Ruthie Knox and Annie Mare and SO MANY BOOKS! But especially, Homemaker, If I Told You I'd Have to Kiss You and Cosmic Love at The Multiverse Hair Salon

Ruthie Knox and Annie Mare are dear friends and amazing authors so for the last interview before summer - you get a real doozie. We talk for OVER AN HOUR - so plug in those air pods and take us for a walk and then fill up your summer TBR with all of the amazing books they have out now. 

In this interview we talk about the following books: 

If I Told You I'd Have to Kiss You 

Cosmic Love at The Multiverse Hair Salon

Homemaker

Trust me when I say you're going to want to read all of them. 

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Transcript

Molly Fader (00:29):

Welcome to Day Drinking With Authors, the podcast series where I pick a book, the author picks a drink and we discuss. Both my guests today are Ruthie Knox and Annie Mayer, and it's fitting that they're my last interview before summer because they are going to absolutely fill your summer TBR. They are having a summer, spring, and a summer of publishing like I've never seen before, and they're here to talk about every single book. That's not true. We're not talking about every single book. They have too many. We're going to talk about three. I meant to have this book, this podcast published at the end of Pride month because they are on an absolute run of beautifully written, thoughtful, and fun queer romances. But I'm terrible at time management. So you're getting it now, but I want to tell you, they have something for everyone this summer.
(01:18)
You want a second Chance Romance? They got it. You want a spy thriller? They got it. You want a Midwestern found Family Time loop, SIC Romance, which is a very specific taste, but lemme tell you, I didn't know I wanted it and I did. I really wanted it. And they also have their big juggernaut. This spring is a mystery featuring a divorced mom that I wished lived next door. I wish Ruthie and Annie live next door. So I'm going to read the back cover copy of Homemaker, which is the mystery with the divorce Mom sleuth, because this book is absolutely special and it's going to knock your socks off. So I really hope you go out there and read it. It's called Homemaker, a Prairie Nightingale Mystery. When a former friend and devoted mother vanishes, a confident homemaker turned sleuth, amateur sleuth follows an unexpected trail of scandals and secrets to find her prairie Nightingale is both the midlife mother of two teenage girls and a canny entrepreneur who has turned homemaking into a salaried profession.
(02:23)
She was also fascinated with the gritty details of other people's lives. So when seemingly perfect, Lisa Radcliffe, a member of her former mom friend circle suddenly disappears. It's in prairie's nature to find out why. Given her innate talent for vital pattern recognition, Prairie is out to catch a few clues by taking a long, hard look at everyone in Lisa's life and uncovering their secrets and including Lisa's prairie's. Dogged curiosity is especially irritating to FBI. Agent Foster Rose Mere, the first interesting man Prairie has met since her divorce. His square jaw and sharp suits don't hurt, but even as the investigation begins to wreck havoc on Prairie's carefully tended home life. She's resolved to use her multi talent homemaking skills to solve the mystery of a missing mom, and along the way, discover the thrill of her new sleuthing ambitions. See, don't you want to spend a day with that book? I did, and it's fantastic. Ruthie and Anne Marie are two great friends, two incredible authors, and I am absolutely thrilled to welcome them to the podcast. Ruthie Knox (03:30):

We're excited. Thank you for having us. Yeah, fun. Molly Fader (03:37):

There are so many books to talk about. We are going to talk about cosmic love at The Multiverse Hair Salon by Annie, me. We're going to talk about the Prairie Nightingale Mystery Series by Ruthie Knox and Annie Meer. We're going to talk about May Marvel, and if I told you I'd have to kiss you the second chance, romance, spy mystery thriller, you guys are writing. That is a thing that we did. Yes. And we're also going to talk about big name fan, the TV detective novels, you guys, these are all books. These are all series that have come out in the last year. Annie Mare (04:14):

Yes, that's right. Molly knows that we were writing in the 2010s and then we took some time to focus on family. We have a little boutique press that we were focusing on and then trying to think about what did we really want for our writing careers. And so at that time we were writing a lot. So that's important to know. And I think one of the first projects we started was the Prairie Nightingale series, which Molly Fader (04:50):

How many night's been in your lives Annie Mare (04:53):

For 15? 20? 20? Ruthie Knox (04:55):

Yeah. We finished it in February, 2020. The homemaker, the first draught of Homemaker Annie Mare (05:01):

Right before the pandemic. And we felt it was a series kind of right away and then the pandemic hit. And it's sort of like, what better way to survive and dissociate this moment Ruthie Knox (05:21):

Than live in a fantasy Annie Mare (05:23):

World in our own Ruthie Knox (05:24):

Making Molly Fader (05:26):

Or several fantasy worlds? Let's just engage every fantasy we have about spies or about TV detectives. Ruthie Knox (05:38):

Well, and I think Homemaker was the first thing we'd written together in a long time, and it was the first thing we'd written that was really fun in a long time. Oh man. So we really had, it gave us such a jolt of confidence and good feelings being able to that together that we did. And this almost feels like a cdy confession the way I'm telling you, but we did write nine of them kind of in a row. We wrote four romances in there too before we finished all nine of them. But we had, you have Nine Prairie Nightingale manuscripts on. What's Molly Fader (06:20):

So funny about that to me is I feel like when I read the book and Ruth, you and I had a little email exchange, I feel like at that point in time, a few, maybe months ago, you had six. So have you written Oh no. Ruthie Knox (06:34):

Yeah, that ninth one has never been touched once it was finished. So it's just sitting there, some kind of brain blurt. But no, we wrote nine of them and we wrote some romances, and so we were writing a lot. And before any of this stuff was even on submission, Annie Mare (06:54):

And then the submission, because I got a new agent in there once we are ready to sort of go forth Ruthie Knox (07:04):

And then things have weird journeys. So Prairie Nightingale was on submission for quite a while and it had a lot of almost yeses before it found its home. And some of those almost yeses turned into other book projects where the editor was unable to buy this book, but send me a proposal for something else. And big name fan was one of the things that came out of that. So it ended up coming out first, but it was written while Homemaker was already out there looking for her perfect match. Annie Mare (07:42):

There's a lot of, yeah, and the Prairie Nightingale series, the first one, homemaker, I think every editor in town probably looked at it, took it to acquisitions and what all of them said was, and I think was the case, is just we don't know what the market is for this kind of amateur sleuth, this kind of amateur, amateur sleuth mystery. And we knew that was true just from our reading, both voracious readers. But then things changed. Something's on submission long enough, the market change, the market changes. And then you're starting to get things like Finley Donovan and Donovan and Ella Cassino, these things, Jesse q Ano and Ruthie Knox (08:27):

Elise Bryant, Jane Peck, Mia Mon Sala. So there's a lot of people who were writing in this space. Annie Mare (08:37):

And then it went to an editor who had said no the first time, really liked it, but didn't know how the team would get it to readers, but then saw it again and was like, they knew exactly what to do with it. Molly Fader (08:53):

Oh my gosh. Annie Mare (08:54):

It opened up again. So that, Molly Fader (08:58):

