NYT Bestselling Author Jessica Knoll, HELPLESS

Summary

Totally Booked with Zibby – Episode Summary

Guest: Jessica Knoll

Episode Theme: Power, Trauma, and Storytelling in “Helpless”

Recorded Live at the Whitby Hotel
Release Date: July 9, 2026

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Episode Overview

This live episode of Totally Booked features host Zibby Owens in conversation with bestselling author Jessica Knoll, discussing her new psychological thriller, Helpless. The conversation explores the novel’s gripping narrative, the complexities of power dynamics, the intersections of trauma and resilience in Knoll’s work, and how personal experience shapes fiction. Jessica opens up about her past, her writing process, and the themes of desire, violence, and control that permeate her latest book.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Introduction to Helpless and Its Premise

[03:55]

• The story follows Faye Heron, a successful Hollywood producer returning to her college for her mentor’s funeral, where she’s confronted by her toxic ex-boyfriend, Henry.
• After what seems like a civil reunion, Henry drugs and kidnaps Faye, taking her to his family’s remote cabin in the Adirondacks.
• The book unfolds in a “locked room” scenario, exploring what’s truly at stake and upending readers’ assumptions about revenge and the past.

Quote:
"At first you think it's about revenge, but it turns out to be a much bigger mystery than that. It's something that completely rewrites the past." —Jessica Knoll [04:34]

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2. Faye Heron: Character and Inspiration

[06:40] – [08:22]

• Faye is inspired by Jessica Knoll’s experience in the Hollywood world post-adaptation of her debut novel.
• Knoll wanted to subvert the “bimbo” stereotype, portraying LA as full of ambitious, calculated people—qualities she sees as strengths.
• Faye represents a woman who’s acquired power in Hollywood but returns to a setting where she was marginalized, allowing Knoll to explore shifting power dynamics.

Quote:
"I loved the idea of creating a female character who had achieved this and... then coming back to a place where she wasn’t someone who had power... I thought it would just be so fascinating to plop her back in an environment where she is now a completely different person." —Jessica Knoll [07:33]

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3. Themes of Power, Violence, and Steamy Dynamics

[08:22] – [09:39]

• The novel delves into romantic and sexual power dynamics—sometimes violent, always complex.
• Zibby warns listeners about the book’s steamy, sometimes violent scenes (not for car rides with kids!).

Quote:
"This book is very much about power dynamics and romantically as well." —Jessica Knoll [08:25]
"There’s a lot of violence too. Even the sexual scenes are bordering on violence... There’s dark moments." —Zibby Owens [08:44–08:55]

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4. Writing Darkness from Lived Experience

[09:39] – [13:17]

• Knoll shares how she channeled her own trauma into her first novel, Luckiest Girl Alive, and discusses the catharsis of writing about trauma.
• She reflects on deciding to share her story of being assaulted at 15 only after years of processing—emphasizing healing through writing and the powerful connection with readers who saw their stories reflected in hers.

Quote:
"Writing helps me just kind of untangle things that, you know, that I don’t know that I would get there as fast without having the gift of writing and story and character." —Jessica Knoll [12:11]

• Discusses how reader responses validated her truth and helped her reclaim her narrative.

Quote:
"To have written it as it happened and have people come to me and call it what it was for the first time... that gave me courage. And it gave me validation in a way I'd never had before in my life." —Jessica Knoll [13:10]

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5. The Aftermath and Shifting Control of Narrative

[15:58] – [16:31]

• Revisiting a pivotal moment: What if, as a teen, an adult had validated her experience as rape?
• Shares how writing released her from the burden: the trauma is a part of her, but no longer dictates her daily life.

Quote:
"It’s amazing when I think about how often it was just a part of my daily life and now it’s not something I think about that often. Like really putting it down on the page, it, like, released me. It lifted a burden that I'd carried for almost two decades." —Jessica Knoll [16:31]

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6. Crafting Psychological Suspense & Writing Process

[17:07] – [19:06]

• Knoll discusses the forced-proximity structure: two characters, isolated, tension rising.
• Compared her approach to a “no waste” cooking philosophy—every character and moment is recycled and vital to the tight narrative.

