Jenna Bush Hager (2:09)

People, authors, celebrities and friends to talk about life and the books that shaped them.

Tracy Dobmire (2:14)

If you love great conversations and discovering.

Jenna Bush Hager (2:17)

Your next favorite read, join me on.

Tracy Dobmire (2:19)

Open Book with Jenna.

Jenna Bush Hager (2:20)

Listen now, wherever you get your podcast.

Zibby Owens (2:31)

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 selling, buzziest or underrated authors and story creators whose 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 zibbymedia.com and follow me on Instagram ibyoens Tracy Dobmire and Wendy Katzman are co authors of 10,000 Light Years from OK, a novel. I recorded this live at the Zibby's Bookshop Pop up at the Minnie Rose Boutique in New York. Tracy Dobmire and Wendy Katzman have been great friends for over 25 years. Their debut novel, Girls with Bright Futures, was a suspenseful journey into the cutthroat world of college admissions, which earned star reviews from Publishers Weekly and Library Journal and was named a book club winner by Real simple and an Apple Best Book. Tracy holds an undergraduate degree from Princeton University and a J.D. from UC Berkeley. She worked in biotechnology, law, and nonprofit leadership. Wendy was a nationally ranked youth tennis player and went on to play at the University of Michigan, where she earned her undergraduate degree, followed by a career in medical marketing. Tracy and Wendy both live in Seattle with their husbands. They enjoy sports, reading, obviously, civic engagement, and spending time with their amazing families and friends. You can often find them together brainstorming and walking their dogs.

Interviewer or Host (4:17)

Welcome. Congratulations. So excited to have both of you here. Tracy and Wendy.

Wendy Katzman (4:23)

Wow.

Interviewer or Host (4:24)

So exciting.

Wendy Katzman (4:24)

Thank you. Thank you so much for having us.

Tracy Dobmire (4:27)

We are so excited to be here. This is really a tour in New York. Aw yeah.

Interviewer or Host (4:31)

Well, you guys know everybody. These are like the most popular people you know. You can like, meet someone. You're like, oh, you have a thousand friends. So, as evidenced by this here's today, okay, 10,000 light years from today. Please tell everybody here who probably knows, but everybody listening who might not, what it's about, right?

Tracy Dobmire (4:48)

So 10,000 light years from okay is about a young, grieving, widowed writer who starts to fear that what she writes comes true after her husband dies in a way that mirrors a plot line from her debut novel.

Wendy Katzman (5:02)

So it has some heavier themes like grief and family and connection and resilience, but also sprinkled in with romance and whimsy, and also explores, like, how coincidence and superstition impact our lives.

Interviewer or Host (5:18)

The main takeaway is it's not worth going around.

Tracy Dobmire (5:23)

Do not go for a run.

Wendy Katzman (5:24)

Do not go For a run. Yes, because sadly, Sam.

Tracy Dobmire (5:29)

That is how Sam dies. Yes.

Interviewer or Host (5:32)

Going on a run right after he has gotten some really great news, actually. Yes.

Tracy Dobmire (5:37)

That's not a spoiler. No, that's fine.

Wendy Katzman (5:38)

Yeah, it's.

Interviewer or Host (5:39)

No, because. Well, why don't you describe.

Tracy Dobmire (5:43)

Yeah, yeah. So basically they're a young, kind of very like, happily married couple. He's a tennis player on the pro tour, and she is a debut author and kind of living her. They're living their best lives. And then she discovers she's pregnant. And on the day that she's finally able to tell him because he's come home from tour, he. They go to the doctor together, they have this moment, and then he go into his family home gym to work out and do his normal workout. But he, for some reason skips his normal workout and goes out for a run and gets hit by a car. And Thea is just completely plagued by, like, why would he have varied from his, like, normal regimen? And it's a question that really kind of picks at her throughout the next five years, and that's also kind of feeds into her grief syndrome and sort of how things develop in the book.

Interviewer or Host (6:39)

It's very unexpected.

Wendy Katzman (6:42)

Yes. Yes.

