00:03:48.660I want to ask Glynis why she has been taping her mouth shut to sleep at night.
00:03:54.380Oh, I mean, really the best discovery I've made in a long time.
00:04:00.520And I can't, I have to credit, and I say this with some effort, Gwyneth Paltrow, which I want listeners to understand is a measure of my desperation to get a good night's sleep, which I have not had in years.
00:04:20.460And even when I'm asleep, it's not a refreshing sleep.
00:04:23.420And as listeners who are in their 40s likely know by this point, anything that goes wrong with your body usually results in the doctor saying to you, oh, it might just be your age.
00:12:34.040So here's the thing with oils is that if it's a serum, you can put it on first.
00:12:40.340But if it's an oil, if it has any actual oils in it, you want to put that on last because it seals in as opposed to becoming a barrier because it's a barrier.
00:12:47.560So you don't want to put it on before your skin cream.
00:12:49.540I put it on after I've put on whatever else is going on my face that night, which is always more than one thing.
00:13:31.680you deserve it okay okay time for a quick break be right back
00:13:37.280and we are back now i read a lot of books i do and recently in the past two years recently
00:13:53.420i've been noticing that so many female characters in fiction are influencers and i don't know
00:14:01.540if I like it. And I like to have some influencers, but I just wish that we had
00:14:07.940a wider variety of jobs for women in novels. I've been getting asked a lot on the Sicilian
00:14:15.480Inheritance book tour why I chose to make one of my main characters, Sarah, a butcher. And people
00:14:22.180are kind of shocked. They're like, a lady butcher? And I was like, yeah, because we don't see enough1.00
00:14:29.160women doing jobs in books that involve a lot of physical labor. And being a butcher is very1.00
00:14:36.000physical. It is very hands-on. I mean, I did it because I wanted someone who truly loves and
00:14:41.120adores food. Now, I enjoyed the influencer character in Sheila's new novel, Friends in
00:14:48.940Napa, but I will say that influencer characters can get kind of tiresome because how do you make
00:14:55.360a character come alive when they're constantly screwing around on their phones. And I don't know
00:15:01.460if I want to see more influencers in more novels. I don't. I don't. So I want to talk to Sheila
00:15:07.540about that today because Sheila isn't just a novelist. She's also a great journalist. She0.88
00:15:12.140writes for The New Yorker. So fancy. The New York Times. All the places. All the fancy places
00:15:17.620that like so often don't want me to write for them. So we're going to talk to Sheila today
00:15:22.940about why she chose to have an influencer character and if she thinks this is going
00:15:28.760to become just bigger and bigger and more of a trend. So I stayed up for the past few nights
00:15:36.660reading your new novel, Friends in Napa. It is, I want to preface this by saying that
00:15:44.240at this point in my life, I actually, I'm not one of those people that loves to read about rich1.00
00:15:50.060people because I'm just like, fuck you guys and your fucking non-existent problems. But I loved1.00
00:15:58.260this book. I stayed up too late reading it. So I've been tired. You do such a good job of creating
00:16:06.380very compelling characters in a very rich and kind of psychotic world. And what I want to talk
00:16:15.640about today is this is something that I've been noticing for a while now. There are characters,
00:16:22.760like there are careers that characters have had in commercial fiction for a very long time. We saw
00:16:29.720so many lady magazine writers in both fiction and in rom-coms, right? Everyone was a magazine writer.1.00
00:16:39.080But now, and I read a lot. I probably read about one book a week, either if I'm blurbing it or
00:16:45.620I try to read for fun as much as I can. I am seeing so many more characters that are influencers
00:16:52.120or aspiring influencers. And there are characters in your book. There's two characters actually
00:16:59.980that are influencers. And there's so much that happens in this book on social media,
00:17:07.100within comments and within messages. And so I just want to talk to you about this shift,
00:17:13.220this shift towards now we really are writing so so much social media into our into our books
00:17:21.420is it unavoidable these days yeah what a great question and first i want to thank you for
00:17:28.300staying up late and reading friends in napa that is the the highest compliment is when when someone
00:17:35.620has been in bed with your book and says that they just wanted to keep reading even though they knew
00:17:41.140It was better for them to get their quality sleep because we all know how how how sleep is like the newest luxury product that that rich people somehow managed to get because someone else is watching their kids and taking care of their house that they can sleep for nine hours a night and be wonderful.
