← The Shit No One Tells You About Writing
The Shit No One Tells You About Writing
How Setting is More Than Just Story Backdrop
00:30:59
Author Interview Laura Resau
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- [00:00]
Unknown Speaker
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- [01:53]
Bianca Murray
Hi there and welcome to our show the Shit no one Tells you About Writing. I'm Bianca Murray and I'm joined by Carly Waters and Cece Lira from PS Literary Agency. Hi everyone. Today's guest is the author of the Alchemy of Flowers, her debut novel for adults, and 11 acclaimed books for young people. Her novels won five Colorado Book Awards and appear on Best of Book lists from Oprah, the American Library association, and more. Trilingual and with a cultural anthropology background, she's lived in Provence and Oaxaca and now teaches creative writing at Western Colorado University. You might find her writing in a cozy vintage trailer in Fort Collins, Colorado, where she lives with her rockhound husband, musician son, wild Husky, A garden of healing Flowers and a hundred houseplants. It's my pleasure to welcome Laura Riso. Laura, welcome to the show.
- [02:52]
Laura Riso
Thank you so much, Bianca. It is a dream come true to be here. I have listened to your podcast for five years and it's been such an important part of my journey bringing this.
- [03:02]
Cece Lira
Book into the world.
- [03:03]
Laura Riso
So thank you to you and Cece and Carly too.
- [03:06]
Bianca Murray
What lovely, lovely feedback. Thank you so much for that and it's wonderful to have you on the show. For our listeners who are not watching on our YouTube channel, I am holding up the book cover, which is absolutely stunning. The Alchemy of Flowers. And Laura is going to be sharing her query letter with us shortly and you'll see that the title changed, so we'll discuss that as well. In the meantime, I'm going to read the flap copy just so that you know what we are talking about. So exhausted and broken by loss, Eloise takes the chance of a lifetime to answer an ad in her French gardening magazine to fly away from a life in the States and tend to both her shattered heart and the flowers of Paradise. And best of all for her, absolutely no children allowed on the premises. Within the high garden walls, Eloise starts to learn the strange rules of the elusive estate owner. Living and working in isolation with her three companions, she finds her heart opening again to fren friendship and realizes she's drawn to the handyman, Raphael. The flowers whisper to her. Enchanting, delighting, healing. But why are the workers forbidden from going out during dusk? Who is the goddess of the garden? Is her mind playing tricks on her, or does she see a wood sprite flitting through the trees? The giggles and glimpses of a little girl haunt her and make her question what is real in paradise and what is illusion? Eloise tries to rationalize her uneasy feelings and the darkness she uncovers beneath the gard lush beauty. But as she digs deeper into the mysteries of her sanctuary, she begins to suspect there's a child on the grounds who may be in danger. When paradise becomes a deadly prison, she must risk everything to protect her newfound family and claim her second chance at happiness. So, so much to unpack there. I am going to ask you now, Laura, to please read us your query letter so that our listeners can listen immediately for how much of it made their way into the flat copy and how you position that.
- [05:05]
Laura Riso
Absolutely. All right, so the subject was published.
- [05:10]
Cece Lira
Author of Upmarket How We Become Flowers seeking agent Dear Ms. Lyonetti, I noticed.
- [05:17]
Laura Riso
Your focus on genre bending book club.
- [05:19]
Cece Lira
Fiction with elements of suspense, romance, magic and humor.
- [05:24]
Laura Riso
I'm hoping you'll be interested in my.
- [05:25]
Cece Lira
Upmarket women's fiction novel, How We Become flowers, complete at 96,000 words. One Italian summer meets chocolat in mysterious French gardens where an infertile woman embarks on a new life, far from painful reminders of children, only to encounter an enigmatic girl who needs her. Heloise Bourne comes to the south of France to escape failed dreams of a family after years of miscarriages and a divorce. A strange job ad has led her to the Wald Jardin du Paradis, a world away from her Denver home. The only skill required turning Merde into Fleur. An impossible task, but she's up for it.
- [06:09]
Laura Riso
Oh, and the icing on the eclair.
- [06:11]
Cece Lira
No children allowed. Although she loves children, she can't bear to be near them at first. Her new home enchants her with fairy tale lodgings, gourmet food and otherworldly flowers. Her secretive co workers are also retreating.
- [06:26]
Laura Riso
From the world, a refugee writer, a.
