Thankful Threes

[00:00:00] Speaker A: Hey, Vicki. [00:00:01] Speaker B: How are you? I'm good. [00:00:02] Speaker C: How are? [00:00:03] Speaker A: Good. [00:00:04] Speaker B: Good. [00:00:05] Speaker A: Welcome back to our pre Thanksgiving, pre holiday episode, episode five. [00:00:13] Speaker B: I'm super excited about this Thanksgiving. [00:00:17] Speaker A: I'm kind of well, I'm excited about the holiday season. Less so about Thanksgiving itself. Although, you know, who doesn't look forward to the full on food fest that's going to happen? Even though it's just going to be. [00:00:32] Speaker B: My mom and I this year. [00:00:34] Speaker C: We are doing like a smaller version of a Thanksgiving here, but my brother's coming over from Charlote with his adorable family, and it's going to be like a mini family thing up here in North Carolina, whereas everybody else is in Florida. So it's like a satellite Thanksgiving. [00:00:55] Speaker A: Yeah. We have a sort of divide and conquer thing happening in that. Dave is in Maryland, but Christmas christmas is when everybody is going to be here. [00:01:07] Speaker C: That's cool. [00:01:08] Speaker A: And the house will be full. So we have that issue where my house is under construction. It's not yet ready for primetime, so. [00:01:18] Speaker C: You probably don't have the ability to. [00:01:21] Speaker B: Do as many traditions that you usually have. [00:01:25] Speaker C: I know when you move, sometimes it takes a little while to get your old traditions back or you have to start new ones. [00:01:32] Speaker A: Well, I put the tree up yesterday, so I committed the crime of putting up and decorating the tree before Thanksgiving. [00:01:39] Speaker C: I did, in fact, do that. [00:01:42] Speaker B: You didn't do that. It's like a travesty. [00:01:46] Speaker A: I did. [00:01:47] Speaker B: I'm owning it. Okay. [00:01:50] Speaker A: I'm owning it. [00:01:52] Speaker C: I've seen other trees up, so you're not the only one. [00:01:54] Speaker A: But I have stockings up. I feel like the family room now is at least together. It's like one area of my life that is together. Part of it is because I actually have presents that are getting delivered today while Dave is out of town. And now I have a place where I can wrap and put those things so I don't have to hide them. [00:02:17] Speaker C: Sounds like a plan. That's a good idea. [00:02:18] Speaker B: Yeah, that is my goal. [00:02:20] Speaker C: So do you have any other traditions. [00:02:24] Speaker B: That you guys do? [00:02:26] Speaker A: We do for Christmas? We have a lot of Christmas traditions, and I'm really looking forward to inflicting them on Dave's girls, because they're coming this year. When I was growing up, it wasn't like a free for all. You didn't get up on Christmas morning and run down and start opening presents. [00:02:47] Speaker C: No. [00:02:48] Speaker A: You stayed in your room until the grown ups were ready. And then if you had to walk through the room where the tree was to get to the kitchen or wherever it is you eat breakfast, they would. [00:03:00] Speaker B: Put a bag on your head. [00:03:03] Speaker A: That's probably a little extreme, the closing of eyes or whatever. And you were allowed to have your stocking while everybody had breakfast, but you had to wait through the whole breakfast and coffee and the whole thing before you could go into the room where the tree is. [00:03:19] Speaker C: I can picture little six year old Carolyn walking through the living room with a bag on her head? [00:03:26] Speaker A: Can you picture 26 year old Carolyn getting subjected to yeah, it's not an age thing. [00:03:37] Speaker B: I might have to talk to your mom about this one. [00:03:39] Speaker A: Yeah, good luck with that. The issue here is that I live in a house with stairs now, and that seems like a safety hazard. So we might not do that. But we are probably going to have to say, look, and actually the stockings and the Christmas tree are in the same room now with the kitchen. So that would be pointless. But don't run down there and start opening up stuff without everybody. We're going to have breakfast first. And you can do your stockings and we'll do stockings and coffee and whatever. And then we will do presents that will sort of modified. [00:04:16] Speaker C: Ours was like, we didn't open presents until after breakfast, but breakfast was cinnamon rolls. Big grands cinnamon rolls and coffee. And everybody looked forward to that. [00:04:31] Speaker B: That was good. [00:04:32] Speaker C: We did some stuff like, oh, my dad and Stepmom, she does this wonderful prime rib dinner on Christmas Eve that it is worth driving to Florida for. Oh, she is such a good cook. I am not a good cook. She's awesome. [00:04:53] Speaker A: Dave's family Italian. So Christmas Eve, they do Feast of the Seven Fishes. [00:04:58] Speaker C: Have you heard of. [00:05:02] Speaker A: It'S? It's mind blowing. It is a spread where they have at least seven seafood dishes, seven different seafood dishes. So starting from appetizer through. [00:05:17] Speaker B: And it is amazing. [00:05:20] Speaker A: It is essentially an entire afternoon of feasting. [00:05:25] Speaker C: That sounds fabulous. [00:05:29] Speaker A: Aside from it being delightful because it takes such a long time because you're moving through. People are sipping on Prosecco or whatever it is they're having. So you might be loaded by the time you get to dessert. But the food is always delightful. Dave is a good cook. Dave's family. Dave's brother is an amazing cook. [00:05:55] Speaker C: Oh, nice. What exactly is a seafood dessert? [00:05:59] Speaker A: Well, I don't think they have seafood for dessert, but they will have a minimum of seven seafood things. [00:06:05] Speaker C: I would