00:18:00.180Anyway, thank you for for reading it. And then, yeah, you know, influencers. What you were saying about the the the golden age of the what were they called? Editrix.
00:18:14.920Yeah, all of the magazine editors. I mean, I'm like, how to lose a guy in 10 days, 13 going on 30. Or people that worked in publishing. People who wrote books loved to write characters in publishing. So like Bridget Jones, right? So many of Jane Green's novels had magazine editors as main characters.
00:18:37.200Also, Jennifer Weiner's books had a lot of journalists and writers, and now her recent books have had influencers.
00:18:46.560Yeah, you know, I think there are a couple things happening.
00:18:49.380Well, one is that as writers, of course, one thing that we all know quite well, and you and I have worked in news media for a good chunk of our careers,
00:18:59.180We know what it's like to be in a newsroom. We know what the machinations of something like a big media company or a publishing house would be like. So it's kind of it's not easy exactly, but it's you can write you write what you know and you can put characters in settings that maybe mirror things that you've gone through before.
00:19:18.540And I think happening with influencers showing up in fiction now is that we are all being forced to be influencers at some sort, right? Like we are our own personal brands. If we're not on Instagram or TikTok or whatever social media platform it is, telling people to buy the book, order the thing, read this thing I wrote, let me also be charming and witty and let you into my life.
00:19:48.260but not so much that I don't have any privacy. We're all doing the influencer thing in some way
00:19:53.920or another. So I think that it's just another extension of something that many writers are
00:20:02.520quite familiar with and maybe have a fraught relationship with. I know that I've gone through
00:20:07.600spells where I'm very eager and happy to share all about my life online, work, professional,
00:20:13.700personal, all of it. And then there are times where it just feels like, why am I putting all
00:20:18.000this content out there for free to for for what exactly like what where is this getting me this is
00:20:25.000draining my creative energy why am i why am i doing it and um it's fascinating to to think about
00:20:31.320for me what's what someone who has many many more followers whose entire bread and butter is coming
00:20:39.520from them talking about things they supposedly like what kind of headspace that person must be
00:20:46.520right now uh it it it can it can really be a minefield of course it is of course it is and i
00:20:53.900look as a person who as a person who has a podcast that really focuses on the world of influencing
00:21:00.440i'm clearly fascinated uh between the public persona of influencers and their private lives
00:21:08.520and i think one of the things that's very attractive to writers is is that smoke and mirrors aspect that
00:21:16.520Influencers are presenting themselves one way to their audience on social media, but as an author, you kind of get to imagine the messiness behind the scenes.
00:21:27.140absolutely there's a character in friends in napa rachel who is she is she an influencer
00:21:37.320she certainly wants to be she's not really she doesn't have the clout that that other people
00:21:44.780uh in who are you know big eye influencers have but the notion that she's kind of
00:21:52.380taking time out of her day and she she should be doing other things she really doesn't even
00:21:58.180she's very unhappy in her own life for a number of reasons but the the notion that oh if i can
00:22:05.420just like angle my body this way and take this picture and then get these like maybe that'll
00:22:10.460make me feel an ounce better and perversely what starts to happen is that the more like she gets
00:22:16.720she the worse she ends up feeling i think that there's a point at which that that kind of
00:22:22.100disingenuousness anyone who is pretending to be something on the outside and really
00:22:27.940the opposite within it it's going to come to a head it it's just going to bubble over and
00:22:35.020burst and uh as a writer yeah that's a really really fertile ground for exploring some pretty
00:22:42.480wild thing that could happen it really it really is it really is and yeah i've got i i think it
00:22:49.640it must be exhausting. I have never tried to be anything online other than what I am. If you were
00:22:56.280to sit down and have a beer with me in real life, probably to my detriment, because I say some
00:23:01.160crazy ass stuff online and show pictures of my body that some people don't like. And, you know,
00:23:08.940but at the end of the day, I'm also like, it must be so exhausting to be two different people
00:23:12.420because being me generally is exhausting. So to have to be like this other kind of perfect person
00:23:19.060has to be so hard. And you have two characters in Friends in Napa who are trying to project
00:23:29.340a social influencer persona. Tell us about the book.
