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- [00:01]
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- [00:56]
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Your call has been forwarded to voicemail.
- [01:00]
Wendy Fox
Hi, this is Zoe Deutsch and Nick Robinson.
- [01:02]
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Holly Gattery
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- [01:15]
Wendy Fox
Please stay.
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- [01:27]
Wendy Fox
Welcome to the New Books Network.
- [01:32]
Holly Gattery
Hello everyone and welcome to nbn. I'm your host Holly Gattery and I'm excited to have joining me today Wendy Fox, who is the author of four books of fiction, including what if We Were Somewhere Else, which won the Colorado Book Award and received a Star for Excellence in the genre of Short stories from Booklist. Her 2019 novel if the Ice Had Held was a top pick in audio for Lithub. She has written for many national publications including self, Business Insider, Buzzfeed, and Ms. And authors a quarterly column in Electric Literature focusing on small press. She is a former SVP of Marketing for a green tech firm and lives outside of Phoenix. You can find her@wendyjfox.com today. We are here to talk about her really compelling and deeply for me at sometimes uncomfortably embarrassing in the best possible way novel the Last Supper. And by embarrassing, of course I'm talking about the characters, not the novel itself. Wendy, I can't wait to get into the weeds with you on this one. Welcome to the show.
- [02:39]
Wendy Fox
Thanks for having me.
- [02:41]
Holly Gattery
I have to admit, when I as a mother of four, I sometimes shy away from novels about mothering or the institution of motherhood because I don't feel like they reflect me or the multitudes I contain. And it feels like this kind of standard trendy depictation of motherhood. And what I really enjoyed about the Last Supper is it did not feel that way. It was so surprising, so funny, and also had some pretty salient commentary on nurturing and mothering and being in the space of a woman today. So for our listeners, there's a little description of the book as Stay at home mom. Amanda turns 40, she faces a reckoning. She's doing her best at parenting. Eight year old Toby, who only wants to eat orange colored food. And almost four year old Blake, who really should be in preschool but is at home doing YouTube aerobics with her. Amanda's mother is a successful attorney attorney. Her next door neighbor makes an enviable living as a visual artist. Her two best friends from college seem to handle careers and motherhood just fine. Yet Amanda just barely manages to muddle through dinner every night while obsessively googling life advice. She's racked up failures like being swindled into pyramid schemes and is struggling to launch what she thought was a surefire influencer lifestyle brand. Amanda Story or Amanda Tori. There we go. Her. When her husband loses his job and threatens her with divorce, Amanda is forced to face her choices head on. Will she finally forge her own identity or is she doomed to repeat her past mistakes? So my question for you Wendy, is where did this story start for you? What delightful little seed sprouted this?
- [04:34]
Wendy Fox
Well, there are two things that ultimately ended up being the genesis for the Last Supper. So the first part of it was that I had been working on a really large novel, a really kind of sweeping, cinematic, you know, lots of descriptions, while a group of people monkey wrenched their way across Colorado. And it was a failed book. And it was I had worked on it for five years and it was over a hundred thousand words, which is too long, which I knew. And so as kind of a reset project, I started doing National Novel Writing Month, which for people who aren't familiar with that, probably many of your listeners are. But you try to crank out a novel during the month of November, which is a really huge page goal. But for me, I thought about this idea, thought about doing that just just to refresh my writing practice and start working on something different. And the daily page counts really force you to be productive. I only lasted about a week. However, what that got me thinking about was more deeply this idea of a reset, which is what Amanda, the character in the book wants is A reset in her life.
