Ep 143: From Starbucks Barista to Thriller Novelist with Julie Doar

A single question on a cold Hudson Valley walk: What if there’s a body in that hunter’s tent? sparked the debut thriller The Gallagher Place by Julie Doar. 

In this episode, we chat about how she wrote the first draft by instinct, then shifted gears into precision: charting dates, timelines, and cause-and-effect until every twist landed in a way that made sense. 

When the manuscript worked its way to 100K+ words, cutting became an act of getting clarity on what stays, what goes, and how much weight the opening chapter really has to carry.

As it turns out, her years working at Starbucks trained the same muscles that make a thriller work: anticipating and executing under pressure. We talk about turning that fast-twitch instinct into a writing rhythm, plus the art of finishing one idea before chasing the next.

We also chat about how querying parallels sales strategy: staggering submissions, treating rejections as market data, and refining pages until they convert. The mindset shift from “why not me?” to “what did I learn?” keeps momentum alive until the right agent says yes.

✍️ You've Been Thinking About This Book Forever. So let's start writing (for real this time).
 
No incense, inspirational playlists, or fancy mantras. Just a clear, doable plan to get your nonfiction or memoir draft written in 33 days. 

👉 https://www.publishaprofitablebook/writethebook

Chapters

• 0:00 Hosts Warm-Up & Interview Style
• 3:36 Cover Reveal & Visual Impact
• 5:21 Hudson Valley Roots & Vibes
• 7:46 Starbucks War Stories & Skills
• 11:31 Origin of the Thriller Premise
• 13:26 Drafting Without a Map
• 16:51 Cutting, Timelines, and Continuity
• 21:21 Querying, Rejection, and Sales Mindset
• 25:21 Agent to Deal: Patience and Revisions
• 28:16 Writing the Next Book: Gossip Mystery
• 30:51 Single-Tracking Projects & Boundaries
• 33:36 Recent Reads & Adaptations
• 36:11 Closing Gratitude & Cozy Reading Plans

Transcript

SPEAKER_02: 1:11

Do you listen to Caller Daddy? I don't listen to it regularly, but I definitely watch the sound bites.

SPEAKER_00: 1:18

Me too. Me too. I'm in the same boat. But you're f and you're but you're familiar with the podcast, right? So sometimes I watch Alex, who's the host, and she has these index cards with all of her questions on them. She does. And she kind of they're a prop almost. Exactly.

SPEAKER_02: 1:34

I'm thinking of implementing that. Even if nothing's on it, just to hold it. Oh my god, I hadn't even thought about that. Sometimes I wonder if she's just holding it because it is videotaped a lot.

SPEAKER_00: 1:47

It is, and I do feel like her conversations are very natural with her guests. Totally. And I I can appreciate how certainly with the caliber of some of her guests, I'd want to have like backup questions prepared.

SPEAKER_02: 2:03

And she interviews some controversial people too. So I imagine there's maybe a list of things she's not supposed to say.

SPEAKER_00: 2:11

That's a great point. I'm already imagining right now, I could have my SOS card that's like if things are going, which it's never happened, knock on wood. Don't make me be the first, Julie. Don't be the first one where I have to pull out an as yet uncreated SOS card. But could it be like if things go really left, this is the okay. I'm gonna don't worry, I'll mention you when I bring my stuff back. Okay, I cannot wait to talk to you about so many things. So for anyone who's watching on the YouTube, right? We've got the cover here. So in love with this cover. When you first saw that, was this the very first cover that it was it was one of three?

SPEAKER_02: 2:50

And I remember I remember where I was when I got the email. And I teach middle school during that's my day job. So I was in the teacher's break room having maybe my third coffee of the day, and I didn't know that they'd made covers yet. I didn't know when that was gonna happen. So it was a total surprise email. And I remember opening it and seeing three and instantly seeing this one. Really? And just getting a big butterfly heart skip-a-beat moment because I do love it so much, and I do think it captures the energy of the book. And I thought, oh, well, that's my favorite. And then I read the email, and my publishers were saying, This is our favorite as well. So it's very perfect that we just agreed. And I'm not even a visual person usually. I instinctually, I just thought that's that's the cover.

