Stories you can’t stop thinking about

[00:00:00] ARIEL LAWHON: I want to feel like this is somebody that I actually know when I'm done with the book, when it's out, after I've done all my hard work and I've sat at my desk and cried for months, I want to pick up. And that is a real part of my process.

ANNE BOGEL: An essential part of the process. Hey readers, I'm Anne Bogel and this is What Should I Read Next?. Welcome to the show that's dedicated to answering the question that plagues every reader, what should I read next? We don't get bossy on this show. What we will do here is give you the information you need to choose your next read.

[00:00:45] Every week we have a great conversation about all things books and reading, and I'm really excited about what we have in store for you today. This is a special time for readers as we're doing a lot of recaps, looking forward to the next year, looking back on the year that's gone by, thinking about gifting in all its shapes and forms.

And on that note, we've had so much good content on the blog modernmrsdarcy.com with so many gift recommendations for people who are readers and also are book lovers. And on that note, I just want to say my book I'd Rather Be Reading makes such a great gift for any style of reader or anyone who shares the love of a good book.

It's stocking-sized. It's beautiful. There's a watercolor of my own home library on the front. And you can make it even more meaningful by getting your copy signed and personalized. To do this, order ahead of time for holiday delivery through our website at modernmrsdarcy.com/shop.

[00:01:45] We also have tote bags and bookplates, and you get copies of all my books there. Don't Overthink It is selling exceptionally well right now for reasons I cannot ascertain, except maybe lots of people think it's the perfect gift. Maybe it's the perfect gift for one of your favorite readers. This is a great time of year to get for yourself or give to someone else a reading journal for kids or adults. We have both.

Check out all your options at modernmrsdarcy.com/shop. And if you want those personalized copies, just put your information in the order notes and we will take care of it.

Now for today's guest. She will be a familiar name to many of you because not only did I recommend her brand new book and newly announced GMA Book Club pick, woo hoo, The Frozen River to Shana Ferguson in Episode 393: What Makes You a Real Reader.

She was also one of our earliest guests on the podcast way back in Episode 15. She's also one of my favorite authors writing books right now and one of my favorite people to talk books and publishing with.

[00:02:43] Joining me on the show today is Ariel Lawhon to discuss her new release and more bookish goodness like the unexpected way her books have aligned with the literary Zeitgeist, why some stories stay with you long after you finish them, and our mutual love for seasoned female protagonists.

Ariel also shares some of her favorite books and the titles she can't wait to read next. So you'll be sure to walk away with plenty of new titles for your to be read list from today's episode. Let's get to it.

Ariel, welcome to the show.

ARIEL: Thank you so much for having me back. I'm really excited.

ANNE: You were on in one of our very earliest episodes, I've almost forgotten. Listeners, we'll put that link in show notes. But yeah, seven years later, it's great to have you back.

ARIEL: Thank you. I am so happy to be here.

ANNE: Well, I have to tell you, I've been angling to have you back on for a long time because you are one of my favorite people to talk books with and I think you're so insightful and smart about the industry, and I feel like you make my reading life better.

[00:03:44] And we could not have you on the show, as our listeners call them regular readers, no one would buy that. But you have a brand new book out today, and I'm so excited for it and for you. I read Martha on vacation, oh gosh, back in May, the eGalleys and ARCs had just gotten released. And I'm so excited that all these people can finally read this book that I've been itching for them to read for forever.

ARIEL: Oh, thank you. I'm really excited. I'm so happy the book is here and I'm kind of amazed that you read it in May, which is probably a good time because you were probably on the beach and the book is cold. So I would imagine you got to skip over that feeling of just being cold all the time.

ANNE: You know, there are times to really lean into the mood and setting and where you want your book to match the place where you're in. And sometimes the total antithesis can be a lot of fun. And that was the case here.

ARIEL: Good.

ANNE: Ariel, you write the kind of work that I think really lends itself to being... I'm trying not to say word-of-mouth sensations. But truly the kind of work that... you write biographical historical fiction. But also I feel like you also write work that is so deeply emotional, resonant. And that is no accident.

[00:04:57] I always love seeing how, in addition to writing about an undercover spy in World War II or a perhaps varnished Russian grand duchess, or in this case, a badass Maine midwife, there's so much more that the story is about.

