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- [00:01]
Zibby Owens
Clips from the Totally Booked Live series are now up on Instagram. TotallyBookedWithZibi. Check it out.
- [00:11]
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- [00:41]
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- [01:11]
Farah Pets
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- [01:50]
Zibby Owens
Hi, this is Zibby Owens and you're listening to Totally Booked with Zibby. Formerly Moms don't have Time to Read Books in my daily show, I interview today's latest, best sell, buzziest or underrated authors and story creators whose work I think is worth your time. As a bookstore owner, publisher, author, and obviously podcaster, I get a comprehensive look at everything that's coming out and spend my time curating the best books so you don't have to stay in the know. Get insider insights and connect with guests like I do every single day. For more information, go to zibbemedia.com and follow me on Instagram. Iby Owens Lori Gold is the author of Romantic Friction. She is also the author of An Adult Historical and four novels for young adults. She Currently lives outside Boston where she fosters a writing community through her creative writing classes, book coaching, and writing retreats. Romantic Friction is her book club fiction debut. She has a second book club fiction coming, especially on the game of Marry, Kiss or Kill, which will come out in April of 2026. Welcome, Laurie. Thanks for coming on to talk about Romantic Friction, a novel. Congratulations.
- [03:07]
Lori Gold
Thank you. Thank you for having me.
- [03:08]
Zibby Owens
Oh my gosh, I really enjoyed this book. It is the best behind the scenes in publishing. The voice is so funny. Literally, you pack in like every paragraph has like another 12 things about the publishing world and the author life that you just somehow I'm like, I can't even miss a sentence because everything is so on target and so funny. So I don't know. Congratulations. Thank you for saying that.
- [03:36]
Lori Gold
I'm glad you found it funny because I love writing with humor and I love making myself laugh, but you never know if other people are going to find it funny too.
- [03:43]
Zibby Owens
I found it really funny. Okay, tell listeners what Romantic Friction is about.
- [03:49]
Lori Gold
Okay, so it is about a best selling romantasy author named Sophie Wilde. And she is at the height of her career when she discovers that another author has used AI to write in her style. And instead of that author in the book being canceled, as we might expect in this unexpected world, fans embrace it. And she's called innovative in the press and social media is trending all about this author. And probably the worst insult insult to Sophie, who has worked so hard to get where she is in her career, is that the other author is invited to the largest romance readers convention in the country, something that Sophie didn't get invited to for years. And so Sophie is understandably, a little livid. A little, take us a front to this. And she bands together with her fellow authors at that convention to try to take this AI author down any way they can, which will involve committing a felony.
- [04:42]
Zibby Owens
As one does the world. Right. So there are so many different themes to be a leading author and to maintain that sort of mantle. It's not always as easy as it seems. Talk a little bit about how you portray this through your character and that even the most successful authors, like, let's just say this is Ellen Hildebrand or something like that. Like even the most successful in your book, right. Have this underlying fear that at any moment it could all just stop.
- [05:14]
Lori Gold
Yeah. And you know, I think that's very realistic for how we all feel as writers. And no matter the level you're at, there's always another level to get to. And I think it's hard to, you know, kind of wrap your head around that. For me, even when I was looking for an agent and first starting out, I was like, I'll just be happy with the deal. I'll just be happy with this. But, you know, the book is also about being ambitious and not apologizing for being ambitious. And I think that's a part of the writer experience and struggle, because you're looking to improve. You're looking to improve your deals, your readership, the craft of writing, which I think Sophie wants to improve upon as well. And so I really wanted to be both transparent and encouraging at the same time when I'm talking about this author world and this experience. But for someone like Sophie, she starts out. Hybrid authors doing self publishing and traditional publishing right now are becoming much more commonplace than it was even when I started out 10 years ago. And she feels like she has really paid her dues to kind of figure out how does this industry work? Because that's part of this process. Do editors work? How do publishing houses work? How do I self publish? Getting cover designers and getting it up online and doing all of the production for it. There is so much to learn at every stage, and Sophie feels like she's done it all. You know, she's gone from self publishing to the traditional publishing world, and she has found success. But even there, you know, you're only as good as your last book. And you know, right now, if you say something that you don't intend or you know is taken the wrong way, you can be taken down. Sophie says something not so great in the book, has this viral rant. And that's part of why she gets some of this backlash. But there's always this fear that your readers could go away. And when you work so hard for something that's devastating. And so I wanted to portray that at every level. Writers feel this fear of what's going to happen. But I also think a fear of, are we good enough? You know, we think, you know, even if you have a lot of readers. I was just listening to another author, who Victoria Aveyard, who's a friend of mine, and she was. She's a huge romantic author moving into the adult space. And she was just saying, you know, I send my book to my agent and she comes back and says it's great. And I'm like, but really, you know, we just have trouble believing that. And I think that so much of that is swirling around in our heads as writers.