SPEAKER_00: 3:53

I'm a very visual person. I will buy a book, it could be about snakes and spiders if I if the cover is fantastic, it it will grab or a title if it grabs me. When I pulled this out of the package from Diana, I was like, okay. And you know what I thought, Julie, was I want to go somewhere. First of all, it definitely gives thriller vibe to me. Good. I want to go somewhere cold and snowy and safe. Like I don't want to be out in the middle of nowhere because I think this takes some twists and turns, and I don't want to get, you know, too nervous. But it's just, it's, it's so great. And then I flip it over and I see um a former Starbucks barista, and you grew up in the Hudson Valley. So I thought, all right, before we even dive into this book, I have to say three things. Three of my kids either currently work at or have worked at Starbucks. I've got two there, and and I've always said that's my backup. So it still is my backup.

SPEAKER_02: 4:59

Is it really? I mean, I always tell myself, you know, if things ever go south at any point, Starbucks is always hiring. And it is tough. It's tough working customer service. It's a lot of drinks, but I know I can do it because I did it for so long. I have their drinks memorized.

SPEAKER_00: 5:19

I don't think I'll ever forget the Oh, we could do a whole episode on this. We really, we we won't, but we could. Um, we could like save it because when my kids started working there, they were equally overwhelmed. And I've often said, okay, if all else fails, that's what, you know, that's what I'm gonna do. And sometimes I'll be working in a Starbucks, not for them, but I will be writing or working in their lobby, if you will. And um, so somebody will text me and say, Where are you? I say, I'm working at Starbucks, and they'll go, Oh, it it finally happened. You finally I'm like, No, no, no, no, no, no, no, I independently working. No, never say never, but today I'm just editing in Starbucks. I'm not making the lattes. Um, but it felt so overwhelming to my kids, and now they, as you know, you get the craziest orders, and they can just rip them out, you know. They yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 6:14

At a certain point, I liked being on bar. I liked the busy work. It's much better when it's busy, even though it's overwhelming. I could hear people ordering at the register and make the drink based on what I oh that's okay. That's my kind of my Starbucks brag. I used to go right in the lobby before I worked there. Uh, I can't do that anymore because I get distracted. I notice, oh, someone needs to change the trash. That counter needs to be wiped because I was for so long in that mindset. They didn't make that drink right. I can tell they didn't shake it enough times.

SPEAKER_00: 6:51

So okay, we are very similar because I'm doing that and I've never even worked there.

unknown: 6:56

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 6:57

Well, sometimes they have a lot of new baristas, and I know this because I was training them, and it's impossible to, in the span of five days of training, know all those drinks. Oh, for sure.

SPEAKER_00: 7:09

So that's you got hot bar, then you got cold bar, then you got drive-thru. And one of my, I don't remember which kid it was, but in their first week, they were so understaffed and so over something that they they were they were thrown into, they were taking orders, handing them out the drive-thru, and dealing with something else at the same time. And I I it's it was like I think they slept for like two days after that shift. It was crazy. Yes, it's stimulating. It's stimulating. It's a lot. So, quick note on the Hudson Valley, because I just found this really interesting. There's another author I connected with last week who I found out about for the first time, and I was so pleased, and I'm gonna forget her name right now because it's so fresh. She wrote an article for Travel and Leisure magazine about how she moved, I believe, from New York City, she and her husband, up to is it like Lichfield County? Is that okay? The way she described it, Julie. I mean, what are you there now? No, I live in Brooklyn now.

SPEAKER_02: 8:12

That's right. That's right. Okay in the Hudson Valley, and most of my family is there. Is it as idyllic as it looks? It's beautiful, it's stunning, and it's not just the landscape, the fields and the forests are very beautiful, but the the old houses and the old farmlands are just it's like stepping into a storybook in a lot of ways. I think I have to go.