Interviewer or Host (6:43)

We'll just leave it at that. Yes, I did read it to find out. And by the way, I started reading my husband, former tennis player. I have a bookstore on the west side of la, and the first page is like this tennis player and the wife of the.

Tracy Dobmire (7:02)

We have a tennis player here too.

Interviewer or Host (7:04)

Yeah.

Wendy Katzman (7:06)

Oh, no. I was a nationally ranked junior and I played college tennis at the University of Michigan. I was a tennis player and then I became a tennis parent. So I raised a kid who was a college All American. So. So I saw both the tennis player and the tennis parent perspective, which is. And Tracy also played tennis. She played tennis in high school, but we knew tennis, and that was part of why we ended up including it. Like, we were looking tennis. We were looking for something where the parents could be over invested in both Sam's career, but then pivot immediately to their granddaughter. Because, like, if Sam had been an accountant, and then they pivoted towards, like, Lucy's times tables, like, not very interesting. So tennis really lent itself to that. And then it also became really plausible that they would be living in the guest house of Sam's parents. And the guest house figures very prominently as a theme, a plot device throughout the story.

Interviewer or Host (8:06)

No. Okay, so. And your last book was about college admissions. Did your son.

Wendy Katzman (8:10)

Did your.

Interviewer or Host (8:11)

Your son. Did your son's tennis play into that was that part of your last book.

Wendy Katzman (8:17)

It actually did not, like, the premise of that book was that. So it was college admissions thriller, and that there was one spot at Stanford, and these three families all had a daughter that wanted to go to Stanford.

Tracy Dobmire (8:30)

Because the athletes took in all of the spots already. So there was only one left for everyone else.

Wendy Katzman (8:36)

So that's. Yeah, that was maybe how it played in. Yeah.

Interviewer or Host (8:40)

So are you getting your ideas from, like, deepest darkest fears?

Tracy Dobmire (8:47)

It's actually kind of. So the idea for this story came out of a series of experiences where.

Wendy Katzman (8:55)

Okay, I'll start with this one. So the way we write as partners.

Interviewer or Host (8:59)

We can back up. How did you start writing. Let me. How did you find each other, start writing together?

Wendy Katzman (9:05)

Okay. Okay. Well, back up. So we've been friends for 25 years. We met actually through my husband, and we all ended up living. Nobody's from Seattle. We all ended up in Seattle raising our families together. And during that time, we had, like, business ideas and book ideas, but they never went anywhere. And we did a lot of community volunteering together. Like, we knew we worked really well together. So we wanted to do something. But it wasn't until both of our families kind of went through a health crisis, and everybody was fine. But it gave us our idea. So the idea was this nonfiction book about female friendship during times of crisis.

Tracy Dobmire (9:43)

Right. So we kind of, well, pushed on.

Wendy Katzman (9:49)

That idea a bit.

Tracy Dobmire (9:50)

We wanted to do it with some humor and some, you know, some amount of levity and just kind of make it interesting and also deep. And as we were kind of working through this idea, there was this one day we were sitting at my kitchen island, and. And we'd been working on it for a while, and I just. I don't know what came over me that day, but I just looked at Wendy and I said, what if we just made the whole thing up? What if we, like, tried to write a novel? And Wendy. Wendy looked at me, and she kind of thought for a second, and then she did her, like, gamer. Like, sure, why not? And so we then literally googled, how do you write a novel? Because neither of us have any experience. I was a lawyer. She was a marketing executive. We were just, like, had no idea.

Wendy Katzman (10:29)

What we were doing.

Interviewer or Host (10:30)

Actually, both of those skill sets are hugely important when you release them.

Tracy Dobmire (10:34)

Yes, yes, yes, it has come in handy.

Zibby Owens (10:36)

Yes.

Tracy Dobmire (10:36)

But not for the actual wrap of the writing.

Interviewer or Host (10:38)

So that's how you teamed up. And then fast forward now. So then you wrote that book.

Tracy Dobmire (10:42)

Yes. So you wrote the first book.