- [07:32]
Zibby Owens
Well, I feel as a group, authors have to be sensitive, right? You have to pick up on so much to be able to write about it in a relatable way. And it often comes with anxiety. And I feel like as a group then to have everything be put into so much in numbers and sales and rankings and whatever, it's actually like the worst mix of industry with creators that there could be.
- [08:00]
Lori Gold
Yeah. You know, I say this, I do some teaching and book coaching and I say this all the time, that if you're going to pursue publication in any form, you have to be as arrogant as you are insecure. Because I think you have to be so arrogant to think out of all the wonderful books out there, mine's going to find a home and mine's going to find readers. But at the same time, if you don't have a little of this worry and self doubt and that anxiety and that I think that pushes you to do your best. If you don't bring that to your projects, then all you have is the arrogance.
- [08:30]
Zibby Owens
Right?
- [08:31]
Lori Gold
All you have is something that is pushing but maybe isn't the best craft that it can be as a book. So I think the anxiety and the self doubt gives you better books, but it certainly doesn't make it necessarily an enjoyable process all the time.
- [08:46]
Zibby Owens
Wait, take us back about what happened 10 years ago. How did you become an author? Give me the whole story.
- [08:51]
Lori Gold
Sure.
- [08:51]
Zibby Owens
Ok. And even before that, like what were you doing?
- [08:54]
Lori Gold
So I was a journalism major before that in college and I worked on my high school newspaper, my college newspaper. And that's where my first career was. I would say writing is kind of my second career that I came to. My first book was published about 10 years ago and I probably started writing about three years before that. So I wasn't one of these authors who wanted to write, you know, since they were a kid and since they could hold a crayon. I was always very much into the world of English and you know, books and readers. I was a huge reader. You know, my mom would take me to the library three times a week and I would have this stack of books like this. She got so tired of taking me continuously that she would just hand me the biggest books we had in the house, which were seemingly always Stephen King. So I was probably like 10 years old like reading these scary Stephen King books, which is probably why I'm such a scaredy cat. Horror movies and things. But so I was always in the world of English and like language and reading and all of that. But I don't know if it didn't occur to me that like being an author was a career. I went the more practical route, and that's probably part of my personality. If I'm going to write, I'll be a journalist. I can do that kind of writing, nonfiction writing. And so that's kind of where the first half of my career took me, working for some magazines and newspapers. I got into technical editing because I live in the Boston area, and there's a lot of tech editing up here. It really wasn't what I wanted to do. It wasn't the type of writing or editing I was all that interested in. And so at some point, point, I took a pause, and my husband said, why don't you try to write something creatively? And I was like, really? I've never taken a creative writing class ever. I was like, how do I do this? But of course, there's a little of that arrogance that comes in, right? Because I was like, oh, yeah, I could just sit down and write a.
- [10:31]
Zibby Owens
Book that just totally, by the way, put me to shame, right? That you were just like, I think I'll pick this up. Just, why not? I'm going to take one class and write this great novel.
- [10:41]
Lori Gold
Well, I ate a lot of crow because it was not that easy. Three years later, I had the equivalent of a manuscript that it was over 200,000 words, which is like Game of Thrones length for those.
- [10:54]
Zibby Owens
It's like four books.