And as we dive in today, I would love to hear what you see as those emotional throughlines in your work. Like, how would a reader know they're holding an Ariel Lawhon novel? What do you think the hallmarks are?

ARIEL: That is a great question. And the funny thing is I was just having this conversation with somebody because really it's you're asking about the theme, right, the overarching theme of my novels. And I don't know that I ever really know what they are when I go into it. It's only something I recognize after the fact.

So specifically, with my subject matter, I'm always looking for, really, something that interests me personally. Either I know a little bit about it, but I don't have the whole story or it's something I had no idea existed, a person or an event that I'd never heard of, and it captures my imagination.

[00:06:06] And I'm always looking for the deep human parts of those stories. I want the emotion. I want to feel like this is somebody that I actually know when I'm done with the book, when it's out, after I've done all my hard work and I've sat at my desk and cried for months, I want to pick up. And that is a real part of my process.

ANNE: An essential part of the process.

ARIEL: Fundamental. If I don't actually get to the point drafting a book where I have sat at my desk and sobbed at least once, then I'm doing something wrong. But I want to tell the kind of stories that make you feel, that make you curious, and also that makes you want to go back and learn more about Nancy Wake or learn more about Anastasia Romanov.

ANNE: We're going to get a little more specific on those things over the course of our conversation, listeners. So don't you worry. Ariel, you have thus far in your published career been writing biographical fiction. Would you just give us a little primer for those of us who don't hear that phrase thrown around a lot? What does that mean?

[00:07:16] ARIEL: My understanding of the phrase is biographical fiction is fiction written about a real person or a real moment in history. For instance, my first book is about a missing judge in New York City. My second is about the last ill-fated flight of the Hindenburg. My third is about Anastasia Romanov. My fourth is about a highly decorated female spy during World War II. And then, of course, my current one, The Frozen River, is about Martha Ballard. She was a real midwife in Maine in the late 1700s.

So, on one hand, it's really easy because much of the story is only there, I just have to research it, I have to find it, organize it, and write it. On the other hand, it's really hard because these are real people and real events. And history is established. These events happened.

[00:08:14] I don't really have any interest in rewriting history or telling a speculative version of a moment in history. I am constrained by the real people and the real events. And that can get really tricky. I'm really telling my version of their life story.

Like, for instance, Nancy Wake in my novel Code Name Hélène, real woman, real spy. She wrote her own biography that I read. I used that biography to tell my version of her life. But then when my book was optioned for film, the screenwriters came in and they told their version of my version of her version of her life.

So there's always this interpretation, right? I'm interpreting the events so that it fits the story that I'm telling. And inevitably things get left out or I have to imagine conversations. But ultimately, I'm giving these dead people a personality. And it's the personality that I choose to give them. I have no way of knowing whether it's accurate or not.

[00:09:31] For Nancy Wake, I got as close as I could because her voice is so strong in her autobiography, but I can't confirm that. So there's this risk involved in telling another person's story in the form of a novel.

ANNE: And yet you've done it for four... We can talk about whether you would say that's five books now. What keeps pulling you back to this kind of writing?

ARIEL: I mean, part of it is industry. My publisher really wants me to continue telling these types of stories. So there's the business aspect of it. But then there's also my personal interest. I have always said that nobody finishes school with a perfect education. There are always gaps in our education.

In this case, I'm thinking specifically in regards to history. So as I go about my life, I'd be bopping around, inevitably, I find some nugget of some moment in history or some person. And I am really curious by nature, so I tend to write these things down and I'll go, "Oh, I had no idea people actually survived the Hindenburg crash. Who were they?" And that leads into a novel.

[00:10:49] Or "I had no idea that the most famous missing persons case of the 20th century was a missing judge in New York City. What happened to him?" And I can trace the origins of every one of my novels to a moment like that, where I am introduced to information and I'm curious and it takes me off on this rabbit trail.

I have ideas that have not been written yet that would qualify for that. I have ideas that I have abandoned that would also qualify. Regardless, the ones that I have finished are all... they all have their origins in some moments, some detail from history that I did not know and wanted to explore further.

