Speaker 1: Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back to The Bob Left's podcast. My
Speaker 1: guest today is Robert cole Curl, author of the best
Speaker 1: selling book Hit in Value With Robert, it's great to
Speaker 1: be here, Bob. Thanks so much for having me on
Speaker 1: the show. Now you're like me. We're talking before we
Speaker 1: started that you're Bob. Were you ever? Robert? I was
Speaker 1: Bobby until I think the day I arrived for college
Speaker 1: and um, someone asked me my name and I tried
Speaker 1: to say Bobby, but I, um, I got stuck on
Speaker 1: the second syllable. Something kept me from saying Bobby, and
Speaker 1: I just switched to Bob immediately and that was it. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I was certainly Bobby growing up and occasionally in my family.
Speaker 1: Certainly by time I hit college, I was not Bobby either.
Speaker 1: But I have never been Robert. It's really kind of funny. Okay,
Speaker 1: So you wrote this book Kin in Valley Road. It's
Speaker 1: about a family, the Galvin family from Colorado Springs. There
Speaker 1: are twelve children and six of them get schizophrenia. How
Speaker 1: did you come and become involved with this story? Well,
Speaker 1: my career really took shape at New York Magazine, where
Speaker 1: I wrote a lot of true crime stories and other
Speaker 1: dramatic and vivid nonfiction tales. And I just tended to
Speaker 1: specialize in writing about people who never imagined that they
Speaker 1: would get news coverage. So not politicians or movie stars,
Speaker 1: but everyday people caught up in something extremely uh, you know,
Speaker 1: of human interest. And my longtime editor there, John Gluck,
Speaker 1: contacted me one day about four years ago. We both
Speaker 1: had left New York Magazine years earlier and had lunch
Speaker 1: every now and then. But he, uh, he contacted me
Speaker 1: saying that he went to school with a friend of
Speaker 1: his high school decades ago. Her name was Lindsay. They
Speaker 1: dated in high school. And it's just because I've read
Speaker 1: the book Is This Hot Kiss with referring to his
Speaker 1: high school, the prep school that she ultimately went to. Yes,
Speaker 1: they both were, um, you know, outsiders at Hotchkiss, sort
Speaker 1: of not part of the preppy set, and they dated then,
Speaker 1: and of course Lindsay wasn't really talking much about her
Speaker 1: home life or anything then. But as the decades went
Speaker 1: on and they stayed friendly, he learned the ins and
Speaker 1: outs of her family, and he got to know her
Speaker 1: older sister, Margaret also, and then one day in the
Speaker 1: sisters came to him and said, we've been thinking about
Speaker 1: for decades now, ways to try to tell the story
Speaker 1: of our family, ways to let the world know about
Speaker 1: our family. We believe scientists have been studying our family
Speaker 1: for decades. The things that happened to us as children
Speaker 1: are so extreme and unbelievable, no one would believe it.
Speaker 1: And we've struggled, but we've decided that the time is
Speaker 1: right to talk to an independent journalist about telling the
Speaker 1: story and following the story wherever it goes, and talking
Speaker 1: to everybody, not just making it a a story of
Speaker 1: the two sisters. And so I got on the phone
Speaker 1: with them four years ago, and this was the first
Speaker 1: I heard about any of it. This is a family
Speaker 1: with twelve children born during the baby boom. The oldest
Speaker 1: in nt the youngest in nineteen. And we're since we're
Speaker 1: being truthful, how old are you today? I am fifty one? Okay,
Speaker 1: So the children were born during the baby boom, yes,
Speaker 1: And a couple of years after the youngest was born,
Speaker 1: the oldest started to get sick, started to behave strangely,
Speaker 1: had psychotic breaks, was examined by psychiatrists. The parents were
Speaker 1: desperate to try to mainstream him and have him kind
Speaker 1: of grow out of it. And then another one got sick,
Speaker 1: and another and another um six of the twelve, and
Speaker 1: then there was abuse, and there were among the brothers,
Speaker 1: and there was a murder suicide with one brother. As
Speaker 1: sisters were telling me about this in that first phone
Speaker 1: call four years ago, I was simply stunned and really
Speaker 1: brought low. I thought to myself, how could all this
Speaker 1: happen to just one family? And then I wondered how
Speaker 1: they could even remain a family. You know, why would
Speaker 1: either of these sisters want to stay in a family
Speaker 1: like this given everything that happened to them. But they
Speaker 1: were not that way on the phone. They were ready
Speaker 1: to talk and to tell their story, and they believed
Speaker 1: that everybody else in their family would too. Um they
Speaker 1: felt like people could perhaps learn from their experiences. But
Speaker 1: also they had done a lot of work in the
Speaker 1: inter intervening decades. They had um a lot of therapy
Speaker 1: and a lot of internal examination to try to move
Speaker 1: through the traumas of their childhood. So they felt like
Speaker 1: that could be a big part of the book as well.
Speaker 1: I was more skeptical. I it took me some doing,
Speaker 1: but I what I said, what to myself was there's
Speaker 1: no way I would work on this unless every living
Speaker 1: family member was supportive of it. I didn't want to
Speaker 1: uh to suddenly being emotionally invested in writing this family
Speaker 1: story and then see that there was opposition within the
Speaker 1: family to even having it be out there. So I
Speaker 1: decided to go very slowly and talk to everybody very gradually.
Speaker 1: Let's let's let's go a little bit slower here. So
Speaker 1: at what point did you decide there's a book here
Speaker 1: and you wanted to do it? Um? It was about
Speaker 1: three months after that first phone call. What I did
Speaker 1: in those three months was very strategic, I said, um,
Speaker 1: And I was very open with the sisters. I said,
Speaker 1: let's let's take this slowly. Books take time, anyway. UM,
Speaker 1: what if once a week I get on the phone
Speaker 1: for an hour with a different family member of yours,
Speaker 1: and then also with a few doctors who have talked
Speaker 1: to the family and might be able to give me
Speaker 1: some perspective on the medical side of things. And I'll
Speaker 1: be very open ended in these phone calls. I'll just say,
Speaker 1: so the sisters are interested in a book, what do
Speaker 1: you think about that? And then just see what they
Speaker 1: have to say. And I said to the sisters, we'll
Speaker 1: all know at the end of three months or so
Speaker 1: whether or not this is doable or not. And if
Speaker 1: it isn't, I'll give you the tapes of the conversations
Speaker 1: that that I've had with these folks, and you can
Speaker 1: write your memoir whether it'll be my good deed for
Speaker 1: the year, and and and they could go off and
Speaker 1: do what they needed to do in their own way.
Speaker 1: But um, being opened this way and being kind of
Speaker 1: casual about it was helpful because I was able to
Speaker 1: really really hear what each individual family member had to
Speaker 1: say about their family, what had to say about the
Speaker 1: idea of the book, and everyone was comfortable enough with
Speaker 1: it so that a year later, when I got a
Speaker 1: book contract and started working on it full time, I
Speaker 1: really was up at full speed from the from the
Speaker 1: get go. Then okay, let's go. So you do this
Speaker 1: three month period of research, then what goes off in
Speaker 1: your brain, and then how do you get the book deal? Um, Well,
Speaker 1: after the three months, I thought, well, this is this
Speaker 1: is really doable. I should get to Colorado, where most
Speaker 1: of the family lives, and try to meet some people personally,
Speaker 1: and most importantly, I should meet face to face with
Speaker 1: Mimi Galvin, who was the matriarch of the family, who
Speaker 1: at that point was years old, I believe, and to
Speaker 1: start doing interviews with her to put together a book proposal.
Speaker 1: And um, and then I, you know, I reached out
Speaker 1: to my agents, who I had been my agents for
Speaker 1: more than ten years, and were they really believe that
Speaker 1: this was something special? Um. The more I talked about
Speaker 1: it with them, the more I realized how unique this was.
Speaker 1: There are wonderful, wonderful books about mental illness out there,
Speaker 1: about the science and mental illness, and there are wonderful
Speaker 1: books that are memoirs about the experience of either having
Speaker 1: your own issue or um having a family member experienced
Speaker 1: that issue. But nobody, to my knowledge, had been able
Speaker 1: to do a three sixty degree omniscent you know book
Speaker 1: that would read like a novel where you have every
Speaker 1: input from every family member and everybody's perspective of woven
Speaker 1: together so that it it really reads like some ambitious
Speaker 1: narrative nonfiction. And so I felt like I had a
Speaker 1: unicorn here, you know, something something that nobody else had,
Speaker 1: and I wanted to see how far I could take it.
Speaker 1: It really was a mystery at the beginning, whether it
Speaker 1: would be a science book about an interesting case study
Speaker 1: or a story of sisters surviving trauma. But by the
Speaker 1: end of those three months I got invested in this
Speaker 1: being much more ambitious. This could be an epic, an
Speaker 1: intergenerational family saga that also is a medical mystery, a
Speaker 1: book about a family where you get to know the
Speaker 1: parents nice and slowly. You you walk in their shoes,
Speaker 1: You live with them for years as they raise a family,
Speaker 1: as they have dreams, as they realize some of those dreams,
Speaker 1: and then as things start to fall apart, and then
Speaker 1: in the whole second half of the book, the children
Speaker 1: start to grow up and get new perspectives on everything
Speaker 1: their parents have done. And because you've read part one,
Speaker 1: you have all perspective on on the parents that you
Speaker 1: wouldn't have otherwise had. And then interwoven you get a
Speaker 1: little bit of information about why this family mattered for
Speaker 1: medical research, which I think kind of raises the stakes
Speaker 1: a little bit. Okay, let's really good. Down to the
Speaker 1: nuts and bolts. You say this to your you tell this,
Speaker 1: give the picture your agents. They immediately say, we're in.
