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00:00:52.600Hey, all. Jo here and you are listening to Under the Influence.
00:00:56.320Today we have a very fun episode with one of my favorite people in the entire world.
00:01:02.460Casey Cheska is one of my closest friends and also the author of the book I am most excited
00:01:07.840about this year. Her first novel, The Fountain, comes out in March, but I read it about six years
00:01:13.880ago when it was in its very first draft form, and frankly, I have been talking about it ever since.
00:01:20.780This is honestly my most anticipated book of 2026, and I wanted to talk about it today
00:01:26.480because I know a lot of you are choosing your book club picks for March right now.
00:01:32.420So Casey's coming on to talk to me all about her wonderful, wonderful novel, The Fountain,
00:01:37.000but also about writing, the writing process, balancing things like kids and having a husband,
00:01:43.620not just with your writing career, but also with her other job, which is running the wonderful
00:01:48.880bed and bar at the Sprucedon Inn in the Catskills. Here's my conversation with Casey.
00:02:02.000So I want to dive right in because I love your novel so much, but this episode isn't just about
00:02:11.400The Fountain. It is also about friendship and sharing books and what that means in a world,
00:02:22.560let's be honest, that is on fire, that is a dumpster fire of crap. And for me, books are0.97
00:02:31.160bringing me so much solace and also connecting me to people. And that's what I want to talk about
00:02:37.320today. 100% agree. My saving grace right now. Saving grace. Books are truly saving me. I think
00:02:44.560that it's what's going to save the world. So I want to back up a little bit. It's hard to talk
00:02:50.220about this, the early days of our friendship, because to me, it feels like we've never not
00:02:54.020known each other. It seems physically, spiritually impossible. Completely an exercise in fiction.
00:03:02.220Let us imagine once upon a time we didn't know each other. Let's imagine that once upon a time
00:03:07.260We didn't know each other. We had just gotten our cabin up in the Catskills, and we had about
00:03:14.3801,900 friends in common because the world is very small. And they kept telling us, they're like,
00:03:20.280you guys have to meet. You guys have to meet. But it was a pandemic, and we both had teeny,
00:03:24.440tiny children. Like toddlers and baby babies. So it would be a very easy time to leave your house
00:03:32.540and make good new impressions. Yeah, exactly. And it was freezing. And let's be honest,
00:03:36.700It was also the dead of winter, dead of winter.
00:04:03.460because what if in in this you know fictional world what if we hadn't loved each other's books
00:04:10.980or writing like what would we be would we be where we are now would we would we be soulmates now no
00:04:17.740no i know it's hard because it's all it's also connected like literally how we parent how we
00:04:24.280read how we write all these things have wound up i mean because they're all a part of ourselves but
00:04:28.400yeah early on it was like it was kind of like the ultimate high high stakes blind date ish
00:04:35.620yes or you know what's that tv show like marriage i'm outing myself as someone who doesn't watch
00:04:41.420reality tv but you know where people get married after knowing each other for just however i believe
00:04:46.080it's love at first sight there you go it's love at first sight yes which i also haven't watched
00:04:50.300but many people keep telling me to watch it so maybe we should check in on this maybe we should
00:04:55.800check in on this show. So we exchanged books. And the one that I gave to Casey was The Sicilian
00:05:02.060Inheritance. And the one that she gave me was The Fountain. And I devoured this book. I loved it so
00:05:11.360much. So much so that I've been recommending this book, even though it had not been published yet,
00:05:17.080for the past nearly six years, I think, five or six years. And now it's about to be published.
00:05:24.220And I just I just want to shout about it from the rooftops.
00:05:28.760And for that, I am so grateful because I obviously devoured the Sicilian inheritance, I think, just as fast, if not faster, because as all of your listeners know, it is an amazing feminist, historical, propulsive, like wonderful book that everyone should read at least once in their life, if not seven times.
00:05:51.440I'm like, you know, the seventh time is the one that's really when you really that's when you start perfecting the recipes that are in the book.
00:07:09.760I mean, that's how I feel, too, although I've been told to not feel that way.