SPEAKER_00: 8:40

You should. It's I think I think this is a sign because of all the places to be mentioned to me twice in one week, or not to be mentioned to me, but to have put in my face twice. I think that's I think it must mean something. So tell me about the writing of this, because this is your debut. Yes. Yes. So just bring us in. Like how did you get the idea for it? What what's your process like? All all the things that people, what surprised you wherever you want to start?

SPEAKER_02: 9:09

So I started writing it years ago. It's been a long process. I got the idea I wanted to write murder mystery thriller. I love that genre. I love reading it, and I felt I felt comfortable writing in that style. I read a lot of genres, but that was something. Even the pattern of sort of the building suspense, the twist, the reveal, I love. So I tried a few different types of premises. I was actually in the Hudson Valley with my family. We were taking a walk, which is kind of a big Hudson Valley activity, is just taking for your for your weekend trip. That's pretty much on the itinerary. Take a long walk. Uh-huh. And we were in a field and there was a hunter's tent because there are lots of hunters in the area and they have tents and kind of deer blinds. And I just thought, what if there was a body in the tent? And that is the opening chapter. That's where it started. It's still the opening chapter. Everything else got changed a lot, but that is still kind of the starting event. A family takes a walk and finds a body. And the process from there, I wrote a lot of drafts, basically.

SPEAKER_00: 10:31

I wrote the first all the way through, or because I like I'm curious if we just stick with. So I've got this premise that this family is on a walk and they find a body. Where did you go from there?

SPEAKER_02: 10:45

So my yeah, my process for this was I, and I usually do this, I write a full draft because I don't know where it goes from there when I start. But as I write and build the characters, one character often leads to another. One relationship leads to another. And then I kind of found out as I was writing it what happened. I did, I had written some past either incomplete drafts or they just weren't quite fully realized. I did steal, I borrowed from past things I'd written. I'd borrowed characters, ideas, and kind of just fed it in to what I was working on. And then I reached the end and I I remember saying, okay, now I know how it ends. Now I know what happens. And then I went back and re-reworked a lot of stuff and changed a lot of stuff. But the first writing the first draft was really exciting because every time I wrote, I was learning what would happen, and the characters would surprise me sometimes.

SPEAKER_00: 11:55

Well, I'm I'm selfishly happy to hear you say that completely unprompted, that you got to the end and then you kind of had to figure out how to get to the end. Because I just was talking yesterday about the fact that sometimes, and when I'm working with authors, it's primarily on nonfiction or memoir when I'm working one-on-one with them. But with nonfiction, sometimes it can really help to know where they're starting. And other times it can really help to know how they're gonna end. In other words, the final chapter, and I I liken it to fiction because for some fiction authors, if they know where it's going to end, or if they know what that pinnacle point is, then they just have to work their way into it and out of it, or all the way to it if it's the end. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. How many? And I don't want to focus on it like it's like there's a rule because there is it, but do you remember approximately how many words your first draft was? Long.

SPEAKER_02: 12:56

It was too long. It was I'm long-winded. Uh, it was over a hundred thousand. Was it? Yes. I don't know the exact, but I do remember the first thing my my agent said to me was, you need to cut, you need to get it down. Um but I'm I would always rather have more material to cut than to come up with material. I felt like I had a lot and so cutting was necessary. What how was cutting easy? For some for some parts of the revision process, it was easy. For at other times it was quite difficult. Uh at certain revision, I was cutting stuff, but also adding stuff. And that got a little tricky because I had to remember, do they know this or was does this person know this or was this cut? Do I have to add this in here? And that's I'm not naturally the most organized. I don't keep a lot of notes as I'm writing a first draft. So I had to put on that skill set of okay, I need to have a very clear timeline. I need every single date worked out, I need to know birth dates, birth years, all of that. And I spent a lot of time doing that because it it was just impossible to be cutting and adding without having that information worked out.