ANNE: What was the origin of The Frozen River?

ARIEL: Great question. I actually found this idea first before any of the other novels that I have published. It was August 8th, 2008, if I remember correctly, and I was in the doctor's office waiting to see my obstetrician because I was pregnant with our fourth son and my doctor was late. He had gotten stuck in the hospital in a tricky delivery and so I got stuck in his waiting room.

[00:12:12] I could have rescheduled, but if I'm being completely honest, rescheduling meant going home and being a parent to three other children. Because a friend was watching the boys, I didn't have to rush home. So I stayed in the waiting room and I finished the book I brought with me, I finished all of the magazines and there was nothing left but a pile of really scary pamphlets, you know, the ones in the doctor's office that you avoid, and they're curled up and rotting in the corner because nobody wants to touch them.

So I'm like digging through this pile of pamphlets and I don't want to read any of the information there. But at the bottom was this little book of devotions. It was like a daily devotional. In Texas these are real common in the doctor's offices. So they're printed in like three-month segments. It's called Our Daily Bread. And they send them to doctors' offices. They just send them around.

So I'm bored and I flip open to August 8th, 2008, and there is a devotional about a woman named Martha Ballard, who was a midwife in Maine in the late 1700s. And it talked about how she delivered over a thousand babies in the course of her career and she never lost a mother.

I remember sitting there reading that thinking, "That's incredible. My own doctor can't boast a record like that, and he has all of modern medicine at his disposal. He knows how to use a scalpel. He's got a sonogram machine in the back." So I remember thinking, "That would make an amazing story. Like she had to have been phenomenally skilled to finish an entire career and never lose a mother in childbirth."

[00:13:54] ANNE: So 15 years later, how did it happen that Martha's time is now?

ARIEL: I keep a file in my office of potential book ideas. And every time I finish a novel and I'm ready to start thinking about the next one, I'll go back to that file. And I honestly revisited Martha's story after every one of those books and it just didn't feel like the right time.

In hindsight, I think it's because I needed more time under my belt as a woman, as a wife, as a mother in particular. Martha's story takes place over a six-month period when she is 54 years old. So this is a middle-aged mother. And a lot of the story is about her relationship to her older children. She has children that are either left home or are leaving home.

And I don't know that I could have done this story justice until I had experienced some of that myself. I joke that I could not have written this story until my children had broken me. And if mothers don't know what I'm talking about, it just means your kids haven't broken you yet. It's fine, everything will be fine, you'll be fine, they'll be fine, but they will break you. And I needed to have experienced that personally before I could tell her story.

[00:15:15] ANNE: I think it's really interesting. Have you said that like Martha is solidly historical fiction? Absolutely. No question. And yet it's a bit of a departure for you. Ariel, I'm not sure I would have noticed had I not heard you talk about it and read all the details in your really juicy author's note.

Friends, if you are not reading the author's note to your historical fiction authors, you have to start immediately. This is where they tell you the story behind the story and how they found inspiration in the waiting room in 2008 and what is fact and what is fiction in the story and the liberties they took with the timeline to make the plot work. You can't miss out on that stuff. But Martha is a bit of a departure. Tell me more about that.

ARIEL: I think this story is more literary than my others. I tend to be a very commercial writer. Lots of stuff happens, I believe, in plot. I believe in a propulsive plot. And Martha's story does have all of that. But it also has a deeper layer of character development and I think emotional resonance than anything I have written before.

[00:16:21] It's part of why this is the first novel that I have ever published that I cannot look at you and say, I know exactly what it's about. Everything else I've ever written did exactly what I told it to. I told the story where to go, I told the characters what to do. This one escaped me. I've never really been able to wrap my arms around what it's about.

And it's fascinating to me because now that it's out in the world and people are reading it, everyone seems to have a very different idea. Some people think it is about this tight-knit community of women that takes care of each other. And it is. Some people think it's about a long and happy marriage. And it is. Some people think it's about the deep emotional journey that a mother takes raising her children and sending them into the world. And it is. It is all of those things. But everyone sees something different in it.

And that is the first time that has ever happened to me where the feedback that I'm getting back is so varied and the people that are reading it see something different from reader to reader. And to me, that's typically what literary fiction does. Everyone sees something different and then they discuss it and go, "Oh, I didn't see that. I thought it was about this." That's why it feels like a departure for me.