00:07:13.020But a book is different and we need to separate ourselves from it. And, you know, separating the art from the artist is a whole other fascinating conversation and can of worms that I think we probably won't get into today. But yeah, it was so nice. And let's not forget, too, that, you know, I had been I had been doing some freelance writing and graphic design. I've been running this hotel, this Brewston Inn, like up in the Catskills where we met and all this.
00:07:37.200but I was not identifying as like a capital W writer at that point. I was like reaching back
00:07:43.500into a tender part of myself that was like a dream. And I was like placing it in your hands
00:07:49.360while meanwhile you were like, you know, very established. So I kind of, I felt a little bit
00:07:54.860of like lower classman, upper classman vibes early days. Oh my God, stop. I actually, I think
00:08:01.400it's so funny you bring this up because I just thought you were the coolest human ever. And like
00:08:05.680she runs a bed and bar with her cool artist husband. And I'm just like, I just hope she
00:08:13.480likes me. But thankfully, we exceeded all of my expectations. We truly, truly did. Now,
00:08:23.020the other really special thing for me about reading The Fountain, and I'm excited to talk
00:08:28.020to our listeners about this because I talk so much about the Catskills and how it has become
00:08:31.880such a special special place for us and this book is so of a place the setting in the Catskills
00:08:39.780it just it comes alive it makes you feel like you're in this valley now I want I want this to
00:08:46.560be the big unveiling moment can you explain just explain the plot of the fountain give us your
00:08:53.040elevator pitch and these are early days because the book is coming out in March and you're gonna
00:08:57.640have to do this a thousand times so you might as well do it i know first here here we go rough
00:09:02.280drafting together so um basically the fountain is about a secretly 214 year old woman who comes back
00:09:12.440to her tiny hometown in the catskill mountains to figure out what did this to her so that she
00:09:18.700can reverse it and finally be released yes yes and when i explain it to people i'm like she's just
00:09:25.120tired okay she's just over it she's been alive for so long she's like i don't want to do it anymore
00:09:31.520and she looks like she's mid-20s which some people would say would be a great thing but i spent 200
00:09:40.340ish pages or whatever exploring how perhaps that might be really terrible yeah it might be well i
00:09:46.680would say that it would be really terrible i think that in our like especially age and tight-faced
00:09:52.820obsessed society that we're like oh my gosh I'd love to look like that forever but there is
00:09:59.000something special about watching your face age and change and grow with your brain and your
00:10:05.380personality and she never gets to experience that. She never gets to experience that and she never
00:10:10.540gets to do it with peers like one of the other bonds that you and I have is we get to be parent
00:10:15.640friends you know so like she's not going through any type of like milestones growth whatever that
00:10:22.300is with any sort of cohort other than she does have like her brother and her mother. So also
00:10:29.780imagine that you've got 200 plus years with your family who are also in this, you know, frozen
00:10:35.960state. Who are also, you know, vaguely, maybe possibly immortal. And I think that you would
00:10:42.640probably get sick of those people after a while, too. And it just it raises so many questions about
00:10:49.040what it means to be human in the world like what adds to our humanity and these questions are
00:10:57.460really interesting in a world where all of these tech giants are also desperate to live forever
00:11:04.640oh not not a single one of them are a woman by the way no woman no no woman in her right mind
00:11:11.400is like i want to live forever it's always the men yeah it should be me just you know just me
00:11:17.100because that's the other part, like the longevity industry, you know, billions and billions of
00:11:23.220dollars. It's it's a boys club and it's a billionaires club and it's all tied up in
00:11:30.040capitalism and power and access. And like, you know, people might be talking about throwing a
00:11:35.200little a little bit of like, we'll solve the cancer question for everybody, too. Don't worry.
00:11:39.480But like, do we think that's top on the I don't think that's top on their agenda. I don't. I just
00:11:44.380don't. No, no. So yeah, there's just there's so much for book clubs to chew on with this book.
00:11:50.800And that's why we're doing the episode now, too, because I know that a lot of our listeners choose
00:11:55.540their book club picks for March, which is when this book comes out now. So I just I want I want
00:12:01.840to give everyone a little taste of the book. And Casey's going to be doing a bunch of touring and
00:12:06.540live events. I might be with her for some of them. So I want to introduce you to this book now,
00:12:11.040because we're also, we're living in the age of, you are going to see 19,000 most anticipated lists
00:12:17.400every day on your social media. So I'm just, I'm getting my most anticipated picks out,
00:12:24.320you know, just to add them, to add them to the conversation right now. And we're going to take
00:12:30.080a quick break. And when we get back, I want to talk a little bit about the writing process for
00:12:34.420this book, because like a lot of our listeners that do want to start some kind of creative
00:12:40.300practice. You have a lot else going on, too. I don't think I can be your friend, Isabella said.
