Helen Zuman, Harvard Graduate and Award-Winning Memoirist, Talks about her Half-FA

Recently we had a fascinating conversation with Helen Zuman. 

Bio:

After graduating from Harvard in 1999, Helen Zuman joined a cult—oops!—stayed for five years, then composted the stinky guck of that experience into fertile soil via Mating in Captivity, her award-winning memoir. Next, she published What Is a Sex Cult? How Cults Reveal Our Culture. As of 2023, she is working on a novel, provisionally titled Common App, in which a college application essay editor compromises the Republicrat candidate’s chances of winning the 2024 presidential election by taking creative license with his son’s Common App Personal Statement. Born in London and raised in Brooklyn, Helen currently homesteads with her husband in Beacon, New York, while dreaming of her next trip to Scotland. She listens to her favorite song, “Scotland the Brave,” three times a day. To stay in touch, sign up for her email list at helenzuman.com.  

Transcript

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Hey there, listeners. Before we get into today's episode, we'd like to invite you to subscribe to our newsletter over at MFAPayday. com for fun goodies and all the most current goings on. Welcome to our podcast, MFA Payday, Elevate Your Writing with Intention. We're your hosts, Drima Drudge. And Barry Drudge. Today our guest is Helen Zuman. Hey Helen, welcome to the show. Hey, Dreamer and Barry, thanks so much for having me. We met through Sue Campbell, Pages and Platforms. And then later on,

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You were my mindset, coach.

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That was, that was one of the best parts of my experience so far as a coach was getting to coach you and getting to know you a little better, you know, in that process. Well, they say you only need a thousand super fans to be a great success with your writing career. I count myself among your thousand super fans. I don't think there's anything you would write that I wouldn't buy. Well, thank you so much. I just need 999 more. this is Helen Zuman After graduating from Harvard in 1999, Helen Zuman joined a cult. Oops. That's what she says. Uh, stayed for five years and then composted the stinky guck of that experience into the fertile soil via mating and captivity. Her award winning memoir. Next, she published What is a Sex Cult? How Cults Reveal Our Culture. As of 2023, she is working on a novel provisionally titled Common App, in which a college application essay editor compromises the Republican candidate's chance of winning the 2024 presidential election by taking creative license with his son's Common App personal statement. Born in London and raised in Brooklyn, Helen currently homesteads with her husband in Beacon, New York, while dreaming of her next trip to Scotland. She listens to her favorite song, Scotland the Brave, three times a day. To stay in touch, sign up for her email list at helenzuman, H E L E N Z U M A N dot com. We want to welcome you. Yes, welcome Helen. Thank you so much. Absolutely. This obviously is MFA payday. So we have to start with something that I've heard you say before that is so intriguing. If you could share a little bit about your unique journey from graduating from Harvard to joining a cult, and get around to, you call it a half F. A. What does that mean, Helen? Yes, okay, a little bit about the Harvard, the cult journey, and then the half F. A. So, yeah, so when I graduated from Harvard in 1989, I received a grant to explore intentional communities, back to the land type places, and so I did that. And the one that I ended up staying at was called Zendik Farm. I had no idea it was a cult, obviously, when I joined. I just thought we were starting a revolution to save the planet from ecocide. Well, not exactly true, not the whole story. But I was there for five years. I certainly, I had, you know, it was, it was quite traumatic in a number of ways. But the main, the main source, the source of the trauma, I would say, was surrendering my self trust and, you know, just. Taking the leaders and the groups, um, views as my own. And so, you know, it was, it was, it was like a journey to, um, come back from that. But at the time I left, I, you know, I was still, I was still a true believer. It, and it took me, like, took me about a year to, like, get the cult memo and sort of, um, Revise my story of what had happened to me. That experience made me a huge believer in the power of stories. Um, partly because it was so amazing that this, you know, a few dozen other people and I, we had together created this super weird story that we lived inside, in which we were truly saving the planet by, you know, doing all the things that we did. So there was the power of that story. And then there was just this incredible ecstatic moment where I got to chuck that story, um, and kind of step out into the world and sort of, Love my family, my old friends again. In the year after I left, I just, I had this feeling of, constant feeling of doom, you know, like thinking that I had failed at the only thing that actually mattered. And so it was, it was just, it was a huge revelation when, when I was able to see that it was simply a story, that Dendek was the only thing that mattered and that I had failed. And then I had this new story, like, oh my gosh, it's just a cult. It fits this pattern. Uh, and And I get to, I get to, you know, just start on a new chapter of my life. Wow. So, so, and as