Wendy Katzman (10:44)

So we wrote the first book. Because part of what was happening is we were going through college admissions and when this health crisis happened. And so there was, like, interesting juxtaposition between, like, college admission sometimes feels like life and death. And we were experiencing real life and death. And so it just gave us this idea. So. But the way we write is we have to plot everything. Like, we can't be Panthers because there are two of us. We have to know where everything starts, where everything ends. And so we're right. So we. We have an agent already because we'd written a manuscript that got us an agent. Didn't sell.

Interviewer or Host (11:18)

Bravo.

Jenna Bush Hager (11:19)

Okay, okay.

Wendy Katzman (11:21)

All right. And she was like, go write something else. So here we're writing something else. We are almost there. We've plotted. We're almost through writing it. It's March 2019, and all of a sudden our phones start blowing up with Operation Varsity Blues. And we felt like the headlines were ripped from our manuscript.

Tracy Dobmire (11:39)

And then it happened again. So shortly after that, the next book that we tried to write was a book about youth sports. And the major inciting incident in that manuscript was this very sudden and very unusual medical emergency on the soccer field. And we finished the manuscript, sent it off to our agent, and then we're reading the news, and lo and behold, this exact same emergency had happened on the field to a European soccer player. So we sent our agent the news article, and she said to us, she said, wow, you two are the seers of upmarket fiction. And we thought, what if we were? Wouldn't that be an interesting idea for a premise for a novel? And we had already kind of. We are superstitious on many levels, and we'd already kind of acknowledged that there were certain things that we would never write about to, like, not putting that bad juju out into the universe. So we kind of had, like, a sense of how we wanted to work this story. And so we basically just created the character of Thea to kind of answer this question.

Interviewer or Host (12:44)

So this is life becoming art.

Zibby Owens (12:46)

Yes.

Tracy Dobmire (12:47)

Yeah.

Wendy Katzman (12:48)

Yeah.

Interviewer or Host (12:48)

When Thea is mourning the loss of not just her husband, which is obviously so tragic, but just the entire life that they had laid up every. All of those expectations. Their child, and just so much. And she's going through it. She's just a mess. Obviously. Talk a little bit about how the two of you wrote through that and where all that knowledge and sort of in depth thoughts and feelings about grief comes from.

BetterHelp Advertiser (13:14)

Yeah.

Tracy Dobmire (13:15)

So, I mean, no one gets out of this, you know, life without some personal loss. Right. And so we've definitely had our share. And so there are a lot of, you know, kind of personal kind of emotions and things that, that you try and work through. And I lost my mom when I was pregnant with my oldest son. And so like, that was. I spent, you know, sort of five years in what I would consider almost like a delayed grief process. So definitely kind of like brought a lot of that emotion into the story and tried to look at this idea of grief and how people do it so differently and there's no. There's no one right way. And so we really try and we created, you know, Thea had like a sort of a complex grief issue and. And then that was really kind of juxtaposed by her mother in law's sort of more avoidant like, sort of tendencies. And so they really come into conflict a lot over this like, kind of divergent way of dealing with grief for the same person, actually. So we tried to really just be mindful all the way through of like showing that there are so many different ways that people can move forward in life and that we kind of. You kind of need to have like, grace towards yourself and towards your loved ones. And, um, and just kind of like, I don't know, just like there's just.

Wendy Katzman (14:38)

No one right way to grieve and that grief isn't linear. And it was really important to us to kind of demonstrate that. Yeah.

Interviewer or Host (14:47)

I'm so sorry for your loss.

Wendy Katzman (14:48)

Thank you.

Interviewer or Host (14:49)

It's true. I mean, I'm sure everybody in this room has had something right happen, but I think when you read about it in fiction, it opens up new ways.

Tracy Dobmire (14:57)

To process and ways to feel less.

Interviewer or Host (14:59)

Alone, which the Sylvia did beautifully.

Podcast Host or Narrator (15:01)

Thank you.

Interviewer or Host (15:02)

Also, it's this notion of rebuilding, right, because we watch her as time goes by and she makes new connections and figures out what to do. There's all sorts of bookish references in here too, which was like, really fun. And by the way, we have four amazing authors have to call you out, but Fiona Davis and Linda Lugman, Susie. Susie Orman Schnell and. And Amy Opel are all here in the global podcast and they're amazing. Anyway, the six of you could have like a very long in depth conversation about writing itself, but there was so much in here about what the agent wants and could you use this material? And she didn't want to publish another book because what if that were to jinx something? And yet it was really good. And then she put it.