00:23:34.220Yeah. Friends in Napa, I, like so many other people, love the White Lotus in the sense that
00:23:42.560I really, I love settings where the people should be happy.
00:23:48.220They're in a beautiful resort-like environment.
00:23:51.140In this case, it's in the Napa Valley, Northern California's wine country.
00:23:57.220They're at a beautiful estate, rolling vineyards, shining sun.
00:24:06.660It's got all the makings of an excellent weekend with friends.
00:24:12.060and it's a group of college friends reuniting they're all doing kind of from the outside it
00:24:16.500seems like they're doing well enough in life that this should be this should be an occasion to just
00:24:21.660you know reclaim the the 20 something versions of themselves and just have a great time with
00:24:27.160old friends drink some some fabulous wine and uh and have this wonderful weekend uh but but instead
00:24:35.500they're all all six of the the characters uh that that the book focuses on are are reeling in one
00:24:43.100way or another their marriages are falling apart their jobs aren't panning out the way that they
00:24:48.200thought they would the the kind of grudges that they used to have in their 20s are still there
00:24:55.700simmering and and just kind of waiting for waiting for the you know gasoline that alcohol ends up
00:25:04.080becoming after you've had enough of it and you start you know rehashing disagreements that you
00:25:08.540may have had with your friends in your 20s and uh uh things get things things get really tense to
00:25:16.200the point that one of the characters ends up dead and we have to figure out you have to wait until
00:25:22.440the end to figure out why it happened who it was and how the rest of the friends are going to
00:25:28.700are going to come come out of this together. Yeah, I love a book that starts with the dead
00:25:34.560body. Mike White, who did White Lotus, actually said this in an interview and I'm going to butcher
00:25:39.920it. But he's like, if you start with a dead body, you can do anything afterwards and people are
00:25:45.500still going to be with you to find out what happened to that body. And I'm like, you're so
00:25:49.960right, Mike White. It's so true. And I heard that same interview and it's it's absolutely true. I
00:25:56.280I mean, look, if it's a conceit that's been used frequently through literature and television and film, there's a reason for it because people want to know what happens.
00:26:06.560And yeah, I just thought that that was a great way to hook readers to even, I mean, I'm sure that you feel this too.
00:26:16.200As a writer, you want to be really interested in seeing what happens.
00:26:19.440And in the process of writing this, I, I did, I did a kind of rough outline and I had a sense of, of what I wanted to have happen, but you never really know how these characters are going to change and surprise you.
00:26:33.040And it's like, could it be that this person has a grudge against that person?
00:26:37.300Like maybe, maybe they're the culprit.
00:26:39.240Like it's, it's really fun to, to sort of have that, the, the altered, one of the worst possible things that could happen.
00:26:49.440having that entry point into a a perversely beautiful scene and then and then letting it
00:26:57.400go on a ride of seeing where how it's all going to play out yeah exactly what's gonna happen next
00:27:03.540and and you have your dead body in like a beautiful winery building in napa i mean yeah of course of
00:27:12.880course we're gonna want to find out what happens next and i love what you just said about you know
00:27:17.420kind of writing things that you want to read, that's where I was at with Sicilian Inheritance.