- [06:28]
Cece Lira
Naturalist and a handyman named Raphael. After some bumps, they open up to Eloise and vice versa, sparking her to heal both body and soul. But she reels upon meeting a wood sprite who may or may not be a human child. As the summer unfolds, Eloise discovers threats from the so called Furies and fears the girl is in danger. Surprising herself, Eloise bonds with the child and falls for Raphael, risking her heart and breaking the rules. When the Furies retaliate, paradise becomes a prison, life and death stakes come to light as Heloise unearths the garden secrets, fights for her newfound family and claims a second chance at love. How We Become Flowers is my debut novel for adults after nine acclaimed young adult and middle grade literary novels with Delacorte and Scholastic. My crossover novels have been popular with.
- [07:25]
Laura Riso
Women'S book clubs and my award winning.
- [07:27]
Cece Lira
Essays on my infertility and travels have appeared in over a dozen anthologies. Fluent in French, I lived in Provence for a year, hold an MA in Cultural Anthropology and a BA in French, and teach English to immigrants in Colorado. My longtime agent, Erin Murphy represents exclusively children's books and I'm hoping you'll consider representing my upmarket fiction as I move in this new direction.
- [07:50]
Laura Riso
Please let me know if you'd like.
- [07:52]
Cece Lira
To see the full manuscript and a pitch for my next novel. Thank you. Best wishes Laura.
- [07:58]
Bianca Murray
Awesome Laura. Thanks so much for that. Now for our Listeners, they're gonna be like, why the heck did Laura have to find an agent this way when she was already published, had published so many novels to such a claim, even though it was a different genre? And they'll be thinking, couldn't your longtime agent have just introduced you to somebody? Why did you have to go through this? So can you take us through that?
- [08:20]
Laura Riso
That's a great question. So I knew that when I embarked on this new path of writing for adults, I wanted to have an agent who knew the industry inside and out and knew that particular niche of the industry. So I wanted them to be super familiar with upmarket adult fiction and even in the sub genre of, you know, maybe bits of romance, bits of magical realism. So I decided it was a lot of extra work, but I decided that, you know, since I was really committed to taking this path, I wanted to set my book up for success as much as possible. So I checked with my children's agent. She was fine with it. She did pass along a few names of adult agents she knew, but she wasn't super connected in that area. Yeah, so then I just jumped. I jumped into it, and I felt like I had a ton of learning to do. And your podcast really, really helped me.
- [09:13]
Cece Lira
With practical advice there.
- [09:15]
Bianca Murray
Yeah, I mean, I know people who've written nonfiction and who've written memoir, and they've had agents for that, and then they moved across to fiction, and they've had to query all over again, which just shows you how difficult the query trenches are, because you feel like once you have a foot in the door, you don't have to go through this all over again. And you've just shown us that you do. Can you tell us what the journey to publication with this was like? How difficult was it to land the agent and what did that look like?
- [09:41]
Laura Riso
So it was very different from landing my first agent. So my first agent, we signed over 20 years ago. It was 2004. The world was very different. And, you know, now that the Internet has taken over, the process is different. I had a lot to learn. So what I did was I spent about a year writing this book in the early days of the pandemic, and then I spent about a year revising it with my writing group, and then I started querying. So I did, after listening to your podcast, I did, you know, make sure that my first five pages, or really first 10 to 15 pages were as enticing as possible. Tried to really refine that query letter to be curiosity inducing, and then I just started sending it out to different agents in batches of about 12. And so I did that to make sure that the query letter and the first pages were doing their job and they felt intriguing. And so, sure enough, after I sent out the first round, I did get.
- [10:37]
Cece Lira
Several requests for the full manuscript.
- [10:41]
Laura Riso
So that told me, okay, things are working. So then I sent very similar versions of the query letter out to the next round a week later, and again got several full requests. So then a week later, I sent out another round to 12 agents and did get several requests. And I think it was that third round where I did get an offer of representation. And so then I went back to the other agents who had the full. Gave them about two weeks to respond. And at that point, I just kind of, you know, the ones who were interested. I got three more offers of representation. I did zoom conversations and phone chats with them, heard, you know, what was their vision of the book, what kind of visions did they want me to do? Just seeing if we got along. And I ended up choosing Kim Lionetti. So she had a great track record. She's pretty prolific with making sales. She represents my genre. I got along with her. I liked her vision of, you know, what to do, revising the book. And then I did have a friend who had worked with her before who thought we would be a great fit, so ended up choosing Kim. It's. I feel really happy with that choice, although it was hard to say no to the other three agents, who are great people, too. So then we revised together over the next few months. And then she started submitting.