- [10:56]
Lori Gold
It's contemporary women's fiction. I was like, I had no idea what I was doing. And so I had to take a step back and really figure out what is it that I'm doing. And I read a lot of craft books. I took some classes. And that book, I got into a form that was queryable. I could query with it. I didn't wind up getting an agent with it, but that agent said, if you write something else, come back to me. And I was writing something else. And that book was becoming Gin, which became my first published novel, which is a YA novel. And so when I finished that, and I had learned a lot more about writing and I had hired editors, and I had, you know, really tried to train myself of what? What is this I'm doing? Then I was able to get that same agent actually became my agent. And then becoming Jin was my first book in 2015.
- [11:40]
Zibby Owens
Wow. And then what?
- [11:41]
Lori Gold
And then I stayed in the YA world for three more books. So I had a total of four young adult novels. And then I knew I kind of wanted to transition into this upmarket book club fiction. But I got diverted on the way because I saw the play Hamilton, and I fell in love with it. And there is a song in Hamilton called Dear Theodosia. And it's about Aaron Burr and Alexander Hamilton talking about their children and the fathers they want to be in this country they're passing on to. And as I sat in that theater, I immediately thought of this Romeo and Juliet tale between the daughter of Aaron Burr and the son of Alexander Hamilton. And so that sent me off on like, it's my only true passion project as a writer. I will say I came home from the play, I did research, and I wrote historical. This historical fiction novel, which I love reading, but I never thought I would write as a writer. And it's a hard process to write historical fiction fiction. So I wrote that, I got it published. I'm super proud of it. But then I kind of went back to this world of where I thought I was going to go after the YA novels, which was book club fiction. And that's, you know, how romantic fiction kind of came to be.
- [12:51]
Zibby Owens
Oh my gosh. Not to put you on spot, but have you read my novel Blank? Because I tried to do something similar. Ish. The unmasking of the industry, so to speak.
- [13:01]
Lori Gold
Yes, definitely. Yes. I love what you do with that.
- [13:05]
Zibby Owens
I feel like there aren't enough books that take the industry and sort of poke fun, but also unmask, because I am routinely shocked even now, even as a publisher and all this, like, I learn stuff every day about how things are actually working, that as a reader I had literally no idea and like, didn't care.
- [13:28]
Lori Gold
Absolutely. You know, I think we don't have any idea what goes on behind the scenes. And, you know, maybe some of that's purposeful and I understand now why you don't know anything at the author. But I think even, you know, published authors are surprised at some of the things that are in my book, in your book, in all of these books. And you know, what I wanted to do with this was kind of show the behind the scenes. But, you know, so somebody in one of the reviews, they called it equal parts mystery, satire and industry roast. And I was like, well, that's kind of. That's kind of what it is. So I wanted to do that behind the scenes. But I did want to involve this little bit of like, whodunit caper kind of, you know, feel to it to, you know, appeal to readers who. There are readers who love this behind the scenes stuff. But I wanted there to be enough for everybody so you don't have to just want to read behind the scenes of publishing.
- [14:15]
Zibby Owens
I didn't.
- [14:16]
Lori Gold
Your book talks so much about motherhood and balancing all of that. There's a lot for everybody. And I think that's important to weave into these stories that might feel without that too much just about what it's like to be an author, right?
- [14:27]
Zibby Owens
No. And I didn't mean to overemphasize that it's more than that, but that is part of it. I also found this whole AI subplot so interesting because I, like everybody, am thinking now so much about AI. Recently someone just sent me like a pitch that they could translate my podcast into all these other languages and they sent me my voice reading it in all these other languages and I was so freaked out. Like, it sounds just like me. So the fact that it's that easy to just take a voice, take a writing style, like, what if. What if someone could just write like you? What makes us who we are? Are our brains seriously? Just that. I mean, it opens all these questions. What do you think about it? Today's episode has been sponsored by Fast Growing Trees. Did you know Fast Growing Trees is the biggest online nursery in the US with thousands of different plants and over 2 million happy customers. They have all the plants your yard or house needs, like fruit trees, privacy trees, flowering trees, shrubs, and so much more. Whatever plants you're interested in, Fast Growing Trees has you covered. Find the perfect fit for your climate and space. Fast Growing Trees makes it easy to get your dream yard. Order online and get your plants delivered directly to your door in just a few days without ever leaving home. Their alive and thrive guarantee ensures your plants arrive happy and healthy. Plus, get support from trained plant experts on call to help you plan your landscape, choose the right plants and learn how to care for them. I am obsessed with the fiddle leaf fig tree, an indoor plant that I got from Fast Growing Trees. It is so beautiful and it just came right to my door. No annoying trip to a nursery or. I once had to go in midtown in New York City, not even midtown, all the way to the flower district to find a tree and put it in the car. And that was such a pain. Anyway, now these came right. Everything comes right to my door. And it's amazing. This spring they have the best deals for your yard, up to half off on select plants and other deals and listeners to our show get 15% off their first purchase when using the code Readbooks at checkout. That's an additional 15% off at fastgrowingtrees.com using the code readbooks at checkout. Fastgrowingtrees com code reed Books. Now's the perfect time to plant indoors or out. Use Reed Books to save today. Offer is valid for a limited time. Terms and conditions may apply.