like to challenge Dave to a seafood dessert. [00:06:10] Speaker A: That sounds like a lose lose all the way around. Frankly, I don't know that I would do. [00:06:16] Speaker C: David david and I started a new tradition not long ago when we lived in Tampa, hyde park. There's a few streets there and historic area. They'd put all their lights up and. [00:06:27] Speaker B: They'Re all, like, pretty organized. [00:06:31] Speaker C: And we would drive through there just for fun, look at the lights, and then we would go to Krispy Kreme and get hot donuts. [00:06:39] Speaker A: Well, super bummed. The Krispy Kreme here closed down right before I moved here. Like, it was here when I was looking at houses. When they're like, come to Hendersonville, we have a Krispy Kreme. And now no Krispy Kreme. But they do seem to have a lot of really cool holiday things which I'm really looking forward to checking out in this little Hallmark town. [00:07:01] Speaker B: Okay, that's cool. [00:07:03] Speaker C: One tradition I would suggest to any listeners might be to watch Saturday Night Live Christmas edition every year so that you can hear the good old Svetti Balls routine with Alec Baldwin. It's hilarious. [00:07:18] Speaker B: You could probably find it on the Internet, too. [00:07:22] Speaker A: All right. [00:07:22] Speaker B: So I thought it would be fun. [00:07:26] Speaker A: Seeing as this is the time of year where people start thinking about all the things that we're thankful for, that I started grouping lists of things that I like, and because I can't come up with just one anything, I thought it would be cool to pick three things. Three things in a number of categories that I like in no particular order. And just to make this fun, I haven't shared my three things with Vicki. So will our lists overlap? I don't know. Will our Venn diagram have some common items? I'm not sure. All right, let's start with some writing things. What books did others recommend to you. [00:08:21] Speaker B: That made an impact on the way that you I've got I have three. [00:08:30] Speaker C: Okay. [00:08:30] Speaker B: So when I was in my MFA. [00:08:34] Speaker C: Program, tony D'Souza suggested Isaac's Storm by Eric Larson. And that is one of my favorites, and partially because of the research that's in it, and partially because it's Galveston, where my family, my mother, was born. And but is that the flood? [00:08:53] Speaker A: Is that the big flood that we talked about in the last okay, that's cool. [00:08:56] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:08:57] Speaker C: 1900 hurricane, and it just wiped out the entire island. It was crazy. But what I got from that was his research is amazing. He went there and he just hung out at the library. And also he describes photographs so well because in a story like that, when you need a lot of photographs but you can't use them or you don't want to go out and get permission for every one of them to be in your book, then you learn how to describe the photos so the person doesn't have to see. [00:09:34] Speaker A: That's really cool. What else you got? [00:09:36] Speaker B: Okay? [00:09:37] Speaker C: I got Liars Club by Mary Carr. She really knows how to show you a screwed up family. [00:09:46] Speaker A: Oh, that's fantastic. I haven't actually heard of that book, so that's cool. [00:09:51] Speaker B: I'm going to look it up. [00:09:52] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:09:53] Speaker A: For those of you we'll put a list. We'll attach a list so that you can go find these things. [00:10:00] Speaker C: Her voice in that is great. She just owns the crazy in that. [00:10:04] Speaker B: I love it. [00:10:05] Speaker C: And then I have. [00:10:07] Speaker B: You don't look like anyone I know. [00:10:10] Speaker C: By Heather Sellers. And that's because it's formatted as, like, a dual timeline. So half of the chapters are, like, her childhood and showing how weird and crazy that was with her mom and dad. And the other is her figuring out it's present day, her figuring out what this prosopagnosia is. She didn't know what it was, why she couldn't recognize faces, which is pretty amazing. [00:10:41] Speaker A: I remember she actually wrote an article at the beginning of the Pandemic about the Pandemic. Yeah, I read she caught COVID, like, at the jump. And she wrote a thing about her experience back when we were all super terrified because nobody really understood it. [00:11:01] Speaker C: I will say that that article was. [00:11:04] Speaker B: So down, not just down to earth. [00:11:09] Speaker C: But it terrified me about not being able to breathe. And I think there was one point where she just sat in bed and just tried to keep breathing. And if that's all you're focused on, that terrifies me. [00:11:23] Speaker A: I've had pneumonia before, so I could definitely relate to that struggle to get air. Yeah, it was terrifying. So we'll see if we can find that too, because I thought that was. [00:11:38] Speaker C: Really what are your books? [00:11:40] Speaker A: That's a good list. All right, so the first book, I don't actually have a copy of it to wave in front of you because I'm sure I lent it to somebody. That's what happens. It's called attachments by rainbow. [00:11:55] Speaker B: Rowell. Are you familiar with her? She's very, very funny. [00:12:00] Speaker A: Anyway, attachments is a novel. But it's a novel told mostly in emails back and forth between two women who work at a newspaper, I believe. And then the other part of the story is the third shift. It guy whose job it is to make sure that people aren't using company equipment for personal things. But he gets so caught up in reading all of their messages that he feels like he feels like he knows these ladies. And it's this whole interesting