soon as I realized that it was a cult, I was like, I clearly have to write a book about this. Yes. I had always, I mean, writing had always been incredibly important to me. I had been quite constipated as a writer. I didn't understand it as a process. I just wanted things to be perfect the first time around. But when I realized what I had. I was like, well, clearly I need to tell this story and I know it has to be a book because this world that I need to build for people is, is just too weird, you know, to do in an essay or something. And so I really am in some ways, I mean, I'm grateful to my Zendik experience for, you know, for a whole bunch of reasons, including the fact that many of my dearest friends are people I know from there and just everything I learned. About, you know, how humans interact with each other, all kinds of, you know, excellent things came out of it. And one of those was that I cared enough about this story and telling it well, to be willing to invest in really becoming a writer in order to do that. And by become a writer, I guess the main thing I mean, it is to start Thank you very much. Interacting with writing is a process and to be willing to write a shitty first draft and be willing to get feedback and be just totally daunted by it and then put my butt in my chair anyway, right? So, okay, so then, and that of course sags, sags beautifully into the half F. A. I started work, I started... Writing my memoir in January of 2006. I signed up for a writing workshop at the Gotham writing workshop and in New York City is one of those outfits, I think they might still have those little those little like kiosks on the sidewalk everywhere with their catalog, not sure but that's That's, they used to have them all over the, all over the place in, in Manhattan back in the day. So I signed up for a writing, uh, memoir writing workshop in January 2006. And then I took a bunch of other writing workshops, you know, in the, in the following years. And I hired a, you know, an, a development editor and so on. Um, and I think it was, must've been 2011. I, you know, I had been, you know, considering MFA possibility. I got this book, I forget the name of the book, but. It was, it was, it was an excellent book about, um, kind of strategizing for your MFA. And I remember the guy saying like, You know, the number one thing to consider when you apply for an MFA program is money, right? Like, how much are, how much is it going to cost you, or how much, or will you get paid for it, or whatever. He, he had some, he had some very good advice, and I, and I, and I took it. Anyway, so I applied, um, so I, I was living in Brooklyn at the time, and I applied to the MFA program at Hunter College. That was okay. It would have been in 20 in 2012. I was applying to, you know, enter in the class of 2012. Um, funny thing about my application. Okay. And okay. The reason why I applied was so I had done a lot of work on my manuscript and, you know, it had, it had progressed significantly, but I just felt like there's something missing here. There's some added. Layer of profundity and not getting to there must be craft things that I could learn to make it better. And so I basically apply to the program, because I just I just wanted to get to that next level of quality with my manuscripts. And I already had a full manuscript at the time I applied. Oh, wow. Funny thing about my application process was I was actually rejected. I actually received a rejection, official rejection. You have, you know, you did not make it into the program. And I was like, okay, and I went through my moving process and I was disappointed. And then I think it was maybe a few weeks later. I received a call from Katherine Harrison, who was one of the teachers in the program. I received a phone call, she left a message, she said, Oh, actually you're accepted after all. I guess someone who had been accepted had, um, decided not to go. So, I was officially the very last choice. Um, among all my classmates. Came in last in that race. Okay. Um, so that was, that was, that was an ego blow, but I managed it. Okay, so, so I, you know, I, so I started the program in the fall of 2012 and I, there were, you know, I took a literature, there was a literature class and a craft class and, um, you know, workshop class. And I really, I really loved, I really loved the craft class. My teacher, Louisa Salvo. Rest in peace. She was a, she was an amazing teacher. I remember though, I remember her referring to us as baby writers. And I was like, hell no, I am not a baby writer. I am, I am a pro. Like I do this. Like I, I know how to write. I know I had my butt in the chair. I know how to take feedback and so on. And, um, and the, the workshop, it was pretty good, but. In the workshop, to me, there was just this feeling of, like, angling for position and, like, people saying things to, I don't know, to try to, like, sound smart or something. And because the leader of the workshop, she was a famous person, right? And I just felt like there was an element of trying to impress her. Um, and, yeah, just, I had been in all these other workshops where, like, nobody cared. We were, you know, it was just. You know, no one was kind of impressed the teacher people were just talking, and this felt different to me, um, anyway, so but but like halfway through I think it was around, you know, winter of that my first year in the program. I just, I found myself Googling MFA creative writing dropout and I was like, Oh, clearly I am just not super excited about