Quote:
"I didn’t want to waste a single character. I didn't want to waste a single moment... I tried to insert them back to the story and use them and use everything up until there was nothing left." —Jessica Knoll [18:40]

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7. Desire vs. Violence: Influences and Intention

[19:06] – [20:56]

• Cites In the Cut by Susanna Moore as a major influence—loves the blurred line between desire and violence.
• Explores how media and culture entangle violence and eroticism, particularly in messages women receive. Wanted Helpless to interrogate and reflect those tensions.

Quote:
"There is such a fine line... I wanted Fay and Henry to walk that line between desire and violence that I think the media has always played on and that I think that women in particular receive very confused and mixed messages about." —Jessica Knoll [20:00]

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8. Casting a Hypothetical Adaptation

[21:02] – [21:46]

• If adapted, Henry would be modeled after a 32-year-old Alexander Skarsgård; Faye is an open canvas—her depiction less fixed in Knoll’s mind.

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9. Aging, Power, and Hollywood

[22:09] – [24:09]

• Conversation turns to the challenges women face aging in Hollywood—Knoll expresses empathy for actresses, calling it “a mind fuck.”
• Reflects on the uncertain future of books and film, worries about shrinking attention spans, and stresses the importance of supporting the arts.

Quote:
"I don't know if I can curse on this, but I think it's a mind fuck to be a—someone, an actor, and particularly a woman in Hollywood as you're aging." —Jessica Knoll [23:07]

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10. Incorporating Real-Time Events: The Fires

[24:11] – [25:17]

• Knoll briefly discusses including LA wildfires near the end of the book—using the real sense of chaos and threat as a metaphor for her character’s emotional turmoil.

Quote:
"That panic lent itself so well to this story and to what Faye was going through at that point in the story." —Jessica Knoll [25:16]

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Notable Quotes & Moments

• On catharsis in writing: "When I'm writing in darkness and when I'm writing about pain and trauma even, I almost feel like my most at home. I'm like, oh, yeah, I get this world and I can have fun in this world and I can even have dark humor in this world because this is my turf and I get how things operate." —Jessica Knoll [09:03]

• On validation from readers:
  “To have written it as it happened and have people come to me and call it what it was for the first time. ... that gave me courage. And it gave me validation in a way I'd never had before in my life.” —Jessica Knoll [13:10]

• On power and gender:
  "This book is very much about power dynamics and romantically as well." —Jessica Knoll [08:25]

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• Book premise and summary: [03:55 – 05:05]
• Developing Faye’s character and Hollywood inspiration: [06:40 – 08:22]
• Themes of power, violence, and sexuality: [08:22 – 09:39]
• Knoll’s personal trauma and the writing process: [09:39 – 13:17]
• The shift after sharing her story: [15:58 – 16:31]
• Crafting suspense and tight plotting: [17:07 – 19:06]
• Erotic thrillers and cultural influences: [19:06 – 20:56]
• Casting and adaptation dreams: [21:02 – 21:46]
• Aging and survival in Hollywood: [22:09 – 24:09]
• Including LA fire in fiction: [24:11 – 25:17]

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Final Thoughts

Zibby Owens and Jessica Knoll’s conversation is compelling, candid, and richly layered, mirroring the complex themes of Helpless. Knoll’s ability to weave personal experience with social commentary and thrilling storytelling shines throughout. Listeners come away with not only an appetite for the novel but also a deeper insight into the ways literature can engage with and transform trauma, power, and the pursuit of identity.

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(For more about Jessica Knoll, follow her on Instagram or pick up Helpless, out July 7th.)

Transcript

[Jessica Knoll]

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[Zibby Owens]

It was a mansion.

[Jessica Knoll]

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[Zibby Owens]

and that pistachio gelato was too good.

[Jessica Knoll]

So where should we go next year?

[Zibby Owens]

I've got ideas.