thing, but it's a different way of reading a story. That's what I got out of this, is that the story is told in part entirely through this conversation via work emails, personal emails on a work computer, back and forth between these women who work in this office and then the guy who feels like he's creeping, although it's his job. And then it gets to some point where he feels like he can't tell. [00:13:05] Speaker B: Them about it now because he's been. [00:13:08] Speaker A: Kind of listening in for a while. [00:13:10] Speaker B: Anyway, good book. [00:13:11] Speaker A: Very funny. The next one I actually have. It's called Where'd You Go, Bernadette? You may be familiar with this book because they made a movie out of it. [00:13:22] Speaker C: Oh, nice. [00:13:23] Speaker A: With Kate Blanchett, I believe. And this book was really fun because, again, the whole first half of this book is told through articles collected by Bernadette's daughter, trying to figure out where her mom went, what happened to her mom. And so it's emails and whatever. It's also very funny. And the thing that I took from this story was how you can take one incident, one thing that happens. In this instance, it's like an altercation that happened in the school drop off line in the morning in the cars from multiple points of view, and how everyone is absolutely sure that the way that they understood it is the way that it happened. But you get that kind of omniscient view of what happened when you get to see all these different things told through artifacts. Again, so very clever. [00:14:27] Speaker B: I loved it. [00:14:28] Speaker A: I thought it was really good. And it helped because at the time I was working on a project that had a lot of components like that, and I needed to think about how can I use artifacts or use these other components to help further my story. [00:14:41] Speaker B: The last one. Number one. [00:14:45] Speaker A: Ladies detective Agency. And this was recommended by a friend a Bajillion years ago who was like, hey, I found these books, and they're like mystery books, but they're really well written, like literary fiction and because there's that snobbery around, genre fiction. [00:15:05] Speaker B: Whatever. [00:15:06] Speaker A: So anyway, I actually started this, and the HBO did a series for one season. That's excellent. [00:15:14] Speaker B: If you can dig it up about. [00:15:17] Speaker A: The number one ladies Detective agency. It takes place in Botswana and it's delightful. And Alexander McCall Smith is delightful. He came to Gauche College in Towson in Maryland once, and a friend of mine and I went to see him talk and got to chat with him a little bit. [00:15:37] Speaker B: He's a delightful human. [00:15:40] Speaker A: So those are my three. All right. And you noticed there were no craft books in there because I was like, no craft books allowed. [00:15:51] Speaker B: But. [00:15:53] Speaker A: You and I both have a problem with the collecting and enjoying of craft books. Maybe me more than you. Maybe I'm projecting, maybe I have a problem with craft books. But I love them and I can't keep myself from getting them. If they look at I get them. [00:16:10] Speaker C: And then I read most of them. Most of it, yeah, put it on the shelf. [00:16:14] Speaker A: And I my to be read craft book list is large. Anyway, I have some unusual and I'll start with this one because we might both have this one on our list. [00:16:27] Speaker B: This the greatest on writing. [00:16:31] Speaker C: Stephen King. On writing. [00:16:34] Speaker A: Yes. If somebody asks me what's a good book to help me know, write better, whatever, I do this one. And I do it because it's accessible, it's not pretentious, it's practical. He gives practical advice. And half of the story is about when he got hit by a van in the woods in Maine and his process of recovering. So it's a little bit memoirish and a little know, helpful advice from your Uncle Steve. [00:17:10] Speaker B: Sort of. [00:17:11] Speaker C: Yes. I like it because there's a lot of discipline in there. Taught me a lot of discipline about getting my butt in the yeah. [00:17:21] Speaker A: And his thing about making time for writing, I mean, reading reading is not a luxury. Reading is necessary for the writer to be able to write well. All right, so then at this point, this is where I diverge. My next book is called Writing Mysteries. This was edited by Sue Grafton. But the thing about this is it's a collection of other writers in the genre and their advice from everything from pacing to getting an agent to doing amateur sleuth or writing a series or whatever. So as in wannabe mystery writer? Mystery thriller writer. I found this to be super helpful. And then lastly, I'm calling this a craft book. Okay. [00:18:18] Speaker C: I might be the judge of that, though. Okay. [00:18:21] Speaker A: The Crime Writers Reference Guide. [00:18:24] Speaker C: Very nice. [00:18:25] Speaker A: This has all kinds of things in here about police jargon and military law and stuff about criminals. And I have a bookmark, by the way. I have a bookmark in the arson section because, yeah, my Internet search history is terrifying. But anyway, I have a bookmark in the arson section because I was working on a piece that had a house fire in it. Anyway, so those are my craft books. What have you got? [00:18:58] Speaker C: I got three. And even though your last one is a reference book, you reminded me of a reference book that I have that I love in this one. And I'll do this real quick because it wasn't on my list, but a few years back, probably a couple of decades maybe, I entered a contest in Writer's Digest, and it was one where you change a literary term or writing term by one letter and create a new one. So I took flash Fiction and