- [12:01]
Cece Lira
I think it was around fall of.
- [12:03]
Laura Riso
2022, and it was not like an overnight bidding war or anything. Like, I know some authors that come on your show have had that wonderful experience. This was. I had to be patient. I had to wait. I had to deal with some rejection. So we did notice over the next few months, a pattern of agents feeling like, you know, they liked a lot of things about the book, but they felt like the pacing was a bit off. So we were just. After several months, we were just starting to think, oh, maybe I should do another revision before we send it out to another round. When we heard from an editor at Harper Muse, which is an imprint of.
- [12:37]
Cece Lira
HarperCollins, and we had had to delay submissions to HarperCollins because they were having.
- [12:42]
Laura Riso
Strike at that, that fall and into the winter. So I was really excited that when we heard back from her and she asked for a revise and resub, so that basically means she wasn't making any promises for a book deal. But she liked the story enough that she was willing to spend the time to give me revision notes.
- [13:02]
Cece Lira
I think we even did a zoom call.
- [13:04]
Laura Riso
And then I went ahead. I really liked her.
- [13:07]
Cece Lira
I loved her revision notes.
- [13:08]
Laura Riso
They definitely fell in line with what other editors were saying in their passes. And so then I spent a few months revising according to her suggestions. We sent it into her, and she was happy with the revisions, and so was her team. And so then they did end up offer me a contract. So, yeah, I mean, the whole. The whole process was about five years from when I first started writing to when the book actually is coming out. But it was a big adventure.
- [13:33]
Cece Lira
I learned a lot.
- [13:35]
Bianca Murray
Yeah. Jesus. So much to unpack there. I love your intentionality in terms of the strategy you chose when, you know, sending out in batches of 12 to see if the query letter was doing its job. Super smart to do that. And for everyone who doesn't get that bidding war and that overnight success from an editor at a publishing house, it is nice to hear that sometimes it can take months to hear back, and sometimes you do need to do the revise and resubmit, and then that does lead to success, because not everything is going to be the bidding war and the overnight success. So that's all amazing to hear as well. Before we move on to some other questions that I have for you, can we talk about the title change, what point that happened at, and how you felt about that?
- [14:18]
Laura Riso
Sure. So the original title I had in mind was How We Become Flowers. And the final title is the Alchemy of Flowers. And my agent and I went back and forth about that. And I also submitted a whole bunch of other possible titles in a brainstorming session, but those were the two we kind of narrowed down. I liked How We Become Flowers because I felt like it was pretty original and it spoke to the themes of the books, which are turning shit into flowers, metaphorically and even literally in the book. But ultimately, we felt like there needed to be more of a suggestion of kind of the magic and maybe like, a hint of darkness. And so we felt like the word alchemy captured that. Like, you know, just slightly mysterious, slightly gothic, because there are elements of kind of gothic horror just, you know, woven throughout. And so we felt like that was a little more intriguing and indicated to the audience, like, okay, be ready for some magic here. Be ready for some kind of gothic type intrigue.
- [15:16]
Bianca Murray
For our listeners who are working in genre blends, you know, straddling genres, this book is wonderful in that because it is genre Melding, you know, it's a bit of something. It's a bit of something else. Not easy, I think, to put on a shelf. And so that's really encouraging to see more and more books like this that are coming out. And you kind of hinted at that in your comps. I think you were very smart about your comps. Is that the same comps that your agent used when you went out on submission, or did those change slightly?
- [15:45]
Laura Riso
They did change slightly and I had suggested a bunch of comps. And actually for my querying of agents, I did select comps that seemed in line with what they were asking for in their manuscript wish list. So I know, for example, that my agent said she liked Rebecca Searle. And so that's why I chose One Italian Summer as one of the comps, because of the Rebecca Searle connection. So basically, I think Kim ended up using where the Forest Meets the Stars, which is a title that Carli Waters represents, and then the Lost Apothecary, which was by Sarah Penner. And that is a title that I use with some of my other agent queries as well. So, you know, we felt like the Lost Apothecary. You know, there are these kind of like apothecary elements in my book and that has a contemporary timeline as well and has that kind of aura of mystery and touch, this kind of magical realism kind of vibe. So that's why we did that. And then where the Forest Meets the Star has a really moving relationship with a woman who's gone through a lot and a little girl. And there's touches of romance. So we felt like thematically and character wise, where the Forest Meets the Stars was a good comp.