- [17:05]
Lori Gold
McCrispy strips are now at McDonald's.
- [17:08]
Zibby Owens
Tender juicy and its own sauce.
- [17:10]
Lori Gold
Would you look at that?
- [17:11]
Zibby Owens
Well, you can't see it, but trust me, it looks delicious. New McCrispy strips now at McDonald's.
- [17:19]
Lori Gold
Bottom of the does it ever feel like you're a marketing professional just speaking into the void? Well, with LinkedIn ads, you can know you're reaching the right decision makers. You can even target buyers by job title, industry, company, seniority, skills. Wait, did I say job title yet? Get started today and see how you can avoid the void and reach the right buyers with LinkedIn ads. We'll even give you a $100 credit on your next campaign. Get started at LinkedIn.com results. Terms and conditions apply. You know, I think that is so interesting because a lot of when I did some research about AI and it's always constantly changing, right? But one of the things that someone said that I think is very interesting is what makes something created by a human or not? And is it the intention? So if the intention comes from a human, is the resulting body of work, piece of entertainment still, can we still call it created by a human? Or is it created by AI or by a computer? So if the intention comes from that human, does that change things? I don't know. You know, I think these are a lot of the conversations that we need to be having that I start to bring up in AI. You know, even when you think of the world of like movies and CGI coming in to do explosions or to do creatures that don't exist or even, you know, animation or humans that, you know, they're doing these movies that are taking a human and they're doing the movements, but it's actually animated. Well, is that the artist, Is that the actor, actress, or is that, you know, the, the AI or the computer creating something? We're in such this complex world and I think we have been for a while and we haven't really understood that, you know, even spell check is a form of AI. You know, even when you start typing a name in your email like in the 2 cents and like you start typing zi and it pops up zibby from your contacts, that's a form of AI. You know, all of these things have been around us and now the spotlight is on them because technology is improving to do so much more than those sorts of tasks. And I think it's in coming into the creative world of writing in a way it hasn't before, that it maybe has in, you know, movies or that kind of form of entertainment. So I think I have a lot of feelings about it. What I think is the technology is continuing to get better and better. And when I first started to do the research for Romantic Friction, it wasn't there yet. You know, I played with it, try to write a scene. I couldn't do it. It didn't feel like a human. It's getting better, and it's continually getting better. I really have no doubt that at some point it will be able to write a novel that feels like a novel. Like you said about, you know, it could take your voice and sound like your voice. I do think it's going to happen. And, you know, I think if we put our heads in the sand and ignore it, writers are going to be left behind. And I feel like what we need to do and what I hope to do with Romantic Friction is to start these conversations between writers, publishers, readers, especially readers, because ultimately, as I say in the book, books may be art, but publishing is a business, and readers are the consumers. So they're going to be the ones who decide. The marketplace is going to decide, do they want to read a book that's written by AI? If they do, do they want it labeled as such so they can be very clear in making a choice of what it is. It is the future that's coming, and I think if we ignore it, we're going to be going down a tough road. I think we need to have these conversations and start setting the parameters because it's here and people will use it as much as we say you shouldn't or it's unfair or not. It's going to happen. I think bringing light to it and having these conversations where we get to dictate where that goes is important and is important to do it as early as we can.