I changed the H to K. So it. [00:19:39] Speaker B: Was flask fiction, and it is flash. [00:19:43] Speaker C: Fiction written under the influence of alcohol or whatever. So I won. And I got a box of books in the mail from Writers Digest and one of them being called a flip dictionary, which I don't think you can get today. [00:20:01] Speaker B: Today we have the Internet, though, so. [00:20:03] Speaker C: This was before we had the Google, I guess you can look up a word or a phrase in there and it will give you other words and phrases. So like a dictionary on steroids, I. [00:20:19] Speaker B: Guess, where you look up a word. [00:20:23] Speaker A: I'm all about thesaurus.com I'm on thesaurus I used it yesterday for work. I wrote a press release. I need another word for blah. [00:20:35] Speaker C: Yeah, we did that a lot. So this would have been like, I guess, an old timey version of that. But my craft books are the Practice of Creative Writing by Heather Sellers. I love that because it teaches you how to get deeper into your writing as opposed to just the form. And there's so many examples of writing in it. [00:21:00] Speaker B: It's really good. Another one is editing. [00:21:05] Speaker C: It's about editing. Seven drafts by Alison K Williams. And I like this one because I've had writers come to me thinking, that the draft they're bringing me, which is their first draft, and they'll tell me that, just edit this and we're done. And that is not how it works. [00:21:24] Speaker A: My sweet summer child. Let's talk about revision and how this works. [00:21:30] Speaker C: Yes, seven drafts is really great way of breaking down all the editing and teaching you how to focus one draft on just one or two things and get it done. [00:21:40] Speaker A: I have to do that, too. I've never read this book, although I'm going to read it now. I do this too, but it's because I get distracted, so it's overwhelming to me to try and go through and do a revision and try and make it all right the first time. Right. I have to go through in passes with specific things that I'm looking that I didn't know that other people had. [00:22:06] Speaker B: Thought that up and wrote a book about. So, yeah, that's a good one. [00:22:10] Speaker C: I like it. [00:22:11] Speaker B: And then the last one is you. [00:22:13] Speaker C: Can Write your Family History by Sharon DeBartolo Carmack. And that one's about kind of like this one is a little bit more form. But when you get into writing your family history, it gets difficult when you go from generation to it makes it causes people to jump, like, or list five generations of people, and the reader gets lost after two. And it just helps you find the right format to do that in and to include history in the area and stuff. [00:22:49] Speaker A: It's good. That sounds really helpful. I've tried to write some stories from my childhood things. There was an incident where I got bitten by a dog in the face when I was a kid in a park. And I've tried to write that story a couple of times, and I don't think it's been particularly successful yet, partly because my memory I mean, I was seven or something at the time, I have my memory of what happened, but I can't remember exactly who else was there. And it turns out my family members can't seem to agree on exactly who was there either. Their memories don't align so weird. [00:23:40] Speaker C: But memory is incredible. I mean, I'm digitizing my dad's collection of slides and I found a camping trip, and I found my friend Lisa in there from middle school, and I didn't remember that she went with us on a camping trip until now. I remember, and it's like, really? [00:23:59] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. [00:24:02] Speaker A: So those are my three writing tips or exercises that you still use. I'll let you go first this time. [00:24:12] Speaker C: Okay, well, I have two. One of them said one's the biggie, though. So mood music playlist. I have a playlist called Memoir Mood, and it's just songs that make me think about a certain time frame or get me in the mood of if I'm writing a scene that's back in. [00:24:34] Speaker A: The 80s, it's got some stuff actually that's fascinating. I wouldn't have thought of that. When I'm teaching class sometimes on breaks and things, I will play you know how YouTube will have those background music for studying with soothing mountain scenes and stuff? I will do that. And I can remember when I was in school playing like, Pandora lists and things that were classical for studying or music that has no words so that you're hearing it, but it's not as distracting. But anyway, that's fascinating. [00:25:14] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:25:14] Speaker C: I have another one called Writing Cave. So when I'm actually doing the writing, I have that music. I have piano music and guitar music with no lyrics. [00:25:24] Speaker B: That's cool. [00:25:24] Speaker C: And that plays soft in the background, just like you mentioned. But yeah, writing cave play. [00:25:29] Speaker B: Love it. [00:25:31] Speaker C: Okay. The other tip I have is to I mean, I don't have exercises that. [00:25:37] Speaker B: I'm using, but annotating a book is. [00:25:42] Speaker A: Like, oh, I hated doing that. [00:25:44] Speaker C: So many things. [00:25:45] Speaker A: Oh, I hate it. [00:25:47] Speaker C: I didn't mind it. But it keeps you reading and rereading. [00:25:51] Speaker B: Some of your books so you could. [00:25:54] Speaker C: Go back to one of your favorites and annotate that or parts of it and what it teaches you techniques you might learn a new technique. Like, for instance, learning how to write and describe pictures. I got from Annotating Isaac Storm for those of you who have inspirational passages. [00:26:15] Speaker A: Yeah. If