- [05:54]
Holly Gattery
That's interesting. I've never done one of those. Like, I probably lasted a week too, but. And I think it's because I know I only lasted about a week with these novel writing, you know, intensives, but I, I, I love that. And when I was saying the beginning, and I want to get into this because it, it delighted me, it tickled me, is that Amanda is an intensely and relatably embarrassing character. For me at least, she doesn't mean to be at all. And it's that earnestness in her that drew me to her and wanted to make me hug her and be like, girl, stop. What? Just stop everything you're doing. But what makes her embarrassing when I, when I really what I call embarrassing. And when I dug deeper because I was uncomfortable labeling Amanda that and leaving that as her label. And when I dug a bit deeper, I realized that what I was witnessing was her vulnerability and her openness to everything. And that's not really a trait that I felt comfortable. Ultimately, yes, it can sometimes be embarrassing, but just that that, you know, label over all of her felt deeply unfair to her. And I was wondering if you could talk about the character of Amanda and that kind of open vulnerability and earnestness that does sometimes lead to her doing slightly embarrassing things.
- [07:20]
Wendy Fox
Yeah, I mean, she's kind of cringe sometimes. Right. And so the perspective in the novel, like the narrative perspective, is a really close third person. So we're often, we're in Amanda's thoughts, we're hearing what she's thinking, what we're witnessing, what she's doing. And part of it is trying to capture that idea of, you know, feeling like you're working really hard to do everything well. But in fact, it's all just kind of like failing around you sometimes through no fault of your own, sometimes through your own choices. This is part of the reason that the book is told in these very short episodic chapters. So it is in, it has over 90 chapters in it. But for, you know, people who haven't read it, don't worry, it's not super long. Each chapter is a day, because Amanda can be very cringe and engender that feeling of embarrassment. That's part of the reason that the chapters are so short, because I don't think it's really sustainable to be uncomfortable for long, long sections. But in these little moments, it's really relatable of like, oh, you know, I spilled my coffee like that all over my laptop too. Or like, oh, yeah, I, I, I do that. You Know, burn the toast or waffles. So I wanted to make her relatable and, you know, surface some of the feelings that we have sometimes about our own inadequacy while also showing a tenderness towards her, because I also believe that we're never doing as poorly as we think we are in our own critical eye.
- [08:55]
Holly Gattery
Thank you for that answer. I think one of the things for me that really drew me in is where. When she is trying to launch and mandatory and which is her lifestyle brand, and she buys a dress that she thinks is going to look amazing on her, but then does not try it on until, like, right before, so she doesn't actually know what fits. And she's just basically like, well, she just assumed it would have. Was just kind of throwing, you know, hope out there to the universe. And she ends up wearing something that she does not feel as great in, and she's comparing herself to her friends the whole time. And at first I was like, who? Who does that? Who buys something for an important event and doesn't try it on? And then I was like, no, Holly, you've done that several times. Several times in your life, you've done exactly that. And then there's the. The closet full of products from failed pyramid schemes. And having been in, you know, the Mummy, just in the depths of motherhood myself for a very long time, I can remember, especially in early motherhood, how many mothers resort to that kind of hopeful scheme to try to help buoy their family, but also, you know, have some kind of identity or an empowerment for themselves. And my next question for you is about balancing writing from that close third person. This is a craft question about giving us that really deep insight into Amanda and her motivations, but also remaining detached enough that the reader has the freedom to interrogate themselves as it's happening. But sometimes when I feel like things are first person, we're kind of waterboarded, and we don't. We're not able to do that at the same time as reading. Whereas with this book, I found that I was able to see myself mirrored to Amanda while I was reading, which was a really interesting experience for me.
- [10:59]
Wendy Fox
It's interesting that you bring up the dress that she uses for her 40th birthday party and the launch of her lifestyle brand again, Amanda Torrey. The reason that. And you hit it on the head, the reason that she doesn't try it on is because she wants to create this big reveal. And also, you know, she is in this position where she believes that she has to believe that she is the type of person that things will work out for. So she's kind of kidding herself about it. But I appreciate that. You notice we all kind of do these things, and that is part of the reason for not using a first person instead of using a close third. I think as the writer, it gives you a little bit more freedom to move that camera angle around, even if it is tight. I've read many novels that employ the first person that I really love. However, I think you touched on something really important there is that you don't get the same type of ability to fully interrogate the character. You might end up asking yourself questions like, you know, is this an unreliable narrator? Where. Where in the third person you can see this is where the character is actually kidding themselves or where they're not being totally honest with the people around them. And so it's just a slightly different.