- [20:59]
Zibby Owens
I wonder, though, if. And of course, this goes to the economics of the industry as well, but if there's an option where readers create their own content in one second and they say, you know, hey, chatgpt, or hey, Siri, like, you know, write me a novel in the voice of. Let's just go back to Ellen Hilderbrand, like, write me another novel in the voice of Ellen Hildebrand, you know, set in Nantucket about, like, a married couple and the beach boy or whatever, and in one second. And maybe it's not as good, right? Because of course it can't be. But let's just say it's pretty good and it's free, right? And then you're reading a novel written just for you.
- [21:39]
Lori Gold
Right?
- [21:40]
Zibby Owens
Like, this blows my mind because, I mean, not like authors should be immune. Every job is about to be eliminated essentially by AI, Right? Like, it's not like just because, like, there's no preciousness to being an author or a creator or whatever, but just the fact that it could become a reader driven content source, the way we're all kind of making our own newspapers now and Apple News or whatever, that's crazy. I don't know, it's just mind blowing.
- [22:07]
Lori Gold
It's wild. And I think what's interesting is I think depending on how old you are, where you are in your life, you think it's great. Somebody might hear what you just said and said, why wouldn't I want to do that? But we as creators or we as people didn't grow up with computer. From the time we were born, we feel differently. And I think that's what society is and that's how society changes. Because someone will grow up always being able to do that, right? They'll never know a time where they couldn't do that. So in this period where you're like, well, I remember when we couldn't, and I have strong feelings about that, what do we do about that? And is it, I guess the question is, is it okay? Is it okay to ultimately do that? That gets into so many issues of copyright work and all that. But to your point of like, that if they could do that, would they want to read it? And I think it's so interesting because it makes me think of again where we're not there yet in terms of writing that we are in movies or tv, you turn on Netflix and you can watch a thousand shows and you can binge A season 20 seasons of Grey's Anatomy if you want, in a couple of weeks. We're so used to immediacy of content.
- [23:13]
Zibby Owens
In fact, I have to say, one of my kids has watched all of Grey's Anatomy. I'm just saying she's literally on season 20. And I'm like, that is insane how much time you've spent on this versus, like, say, school. Right? Okay, just saying.
- [23:29]
Lori Gold
No, but I mean, but it's true. And like they're used to being able to do that. Like, that's just kind of. It's what you can do in a world that you couldn't do that, where you had to wait. Thursday night, ER came On that was like, exactly.
- [23:41]
Zibby Owens
I was so excited. I had to like, rush home to get there at like, what, 10:00 clock or something? 9:00 clock.
- [23:45]
Lori Gold
Yeah, exactly. So it's interesting to think about it, you know, if. If readers could get another Lori Gold book or another Zibby Owens book in a month rather than a year or two years, and it's pretty good.
- [23:55]
Zibby Owens
Do they want it or in a second. It takes a second to do anything on AI, it's like, do, do, do. Boom. Like, here it is. Like, they don't have to wait for anything.
- [24:05]
Lori Gold
Yeah. And then it just, it becomes an issue of do we, what do we value? Do we value just the entertainment or do we value the creator behind it? And again, I don't think we know the answers to these questions. They're the things we need to start talking about. Well, the questions are here. They're being posed all the time. But I think, you know, sometimes people have a knee jerk reaction of like, everything's wrong. Right? And everything new is wrong. And I don't like approaching it that way either because, you know, in the whole world, if we, you know, currently, right now, it'd be nice to have, you know, discussion and debate as opposed to such, you know, divisiveness. And I think that can filter down to everything, even an issue like this, you know, what are the pros and what are the cons and why, you know, would a reader want to do that or not do that and is it okay or not? And I think I just want to think about it more than I think people just have that knee jerk reaction of yes or no. And I want to think about all the complexities involved, whether it's like, is it as entertaining, are we taking away jobs? And do I feel okay about that? All of these questions are stuff I just wish people would think about a little bit more.
- [25:08]
Zibby Owens
Yeah. My gosh. So tell me more about your life when you're not writing. Like, obviously you're thinking about writing, but what is like a typical Laurie day? Like, you live in Boston, like, what else?