you haven't been through an MFA program where they give you a stack of books and they're like, read and annotate these, that's what you do. You read the books that were assigned to you and then you have to go through and take notes along the way and yikes. [00:26:37] Speaker C: I'm not afraid to write in my books either. [00:26:40] Speaker A: Oh, I don't write in my books. My books are my books are I. [00:26:49] Speaker B: Write in them sacred. [00:26:52] Speaker C: And sometimes that helps you get your books back when you lend them. [00:26:56] Speaker A: Oh, yeah. I don't remember who I lent that. You know what? And it was probably Maryland people. I probably lent books out to people in Maryland. And then I packed up and moved. So I'm never seeing those things again. All right, my three writing tips that I still use, one, Jennifer Vandervis, who. [00:27:16] Speaker B: Was in our program, MFA program. [00:27:20] Speaker A: Yes, thank you. She had us, in our workshop session, create a sensory detail, something small, but. [00:27:34] Speaker B: That really. [00:27:37] Speaker A: Puts the reader in that space in some way. And it could be the introduction of a color. It could be a sound. I remember in the exercise that we did, it was the sound of my character's heels clicking across the marble floor through, like, a corporate lobby to get to the elevator bank to go up and how it echoed in that big open space. And that was the detail. But I find now that one of the passes that I go through and I don't know if there are seven of them that I go back through and I do revision. I look for places to add those moments. So I still do that. We did that in school. All right, so that's one, the second one is eliminating as many words as possible. This one I owe to Jason Ockert. And he had us write flash fiction, like 1000 word story on something. And we would come to class with that and then he would make us cut it down to 500 words. [00:28:43] Speaker C: Oh, wow. [00:28:44] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:28:44] Speaker A: If you've never done that, I recommend and it works, by the way, for memos, for work emails, for other things. It doesn't have to be. [00:29:01] Speaker B: Just stories. [00:29:04] Speaker A: And you can go back in after you cut it down to 500 words or cut it down, you can go back in and add some clarifying stuff to make it make sense. But the process of really making choices. [00:29:17] Speaker B: About what works for you and what you don't need is a step way too many people skip when they're editing. That's true. [00:29:30] Speaker C: It really makes you focus on it. That's good. [00:29:33] Speaker B: I like that. [00:29:33] Speaker A: And then lastly, jennifer. Again, unusual word combinations. To spark curiosity, she took, like, a list of adjectives on one side of the room and a list of nouns on the other side of the room, and you had to pick two that, on the face of it, do not go together at all. And then that will lead you to something about in what circumstance might this make sense? It's a little bit like coming up with your band name, things like those random word generator things, and that will kind of get you moving through. And I've had whole stories when you. [00:30:15] Speaker B: Think about whole stories come out of that or whole characters come out of. [00:30:20] Speaker C: That, I remember some of those exercises. [00:30:22] Speaker B: Like on the similar to that, and. [00:30:25] Speaker C: I enjoyed those where you take things that you yeah. That aren't even related at all. I love those. [00:30:32] Speaker A: It's a great way. You know, I have a crazy idea board. If I come across a word, and I really like that word, I don't know how I'm going to use it, but I don't want to forget it. I will put it on my crazy. [00:30:42] Speaker B: Idea board, and then later there might. [00:30:45] Speaker A: Be a way to attach that to something else. All right, three subjects you'd like to learn more about. [00:30:55] Speaker C: Well, I would like to learn more digitizing home movies. I've been digitizing prints and negatives and slides, but I've never gotten into the home movies or audio tapes or anything like that. So I'd like to learn how to do that. And another is I want to learn how to write grants. [00:31:21] Speaker A: That's practical. Yeah. [00:31:23] Speaker C: Well, the North Carolina humanities has just put out their deadlines for grants, and I'm seriously looking into you know, I was in a master's certificate program when I was still in Tampa, and I had to leave when we moved, but that's one of the things that was at the end of that, and I. [00:31:43] Speaker B: Didn'T finish, so didn't get there. [00:31:45] Speaker A: Yikes podcasting is on the top of my list. I mean, we are stumbling our way through this. [00:31:52] Speaker B: We are. [00:31:53] Speaker A: Thank you. Thank you, listeners, for bearing with us as we figure things out. But yeah, so this has been kind of a whole new world, so I'm looking forward to learning more about that. And then I put pasta making on my list. Have you ever tried to make oh, you said not so much about the home cook thing. I tried to make pasta from scratch once, and it was a disaster. [00:32:17] Speaker B: Disaster, disaster. [00:32:20] Speaker C: I've never made pasta from scratch, and I never really wanted to. I'm one of those people where if I find a good, like, lasagna at Metzaluna's downtown is so fantastic that I've given up making lasagna. [00:32:36] Speaker B: Why bother? Okay. [00:32:39] Speaker A: I made lasagna last week, actually. It was delicious. Yeah. But I've never made my own pasta, so I'm learning. In a couple of weeks, Dave and I are going to go make some cheese ravioli. I think it's cheese ravioli. We're going to make ravioli