00:27:23.980And I also, I really love what you said about how you don't know what is going to happen to
00:27:30.820your characters because characters are kind of like witchy magic in your head. I knew how Sicilian
00:27:37.100Inheritance was going to start and I knew kind of what was going to happen at the end. But I was
00:27:42.720mostly like get your butt in the chair and then the magic really did happen i i have this one0.74
00:27:48.180character in the book called juicy and she's the best character i've ever written she's so0.94
00:27:53.780fucking cool and i had no idea she was going to exist she wrote herself into my life she was just0.98
00:28:00.280like it's like juicy was somewhere in the ether and she's like i am a badass bitch coming in hot1.00
00:28:05.980and i have main character energy in your book you don't know it yet but here i fucking come0.91
00:28:11.540it is the best when that happens time for a quick break when we get back we're going to talk just a0.69
00:28:18.580little bit more about writing the job of the influencer and then i want to hear from sheila
00:28:24.740about the kinds of comments that she gets when she writes pieces for the new york times and1.00
00:28:29.620The New Yorker about women. Are influencers just going to become like a job that is written about0.99
00:28:44.060this written about and it's also on TV shows and have have they now are they fully in the
00:28:50.080mainstream enough that this is this is it we're now now influencer is just a thing that we're
00:28:54.440constantly going to see in everything we read and everything we watch on tv i think until you know
00:29:03.220i think about the the term mommy blogger uh which so which is a word i hate a word i totally hate
00:29:10.960it detest it uh but i think in the in the 2010s that was what that i you know now you would call
00:29:18.240them influencers like like ballerina farm like uh you're you are so great at chronicling
00:29:24.260chronicling the vast landscape of of mothers who are also incredibly online and uh monetizing0.99
00:29:32.900the act of being a mother in in a variety of ways but but all of these women would have been called0.65
00:29:40.040mobbie bloggers if you know we were we were 20 years ago and um you know that that whole
00:29:47.880the the bloggers evolved into the influencers and i am both eager to see and also slightly
00:29:56.100terrified about what's going to happen after influencing like i i i do i'm talking with a
00:30:03.800recently who was saying that they see instagram like sort of tipping into the the facebook sort
00:30:10.320of like like okay this instagram is far from being like the the the latest hot thing like
00:30:16.880tiktok is really popular that is taking off with a younger generation but what's going to happen
00:30:22.860when instagram totally loses any cool factor and something else moves in or is there going to be
00:30:30.140what's going to happen next i think that consumers are also pretty savvy at this point knowing when
00:30:36.640someone is advertising something because they're getting a check which more power to you we all
00:30:42.680have to figure out how to how to make it in this economy but there's a difference between that and
00:30:48.040genuinely liking something and recommending it and uh the as people as sort of the lines blur
00:30:58.240between commerce and what you're actually personally what you like and what you would
00:31:05.660just do if you weren't getting paid to do it i i think that's going to inevitably force the
00:31:12.120influencer industry to evolve and um i don't know i don't know what kind of characters we'll be
00:31:17.980having in our books in 10 or 20 years but but i'm sure there's something to be total mess
00:31:23.400totally like there is like there's never going to be a lack of hot messes in fiction because hot
00:31:31.280messes make for a good story my friends they do you don't you're never gonna read the book i'm
00:31:35.960like let me tell you about the person whose marriage is like just really nice and they have
00:31:40.640really really good vanilla sex like once a week and sometimes they bicker over the fact that
00:31:49.000the husband only likes fancy pour-over coffee and the wife really just wants a Mr. Coffee.1.00
00:31:54.880I just want a fucking Mr. Coffee, Nick Astor. Just can hate, hate your fancy pour-over coffee,1.00
00:32:01.180which I just like to try to dig, try to get that in there all the time. No one wants to read normal