And that is an experience that intellectually feels like it should make sense, but I've never heard that happen before, that it's around long enough and people carry it with them. They're thinking about it long enough that when it comes back around, the world has changed. I mean, what that doesn't happen, Ruthie Knox (09:20):

I think it was a couple years and we'd done another revision on it. We revised it quite a few times. It's not the same book it was when we first wrote it, but we'd done another revision on it because Maryanne's editor, sorry, Annie's editor Tara knew, had an editor she wanted to send it to, but that editor couldn't look at it unless it was substantially revised because someone else at her house had already seen it. Singer (09:47):

So Ruthie Knox (09:47):

We revised it. I had had an idea that we wanted to try out anyway, and that person didn't buy it, but the same revised version went to Thomas and Mercer and then that version ended up being bought there. So yeah, I mean, it was one of those things where we, we just kept rolling with it. We just kept taking whatever opportunities were put in front of us, but we were kind of relentless about it. Where, and Annie's agent, Tara, Gil Simino is a relentless person, which was helpful, but we just wouldn't put it down. She just kept thinking of new places to send it. That's Molly Fader (10:31):

Incredible. That's incredible. And it's such a different experience than the three of us had sort of come to the end of our romance careers where agents, our agents were just sort of like, gosh, Ruthie Knox (10:45):

There's nowhere. Molly Fader (10:48):

You don't know what to do. So to have someone really pick up the banner and fight is what a thrill. Annie Mare (10:57):

Yeah, I think it proves that. The thing about a writing career, probably the most important thing is just persistence. If you need a break, take the break. But taking a break doesn't mean you've put it down. It just means you're thinking about what's going to feel good next, what's going to do that energy next? And the three of us can see it. We've been around a while in this game and all of us can see that that persistence is kind of what gets you through this. We've seen iterations of a lot of authors that we know and love doing different genres, different kinds of books. And I think, I don't know, at least for me, it feels better and less anxious than it did when I first started in publishing. Molly Fader (12:01):

Why do you think, is it you're older? Why? Is it because it's not romance? I mean, not that your books aren't romance because there's definitely romance in all of these books that I've read, but they're not pubbed under the banner of romance. Is it because the pace of publishing other kinds of books is different? What do you attribute that to? Annie Mare (12:26):

I think it's just realising that you can come to the end of something and not know what's next and get a whole new agent and that you can do that. Molly Fader (12:46):

It's not failure. It's Annie Mare (12:48):

Failure. Yeah. I think that publishing in the commercial fiction space means that there's multiple generations of readers always coming up and that it starts to get easier to really see that as an opportunity to try new things instead of I'm going to lose my career. Molly Fader (13:13):

I have to keep hammering at this wall. Ruthie Knox (13:17):

I was somebody who started writing pretty late. I did some writing in school, but I wasn't somebody who always knew I wanted to be a writer. And I think in the earliest years of my career, my question was kind of like, am I a writer? Can I be a writer? And I was always waiting for someone to answer that question for me. But after a while, it just gets set aside. There's other questions and the question of am I a writer goes away. Yes, I'm a writer. I can write whatever genre, let me add it and I'll make something up for you. It's just a pack of lies. Anyway, so I think that a, sometimes Annie says that to me when we're stuck, she's like, it's just a pack. We just have to make up another lie. It's fine. It's just another lie. Another lie won't solve another lie. And I'm someone who is a big knitter and I make a lot of sweaters and I started thinking of a book as being essentially the same thing as a sweater. It takes several months. There's always going to be stuff I don't like about it when it's done. It's not exactly what I thought I was going to make. It's different, but that's okay. It's just a sweater. It's just, it's Molly Fader (14:35):

Never the sweater you dreamt of at the beginning. Ruthie Knox (14:37):

No, not exactly Sweater. A sweater. It's still a book. It's a book. It's just a book. And that helped me too. So I mean, I think it's just like you do something. I Molly Fader (14:48):

Have to push back a tiny bit on that because it's not, no book is just a book as we know. Ruthie Knox (14:54):

I feel really strongly about sweaters, I should say. No, Molly Fader (15:01):

No sweaters. Just a sweater either. But I don't know. I feel like you'd said something at the beginning of this conversation that still hasn't gotten into really a single one of these books, but you said something about how fun The homemaker was the first in the Prairie Nightingale series, and there's something about it that reads as fun. And I feel like I talked to enough writers who got really churned up through the romance publishing who went a totally different way, whether they were doing self-publishing or they started writing thrillers or they started writing whatever it was. And you can feel when an author's having fun and is really in touch with something that's exciting and relevant to them. And I felt that through all three of these books that we're going to talk about that these felt like really joyful and joyous and very in touch with the things that are important. I feel like I know you guys better through these books, and that's a really special thing. Annie Mare (16:14):

Well, that's nice to hear because I think that that's true. And I do think that the hardest genre anyone can write is romance, just technically it's a difficult thing to write and emotionally and it's difficult to revise. It's difficult to understand the appeals of romance and to communicate those to the readers. And so I think there's a way in which coming up through romance, and like you said, all of these books are romances and their own way, but gives you so many things that you need to know to write in the sense that what I'm trying to say is we sat down to write different kinds of books. It's like we learned so much. We know so much about writing and what makes a story and how to make things exciting, when to slow it down, what pacing is, what a scene is, what the reader wants next. Because you're so walked into those things when you're writing a romance that the skills are so, they transliterate across so many genres. And we know this is true because people who write in other genres more exclusively talk about how it's more when they try romance, they find it to be extremely difficult.
(18:01)
There's something about romance for the best. Romance books have that thing where they make the reader feel everything, but also they're just effortless and invisible craft wise. Ruthie Knox (18:14):

Well, because I mean it's character that's turning pages. I mean, it's supposed to be internal and external conflict, but I have always been light on external conflict. So it's really just like character that's turning pages in a Ruthie Knox romance and to have a mystery where you have a whole plot that's turning the pages. And it's kind of fascinating because we're already going to build all that character. We can not do that at this point. Molly Fader (18:47):

You're like, oh wait, there's a mystery here for crying out loud. Ruthie Knox (18:52):

What else I know about Prairie because I know a lot about this woman. It's not even relevant. Okay. Yeah, it's interesting. Annie Mare (19:06):

Yeah, so it is a lot of fun. Molly Fader (19:09):

So to dig in a little bit further into the Prairie Nightingale series, Prairie is a divorced mom. Her and a woman in her social circle in her school circle has gone missing and she finds herself in a position by virtue of being relatively nosy and well connected with people to find out what happened to this woman. There's a great, obviously going to be teased out through several books, romance in it, but the way the fantasy fulfilment of this woman's divorce, you guys orchestrated perhaps the most unorthodox and yet ideal divorce there has ever been. Can you talk a little bit about setting that up? Annie Mare (20:16):