Speaker 1: They wanted me to do it before I wanted to
Speaker 1: do it. Um, they understood how how different this was
Speaker 1: and how potentially, um it could really connect with a
Speaker 1: lot of people. And how do you sell it to
Speaker 1: a publisher? Um, you write what's called a book proposal
Speaker 1: when you're a novelist, and you do this often, that
Speaker 1: means you've written half the book already, written some chapters already.
Speaker 1: Maybe you've if you've written the entire thing already. But
Speaker 1: with nonfiction, it's more of a perhaps you'd have some
Speaker 1: sample chapters, but really it's more of a a high
Speaker 1: speed version of what the book will be, like a
Speaker 1: flyover of I'm going to do this, and I'm gonna
Speaker 1: do that, and I already have done this, and I
Speaker 1: already have and that, and this is how I envisioned it,
Speaker 1: a little like a Hollywood pitch meeting. And I sent
Speaker 1: that to How long did it take you right there? Oh? Um,
Speaker 1: over Christmas time, so like a couple of weeks, and
Speaker 1: then it went. Then my agents helped me revise it,
Speaker 1: and then we sent it out in the spring. Um uh,
Speaker 1: the timing of it. There was some particular reason to
Speaker 1: send it out then, and um, something like a dozen
Speaker 1: publishers received it, and I took meetings with ten of them,
Speaker 1: and eight of them bid on it. And the interesting
Speaker 1: part was that I have a good friend, one of
Speaker 1: my best friends, Jennifer Senior. She she's an author and
Speaker 1: worked with me at New York Magazine and most recently
Speaker 1: has been a book critic and cultural critic at the
Speaker 1: New York Times. She's on the op ed page now.
Speaker 1: And she said, I predict that the people you meet
Speaker 1: with who have the most people in the room are
Speaker 1: the people who are going to bid the highest. What
Speaker 1: was the thought there? The thought was that they were
Speaker 1: so that there would be enough instito usitional investment in
Speaker 1: the idea of the book, that there'd be people in
Speaker 1: the house, would be so psyched about it that they
Speaker 1: would want to try and put on a good show
Speaker 1: for me. So um lo and behold, she was right.
Speaker 1: Double Day had the most people in the room, and
Speaker 1: and and they won the auction. And I could not
Speaker 1: be happy. Or my editor, Chris Popolo, is one of
Speaker 1: the best in the business. It's been a wonderful experience
Speaker 1: the whole way through. Okay, how luquiative is a deal
Speaker 1: like this, Well, it had to be enough for me
Speaker 1: to work full time on it. Um Uh. That was
Speaker 1: not the case with my first book, Lost Girls, where
Speaker 1: I had enough time to maybe take six months of
Speaker 1: leave from my job at New York Magazine at the
Speaker 1: time and write it, and then I was working full
Speaker 1: time and revising the book for the next six months
Speaker 1: to a year. That that was difficult, But that would
Speaker 1: not have been possible with a book like this because
Speaker 1: while I certainly had access to the family and could
Speaker 1: go and interview them any time I wanted to, the
Speaker 1: science of schizophrenia was something I was starting at zero
Speaker 1: with and I really needed to hit the books and
Speaker 1: really need to needed to interview researchers and understand neurobiology
Speaker 1: and biology and genetics and psychiatry and brain chemistry and pharmacology.
Speaker 1: It was very daunting, and so there was no way
Speaker 1: I could do what so many people I admired you,
Speaker 1: which is, you know, wake up at four in the
Speaker 1: morning and write for three hours and then go to
Speaker 1: their day job. It just wasn't going to happen with
Speaker 1: a book like this, so that the advance had to
Speaker 1: be enough to sustain me for a few years while
Speaker 1: I worked on it. Luckily, I had written one book before,
Speaker 1: so I had a bit of a track record. So
Speaker 1: I wasn't. Um, I wasn't somebody coming in out of
Speaker 1: absolutely nowhere saying I got a book idea and you
Speaker 1: gotta give me a lot of money. I had a
Speaker 1: little legitimacy. I get it. Okay, did you do any
Speaker 1: other work while you were writing this book? No? It
Speaker 1: was all full time. And then if you say you
Speaker 1: started four years ago and ultimately the deal was six
Speaker 1: months after you started, how much time did you actually
Speaker 1: spend writing the book? I mean we start drinking in writing. Um. Well, um,
Speaker 1: the from the I I first met the Galvins on
Speaker 1: that phone call in the spring of and I handed
Speaker 1: in a manuscript in um September. Um. But it really
Speaker 1: was a year and a half of full time work,
Speaker 1: not two and a half years, because um uh, that
Speaker 1: first year I was still you know, talking to the
Speaker 1: family and putting the book proposal together and whatnot. How
Speaker 1: how come the book was turned in in September and
Speaker 1: didn't come out for another sixteen eighteen months. That's the
Speaker 1: book business. It's really unbelievable. Um. But but things moved
Speaker 1: very very slowly. The book was pretty much ready nine
Speaker 1: months before its publication date in April, UM what what
Speaker 1: the publisher needed was time to build buzz. Because this
Speaker 1: is a big book. It's a thick book. It has
Speaker 1: lots of footnotes, you know, it's it's heavily researched. It
Speaker 1: is not realistic to however, just saying people who have
Speaker 1: not read the book, it's not dry in any form
Speaker 1: or fashion. I don't want to make it sound like
Speaker 1: a toll. Oh yes, of course. Um and uh you know,
Speaker 1: god willing you read it and you think, oh, it's
Speaker 1: like a novel, you know, lifts off exactly. That's a
Speaker 1: great thing about it. Um. But it's an ambitious, big,
Speaker 1: big book of the year. And with an ambitious big
Speaker 1: book of the year, they don't want to just dump
Speaker 1: it on people and say, Hi, review this for next
Speaker 1: week please. They want to start building up interest and
Speaker 1: sending it out early and getting it to critics and
Speaker 1: getting it too bloggers and getting it to uh special
Speaker 1: readers on good Reads, just to get people starting to
Speaker 1: talk about it. Um. They put me in front of
Speaker 1: the media in December with people like um People magazine
Speaker 1: or the Wall Street Journal, places that plan their news
Speaker 1: coverage way in advance. So so it really is a
Speaker 1: function of the book promotion business. It's not about it's
Speaker 1: not about the physical act of publishing, which of course
Speaker 1: they could do with the push of a button and
Speaker 1: get it people's kindles tomorrow. To what degreed is the
Speaker 1: success of the book align with your personal expectations. It's done,
Speaker 1: it's it's it's it's been overwhelming. It's more than I
Speaker 1: ever could have imagined. I am. I had in my
Speaker 1: fondest dreams. I imagined it would be very well reviewed
Speaker 1: and respected, and everyone would say, oh, it's a very
Speaker 1: noble book, when very well intentioned, and how interesting that
Speaker 1: you did all this work. And the people in it,
Speaker 1: I'm sure they're very happy to tell their story told.
Speaker 1: But you know, big nonfiction books like this that are
Speaker 1: narratives that are about a specific issue, they all are
Speaker 1: like that. They're all big swings for the bleachers. And
Speaker 1: they either either get published and people say, oh, nice,
Speaker 1: good job, and then move on to the next thing,
Speaker 1: or they build up ahead of steam and momentum and
Speaker 1: really connect with a lot more people. And so I'm
Speaker 1: when I write a book. When when I write books
Speaker 1: like this, and this is my second one, they are
Speaker 1: bets at the big at the High State table for
Speaker 1: sure in that sense. Okay, Uh, what day did the
Speaker 1: book actually come out? April seven? Okay, so right in
Speaker 1: the heart of the COVID nineteen era. I've talked to
Speaker 1: other people whose books were in the pipeline, and they say, traditionally,
Speaker 1: other than the big media you're talking about, the Wall
Speaker 1: Street Journal, at the Times, Washington Post, they go on
Speaker 1: a tour, which, needless to say, you cannot do now.
Speaker 1: So was it a good or bad thing to put
Speaker 1: out the book then? And how did you promote it
Speaker 1: beyond the traditional outlet? Um? I had book dates set
Speaker 1: up at bookstores around the country. It was going to
Speaker 1: be a solid week of running around basically every region
Speaker 1: very quickly. UM. And of course all those dates got
Speaker 1: scrubbed as soon as the shutdown started happening. UM. I
Speaker 1: had one huge advantage and I and I don't want
Speaker 1: anyone who's listening to think that I would complain about
Speaker 1: publishing in the time of COVID at all, because I'm
Speaker 1: in a very privileged position. Because the book got selected
Speaker 1: for Oprah's Book Club, and uh that I knew about
Speaker 1: that a few weeks before it actually was announced. So
Speaker 1: I had a few weeks there where the pandemic was
Speaker 1: was coming, and without Oprah, I would have been very,
Speaker 1: very despondent and sure that my book was going to
Speaker 1: fall off the face of the earth. But because it
Speaker 1: was part of Oprah's book Club, I knew it was
Speaker 1: going to get a huge publicity push. No matter what
Speaker 1: that a lot of people would order it online. Even
Speaker 1: if Amazon wasn't shipping packages on April seven because of
Speaker 1: a world economic collapse, people could still read it on
Speaker 1: April seven. It gave me a bit of calm, and
Speaker 1: so I don't want to give anybody the impression that
Speaker 1: that I was cool in the pool while other people
Speaker 1: were sweating for for no good reason. There there was
Speaker 1: a very nice turn of events for me that I
Speaker 1: don't take for granted. Okay, in April um Amazon went
Speaker 1: out of a lot of physical bestsellers. Did that happened
Speaker 1: to you. There was a little bit of a lag
Speaker 1: at some point where, but but I think that was
Speaker 1: mostly because they were prioritizing shipments for essential supplies. So
Speaker 1: normally Prime members could get the book in a couple
Speaker 1: of days, but they were getting notices saying it's going
Speaker 1: to be a week or so because we need to
Speaker 1: send out hand sanitizer to people around the country. Um,
Speaker 1: And that that that subsided after a little while. But
Speaker 1: that was minor that issue, okay. And how did it
Speaker 1: become one of Oprah's picks? Well, as far as I know, Um,
Speaker 1: the books editor at Oprah Magazine heard about the book
Speaker 1: early during that press period that I was telling you
Speaker 1: about earlier, and she put it in front of Oprah
Speaker 1: because Oprah was planning to do a TV special for
Speaker 1: about mental health. She was going to work on it
Speaker 1: with Prince Harry And I don't know if she's done
Speaker 1: that yet or that's still in the works. Her deal
Speaker 1: is with Apple Plus, the streaming service, and so she
Speaker 1: was going to put together a special for Apple Plus.