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00:14:18.400It's when do I deserve this thing? And I think it's the deserve that gets really hard. But you've also, you've been juggling 19 other things. In the creative fields, too, one of the reasons that we met is because you have an artist's residency at the Sprucedon Inn.
00:14:38.300I do. One of my favorite parts of the whole operation.
00:17:09.560And we're very, we're very stern about how we expect nothing.
00:17:14.620Basically, you can tell us you're going to get up to one thing.
00:17:17.120You can change your mind when you're here.
00:17:18.500If part of your creative process is napping for most of the day, like we believe you, you don't have to prove anything to us. We really didn't want some intense sort of accountability. We wanted to be the place where you could lean into whatever the truly wacky parts or some might say wacky parts of your creative process are.
00:17:37.340And we have met some of the coolest people from it.
00:18:06.120Yeah, no, I love it. And this is yet another reason that we ended up in the Catskills and that we became friends because Glynnis McNichol, friend of the show, godmother to one of my children, was an artist resident.
00:18:20.840She was staying there. And we happened to be up in the Catskills visiting another hotel on the other side of the mountain. And she calls me and she's like, I am at the cutest, coziest motel down a dead end road in the middle of winter. I think there's going to be a snowstorm. I'm either going to write my book or be murdered here. And I don't know which is which.
00:18:46.380and I was like oh well come meet me for a drink then and she did and the next day we drove down
00:18:51.740that dead end road past the inn we didn't want to bother her we didn't want her to know that
00:18:56.580we were creepily stalking stalking guys and Nick was like wow I this is beautiful this valley is
00:19:03.780where I want to live and that is what brought us to the valley and that is what brought us
00:19:07.040to you and and I love that because it is such a special place there's so many writers
00:19:11.500there's such good community of all ages which really matters to me like i our kids hang out
00:19:19.480with someone when we're up there they hang out with someone from literally every generation
00:19:23.600i think yes um that's the thing i think about and talk about a lot like this is one of the
00:19:29.580whitest communities i've ever lived in but so many other types of diversity in life experience from
00:19:36.260people and like my besties up here on the road aside from you darling are 31 and like mid-60s
00:19:45.520you know and that was not the case when i was living in new york city or san francisco or
00:19:49.200whatever i was very it just wound up being kind of peer focused which felt like normal um and you
00:19:56.180just learn so much more when you're not just focused on your own little area it's true it's
00:20:03.220true. I think that you learn so much more about the world and so many more perspectives when
00:20:09.020you have people that have had different life experiences than you and even younger folks,
00:20:14.860too. It's really fun for us because some of our really good friends are slightly younger and also
00:20:22.200with their first babies. And so we feel kind of elder states people sometimes. But they also,
00:20:29.640they remind me so much of of what it is like and the perspective of of going through that for the
00:20:36.520first time uh and it's it's a nice reminder now that i'm like a jaded old mom but yeah this was
00:20:44.240one of the things that was really fun to imagine on the page in the fountain was um this type of
00:20:50.720community these and these types of intergenerational or intergenerational relationships and things
00:20:55.740like that. Like locals have asked me, like, am I in the book? Are we in the book? And I'm like,
00:21:02.600yes, all of you are in the book. And no, none of you are in the book. Like it's it's fiction. You
00:21:08.220know, we we've I've made the whole thing up. It's about a woman who's 214 years old. Right. Right.
00:21:14.280Exactly. But and yet if you're if you're friends with me, you know that you're in all of my books.
00:21:19.120Yes, wow. You agreed to certain clauses in our relationship. Did we forget to have you check the box? I think.
00:21:27.900Oh, I'm sorry. I know. Sometimes Nick is like, you literally put a line that I said verbatim in that guy Greg's mouth. And I'm like, you know who you married, sir?
00:21:38.420Yeah, you're like, thank you. Was that not in our vows?