[Jessica Knoll]

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[Zibby Owens]

Welcome to Totally Booked. I'm Zibby Owens. I've interviewed more than 2,000 authors on this show and learned endless amounts about storytelling, reinvention and life itself. Because when you talk about books, you're really talking about life. So get ready to hear from today's best authors, the best selling and the not yet discovered. Come find your next great read and the story behind it. Enjoy. Jessica Knoll is the author of Helpless A Novel. Jessica and I recorded this live at Totally Book Live at the Whitby Hotel a while ago and we have had to hold this until the book finally is coming out now. And I am so excited because I had to message Jessica as soon as I finished, which I don't do that often, but I had to and asked her a few questions about it and what she thought and oh my gosh, second half of the book in particular. I was flipping pages so quickly I couldn't wait to get to the end. I couldn't wait to figure out what happened and there was a. Well, I'm giving away too much but oh my gosh, like really good. Okay, Jessica Knoll is the New York Times bestselling author of Bright Young Women, the Favorite Sister and Luckiest Girl Alive, now a major motion picture from Netflix starring Mila Kunis. She has been a senior editor at Cosmopolitan and the article's editor itself. She lives in New York City with her family and actually I just ran into her at a party for John Sterls new book, all about working at Cosmopolitan back in the day with Helen Gurley Brown. So hearkens back to her, her early days. You are going to love this book. Welcome to Totally Booked Live. I'm here with Jessica Knoll. So exciting. Thank you so much for being here. Her new book Helpless is coming out July 7th, so we all get a sneak peek. Congrats. Thank you for having me. Okay, you can applaud now. One day you guys are going to get the hang of this. Hopefully today. Anyway, you guys, this book was so good that when I finished, I had to DM and be like, oh my gosh, wait, explain. Tell me this, tell me anyway.

[Jessica Knoll]

But I love that the question you asked me is the question you asked me because it's the question I'm hoping everyone is asking when they finish the book. So it really, it warmed my cold, dark heart.

[Zibby Owens]

Oh, good, good. I'm so glad. Okay, tell everyone what Helpless is about.

[Jessica Knoll]

So Helpless follows a woman named Faye Heron who returns to her college campus after 10 years for the funeral of her beloved film professor. And while she's there, she has a run in with her college ex boyfriend with whom she had a very tumultuous and some would say toxic relationship. But it's ten years have passed. They're both married, he has kids, they've grown up. Everything seems, you know, like they can put the past behind them and admit that they both acted poorly. So Henry, her ex, invites her to have a drink to bury the hatchet, at which point he drugs and kidnaps her. And so the majority of the novel takes place at his remote family cabin in the Adirondacks. And you're uncovering what it is she's really doing there. At first you think it's about revenge, but it turns out to be a much bigger mystery than that. It's something that completely rewrites the past. And the actual answer, I hope, will lead all of you to be sending me a message on Instagram asking me the question that's be asked me.

[Zibby Owens]

It's so funny because on the back of the book it says on the description, on the top it says, from the New York Times bestselling author of Luckiest Killer Alive and Bright Young Women comes a smoldering psychological thriller with a singular mind bending last page. So meanwhile, my kids, I was carrying this around for a while while I was reading it, and one of them picked it up and it was like a smile smoldering, last page. And they're like, we're gonna see what's on the last page. I'm like, no, no, no, don't tell me. And so they read out loud part of the last page before I had finished because that's how sweet they are. But I have to say, it doesn't give it away until you've read the book. So it's not like that. It's not like there's some thing that. But it's if, you know, you know, just IY and whatever. What K. Anyway. But it is the last. The ending is incredibly intriguing. We will all be talking about the ending, but not today. Today we'll talk about the story. Faye is such an interesting character. So she comes from the acting, producing, directing LA world where she has risen to the top echelon of that society. You have an opening scene where Melanie Griffin says like, oh, I'm such a fan of yours. And I'm like, that is so great. That just shows us where she is. And she'll say things throughout the book. Like she'll run into someone and say, well, I know he knows who I am. I know what my appearance does. I know my good side. I know how to work every room. Like, she is so in command of who she is and how she is projecting to other people. Where did Faye come from?

[Jessica Knoll]

Yeah, I love Faye so much. She is a little bit. She came from my time that I spent living in Los Angeles and getting to know that Hollywood world a little bit through kind of the adaptation of my first novel, which I was a producer on. And I wrote the script. And I just found, first of all, I found the biggest misconception I had about Los Angeles before I moved there was that it was a kind of a place for bimbos and airheads. And I actually found that Los Angeles is a very much a working town and people there are very ambitious and they're very calculated, especially people in the entertainment industry. And I say that as a compliment. People who are calculating in their careers absolutely fascinate me. And you have to be very calculating and have sharp elbows to rise to the upper echelon of Hollywood. And so I loved the idea of creating a female character who had achieved this and who had had kind of amassed some kind of currency and power in her life and then coming back to a place where she wasn't someone who had power, she wasn't someone who had social currency. She was the scholarship kid in college and she was surrounded. And her ex boyfriend in particular, they all came from family money and they had very different experiences in life. And I thought it would just be so fascinating to plop her back in an environment where she is now a completely different person than she was when she first found herself around these people and in this world.