Speaker 1: And so this is the way it works. Apparently people
Speaker 1: put books in front of Oprah and she has a
Speaker 1: bunch of them, and then one of them, you know,
Speaker 1: she just says, let's make this the book club book.
Speaker 1: And that's what she did this time. She went back
Speaker 1: to Lee Haybor at Oprah Magazine and said let's make
Speaker 1: this the book club book. And Lee said okay, And
Speaker 1: she okay. In talking with me, she said, I mean,
Speaker 1: mental health is a big issue for her. It's important.
Speaker 1: You spoke with Oprah? What what was that like? Well, I, Um,
Speaker 1: I did not have one of those moments where she
Speaker 1: called and I said, you're kidding, it's not you know,
Speaker 1: your your friend playing a joke on me, Like she
Speaker 1: sounds exactly like Open Winfrey. So I immediately knew who
Speaker 1: she was. And as I said, I was sitting there
Speaker 1: at home sweating out pre publications. So the minute she called,
Speaker 1: I started laughing. I burst out laughing because I knew
Speaker 1: there could only be one reason why she was calling
Speaker 1: and um and uh, and that I was suddenly being saved.
Speaker 1: I was being being really helped out tremendously by a
Speaker 1: tremendous act of kindness by her. So I was I
Speaker 1: was hyperventilating, and I was laughing, and then I was
Speaker 1: thanking her a lot and telling her how much it
Speaker 1: would mean to the family too, you know the family. Uh.
Speaker 1: The girls say that they would watch over show as kids,
Speaker 1: and they would say, the people on the on her
Speaker 1: show have nothing on us, like we should really be
Speaker 1: on her show. So I think that might be why
Speaker 1: Oprah was interested too, because it is that the family
Speaker 1: at first glance would be a good subject for the
Speaker 1: Oprah Winfrey Show. Okay, did you have a substantive conversation
Speaker 1: with her, or was just basically I'm calling to congratulate you.
Speaker 1: She um, she was calling to congratulate I. Um. I
Speaker 1: said to her that, you know, I love I said, I,
Speaker 1: but I was extremely grateful, and I said, it was
Speaker 1: the challenge of a career to be able to weave
Speaker 1: together so many different perspectives of so many different people,
Speaker 1: to to juggle so many characters, if you will, it's
Speaker 1: not characters because it's nonfiction. A juggle twelve kids and
Speaker 1: two parents in a book and have readers actually be
Speaker 1: able to keep track of it all was a huge challenge,
Speaker 1: and that I wanted to try to make it like
Speaker 1: something like East of Eden. And I mentioned East of
Speaker 1: Eden to her because I know that that was an
Speaker 1: Oprah's Book Club pick a couple of years ago, and
Speaker 1: that she liked it and that was an influence on
Speaker 1: me as well. And she got it. She said, Oh, yes,
Speaker 1: of course, this is a lot like this makes me
Speaker 1: think of used to be eating a lot. I see
Speaker 1: what you're saying. So she definitely read it. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: she definitely read it. She's a reader. The other day
Speaker 1: in the prior to her leaving television, the book would
Speaker 1: also get a TV segment. So they say, it's great
Speaker 1: having Oprah picket. But what does it that actually mean
Speaker 1: today other than, you know, giving a higher level of
Speaker 1: notice to the book. The new version of Oprah's Book
Speaker 1: Club is a promotion deal with Apple, so she um.
Speaker 1: Obviously the books available everywhere, including Amazon, but when she
Speaker 1: promotes the book online, she said, has swipe up to
Speaker 1: buy it on Apple Books. And when she does a
Speaker 1: TV show about the book, it's a special for Apple Plus.
Speaker 1: So I was interviewed. Unfortunately it was on Facetown because
Speaker 1: of the pandemic, but family members and I and experts
Speaker 1: were all interviewed on FaceTime for a show that will
Speaker 1: be out on June four or June five, I think
Speaker 1: on Apple Plus on Apple Plus. But the big thing,
Speaker 1: and the thing that I did not realize that she does,
Speaker 1: is that she and the club actually read the book
Speaker 1: together week after week after week. They've divided this book
Speaker 1: into six weeks and they meet on Instagram on on
Speaker 1: the Oprah's book Club account and each Monday morning at
Speaker 1: ten am for the last five weeks. The last one
Speaker 1: is next Monday. UM her account runs a short video
Speaker 1: by Oprah who she's holding my book and she says, Okay,
Speaker 1: so we've read chapters whatever through whatever, and this happened,
Speaker 1: and that happened, and this happened. My question for you
Speaker 1: is how what do you think Lindsay was feeling when
Speaker 1: she made that decision? And then in the comments section
Speaker 1: of Instagram, hundreds of people start to weigh in in
Speaker 1: real time giving their perspectives on the book. So it
Speaker 1: is a real live book club that is actually reading
Speaker 1: the book. And for an author, it's been mind blowing
Speaker 1: week after week to watch hundreds of people reading your
Speaker 1: book and talking together about it, and I get to
Speaker 1: sit in and look at it. It's it's more than
Speaker 1: I could ever have imagined. It's just stunning. If someone
Speaker 1: is picked by Oprah generally speaking, how many additional sales
Speaker 1: do you get? Well, I only know that they increased
Speaker 1: my my initial print run dramatically by like tens of
Speaker 1: thousands of copies. I don't know if it's different for
Speaker 1: fiction or if it's you know, or different for from
Speaker 1: book to book, but it it's a it's a huge
Speaker 1: leg up. Okay, So how many did they ultimately print?
Speaker 1: Originally double day, Um, they print. Originally they printed close
Speaker 1: to a hundred thousand copies and um hardcover, and now
Speaker 1: they're up to like a hundred thirty three thousand hardcover. Okay,
Speaker 1: what's the arc of a book like this? So, I
Speaker 1: mean every book is unique, but is it tend to
Speaker 1: be front loaded forgetting the paperback sales? Somewhere down the
Speaker 1: future a hardcover book? Will it sustained for months? Has
Speaker 1: it already peaked? Is it yet to peek? I think that, Um,
Speaker 1: this book's a little bit of an outlier because it
Speaker 1: has because it's been very successful, so it has remained
Speaker 1: on the best seller list. Um, the sales are not
Speaker 1: what they were in the first couple of weeks. They've
Speaker 1: they've gone lower, but the sales are still high enough
Speaker 1: to keep it on the best seller list. But sometime soon,
Speaker 1: you know, the house always wins, you know, someday soon
Speaker 1: one week coming up, maybe next week, maybe two, three, four,
Speaker 1: seven weeks from now, it will fall off the best
Speaker 1: seller list and then hopefully it will it will develop
Speaker 1: some sort of niche where it continues to sell let's
Speaker 1: hope thousand cops a week or something like that, and
Speaker 1: then it becomes a regular earner for the company, and
Speaker 1: then within a year the paperback comes and gives it
Speaker 1: another jolt, and that that's at a different ice points.
Speaker 1: So it really is, it's really appealing to an entirely
Speaker 1: different book buying public. There there are people out there
Speaker 1: who never in the world in their in their lives
Speaker 1: have bought a big, heavy, first edition hardcover book because
Speaker 1: it's so expensive. They wait for the paperback, and so
Speaker 1: that whole market gets reached. Meanwhile, electronic books, especially in
Speaker 1: the time of COVID, are basically half the sales. Um,
Speaker 1: so wait, wait, wait, slow there half of Hidden Valley
Speaker 1: Road was essentially kindled. Yes, but um, I'll be why
Speaker 1: don't I be a little clearer. Let's say this. It's like,
Speaker 1: roughly is Kindle or Apple books or electronic, Roughly forty
Speaker 1: or forty one is hardcover books, and then the rest
Speaker 1: is audiobook. The audiobook sales are not trivial. They're they're
Speaker 1: over some Sometimes it seems like it's closer to audio
Speaker 1: books are a big deal. Okay, who reads the audiobook? Um, well,
Speaker 1: anyone who drives? Um no, no, no, no. Who literally
Speaker 1: did the reading of the book for the recording? Oh?
Speaker 1: Um he's wonderful. Sean Pratt, he's terrific. He actually read
Speaker 1: Lost Girls, which was my first book, and they asked
Speaker 1: me if I was all right with using him again
Speaker 1: and using him some bad term. He used me, I'm
Speaker 1: really fortunate. He's a star. People love him and he did.