SPEAKER_00: 14:31

I the dates thing has me so tripped up because I at one point I realized in the book I'm working on that I had someone who was married when she was like seven and she had a baby when she was like 92. I mean, like the dates were not, the math wasn't mathing. And I thought I never realized I was gonna have to become proficient at math in order to write fiction.

SPEAKER_02: 14:52

This is yes, same. I'm not not, I was counting on my fingers the calculator for for years, especially in this book. There's there's two sort of main families. There's and I I wanted to explore family relationships and sibling relationships, but also intergenerational dynamics. Uh during the first draft, I didn't think anything of dates. I was just writing, and uh, it was during the revision I had to think, oh, actually, if this character is this old in this scene, I need to actually figure out when they were born. And so I had a family tree, I had everything worked out. But I I kept, I did keep thinking I was making math mistakes. There was one character and I he was supposed to be mid-50s, but somewhere he had become a 45-year-old or early 40s. Well, listen, that's it, could have been worse. Exactly. And I was thinking, I just skipped a decade in my coming at some point, and I and I was so careful that I need to fix this.

SPEAKER_00: 16:06

Like, are you do you watch Bridgerton? Or have you ever watched Bridgerton? Yeah, okay. Yes. Okay, I'm sensing that you're a fan. Okay. So I am not innately a fan of period stuff, right? Like, like I I never really got in, and maybe I still will, so never say never, but Downton Abbey. Like I just didn't, the Queen, like all these different things. I didn't quite get into it. Yes. And my oldest daughter, and then believe it or not, one of my sons, who's 23, was like, they both said, this is so good. And I thought, if my son, who's just a very, he's a very masculine presence, is suggesting this. I'm obsessed. It kind of, when you said like the generations, like I have to put together, wait, who's from what family? Gives me so much of a better regard for how Russian literature, you know, Anna Karenina, which is one of my favorite novels of all time, all time, war and peace. Thank God they have the family at the beginning because I would just what? Like I'm trying separate side note question. Is it accurate that in Bridger Tim, the one family, the first child's name starts with A and then it goes down? Did you pick up on that? Oh, yes.

SPEAKER_02: 17:25

So I actually read the books for the Netflix show. Am a bit of a romance novel lover. Okay. I I love a good quick romance read. And yes, that's in the books, and they discuss it in the books. It's just kind of a who is C? Claud, Claudia? Wait, who is C?

unknown: 17:47

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 17:47

Because there's Anthony Colin.

SPEAKER_00: 17:50

It's Colin! I forgot for a second. Thank you. So that family, at what letter does it end? Do you do you know that off the top of your head? I think it's the youngest son is G?

SPEAKER_02: 18:05

Jeffrey? Oh, I don't think I know Jeffrey yet. I think he's a kid on the show. I don't know if the show's gonna do all the books. So I'm not sure.

SPEAKER_00: 18:15

Okay, well, that's an aside, but thank you so much for Colin because I I didn't even pick up on this until, and I won't say it as a spoiler, but somebody has a baby, and the husband says, Well, obviously his name will start with an A in keeping with tradition. And I was like, What tradition? I don't think they mention it in the show. I don't remember that. I it never even occurred to me until that moment. And then I started going back and going, oh, there's anyway, okay. So yeah, I who is C now. We know. Prepare for me to message you later and say who's F? Like I'm so anyway, we'll we'll deal with that later. So in the Gallagher place, I'm sort of gleaning this isn't the first book you've written.

SPEAKER_02: 18:59

No, it's the first, it's the first I've published. It was not the first draft I finished. It was the first draft that felt like it was something.

SPEAKER_00: 19:10

Okay. Um, did it start early? Because did you have an agent before?

SPEAKER_02: 19:18

No. Okay. No, I had it. I was writing. I wanted to be a writer. I was, you know, working various jobs and trying to finish something. I finished a few things, but and I think you'll I think every writer can relate to this. You finish it and it's it feels not what you visualized, or it's not at the vision. The Gallagher place was similar. It wasn't exactly meeting the vision, but it felt close. It felt like the thing I'd created that was the closest to what I'd set out to create. So I revised and invested a lot of energy in it. And then I sought an agent with the manuscript.