[00:17:59] ANNE: Does the readerly reaction you're seeing surprise you?

ARIEL: It surprises me a little bit because when I sat down to write this story I was looking at the main thrust of the novel, which is it's a murder mystery, but it is also a rape trial. And I was writing those two realities through the eyes of a married, middle-aged mother. So everything else I wrote in and it is intentional, but it is fascinating to me what rises to the surface in each reader's mind.

ANNE: You also noted that this book is less biographical than your other works, and I'd love to hear more about that aspect.

ARIEL: So everything else I've written there has been a good bit of research material available. Biographies, histories, you can go to archives. You can find a lot about the Romanov, you can find huge amounts about World War II, and even huge amounts about Nancy Wake, the Hindenburg, Joseph Crater in New York City. You can find that information.

[00:19:15] When it comes to Martha Ballard, there are two things. There is a biography by Laurel Thatcher Ulrich. It was published in 1992, and it won The Pulitzer actually. It's a biography of her life, but her life in the greater context of the post-Puritan era.

And then there is Martha Ballard's diary itself. It is, I don't know, 900 pages, but it's more of a daybook. There's no editorializing. She doesn't really emote. You get the date, you get the weather, you get information about what she did that day. And it is in that diary that the only written record of this particular rape trial exists. There's no record of it anywhere else in history.

So as I'm reading Thatcher's biography, I get this very clear picture of life in post-Puritan Maine. As I read Martha's diary, however, I have this scant information and I have to look at all of these disparate details from what she had for dinner to who fell in the river to who got arrested. And I have to piece them together tiny detail by tiny detail.

[00:20:32] And it left me without any kind of certainty as to her personality, her speech patterns or the relationships that she had with the people in her town. So I had to build those from scratch. There are no records that say, Oh, Martha was really funny or Martha loved to read. There's none of that. So I had to build her to look the way that I wanted her to look in this novel.

ANNE: And how did you want her to look?

ARIEL: I wanted her to be ferociously intelligent. I wanted her to be funny, but in understated way. I wanted her to be deeply loyal and committed to justice when there was no justice to be found. I wanted her to really value her marriage. I wanted her to deeply value human life and be a proud mother. And I believe that you can infer all of those things from her journal. I just don't have a direct quote to go back and say, look, she was these things.

[00:21:47] ANNE: Now, you said something when we were talking earlier that we saved for this episode, we have not unpacked it yet. But I was like, Oh my gosh, I need to hear more about that. So you are someone who educates yourself about the industry. You know what's happening in publishing. You keep up to date on the news. And you mentioned that you feel like you've accidentally hit on a publishing trend with each of your works. I don't even know what to ask, but I would love to hear more about how you've seen that.

ARIEL: It is the darndest thing. I have never looked around and gone, Oh, what kind of books are selling well right now? I'm going to write one of those. Because if you do, the trend is already gone. By the time you've written the book and it goes to the publishing process, the trend is gone. I also have no interest in doing that. But for some reason, I have found myself in the white-hot center of the Zeitgeist every time.

With my first novel, I found the story of this missing judge, and by the time I'd written it and it was published, Jazz era in New York City was all the rage. I'm thinking Rules of Civility. I'm thinking The Chaperone. There were a ton.

[00:23:01] I wrote Flight of Dreams, my novel about the Hindenburg because I was interested in the subject. And by the time it was published, we were right at this rising tide of World War II. With my third novel, it was set during the Russian Revolution, and it came out right as A Gentleman in Moscow and several other Russian Revolution novels were happening.

And then with Code Name Hélène, I went back to World War II because I was interested in her, and it was the peak of World War II fiction.

And then with Martha's story, again, I found this a million years ago. I've been holding on to this idea until I felt like I was ready to tell this story. And it comes out amidst this sort of... this one I would call a smaller wave, a miniature wave of Puritan-era fiction.

I don't know, it’s trend, and I hit it again. And I've never intended to. I don't know whether it's good or bad. It's just funny to me that somehow, either by luck, good or bad, I don't know, timing, I have found myself every single book in a wave.