- [16:56]
Bianca Murray
Yeah.
- [16:57]
Carly Waters
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- [20:29]
Bianca Murray
And I like how you've said that you change the comps depending on what the manuscript wishlist said. Super smart. Again, really not something we've seen a lot of people talk about is how they change that. So something for our listeners to keep in mind as well when you're querying is to really hit exactly what the agent is asking for. And I feel like that's more important in terms of personalizing the query than, you know, starting with the dear so and so I see you represent this or that. Like, personalizing the comps is a great way of personalizing the query letter. So something to keep in mind. So Laura, why the genre change at this point? Because I feel like if you'd come at this book from a different angle, it still would have worked really well as ya. Or you could have come at a slightly different angle. Could have worked for middle grade. So what was it that inspired this and what made you decide, okay, I'm going to come at a totally different target market?
- [21:23]
Laura Riso
Yeah. So I agree that there are a lot of elements in the book that would speak to middle grade and would speak to young adult. My publisher used the comp the Secret Garden, which is a children's book, and kind of pitch this as a magical modern day adult version of the Secret Garden. So I do think there are those kind of, there's almost a foundation of this whimsical, childlike wonder in the book. But for me it was important. And the reason I made the change is because I have been through infertility and miscarriages and I really felt drawn to explore those topics in a book. So for me, writing a book is, it's therapeutic to me. It's also a way to connect with readers who might have some point of, you know, connection to experiences as I've gone through. And I felt like even, even people who haven't gone through infertility, miscarriage, you know, by the time you're an adult and you've lived for a few decades on this planet, you will have gone through some pain, life will have handed you a pile of shit, and you have to figure out, am I going to Be resentful and bitter, or am I going to find some way to transform this and make myself a wiser and hopefully warmer person in some way? And so those kind of second chance type themes I felt were more easier to explore in an adult book versus a kid's book. So a lot of it had to do with the themes, a lot of it had to do with the topics. So, yeah, that was kind of my main reasoning for moving into the adult space.
- [22:48]
Bianca Murray
Yeah, I love the intentionality there. When it came to writing for the adult space as opposed to writing for younger readers, what were the challenges you faced? I mean, you've written a lot for younger readers, so I feel like we tend to stay in a lane even when we're trying to be, you know, creatively adventurous. Like when you were writing it, were there challenges where you had to keep going? I'm not in the YA space anymore. I'm writing for adults, definitely.
- [23:15]
Laura Riso
So I remember I was so excited when I finished a draft, or, I don't know, I guess I finished a pretty solid draft of this book and handed it to my writing group. And I was just hoping they would say, this is brilliant. You can start sending it out. And that did not happen. They. They did like a lot about it, but one of the big comments was, it read young. It read more young adult. It isn't first person, so I think that probably contributed to it. But I also think I had developed a voice and a writing style that was, you know, more a young person's voice. So I thought a lot about it. I spoke to some of my friends who had made the shift from writing from young people to adults. I realized that I needed to allow myself to have some more layers of self awareness and self reflection.
- [24:02]
Cece Lira
I needed to allow for a little.
- [24:04]
Laura Riso
Bit more nuance and complexity. And I needed to remember that my character has decades of life behind her and she's going to be constantly comparing and contrasting and referring to these experiences. And, you know, in contrast, when I'm writing for kids and young adults, I really try and have it be very raw, very immediate. And I do want to emphasize that I think that books for young people are just as meaningful and deep as books for adults. But I think you get there in a slightly different way. So I had to give myself permission to add these extra layers of awareness and reflection. And when I did that and sent in the next revision to my writing group, they really felt like it came alive. They felt like it was working at that point.
- [24:52]
Bianca Murray
I love that because often we'll look at query letters. And Carly and Cece will say, this feels a bit young to me. Or they'll be like, if they're reading ya, they'll be like, this feels a bit older, you know, to me than ya. And I love that you. You've kind of nailed how you can tell that the voice feels too young or feels, you know, too old, because I think that kind of feedback is difficult for somebody to use when somebody just goes, it feels too young for me. And then you want to be like, well, in what ways? And like you say, there is an immediacy to a younger voice and not that lifetime of experience and perhaps like learning from experiences and being a bit jaded in certain ways that young people aren't, et cetera. So for those of you who have gotten that kind of feedback, this is really useful to think about it in terms of that. In terms of bringing setting to life. Laura, you did this so brilliantly in this book. Like, it was so vivid in my mind. And I am not someone who's familiar with flowers. You know, I could probably name 10 flowers if my life depended on it, which is terrible. I can appreciate them, but I don't really know them. And yet, at all times in this book, I was imagining things. Exactly. Like, your world building was just. Just so incredible. It was so enchanting. So advice to listeners who want setting to become character, but who don't want to bog the story down with too much description. Like, how do you work on describing things, but still keeping the pacing going, et cetera. Like, what was your approach to that?