- [12:19]
Holly Gattery
I also found it interesting that the children in the book, Amanda's children, are there. It's so clear that she adores them, loves them. That is never in question. But I didn't feel like they were incredibly central to the internalized experience of what was going on. Like, the turmoil for Amanda. Like, they are not the problem. The children are not the issue at all. And I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about positioning the children as definitely there, but not as part of any of the conflict in the book.
- [13:04]
Wendy Fox
Amanda ultimately is searching for more creative and economic agency, which I think is something that many people, in particular women, can relate to in the novel. Her children are essentially a structural barrier to her achieving that type of economic and creative agency. And it's not because she's not a good parent. It's not because she doesn't love them. It's not because they're terrible. It's because we live in a nation, in a society, and this is not news to anyone. That doesn't create the correct care infrastructure for many, many people to be able to pursue things that are important to them, both intellectually and emotionally. Even without kids, it's super tough. And then you add children on top of it, and you're in this. You can find yourself in this really desperate situation that Amanda is in. This is another reason why the book is also compressed into a time frame of right around just about three months. You don't see the kids fighting a lot. Of course they're going to fight with one another. And so that's also, like, not a sustainable choice if we look at a novel that lasts for a couple of years. But because the focus is on her. And again, that camera angle is really tight to her perspective. We're so much more in her head than in the external experience of her. She is actively day to day parenting, but we're looking at things really, really from her lens and from, you know, the experience that she's having of feeling a little desperate, a little trapped.
- [14:44]
Holly Gattery
Thank you. And yeah, like I said, like, the kids themselves seem like great kids. I mean, quirky, absolutely. Like only eating orange colored food, but I mean, that doesn't like. To me, that just seems like a normal kid thing. I have a kid who's convinced she wants to be SpongeBob's body double when she grows up. I. Fine.
- [15:05]
Wendy Fox
You know what I mean?
- [15:05]
Holly Gattery
Like, that's just kid stuff. And it can be funny, quirky, sometimes strangely inconvenient, but it's not, as you said, it's the structural barriers. And speaking of structural barriers to care and community, I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about Amanda's mother, who I loved as a stark contrast to a different kind of mothering.
- [15:27]
Wendy Fox
Yeah. So in the novel, Amanda's mother is a very successful attorney. She is a divorce attorney. She loves to see women get paid what they're. What they're worth. And so in many ways it's kind of an archetype.
- [15:44]
Holly Gattery
Right.
- [15:45]
Wendy Fox
Of Amanda's mother. Camille has achieved her creative and economic agency and Amanda is looking for that. And they have a little bit of a tumultuous relationship, which I think is also. Can be relatable to people. Even if you don't have turmoil with a parent, there's often, oh, just a little bit of conflict around the choices that we make. Ultimately, you know, Amanda has to resolve that relationship just like she has to resolve the relationships with the other people around her.
- [16:21]
Holly Gattery
And Camille was, Was. Is there for her ultimately when she really, truly needs her. So, I mean, for someone who I don't operate with tough love, like, I don't operate well under that circumstance. I don't like when people try to tough love me. I just need hugs. But Camille does that and I admired her as a character. I don't know how much I'd love it as a. If she was my mother. But as a character and as a woman, I admired her a lot. Before I asked you to read, I was just wondering if you could talk about Amanda's husband who was deliciously unlikable. I found he's.
- [16:58]
Wendy Fox
Yeah, Amanda's husband Kyle is really unlikable. Um, and, you know, a couple of folks have said, like, oh, well, you know, he's a little bit of a flat character. We don't see a lot of him. Again, the novel is from her perspective, not from his. I would also argue that we can look at many novels and see a character of a wife who is we as a woman, you might say, a little bit un underdeveloped. And you know, the thing with Kyle is that he's probably not ultimately a terrible person. He just, you know, he's not into it and they're not getting along and that is driving a lot of the decisions that Amanda is making because they think it really matters who you marry if that is something that you're going to do, because it really informs a lot of the texture of your everyday life.