[Zibby Owens]

Wow. Yeah. The total shift of power dynamics.

[Jessica Knoll]

Yeah, exactly. And this book is very much about power dynamics and romantically as well.

[Zibby Owens]

Yes, a lot of very steamy scenes. Just saying, heads up if you're listening to the audiobook, eventually, maybe not the one to listen to with other people in the car with the kids.

[Jessica Knoll]

Do not listen to with the kids in the car.

[Zibby Owens]

Or choose your companions carefully. I'll just say that. And there's a lot of violence too. I was gonna say even the sexual scenes are bordering on violence. But there's. I mean, there's dark.

[Jessica Knoll]

Yes.

[Zibby Owens]

Things.

[Jessica Knoll]

Dark things.

[Zibby Owens]

Dark moments.

[Jessica Knoll]

People often say that to me about my books and I always have to laugh because to me, it's not that they aren't dark, it's that they don't make me feel dark. Like, I come a little bit from a dark place and I've experienced dark things in my life, but I don't think that I present that way. And I think part of that is that when I'm writing in darkness and when I'm writing about pain and trauma even, I almost feel like my most at home. I'm like, oh, yeah, I get this world and I can have fun in this world and I can even have dark humor in this world because this is my turf and I get how things operate. So I just, I love, like, I don't know, rolling around in the mud like that. Like, it's just fun to me.

[Zibby Owens]

Well, I have to say I reread your Lenny letter after reading this book and the New York Times piece about it afterwards. And I know you've come out publicly and talked about the experience you had at age 15 where you essentially were gang raped by kids at a party and you decided not to talk about it until the paperback release of your. So it's not like you use this for book publicity or something like that. Not that you would, but I'm just saying, like, this is something you took your time and thought about before sharing and puts stories like this into context, because we see what's happened. Can you just share a little bit about that? Yeah.

[Jessica Knoll]

So I wrote my first novel. The character is a survivor of sexual assault, and her experience very closely mimics mine, but it is a. It's fiction. And I didn't share with anyone at the time that the book was coming out that anything about her experience was based on my own experience. But this was a story that I carried with me since I was 15 years old. That book published when I was 32. So it was, you know, 17 years, something like that. And it was something I thought about every waking second of every single day. And when I finally figured out a way to write this into a story and get it off my chest, it was just the most freeing and cathartic experience. I almost feel like I entered a fugue state in writing that novel, Luckiest Girl Alive. And then it came out, and a lot of readers had. Would come up to me at events and say, wow, you know, she's. Her ani's experience and how she reacts to it and how she handles it and how it impacts every single choice she makes in her life. It's rendered so realistically. Like, it's. You know, and. And I. They would. No one would say, like, did that happen to you? But it was always. I always felt I could feel, like, a connection. Like, they were saying, this seems realistic to me because this happened to me. Did this happen to you? Like, that was always the. The unspoken part. And so about a year later, I did write an essay saying, yes, you know, this had happened to me. And so, yeah, it informs a lot of what I write about. And it's been many years, and I. I've had a lot of therapy, and I've moved my way through it, and I've healed a lot of things, but there's still always stuff there that, you know, I'm grappling with and that I'm curious about. And writing helps me just kind of untangle things that, you know, that I don't know that I would. I would get there as fast without having the gift of writing and story and character.

[Zibby Owens]

Well, I know you've helped so many people. Not that that was necessarily the goal, and I know you've helped yourself process, and that's amazing. But the gift of sharing that is so remarkable.

[Jessica Knoll]

Well, readers have helped me, too, because I think the piece of it that was always so painful was after I was assaulted, the narrative in high school was that it was just a party. Things got out of hand, and I was a willing participant. And so to have written it as it happened and have people come to me and call it what it was for the first time. It was like I remember thinking like, I'll write what happened and and I will let readers decide if I'm allowed to call it rape, even though I knew in my heart that it was. But then to hear so many people come and say she was assaulted and to name it, that gave me courage. And it gave me validation in a way that I'd never had before in my life.