Speaker 1: My brother in law listen to it, actually said it
Speaker 1: was great. Okay, you're obviously a student of the game. Uh.
Speaker 1: If you read the New York Times Walt Three Journal,
Speaker 1: kindle sales continued to decrease as the percentage of overall sales.
Speaker 1: Yet in your case, they're really notable. Is it a
Speaker 1: COVID thing? What do you think's going on here? I
Speaker 1: think it's a COVID thing. And also the the book.
Speaker 1: A lot of bookstores just aren't open, and which obviously
Speaker 1: contributes more to the kindle thing. But it means fewer
Speaker 1: people are browsing and seeing the Oprah's book club stand
Speaker 1: and saying, oh, I'll buy this. So who knows, maybe
Speaker 1: that will change. Maybe in the fall, um the hardcover
Speaker 1: will be sitting at airport bookstores again and people will
Speaker 1: be flying again. I'm being a little optimistic thinking that
Speaker 1: people are gonna be flying in the fall. But you
Speaker 1: know what I'm saying, Okay, you got your advance. When
Speaker 1: will you see another check? Well, typically it's for payments, UM,
Speaker 1: so I'm gonna use fake numbers. You know, if the
Speaker 1: advance is a million dollars, you get two dollars when
Speaker 1: you sign, you get another two fifty when um, you
Speaker 1: deliver the manuscript and the publisher decides it's good enough
Speaker 1: to be edited and a play, see you on the schedule.
Speaker 1: So that might that's a little wiggly, that could be.
Speaker 1: That could take some time because they might want you
Speaker 1: to do another draft or do another revision. But once
Speaker 1: it's once it's put on the schedule, payment number two comes,
Speaker 1: and then payment number three comes on publication day, and
Speaker 1: then payment number four comes a year after publication day,
Speaker 1: which more or less usually coincide it's with the paperback
Speaker 1: coming out. Well, in this particular, Kay, you're obviously have
Speaker 1: earned back the advance already. So in terms of royalties,
Speaker 1: those will come a year from publication. UM. I usually
Speaker 1: get a royalty statement twice a year, in April and October,
Speaker 1: and it's pretty much right up to the date. So
Speaker 1: if this book earns back by the end of the summer,
Speaker 1: which hopefully it would. I might actually see some royalties
Speaker 1: in that October statement, Okay, with such a successful book,
Speaker 1: even though we're in the COVID nineteen era, did you
Speaker 1: splurge it all in your personal life? No? It basically
Speaker 1: gave me peace of mind in the COVID nineteen era.
Speaker 1: It meant that, UM. It meant that I didn't have
Speaker 1: to worry about lining up a new project right away,
Speaker 1: that I could that I can sit and and take
Speaker 1: care of my family and and take it slow during
Speaker 1: this difficult time and not sit and worry about the
Speaker 1: house being far closed on. The book is a huge success.
Speaker 1: S Has this even though we're in this crazy era?
Speaker 1: Has this led to any new opportunities? Not yet. UM.
Speaker 1: I have a couple of ideas that are hopping, but nothing,
Speaker 1: nothing that's really book length. Um. The biggest opportunities have
Speaker 1: been uh meeting other people, UM who are in the
Speaker 1: mental health community, people who have been touched by mental illness,
Speaker 1: either in their family or through their work. And those
Speaker 1: people are emailing up a storm. And so I'm I'm
Speaker 1: handling a lot of reader feedback at the moment from
Speaker 1: people who have really emotionally connected with the book, And
Speaker 1: have you personally been to therapy, Yes, but not for
Speaker 1: anything but remotely like schizophrenia, and of course not, but
Speaker 1: you had some experience in the field. We live in
Speaker 1: a world where many males or anti psychotherapy. That's why
Speaker 1: I asked the question. Oh yeah, sure. Um, it's been
Speaker 1: like regular meet and potatoes therapy for for for garden
Speaker 1: variety anxiety and um and so I've done on and
Speaker 1: off chid this and that with various people over the years.
Speaker 1: Um and UM. I think it's terrific. And it's also
Speaker 1: I mean as a writer and someone who interviews people,
Speaker 1: I'm basically sitting and witnessing the therapists interviewing style and
Speaker 1: getting pointers from them and tips from them on how
Speaker 1: they how they listen and how they draw me out.
Speaker 1: So I have an appreciation for that as well. While
Speaker 1: I'm in the middle of it, Okay, you have the deal,
Speaker 1: it's a go. You start. How do you start? Tell
Speaker 1: us some of the story? Um? Well, uh, the story
Speaker 1: is is the American dream that that is suddenly shattered
Speaker 1: when when everything goes wrong. It's about a couple that
Speaker 1: falls in love during World War Two and raises their
Speaker 1: family during the Cold War. And then by the late
Speaker 1: sixties their model family that everyone else looks up to.
Speaker 1: They're smart, they're charismatic, they're cosmopolitan. In what is basically
Speaker 1: a very small town out in Colorado Springs, they have
Speaker 1: a high profile, and they are self consciously invested in
Speaker 1: being a model family toward others. It makes them feel
Speaker 1: good that other people think that they're perfect. And then
Speaker 1: the worst happens. Then this illness hits them, and and
Speaker 1: they have the bad luck of it happening at a
Speaker 1: time where half of the experts want to blame them
Speaker 1: for causing schizophrenia in their children, and the other half
Speaker 1: want to put them in institutions and medicate them into
Speaker 1: a stupor for the rest of their lives. Um there's
Speaker 1: no middle ground, and there's no no way to really
Speaker 1: do anything without becoming scandalized, and so they try to
Speaker 1: cover it up for a few years, and then things
Speaker 1: get worse and worse and worse. Another son gets sick
Speaker 1: and abuses his wife and starts surreptitiously abusing the two
Speaker 1: younger sisters. And then a third boy decompensates you know, uh,
Speaker 1: in the middle of his classroom at a young age.
Speaker 1: He's only fourteen and then uh, in the worst possible moment,
Speaker 1: the golden child Michael, sorry not Michael Brian, who has
Speaker 1: gone off to California to be a rock star, he
Speaker 1: kills his girlfriend and then shoots himself. Um, and everybody
Speaker 1: wonders if it could have been prevented and what what
Speaker 1: is going on? And finally that the by five or so,
Speaker 1: the family can't hide it anymore. They they they have
Speaker 1: at least three mentally ill sons living at home. They
Speaker 1: have two more with the warning signs. They have one
Speaker 1: who's dead. And um that the families in totally dire
Speaker 1: straits and that that's when the father has a stroke.
Speaker 1: Um I I. As I tell the story, it sounds impossible.
Speaker 1: But then um, interesting things happen. Stuff that's out of
Speaker 1: Charles Dickens, like a wealthy family that's friendly with the
Speaker 1: family with the Galvin family. They they pluck one of
Speaker 1: the daughters up out of the family and they move
Speaker 1: her in with them and they help her out. And
Speaker 1: then Lindsay goes off to hotch Kiss and tries to
Speaker 1: she changes her name. She actually was born with the
Speaker 1: name Mary, and now she goes by Lindsay. She tries
Speaker 1: to reinvent her life. There's a quickie marriage that one
Speaker 1: of them has in order to try to run away
Speaker 1: from her family. There's um years of therapy where they
Speaker 1: try to find a way to confront their abusive brother,
Speaker 1: and then there's different levels of denial that their mother
Speaker 1: continues to go through because they can't understand why their
Speaker 1: mother shows the six sons over them. They feel forsaken,
Speaker 1: they feel abandoned, and then, out of nowhere, in the
Speaker 1: middle of the nineteen eighties, there's a knock at the door,
Speaker 1: and it's a medical researcher from the National Institute Mental Health.
Speaker 1: She's there to tell uh Mimi that her family has
Speaker 1: a genetic disorder, that it's not bad parenting that caused it,
Speaker 1: that it's not something in the drinking water, that it's
Speaker 1: not a contagious disease, that she's not to blame at all,
Speaker 1: And and they suddenly become studied by some of the
Speaker 1: pioneers in mental health medicine, and and the story takes
Speaker 1: an entirely new and potentially quite hopeful turn as the
Speaker 1: daughters start to rebuild their lives, as everybody starts to
Speaker 1: see their parents with new eyes, and as further secrets
Speaker 1: get revealed later on. It's the way I try to
Speaker 1: describe it. It does sound enormously twisting and turning and
Speaker 1: complicated with a lot of moving parts. There are interesting
Speaker 1: subplots to where one son goes off to a commune
Speaker 1: and lives there and it changes his life. Um. I
Speaker 1: wanted it to have this kind of epic feel where
Speaker 1: you can follow the family on different detours and digressions
Speaker 1: and see how many different people experience their family in
Speaker 1: different ways. I wanted it to have that kind of, um,
Speaker 1: big Russian novel kind of feeling, so that you got
Speaker 1: so swept up in the families ups and downs that
Speaker 1: you forgot that you were being spoon fed a lot
Speaker 1: of technical information about neurobiology. Okay, we covered your initial
Speaker 1: conversations with Margaret and Lindsay, what were your conversations like
Speaker 1: with the rest of the members. The father was already
Speaker 1: dead when you started then, and there was one brother
Speaker 1: who was dead, but you spoke with all these people.
Speaker 1: What was that like. Well, the one big challenge was
Speaker 1: to talk to the mother of the family, Mimi, who
Speaker 1: was nine. She was my first phone call after the sisters,
Speaker 1: and it was it was it was really really quite wonderful.
