me or anyone in the media to ask or to expect a woman to carry the pressure of representation and being a role model. But I think every time where you are still pioneering and if one of the first, and there's still an expectation that you are helping to debunk and be inspiring, because as we always hear, you know you can't be what
you can't see, and you've certainly helped. I would say women in Australia, particularly potential business founders, current business founders, to possibly help be because now they could see how is that sat on you? And again has that been a little bit of a gradual thing, because I don't imagine again that you woke up thoughing great, this has all been fabulous. But now not only do I want to go and launch a business and for it to
be successful, but I want to also be inspiring. And even if I'm doubting myself when I'm asked to speak at business conferences, I still know that that will have a lot of important in terms of what it says.
Visibility great question because it still feels a bit foreign and silly to put myself in the expert position there because I'm just still learning as I go, and I've only had one experience. You know, there are people who have had four or five businesses and they're a lot more informed and have a lot more experience. What I do like, though, is that we had very little money growing up. I grew up in a small town in
the Southern Highlands. We're all sort of creatives, musicians, artists, and I have somehow found myself in a successful business position. And it wasn't because I did a business degree or an MBA or had a clue about commerce. It was because I learned as I went. And I think generally speaking, a lot of founders come in creatively. They see a gap and they went to fill it and they have great ideas and that gets you so far. And then my advice is always bring in the people that can
do the things you can't. Early. A lot of the tendencies to go, oh, hire some juniors to help me out, but I would say, hi, seniors, because that's really going to help you a lot faster, and invest in that. So it's bringing the people with the skill sets that you don't have and they'll help you and everyone benefits from that. But I do like when young women and founders.
Anyone is like, I took a risk and I believed in this, and that feeling is really the thing that will take you through just to go I can do it, she can do it. I can do it. You know, how hard can it be? It can be hard. It can be hard. But it's often a time when people have got to a level in their career where they're feeling like I've done everything now, or I'm feeling restless. I, for example, in beauty, had written a blog, I'd written a book, I'd been a beauty journalist for ten years.
I was like, Okay, what's next. I'd consulted to brands, and so starting my own brand sort of organically felt correct for me. But I think starting a business is not the kind of thing where you can go, I'm ready, I have the skill set, you have the idea, and you just go for it yourself and bootstrap it if you can, and don't give up your day job. I would say, until it's flying. But yeah, I think you got to back yourself. I like it. I'm not a verst to risk. I think you got to take a few risks.
And then what about having that self doubt or overcoming a failure, because I think that's also really encouraging and inspiring to hear that from other people, because I would say, and I'm sure that you are being a bit presumptuous that you would recoil at this, BUTIFI, which is sort of characterizes, say, it looks like Zoe Foster Blake, everything you've touched has turned to gold, and you have turned your hand at all these different things, and it's this huge success story.
You know, of course that's orchestrated, right, That's all been carefully channeled to you to appear that way. And this is the whole thing of social media. We choose a highlights reel to show you what we're doing. I mean, I usually I just pretty much want to use it
for work now my cats. But I think there's this very dangerous idea of perfection and every failure is a lesson and yeah, to the point where I actually don't even think of them as failures but just a lesson and how to quickly regroup and move on and get
past it. And as a creative I really enjoy the challenge of something going wrong in some ways because you're like, Okay, how are we going to quickly fix this, and who on our team is best equipped for this, and how are we going to use everything we've done in the past to get to a better position. And sometimes I think they're thrown at you to really test you and see if you really mean it. So of course there have been failures. You're never going to see them, are you,
unless it's a big public foil. And unfortunately I am in a position where that could happen. But even then, I think we're all human, we're all fallible. It happens, going to happen again. You know, that's life. It's how you get back up. It's not the failure.
I really Also, I love that idea of being a little bit excited or motivated by something going wrong, because it just helps you reframe it a little bit, as in oh no, to oh, this could be a bit of an opportunity here.
This is what I tell my children when they're big lego structure breaks. I'm like, the second time is always better. You know, the first draft of a book is terrible, but each time you get better and better and better at it, and it's all it's all meant to be the way it is.
Before we finish up I just wanted to go back to the title of the book and everything that it conjures up, which is again a little bit of this notion of the juggle. And I mean we all know that the whole balance thing. We're sort of, I think retired that that will come down exactly. I think so really thinks will come down. I think by next Friday,
everything's going to be cool. I personally, as an interviewer, have never really had to really squelch that thing of particularly saying I think to women, particularly to working mothers, how do you juggle it all? And I think fortunately we as a media industry are starting to second guess that instinct a little bit. But of course it is something that all of us, whether you are someone that has a cat or aging parents, everyone's got their own thing going on.