00:32:06.540people having a happy normal life. They don't. They don't, which also makes me, I just don't
00:32:13.080understand that the comments or the reviews sometimes on which i i did see with my first
00:32:19.960book the goddess effect and i've seen it even on stories that i've written for the new york times
00:32:24.560or for other other uh publications that allow online commenting where where people are mad
00:32:31.480about especially women doing something either cheating or uh uh what i mean i think it's
00:32:39.040adultery obviously murder uh obviously but when you're talking about fictional characters yeah
00:32:46.360they're not going to be good people these are not going to be people that you would necessarily
00:32:50.460want to be friends with or invite over to your home like you know what's to read about well
00:32:57.200adjusted happy people it's not like morals they morals just like kind of get in the way of a good
00:33:04.980story and uh i'm not really sure why i i don't know who these readers are that just want their
00:33:12.880values affirmed to them by whatever they're reading i'm certainly not creating anything0.89
00:33:18.720for them it's not no i want to read about crazy people doing crazy shit is what i want to read
00:33:24.160about i do that actually you just brought up something else i wanted to ask you you write a0.53
00:33:29.080lot for really great very high-end reputable publications are the comments sometimes gonzo
00:33:37.760do you get gonzo comments when you write especially when you write about women
00:33:41.760oh yeah especially when i write about women and i get you know uh i write for the new yorker which
00:33:49.440does not have a commenting function uh but sometimes people will will find me on instagram
00:33:56.800or will will go through my website and and contact me through my email and send really awful things
00:34:05.400yeah yeah they are um i remember when i was i i had profiled uh uber's new head of marketing
00:34:15.000just like probably 10 years ago uh who at the time she was a black woman and she had a really
00:34:21.480incredible story and i got some really awful hateful comment uh from from absolute strangers
00:34:29.180on that story who were just i i i can't understand what has to be going through someone's head to
00:34:34.880number one post any of that vitriol online let alone go out of their way to actually email an
00:34:42.840author and and say i really hated that you spotlight this person it's terrible you did
00:34:48.440something wrong. I don't know what it speaks to. Trolls, the fact that people think they can stay
00:34:55.360whenever they want online and not have any consequences, a lack of decorum, just general0.92
00:35:02.240misogyny. It's terrible. But one of the first things that I was told when I started my career
00:35:12.280in journalism was don't read the comments. And sometimes I'm good at it. A lot of times I do.
00:35:18.440read them. Yeah, I'm pretty bad at not reading the comments. And to be honest, comments make me feel
00:35:24.320like, shit, I wrote about that today. When people post nasty things on my Instagram or on my0.99
00:35:30.260newsletters or on the stories that I write for more mainstream publications, it always burns.
00:35:37.100It does. I'm like, oh my gosh, maybe I am a terrible person. Comments suck. And it's tough
00:35:45.660to have a have a thick skin i do not read my book reviews anymore my co-writer christine
00:35:51.660reads them uh i don't i just like i that that is almost too personal that is like
00:35:59.000someone just stabbing me in my soft belly i i uh yeah i quickly learned with the goddess effect
00:36:08.220not to do not to read reviews um and that said if i do see if i if i see a five star i'm like
00:36:17.640do i want to click on that but yeah i have i have author friends that say look if you read the five
00:36:23.040stars you have to read the one stars i i you know i don't think that's true because i don't think
00:36:27.760that's true no yeah no no no no um i also you know when well with podcasts too people are much
00:36:35.480more likely to write a review when they hate something than when they like something. And I
00:36:38.860know this is true because I never write reviews, which is terrible. People have to remind me to
00:36:44.620write reviews. And I love so many books and I don't write enough reviews. But we get a lot of
00:36:50.900one star reviews for under the influence from someone that's like, you clearly hate conservatives.