this. And so I just, you know, my Googling behavior showed me that I was, I was not super excited about it. And I, you know, secretly, like I always sort of had a fantasy of, of like dropping out of college. I kind of tried to do it a few times at Harvard, didn't work, but. Um, and I had read this book. Um, what was it called? It was by Judson Jerome. It was about, um, oh, Families of Eden. It was, he did a lot of research on a Uh, communes in the 1970s, he was a communard himself, and he used the phrase, peek out, P E A K out, when he was talking about people leaving college at that time. Like, it's not like you, you, you, you drop out because you're, you can't make it, it's like, you kind of rise above it, it no longer is useful to you. And, so, My, so it, my, my feeling about this was, so like I said, I already had this manuscript when I came into the program. Um, I, my reason for, for being in the MFA program was, it was, I wanted it to serve my book. And, I found, like, for example, in the workshop, you know, we were only submitting, like, whatever it was, 15 or 20 pages at a time, and so a lot of the feedback I was getting was, like, had to do with things people didn't know because they hadn't read the whole manuscript, and so in that way, it was not incredibly great. Thank you. It was not incredibly useful to me. Of course, I was also spending a lot of time, um, you know, investing a lot of time in, like, critiquing other people's manuscripts, um, which was just, just a significant investment of my limited amount of thought power, you know, that I had per day. Um, And, and then there was the matter of money. So my first year I didn't pay anything. I, I had a, what was called a Hertog Fellowship. I did some research for some distinguished writer and then I basically didn't pay tuition. But then the next year I was going to need to pay tuition. And so I was saving up my money. And so I had the money I was, you know, I had it saved up, but in that, in the, in the spring of, I guess it was the spring of 2013. I was just. I was just starting to think about this in terms of my allegiance is to my book, and if I, if I invest this money in year two of the MFA program, and then I will need to continue to work, you know, to make additional money to, to fund my life. And I could teach a class but then you don't get paid very well to do that and that takes, you know, additional investment of thought work. So, and. I'm not getting feedback on my whole manuscript, and I'm in a different place, you know, from, from my classmates, you know, in which I'm not trying to just like marshal, you know, the first 70 pages of something I can, I can complete after I graduate, like I already, I'm, I'm kind of farther along. Um, and so, yeah, so I just decided, well, basically I was like, I'm at this point. I'm the one who knows my manuscript the best, and so I decided I was gonna keep the money that I had saved for my tuition, I was gonna use it to fund, I don't know, four or five months of not working for money, and I was just gonna like, You know, spend whatever it was three hours a day, and just really, you know, revise my manuscript again really really well using everything that I knew, and I said so I set a deadline with. an editor for, I think it was the end of 2013, to get that revision to her. And I did, and I still had a bunch of years to go. I mean, it didn't come out until 2018. I would say I didn't, I didn't, uh, I didn't truly I still had another, another, you know, significant revision to do of the manuscript, um, but basically that's, that's, that's why I awarded myself a half F. A. After, after one year was because it seemed to me like, okay, the book is what matters, and at this point, the interests of the book and the interests of the program are diverging. And I'm going with the book. Yeah. It seems as though that they, they didn't do a, do you a service in some ways? I think that, uh, you know, I know our program had something that was more of a full length. Uh, work that could be critiqued and everybody in that, it was a smaller group and they would take and look at the entire, uh, memoir or novel or whatever and, and then give you, you know, feedback that way because yeah, I know we've had other people that I've been in workshops with that have had memoir that if you could read a little farther than what they gave you, you might know the answer to it. But people start asking those questions and I thought, well, that's not productive, not at all. So, yeah, wow, that's, that's kind of mind blowing. So you're currently working on a novel titled Common App. Yes. Could you give us a sneak peek into the world of this novel and how it, uh, it takes off and diverges from your previous work? I just wanted to say, I want this novel, I want it in my hands. Okay. Thank you. I'm doing a little bit about it. And also, if you could like, um, start with maybe a explanation of what the common app is for and who's for those who might not know. Okay, so the seed of this novel came out of my seven. Years working as an editor of college application essays, working for an admissions consulting company, revising, editing, sometimes rewriting, and sometimes even fabricating essays for overprivileged teenagers, college applications. The main essay that the kids have to write these is called the Common App Personal Statement, limit of 650 words, and There's all different kinds of prompts that you can choose from, but basically, this is where you get to talk about whatever you want. And so, as