SPEAKER_00: 20:00

Got it. Okay. So a lot of people who are considering trying to get agented and go traditional really are challenged by the quarry letter. Oh, yeah. Okay. So how and so it just makes me, I don't know that I've ever asked this before, but how did you go about summarizing a plot that wasn't completely nailed down? I mean, it was, but as you said, there were it still felt like it's not quite there yet. So how did you, how did you do that and have the confidence to send it out that it could intrigue the right agent?

SPEAKER_02: 20:36

Part of it, looking back, it might have been false confidence, to be honest. I think I actually sent it out too early. I thought, okay, it's ready. Ready enough. Sent it out for a few rounds, nothing was happening, and I had to go back and kind of say, okay, it wasn't ready. I need to adjust and send out more rounds. I definitely in the letter itself, there's a duo mystery of the novel. So there's the one body they find, and then there's a past mystery from 20 years before, in which this friend uh disappears. So I leaned heavily on that. This sort of digging into old family secrets. The details did change, but that idea remained constant of a family with secrets, basically.

SPEAKER_00: 21:32

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 21:33

I will say when it came to querying for Starbucks, I worked in sales. I was cold calling people, and it was, you know, the headset on a book, a territory of businesses, literally calling up business owners and trying to sell them advertising in 20 minutes over the phone. Oh my god. And it was not a fun job. I was gonna say, did you enjoy that? Because no, it didn't come naturally to me. Yeah. It was not, I didn't consider myself an extrovert, I didn't consider myself a salesperson, but it was I was an English major, I graduated, that was a job I could get. But I did learn in sales, it's really a numbers game. You have to cast the net and you have to make, you know, 10 dials to reach a decision maker. And then you might make 50 dials a day, means you're gonna reach five decision makers. Out of those five decision makers, you have to convert one to two to a sale. So I approached the query letter with that philosophy. You know, I'm gonna get a lot of rejection. People are gonna hang up the phone, but if I send out a certain number and I get one agent to read, now I have to say, okay, is that converting into an offer? And it took a lot of the emotion out. I think writers obviously were emotionally invested. Rejection can be difficult, but thinking of it in the way I would have thought about the sales job helped me.

SPEAKER_00: 23:14

Well, I remember when I was talking to Emma Gray and she was saying the rule of a hundred for her. Yes. So she almost just went in with the mindset of I'm gonna get a hundred rejections before I get someone who's interested. And it didn't take that long. She didn't have to get to a hundred. But because that was her mindset, I think that's such a healthier way to do it than to think I've submitted to three people and they all said no, so I quit. Exactly.

SPEAKER_02: 23:43

Yeah, that's that it's the first three people, our odds are going to say no. And then I think that mentality is so healthy because it it's almost a mental trick, and you start celebrating the rejections. You think, oh, another rejection check. Yes, because you can my way. Uh I love a checklist. So that helps. I'm a definite fan of that philosophy.

SPEAKER_00: 24:09

So how long was it then from when you well, how long did it take before you got an agent who was interested? And the reason I ask this is because I enjoyed letting people hear a lot of different experiences with this. And I think people are surprised to sometimes hear it takes it can take a little bit longer than they might think.

SPEAKER_02: 24:31

It I think it took around a year, possibly longer, because I did do I staggered it because I didn't want to send out a query letter. If it got if I sent it to 10 and nothing happened, I thought, okay, I need to adjust the query letter. I need to adjust something. So that meant it took longer and it takes a long time to hear. There's a lot of sometimes there'll be a request for the first 50 pages, the request for the full thing. So it does, it did take time. It was a journey.

SPEAKER_00: 25:40

Well, and I'm anticipating a question from listeners, which is how did you know what to adjust?