Wendy Katzman (15:44)

Anyway.

Interviewer or Host (15:45)

Talk a little bit about the meta writing in writing.

Wendy Katzman (15:50)

I mean, I don't think we set out to be like yellowface, where we were this. But it was just reflective of our experience being new writers and like what our first publishing experience was like and poking a little bit of fun at the whole experience. Just maybe like pulling back the veil for people who aren't writers. Like, I mean, that's part of the fun of like getting to learn about a new world that you know nothing about by reading fiction. So we had a really good time doing it.

Interviewer or Host (16:21)

Relative movies to publishing, what were you most surprised about? Like, what should everybody know who's not at the center's baby? Like, oh yeah, that's funny, we should put that in.

Jenna Bush Hager (16:31)

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Wendy Katzman (20:07)

Let's see. I'm not sure it's funny like the rejection. I think that's one of the hardest things.

Tracy Dobmire (20:17)

I mean one thing I guess we could talk about is the Thea has a moment where she's frustrated because she, her publisher is asking her to do all of this work to publicize and promote her own novel. And she's kind of like I already wrote the thing, like can't someone else do that for me? And it's I think something that a lot of authors have felt over time, especially during the social media era. And I think the publishers have kind of started pulling back a bit on promotion in general and kind of like are focusing on a small number of titles. And so it leaves authors to feel like they have to do a little bit more to fill in the void. And some of us are talented at social media, some of us are not so talented. So it's a challenge for team challenge where we try. Yes, Wendy does a great job.

Wendy Katzman (21:09)

But they didn't when I was doing marketing, they hadn't invented social media so it was all new.

Interviewer or Host (21:15)

So what have the two of you learned about each other?

Wendy Katzman (21:19)

Wow. Let's see, what have we learned about each other? I mean I knew you Were a great cook. So I'm not sure we learned that. So we have this deal. So we work at Tracy's house. So I drive and she makes lunch every day.

Interviewer or Host (21:31)

So I mean, use that. The easy end of that deal.

Wendy Katzman (21:34)

Oh, for sure. I think so.

Tracy Dobmire (21:36)

I don't think so.

Wendy Katzman (21:37)

But she doesn't think so.

Tracy Dobmire (21:38)

She likes to drive.

Wendy Katzman (21:39)

Right.

Tracy Dobmire (21:39)

So I'm so happy to just stay in my house and have Wendy come to me. And I just have to.

Interviewer or Host (21:44)

I do.

Tracy Dobmire (21:44)

But it's, you know, she's pretty easy. She's a little picky, you know, narrows the universe of things I can cook, which makes easier your decision.

Interviewer or Host (21:53)

So.

Tracy Dobmire (21:53)

But let's see. I think.

Wendy Katzman (21:55)

Well, okay, I have another one for you. Like, she does. Okay. Two of my favorite words in the English language when they come out of her mouth are what if? So like, she'll wake up in the middle of the night, like, not the best sleeper. And with these, like this, at first blush, seem like harebrained ideas. But I'll get to her house and I'm barely in the door. And she's like, what if? And like, what if we made the whole thing up? But it's just. There's always these what ifs, but what. They're amazing because they just keep pushing us to be better. Like, instead of just accepting whatever we've come up with, like, her mind is always still working and she just comes up with these incredible ideas. So what if?