Well, we started really thinking about when we talk about things like fantasy for any kind of marginalised person and for women, I think that we often get it wrong because actually the best fantasies are rooted in whatever systemically has been going wrong for you, whatever has put life on hard mode. And to alleviate that would be the fantasy. And so we're like, how could we do this in a grounded way? And so we thought it would be fun to have this woman realise all the kinds of things that you realise in midlife that it was like your labour, it was your emotional labour, everything that you put on your body and on your mind, on your psyche that facilitated the success of your partner, especially choosing to be the one who ran the home and raised children. And this is Prairie's situation like her husband and started a successful software company because she found herself in a position where she was making that work for him, making all the things that worked that he didn't do well. And then she gets to the end of this where she realises their marriage. It's come to the end of some line, and we know the backstory of that is they tried, they did all the things, they did counselling, they whatever. And it gets Ruthie Knox (22:14):

To the end and it's just like a death by a thousand cuts situation for Prairie where she actually can't keep her psyche together anymore Annie Mare (22:23):

With Ruthie Knox (22:24):

All the small wounds. Annie Mare (22:26):

And so then it's kind of like she's in one of those counselling sessions that you get that's like, so how are we going to get divorced? Or the counsellors, this is what I think you guys need to think about. And the thing that the counsellor told Prairie is, you're going to have to work. You're going to have to get a job, think about your qualifications, think about your qualifications, and then the rage, the rage that comes up out of that, because your qualifications are, I made Greg for Ruthie Knox (23:03):

You, the Greg show for all these years. I look what a good show. Everybody likes it. They're continually telling me how lucky I am to have Greg who I made. And it's like, I mean, that's unfair, but is it? Annie Mare (23:22):

And Prairie already is a character who is not allergic to and very familiar with counterculture, Molly Fader (23:31):

Right? Annie Mare (23:31):

One of these sort of elder millennial, gen X people whose parents raised her in kind of a commune. And so she's used to thinking outside of the box and she's like, look, I don't want a regular divorce settlement. I don't want alimony. I want to be paid a salary to be the CEO of what I'm doing so that I can show our daughters what this work takes, how many people you would have to hire to do different parts of it, like what it is. And it's meant to be a kind of over the top metaphor. She knows that. She knows that. I mean, Perry knows that. Perry knows that it's a time limited kind of thing, but Ruthie Knox (24:17):

Also she wants at least a few years of fucking pay me Molly Fader (24:23):

To Ruthie Knox (24:23):

Do this essential work that you can't live without. Molly Fader (24:27):

And also the building of the team around what it takes to actually run a house, to run a family, and to make a Greg and then to eventually solve murders. But I just delighted in it more than I can say. Ruthie Knox (24:51):

I think it really hits, it's kind of interesting how many people it hits for because we did have kind a larger beta reading group with this book than we would normally, not even just writers, but some friends and my parents, quite a few different people. And it's a very resonant fantasy for a lot of very different people, which I think suggests that we do have some practise with divorce. Annie and I, we've had two divorces and we had a lot of thoughts and a lot of anger and a lot of observation. And I think a lot of those observations that get into this fantasy are quite widespread. Even people who aren't divorced, who are still married, who are not even necessarily married to men. But there's a lot of experiences here that are not atypical, even as Prairie is a highly atypical character. Molly Fader (25:56):

Yeah, no, it just seemed like a wish fulfilment in a lot of ways. Whether you're divorced or not, I felt seen as the woman who's doing the emotional labour in the house and filling out every fucking form, those two things, Annie Mare (26:20):

Every fucking form and the emotional labour, right? Yes. And this mystery she's solving is comprised of all of those women, the women filling out forms like the women at school pickup, the women who are dealing with households and husbands and children. And so becomes uniquely positioned to know what questions to ask of who she tells this FBI agent who gets involved in it because a capital case, you guys don't know all the questions to ask
(27:05)
And you don't know who to ask them to. And she learns from another character who eventually will join her teams for the other books that really doing something like justice has to be a community type of service and peacekeeping to each other instead of what it is now. Especially in the United States where we've really lost the plot when it comes to things like policing and justice and crime and how exclusive it is, how narrow it is, how abusive, punitive, and how it creates. Its more problems of justice than it solves. And so it was fun to introduce the reader to a different landscape of thinking about justice than your procedural. And instead, take justice finding to the community, what does the community know about what is happening here and what would justice mean in this case? Because Prairie ends up making some decisions in this book about who deserves justice that are different. Molly Fader (28:42):

Well, it makes for a compelling story about a community and a woman. I mean, she was fascinating. She has a great outsider's perspective and being, being an outsider that I think lends her a certain level of clarity about what justice means and who should have that justice. This, I had a conversation with you guys before about how these books get written, how you co-write, and it's so interesting and infuriating at the same time. Would you mind talking about how you co-write? Ruthie Knox (29:26):

It's infuriating. Molly Fader (29:28):

It's so crazy. This is madness to me, but please share. Well, you Ruthie Knox (29:32):

Think you got a new way to talk about it that I think makes sense, which is if you ever, you were in school and you went outside on the at recess and you and some little crew of your nerdy little friends gathered in some predetermined spot that you have decided is the best spot under the jungle gym, who knows where you're, and you start, you're doing a made up fantasy play game Singer (30:01):

Where Ruthie Knox (30:02):

You're just passing it around and you are the princess and you have green hair and blue eyes. You're sharing the imagination between you kind of seamlessly. It's moving around. Maybe every now and then you get into some giant fight about whether there should be worm people or there shouldn't. But overall, you're having fun playing. And I think we, most of us know how to do that. We know how to do it. We just stop at some point and never do it again. And what we've learned is that we could pick it back up and we could write books that way. And I mean, you know us, Molly, so we really like each other. That helps. But mostly it's just being willing to share the imaginative play that way. And there's a certain amount of ego that you have to pull out of it Singer (31:03):

Because Ruthie Knox (31:04):

You're not going to get everything you want. Every idea isn't going to be, you can't always have Molly Fader (31:09):

Warm people. Ruthie Knox (31:10):

You can't always in every book. And if you're partner points that out, maybe it stings. Maybe you're kind of committed to the worm people, but you move on. And the great thing about it is once you step out of that ego space, it also takes a lot of the self-hatred and self-doubt out of writing because you're not the only one who's writing. Molly Fader (31:36):

Yes, you're in an echo chamber of delight and joy. And yeah, Ruthie Knox (31:43):

If you want to do a spiral about how much your book sucks, you're doing that to your favourite person too. You're going right at your person and saying, this Molly Fader (31:55):

Book that you're Ruthie Knox (31:56):

Also Molly Fader (31:57):

Writing is the worst. Yeah, no, you're not doing that. It's Annie Mare (32:01):

So true. So you just don't, yeah. And I think too, maybe it's easier for people to understand if you've ever done theatre or been a musician in any kind of ensemble or a band or whatever, we know how to use our skills together without, in a way that while you're doing it feels effortless or feels fun or feels like something, you don't need a lot of fancy QS four or whatever. It's really subconscious. It's really, yeah, it's a human thing. I think so. I mean, think it's like if you're in the arts, I think everyone should try to do collaborative arts if you haven't already because it does teach you a lot about your craft and about the work you're doing and about what your own skills actually are, which can sometimes be murky unless you're working with someone. And then you start to see what your strengths really are, which certainly helps across the board, but it's not quite as spooky as one would think, Molly Fader (33:29):