- [25:22]
Lori Gold
So I teach creative writing and I lead writing retreats and I do book coaching. And so that's kind of the bulk of what I do when I'm not either writing or promoting a book. And I love having both pieces of that. You know, sometimes it's hard to balance and I talking to you about balancing things and I know how many millions of things you do as a publisher and writer and leading retreats and all of that, but it's interesting to see, like, you can. Things can take over. Right? So the writing can take over, and then you don't do any of the other work or the book coaching and the teaching can take over, and then all of a sudden, you realize you haven't written for a while. So balancing those things is something that I really try hard to do, to have components of my day that are meeting with students. And mostly it's online, on zoom, and then dedicating time to writing. I'm really good about setting writing goals, so I figure out how long. And I've been doing this for a while now. This is my sixth published novel. I'll have another are coming with HarperCollins next year. But I have four or five other books that I've written that haven't sold. So, you know, I'm probably up to 11 or 12 manuscripts now. And that's. Let me know what is my writing process, how am I most efficient, and how long does it generally take me to research and then write a book? And so I'm a big proponent of setting goals. So if I want this book done by September, what do I have to write every week to hit that goal? And then I can fill in with all of the other things that I do with book coaching and writing and teaching, because I love doing those pieces. You know, writing can be such a solitary job, and if you just write, you miss that opportunity to connect with other writers. And so I love that about the other aspect of my job. And I learned from it so much. You know, being able to read someone's work instantly on a page and read five pages and give them meaningful critique very quickly, it's hard to do. And it's a skill that I've kind of learned and gotten better at as a. As a instructor. But it makes my writing better because now I can assess my writing as quickly in a way that I couldn't certainly when I first starting out. So those are the other pieces of my day. And I try to integrate beach walks when it's not raining, which it's been raining here in Boston a lot lately. So that's the other piece. But that also becomes writing time, right? Because you're thinking in your head as you're walking.
- [27:33]
Zibby Owens
I saw somewhere that, like, an image of a brain when you're sitting down, and then an image of a brain when you're walking and how, like, everything is, like, lit up.
- [27:41]
Lori Gold
Oh, that's fascinating.
- [27:42]
Zibby Owens
Yeah, it was somewhere on Instagram, and I was like, oh, God, I know I need to walk more. I know. I know. But anyway, what is your next book? You slipped that in there. What is it?
- [27:50]
Lori Gold
Yeah. So I have another book with HarperCollins that'll come out in April of next year. We're working on the revisions now, so I can't say too much about it, but it is still in this book club fiction world, and it looks at the same things that romantic fiction does of like ambition and female friendship, which is another big component of romantic friction. But it's a spin on a conversational game where three best friends and founders of a health and wellness app play this game at their summer outing, and it leads them down paths that they didn't expect. Interesting. And it's got a slight speculative element to it, I will say.
- [28:25]
Zibby Owens
Huh.
- [28:26]
Lori Gold
Love it.
- [28:26]
Farah Pets
Very cool.
- [28:27]
Zibby Owens
What types of books do you like to read?
- [28:29]
Lori Gold
So I mainly read book club fiction now with the occasional deviance to historical fiction. But I try to stay abreast of, like, what's popular in the genre that I'm writing. So I read a lot of that. You know, I love Taylor Jenkins Reid. I love Leah Moriarty and Sally Hepworth. I really love books with a little bit of humor, you know, like wedding people especially that tackle, like, a difficult topic, but, you know, use that humor in there. I just actually finished, which I'd never read her before, Beatrice Williams, Husbands and Lovers. It came out last year, and I loved it. And I loved the mix of storylines between present day and a couple of different past storylines and then how they all come together at the end. I love those kind of like merging together at the end of multiple characters and storylines. I kind of think it maybe comes all the way back to when I read Stephen King as a kid because those are huge ensemble characters and casts, and all the stories had to merge at the end. So maybe I still gravitate towards that because it was my roots of reading.