[00:24:16] ANNE: I appreciate you sharing all that. That is fascinating. And also I don't think that's the only thing. Like we've heard from listeners on our podcast and the readers I talked to, you know, every day because that's my job, about how they wish they saw more titles about seasoned female protagonists.

And by that I mean they're looking for characters who aren't just in their 20s or their 30s. They want to read about women who are 40, 50, 80 dealing with real-life issues. And they say that publishing has, for market reasons, disappeared these women from the stories. The stories aren't getting published, even though they think that many readers be clamoring to grab those books from the bookstore shelves.

And I've noticed, especially this season, I'm reading Spring Book Preview titles now, we're already populating a robust database for Summer Reading Guide titles, friends. Like if you're into that nerdy stuff, how it happens behind the scenes, that's how it happens.

So you have this story about a 54-year-old fiercely intelligent midwife in the Puritan era who does have a long and happy marriage. We also hear from people who say, like, I wish I could read about relationships that work. But you don't get that in novels, because if the story is about a relationship and it's working, there's no friction, there's no tension, there's no plot. But in a story like The Frozen River, you have the opportunity to see that up close.

[00:25:36] And then you mentioned, I don't know how much this is the trend, but I do think I can see how it's something that we would be hungry for right now. You do portray this community even in the face of just such a lack of justice for females and such horrible misogyny. Oh, my gosh, the Harvard obstetrician in your book, I just want to pinch his nose and then push him in the river.

ARIEL: Oh, that is so much nicer than what I want to do to him.

ANNE: Well, this is a family-friendly podcast most of the time. But you do portray this... I mean, the community of supportive and protective women, like that is a whole atmosphere. And I didn't know that was something I was longing to read about until I was reading about it. And I was like, Oh, this is so great.

ARIEL: I think you're absolutely right. I think women, readers, want to see themselves reflected in fiction. We know this. Everybody wants to see themselves reflected in fiction. But there is an entire demographic of women that so rarely gets to see that in its mature, middle-aged readers. We are so obsessed with the young, buxom, 20-year-old blond in fiction that the mature woman gets left out.

[00:26:50] And personally, I was so drawn to Martha's story because I want to read about a woman who has seen some stuff in life, she has experienced it, it is under her belt. We hunger for that because that's life. We all get older. If we're lucky, right? When lucky to age, that is how you win at life. You get old, that's how you have won at life. And we want to see that.

And when it comes to the marriage, I mean, you're right, it's easy to write a bad marriage because there's friction. And I haven't been married long. I've only been married 23 years and I was told recently that I hadn't been married long.

ANNE: Martha would say you're young.

ARIEL: I'm young. Now I say I haven't been married all that long, just 24 years as a friend reprimanded me. She's been married 50-something. I want to see that on the page. What does it look like in real time 35 years after you have made the right decision? I love a good love story. I love a good romance novel.

[00:27:57] But I think the one thing that we get wrong in that genre is that the wedding is not the finish line, it's the starting line. That is where you begin a relationship. And after 35 years, Martha has given birth to nine children. Six of them are living. She's got a lot of life under her belt and she has a lot of things to tell us about what life can look like at that stage.

And one of them, when you brought this up, one of them is that in this particular story, the women of this community have to band together. And it's what women have always done, right? It's how we take care of each other. That's the story of womankind in the world, is that we look around and we go, "Oh, this isn't fair. It's not right. No one is coming to save us, so we'll save each other. We will take care of each other. We will nurture and support each other."

And Martha, through her real life, did that for 30 years, she was the one in those birthing rooms saving their lives. She was the one testifying on their behalf in court. She was the one fighting for them when nobody else would.

[00:29:22] ANNE: In a book where so many hard things happen, it was so life-giving to see that portrayed on the page.

ARIEL: Good. That was my hope. Because I say all the time the story isn't polite. I mean, but then again, my life hasn't been polite. I don't think anybody's life is polite. So there's this balance between telling the truth about what happens and also showing the other side that life is hard and it is not polite. But there is so much good and there is so much light and there is so much hope and it comes through people.

ANNE: I'm remembering now how before I read it, you described this book as your most violent. No question. But also your most... was it tender?