And it's not as lonely. And I do think, Ruthie, that was the positivity that you have to keep on it because you're not going to shit talk your favourite person to their face. It really does keep a lid on the negative self-talk stuff. Ruthie Knox (33:48):

It really does. It does. I mean, you still find ways, but not as much anymore. I would say in the early years that we were doing it together, sometimes there would be this kind of like, but I'm not contributing as much as you are. You could do this without me, but I couldn't do it without you. This kind of like, you'd still find a way to do a big self-doubt in the partnership, but I think we had to just come to Jesus a couple times about, I don't want to do this without you, and I couldn't, and you don't want to do it without me and you couldn't. So that's it. Right? It's okay. I think it's important as we try as humans to dismantle ableism and get out from under capitalism and all of its gross little lessons that drive us so much of the time to understand that really have experiences of collaborative work and understand that it's okay to be in a relationship of mutual dependence. I don't have to be able to write a novel entirely on my own and get it published by a big five publisher for 10 figures to be a capable person who can write a book. It's okay to write a book if I only want to write books with Annie for the rest of my time. That's a legitimate Molly Fader (35:14):

Effort. That's a legitimate use of your time. Ruthie Knox (35:16):

It's a legitimate use of your time. So there's a lot of interesting things that get dismantled. I think writing with another person Molly Fader (35:24):

And then to have homemaker go on and be really successful has got to a little bit fuck you up a little bit. Like you'd come to this place of joyful work again and you hung in there for the process of it going all the way around the world and back again to some of the first editors that you sent it to and then to have it be successful. How are you handling that? How are you doing with that? I mean, it's a weird thing to think that there's a negative aspect to a book doing well, but we Ruthie Knox (36:03):

All know there's negative aspects to it to everything. But Molly Fader (36:07):

It could be a bit of a mind. Fuck. Annie Mare (36:11):

Yeah, I think so. Mean, certainly this is a book that's been highly perceived, so that's, a lot of people have read it. You have a sense of how big the audience has become for a book. And what's actually helped, which I don't necessarily recommend, is that there's these other two books that came up. Ruthie Knox (36:46):

You can be the rat in the cage pushing the levers when you have one book out. You can push levers all day long. You'll get yourself real worked up. You're just going from website to website being a rat. But three is too many. The rat is dead. The rat has died. The rat doesn't give a shit about the levers anymore. Anymore. The rats just looking for other things to do with his time. Annie Mare (37:11):

So I mean, I think that honestly, the thing that's been the best about it is the author care at Thomas and Mercer. I do have to shout out the group there and their publishing mysteries and thrillers, their author care has been just sort of the right combination of professional and clear-eyed and supportive on the things that you want support from your publisher for. And it's helpful in this publishing to get that. And we've found that it's especially helpful when it's doing well because it's just like, okay, well, I like these coworkers. I'm collaborating with these editors and this publisher and this sales team. They're all very grounded. This is their job. They're pleased. It scales it a little bit to have, we had a friend, and she's from Melbourne. She's getting ready to have a book published next year. I was exchanging some email with her a few weeks ago, and she said, because this will be a debut for her. And she said, I'm having a hard time figuring out the difference between enthusiasm and American enthusiasm and what's helpful and not helpful. And I thought, yeah, that is true. When you are working in a high rejection industry like publishing or probably any of the arts, acting, whatever, there's this way in which the movers and shakers do pile on and then take away, you're the best thing ever. This is going to be the best book ever. I didn't really sell. We're so excited about it. And then they're like, I don't know, Ruthie Knox (39:22):

Probably you did it wrong. Yeah, it's too bad you didn't have a bigger social media platform. A couple more blog posts from me really would. Annie Mare (39:32):

Yeah, really would've put it over the top. And I think there was something like Thomas and Mercer, they have got that scale nailed down. Molly Fader (39:44):

They don't need your social media influence. They don't, yeah. Annie Mare (39:47):

They're like, this was our risk. This is our job. We're professionals. We believe in ourself. You did what you were supposed to do and we commend you for it. We're pleased. And it's like, okay, yeah, this is more like going to your bookkeeping job and doing a good job. Molly Fader (40:11):

Well, there's something about it that takes the rollercoaster pain, whatever word you want to say about the part of the publishing that's out of your control, the thing that you did is done and you did it to the best of your ability. And then there's this other part that somehow is still your responsibility. It takes that part of it out of it. Annie Mare (40:36):

And I think it's been, especially now that everyone's online irresistible for publishing teams not to try to, I think probably project some of their own risk and anxiety about what they're doing onto their authors. I think that's normal when publishing, everybody's taking a risk. You don't know what people are going to love. Or there's always books that somebody discovers 10 years later, and then it can feel uneasy. And I think sometimes that uneasiness translates into that roller coaster of American enthusiasm, like our friend said, and then subsequent disappointment. So honestly, that helped. And it's not something either one of us had experienced before. We're a little more accustomed to the go. The whole team's super excited. Look at this fabulous thing. Whoops. Molly Fader (41:54):

Followed by Oh, no. Followed by silence. Followed Annie Mare (42:01):

By silence. Polite silence.
(42:06)
So I think, and those are conversations that I'm hopeful we'll start to have more of in publishing, because one of the things about being where we're at in publishing, having had all of those experiences for a long period of time, is you kind of get to a point where you're like, okay, well, we are white women and we have seen a long record of marginalised authors experiencing these things by some enormous factor, and there's nothing that they're doing wrong. And this is entirely because of the machines, these sort of creaky familiar machines of this industry. But having the experience we have, being where we're at in our life, what's kind of nice is we can have some margin to push back on that and raise up flags and alarms that we didn't have the first time around in publishing,
(43:18)
In the hopes of pointing out these things in a way that in the project of making publishing more inclusive. Because if white women are the squeaky wheels with their publishers, their editors, their agents, whatever, saying, you know what? This isn't right. I think it should be like this doesn't work. What about how are you treating your marginalised authors when it comes to this? Then they've heard it. Maybe they don't do anything for you or admit to, they definitely don't do anything or admit no, but they've heard it, but they've heard it. And I think that makes a difference when they hear it from authors who do have the privilege because it tells them they're not going to continue to get away with some of these Molly Fader (44:19):

Super antiquated Annie Mare (44:21):

Practises because we're all going to start to point out that this isn't okay. And I don't think you fully start to appreciate and embody the unearned privileges you have until you do start getting older and having a lot of experiences. I Ruthie Knox (44:46):

Mean, it's for people to, easier for people to understand that mostly what agents do, mostly what editors do is say no. So if an agent or an editor says no to you, an agent says no to you as someone they want to represent, and editor says no to your book as a book that they want for their list, we're always looking for reasons. But most of the time, the reason is that no is almost always what they say. So you didn't get a yes. But that's just because editors almost never say yes, not because there was something wrong with your thing. You didn't get a yes from the agent because they take two people a year maybe, and otherwise they say no. But I think it's really hard for writers to believe and inhabit the belief that if your book doesn't become a bestseller, if it doesn't hit a list, it's because mostly books don't hit a list. Not because you did anything wrong and it was actually a bad book after all, or because your publisher did their thing wrong and they should have done a better job. It's really the reason almost all the time is that that is what happens. Molly Fader (45:59):