- [29:25]
Zibby Owens
Okay. And this is totally invasive and you don't have to answer this, and probably inappropriate, but you have, like, this gorgeous mane of hair, yet you are letting it go naturally gray, and you happen to have one of these of these beautiful grays. I don't know how you knew it would be beautiful, because mine is not coming in beautiful. Like, tell me about that decision.
- [29:43]
Lori Gold
Yeah, it was an easy decision because the pandemic made it happen. When the pandemic started, I had my hair, like, up to here. It was just a short, and it was like a layered bob, and it had a lot going on. It was one of those cuts where you had to go, like, every you know, four weeks. You should. But I would leg it out to six weeks for it to really look really good. And I was getting it dyed. I've had gray hair since I was, like, my early 30s. It was. Started coming in very. You know, I was young, and so I was dying it for years. And one, the texture was awful. And the time it takes to go into a salon to do that all the time got, like, expensive and such a time suck. And the pandemic hit and you're inside. And I was like, well, I have no one to cut my hair, so it's just going to grow. And you go through this very awkward phase where you've got the hair with all these layers grow. It looks crazy. And then the gray start. Starts coming in. But I had highlights, too, so it was like. It was totally, like, skunk light blonde down here. It was like. It was a mess, and I just pushed through it and I got through the other side of the pandemic and all. It was mostly one color. So I cut it off so it looked one color. And I looked at the gray and I said, you know, it's okay. You know, like, I think it's okay. And it was an interesting decision because my mom always tells me, which I do remember this when she started to go gray early as well, because that's where I get it from. I snotty little kid said to her mom, you have to dye your hair. You can't go around looking like that. And I said, gosh, that was one of the meanest things I could have said to her. I'm sorry, mom, but, you know, I said, you know, it's okay, and I'm just gonna go with it. And I'm not opposed to dyeing it if at some point I don't like it anymore. But with the longer hair, sometimes it looks like highlights on zoom. It's okay. I'm going with it.
- [31:26]
Zibby Owens
It looks amazing. It looks amazing.
- [31:28]
Lori Gold
It saves so much time, I'm sure.
- [31:30]
Zibby Owens
I know. I'm like, this is a big time suck.
- [31:33]
Lori Gold
Okay.
- [31:33]
Zibby Owens
Sorry for the superficial. Anyway, romantic friction. Congratulations. So fun, so great. Such an unmasking of the industry mixed with fun plot and just like, how do we get through life and how do we just roll with it when things don't go our way and when the unexpected happens? And that is something that we all need to figure out how to do every single day.
- [31:56]
Lori Gold
Yeah. Still working on that.
- [31:58]
Zibby Owens
Still working on that.
- [31:58]
Lori Gold
Me too.
- [32:01]
Zibby Owens
All right, well, Lori, thank you so much for coming on.
- [32:03]
Lori Gold
Thank you, Zibby.
- [32:04]
Zibby Owens
Okay, take care.
- [32:05]
Lori Gold
Okay, bye.
- [32:07]
Zibby Owens
Thank you for listening to Totally Booked with Zibby formerly Moms don't have time to read books. If you loved the show, tell a friend, leave a review. Follow me on Instagram, Iby Owens and Spread the word. Thanks so much. Oh, and buy the books.
- [32:29]
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You were made for going the extra mile for your pet. And Farah Pets was made to do the same. Farah Pets supplements are vet created with innovative ingredients that combine eastern and western therapies so your pet can thrive. After all, you would do anything to help your pet feel their best. And so would we. Visit. Visit farapets.com pod to get 20% off today. That's F E R-A pets.com pod Farah pets we were made for this.
- [32:57]
Lori Gold
Every idea starts with a problem. Warby Parker's was simple. Glasses are too expensive. So they set out to change that. By designing glasses in house and selling directly to customers, they're able to offer prescription eyewear that's expertly crafted and unexpectedly affordable. Warby Parker glasses are made from premium materials like impact resistant polycarbonate and custom acetate. And they start at just $95, including prescription lenses. Get glasses made from the good stuff. Stop by a Warby Parker store near you.
- [33:28]
Paige DeSorbo
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- [33:59]
Zibby Owens
Clips from the Totally Booked Live series are now up on Instagram. Totallybooked with Zibby. Check it out.