Tracy Dobmire (22:39)

Well, and I guess playing off of that, the ideas would never come to anything. They would never amount to anything without Wendy because she's got this incredible, like, kind of big picture sense. Like, she's like a puzzle maven, you know, So I feel like she can. She can take any like, amount of like, craziness coming out of my brain and, and sort of distill it down into like. And help it kind of fit in the story that we're trying to work on. So I think together we make such a great team. And I think we knew that going into it, but it's just been confirmed over and over again. And also just the fact that one of our rules together is that we check our egos at the door and we really almost never fight. I mean, people ask us all the time. They're like, you guys must have arguments, right? And we really don't. We just. We have this like, rule that we're going to try and get to like an all caps. Yes on everything that we do. And there's no compromising because compromising and kind of makes Things just kind of fall flat. But we really try and get to like, the thing we're super excited about with exclamation points and, you know, and all that. And so. And the only way to do that is for each of us to kind of come into it every day. And we kill our babies. We kill our. I mean, not our actual babies, but, you know, we kill, you know, like if, if Wendy's written something and I'm like, I don't think that's quite right. I just tell her and she does the same to me. And we don't like. But I've worked really hard on that, you know, and it's mine and I feel really attached to it. We're just like, okay, tell me why. And then we just move on.

Interviewer or Host (24:07)

But who is doing the actual writing? Like, you're sitting there, but you divide up.

Wendy Katzman (24:13)

Okay, well, here's how we do it. So our process, we have a three part process. So as I said, we do all the plotting. So we sit there together plotting everything and what if, what if? And coming up with characters and we end up with about a 70 page outline. I mean, this book was about 70 pages and it's got timelines and character stuff and every single scene and where it started and where it ends and who's in it and what's the conflict. And then we divide up the chapters and it's really whoever wants to write whichever one. There's no rhyme or reason, but we stay very close together in the manuscript. So if we run into a problem and as you finish it, goes into the master document and then we edit it all together.

Tracy Dobmire (25:02)

Oh yeah.

Wendy Katzman (25:04)

Oh, so fun. But it's so fun.

Interviewer or Host (25:08)

We love it. And are you working on a new project?

Wendy Katzman (25:11)

We are.

Tracy Dobmire (25:12)

Yes, we are. So the youth sports manuscript that I mentioned earlier, we're kind of starting to work on a first page, one rewrite of that because we really feel like we've grown a lot. I mean, we started this not knowing how to write at all. And every time we write something, we feel like we get a little bit better. And so now we're kind of revisiting that manuscript and we feel like we still have something that we really want to say on that.

Wendy Katzman (25:36)

So.

Tracy Dobmire (25:36)

But we think we can say it a lot better than we did with that draft. So we're kind of working on that. And then we have another, another fun idea that we're exploring around, like an unlikely friendship. So hopefully we'll, we'll be back when.

Interviewer or Host (25:50)

You, when people are browsing, like they come into the store. There are lots of books.

Wendy Katzman (25:54)

Why would.

Interviewer or Host (25:55)

Why this book? Sell the customer deluxe.

Wendy Katzman (26:00)

Okay. She's gonna turn over to me, the marketer.

Tracy Dobmire (26:03)

I'm tapping out.

Wendy Katzman (26:04)

Yeah. I mean, I think this book offers something. There's stuff in it for everybody. As I said at the beginning, like, there. There are these heavier things of grief and connection and resilience and, like, how we make our way in the world, but there's also, like, elements of, like, whimsy and romance and. And we love, like. So there's a lot of coincidence in there. We've. Because of the things that have happened to us and what led us to write this, we think a lot of that coincidence. And it really gets you thinking, like, how. Like, how do you explain these things? And we've probably all had things like this in our life where there have been these strange coincidences and, like, how does the world work? Is it random? Is there an invisible hand? And so I just think there's a lot in here to think about, but to also talk with other people about and just think about, like, how life works and how we move forward and how we connect with people. And I think right now, people want connection. We're seeing that with everything that's happening in the world. And I think this book, like, offers connection and thoughts about making those connections.

Interviewer or Host (27:13)

That was the thing. I know you said it wasn't very funny. I actually thought parts about writing were quite fun.

Wendy Katzman (27:22)

Good. I appreciate that.

Interviewer or Host (27:24)

And do you. When you were writing or when you focus on your next book, are you like, oh, if only I could make it, like, this book. Like, this would be my ideal. Like only we could. You know, like, what. What books do you love so much that you wish you could.

Wendy Katzman (27:37)

We could be them we wish we.

Tracy Dobmire (27:39)

Could have written or that you just love.