ARIEL: Tender, yeah. I wanted both of those things to live on the page. It is a violent book. It is a murder mystery and it is a rape trial. And even though I think I handle both of those things delicately, it's hard and it's hard to read. And it should be. If you can read about either of those things and not flinch a little bit, I think something is wrong.

[00:30:32] But again, this is the story of a really long and happy marriage. It's the story of family and friendship. There are a number of scenes in this book that I'm so proud of, scenes where Martha is interacting with her husband or one of her children, or particularly the scenes where she's interacting with her patients. And you described earlier Dr. Page, Mr. Harvard. The contrast between how she cares for her patients and how he does not I think is incredibly illuminating and was, in a weird way, one of the most fun parts to write in this story, sort of the rivalry between midwifery and obstetrics. They clashed pretty hard.

ANNE: Without giving anything away, I can see how that could have been deeply satisfying.

ARIEL: Yes.

ANNE: Okay. Speaking of things that are satisfying, I just want to say that I finished this book back in May and went, "Uh, who can I talk to who has read this? Because I have to talk about the ending." Do you just want to comment on that?

[00:31:51] ARIEL: So the ending, oh, gosh, that was fun. The ending either really shocks people or it makes them cheer. The first iteration of this, when I first handed it in, my then editor was like, "Oh my God, I don't know if we can publish this." And I was like, "Well, I understand what you mean, but for the record, when McMurtry did it, they gave him a Pulitzer. So I think we're okay."

And then, of course, through the long editing process, I went in and I fine-tuned and worked. I was afraid so many people would be so stunned that they wouldn't like it. But overwhelmingly, the feedback that I am getting is that people want it and they're really glad. And that is what justice can look like when there is no justice if that makes sense.

[00:32:56] ANNE: I think it does. All right, I started by saying you are one of my favorite people to talk books with, and I think you're just so savvy about the industry. So I'd like to zoom out and talk a little bit about what you're loving and also what you're seeing in the current literary landscape. And listeners, we're going to talk about these things more as we enter the transition into the new year. But Ariel, is there a publishing trend that you're excited about that you see happening right now?

ARIEL: Oh, gosh, that is a good question. I see sort of a broader move. I don't know if it's toward magical realism or back towards it. I think you could argue either case. But I'm thinking of actually three books that I requested for myself - just they're not out yet. They come out next year - that I so badly want to read. And all of them have just a little bit of a bent toward magical realism.

And I'm so excited because I love it. I love stories that take place in the real world, but they have just this element of otherness to them. I mean, they're magical. It's like a fantasy without committing fully. Does that make sense?

[00:34:09] ANNE: Just a little something. Okay, you got to tell us, what are the three?

ARIEL: Okay, so A Short Walk Through a Wide World. Westerbeke is the guy's last name. Douglas Westerbeke.

ANNE: That's on my shelf. It just came in the mail.

ARIEL: I want it so badly. Actually, the editor that acquired Martha acquired that book, and she has great taste.

ANNE: Intriguing. I didn't know anything about it when it showed up, with a puzzle ball that my youngest took apart and then couldn't put back together.

ARIEL: I did not get the puzzle. Well, I'm curious about that. But it's a story of a young girl who gets ill or gets injured, I'm not entirely sure yet, but in order to stay alive has got to keep walking. And she cannot stay in any place for more than a day or two over the course of her life. And I'm like, Oh, why didn't I think of that?

The other one that I have here and I cannot wait to start is called The Other Valley by Scott Alexander Howard. A friend of mine read it and she said it was in the top three books she read in 2023. She does not stop talking about it. It also has an element of magical realism to it.

[00:35:19] And the reason I love this genre so much I think, and this is just my opinion, I think what magical realism does is it restores the fun to reading and the whimsy and the magic. And as much as I love a really intense thriller and a really deep literary novel, what I really, really, really want for my reading life is to have fun. I want to have the magic restored. The reason we all fell in love with reading in the first place. And I would argue that magical realism does that better than most genres.

ANNE: Intriguing. Do you want to share a third book?