00:21:41.500Because I'm pretty sure it was. So I am going to I'm going to just rave about you for another
00:21:50.180minute because I'm not the only one that is telling people to order this book and to read
00:21:55.980this book. My friend KJ Del Antonio, she has a wonderful sub stack, a wonderful podcast.
00:22:02.160I got an email from her in her sub stack that said, just one book. If you trust me,
00:22:08.080pre-order this and i was like oh i trust kj i'll open it and i'm like wait a second it's the
00:22:13.380fountain i know that girl i know that girl i know that girl hey hey you um and yeah i mean kj is
00:22:22.100such a smart journalist and like such a great reader and she said i couldn't stop reading
00:22:28.900at first i wasn't even sure what i wanted for vera who was tired of life but can't stop living it
00:22:35.480But I wanted something for her, something better. And then her brother showed up with a mysterious fellow immortal who I was totally wrong about. A sign of a good story for sure. And then the immortality seeking billionaire. I mean, this isn't just a book about an immortal. This is a thriller, girl. Like, did you know it was a thriller at the outset or did it evolve into one?
00:23:02.920At the outset, I actually wrote the first chapter just as a short story. I was cheating on another manuscript that I was frustrated with. And this wound up taking on a life of its own.
00:23:17.040And in the writing process, in like the first draft, I actually didn't know, like Vera, where to look for this source, how to like I was looking with her, you know, I was like, let's I don't know.
00:23:29.700Let's go to the woods. Let's let's go to the historical archives.
00:23:33.140Like, where where are we searching? Which was kind of a really fun part of the process.
00:23:37.360And then naturally, once I got through deeper drafts, I had more of a concrete vision.
00:23:42.920Yeah, well, I like that kind of process talk, and I know a lot of our audience does too. So let's take one more break and then dive in a little bit to process.
00:23:57.060You want to impress them on a first date, but also play it cool. So what do you do?
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00:24:30.280Okay, we are back. I get asked all the time if I plot out my novels. I do not. I am a full
00:24:37.820pantser. I fly by the seat of my pants. I love this about you. And your pants are so talented
00:24:44.400and sturdy. Thank you. They are. Speaking of, I think you still have my period pants that you
00:24:49.740got me for Christmas. I did. I have them right now. Right there. I'm going to send them with
00:24:54.980the pants that Charlie left as well. You know what? You don't have to mail them. How about I
00:24:59.040just grab them from your house? Yes. Even this weekend. Just leave them out. Leave them out for
00:25:03.180me uh but yeah i'm a full pantser and that makes a lot of people really nervous i'm working on my
00:25:09.540new thriller murder for hire mystery the last ride right now and i'm like i know how i know
00:25:17.900what needs to happen and i don't know how we're gonna get there so what do you do do you outline
00:25:24.740do you plot do you pants do you do a mix of both uh with this one like i was saying it began as
00:25:30.120just like a short story kind of exercise. I was frustrated. I was trying to get back into a more
00:25:35.780like exciting creative spot. And I basically revisited a question that has haunted me since
00:25:41.140I was like 10 or 11 years old and read Tuck Everlasting by Natalie Babbitt in school, which
00:25:47.440is about a family who is kind of protecting a spring that makes you immortal and a little girl
00:25:54.420who stumbles upon it. And we basically had a book club experience, you know, in that English class
00:26:00.540of like, what would you do? Would you live forever? Would you protect the spring? Would you
00:26:03.940sell the spring? All these things. And, you know, a lot of the boys in class were like, of course,
00:26:08.360man, I'd borrow that up and become a millionaire. And, you know, the, can I spoiler Tuck Everlasting?