Interviewer or Host (27:41)

And that inspires.

Wendy Katzman (27:42)

Yeah, I'm trying to think.

Tracy Dobmire (27:43)

I mean, I guess I can take you back to the books that. When we were trying to learn how to write, there were a few books that we really dissected, like, you know, along with reading craft books and all of that. But there were a few books that we were just like, how did they do that? Like, it just seemed really. Just remarkable. And one of those was a book by Noah Hawley called Before the Fall. And we just thought it was a fantastic structure. And the hero's journey was super interesting. And it was just one about the earphones. Yes, exactly. Yeah. And so many voices and everything. And then another one, just mostly for pacing. I think primarily was the Dan Brown, the Da Vinci Code. We just were like, you know, how does he keep turning the pages like that? You just. And you just like these little bites, bite sized chapters and everything. So we studied that one a lot. And then what was big little lies, right? Yeah. Another one that we just like the way, like the way that this kind of domestic kind of mystery unfolded and the way that she kind of handled different voices. I don't know. I mean, there are a million amazing books. I feel like every book I read, I'm like, I wish I'd written that. There are so many great books, but those were just three examples of ones that we actually did study because we felt like that something really interesting to teach us.

Interviewer or Host (28:58)

My daughter just read Vinci Code at school and I am so old. Yeah.

Wendy Katzman (29:05)

I'm that right.

Interviewer or Host (29:08)

I read the whole thing. She did not have the same reaction.

Wendy Katzman (29:13)

Interesting. Okay, okay.

Interviewer or Host (29:16)

What advice do you have for aspiring authors?

Wendy Katzman (29:20)

Okay. Yes, Talk about mindset.

Tracy Dobmire (29:22)

Yes, let's talk about mindset. Okay.

Zibby Owens (29:24)

Yeah.

Wendy Katzman (29:24)

So our favorite craft book is actually not a craft book at all. So there is a book called Mindset by Carol Dweck that we read as a parenting book when we were much younger parents. And so the gist of it is that, like, you want to have a growth mindset, which is about effort and attitude and like, working hard to recognize your potential, versus having a fixed mindset where, like, talent is like, like in a finite supply. And when we started this journey, for maybe the first nine months, we didn't really tell anybody what we were doing because we were worried, like, what if we were bad at this? What if we failed? And this, we had this like, aha moment one day recalling this book and realizing, like, we were raising these kids and we're modeling a fixed mindset. And that was just this moment for us. And we realized, like, we needed to embrace this growth mindset and do a better job modeling. And so after that, like those first nine months, we had a lot of conversations, like, should we write the write a book? Like, can we do this? And after that, we stopped having stopped wasting time having those conversations, and we just committed ourselves to trying. So making an effort, putting your butt in your seat, controlling the things you can control, seeing all that rejection and feedback as learning opportunities and just like, doing our best every day. And we can't control whether we get a publishing deal or how many books we sell. We can just control what we do every day. So I would say mindset.

Interviewer or Host (31:07)

Maybe it's not a coincidence it took.

Wendy Katzman (31:09)

Nine months, maybe not.

Interviewer or Host (31:16)

Any other advice?

Tracy Dobmire (31:17)

No, I just I think just echoing everything Wendy said, I think you just in this business, you have to have courage to put yourself out there. And it's not always easy. I think, you know, it can be very vulnerable and excruciating. But I think it's better to try and fail than to not try. And so I think that's probably what I would say.

Wendy Katzman (31:40)

Yeah.

Interviewer or Host (31:41)

Last question. What is your best tennis stroke?

Wendy Katzman (31:44)

Oh, Dandelion Backhand. Yeah. All right.

Interviewer or Host (31:51)

Thank you both so much.

Tracy Dobmire (31:52)

Thank you, thank you.

Zibby Owens (31:56)

Thank you for listening to Totally Booked with Zibby for Summarily Moms don't have time to read Books. If you loved the show, tell a friend, leave a review, follow me on Instagram ippyowens and Spread the word. Thanks so much. Oh, and buy the books.

Wendy Katzman (32:19)

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Podcast Host or Narrator (32:49)

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