Yeah, the numbers game of this business is always stacked against Ruthie Knox (46:05):

Us. And I think that's hard to live with, but it's easier to live with than constantly being convinced that you're the problem, which there are plenty of people who are happy to make you feel that way because it does take them off the hook for it being them. If it's you, it's not me. If it's your book, it's not our publisher. It's like, well, what if it's nobody? But there are, Molly Fader (46:31):

Yeah, the machine. Annie Mare (46:33):

But where we know that it is like say the fault of racism, of systemic barriers, we know that we can't pretend like that's not true, then we should attack those and take 'em apart. Ruthie Knox (46:49):

Yeah, Annie Mare (46:50):

It's a numbers game. Most people are going to get nos, whatever. But there is this other thing where it's like, Hey, Ruthie Knox (46:56):

This series is not getting the attention it should be getting for the sales it's doing and the award. It's winning. And we all know Singer (47:04):

Why. Molly Fader (47:07):

I'm wondering if all of this context that you've given your publishing experience and publishing in general has made it hard to celebrate when things are joyful and good, when things are going well, Ruthie Knox (47:19):

What is that? Molly Fader (47:23):

It goes back to the question of the success around the Prairie Nightingale series. Are you able to feel that? Are you able to feel No, no heads are shaking. No, they're laughing. It's ridiculous. What a stupid idea. Really. Ruthie Knox (47:38):

I think the only thing we can really feel is when we're able to write more books, we get another contract or that we do get genuinely excited about that. We can't get anyone else excited about it in our families or lives, but we get excited about that because we like writing books and knowing that we're going to be able to do that and we buy groceries feels good. But it's hard to feel good about what a book is doing in the world, partly because it doesn't really feel like our book anymore. Once it's out, there's everybody else out Molly Fader (48:18):

There in a big way. Ruthie Knox (48:20):

It's nice that people are having experiences with it. It feels good to know that people are having experiences with it. But it's hard to feel that in my body. What Annie Mare (48:30):

Helps me is listening to the audio book because it's completely different. Our Mia Hutchson Shaw is the performer for homemaker and for several of our other books, and she's a very gifted performer, and she really does a good job of embodying the story, finding things in it, whatever, and listening to it, it's like, okay, yeah, this is a thing in the world now. She did something completely different with it. Listening to the audio book. It doesn't feel like the labour anymore. It feels like the story. And it's like, Hey, we made that story. It's out in the world. This other artist made this other thing with it and is hitting some parts of it harder than we did because, and that really works. And that's been, and she also performed, if I told you, I'll have to kiss you. And that's really fun because that book has accents and foreign location, foreign locations and language and different people of different ages, and she brings the one Woman theatre show to that experience. And that was fun. Molly Fader (50:07):

So that's a perfect segue. So talk to me about the difference between a Ruthie Knox and Annie Meerberg book versus a May Marvel book. What Ruthie Knox (50:18):

We think of Maine Marvel as being kind of bigger stories, and especially stories where we haven't necessarily read a sic version of that story before. And so it's fun to think about how to tell it. And it's fun to think about how the story being sic is going to make it different. Singer (50:45):

So Ruthie Knox (50:46):

If I told you, I'd have to kiss you, we really liked the idea of doing a spy caper along the lines of Alias or Melissa McCarthy spy. I do think when you're telling a romance story, and both of the leads are women, it often does change the dynamics of the story, like the dance of power between the characters. How do they communicate, what kinds of problems do they have? And it's just not the same story as one of the comps to this book is Mr. And Mrs. Smith, which I actually haven't seen, but I'm going off a trailer idea of what that story is. But there's a lot of animosity in that story. Molly Fader (51:37):

There is a lot of power dynamic struggle. Yeah. Ruthie Knox (51:40):

They're not even on the same side, I think. And then this is a marriage and trouble, spy romance. It's a relationship and trouble. So that's what we like to do with May Marvel is think of a big story and then really think about if you make this story sic, how is it different? How is it a different story? How do we get a whole new Molly Fader (52:02):

Thing? Whose idea was spies who was like, you know what we need? I don't even remember. Annie Mare (52:09):

I don't know. I mean, I know when we were sitting down for the thinking about options for the second book after everyone I Kissed, since you got famous and we had a very clear idea of what May Marble was, we knew, I think one of the hardest things to do as you're coming of age as a author is to understand exactly what high concept is. Molly Fader (52:34):

Yeah, you think so? I think there's nothing like having a high concept idea and then everybody in the room's like that was a high concept idea. And then you're like, okay, great. Then you're going to love this other high concept idea that I have. And then you say those words out loud and they're like, there's nothing about that on a farm. And they're like, no, that's not, no, you're Annie Mare (52:59):

Wrong. So these conversations, we have them as conversations. We're just throwing out things, taking notes, like whatever. And I can't remember which one of us said spies, but very quickly we were like, one of these characters should be like a legacy spy, A oh oh seven, someone who is famous in Spycraft. And so we were thinking about if it was a woman, where would all of that legacy and power come from, other than the fact her grandfather was a spy Yardley. And we're like, who would be the most amazing field agent? Field officer would be one of these private school prepared southern debutante young women who have had to get along with everybody, go through all these machinations to get what they needed and what they wanted. They would have so many sort of Molly Fader (54:06):

Soft skills, Annie Mare (54:07):

Soft skills, soft Molly Fader (54:08):

Skills. Annie Mare (54:09):

And so we were like, oh, well, that is an incredibly fun character to build, is someone that surprises the agency in the sense that here is this legacy spy, but then becomes their best buy because of unexpected skills that are normally Ruthie Knox (54:33):

Discounted, Annie Mare (54:34):

Dismissed, sort of these skills of a steel magnolia kind of thing. And so then it became easy to imagine the partner being this someone from the southeast who was scrappy, somewhat got to where they were going via persistence, resilience to neglect. So I mean, that's where, those are the things you learn in the fire of romance. Molly Fader (55:20):

But again, this is so funny. It's so very, you two where it's like indeed, those are the characters, but they're the plot Ruthie Knox (55:32):

Of this book. Annie Mare (55:35):

It's bananas. Ruthie Knox (55:37):

We like the, it's so much fun to write a book with spies and explosions and accents. We weren't going to miss a single troop of the spy caper because they're fun. I don't get to write that kind of thing every day. We definitely have to have a scene where one of them is whispering in the other's ear. Are they having over the calm? Are they having a fight? Is it sexy? All of those kind. Are they cracking a safe? Are they cracking a safe? Yeah. And I think it was really fun to play with these characters who Yardley Whitmer is weird. She is a strange person, but she's a strange person who's conventionally beautiful. So no one really noticed. She is a weird girl, but Casey knows that she's weird. She's noticed that, but she doesn't know she's a spy. She knows everything about her except that one thing. So Molly Fader (56:36):

Was this a challenge to write? I mean, even though Prairie Nightingale is a mystery, but this is, like you said, it's explosions. It's a spy caper. Was this challenging for you two to write? Was it challenging for you two to edit? Ruthie Knox (56:55):