You won't see half of it. You don't see half of that.
And what do you think over the course of your career, because you've stared down a lot of gender tropes the way that you've been had to, like every successful woman, I think there's been stereotypes and assumptions as you really have stared down, whether it's in that boardroom or somebody trying to characterize a successful woman a certain way in
mainstream media on social media. How do you think we're getting as a society on the home front in that are we starting to unravel a little bit of the expectation that it's all a woman's work.
I really hope so. And maybe it's just my algorithm, but I feel like there are a lot of content creators now, and there's a lot of awareness about the mental load, which was something we didn't even have a name for, and the admin load and being overstimulated, and I honestly go, oh, I'm not a bitch. I'm just overstimulated, you know, in the fan from the ovens on, and the kids are yelling, and you know, there's just too
much going on. So I think awareness of who we are and how we are and what we're doing is so critical because it makes me feel more human and we are all incredibly human. But I think it always comes back to empathy. Asking someone how they're juggling it all is interesting, and I think women, often like my own friends, will text me and say another book, how did you do it? How are you doing it all?
And I think there's a genuine curiosity, and my genuine answer is at great cost, like to my mental health, to my time with my family, to my physical health. Like the things that got pulled aside for me to be able to finish this project and do it well are quite enormous. That's why they can only be short bursts. And so my focus as I grow older and I have the ability and the immense privilege to be able to pick and chose the projects I do, which is books and go to and family. So what we prioritize
becomes where all of our time goes. And I know, you know, I'm heading into a phase and I can see into the future where yes, aging parents, tricky teenagers, health issues, whatever it may be. But the support of those friendship circles, the support of family. I have an amazingly supportive husband, and that is I feel that's the thing I'm happiest about, is that that support. We all need support, and if you're not getting even someone else,
give it to yourself. And self care is another term that I think we've all sort of purpued because it just sounded so like you just think of a bath, right, It's not a bath, it's going for a walk in the sunshine, it's having a coffee with a friend, it's eating chocolate and watching your favorite Emily in Paris. It's whatever it might be to look after yourself and have some downtime. So I think the term balance is interesting because if you think about balance, it's always it's never
just clean. You never got all your ducks in the room. And I laugh because I have kit days, as I call them, all the time I had on this morning, I was ready to walk out the door and I dropped a massive sledge of makeup on my top and then the cat pissed on the bed, and that's that's kind of morning. I'm like, I need to go, and then you know, I hadn't done the kids lunch order. And this is every day for every person, every working mother.
It's a tricky day. But I'm also proud of myself, and that's part of growth, is going hey, hey, hey, be kind to yourself. You're doing really well. And that's just taken a long time to get to that point because I am very tough on myself, and I don't think you can kind of get to a stage of outpush that I seem to be doing without, you know, being quite disciplined and hard on yourself, but you have to be kind to yourself as well.
I love that answer. Thank you so much, and so we thank you for coming in today. I know that you are such a well known person, but you're not somebody that enjoys speaking about yourself. Oh you are, so I do thank you for that, because you know, some people are really happy to be quite front facing, and you know, despite your profile, you're not one of them. So thank you for coming in.
Answered the other day, She's like, it's such a weird thing to be closed off in your traxit pants with your cats, writing a book for a long period of time, and then suddenly you expected to come out and be this dazzling peacock. And I am an introvert. I'm highly social skilled, but I am an introvert, so things like you know, tours and stuff take a lot out of me.
But he's so worth it because that connection, after you've created a piece of work and seeing how people are enjoying it and reading it and what they're interested in, that's kind of the cherry on top.
Well, congratulations again on the book Things Will Come Down Soon by Zoe Foster Blake, will be available on October one. We will have a link to that in our show notes. Zoe, thank you so much, thanks for having and I'm sure things will really come down soon. Tell ourselves out that final lie before we leave the studio today. Thank you, Sarah, Well, thank you so much for coming in to talk to
me today. Zoe Foster Blake's new novel, Things Will Come Down Soon, will be available through Atlantic Books Australia on first of October. You can find more information via Zoe's Instagram. Will have a link in our show notes. If you've enjoyed this episode, then make sure you're following us because we'll be back with another exclusive guest on Stella's Something to Talk About next week. See you then,