- [17:48]
Holly Gattery
Yeah, I didn't, I didn't find Kyle flat at all. I think that I could see where I could see his humanity. I could understand maybe who he was in the past. I could, I could understand a lot about him. I just didn't like him. Sure.
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Wendy Fox
Yeah.
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Holly Gattery
And it's an interesting thing too. I mean, I feel like there's so
- [18:10]
Wendy Fox
much discourse around this likable character, unlikable character. I don't know where we got to this point that it seems like some readers want all the characters to be likable. And I get it, because if you're going to spend time with these people, you don't want them to leave a distaste in your mouth. But at the same time, the reality is that a lot of people are kind of unlikable.
- [18:36]
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Wendy Fox
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Holly Gattery
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Wendy Fox
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- [20:31]
Holly Gattery
I think that I wonder sometimes if it has something to do with our little. Our lack of community and the fact that everyone's so insular. Because if you think back, you know, even in some parts. Remember reading Emily Urquhart's wonderful Ordinary Wonder Tales, and she writes of a part in a remote part of Newfoundland where the community is so small and even if you don't really like your neighbor, you have to learn to get along because you depend on each other. And I always think about unlikable characters like that. Is that like, yeah, I live in a world where not everyone is. I'm not gonna like them and you know, at all. But that's. That's okay. I don't have to get along with somebody to exist. And in fact, learning to try to understand a little bit about more about people I don't like or that I feel this abrasive attitude towards, or they rub me the wrong way, I think is a fundamental part of getting to know yourself better. Maybe just like honing your humanity a bit more. So I genuinely am fascinated by characters I don't like. And I like to interrogate myself about why I don't like them. Like, maybe it's a me thing. Maybe it's a me problem, like Adele Wiseman's incredible novel Crackpot, where there's. There's Hoda, who is I. I disliked her immensely when I read the book in my 20s and I read it again in my late 30s, and I loved her. I thought she was great, aside from the sleeping with her son part. That was weird. But you know, there's. There's Wayne Ng's incredible The family code where I genuinely, it's like the mother character, Hannah, but I was actually rooting for her and that's how I felt about Kyle's like, I don't like you, Kyle, but I'm rooting for you to do better, buddy.
- [22:18]
Wendy Fox
Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. And I love that, like the, you know, again, the interrogation part. It's kind of interesting that you bring up that example because I'm also from an extremely small town and went to a really small school where we did all kind of have to learn how to get along because there's not other people. So maybe that informs some of my own relationship to the idea of unlikable, likable, because I, I, you know, I often don't even, I often don't even really think totally in those terms. More of just like, ooh, this person is not so much for me. Or in the case of Kyle and Amanda, again, you know, maybe they're just not right for each other because that happens all the time too.
- [23:04]
Holly Gattery
They really do seem like Amanda seems like to me, if I had to picture her, I would think of like a kind of one of those beautiful shiny butterflies, but one that's kind of hit a window and is kind of wobbling around, but like, like a pretty dazzling person but maybe doesn't realize that she is. And then, And Kyle, I mean, kind of a meat and potatoes kind of guy. Like, just. And there's nothing wrong with that. It just seems like they're not really well suited to you. Yeah, yeah, and that's, that's fine. I, I really enjoyed just in, like I said, like, just looking within. I mean, books are such beautiful mirrors. And sometimes when a reader has a response to the book or somebody tells me a response to a book that they've had, I'm like, I think this has more about you than it does about the book. You're telling me a story about who you are, not the book. And I love that though. I love that about books. And I hope that more readers, when they have a response to a book, can take a beat and think about, is this a book? Is this something to do with the book or is this more to do with me? And it's an interesting discussion to have with yourself. Lindy. I would love to invite you to read from the Last Supper.