- [26:22]
Laura Riso
Yeah, it's definitely a challenge. I love writing setting, and I could just go on and on and on forever, and I need to really pull myself back. And when I go through it and do revisions, I do a lot of trimming of setting because I do get carried away. But with setting, you know, I try to let it be as multifunctional as possible. So I'm not just describing something, but.
- [26:42]
Cece Lira
We'Re seeing it through the lens of the narrator.
- [26:44]
Laura Riso
So that gives us a clue to what she's feeling and maybe what she's processing, what are her emotions. So we're using that lens. I also use setting to build atmosphere and foreshadowing. So there are a lot of setting details in the garden, you know, that. That kind of hint at the dangerous, dark underbelly. So, you know, apparently this place with its otherworldly flowers is a kind of paradise, but needed to hint at the kind of darker things that were lurking beneath that were going to emerge at some point. So I would say, you know, using setting for developing character, for foreshadowing, for atmosphere. And then I also try and have a lot of movement in my setting. So I like to have the characters.
- [27:32]
Cece Lira
Inter connecting with this setting in interesting.
- [27:34]
Laura Riso
Ways rather than just describing it. How are they moving through this setting? You can let your readers feel that sense of movement and that sense of engagement with the setting too.
- [27:43]
Bianca Murray
Yeah. And also I feel like setting needs to lend itself as well to providing plot opportunities. You know, too many people view setting as just the backdrop to the story, but like so many things in this particular story, allowed the setting to create. Create plot elements. If the setting was different, the story wouldn't have been able to unfold the way it did. So I love the way you say having the character interacting with the setting. How does that make them feel the foreshadowing as well? But in terms of plot development and creating story forward plots, the setting also did that perfectly. So it's another good example of how setting is not just, you know, something that the character interacts with, but it. It kind of informs everything about the story because the story couldn't have happened anywhere else else. How much world building did you do beforehand, Laura? And how much was it getting to a certain point and then being like, okay, I need to figure out what this looks like, or was it so vivid in your mind before you began?
- [28:42]
Laura Riso
So I often start stories with. With world building or setting or kind of imagery or kind of multi sensory elements. That's just kind of often my doorway into a story. So I think as far as the kind of the general vibe of the setting, I had a pretty clear feeling about that from the get go. I did do a lot of brainstorming and note taking, again from a very multisensory kind of perspective. At the beginning of the pandemic, I decided to start a medicinal and healing flower garden. And so I was working with the flowers. I was making my own lotions and potions and healing teas. And so, you know, for me, it wasn't a really big step to imagine being a flower whisperer, which is kind of the role that the main character, Eloise, takes. She can communicate with flowers in interesting ways. And so as I was interacting with my flower garden, I was also kind of taking notes on the experience. And again, the multisensory aspects of that. For me, the big challenge is the geospatial stuff. I could not find my way out of a paper bag. I just don't really have a sense of Where I am in space. I'm terrible with math maps. And some comments from my agent and my editor were like, we don't know, like, how big are these gardens?
- [30:01]
Cece Lira
Where are things in relation to each other? Where's the castle in relation to the tree house?
- [30:06]
Laura Riso
And so I actually sketched out a map for myself that was actually to scale so that I could make sure I was consistent with that aspect of the world building. And I was very delighted to find that they were interested in including a map in the final version. So that that's been a really fun thing to participate in. But I just think, you know, as a writer, reflecting on what are your strengths and what are places where you need work. And I know that my strength is multisensory kind of imagery, rich descriptions. I know my weakness is like, where.
- [30:36]
Cece Lira
The heck are we in space?
- [30:37]
Laura Riso
So that's something I have to work on.