Annie is wildly creative story maker, so she did not have any problem coming up with all kinds of ideas and scenarios. What was challenging was we had a proposal approved for this one, but then when we wrote it and turned it in, it was post-election. And so Trump had won the second term in the White House, and when it came back from our editor, she had to say, I probably should have figured this out sooner. I should have seen this sooner, but this has to be divorced more from the political landscape of our world, because we had written a much more election in jeopardy, right wing terrorist, bad guys kind of story. And she's just like, I don't think Annie Mare (57:47):

We can do that. Ruthie Knox (57:48):

We can do it. So we had to repl it on top of the, we had to take the plot that was there and revise the whole plot while leaving the book more or less intact, which was not easy, Molly. Molly Fader (58:09):

No. And at the same time, you're wrestling with everything you're feeling about the election and then basically removing all of that from the book. Annie Mare (58:22):

Fuck. Yeah, it was a lot. We ended up getting a room in the middle of February and Door County, which is normally a summer vacation destination. And so I think we're the only people at this hotel Ruthie Knox (58:36):

Desolate Pen. It was good. We had this sort of empty, quiet hotel room, Annie Mare (58:44):

And we just did the whole thing you never really get to do, which is the uninterrupted 12, 14 hour days of hammering at it. But there's ways that it became a better book for it. Ruthie Knox (58:59):

Yeah, I think it was a good edit from our editor. I don't think she was wrong. And a lot of the new stuff that we wrote as we tried to nail down some of the emotions that went with this changed plot are things that we're really proud of that we really like how they turned out. And we got more connected to the theme and the title kind of got in there more. So I think it was a good revision, but it wasn't easy Annie Mare (59:30):

Because we still wanted to maintain a progressive geopolitical safety. They're both spies who don't like guns, and so don't use them. Everybody's queer. Ruthie Knox (59:53):

You have to know going in that the agency's going to throw you under the bus over and over again. Annie Mare (59:59):

And how do you fight against that? Ruthie Knox (01:00:00):

How do you fight back against that? There's a sort of counterculture of being a successful spy that Yardley is teaching kc. So there's ways that, yeah, it's still a progressive, but there's a reason that these kinds of romances are a little bit more rare. I mean, there's some tricky business there as far as what people want from romance, and then whether you can deliver that and how you can deliver it in this kind of package. But it was irresistible because spy stories permit so much hyperbolic behaviour and feelings, and we love these hyperbolic characters. I mean, Yardley in particular, the truth was a stiletto in her heart. She is a very, very intensely hyperbolic person, which is fun. It's really fun Molly Fader (01:01:03):

Where everything's heightened, when the stakes are so high and everything's heightened, there is a real freedom to writing these. Annie Mare (01:01:13):

It can be. What's funny is, so of course by design, no one really knows anything about Spycraft and the real world of espionage, which is funny. And we have had some reviews who are either they're tangentially involved in intelligence or their partner is, and they've said, this doesn't work like this in any way, but it's still lots of fun. It's like, no, that's exactly right. We're writing a oh seven kind of thing. Are the Oh, oh Molly Fader (01:01:45):

Sevens getting that kind of Annie Mare (01:01:49):

Reviews Molly Fader (01:01:50):

On their Amazon reviews. Annie Mare (01:01:51):

Exactly. And what's funny is just recently somebody won the book in a giveaway, and so we exchanged some email and it turns out they're a very important intelligence officer, this woman. And we're like, okay, well, just so you know, all of our research was spy movies. Ruthie Knox (01:02:22):

What are the chances that they would win this? I know the email came in and Maryanne looked at it and she was like, oh, no, she's a spy. Annie Mare (01:02:36):

But I think that it was the first time we had been hit with a rewrite that was high stakes on a book. That was very high concept. I am proud of that. We did that. We learned a bunch of stuff, and it was fun. It Molly Fader (01:03:03):

Reads fun. It reads fun. It reads very like, I haven't read anything like that. And I think that's exciting. Which also leads me to the third book we're going to talk about, which is another book that I've never read anything, which is Cosmic Love at the Multiverse Hair Salon. So in the middle of all this co-writing, Annie, you're just like, I'm doing this one alone. Ruthie Knox (01:03:27):

How did this, I wrote one alone at the same time, but it is still on my laptop. Molly Fader (01:03:37):

How does this conversation go where you're like, I'm going to write this book by myself Annie Mare (01:03:44):

Mean, or is this an old book? Is this an old book? It's not an old book. I think we have a pretty good sense when we are talking about ideas for books or ideas for options or whatever, sometimes we do run into ideas where we're like, oh, that's a Ruthie Knox book. And this one, my agent wanted me to write a book. Well, she had had on submission and still actually does have on submission, it's been on submission Forever, another book. And she's like, what do you think about writing another one? We could take on submission? And if I was going to do that, I did want it to be different. My very first love as writer in middle school and high school of course, was speculative and fantasy books, just so many nerdy writer girls. And so I was like, I'd really like to do something that was paranormal or speculative or in the fantasy, but grounded. And I think it would be fun to do a time thing because I think there's so much angst to mine and sort of that triumph time, travel time loop sort of space. And yeah, Molly Fader (01:05:36):

I started this book and I was like, what? The premise is fantastic. The premise is a plus and it's exciting and it's all those angst. But as a writer, I was like, what did you sign up for? Possible challenge. Annie Mare (01:05:55):

That question was asked to myself in tears with anger, with hysteric amusement. Yeah. And what was funny too is that I said this and my agent was like, I'm not really a time loop time travel reader. And even she's like, but you can try it if you want to. Which why do that? Why write a book you haven't written? So it's not like a book you haven't written that your agent has told you right off the bat, it probably won't. Like I'm not Molly Fader (01:06:32):

Excited about. And you're like, no, no. That's the thing to me about a time loop story when it's done. And I feel like this one was done. The movie, the Lake House was done, the life after life, the Kate Atkinson book was done. When it's done right, it is breathless. You can't stop thinking about it. It is like, why isn't every book feel like this? But I can't imagine the amount of work and traps that you set for yourself. I just can imagine. So talk a little bit about the process of writing this. Annie Mare (01:07:16):

Well, when I came at it, it was helpful that my touchstone was like, I want this book to be a book that validates feelings that all of us have and all of us share, and we feel a way about. And the feelings were things like Love it for sight. The way someone you haven't met feels like home right away. The way you can end up in a place and think something about this place is where I should be, or even bad things. I have a bad feeling about this day or when this terrible thing happened, I knew something was going to happen. I wanted to validate what we're already feelings that as humans we try to find a spiritual explanation for or turn to faith for or metaphysical or whatever, but then actually validate it as actually this is the world we live in. Those feelings are real, they're authentic, and how could I fully validate that? And so very quickly I was like, well, the easiest way would be a multiverse where we're seeing these universes sort of bleed into each other so that such that the characters can appreciate that everything that's happening to them has always been happening and will always happen, particularly when it comes to love, and particularly when it comes to the fact that you never really lose those that you loved.
(01:09:07)
Your grief is the evidence of that love, and there's always a universe where you're with them. So it kind of started from there. So then it's sort of having to make all of the decisions that I made along the way support that feeling, because it was kind of one of the first books I wrote that I'm like, the reader has to feel more here. There has to be more like I had to really crack open the earnestness box there. Molly Fader (01:09:43):