- [24:14]
Wendy Fox
Yeah, I'm just going to read from the opening of the novel, which starts on Friday, May 11th. That kicks off our 30 day journey into Amanda's life. Amanda never had a sweet 16 nor a coming out party. And the only Recent adult birthdays she could recall were of soggy office break room sheet cakes or collapsing onto the sofa after her children were in bed. For her last milestone, 30 before they had kids, her husband Kyle had taken her to his favorite after work pub where he'd run into some colleagues and spent most of the time watching baseball on the television mounted behind the bar. When she had married him, she knew he wasn't one for big gestures. She married him in some part because he didn't parade her around like a prize he'd won. She checked her to do list. Her 40th tomorrow would be different. The decorations were done. Champagne chilled white plates, fluted glasses, flowers from the wholesale florist in miniature mason jars spread out on the counter and a gluten free cake from an artisan bakery in the fridge. The layers spun imperfect rose gold frosting. How it tasted when it was two days old wouldn't matter. She was not eating gluten free. Gluten free was just for the hashtags. Her children's plastic playset, which usually dominated the yard, was pulled off to the side out of the angle of the pictures. She used the selfie mode on her phone's camera as a mirror and pulled her dirty ponytail tighter. The clock on her phone screen ticked 40 minutes until her older son, Toby, 8, was due home from school and she really needed to wake up her younger son, Blake, a three almost four year old, from his nap that morning. Amanda had looked around her home and felt deflated. There were toys strewn everywhere, discarded and leaking yogurt cups and empty single serving snack bags on every table, unsorted mail in a heap by the front door, pizza crust on the kitchen counter from last night's excuse for a dinner, a pair of pants tossed off by Toby in the middle of the living room floor when he decided suddenly he was not going to wear jeans to school but instead wanted pajama bottoms. Had taken off his underwear too, which were wrapped around the inside pants she hadn't picked up yet, and it was unclear to her if he had put on new underwear with the jammy bottoms. Also, she didn't care. He was already a third grader. She wasn't going to fight him too hard about her clothes or she wasn't going to fight him too hard about his clothes. She wanted her party to be a reset. She wanted to be the center of attention, and she wanted to prove she was someone other than a stay at home mom in worn yoga pants. And all days she'd been perfecting the details of the party and of an announcement she planned to make. She was going to found a lifestyle brand. Every time she thought she might lose the battle against the clutter in her house, or when she thought she might not be able to wrestle the playset by herself, she whispered entrepreneur to herself. And she felt a crackle of energy, like the caffeine tablets she'd taken in college to get through finals, or the adrenaline spike of narrowly avoiding a fender bender. Now the house was in near perfect order, the food prepped or finished, and alongside her whisper entrepreneur, she'd also been praying all day she'd fit into her party dress. It was new, and she'd avoided trying it on, which was risky, but she had to be the kind of person who took risks. She had to be the kind of person who believed things would work out.
- [28:28]
Holly Gattery
Thank you for reading that part. Yeah, the entrepreneur, like, I. I've seen, you know, she. She's thrown herself into a lot of pyramid schemes before, and I see a lot of people that do that kind of thing, you know, labeling themselves as entrepreneurs. And I thought about that and how she's taking a step towards something that's more under the traditional definition of entrepreneurial. And it's, you know, this. This really marvelous moment of I'm just gonna believe in everything, like, fake it till you make it moment. I mean, how many of us haven't done that? I just. I love that section is one of the earliest sections in the book where I'm sitting there going, oh, girl, this is. This is gonna be a mess. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like, the reader can see that. Even. Even if she can, it's like, this is. This is not going to go well, but she's trying so hard, and it's endearing. And I mean, this does lead really well to a question that arguably I should have asked before, but that's got the title of the book, the Last Supper. Now, I think that a lot of people who have to make dinner for other people every night might. Might relate to the frustration. But I. I'd like to ask you to talk a little bit about the title before I go off into a rant about making dinner every night.