Speaker 1: This is a woman who, despite everything she's been through,
Speaker 1: is a tremendous good cheer and really um tries very
Speaker 1: hard to look on the sunny side of things. That
Speaker 1: that means that she was very willing to talk to
Speaker 1: me because she knew that this book would be more
Speaker 1: about the genetics and less about UH judging her, and
Speaker 1: she was tired of being judged by the medical establishment.
Speaker 1: That was really a big problem for her. The problem
Speaker 1: with Mimi is that she didn't want to really talk
Speaker 1: about unpleasant subjects. She was had spent a lifetime sort
Speaker 1: of deflecting unpleasantness, and so it took the personal visit
Speaker 1: with her, with help from her daughters also to try
Speaker 1: to nudge her into a place where she felt comfortable
Speaker 1: talking about the years and years of shame she was
Speaker 1: made to feel for having this problem in her house,
Speaker 1: the way that she was told that she was a failure,
Speaker 1: the way that she sometimes felt unsafe around her own sons,
Speaker 1: and how she had to keep that to herself. Um,
Speaker 1: these are things that weren't easy for her to talk about.
Speaker 1: But but but to her credit, she really did. But
Speaker 1: mainly I found her inspiring. I mean one of her
Speaker 1: big sayings was you can't be heartbroken every day, which
Speaker 1: I think, you know, for someone who's been through everything
Speaker 1: she's been through, is a pretty astonishing thing to say.
Speaker 1: And sometimes if I'm having a bad day, I think
Speaker 1: about that still, I think, well, it can't be heartbroken
Speaker 1: every day, and maybe maybe there's something to that. And
Speaker 1: then I talked to medical before you leave, Mimi, since
Speaker 1: you're with an observer and you wrote the book, how
Speaker 1: do you believe she coped? Um? I think she developed
Speaker 1: a certain set of blinders where she decided, um that
Speaker 1: that certain things were important than other things she was
Speaker 1: going to ignore. And I think that some of the
Speaker 1: things that she decided to ignore were the healthy children
Speaker 1: and her family, which was a you know, of course,
Speaker 1: something the healthy children grew up feeling horrible about and
Speaker 1: really judged her for. But this was her this was
Speaker 1: her survival strategy. She was going to focus on making
Speaker 1: sure that the sick boys like Donald and Peter and
Speaker 1: Matthew and Joe and Jim, not Brian because he had died,
Speaker 1: We're getting all the help they they could have and
Speaker 1: had a place to come home to if they needed to,
Speaker 1: if they weren't in the hospital or in a group home.
Speaker 1: And and that meant seeing a million doctors and going
Speaker 1: all over the place and becoming an advocate basically for
Speaker 1: her children. But it didn't It meant that if little
Speaker 1: Lindsay or Margaret went to their mother and said I
Speaker 1: have a problem, the response for Mimi would be, you
Speaker 1: don't have any problems. You know, these boys have problems.
Speaker 1: You You're fine. And so they they basically lost their mother,
Speaker 1: and and so that that that this was her strategy.
Speaker 1: And in a way, um you see as the book
Speaker 1: goes on that that the children, as they grow up,
Speaker 1: they start to understand her strategy better. They may not
Speaker 1: forgive her everything that she's done, but they get her
Speaker 1: in a way that they didn't get her when they
Speaker 1: were children. And this is something I think that we
Speaker 1: as readers can really um identify with. We all judge
Speaker 1: our parents in a certain way when we're younger, and
Speaker 1: then we all see them with slightly different eyes when
Speaker 1: we get older. Sometimes it's because we have children of
Speaker 1: our own, or sometimes because you learned things that you
Speaker 1: weren't told when you were a child, or sometimes you're
Speaker 1: just older and you get what it's like to be
Speaker 1: fifty and have responsibilities or whatever. So um to me
Speaker 1: that that it was. It was exciting to be able
Speaker 1: to try to tell that version of the story in
Speaker 1: the book. But what it means is that in this book,
Speaker 1: the first part of the book, Mimi comes off pretty terribly,
Speaker 1: but in the second part she comes off in a
Speaker 1: slightly more nuanced way. And I'm very very glad about
Speaker 1: that actually, because I think there are too many stories
Speaker 1: out there, both fiction and nonfiction, that really where the
Speaker 1: mother really takes it on the chin, where it's the
Speaker 1: mother's fault, you know that the mother has caused all
Speaker 1: the problems, and I didn't want this book to be
Speaker 1: unnecessarily about that. Let's switch back to the father, because
Speaker 1: on one hand, he's a real achiever. He enters the military,
Speaker 1: ends up the Air Force, he develops the Falcon logo
Speaker 1: insignia for the Air Force. But there's some subtleties. Actually
Speaker 1: he's kinda pushed off the fast track. He's now in
Speaker 1: PR and then they you know, you say that he
Speaker 1: ran this big Western States UH Arts and Development unit
Speaker 1: and then he but in the in the interim, he
Speaker 1: had been into what will just labeled generally a mental hospital,
Speaker 1: but bab on all your research, was this a stable
Speaker 1: guy or was this guy? The other thing you did
Speaker 1: say was despite there being twelve kids, he was not
Speaker 1: that engaged and he had a fears himself. Well, what
Speaker 1: was your insight there? Um, he was most certainly a
Speaker 1: man of his time, and that he didn't he might
Speaker 1: have taken intense pride at having such a large family
Speaker 1: and really loved being the captain of the ship or
Speaker 1: the leader of the football team or whatever of of
Speaker 1: of his little troop of kids, but that he wasn't
Speaker 1: gonna really just you know, concern himself with the minute
Speaker 1: to minute domestic issues in the house. And that meant
Speaker 1: that at all, that that was the wife's job. And
Speaker 1: also he had a globe trotting job. He in the
Speaker 1: beginning he was um with the military, Harry Flatt, going
Speaker 1: around everywhere, and then as the years went on he
Speaker 1: was working nights to get his master's and PhD. And
Speaker 1: became an instructor at the Air Force Academy. And then
Speaker 1: he didn't stop there. He became the head of the
Speaker 1: falconry program and traveled all over the country flying falcons
Speaker 1: at football games wherever the Air Force played, and tid
Speaker 1: doing speaking engagements about falconry. And then he didn't stop there.
Speaker 1: Then he went and worked for NORAD and he traveled
Speaker 1: all over the country to give information sessions during the
Speaker 1: Cold War about everything that Nora could do. And then
Speaker 1: he didn't stop there. He went to work for the International,
Speaker 1: you know, for International for the Western States lobbying organization,
Speaker 1: and he went to Washington to lobby for more resources,
Speaker 1: and he gave out grants to dance companies and arts organizations.
Speaker 1: And he had Mimi on his arm a lot of
Speaker 1: the time, but a lot of the time he was
Speaker 1: off alone. So he was he was a mythic, iconic,
Speaker 1: highly idolized figure in the house. But when he came home,
Speaker 1: he was about being everybody's buddy and not really necessarily
Speaker 1: about being too too deep into what was going on.
Speaker 1: And so the parents, the kids tended to just judge
Speaker 1: their mother harshly because she was the disciplinarian. As the
Speaker 1: years went on and as they got older, they started
Speaker 1: to ask themselves more realistic questions, like, wait a minute,
Speaker 1: where was Dad when all of this was going on?
Speaker 1: He could have gotten out, She couldn't she stayed, you know,
Speaker 1: she could have she could have blown out of town too,
Speaker 1: and we all would have been on the street. Um,
Speaker 1: but she didn't. She stayed. Okay, let's talk about the
Speaker 1: oldest brother who first shows signs of schizophrenia. Don He
Speaker 1: goes to Colorado State. He has an early marriage. One
Speaker 1: thing that is consistent through the book. Even though his
Speaker 1: wife at some point ex wife moves to the Northwest
Speaker 1: to pursue further education, he is constantly trying to win
Speaker 1: her back in his mind. How long does that actually
Speaker 1: go on for and what's the status? And did you
Speaker 1: ever speak with her and get her perspective? Um? I
Speaker 1: never spoke with her, Um I I did, was never
Speaker 1: able to track her down. UM. But I know from
Speaker 1: the medical records and from you know, from written records
Speaker 1: of the time that when he would break away from
Speaker 1: the house or break away from a medical setting, it
Speaker 1: often was to go to Oregon to try to find her.
Speaker 1: And then there'd be one line in the medical records
Speaker 1: saying he was not able to see her, or he
Speaker 1: made it to her house and they did not let
Speaker 1: him in, or they talked for five minutes and she
Speaker 1: told him to leave. UM. So it was it was
Speaker 1: never very productive. His psychotic break was was contemporaneous with
Speaker 1: the end of his marriage, and the marriage seemed to
Speaker 1: be extremely important to Donald because it was the signal
Speaker 1: that he was a grown up, independent man who could
Speaker 1: make his own decisions. Um, he really needed that in
Speaker 1: his life, perhaps even independent of his mental illness. He
Speaker 1: needed to be the the to to inherit the mantle
Speaker 1: of his father, to be the big shot of the family,
Speaker 1: to be everybody's role model. And for a time in
Speaker 1: high school he was. He was an all state athlete
Speaker 1: and the wrestling champion, a star football player. He climbed
Speaker 1: and repelled and jumped out of airplanes. He dated the
Speaker 1: general's daughter. He was really big deal in high school.
Speaker 1: But um, he was masking a lot of real difficulties.