ARIEL: I'm looking at my list here. So I'm not sure. I have not dived into the summary enough to know whether this is also magical realism. But I'm looking at I Cheerfully Refuse by Leif Enger. It comes out next April maybe. And I love, love. I love his writing. I love it. Peace Like a River remains one of my all-time favorite novels. So when I found out he had a new book coming, I sent a frothing fan letter to his editor. I basically begged and begged for a copy when they were available, and it just came a week or so ago.

[00:36:43] ANNE: I read that last month. And while I don't believe it has magical elements, if memory serves, Leif Enger is writing dystopian, which I didn't see coming. That book is a mood.

ARIEL: Okay.

ANNE: There's a lot of eeriness. I don't know if you'll find it... You'll find it intellectually fun.

ARIEL: Okay.

ANNE: I don't know whether you'll call the plotline fun.

ARIEL: Dystopian is like in the same family. It's like a second cousin once removed from magical realism. They exist together.

ANNE: It's like, Author, how did you imagine that world? Like it does have that kind of delightful element.

ARIEL: Okay. Ooh, I can't wait.

ANNE: I'm glad to hear it. What's a publishing trend that you are less enthusiastic about?

[00:37:30] ARIEL: One trend I don't love, and this probably is just me showing my age, I don't-

ANNE: I wanna guess.

ARIEL: I don't love the TikTok craze. I don't love it. And I don't really know why I don't have it. I'm not on it. I don't let my kids have it, the ones that live at home. The ones that no longer live at home, do what they want, as I'm sure you know. But I don't love either version of the TikTok trend, which is we give all of our attention to a single book and it sucks all the air out of the room, or we disparage a single book, and that poor author gets a pile on.

I think both of them, from my perspective, would be incredibly stressful to manage. And I don't know that anyone can really manage it well. So it's hard, though, because I am all in favor of people sharing the books they love. I just don't really understand the way that that works on TikTok.

[00:38:35] And I also don't love the excuse that I hear a lot of times. "Well, oh, the only reason that book sold well is because it was a TikTok phenomenon." I don't think that's fair. I don't think it's fair to the book, and I don't think it's fair to the author to write off anyone's success because it happened to fall into a trend. Does that make sense?

ANNE: It does. And we're not talking about publishing trends that are bad. We're talking about ones that you are less enthusiastic about. And as someone who I think... I think I'm like two weeks older than you, maybe three. Yeah. I can relate to just maybe being old. All right. This is general in purpose. What do you think makes a book work? Your book, someone else's book. What is it about a book that makes us just go like, Ah, this is it?

ARIEL: For me, it boils down to a single thing. Am I thinking about that book when I'm not reading it? Does it take up mental real estate during the entire time that I spend with it? Because the books that I personally abandoned are the ones that I don't think about when I'm not reading. If I'm driving or if I'm in the shower or if I'm cooking dinner, I want that experience that when I commit, I don't know, to giving in a couple of days of my life to a book that I'm so in it that I want to know what happens next. For me, it's that simple.

[00:40:06] When I'm writing, it is this thing that I'm always working really, really hard to establish. And I can't control it. I have no control over whether someone will enjoy my book or not. But from a craft perspective, I think that is the most important thing that I can do to tell a story in such a way that people cannot help but think about it when they're not reading it.

ANNE: When's the last time that happened to you as a reader?

ARIEL: Oh, probably happening now. I am reading the Fourth Wing series like everybody else. It's so much fun. I think about these characters and I'm not with them, so that's an easy answer because everybody in the world is reading these books.

Before that it was Fairytale by Stephen King. I fell into that world and I loved it. I just finished Artifice by Sharon Cameron. I got to interview her at Parnassus last week, and the same thing happened. I spent a week with those characters and I just wanted to know what was going to happen next. And she did a really, really good job of pulling me into Amsterdam in World War II, and I cared immensely about those characters.

[00:41:26] ANNE: I bet that was an amazing conversation. I finally read Bluebird on the same trip that I read The Frozen River. I haven't read her brand-new one yet.

ARIEL: It's really good. The interesting thing about Sharon is she technically writes YA, but it doesn't necessarily read that way to me. I feel like her characters have a sense of maturity that transcends the genre.

ANNE: Yeah. I've only read that one book and I am glad that you reminded us that there's a new one we can check out. Ariel, what are some books that you personally really love that you think more readers should know about?