- [29:49]
Wendy Fox
Yeah, I mean, the Last Supper kind of references. References a plot point, but part of. When I was in the early phases of drafting, I was referring it to, like, my friends as my book about the terror of what the hell is for Dinner, because it's this sort of constant thing. And it's also. It's also really. There's. There's two. There's two Things at play with like the what's for dinner? Conversation and the feeling of doing it. One is that it's really important. You know, it's a nurturing act to feed the people that you love. It's really important in terms of our needs, shelter, food. It can be a really loving and really caring act. And it's also a total pain in the butt to do every single night when, in Amanda's case, when you're not really getting any help. And it creates a type of pressure point point on her. It's really the one thing in her life that is, that is ultra scheduled other than her carpool. And it's an indication of, you know, just kind of the difficulty that she's having holding things together.
- [31:00]
Holly Gattery
Yeah, I think. I can't remember if it was an interview that went viral with Aretha Franklin, but it was asking her what the biggest challenge in her life has been and she's like, it's what to make for dinner every night.
- [31:13]
Wendy Fox
It.
- [31:14]
Holly Gattery
Yes, yes, I saw that. Yep, I thought of that. I was like, yeah, that is, that is a. Especially when you have young children, because when you have older children, it can be like, just fend for yourselves. But when you have young children, they can't fend for themselves.
- [31:28]
Wendy Fox
And, and I want to be transparent about something like, I am actually not a parent. So much of like the inspiration for Amanda is taken from like my dear friends who are parents. I worked very hard to write this from an authentic voice. But even for me, as someone who worked a full time job, is working on my writing career, I could always see this question of economic and creative agency. It seemed impossible to me of how people do all of it. I mean, there was. Speaking of interviews, there was an interview with the writer Lauren Groff, who was asked, you know, how she manages it all. And she said, well, it's challenging, but I'm not really going to answer that question until people start asking men the same question. And I think that's really legit. So you know, it. I think we can see how all of these things, again, in the absence of a care infrastructure, just make it really difficult to live sometimes.
- [32:33]
Holly Gattery
Mm, they can. And I think that because Amanda's husband is the person working outside of the home and. But he, he doesn't give her like she, she's got this incredibly difficult job at home, domestic work. And then he, he's putting a bit of pressure on her too, to get out there and work again or bring home, bring in money somehow, which is so ridiculous. Like it, it's so impossible and so ridiculous. So one of my final questions for you is actually about how this book deals with economics. And to me it's a really interesting salient but it not obvious commentary on economics today because I didn't really think about it while I was reading it, but after it I was thinking about books I've read recently about economics and wealth that made me rethink my ideas of wealth and how I rethink my everyday relationship with money. And your book actually came to mind.
- [33:40]
Wendy Fox
Economics is something that I think about a lot because access to capital means access to resources. Money does not buy happiness. But it's a lot easier to focus on your own happiness when you're not worried about pain, electricity bill or the mortgage. This is why Kyle's job loss, while an economic event on its own, especially in a single income household, is such a tidal wave for them. In conjunction with Amanda trying to figure out how to make her own money. And this is also an idea that's contained wherein. Right. Like making your own money. So there's, it's. It's really challenging. I feel like so many things come back to class. So many things are informed by class. Whether again it is access to economic resources which makes it easier for you to do things in a different, in a different class structure, Amanda would have a nanny. Even if she didn't work in a different class structure, you know, she would maybe order in more or have a meal delivery service, all types of things that would give her more time. So you know, it's a kind of a slippery question sometimes, but it is something that I think about a lot which is, you know, what's at the center of the book is really. That's driving her is trying to find a way that she can make it on her own and support her kids.