opposed to the supplement, the supplements for the individual schools tend to be more focused, and you're talking maybe about that particular school, or they're just more specific. But basically, you can use the, you can use your essay to tell any story you want, and therefore, it is the one in which storytelling skill is the most important. So, you know, in my, in my seven years doing this, I edited slash rewrote, I don't know, it was probably hundreds of these. Of these essays and okay, and so, so the, the, the novel, the story is set in 2024, October, November, 2024, during the, the, you know, US presidential election, the protagonist, her name is Gale, G A L E. She is an editor of College Application Essays, and she, she went to Harvard. Just so happens, she went to Harvard with the Republicrat candidate for president. The Republicans and Democrats have merged, officially, one party, Republicans. Their candidate's name is Granville Cabot. And he and, he and Gayle went to school together, and bad shit happened between them. Therefore... She's, you know, she, she, she would like revenge, but basically she's, in the 25 years since she graduated, she has done her best to avoid him. Like she doesn't even watch, she doesn't watch TV, she doesn't read the newspaper, she wants nothing to do with him, and she just tries to avoid him to the best of her ability. But, the, it just so happens of course that the, the, the election day is very close to the early action deadline for, for Harvard. And. And, you know, Gail works for a super high powered mis insulting company, and she is assigned to edit Granville's son's... Oh, I'm gonna, I'm gonna I need this book. I need this movie and this book. I need it today. So, so she received this assignment and at first she's like, I don't want to help a goddamn cabinet get into Harvard and she just doesn't want to do it. But then she sees a way that she could use this assignment to get revenge on, on Granville and also to To increase the, the fortunes of the opposing party, the opposing party is called Dirt First, exclamation point, and part of their platform is, you know, stewarding, air, water, soil, and relationships, and it's, and it's also to introduce, uh, universal basic income, and also to encourage people to take the common nap. Part of their platform is like humans. Just like quit with all the activity just like slow down you actually care about the ecology, you know Take a rest. Take a break. So, that's basically where the story starts. There's also a couple other themes. There's a Scottish versus English theme. The protagonist and her brother, who's also her sidekick. They are Americans, but they're of Scottish descent. And of course, the villain is of English descent. Um, and, and then there's the mycelium. And what we, what, what we, what we discover at the end is that the mycelium are actually in charge and they're actually running the show. So, that's a sneak peek. Oh, wow. Well, this actually feeds nicely into a question that we have regarding your connection to Scotland. We love Scotland, by the way. Yes, indeed. Oh, cool. And you seem to have this strong connection with Scotland. And you mentioned that you listen to Scotland the Brave like every day. So what draws you to Scotland and how does it influence your writing? It sounds like there is some in this novel. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, what, what draws me to Scotland feels to me like a bit of a, of a mysterious force that sort of had been weaving throughout my life without my really paying attention to it until 2019 I, um, well, I have a, I have, I had a good friend who was very much of Scottish descent and who got me interested in Scotland. And then, uh, around the time that I was, I was, um, kind of heavily in touch with him, I, I went to this, uh, Native American church, uh, ceremony on New Year's Eve of 20, it was, it was 2018. And. I, at the time, I was in some turmoil over where I was living, and this house renovation my husband and I were doing, and, and I was thinking about, about Scotland a lot, and I, I had, I came into the ceremony, it was an all night ceremony where we, where we took, um, uh, peyote, and pain medicine, and I, I came into, I had this question in my mind about, about where I belonged, and I didn't speak the question, I just, fought it. But right when I fought it, the shaman who was leading the ceremony said, You know, he's a man of Lakota descent, and he said, you know, you people, you come to me, you want to, you know, learn from, learn from my ancestors, but I'm telling you, you need to look into your own ancestry, you know, and get your answers from there. And so, that, the entire night, I just kept... In my mind asking questions and getting answers and receiving instructions. That's how it registered to me. And one of the instructions was that I should take my husband on a trip to Scotland. And, um, and so I did in 2019 he and I went there for about two weeks and Um, but, but I also, but when I looked back, I saw, like, these other connections, like, my very first boyfriend, he was Scottish and he was extremely proud of it. In my first semester at Harvard, I took Scottish Gaelic. Why? I don't know. It just, it was just like, this is weird and cool. And then, when I was... When I, in my, in the, in the year after I left Zendik, where I still believed and I thought I needed to go back, and I was trying to like, knock out all my, quote, death culture fantasies, one of the things I thought like I need to do before