Yeah, there's a lot. Pining. This book is just timing for pages and pages and pages Annie Mare (01:09:52):

And kind of not step away from that. I think that even as a romance writer, there's a way that all of us back away a little bit from going all the way down with some of those kinds of feelings of pining and intensity of feeling and love and all of that. Ruthie Knox (01:10:16):

But we get punished for it as women we're punished for it. So being too earnest. Cool. And so I think there's a way that as romance writers, we often try to walk that knife's edge between emotional and romantic without being uncool, but you can't really write this kind of multiverse love story without just letting go of that completely. Annie Mare (01:10:45):

Yeah, just technically it was really difficult. I mean, there's so many revisions, Molly, Molly Fader (01:10:55):

Internal timeline alone. What day and did this happen? And if she's on this day, what day is she on? Annie Mare (01:11:04):

Yeah. And what Molly Fader (01:11:05):

It was a magic trick. It was a magic trick, Annie. You pull it off. It really was. It was delightful. Annie Mare (01:11:13):

Oh, thanks. Yeah. I mean, when you're in the middle of it, it doesn't feel like, I mean, my first finished draught, so it's like I got it to where I couldn't get it any further without somebody looking at it, and I gave it to my agent, and she's just like, well, this is a beautiful mess. That's basically, here is my 10 paragraph feedback that you have to before I'll take it out. I mean, she wasn't wrong. And then you're in it again. And it becomes the book that every time I went to revision it did a little bit feel like not again, not again, getting into this head space, not again, pulling out all my notes of what happened when to who, not again, trying to tease this out and forgetting about something and making a mistake or creating a plot hole that didn't exist before. Ruthie Knox (01:12:20):

Well, and Annie, I mean, she can write anything, and I think this is the only book in all the years I've known you, that there was a moment where you said you couldn't do it, you just couldn't do it. And I had to be the one to say, you can. You're already doing it. It's happening. It's happening. There's nothing here that you can't handle. But you did hit the end of your Annie Mare (01:12:45):

Rope completely. Completely. It was like it had a brambly little path because then Tara took it out and we kind of decided, let's do a very strategic targeted first round instead of a wide first round, let's focus on editors who are already doing interesting things, which is the right move. Because then Essy Soga, who's amazing and has a lot of vision was like, yeah, absolutely. I'm totally into this revise and resubmit, Ruthie Knox (01:13:27):

Which it's not the outcome for the anxiety riddled writer. Molly Fader (01:13:32):

No, it's the worst. It's the worst. Ruthie Knox (01:13:34):

I mean, I have a lot of inherent soul confidence. I got to revise and ment, I'm going to be like, of course they're going to take it when I'm done with it. Why wouldn't they? But that is not how it felt inside your body, that one. Annie Mare (01:13:48):

Yeah. And honestly, Essie is very, very smart. Just one of those very sharp editors. And I think she gave me some fairly brief edit letter for the, it's like a paragraph for the r and r, but it was like a thousand percent right. Air Molly Fader (01:14:11):

Got right to it, Annie Mare (01:14:12):

Arrow right through the heart. And so I did know what to do, and she did take it, and it's been lots of fun to work with her. But I mean, I think there was maybe though four rounds after that, and it's because this is the kind of book that has to be, right? It has to be come through. So yeah, I don't know. Molly Fader (01:14:42):

Well, I feel like one of the rewards for working so hard is getting a cover like that, that cover you hate that cover? Annie Mare (01:14:51):

No, I cried when I got the sketches. I was just like, I have never, it was so overwhelming. It was so good because I It's so Molly Fader (01:15:01):

Perfect. I know. Annie Mare (01:15:05):

That was a magic trick because to be honest, I didn't give any kind of real brief or anything like that. We sort of agreed that it should be something kind of vintagey and maybe focus on font because the title. Yeah. But I didn't have any kind of brief or big comps for that. And then they took it to, the art director, took it to this artist, Jill Han, who is an old school pen and paper illustrator. So I got back three different options, I think, and every single one of them knocked it out of the park. Oh my gosh. Just black and white sketches. And it was nuts because I felt like it just really looked into the soul of the book and an aesthetic that gave me feelings. So that was such a joyful, that was honestly the way that I celebrated the book the most, was just being excited about that cover and watching it come to be and getting the final back on that cover with the colours. Cool. And just enjoying people it, yeah, responding to it. So that was fun. Molly Fader (01:16:43):

One of the things that really ties all three of your pen names together is, I think I had said this to Ruthie, it's like, I don't know how you made the Midwest feel so exotic, have a lot to do with the community that you're building within these books. And I like how you say in some of your author notes about how you're writing about the Green Bay that you wish existed while at the same point honouring the part of Green Bay that does exist. And I felt that way entirely about the Midwestern of all of these books. It is. You somehow made it exotic. You've touched all of my memories of growing up in the Midwest while erasing some of the things that have made me crazy about the Midwest. I feel like it's a weird little magic trick of the best of you've created a world while keeping it realistic at the same time, which isn't an easy thing to do. Ruthie Knox (01:17:49):

I mean, I think we do that with place as writers. We do that with place all the time. We just don't do it with the Midwest. I mean, if you think about New York City, it's such a fairy godmother in fiction, right? It's like so true. It's like you can take the country girl to New York and that this place is going to, it's going to give her things. We have this rich, spoiled person in New York, and it's like New York is going to teach her a lesson. But I think in California, California looms large the movie industry as a setting, and we have expectations about the kind of story magic that Place will work. In the book. Evelyn Hugo is a book that moves back and forth between Manhattan and California, and you kind of know what the role is of those places in that story, but we don't do anything with the Midwest in fiction very often. Molly Fader (01:18:52):

Or it's the place people are escaping or it's the punchline of a joke or it's equated. Yeah. Ruthie Knox (01:19:01):

Like Jane Smiley sets her King Lear story in Iowa and it becomes this kind of dark place of family strife. But yeah, I mean, we are just interested in writing about the place where we live and giving it some of that power of being able to be a place where people change, a place that does things to people. I don't even know. I mean, well, Molly Fader (01:19:33):

A place where people find their communities, the Midwest, and a lot of storytelling is the place you have to leave to go find your queer community. It's the place you have to leave to go find your diversity and things like that. And I feel like you've, and that's not entirely true. Annie Mare (01:19:51):

No. There's also a lot of queers in Green Bay, Wisconsin, as there are in a lot of medium-sized cities. Of course there are, of course there. I mean, statistically they are. But Green Bay, it's like an immigrant built manufacturing medium-sized city on Lake Michigan. And that means there's a lot of story here, a lot of story here. It's the place where literally there's two indigenous nations. The Monomy, the Monomy, and Monomy, the Oneida are right here and very active communities both politically and socially. And there continues to be a very vibrant immigrant community. And there is no way to live here and not experience that all the time. There's nothing white bread about Green Bay, Wisconsin. And so with Prairie Nightingale, it's very, very easy. It was so easy to imagine what kinds of crimes there would be in the series in someplace like this. Ruthie Knox (01:21:18):