00:26:15.000I think you can. You know, I actually have never read Tuck Everlasting. And I was thinking about
00:26:18.560reading it with the kids, but you can spoiler it. It's good. But so Winnie, the main character,
00:26:22.380she's a little girl she um basically in the end of the book you find out that she made what i
00:26:27.660thought was the wise and heroic choice they come back to look for her and they find just her
00:26:33.300tombstone and even though she knew where the spring was she chose to live a whole life and die
00:26:38.520instead of possibly live forever and that just felt wise and grand and meaningful to me and
00:26:44.920something i wasn't capable of at that age and i was like i really hope i grow up to be someone
00:26:50.120like Winnie. And this is kind of a grown up examination of that those same questions. So
00:26:57.620that like all that was what led me to the like writing the book and through the early drafts of
00:27:05.480it where I just kept mucking around in the like, oh, but wouldn't somebody think this way? And
00:27:10.500then like a character would kind of appear. I'm also one of those writers. I don't know if you
00:27:15.200are too, where it feels like the characters are their own people. I'll be writing something and
00:27:21.580they just start talking and I'm like, oh, so that's what happened in your childhood. Good to
00:27:26.100know. Thank you for telling me. Yes, yes and yes. And I'm not woo-woo about pretty much anything
00:27:31.660in the world except for that, that the characters come alive, that they spend time with you,
00:27:37.080that they start talking to you. And it's one of the reasons that I'm so militant
00:27:40.040about my word count and and doing my word count every day even when i'm just like mucking around
00:27:46.660because then they're alive in my head all day and we're spending time together and they're like
00:27:51.960oh i would make this joke or maybe i would like to watch this tv show and all of this stuff that
00:27:57.120maybe doesn't even end up on the page but ends up just rounding out their characters
00:28:03.920is that they tell they tell you what they want to do it's that tip of the iceberg metaphor where
00:28:08.820like you have to know the whole iceberg about your characters, but only the tip of it is going
00:28:13.040to make it into your story. Just the tip. Just the tip. Yeah. Can you tip this bit away from
00:28:19.820this conversation? Besides that. Take away just the tip. And that Casey buys me period underwear
00:28:26.960for Christmas. Yes, exactly. These are these are key takeaways. I will say that with The Fountain
00:28:32.620like being a this was my first like novel um i wound up using a really great tool called
00:28:40.820save the cat which is like a basically a pacing how cute there's like the screenplay version
00:28:49.880there's the novel version it was it was helping me in my more dark and lost moments where all of
00:28:56.040the characters were talking to me but i was losing my way in like in the plot and in the pacing of
00:29:01.640the story. And for people who are embarking on this, I would say that's a good tool to keep in
00:29:08.380your back pocket. Some people swear by it and like start out with the beat sheet. If, you know,
00:29:14.060if that's for you, that's great. But I don't know. I love the idea of not hemming yourself
00:29:21.520into too much to let, like, you know, like you were saying, Joe, the characters kind of speak
00:29:26.760on the page the magic come throughout the actual writing process to let the magic happen it can be
00:29:33.240very stressful though i will tell you that because there are days when i sit down and i'm like oh
00:29:37.820fuck i don't know what's gonna happen but i will also tell you that this is like and it's a very0.59
00:29:44.660interesting life lesson for me that something always does happen that you always get there0.99
00:29:50.120i've always gotten there okay yeah every single time and yet we never believe it and never how
00:29:55.800many times have I texted you recently being like I don't know I don't know I don't know what's gonna
00:30:00.680happen yeah uh I feel like another thing that you and I talk about too is even if you don't want to
00:30:07.280be like you're very diligent about a word count sometimes that can be intimidating to people and
00:30:12.780then it gets tied up in feeling guilty because they didn't complete like the exact number of
00:30:18.280things but we just always say like the main difference between being a writer or not is
00:30:29.860If you want to be a writer, write the thing.
00:30:32.680Yeah, no, I mean, I talk about that all the time when people are like,
00:30:35.900I want to be a writer. I want to do this.
00:30:37.060And I'm like, well, then you're going to have to write.
00:30:38.680You're just going to have to sit down and get it done.
00:30:41.100Right. So tip number 17 in all this, too, is find yourself a reader like Joe.
00:30:46.600Honestly, Joe has been an early reader now after the fountain with other like projects and things.
00:30:52.840And I treasure your input because you are you're a good reader and a good writer.
00:30:59.000So you come at it as both an audience member and a craftsperson and you ask the best questions.
00:31:05.080So sometimes you'll have a suggestion, but you are really good at pointing out places in the story where it's like maybe this is on your head or in your head, but it's not on the page yet.
00:31:15.620Or I loved this relationship, but I have these questions about about it still.