SPEAKER_02: 25:47

I think I did a lot of research. I read a lot, I read a lot of articles, listened to what other authors had to say about their experience. A common thing I heard, and I think this was the number one thing I was adjusting, was the first chapter. The first chapter, if either you're sending it in the query letter or an agent requests that, yeah, it has to be really strong. Yeah. And I always felt a little uncertain about my opening, not even just my chapter, my opening 50 pages. I felt I was constantly changing that. So that was most often what I was adjusting.

SPEAKER_00: 26:29

And so then from getting the agent to getting the offer, how long of a period was that for you?

SPEAKER_02: 26:35

I think that was about a year, maybe around there, something like that. But that, I mean, the great thing about having an agent is all of a sudden you're not alone. You're not just doing this on your computer after work. So it felt really assuring to have to have that. Someone believed in it in some to some capacity.

SPEAKER_00: 26:59

And are you someone who once this book was edited and off and and in the queue of publishing will say, do you start working on something else? Oh yes.

SPEAKER_02: 27:11

Okay. I I have to I have to have something new because I'm I don't like waiting. I didn't want to sit and just wait. And I I always thought, you know what, rejection is part of this process, so I have to even just mentally tell myself maybe it won't happen with this.

SPEAKER_00: 27:31

I can't oh, so while even while it was on submission, yes, you were working hard.

SPEAKER_02: 27:36

Just to help think, you know what, if if it's not this, yeah, I need to have something else. If it takes like another two, three tries with the with the novel, uh, I'm gonna keep writing something. Yes.

SPEAKER_00: 27:53

I I think that's a common refrain I hear from authors who just they want to write for the long term. Yes, they know it's a long, long game.

SPEAKER_02: 28:05

It is, and everyone tells you that. Seasoned writers always say that. So I kind of the longer I write, the more I start to feel it's the successful long-term writers are the writers who just don't stop. Right. Just keep doing it.

SPEAKER_00: 28:23

Yeah. It's not some secret. You just keep going. You just keep going. So is the next one that you're working on now, is it also a thriller?

SPEAKER_02: 28:33

Yes, it's also got a mystery. It's a little more of a I think of it as a gossip mystery, weirdly, because it's sent it's a wedding weekend premise. I love the idea of constraining it to two days. Okay or two to three days. So it focuses on kind of friend group dynamics, relationships, whispers, gossip. Uh and there is a central mystery, yes.

SPEAKER_00: 29:07

That one of my favorite books, I've I think I'm in my thriller era. I don't know if I've already mentioned this, but I think it's happening. And it might have started with the dinner list. Is that Lucy Score? Lucy Foley? Lucy Foley. Lucy Foley. We don't want to be yeah, I've read one of her novels. She's yeah, and and it was, it was confined to three days, and it was so two to three days, and it were maybe four, but it was so much, and it just I couldn't stop turning pages. Yeah, that's that's the best feeling for me. And then you don't have to deal with people's age changing, exactly.

SPEAKER_02: 29:43

Yes, after dealing with the timelines, I thought I need three days, I can do track of three days.

SPEAKER_00: 29:50

Okay. Now, personal curiosity, when you got the idea or when you get the idea for another book, but you're still working actively on the book that you're working on, what do you do?

SPEAKER_02: 30:04

I struggle to do two things at once. So, and but I always want to. Yeah. I always, if I'm stuck with one project, all of a sudden I have another idea that is so exciting and so thrilling. So I will allow myself to write a little bit for whatever the exciting, enticing idea is, but I I do try to limit myself because I just know I have a one-track mind. Yeah. And I just have to focus on one thing at a time.

SPEAKER_00: 30:36

That's something I've learned about myself in the last several years, is I otherwise I will have, and it's not just writing, it's projects around my house. I mean, I my kids are like, mom, you've been working on the steps for nine years. Can we? And it's it's no, it's not that I've been working on the steps for nine years. It's that I started working on the steps, but then I thought, I think the pantry needs a makeover. And then I thought, I think I need to tear out the shower. And then I thought, so I'm I'm gonna come back around, but I have to have some boundaries around a project. And I I've started to tell myself, we're gonna finish this this thing before we're gonna we're gonna write the end, even if there's still some massaging to do, we're gonna finish it, and then we'll move on to that next yes.