Oh, yeah. Annie Mare (01:21:19):

Very easy. Ruthie Knox (01:21:20):

There's all kinds of crazy murders here. I read the paper and I'm just like, did you know about this murder at the paper mill that happened in the eighties? I mean, there's a lot of strange, there's a lot of strange stuff Annie Mare (01:21:36):

To write about. Well, there's so much intersecting here, so many different communities, so many different kinds of people, so many different kinds of industry, and it's a very rich landscape. Also. It's very beautiful in northeast Wisconsin. And so, I mean, I think that it's been fun to get readers to think about the Midwest in a different, and we get a lot of feedback in that way from both sides, Midwesterners, who are pleased to see themselves and to see the place they actually live reflected with them, their Molly Fader (01:22:17):

Experience in their cities, Annie Mare (01:22:19):

And people who know nothing about it, who are suddenly extremely interested in it. We have a reader for Homemaker who lives in New Orleans and a glamorous neighbourhood in New Orleans who went through Google Maps and the internet trying to find all the places in Green Bay, Wisconsin. She thinks that we fictionalised and became so fascinated by the glamour. Molly Fader (01:22:49):

Well, that's what happens when people connect with a book and a place and they feel like they experienced something new. You did it. Ruthie Knox (01:23:01):

We did it. Molly Fader (01:23:04):

So this year has been an unprecedented year, but all of these books have sequels. Ruthie Knox (01:23:12):

Yeah, all of these books have sequels. Next year in February, there's another Prairie Nightingale book called Trail Breaker, and there's another other Hollywood detectives book as well called Love A Comeback. So that's the sequel to big name fan. I don't know if they'll both stay in February, but right now they're both in February. Oh Annie Mare (01:23:37):

Lord. I think they'll move, but Ruthie Knox (01:23:40):

I think one of 'em might move. And then we have another Mei Marvel in the summer, which is going to be, it's set in England, and it's called The Guest Book. And it's two women who end up at a cd, it kind of end of the road, English Inn together, Annie Mare (01:24:05):

Who have both hit kind of rock bottom, Ruthie Knox (01:24:06):

Who kind of hit rock bottom, find a treasure hunt in the guest book. Molly Fader (01:24:11):

Oh my gosh, what's it called? The Ruthie Knox (01:24:14):

Guest book. Yeah. And it's kind of a multi-generational romantic English vacation novel. And then there's another Annie Mayer book that doesn't have a title yet, because it's really hard to come up with a title as good as Cosmic Love at the Multiverse Hair Salon. It's true. You really painted yourself in a corner Molly Fader (01:24:37):

There. He did. Annie Mare (01:24:40):

And that one's a, it's set in Green Bay like Cosmic Love is, but the idea is that in the Massachusetts Bay Colony, 300 years ago, like a Puritan and Hester, who's a real person in this, ended up forging this unholy deal where all of Hester print's descendants are basically manifestations of the devil. Ruthie Knox (01:25:16):

Well, one in each generation. Annie Mare (01:25:17):

One in each generation, and then one in each generation of this Puritan is cursed to fight the devil. And so now we're to present day in Green Bay, Wisconsin, and there's the current print and the current steadfast, but they're both women who, when they were teenagers fell in love, but then the curse took hold and they were forced to fight. Molly Fader (01:25:45):

Oh my gosh. Annie Mare (01:25:46):

Now they have to break the curse with the help of Rin and a kind of found family of people who have different powers for different reasons. Ruthie Knox (01:26:00):

She's really digging into the generational trauma. Molly, really, really, I Molly Fader (01:26:06):

Love it. I love it so much. Generational trauma and magic. And then there's also a sequel to the Spy novel. Ruthie Knox (01:26:14):

No, the one after the Spy novel is the guest book, so we're going Whole Other Direction still. Annie Mare (01:26:23):

That's Molly Fader (01:26:24):

Another big year. Ruthie Knox (01:26:25):

That's another big year. Annie Mare (01:26:26):

Yeah. Hopefully, though, I mean, weren't all meant to come out in June. That just happened because of publishers moving pub dates, and then suddenly we realised before any more changes really could be made. What was going to happen. Molly Fader (01:26:46):

Yeah. What have you woke up and turned the page on the calendar and you went, Annie, you got to see this. Ruthie Knox (01:26:55):

They won't all sidestep in the same direction, and then they'll all come out in October next year. Hopefully they will sprinkle themselves somewhat more throughout. Molly Fader (01:27:05):

Yeah. June is hard enough. You don't need to add four book releases to it. Although that said, for a reader and for a reader gearing up for summer reading, this is, you've got it covered. You've fueled up the TBR. It's a pretty amazing, Ruthie Knox (01:27:22):

Someone should make a summer reading list, and then it's just our book. Yes, yes. Are you looking for a detective novel? What about a time romance? Yeah, that would be kind of funny actually. Molly Fader (01:27:37):

Well, you definitely made my June some fun reading, and I just am so excited to see first of all of your creative impulses being met with the contract with success. It's really exciting. And to see the Prairie Nightingale series launched so well. I can't wait to read all nine books. Annie Mare (01:27:59):

Well, thank you. Thank you. We hope that everyone will be able to read all nine of them. I don't know. Prairie has kind of a little bit of a, Ruthie Knox (01:28:08):

She has a bit of a glow about her. I think they'll come out one way or another. You guys, it's really hard to get you Molly Fader (01:28:18):

Excited. Ruthie Knox (01:28:21):

I know. We need to work on excitement's hard. Molly Fader (01:28:25):

Yeah, it is. When you've been in the business as long as we have, it's hard to, it's hard not to know that every mountaintop comes with a Ruthie Knox (01:28:35):

Valley. We're excited that you read them. Molly Fader (01:28:38):

Yes, I read them and I love them, and everybody who's listening to this is going to love them. I'm sure that my mom is going to love them. My mom's going to love Prairie Nightingale. Annie Mare (01:28:48):

Oh, that's good to hear. I mean, she's very lovable. Molly Fader (01:28:53):

Yeah. Well, lady, thank you so much for taking the time. This is officially three times longer than I normally do. Annie Mare (01:29:03):

Timer over here and thinking, cut out whatever you want. Molly Fader (01:29:08):

Thinking about Molly, you said this was only going to take 30 minutes, cut out Annie Mare (01:29:13):

Whatever you want. Molly Fader (01:29:15):

I'm not going to cut out anything except for when the phone rang Everybody out there, please pick up all of these beautiful books. Links will be all over the whatever they're called, show notes. I don't know. I'm not professional. Annie and Ruthie, thank you so much for coming by. It's so good to see your faces. Ruthie Knox (01:29:34):

Thank Singer (01:29:34):

You, Molly. It's been fun. All Molly Fader (01:29:35):

Right, everybody out there, stay safe. Read a book. Singer (01:29:39): 

Stay Drinking With.