Speaker 1: He was having trouble connecting with people. He was really
Speaker 1: happier outside repelling off of cliffs than he was hanging
Speaker 1: out with friends. And once he was at college he
Speaker 1: started to really become very strange and insecure. He would
Speaker 1: do impulsive things that he didn't understand why he was
Speaker 1: doing them. This is a hallmark of schizophrenia. He would
Speaker 1: he jumped into a bonfire and burned himself. He he
Speaker 1: tortured and killed a cat. He wandered into health services
Speaker 1: one day convinced that um he had his roommate had
Speaker 1: syphilis and that he was going to give it to him. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he's just started to lift off away from reality for
Speaker 1: a little bit, and and he was troubled by it too.
Speaker 1: He was very anxious and upset, and so the marriage
Speaker 1: or dating and girlfriends was one way to tell himself
Speaker 1: that everything was all right. You know, that if he
Speaker 1: could just get married, then he could become a man
Speaker 1: just like his father. He could he could have a
Speaker 1: family just like mom and dad. Everything would be fine.
Speaker 1: But it wasn't fine. He and his wife, the marriage
Speaker 1: was extraordinarily difficult. At some point she decided she was
Speaker 1: going to leave, and that brought him back into therapy again.
Speaker 1: And just when the therapist was convinced that he was
Speaker 1: starting to mellow out a little bit, he had an
Speaker 1: enormous psychotic break and almost did real serious harm to
Speaker 1: his wife and to himself. That was the end of
Speaker 1: the marriage, and that was Donald's first trip to a
Speaker 1: real heavy duty mental hospital in Pueblo, Colorado. Okay, you
Speaker 1: actually spoke to the schizophrenic brothers who were still alive
Speaker 1: I did, and that was another huge issue going forward
Speaker 1: that I really overlooked earlier in our in our talk
Speaker 1: that early on, I really I said to myself, I
Speaker 1: can't write a book about six people with schizophrenia where
Speaker 1: they just go crazy and that's the end of it.
Speaker 1: I don't want to say. And then Joe went insane too,
Speaker 1: and then we walk away from that. I needed to
Speaker 1: be able to write about these people as people, not
Speaker 1: just as a cookie cutter sufferers of the same illness.
Speaker 1: And so when I met the three surviving mentally ill brothers,
Speaker 1: I was pleased. And perhaps I shouldn't have worried at
Speaker 1: all about this, but I was pleased to see that
Speaker 1: they were different people, where where their illness manifested in
Speaker 1: different ways, and they had different personalities and and so
Speaker 1: it was not difficult at all to write about them
Speaker 1: as individuals. Peter is a peripatetic and high energy and affectionate,
Speaker 1: a gregarious guy. He loves to play the recorder and
Speaker 1: and loves his family and knows and loves to recite
Speaker 1: everybody's name and um. Matthew is cantankerous and grumpy and
Speaker 1: self pitying, and often goes on long jags about how
Speaker 1: the Stato's in money and how um he if he
Speaker 1: doesn't get what he wants, that big hurricanes are going
Speaker 1: to happen um. But he is gentle as as can
Speaker 1: be and and nothing never ever acts on any of
Speaker 1: his anger. And Donald, who we still spoke about a
Speaker 1: moment ago. Donald has been through decades of difficulties but
Speaker 1: now is quite quite serene and quite calm. He still
Speaker 1: has this intense hyper religiosity that he developed in the
Speaker 1: seventies and never let go of, but he's quiet about
Speaker 1: it and and very very peaceable around everyone. Doesn't say much,
Speaker 1: but knows exactly what's happening. You can ask him about
Speaker 1: his family, and he knows who everybody is and who's
Speaker 1: related to everyone else. But then he will spin off
Speaker 1: into his delusions. He'll say that he is h descended
Speaker 1: from an octopus, or that um he actually his parents
Speaker 1: aren't actually Don and Mevie Mimi Galvin. He was born
Speaker 1: a few years before in Ireland to another family named Galvin,
Speaker 1: and they sent him here and then he designed ten
Speaker 1: thousand buildings because he's an architect, And then he has
Speaker 1: eight thousand other careers and his favorite one is a
Speaker 1: falconer um. You see, it's become sort of a word
Speaker 1: salad after a while. So he's not able to sustain it.
Speaker 1: But but he's I guess the point I'm trying to
Speaker 1: get at is that these aren't these aren't straight jacket
Speaker 1: maximum security hospital situations for these guys. They all are
Speaker 1: under some level of care and and getting lots of prescriptions.
Speaker 1: But you know, Matthew has been able to live independently
Speaker 1: most of his adult life in federally subsidized Section eight housing.
Speaker 1: He can drive a car. Um the other guys, you know,
Speaker 1: they can be with their family on holidays and on
Speaker 1: weekends of they their guests and and so it's it's
Speaker 1: been interesting to see um how they have come along
Speaker 1: over the years. Of course, their their family only sees
Speaker 1: the loss like they see what the people they used
Speaker 1: to be. And Okay, so talking about the other two
Speaker 1: brothers who are still with us, you could have a
Speaker 1: conversation with them just like you're having one with me
Speaker 1: right now. Not just like it. No, they all have
Speaker 1: cognitive issues. It's it's you're definitely talking with somebody who
Speaker 1: is disabled in some way, and they all have convert
Speaker 1: they all have subjects that they like to go back
Speaker 1: to and become broken records about um. So you they
Speaker 1: basically control the conversation and it's about one or two
Speaker 1: or three limited subjects. Um uh. But in the in
Speaker 1: the fringes, you sort of get little senses of their memories,
Speaker 1: their childhood memories. You see the tenderness they feel towards
Speaker 1: their their family members who come to visit them quite often.
Speaker 1: You see the gratitude that they have towards the family
Speaker 1: members who come to visit them, which is really quite
Speaker 1: nice to see as well. So it's a at this level,
Speaker 1: at this age, with this this many years of medication
Speaker 1: behind them, it's become more a little bit more analogous
Speaker 1: to visiting a relative with Down syndrome, let's say, or
Speaker 1: what comes syndrome with Down syndrome or something like that. Somebody,
Speaker 1: they're just cognitive issues, right, But uh you did you
Speaker 1: feel any danger being around them? Oh? Absolutely not. No, No,
Speaker 1: They're all everybody's And then that's I think the trajectory
Speaker 1: of this illness is that the volatility and unpredictability and
Speaker 1: anxiety it one people tend to mellow out a little
Speaker 1: bit by the time they're in middle age, and then
Speaker 1: sometimes the drugs they've been taking for decades of muffled
Speaker 1: the symptoms as well. Okay, so um, one thing even
Speaker 1: I know from writing about it. Uh, it's almost like
Speaker 1: the Democratic left in that some of the terms are
Speaker 1: very touchy. You know. You say that now schizophrenia is
Speaker 1: a spectrum, mentally ill is an issue. So what is
Speaker 1: the proper terminology today? Well? I think, um, the safest
Speaker 1: thing would be to say that someone has been diagnosed
Speaker 1: in schizophrenia. Um. I think these thing schizophrenic as a noun,
Speaker 1: like like, you know, three schizophrenics walking to a bar.
Speaker 1: That's not cool. Um. It that the word schizophrenic, even
Speaker 1: as an adjective, tends to be sound a little pejorative.
Speaker 1: And so I actually did a little house cleaning with
Speaker 1: the book late in the game, and I went and
Speaker 1: vacuumed out all the times that I use the word
Speaker 1: schizophrenic as an adjective and or as a noun, and
Speaker 1: instead I would say people with schizophrenic neo or patients
Speaker 1: diagnosed the schizophrenia or schizophrenia patients. Just to make sure
Speaker 1: that I wasn't seeming too cavalier. Um, I don't think
Speaker 1: that that's a I don't think that these are these
Speaker 1: are huge abusive terms necessarily the way that some other
Speaker 1: terms might be. But they but but it's that's the
Speaker 1: recent thinking on that stuff. Okay, John ends up moving
Speaker 1: to Idaho and pretty much distances himselves from the family.
Speaker 1: You believe that self preservation. He's working as a music teacher,
Speaker 1: not making a huge income. What's your perspective on the well,
Speaker 1: his He's the third child, and the two older brothers,
Speaker 1: Jim and Donald, they they feuded amongst one another, and
Speaker 1: they bullied one another, but they also bullied everybody younger
Speaker 1: than them. So John was directly in the line of
Speaker 1: fire of that. Growing up, the parents were so invested
Speaker 1: in being a model family that they kind of turned
Speaker 1: a blind eye to any rough housing and kind of
Speaker 1: orowed it off. But John was legitimately afraid. He was
Speaker 1: getting beat up a lot. And then, of course you
Speaker 1: can't discount the fact that there probably were early signs
Speaker 1: of extreme mental illness in both Jim and Donald, and
Speaker 1: so they didn't probably didn't know limits, and they probably
Speaker 1: you know, things probably got pretty ugly. So I think
Speaker 1: John was very happy to leave for college and then
Speaker 1: very happy to meet and marry someone almost immediately, and
Speaker 1: and and really not come back. Um. He came back
Speaker 1: to visit obviously, and he has good relationships with a
Speaker 1: lot of his siblings, but he really did not, um,
Speaker 1: you know, he really was glad to get out at
Speaker 1: that time. Okay, the father at first, he's in the
Speaker 1: year force. The mother doesn't work outside the home. How
Speaker 1: does this work monetarily with twelve children? Is it just
Speaker 1: a different era or were There's there a lot of sacrifice,
Speaker 1: so there was enough money. Well, she made all their clothes,
Speaker 1: she worked the sewing machine. Um. The Air Force gave
Speaker 1: them health benefits obviously, so there wasn't that kind of issue. Um.
Speaker 1: But no, money was very very tight all the time.