SPEAKER_02: 31:26

I'm the same way right in in the house too. I have a leaking faucet, and I just can't, it's I can't even put it on the list yet because I have to deal with two other things. I am aware it's happening, but I just can't deal with it right now.

SPEAKER_00: 31:39

I know, I know. It's like the shorter my list, the saner I am, which makes all the sense in the The world, but it's not normal for me. I'm so used to having a list that's like a notebook long, it's just it's pages and pages and pages. But that is, I can't, I can't. It's too much. It's too much. Nothing ever gets done. It's no, I need to just check back to your loving to just put the check mark. I need the check mark. So, last question I always ask is what are you reading now, or what have you read recently that you just loved or felt like, gosh, I wish I could read that again, having never read it the first time.

SPEAKER_02: 32:19

I just read Wide Sargasso C by Jean Reese. It's it's a reimagining of Jane Eyre, and I love Jean Eyre. Okay, I love Bronte Sisters. It's about the wife in the attic, who you never really see in Jane Eyre. She kind of is haunting on the outskirts this very mysterious figure. So it's a retelling from her point of view. Okay. Which I love. I love a different point of view. Yeah. And it's very, it's very good. It's very beautiful. And it is not a thriller. It's not a mystery, but it has sort of frightening elements and haunting aspects. Ghost there's some ghost stories in it. Ghost stories. Okay. That's interesting. I loved it. I loved it a lot. I also just read. I like to you mentioned memoirs earlier. I really enjoy a good point of view memoir. I just read the I'm Glad My Mom Died by Jeanette McCurdy because I heard a I heard a lot about it. People were talking about it. It's good. It's kind of read it. It's got it leans a lot into it's celebrity gossip, which is interesting, but it's not over-reliant on that. It's mostly about her relationship with her mother, which is fascinating. And she writes about it with a very distinct voice.

SPEAKER_00: 33:43

Heard so much about it. And I think for me, the title was so hard for me. I think I think that's frankly. Yeah, I think it was jarring for a lot of people. And I I don't know. Um that's not good or bad, or not none of those things. It helped, whether they intended it to or not. It helped the book get a lot of word of mouth because people couldn't help but say, What's oh my god, right? Like right. What what the heck? But I've also heard that some people really, really enjoyed it. Yes. And so I've been wanting to take a look.

SPEAKER_02: 34:17

Yeah, I didn't read it initially when it came out, but this always gets me is when I hear there's going to be a television show or a movie adaptation adaptation. Yeah, and I saw, I don't know if this is real, but I saw that it was being adapted to a TV show. And even when I'm not probably not going to watch a movie, all of a sudden I think I have to read the book very quickly. Oh, really? Just in case I decide to watch the show, I want to have the the book already read.

SPEAKER_00: 34:49

Do you compare? Like, do you watch then the movie or the show and think this wasn't in the book? Or yes, I love doing that. Okay. So I'm seeing the Starbucks to come full circle. I'm seeing the working in the Starbucks, not at the Starbucks, but observing what they're not doing and also reading a book and then watching the show and observing what they left out. Yeah. I need to have the insider information. Yeah. Oh my gosh. Well, thank you so much for creating time so quickly. I wish you all the luck in the world with this. I'm gonna take it up somewhere north where it is not a hundred degrees the minute the snow starts falling up there, and that's what I'm gonna do for the weekend. Light a nice fire. It's a good fireplace. There is a fire on the cover. I I mean it's not a fire, it's it's like illumination, but it a glow, a glow, but it gives the sense of a fire, meaning from a fireplace.

SPEAKER_02: 35:48

Yes, it's yeah, got some hearth, some fireside settings, elements. Yeah. I hope you enjoy it.

SPEAKER_00: 35:56

And I have no doubt that I will. I can't wait. Thank you. Thank you for having me. This this has been so nice.