[Zibby Owens]

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[Jessica Knoll]

Hold on one second. I just need to. What if you had a room where no one interrupts? No notifications, no expectations, just space to talk with. Better Help Therapy happens in a space that's yours. Visit betterhelp.com randompodcast for 10% off your first month of online therapy.

[Zibby Owens]

I wonder if the doctor who you saw who said you had asked her if it was rape and she said, I'm not qualified to make that determination.

[Jessica Knoll]

Yes.

[Zibby Owens]

What if she had answered differently?

[Jessica Knoll]

I think it would have changed everything. I really do. I just needed one person to say what it was. Yeah.

[Zibby Owens]

So you did mention in this book or somewhere that I read that now that you have done that, you couldn't imagine that now it wasn't the thing that you thought about every single day, that now you've put it in its place and it is part of you, but it doesn't control your narrative.

[Jessica Knoll]

Exactly. Yeah. It's amazing when I think about how often it was just a part of my daily life and now it's not something I think about that often. Like, really putting it down on the page, it, like, released me. It lifted a burden that I'd carried for almost two decades.

[Zibby Owens]

Well, in a way, it's the same thing for Faye, right? You go back to your high school days, and Cher, she goes back to her high school days. She wants to just take that whole conversation back. And so. She does.

[Jessica Knoll]

Yeah, she does. Yeah.

[Zibby Owens]

Talk a little bit about how you accomplish all these things in fiction. Right? You have Fae. You have. Do we believe this? Do we not believe this? You have, like, who is the good guy? Who is the bad guy? Like, you have us in a tailspin, Right? We are on such a ride, and with all psychological suspense, you're like, wait, is this a red herring? Or where is this the twist? Is this, like, explain, I think, with

[Jessica Knoll]

this one, because it is. It's essentially what it is, is it's a forced proximity story. So it's two people alone in a remote cabin on an island in the Adirondacks. It's only accessible by boat. She doesn't know how to drive a boat. It's too far to swim. There's no electricity, there's no phones, there's no Internet. So there's only so much you can do with two people alone in a locked room. So I'm always thinking about, okay, I've introduced these characters initially in the early pages of the book. How can I bring them back in? And so it's always a question of how it's a little bit like how there's a movement in food right now to like use everything. Like we're gonna use like the greens at the top of the carrots and like we don't wanna waste anything. Right. That's how I feel.

[Zibby Owens]

What are we doing with the greens?

[Jessica Knoll]

Oh, you chop the carrots, you chop em up and you can like add em as an herb into your salad.

[Zibby Owens]

Oh, okay. I'm sure you're all doing that.

[Jessica Knoll]

So. Yes, there's nothing. This is my. It's my slimmest novel yet. It's my tightest. And I didn't want to waste anything. I didn't want to waste a single character. I didn't want to waste a single moment. And so once, you know, I kind of got Henry and Fay to where I wanted them, I kind of looked back at what, you know, my bounty from the beginning. Right. Like who are my characters, who are my people? Who is the story from the beginning? And then I went and I tried to insert them back to the story and use them and use everything up until there was nothing left. That's how I thought about it.

[Zibby Owens]

And a lot of sort of lust and.

[Jessica Knoll]

Oh. So this book I was reading, I was reading in the Cut by Susanna Moore, which to me is like the quintessential erotic thriller from the. I don't know if it was published in the 90s. I think it might have been published in the 90s. And then the film adaptation which was done by Jane Campion, who's now an Academy Award winning director, I think I believe that came out in like 2001. I am obsessed with this book. I am obsessed with this adaptation. It does not have a good score on Rotten Tomatoes which just fills me with rage. I'm like, this is a. I think it's a stunning movie and I really, really wanted something that kind of captured what I believe Susanna more so expertly captures in the Cut, which is like there is such a fine line, I think between. Or I wanted. I wanted Fay and Henry to walk that line between desire and violence that I think that the media has always played on and that I think that women in particular receive very confused and mixed messages about like if you think about a lot of the content that we grew up watching before we were kind of tackling some of these issues with like thought and care. There would be scenes of violence with very lusty and sexy music over overlapped or scenes of. Of love and desire that will were also interspersed with violence. So like that is something that is like a Messaging that I felt was fed to me as I was growing up. And it was something I really wanted to explore between two characters who also would have received that messaging. And how did that manifest in their real romantic lives?