of some kind. There's a little place that teaches people how to make pasta downtown, so I'm excited about that. And then lastly, I don't really understand social media all that much, so I'm enlisting one of Dave's daughters to try and help explain some things to me. [00:33:10] Speaker B: Good. That's cool. [00:33:11] Speaker A: I can't figure it out. [00:33:12] Speaker B: I'm too old. [00:33:15] Speaker A: I'm above the threshold. [00:33:16] Speaker C: Always be learning. Always be learning. [00:33:19] Speaker B: I don't remember who said that, but I like it. [00:33:22] Speaker A: All right. Fave things about North Carolina so far. [00:33:27] Speaker C: I love the small town festivals and. [00:33:31] Speaker A: Events that's on my list. This is the first time this is the first time we have an intersection. [00:33:38] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:33:39] Speaker A: Community activities and all the festivals and everything going on here. Yes. [00:33:43] Speaker C: I mean, we have a tree lighting. [00:33:46] Speaker B: Coming up Friday in downtown. [00:33:50] Speaker C: They're lighting up the huge tree. We were downtown last night, and the huge tree is up in front of the courthouse, but it's dark, and it just kind of looms there right now. So Friday they light it, and it's a whole thing. And then the following Friday is the old fashioned Christmas, and they have, like, carriage rides, Santa Claus, carolers walking around. It's really cool. [00:34:13] Speaker A: It's a freaking Hallmark movie. It is a Hallmark movie town. I'm all in on the Hallmark movies right now, too, but it's 24/7 Christmas movies on Hallmark all about it. It's a. [00:34:27] Speaker C: Biltmore movie. The yeah. Is coming out, and part of here. [00:34:33] Speaker A: I don't even care if the movie is any good. I'm in. I'm in. [00:34:37] Speaker B: Oh, yeah. [00:34:39] Speaker C: There's a scene at a train station, which they did here in downtown Hendersonville because we have a prehistoric really? We have an historic they filmed it here. [00:34:48] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:34:48] Speaker C: And David was there. He was watching it. I was out of town, but he was watching it. Yeah. [00:34:54] Speaker A: I didn't even know that. All right, so that comes out this coming weekend, right? [00:35:00] Speaker C: I believe it does. [00:35:01] Speaker B: On Sunday, I think. [00:35:02] Speaker C: All right, we can double check. [00:35:05] Speaker A: I'm definitely in for that. [00:35:07] Speaker C: And then the other thing is just being outside, like, hiking, eating, drinking, listening to music, walking around. Like, sometimes after dinner, David and I will you want to go walk downtown? [00:35:20] Speaker A: Sure. [00:35:20] Speaker C: Let's go. You couldn't do that in Florida. So for me, that's really big. [00:35:25] Speaker A: You also can't do that in. [00:35:29] Speaker C: Could for different reasons. [00:35:31] Speaker A: You could once no, I joke, but no, I mean, you could have gone down to, like, Fells Point or you could have don't, but I wouldn't recommend okay, so that's a good list. And it's sort of like one of the items on my list is similar but not the same. And I called it Serene Quiet, meaning there are a lot of places here where there are beautiful views. And, I mean, even driving down the mountain I live on, to get to the street now that the leaves are. [00:36:04] Speaker B: Down, you can see from the height. [00:36:08] Speaker A: You can see mountains in the distance. It's really nice if I have to go into Asheville for something or I have to. Driving just driving in the mountains is really cool. We had a boondoggle trip a couple. [00:36:23] Speaker B: Of gosh a week before last or. [00:36:26] Speaker A: Something, where Dave and I drove to Tennessee and we went to Bucky's, which is an experience. We had to drive through the mountains. It was gorgeous. Peak fall, everything. It was lovely. So I have that. And then there are places like Jump Off Rock that you can go to. [00:36:45] Speaker B: And just sit and look at the beautiful view. [00:36:52] Speaker A: And they're everywhere. They're waterfalls and mountains and it's just everywhere. And then lastly, I love that this area has embraced coffee. As a writer who is drinking coffee while we're doing this out of my Tavern on the Green Mug. [00:37:15] Speaker B: Oh, nice coffee houses. [00:37:18] Speaker C: Are there's so many of them here? Yes, it's great. And if it's the afternoon, it could be a cidery or a brewery or a winery. [00:37:32] Speaker A: Yes, all good things. All right, what are you looking forward to in 2024? [00:37:43] Speaker C: I'm looking forward to volunteering. I haven't volunteered since I was in Tampa, so I'd like to do or I'm planning to. I actually went to the genealogy society here in Historical Society, and I went to their meeting and they said, oh, we're looking for volunteers. And they rattled off a bunch of stuff, and one of them was to help with the journal. [00:38:10] Speaker B: And I said, oh, I would like to help. [00:38:12] Speaker C: So I'll be volunteering with them on. [00:38:16] Speaker B: Their journal, and I'm excited about that. [00:38:18] Speaker C: And then also piloting a mentorship program that I'm building. So next year I'll be piloting one and hopefully the following year have something in stone. [00:38:33] Speaker B: Yeah, that sounds fun. What about you? [00:38:38] Speaker A: I am really looking forward to sort of getting to know Hendersonville and North Carolina a little better. I mean, I haven't been here a full year yet, so getting through that, settling into the house customizing. [00:38:57] Speaker C: Thinking about. [00:38:58] Speaker A: What I'm going to be doing with the guest rooms and going on. Then