00:36:58.340And I'm like, none of that is true. But I mean, like you obviously like feel very strongly about
00:37:03.640that and so you wanted to give me a one-star review you're not like no no one ever gives
00:37:08.140reviews to be like i loved this and it just made me feel nice no they don't they don't and it you
00:37:14.640know it's the same thing with restaurants or with actually there's there's a valvoline uh like the
00:37:21.120instant the 15 minute oil change place that's down the street from me in los angeles that has such
00:37:27.900good customer service that I felt the need to go on Google after the first time I went there and
00:37:33.900actually write a positive flowing review saying that like I had a fun service here. There was no
00:37:39.740wait time. It was just a really pleasant experience when I was gearing myself up for something
00:37:45.060horrible. And I would like to think that, you know, karmically, if we can put more lovely reviews of
00:37:56.580things into the world then maybe it'll kind of balance out all the the absolutely uncalled for
00:38:03.660one star zero star like not everything is for everyone and i think that's another thing that
00:38:10.840especially with books um you know sometimes people pick up something they they they picked up the
00:38:18.760goddess effect or they given it a try and it wasn't their normal genre and they even say that
00:38:23.760in the review this isn't something i would normally read i didn't like it like well i you
00:38:28.380know that's like i'm not gonna go to a i don't know i'm not super into wrestling i'm not gonna
00:38:35.340go to like a wwe smackdown and then be like this is horrible no one should watch this this is just
00:38:41.220absolutely terrible it's um every people have to figure out what they like and do more of that and
00:38:49.400not really not bring down people who are are into something different and just expressing
00:38:57.780themselves in a way that's perfectly fine that's perfectly fine exactly exactly that's such a good
00:39:04.260way of putting it i agree let's just build people up instead of instead of breaking them down um and
00:39:10.380by people i mean people and not influencer brands because it is perfectly okay to to do a media
00:39:17.220criticize a media media criticism of an influencer brand just putting that out there i got yes yes
00:39:24.240no no look there there is a there is a time in place for the the sort of artful critique that
00:39:33.220you do really well uh but of of these brands that are are the lifestyles that you know kind of they
00:39:41.840masquerade as lifestyles but they're actually a brand uh the the notion that okay this person
00:39:49.580has such a beautiful put to you know quote-unquote beautiful it looks nice on the grid they have this
00:39:55.200life and how do I get a piece of that oh look they're selling a farmer's market tote oh they've
00:40:01.000got a candle they've got uh milk they've got all these things that I can buy and maybe I can make
00:40:06.300my own life look a little bit more like theirs that's a company that's like anything you know0.98
00:40:11.440it's like the gap or something it's you're the gap okay that's what it is you're the freaking gap
00:40:16.500guys you're the gap and if you don't like the way the gaps jeans fit you can you know you can
00:40:22.920return them or not follow the gap okay not follow the gap um shop elsewhere will you tell everyone
00:40:30.960where they can find you on on the social medias and also how they can order your book which is
00:40:38.740from Mindy Kaling's studio which is so fucking cool I'm I'm so thrilled that Mindy Kaling picked
00:40:46.360it up for her her book studio it's she's got her own publishing imprint and it's uh it's pretty
00:40:52.860fabulous it's definitely to have her seal of approval literal seal on the cover of the book
00:40:58.080it's still Mindy's name Mindy's name is on the cover of your book that is really cool
00:41:02.240she wrote the forward and i yeah i could not be happier about all the the link is in my instagram
00:41:11.120bio which is the only social media platform that i'm very consistently on my name there is sheila
00:41:19.060ym and uh that's the same name that i have on all of social media although i'm not really on
00:41:25.500twitter or x anymore because it just seems like it seems like a like a coven of ads and hate and
00:41:36.540yeah i'm i'm trying to avoid that okay that's all we've got for today thank you so much for joining
00:41:42.860us i love all of you i really do i just appreciate the hell out of everyone these days um it's been
00:41:50.440rough. I've been tired. I took a little breather. I went to Puerto Rico. I feel good. I feel good
00:41:55.740and I feel energized. And I think we're going to make the Sicilian Inheritance the book of the
00:42:00.000summer. I do. I do. We just have to keep saying it. We do. Sicilian Inheritance. It's the book
00:42:05.500of the summer. If you haven't gotten it, pick it up. It makes a great Mother's Day present.
00:42:11.660It really does. And a lot of people are telling me that they are buddy reading with their moms,
00:42:17.300moms, which I love so much. So if you already have a copy, grab a copy for your mom. Why not?
00:42:23.240We talk about motherhood so much in the book that I think it will lead you to ask your mom
00:42:27.900questions about being a mom that maybe you've never asked her before, which I love. Now go
00:42:33.500have a good day. Do something nice for yourself. Do something nice for someone else. And maybe tell
00:42:39.020one of your friends that she's a good mom, because we all need to hear that. Someone said that to me
00:42:43.700yesterday and I just cried because, yeah, I needed it. Okay. Bye, guys.