- [35:14]
Holly Gattery
Yeah, it's. It's always an interesting question to look at because. Yeah, I often think it made me think about my own upbringing and that there was a long time where my mother was a stay at home mom and how you don't see that much anymore. And I have a few mother friends with kids, with kids who are still at home and not in school and a large portion of them are being forced back to work because of the economic situation and the guilt they feel, the tremendous guilt they feel about that and how broken and it's, it's not them. They're not, they shouldn't feel guilt. It's just a messed up system that we live in. And I think that this book, your book, the Last Supper really made me. It was. It was, like I said, it was just a salient commentary on that that doesn't offer answers, but it does offer an opinion and it does offer, like I said, some commentary on it. But again, like, no, there's not answers because this isn't up to an individual person or an individual mother or a small group of people to fix. This is systemic. And it's, like I said, quite a fascinating book and I really recommend it to everyone. But I do want to add, again, it was actually a really funny book, too. And most. Sometimes the fun was a bit at Amanda's expense. But actually, I don't even know if that's true because I was laughing with her, not at her. As someone who's been through this myself, and I do my. One of my final questions, because humor in books, especially humor that deals with serious subjects, is a kind of. It's a trait I love in books where somebody can take something very serious and then make it absurd or make it funny. I think absurdity is a wonderful clarifying agent. And Amanda is nothing if not sometimes at least a little bit absurd. So I would just love to ask you about using humor in this book and how, again, you didn't make Amanda the butt of any jokes, but she's a funny character.
- [37:21]
Wendy Fox
Yeah, I think it's the, the laugh, laugh, so you don't cry thing sometimes. But I think if you hit it right on the head with the, with the absurdity piece, like, a little bit of levity helps. And actually, again, because we're in while a tight third person, still the third person, we're watching her, the reader is watching her do some things. And, and she is being a little bit ridiculous sometimes. And her, her internal commentary, you know, can sometimes be a little bit biting, but still kind of funny. And so the, the use, the use of humor adding a little bit of levity. I certainly didn't set out to write a book that is funny, but in really trying to develop Amanda as an authentic character and as an authentic representation of the position that some people find her in, you know, we get those moments where, you know, all you can really do is laugh about it because it's so ridiculous.
- [38:25]
Holly Gattery
Yeah, I agree. You're talking to someone who was listening to Bohemian Rhapsody and started to think about Freddie Mercury and how much I miss him. And I started crying. Then I started laughing at myself, and all my kids were just staring at me because I was laughing and sobbing at the same time. So like I said, Amanda makes sense to me. And, yeah, yeah. And often when I. Even when I was having this reaction to her, like this, as you said, a cringe, like a cringy reaction to her, it was in part, at least because I could see myself in her. And that's. That made me feel embarrassed. But it's. It's at least a moment of connection. And I think the more moments of connection that we have with each other and the more that we tune up and tune into that part of ourselves that's able to connect with people, the better off we'd all be. My last question for you is about what you're working on now, if anything.
- [39:24]
Wendy Fox
I am currently working on a series of novellas. And I know that everyone says, like, don't write a novella. No one wants to publish it. However, that is the form that this project is taking. So that's what I'm doing. I don't know if I'll finish it. I often, as a writer, like, I don't. I don't totally know what something is until I'm. I wouldn't say done, but at a stopping place with it. For example, with the Last Supper, I didn't think I would keep the. The chapter structure, but I did keep it because it totally works for the book. So I'm working on some novellas and I challenged. Challenged myself to write a short story because I haven't written one in a long time. By the next time I write with my meet with my writing group, we're recording on June 11th. I've got a week. Feels a little bit like graduate school, but I'm going to do it.
- [40:15]
Holly Gattery
That's amazing. My writing group and I never hold each other accountable. We end up showing up and then just drinking too much coffee and not even talking about anything we brought to workshops. We are not good. I love that you're writing novellas, by the way. I love novellas. They are one of my favorite forms. Yeah. There are so many good novellas coming out. Michael Morella's. How about this? I just read. They're not out yet, but two wonderful novellas by Stephen Mayoff. I was lucky enough to get to blurb them. I think the novella is such a beautiful, distilled pearly form. And I am. No, no pressure, but I will read them, your novellas when they're out. But, you know, no pressure, but fabulous. But finish them. Yeah. Thank you so much. I've had so much fun talking to you.
- [41:09]
Wendy Fox
Oh, thanks so much. This is great.
- [41:10]
Holly Gattery
Yeah, absolutely. And I want everyone to go out and get the last Supper. It's available wherever books are bought or borrowed, and it is published by SFWP Press. And Wendy, you have a marvelous day and thank you again for talking to me.
- [41:27]
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