Speaker 1: And and that was the one good thing about writing
Speaker 1: about this particular family is that they really weren't They
Speaker 1: didn't send anybody to the Meninger clinic. There was nobody
Speaker 1: who who went to I don't know, to Sweden or
Speaker 1: something to to deal with their psychiatric issues. There was
Speaker 1: these were these were middle class people with with real
Speaker 1: money issues, and they often ended up in the state
Speaker 1: mental hospital. But yeah, there was it was clear they
Speaker 1: would have to go to state colleges and and they
Speaker 1: when they bought their dream house in nineteen in the
Speaker 1: suburbs on Hidden Valley Road. It was a ranch house
Speaker 1: that it was extremely ordinary looking and that barely held
Speaker 1: them all. You know. It wasn't like they suddenly everybody
Speaker 1: suddenly had a room of their own with twelve children.
Speaker 1: They had like three different rooms with two bunk beds
Speaker 1: in them. Let's talk about the survivors. Who can we
Speaker 1: say mentally ill? Because I got to blow back on that. Sure, Okay,
Speaker 1: the survivors were not mentally Lindsay does a lot of psychotherapy,
Speaker 1: gets her older sister Margaret, a little bit into psychotherapy,
Speaker 1: but Lindsay ends up being hands on and Margaret is
Speaker 1: definitely hands off. So of the remaining people with there's John,
Speaker 1: There is it Michael who was in the uh, the
Speaker 1: farm or whatever it was, So there's there there for
Speaker 1: any other ones who were not diagnosed. There's Mark Mark Mark,
Speaker 1: who who has led a quiet life. He worked at
Speaker 1: the University of Colorado bookstore for a while and Boulder
Speaker 1: and now is uh he's retired. That he married and
Speaker 1: had a few kids, but he kind of kept to himself.
Speaker 1: Mark was a sad case because in any very large
Speaker 1: family that the siblings closest to you become your sort
Speaker 1: of family unit within the family. And so he was
Speaker 1: one of a foursome with with Peter and Matthew and Joe.
Speaker 1: The four of them played hockey to that they were
Speaker 1: on the same teams. They often were in the paper
Speaker 1: together about scoring goals together. They really were, we're tighter
Speaker 1: than than the rest of the family was to them.
Speaker 1: But all three of those brothers all became mentally ill.
Speaker 1: He lost Matthew, Joe and and and and it was
Speaker 1: really hard for him. It was like he lost his
Speaker 1: whole family. So, of the five remaining I'll say lucid members,
Speaker 1: to what degree are they affected permanently by this upbringing?
Speaker 1: I would say that the one thing they all share
Speaker 1: as a certain hyper vigilance that that even if they
Speaker 1: Michael may not acknowledge it because he's a, you know,
Speaker 1: sort of a child of the sixties and a hippie
Speaker 1: and feels as if he's laid back, but it's clear
Speaker 1: from my observation that he's And and Margaret and Lindsay
Speaker 1: and Mark that they all are are. They remember what
Speaker 1: it was like to grow up in a house where
Speaker 1: either you were going to go insane yourself, or you
Speaker 1: were going to watch somebody else in your family go insane.
Speaker 1: And so you would go to bed every night wondering
Speaker 1: would you wake up the same in the morning, And
Speaker 1: then once you were up, you were wondering, I sure
Speaker 1: hope that I don't step out of line, or else
Speaker 1: my parents will think that something is wrong with me.
Speaker 1: And so that sort of hyper vigilance doesn't really ever
Speaker 1: go away. And they all they all lead functional lives
Speaker 1: and are I you know, have had happy marriages and
Speaker 1: many of them have kids. And but but I think
Speaker 1: if you talk to them at length, you'll get the
Speaker 1: sense that they have a certain watchfulness and weariness about them. Okay,
Speaker 1: if you go into the science, which was threaded throughout,
Speaker 1: even when we get to the end, and I don't
Speaker 1: really think I'm giving anything away here, there is not
Speaker 1: a definitive solution in terms of what exactly is going
Speaker 1: on and how to treat it. Can you amplify that
Speaker 1: a little bit? That's true? And I didn't want to
Speaker 1: oversell the book that way. I didn't want to say
Speaker 1: that there was a smoking gun or a Rosetta stone
Speaker 1: that the family supplied. But um, I do think that
Speaker 1: they had something of value to offer that they were um,
Speaker 1: they existed at a time when we were just discovering, uh,
Speaker 1: how to understand the genetic code and how to analyze
Speaker 1: the human genome, and at the time there was a
Speaker 1: lot of excitement that if you just had a general
Speaker 1: understanding of what a normal so called normal human genome
Speaker 1: should be, all you'd have to do is look on
Speaker 1: the computer and compare that with somebody who had schizophrenia
Speaker 1: or cancer or any other you know, disease, and just
Speaker 1: see what was different, and you would solve the problem
Speaker 1: by dinner time. Like you you you would be able
Speaker 1: to find the smoking gun genes that would cause the
Speaker 1: cause those diseases. But what we learned once the human
Speaker 1: genome got sequenced is that for complicated diseases like cancer
Speaker 1: and Alzheimer's disease and Parkinson's and schizophrenia, it's not one gene,
Speaker 1: and it's not three genes, and it's not four teen genes.
Speaker 1: It's more than a hundred genes so far that they
Speaker 1: have found that have genetic irregularities that might play some
Speaker 1: tiny little role in schizophrenia. And that is that's been
Speaker 1: very dispiriting, but What that's meant is that the people
Speaker 1: like the researchers in Hidden Valley Road who have been
Speaker 1: studying families like the Galvin's, it means that they would
Speaker 1: have been on the right track all along, because it's
Speaker 1: those families who actually might be able to demonstrate exactly
Speaker 1: how the disease plays out in uh, not just in genetics,
Speaker 1: but in the brain because they all, if they all
Speaker 1: share a certain mutation, they can see how that mutation
Speaker 1: might affect brain function. And so there's promise from them
Speaker 1: in that regard. That's kind of a long answer that
Speaker 1: the shorter answer to your question is um to me
Speaker 1: that the science and this story serves the family story,
Speaker 1: that the that the march of progress in science is
Speaker 1: not like not everything is polio and not everything is
Speaker 1: a horrible illness that one day we just solved and
Speaker 1: then we we we all can go to bed um.
Speaker 1: Most sciences wiggily and wobbly and two steps forward and
Speaker 1: one step back. And that's been the story of schizophrenia
Speaker 1: so far. And this family is our window into that story.
Speaker 1: What amazing thing is because you know, you start early
Speaker 1: in the last century and then the kids are born
Speaker 1: in the baby boom era is. You know, you're talking
Speaker 1: about the research and then it's ten years later that
Speaker 1: these people come back in that you say, this was
Speaker 1: not a wealthy family. They could necessarily seek out the
Speaker 1: best and the brightest. They're living. You know, people come in,
Speaker 1: we got the cure, and then they disappear for ten years.
Speaker 1: That must have been very depressing. I don't know how
Speaker 1: they kept it together, absolutely, and and I think one
Speaker 1: reason why they they finally decided to move forward with
Speaker 1: the book is that they had some inkling from one
Speaker 1: research team that there was some work being done that
Speaker 1: they had a and in helping out with, but they
Speaker 1: really didn't know what was going on with the other team,
Speaker 1: and so they were hoping a reporter could help with
Speaker 1: that too. So I almost one of the very first
Speaker 1: things I did was I called up Dr Lynde de
Speaker 1: Lacy in New England and I said, you know that
Speaker 1: the family says that you studied them long ago, And
Speaker 1: she said, oh, yes, I remember them. I've been meaning
Speaker 1: to call them because we just found out something about
Speaker 1: their jeans. And I said, you've got to be kidding me.
Speaker 1: And so they connected them together in and a lot
Speaker 1: of the revelations from that are sort of at the
Speaker 1: end of the book. So let's talk about you for
Speaker 1: a second. You're from where originally? Um, My whole family's
Speaker 1: from Baltimore, and I um as a kid, I moved
Speaker 1: out to the bourb So I'm from Columbia, Maryland, between
Speaker 1: Baltimore and Washington. And your parents did what for a living?
Speaker 1: My my dad was a real estate developer who's retired now,
Speaker 1: and my mother for twenty five years was what worked
Speaker 1: in the in the psychiatric part of our little local hospital.
Speaker 1: She was she was not a psychiatrist. She was a
Speaker 1: She had a master's in counseling psychology, so she was
Speaker 1: a psychosistant. And this was a local hospital where you know,
Speaker 1: people would cycle through who maybe maybe there'd be some
Speaker 1: people with schizophrenia who would go into their health benefits
Speaker 1: ran out for the month and then they so they'd
Speaker 1: come for a few days at a time, but mostly
Speaker 1: it was trauma from people who were in car crashes
Speaker 1: or teenagers with suicide attempts, you know, the sort of
Speaker 1: thing a local hospital would deal with. So she was
Speaker 1: and she was not a theoretician. She she didn't come
Speaker 1: home and talk about Freud and young with us. She
Speaker 1: was very practical and very pragmatic and really was really
Speaker 1: just there to help out. So it's I don't want
Speaker 1: to go to suggest that I got this fascination with
Speaker 1: psychiatry from my mother, but I did get her listening skills,
Speaker 1: for sure. She was a really, really good, active listener,
Speaker 1: and so I credit her with that. How many kids
Speaker 1: in the family, I'm the youngest of three, and so
Speaker 1: you go to college where um I went to Columbia
Speaker 1: University undergrad and I got here in New York. I
Speaker 1: arrived in the fall of n when nobody wanted to
Speaker 1: move to New York, and so it was very easy
Speaker 1: to get into Columbia. And my friends and I from
Speaker 1: that time we all say how we never could have
Speaker 1: gotten in now, because that's what they say. But leaving
Speaker 1: that aside, at what at what point do you decide
Speaker 1: you want to become a writer? UM? I loved writing
Speaker 1: from from fifth grade onward. I didn't know what I
Speaker 1: was going to do with it, but I just thought
Speaker 1: I would keep going with it, and I really was not.