I return to Zendik and, and hand my life over to them again, is I need to go to Scotland. I, I, well to Fintor in particular, I didn't actually go at that time. But so there's all these, all these threads. And actually my, my very first, um, post Zendik boyfriend, he was also incredibly Scottish and super proud of it. So anyway, all, all those threads were coming in. But, um, but then, but ever since, you know, basically, you know, for the past few years, um, I've just, I've just felt so, so drawn to Scotland. I absolutely love bagpipe music. Um, they always make me cry. When I was a kid, I grew up in an Irish Italian neighborhood, and I would march in the St. Patrick's Day parade, and I'd hear the bagpipes, and I just always loved them. Um, but, yeah, and then, and I just feel this, I feel this yearning for that place. I do have Scottish ancestry as well. I'm also English and Irish, but I just, I sort of love the Scottish part and the other parts I'm not as interested in, at least not yet. Um, so, so then when I was, you know, working on this, Working on this novel, I guess I felt like, well, I, I am really interested in this whole, you know, um, you know, ancient hatred of the Scots versus English I'm really interested in, in Scottish history. And I was like, oh, well, you know, I can't, I'm not moving to Scotland. like, not right now, but I can sort of like en enjoy. Um, you know, exploring my heritage through my characters. Um, and so I figured I would just, you know, I put that in there and also, you know, and also revenge is a big part of the story. And, and, you know, and I'm, I'm very interested in, like, the history of the Scottish clans, the Highland clans, their history with revenge. You know, like how, how it was back in the day before there were jails and prisons and, you know, and, and, and a bureaucratic justice system, like, how did people, how did people handle it when somebody wronged someone else, you know, and, and how, like, you know, I mean, well, so one, one way I think of it is like as local art, artisanal warfare, you know, like in the Highlands and the, uh, Whatever 1500 1600 1700s. Um, of course, like there were horrible, you know, aspects to life there and I'm not looking for a time machine to go live there myself. But, but, and there was all this all this violence and you know, and, and, you know, plan warfare and so on. Um, But the, but the, the upside was when, when this violence was, was, um, was personal, like it wasn't, it wasn't wholesale, you know, like it, it wasn't, it wasn't destroying the very web of life, you know, which is what, which is what warfare, which is what modern warfare does, you know? Yeah. And also back then, if a clan chief wanted to go to war, he had to sell it. You know, he had to, like, he had to, like, muster people to, you know, to come join his cause, and they weren't convinced they were going to leave. They didn't have conscription, you know, and so, yeah, I'm just, I feel like also, though, there's just There's just something mysterious going on here that I don't really understand. But for some reason, and I live in the area of upstate New York where I live, it's called the Hudson Highlands. Like, I live in the Highlands. Oh, wow. Yeah. And this place in North Carolina, Earth Haven Eco Village, which is my other favorite place to be, um, it's, it also, like, it's in a part of North Carolina where lots of, um, lots of Scottish people moved, you know, because it reminded them of home. And so I just feel like these, you know, these places somehow are just, you know, part of my soul. And, um, so I just, I just sort of get to be with that mystery and explore it. Oh, and I think about Scotland and I think about their, their love of the arts today. I mean, like, uh, we were in Edinburgh and they crossed away from us from the hotel we were at. They had a big, uh, Sir Walter Scott, you know, uh, statue. And, uh, we went to like Robert Burns's birthplace and, and we went to a museum of writing that they, they seem to, to, to really connect with that. And you were talking about the warring tribes. My, uh, Familial ancestors on my mom's side. They were McFarlane's. So they were the last chieftain died in like 1918. So I totally get the call to a mysterious country like that. Like so. So you think that that's as you're talking about your book, do you think that that kind of attitude you're trying to kind of do some references to that in the political aspects of it? I don't think there's so much, so much having to do with, with the politics. I mean, okay, so really I would say maybe the, hmm, the biggest connection between my novel and Scotland actually lies with My friend who got me interested in Scotland in late 2018, he, you know, as I said, he was, he was very, he was very Scottish, very into his, his ancestry, and, and this book, in a way, is an attempt, part of its purpose, is to compost my relationship with him and what he did, he killed five people on my birthday in, in 2021. And he did it for revenge. And I, and so, yes, so part of the part of what I'm doing in this. Novel is kind of attempting to understand that and compost it and put it in historical perspective and kind of tease out the ways in which, in which, in which, in which I guess violence is a part of me too, right? Like, not in the way, not in the way that it was part of him. Um, and. There's no way I would ever express it in the way that he did, but just kind of, like, after, after he, after he died and killed people, um, the, you know, of