lastly, I'm looking forward to taking some time every year. Writers are like, Well, I would like to write more. I would like to read more. And I'm all about that, but I've been branching out this year a little bit and doing some voiceover stuff for work, and we have this podcast, which is new, and I feel like this is sort of the beginning of maybe a wider range of media related cool things to learn about and get involved in. [00:39:33] Speaker B: So I'm looking forward to. [00:39:37] Speaker A: Getting a little better at this, making this a little bit easier, and branching out and doing some cool new things. [00:39:43] Speaker B: Cool. [00:39:44] Speaker C: That sounds fun. I know. One thing I learned just a couple of years ago is I used to think or have the attitude that when you go into something new, that you have to learn everything first before you try it. But no, you have to experiment. Experiment is my new word. [00:40:02] Speaker A: Yeah. And not only that, you have to kind of get in there and be all right messing up. Like, I have certain family members who do not enjoy the process of learning new things. They feel stupid. [00:40:15] Speaker B: They feel dumb. [00:40:16] Speaker A: I expect to mess up when I try new things. Plus, sometimes if you don't get in. [00:40:23] Speaker B: There, it'll be too overwhelming. [00:40:25] Speaker A: You think, this is what other people who know more than me do. [00:40:30] Speaker B: They don't. [00:40:33] Speaker C: Impostor syndrome, which writers have, naturally, that you have to fight against. [00:40:39] Speaker B: So I hate that. I'm with you. [00:40:41] Speaker C: Yeah. I am an imposter lots of the time. But you don't tell anybody that. [00:40:48] Speaker A: Your secret is safe with me and everybody listening. All right, three favorite podcasts, other than ours, obviously. [00:41:00] Speaker C: Yes. So ours is a given. I have a writer related one called. [00:41:09] Speaker B: Right Minded with Brooke. Good title. Yeah. [00:41:13] Speaker C: And it's spelled right, like writing right Minded. And she has a lot of decent guests on there that's just really nice. And then goes over is she used to be with a big like one of the big five publishers, I believe, and she got really frustrated with what they were doing, and she went out on her own. So she's running a hybrid publishing house called she Writes Press, which is really good. I mean, they put out some really amazing stuff, mostly women. She she does that. Another one is Family Secrets by Danny Shapiro, which is hey, it's Family Secrets. [00:41:59] Speaker A: This is, like, right up your alley. [00:42:01] Speaker C: Yes, it is right up my alley. And each time she does an episode, she has a writer on or a person on that has figured out a secret in their family, and they've written about, so and the last one is for fun. It's called smart lists with Jason Bateman, will Arnett and. [00:42:23] Speaker A: I've. I haven't listened to that podcast, but I've seen it, so that's good. [00:42:28] Speaker C: It's good. And their little trick is between the three of them, one of them brings the guest and doesn't tell the other. [00:42:35] Speaker B: Two until they get into the podcast. [00:42:38] Speaker C: Yeah. So they get very excited when they've had some pretty good guests on, so. [00:42:43] Speaker B: I would check into that one. [00:42:45] Speaker A: All right, well, my three well, first is Serial. The very first podcast I ever listened to ever anywhere, was Cereal the first season. And that was super impactful, not only because I got used to the whole listening to a podcast thing, but because it took place in Baltimore and in Woodlawn, which, by the way, I worked out of for a while, which is on the kind of western side of Baltimore City. And I know everybody has probably listened to this whole tale, but it follows the case of a high schooler who was convicted of murdering his ex girlfriend. Yeah, and it follows that case. And the layers that make this really interesting are the sort of history Baltimore City has with police corruption that came out later, like after this case. But we've had multiple mayors indicted for things. [00:44:04] Speaker B: We've had police chiefs go to prison for things. [00:44:10] Speaker A: We've had the Gun trace task force thing where cops were stealing from drug dealers and committing crimes, and there was all of this stuff going on. And that's the environment in which this one case happens. And so you really do have to come at this with all of these. [00:44:32] Speaker B: Questions about how this all shook out. [00:44:36] Speaker A: Anyway, it's fabulous that's Sarah Koenig Serial the first, had I think they're doing some other seasons, too, and they do different topics and things. My second favorite would be Criminal. I'm sure this comes as no surprise. Phoebe judge. It's fantastic. It's not like a true crime podcast in the sense that they're following, like, the Long Island Serial Killer or something. It's about small, interesting things that may or may not be against the law. Interesting things. There was like, a girl whose boyfriend got her into counterfeiting when they were dating or whatever, and they would print up their own money on a color printer. And what happened with that relationship and with that thing, just interesting, fun little short episodes. There's a town in Florida, you would love it, where there was a whole town and they were taking advantage of those clauses, you know, when you sign up for your benefits and you get money if you lose a limb or something, like accidental death and dismemberment. But the dismemberment part. So there was a whole town in Florida who were dismembering their own limbs for the money that they were getting. [00:45:50] Speaker C: From what town is that, do