- [30:39]
Bianca Murray
Yeah, it's so important as a writer to know where your strengths are and where your weaknesses are. For me, what I love doing is I love setting up vision boards so that the whole time while I'm writing, I look up and I see the setting and it reminds me, you know, because I tend to be more character focused and then I'll forget that this character is in this particular setting. And so they're not just la, la, la, the settings kind of scary or creepy. They need to be responding to their environment the whole time. So I love using vision boards for my world building. But you can see your experience with this world comes through. It's so authentic. And that's something for our listeners is when they say write what you know, it's not just only stay in your lane and only write the things you know. But in terms of authenticity, you can see you started that kind of garden during COVID because it came out in the descriptions of everything. I don't think anybody else could have written it. Certainly I could not have brought this world to life in, in this way. So it is lovely to take your passions from life and build on that and work on that. Did you find that you still had to do research or did you know enough that you were able to just write from what you knew?
- [31:51]
Cece Lira
I still had to do research, but.
- [31:53]
Laura Riso
You know, for me it was fun because I knew that I would love this type of research. So I did do research into medicinal plants. I had to research poisonous flowers as well. And then there's a lot of goddess mythology in the book and it's cross cultural goddess mythology. I had a lot of a deep dive into that area. It was something I knew a little.
- [32:13]
Cece Lira
Bit about already, especially triple goddess mythology.
- [32:16]
Laura Riso
But it was completely fascinating to give.
- [32:18]
Cece Lira
Myself permission to take a deep dive into that.
- [32:21]
Laura Riso
And then as far as the setting, I lived in France for a year, in Provence for a year with the host family. I'm still close with the host family. I visit them as often as I can. And so after Covid ended, I did go back to Provence to do some research. So, for example, I went to a castle, the Lor Castle. That kind of was basic inspiration for the castle in my book. And, you know, just taking a lot of notes, taking a lot of pictures, making sure I had the flora and the fauna right in that area. But again, I tend to choose projects that have really enticing, delicious research involved.
- [33:03]
Bianca Murray
Yeah, you could see you had fun with it. I could feel that you had fun with it. And it was just such a calming book. Like, I've been reading a lot of things lately that have just got my nervous system inflamed. It's called the news, people. It's called the news. But besides that, you know, there were these foreboding elements, and there was the tension and everything there, but it was just like a healing kind of book to read. The last question we have time for is for our listeners who are trying to write something in English that is taking place somewhere else. And you know that they're kind of speaking a different language, but you're writing it in English. You integrated that so well. So I don't know any French at all, and yet I always knew what the French words meant because you were able to put them in context, but it didn't feel like you were sort of weighting us down with exposition each time you did that. So, again, your advice to people who are approaching that kind of, you know, language issue in terms of writing.
- [33:58]
Laura Riso
Yeah. Thank you. For me, I like to make sure that my books are accessible to readers who don't speak whatever foreign languages is in it, whether it's Spanish, whether it's French. And so I always make sure I provide enough context clues so that the reader can pretty easily figure it out, because the most important thing is that the reader stays in the flow of the story. And I really don't want them being broken out of that flow because their brain needs to stop and look up a word in the dictionary. So that's my foremost concern. But I think if you provide context clues, then readers can keep reading, and it can be a smooth experience. The few times when it's not. Obviously through either being a clear cognate with English or having a context clue, Then I'll just do, like, a quick translation. But I usually only do that if.
- [34:47]
Cece Lira
It'S just super short.
- [34:48]
Laura Riso
I'm never translating entire sentences. And so, yeah, I think that for me, the key is give your readers the kind of the flavor of the language, but make sure that it's not interfering with a smooth reading experience.
- [35:04]
Bianca Murray
Yeah. And also have the character, because the character is kind of translating in her head most of the time as well. So she knows French, but this is. She's not completely fluent in it. So people are speaking to her, and then she's like, is that what they mean? Or when she speaks back to them, she's trying to interpret it or translate it as well. So that was also super helpful. It's another example of how making sure your character calibrates to what is happening in the story. Right. Because if she was arriving there and already completely fluent in French, I think it would have made that part of it that much harder. But where she was in terms of her character development helped the reader to understand the story as well. So another great example of doing that. Laura, it was so wonderful chatting with you. For our listeners, we're linking to the Alchemy of flowers on our bookshop.org affiliate page. If you get the book there, you support an independent bookstore and the podcast at the same time. Thank you so much, Laura.
- [36:00]
Laura Riso
Thank you so much, Bianca. This was really wonderful. I appreciate it.
- [36:04]
Bianca Murray
And that's it for today's episode. I hope you'll join us for next week's show. In the meantime, keep at it. Remember, it just takes one. Yes.