00:31:20.580yeah no i will and i love doing that and you did that for me too with uh parisian heist which was
00:31:27.640super helpful in fact your husband your wonderful husband steven uh was the inspiration was the
00:31:34.240person who told me that i had to write parisian heist and i'm just gonna plug it right now guys
00:31:38.200i want you to go to wherever you buy books and order the fountain right now so that it comes
00:31:44.320here that will be here soon that will be here in like less than six weeks but then also just order
00:31:49.160parisian heist right now because right right like pre-orders matter pre-orders matter and
00:31:56.960and it'll be a nice surprise for yourself in july such a fun surprise it's such a great
00:32:03.720i mean it's a it's a classic joe piazza in that you're pulling in different timelines you're like
00:32:11.480it's very smart but it's extremely catchy and page turnery and you're i don't know your ability
00:32:18.640to capture the detail of a place like watch out you should also probably just put some money
00:32:24.560aside because you will have to go to france after reading this don't have a choice you're just gonna
00:32:30.540go to paris i'm so sorry have a choice you'll have to go to paris and eat all the things she
00:32:35.280describes and go see all the art that she describes and it's just it's so fun like it comes out in the
00:32:40.580summer and it's such a good um summer read thank you i think i think so too and we we really fought
00:32:48.560hard for it to come out on Bastille Day. So yeah, right. Exactly. Exactly. So order both of these
00:32:55.960books right now. I'm just I'm just I'm just saying it. Just get it. Just get it done. Check
00:32:59.780it off of your to do list. But yes, Casey's husband, Stephen, who is an artist and also an
00:33:06.420author, had been working on his book, What is Color, which is about the science and history
00:33:12.040of color and we sell so many of them in our in our our pop-up bookshop the bookcase and they just
00:33:18.180fly off of our little shelves because it's so good and one of the stories he discovered was
00:33:23.580the untold story of joe van gogh who was vincent's sister-in-law who inherited his many many worthless
00:33:30.320paintings and had to sell them and make him famous in order to survive she's only 28 she has a one
00:33:37.800year old baby and steven was like if i were a feminist novelist this work i would write i wish0.66
00:33:43.260i knew a feminist novelist and i'm like god damn it steven yep yep yep yep yep and that's where
00:33:50.320that's where the idea was born i mean i i get asked a lot of times like you know where do you0.78
00:33:54.260find your ideas and i'm like it's hard to get them to stop coming because they're coming at me
00:33:57.920always always but it's but it's the rare one that like comes at me and then like grabs me
00:34:04.960like in my belly and won't let go. And it's like, you have to write me and you have to write me
00:34:09.480right now. I know that the fountain started because you were cheating on another manuscript
00:34:14.880that you were a little stuck on. But once you got going, did you have that feeling of propulsion?
00:34:19.580You're like, I have to write this or I will die. A hundred percent. There was no choice to not
00:34:24.340write it. And that is like when people will ask, like, how are you running the hotel and parenting
00:34:30.300and, like, writing and being in a relationship.
00:34:33.600Like, how are you doing it all at once?
00:34:35.140And, like, oh, I would, I guess, like, I just have to.
00:36:25.420And then people keep asking me, including like my friends who run bookstores, they're like, is Casey's book? And I'm like, actually, now it is. Now it is. Yes, yes. Now you can order this wonderful, wonderful book. But I think about Vera a lot, especially when I watch the news and think about history and just like the ups and downs and trials and tribulations. I'm like, would I be, would I go through these periods of ennui and be so jaded because history does repeat itself in so many ways?
00:36:52.640Yes. And hindsight is 20-20. Like it's always easier once something has passed to be like, oh, it was clear that it was going to shake out this way. Or this was obviously like the most important way that we could stand up to this type of fascism or X, Y, Z.
00:37:10.480And then combined with most people always have something that they are protecting. And it is up to you to decide, like, how much you're willing to risk. And for some people, it's, you know, their literal bodies, their money, their, you know, their job. They're like, things are always on the line.
00:37:28.720And for Vera, it's like this imaginary complicated question of, wow, what if somebody like figured out I was immortal and then blah, blah, blah.
00:37:37.860Like her stakes are supposedly higher than all of ours, but they're not.
00:37:41.600This is just like another way that we can use fiction to talk about like very real life problems.