[Zibby Owens]

So interesting. So have you cast this movie in your head?

[Jessica Knoll]

So Henry. Yes, but he doesn't really exist, is the answer. Because essentially he's Alexandra Skarsgrd. If Alexandra skarsgrd was still 32 years old. So I'm like, I don't know who that is, but. But I'm open.

[Zibby Owens]

I'm open to finding him. And what about Faye?

[Jessica Knoll]

Faye, I'm much more. She feels more like. I don't want to say she's more of a campus to me, like an open canvas. Like, I. Even as she's written in the novel with, like, her hair color and her stature, I'm like, I don't feel so married to it in whomever I would be lucky enough to have play her.

[Zibby Owens]

Interesting. Yeah. We were talking earlier to Kelly Yang, who wrote a book called the Take, who. I'm sorry that you aren't overlapping because I feel like you two should be in conversation together. In fact, I should have just had you on a panel. But anyway, okay, next time. But her character Ingrid would very much like. I feel like the two, Ingrid and Faye need to, like, go off and have a little adventure.

[Jessica Knoll]

I'd like to meet this Ingrid.

[Zibby Owens]

Yeah. I mean, both women, as they're aging in the world of Hollywood, wrestling with the idea of power. How do you view that yourself? You've just left la. Like, where are you leaving the film, TV streaming world? Where are you in your head?

[Jessica Knoll]

Well, fortunately, I'm not an actress. I think it's a much different thing if your appearance is involved. And I truthfully don't know how anyone survives that. And I don't know that people really do, because you see everywhere, like, people are doing things to their faces, younger and younger and younger, and it's you. You see clips of some of these actors from 10 years ago or 15 years ago, and they do not have the same face anymore. And the face that they had was already so stunning and beautiful and unique. And so I think it really is. I don't know if I can curse on this, but I think it's a mind fuck. I think it's a mind fuck to be a someone, an actor, and particularly a woman in Hollywood as you're aging. So I guess I just have to say I'm glad it's not me, but I. I think where we're at with content, streaming movies, film. Personally, I. I find it to be a little scary. I think that these are art forms that I love and cherish, not just because they're the things that I like to do and that are my livelihood, but because I enjoy them myself and I don't want them to go away. And I'm afraid we're entering an era where things are going away, where people aren't going to movie theaters, where people aren't, you know, thankfully, people are still reading. But it scares me a little bit. And with the proliferation of AI, I just don't know what it does to people's attention spans. And I don't know. I don't have any answers. I just keep trying to support the things that I love to watch and read and hope that people turn out to do the same.

[Zibby Owens]

We're all going to turn out to support this.

[Jessica Knoll]

Yeah.

[Zibby Owens]

So there's that. Thank you. By the way, this is the first time and so fast that I've read about the fires in fiction.

[Jessica Knoll]

Oh. Oh, interesting. Yeah.

[Zibby Owens]

How did you decide to do that?

[Jessica Knoll]

Yeah, because it's only a little snippet at the end. And I think at that point that I was towards the end of the book was around the time it had happened. And I think it lends itself so well to this story, because even when we're. Even when she's saved, right, and she's. We're out of the Adirondacks and she's back home in LA now this other tragedy strikes and. And not just the tragedy, but, like, the hours that that was happening, it truly felt like the world was ending. It felt like there was nowhere that was safe. Like when a fire broke out in West Hollywood in the urban grid, I was like, forget it. Like, we're trapped in la. We're never getting out of here alive. That was really what it felt like for about 24 hours. And that panic lent itself so well to this story and to what Faye was going through at that point in the story.

[Zibby Owens]

Wow. As if we needed more drama. Yeah, let's put that in.

[Jessica Knoll]

Never enough.

[Zibby Owens]

Never enough. Oh, my gosh, Jess, this is so good. I can't wait for you all to read it. I can't wait to discuss it even more.

[Jessica Knoll]

Thank you.

[Zibby Owens]

Okay, great. Thank you. Great job.

[Jessica Knoll]

Thank you.

[Zibby Owens]

Thank you for listening to Totally Booked with Zibi, formerly Moms don't have Time to Read Books. If you loved the show, tell a friend, leave a review. Follow me on Instagram ibbeowensk and Spread the Word. Thanks so much. Oh and buy the books.

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