you know? [00:45:54] Speaker A: I'd have to look it up. But crazy stories like that that are random and kind of just on the fringes of whatever. So that's a great one. And then lastly, I'm almost embarrassed about it, but I absolutely love the New Heights podcast, which are the, you know, one playing for Philadelphia, one playing for Kansas City, all very public right now because of the Taylor Swift thing, but they are hilarious. And I sort of found the podcast before the Taylor Swift thing because I watched Jason Kelsey's documentary. There's a documentary about him in last season. It follows him from the beginning to the end of the season where they meet in the Kelsey Bowl because he's deciding if he's going to retire or not. So, anyway, that's a really interesting documentary. So those are my three. [00:46:53] Speaker C: That's funny. Are you ready? Last night, real quick here, we were playing a Pure Prairie League record on our record player. Saw Vince Gill on there. Didn't know Vince Gill was a member of Pure Prairie League, but he is now a member of the Eagles. And then we were talking about the. [00:47:12] Speaker A: Because they've lost some brought on they. [00:47:16] Speaker C: Brought in Vince Gill and Glenn Fry's. [00:47:21] Speaker B: No. Yes. Deacon fry his son. [00:47:25] Speaker C: Anyway, I was looking at who's the saxophone player for the Eagles, so I did a Google search, and all I. [00:47:32] Speaker B: Could get is, like, Jason Kelsey playing. [00:47:37] Speaker C: The saxophone for the team, the Eagles. So I had to go through five pages of stuff to find my answer for the band. [00:47:47] Speaker A: Yeah, their podcast is really entertaining, and a lot of it is football related, but they're just funny. [00:47:56] Speaker C: I'm going to listen to that. [00:47:57] Speaker A: I've been watching that. All right, let's play truth or fiction? Are you ready? [00:48:02] Speaker C: Oh, okay. [00:48:03] Speaker B: Yes. [00:48:04] Speaker A: Are you ready? I've got one. [00:48:06] Speaker B: Yes. Go. [00:48:08] Speaker A: 14 year old girl is followed home. [00:48:13] Speaker B: From school by creepy dude who attacks her right in front of her house. [00:48:21] Speaker A: And she manages to get into the house, and she manages to fight him off, and he runs away, and she's. [00:48:31] Speaker B: Okay, but the whole thing is captured. [00:48:35] Speaker A: On her home security camera. And when the police release that home security footage of her fighting off this. [00:48:46] Speaker B: Guy, it goes viral because she's 14 and she fights off this dude. And in that footage, I mean, they. [00:48:59] Speaker A: Catch the guy and that's great. But because that footage goes viral, it sets to light a completely unrelated crime, not related to the attack or the attacker, but in the security footage from the house. Because it goes viral because she's 14 and she whoops up on this guy, a completely new crime comes to light. [00:49:36] Speaker C: So I'm thinking this sounds like an episode of a crime drama, which would be fiction. [00:49:46] Speaker A: It is fiction. It is not a crime drama. It is the kickoff for the Hidden Things by Jamie Mason. And I picked this book because, A, it's great, and you get to hear about what else happens with this girl who's awesome and also Jamie Mason, local writer oh. Lives in western North Carolina. [00:50:08] Speaker C: Okay. [00:50:08] Speaker A: I'm going to get I met her years and years ago, one of many. We don't know each other exactly, but I did meet her at a Voucher Con many years ago. And this book is Mason, jamie Mason. [00:50:27] Speaker C: Like it. [00:50:28] Speaker A: All right, let's talk about works in progress, and then we will allow our listeners to carry on with their holiday preparations. [00:50:41] Speaker C: Right now. [00:50:46] Speaker B: I have a client. [00:50:49] Speaker C: Beginning January 1, so I'm taking the rest of the year. Yeah, I'm so excited. So getting one client, that's excitement. In the meantime, the rest of the year, I'm going to be working on digitizing my dad's slides and trying to make a presentation of that. And there are four huge totes full. [00:51:14] Speaker B: Of magazines of slides, and I've gotten 25% of the first one done. [00:51:23] Speaker C: So I have my work set out. [00:51:27] Speaker B: For me, and maybe I might do. [00:51:30] Speaker C: Some more writing on my book. [00:51:31] Speaker B: In the meantime, I have another possible. [00:51:38] Speaker A: Deadline coming up in January for another anthology. So I'll be working on another short piece, another short fiction piece about which I have no idea what I'm doing yet. So I will be adding notes to my crazy idea board as we go and then trying to find pockets of time between holiday crazy to see if I can turn that into something. Well, thank you. That's cool for hanging out with me this morning and talking through your list. I got some good ideas for holiday time reading, and I definitely going to. [00:52:22] Speaker B: Check out some of those podcasts you mentioned too. [00:52:25] Speaker C: Yes, I am going to do the same. [00:52:29] Speaker A: And our listeners, if the things that we have recommended or talked about make you think of other things that we. [00:52:37] Speaker B: Didn'T mention but that are must sees. [00:52:40] Speaker A: Must reads, must listens, please add those and we will check them out. All right. [00:52:47] Speaker C: And our Facebook page. [00:52:49] Speaker A: All right, I got to go make sure my turkey is thawing because it's been in the fridge a couple of days, and it's still like a boulder, so I might have to take it out today. [00:52:57] Speaker C: I have to make a spice cake. [00:53:00] Speaker B: All right, till next time, guys. [00:53:04] Speaker A: Yeah, bye.