ARIEL: This is no surprise to anybody that knows me. I feel like Stephen King has been labeled just a horror writer. And he does. Absolutely. He absolutely writes horror novels. But I think people miss some of the best writing in the world, if they just go, "Oh, I don't like horror. I don't want to read Stephen King." For instance, 11/22/63 was an astonishing work of fiction.

[00:42:36] Another author would definitely be Susanna Kearsley. I love her work. She writes historical fiction. Usually it's a blend half historical, half contemporary in the same novel. I think she blends it beautifully. I have read every single book she's written.

I think if you love big explosive action, Andy Weir can't get better than The Martian and Artemis and Hail Mary. I mean, this is me being biased, but my friend, J. T. Ellison, I believe she writes some of the best thrillers out there. People either know her and they read her and they adore her or they don't. And if they don't, they should absolutely check out some of her work.

I also love Deanna Raybourn. She wrote a book last year called Killers of a Certain Age, which is populated by mature female characters. And I believe the reason that book was so successful is because she let readers see themselves. And mature women got to be the assassins. It was great fun.

So another one that I love that I'm looking at now on my shelf is The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini.

[00:43:58] ANNE: Oh, my gosh, Ariel. I still haven't read that. I started. I started it and it was so hard for me at the time. I think more mature Anne can come back to that story now. But tell me all about it.

ARIEL: It will be a fist around your heart for 350 pages. And it is one of the most beautiful, hard, grueling, hopeful, redemptive books I've ever read in my life. And I will occasionally, if I just need to, remember what books are supposed to do to you, pull it off my shelf, and read the last page. And it is perfect. And it never fails to remind me the power of fiction, what my job is as an author, specifically to leave somebody with that, but also just that sense as a reader when you close the book and you set it in your lap and you just have to convalesce for a moment to recover. It is perfect.

[00:45:01] ANNE: That sounds amazing. That sounds amazing. I can see it from where I'm sitting. It's on myself just constantly reminding me. Thank you for that nudge.

ARIEL: You will love it and you will text me and be like, "Oh my God, oh my God. Why? Why? Why did you do that to me?"

ANNE: I look forward to it.

ARIEL: I also love a good Western. These are not new. But Lonesome Dove and True Grit are two of, in my opinion, the best novels ever written. I read everything. I read across genres. I love science fiction. I love fantasy. I love murder mysteries. I think you and I are similar in that regard. We just want a good story.

ANNE: Good stories well told.

ARIEL: Yeah, and they can come from any direction.

ANNE: Well, Ariel, congrats on your publication day. A very weird day, but also a very exciting one. Is there one thought you'd love to leave readers with as we sign off?

ARIEL: Yes. I do. I have so many thoughts.

ANNE: I am at the lectern.

ARIEL: The one that I would like to share specifically, and this is directly related to Martha and The Frozen River, is that I want the world in general, and specifically readers, to remember that stories don't have to be about these huge wars or intergalactic battles. That sometimes, maybe most of the time, they need to be about small acts done in love. That the things that don't make the history books, say a woman who spends her life faithfully delivering babies, are just as important as the things that do make the history books.

ANNE: I love that. Ariel, this has been a pleasure. Thanks for coming back on and talking books with me today.

ARIEL: Happy, happy to be here. Thank you for having me back.

[00:47:08] ANNE: Hey, readers, I hope you enjoyed my discussion with Ariel today. You can find her on Instagram @ariel.lawhon, or on her website, ariellawhon.com. We'll have links in our show notes to all these places, plus her Substack. You'll also find the full list of titles we talked about today right there. That's at whatshouldireadnextpodcast.com.

Every week we highlight our episode on Instagram and sharing our posts with your friends is such a great way to spread the book love. Find us there @whatshouldireadnext. And while you're there, you can follow me to my personal account, which is now heavily featuring the tree in our library and its twinkle lights is @annbogel.

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Thanks to the people who make this show happen. What Should I Read Next? is created each week by Will Bogel, Holly Wielkoszewski, and Studio D Podcast Production. Readers, that's it for this episode. Thanks so much for listening. And as Rainer Maria Rilke said, "Ah, how good it is to be among people who are reading." Happy reading, everyone.