course, the, the, the sort of near universal response was to, you know, hate him, reject him, attempt to forget him, and that's just, that's just not how I work, like, that's not what I did with my identity experience. That's, I, I, it's not what I want to do. I feel like, um, what that, what I want to do with my relationship with him. I, I, I, okay, so in, in, in, in real life, like I, I'm, I am a master composter of, you know, in the composting, in the physical way, um, you know, certified by the New York City Department, sanitation. Oh, wow. And I feel like, I feel like this, this composting of my relationship with him and what he did with his life. It's like I received this assignment because I am also a master etheric composter. And so yeah, like it's a super stinky pile. And I believe it does hold some fertility. Wow. First of all, I'm incredibly sorry that, you experienced that, that you, uh, went through that, but we're incredibly honored that you would share that with us. Definitely. I think what I'm getting from this too, Helen is. That absolutely everything that happens in our lives. I think if you're a writer, that's something that you can do to process that right and it becomes. Material I think whether we realize it or not, it definitely becomes part of our story and the story that we write, I would say, yeah. So, yeah. Well, as as we're getting close to the end here. Is there anything we didn't ask you something that maybe you want to talk about whether it be about your novel or, and I definitely want to recommend your memoir, which is out. Definitely a fascinating read. And then, your second, I bought that as well. It's, it's a mutt. It's a mutt of a book. It's a compilation. It includes a whole bunch of essays. The, the, the oldest one dates back to 1995 that I wrote for a newspaper at Harvard. And, and then, and then there's, there are a lot of essays that I wrote, you know, post Zendik. Sort of, you know, inquiring into the cult experience and what it means about our culture, you know, using it as a, as a lens to, to look at the wider world. There's a bunch of outtakes from Mating Captivity, my Zenic memoir. And, and there's also, there's a little, there's a little bit of fiction in there too. But, um, but yeah, basically that book, it was an experiment. I gave myself the assignment of producing a book in a week. So my first book, my memoir took me 12 years and this book actually took me 12 hours. Oh my gosh, not, not, not the producing all the material because that was, and it happened over a period of, you know, decades, but just like making all the decisions about how I was going to organize things, what to include the title, you know, the flow, doing the formatting, just. the cover, the whole thing. And, you know, so that's sort of, um, what it, what it came out of. Um, yeah. And just the, the, the desire because I, you know, I've, I've written so much, you know, on this subject and I just wanted to put it all in one place. Well, you know, actually I'm embarrassed to say I did read it, but I read it quickly and I usually like to do one burn through of something and then go back at a later date and really pick up more of it. But I didn't remember the fiction part and I apologize. Oh, well, the reason you don't remember it is because I actually did the very short bit of fiction. I wrote it for a literary salon here in Beacon to read on April Fool's Day. So it reads. Like part of my outtake from the memoir, but then but it's I made it up. That's all I love to play with form So I think that's fantastic Well as we wrap up when might we be able to expect your new novel common app to come out? Do you have a timeline? Well? I, I want it to be out in 2024. I want it to be out by the time of the presidential election because I think part of its purpose. Okay, here, this is, this is my, my perception is that there are so many people in this country who like me are like, oh my gosh. You know, kill me now as far as presidential election goes. Like, can we please have a third option? And a part of what my book does is it sort of, it's kind of an escapist fantasy in a way of like, like imagining there is a third option, right? And so I want people to be able to be, to read this book while they're, you know, despairing over the state of the actual world. So anyway, I want to see how by 2024 and how that will happen. I am not sure, but That is my, that is my desire and we will see how it goes. And if you sign up for my email list, you'll be the first to know. Perfect. Love it. Yeah. Alrighty. Where can people find you? I don't think we'll learn more about you or keep in touch. Okay. Well, the best place to find me is at my website. HelenZuman. com. H E L E N Z U M A N dot com. Every page of the website you should be able to find the sign up form for the aforementioned email list. I am also on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. I believe it's just at Helen Zuman in all those places. Oh, Helen, this has just been fascinating. We really appreciate talking with you today. We sure do. Your, your journey is, uh, diversity of writing projects is truly, I mean, I, there's so many things that happened today that I'm going to have to sit back and re listening and because it was just flying by the speed of light, but we want to thank you for sharing your experiences and insights. So gosh, you're so welcome. And thank you for having me. Oh, sure. And we have a tagline that we always say. So until next time, keep writing all the things. We Wish You a Merry Christmas