Speaker 1: Didn't discover reporting until I was twenty three and out
Speaker 1: of college for a year or two and working at
Speaker 1: a little local neighborhood newspaper doing neighborhood news um when
Speaker 1: I was a kid in the eighties. But the people
Speaker 1: who wanted to become reporters wanted to be Woodward and
Speaker 1: Bernstein or a foreign correspondent or Sam Donaldson. They were
Speaker 1: you know, in the white House pool and these were
Speaker 1: things that I just never really connected with emotionally. I
Speaker 1: wanted to be, you know, maybe a movie critic or
Speaker 1: an essay writer or something. But then, um, I majored
Speaker 1: in history in college, and I love the narrative aspect
Speaker 1: of history, the the idea of different concepts coming up
Speaker 1: over and over again and following them through over time.
Speaker 1: And then as a reporter, I found that I was
Speaker 1: talking to people who where everyday people people who never
Speaker 1: thought they'd ever be in the papers, and they were
Speaker 1: dealing with situations on their block, like I don't know,
Speaker 1: fighting the local market because they were littering, or worried
Speaker 1: about a drug war happening on their block, or um
Speaker 1: fighting the skyscraper that was planned to go up two
Speaker 1: blocks away. And I would come back to them week
Speaker 1: after week after week, and it became a serial. It
Speaker 1: became like a like a soap opera, and I also
Speaker 1: developed nice relationships with those sources and got to know
Speaker 1: them as people. And so I was writing about everyday
Speaker 1: human dramas and UM. When my career really took off
Speaker 1: several years later and I got worked at New York Magazine,
Speaker 1: I was able to spin out reporting like that into longer,
Speaker 1: bigger feature stories with that that were about higher stakes
Speaker 1: issues and higher profile things. But I never really stepped
Speaker 1: away from that approach, which is to tell narrative stories
Speaker 1: about people going through difficult situations. Now, you did or
Speaker 1: did not go to graduate school. It's unclear here. I
Speaker 1: did not, um the way you were talking about that,
Speaker 1: I went to undergraduate school, not that you had to,
Speaker 1: but I was wondering whether it was a shoot a
Speaker 1: drop there. No, I'm smiling because I worked at the
Speaker 1: school paper, in the arts section of the school paper,
Speaker 1: and and there was a reverse snobbery at Columbia's UH
Speaker 1: school newspaper where where everybody said, we don't have to
Speaker 1: go to J school because we're putting out the school
Speaker 1: paper at Columbia and you know, we're better than the
Speaker 1: J school and who needs J School? And of course
Speaker 1: half the people who who said that ended up going
Speaker 1: to J School, and and J School is great, but
Speaker 1: most of the many of the people I love in
Speaker 1: my career went to J School, but I just never
Speaker 1: ended up there for one reason or another. Okay, so
Speaker 1: how did you end up working at New York Magazine? Well?
Speaker 1: I got there when I was twenty nine. Before that,
Speaker 1: I really jumped around a lot. I Um, I wanted
Speaker 1: to work in magazines and wasn't sure how. I didn't
Speaker 1: know how to make that jump from little weekly papers
Speaker 1: to magazines, and so I worked at Backstage the Theater newspaper,
Speaker 1: and I edited articles for them, and I wrote articles
Speaker 1: for them, and then um, one day, Time Out magazine
Speaker 1: announced that it was going to launch its New York
Speaker 1: City version of the magazine, you know, the London Time
Speaker 1: Out magazine. So Time Out New York launched in and
Speaker 1: that was suddenly, in a very difficult time financially in
Speaker 1: New York. That was thirty new journalism jobs suddenly, and
Speaker 1: I was one of the people hired there, and I
Speaker 1: was part of a launch, which was great, and it
Speaker 1: was like being in college all over again. We worked
Speaker 1: twenty four hours a day to get this thing off
Speaker 1: the ground, and I was writing City stories that were
Speaker 1: really that would have been at home at New York Magazine.
Speaker 1: And so it kind of makes sense. And in site
Speaker 1: that three years later, I got hired at New York
Speaker 1: Magazine to do a lot of the same sort of
Speaker 1: stuff that I was doing at Time Out Magazine, and
Speaker 1: you ultimately wrote a story about a superintendent of schools
Speaker 1: on Long Island that was just recently a very highly
Speaker 1: reviewed HBO series. Yes, I can take no credit for
Speaker 1: the movie, but it's the sort of thing that magazine
Speaker 1: writer's dream of happening, that one day somebody's making a
Speaker 1: movie and options your story and and uh and uses
Speaker 1: it and it makes it into a movie. And the
Speaker 1: New York Magazine has a nice track record with that.
Speaker 1: Hustlers came from a New York Magazine story, and American
Speaker 1: Gangster came from a New York Magazine story, and Saturday
Speaker 1: Night Fever obviously came from a New York Magazine story.
Speaker 1: But the in this case, I've been writing a lot
Speaker 1: of stories set out on Long Island. Um. I think
Speaker 1: it's because I live in Brooklyn, which is not so
Speaker 1: far from Long Island, and that I had a car,
Speaker 1: so they thought, well, you can go out there, it's
Speaker 1: easy for you, and they were all these kind of
Speaker 1: gritty narratives. This was This was a few years after
Speaker 1: Amy Fisher enjoy Bafuco. But there were plenty of other
Speaker 1: stories like that happening out there. And this was an
Speaker 1: amazing story about UM the biggest public school system embezzlement
Speaker 1: scandal in America, all happening in a very high profile,
Speaker 1: very swanky part of Long Island where the kids all
Speaker 1: went to Harvard Um called Rosalind and Um the superintendent
Speaker 1: was a was a was a god um there. He
Speaker 1: was really held up in high esteem because he was
Speaker 1: delivering for everyone. And he probably would have done that
Speaker 1: for years and years more if if his if it
Speaker 1: hadn't been found out that he was, you know, stealing
Speaker 1: from the register. And so the question I asked in
Speaker 1: that article was did he swindle the town or did
Speaker 1: the town allow him themselves to be swindled by him? Because,
Speaker 1: you know, because they needed his success, they needed him
Speaker 1: to be delivering for them. And I never dreamed it
Speaker 1: would be a story. And then there was a young
Speaker 1: man named Mike mccowski who was a junior high school
Speaker 1: student at the time of the scandal. Years go by,
Speaker 1: he grows up, he becomes a screenwriter, and he decides
Speaker 1: to write about it, and he options my story. And
Speaker 1: I know, I don't blink an eye, like I think, well,
Speaker 1: these things never get made into movies. And then one
Speaker 1: day I get an email from the magazine, years after
Speaker 1: I left the magazine saying good news, they're starting to
Speaker 1: shoot it with Hugh Jackman and Alison Janney. And I was,
Speaker 1: you know, I fell on the floor. It was wonderful,
Speaker 1: really wonderful, and I really I really liked the movie
Speaker 1: a lot. Okay, what is the deal with New York
Speaker 1: If you write something and it's optioned? Uh, do you
Speaker 1: split it with New York Magazine or you get all
Speaker 1: of it? Or how's it work? Well, in the old days,
Speaker 1: you'd get all of it. And then that was just
Speaker 1: sort of a convention of the business that you um
Speaker 1: that that that even if technically it was a work
Speaker 1: for hire, um and uh, and it was technically the
Speaker 1: intellectual property of the publication, it was a professional courtesy
Speaker 1: that they would sign a one Sheeeter called a Bulsher's
Speaker 1: release and allow you to option the story and you
Speaker 1: would get the money for the store. The idea was
Speaker 1: that it doesn't happen that often, and that the magazine
Speaker 1: was too busy making money other ways to try to
Speaker 1: horn in on these deals. Because the amount of time
Speaker 1: and hours it takes to try to develop those deals,
Speaker 1: you end up spending all the money that you would
Speaker 1: make on those deals. But then the business changed and
Speaker 1: and uh, this is maybe longer answer than you're expecting,
Speaker 1: but the business really contracted and every and everybody needed
Speaker 1: money everywhere, and there were a couple of huge successes
Speaker 1: out there that the that the publication didn't get a
Speaker 1: dime from, and UM speaking specifically of Sex in the
Speaker 1: City and the New York Observer, Like the New York
Speaker 1: Observer was this tiny little paper that was losing money
Speaker 1: all the time. And Canadas, Bushnell sold the idea for
Speaker 1: Sex in the City, which was printed in the Observer,
Speaker 1: and the Observer didn't get a cent from it. And
Speaker 1: so I think magazines and publications started to wake up
Speaker 1: about ten or fifteen years ago and say, all, we
Speaker 1: can't let that happen, And so they started to negotiate
Speaker 1: with their writers and UM and they started to come
Speaker 1: up with revenue sharing arrangements. So now even the New
Speaker 1: York Times, which develops TV series and movies from and
Speaker 1: and reality shows and whatnot. From various things that they print.
Speaker 1: They have a revenue sharing arrangement where the paper gets
Speaker 1: some and the writer gets some, and I think New
Speaker 1: York Magazine does too. What happened on your deal on
Speaker 1: that movie? I think I was grandfathered in so, like
Speaker 1: everything up to this exceanely high amount, I was going
Speaker 1: to get a percent of and then if it if
Speaker 1: it became a superhero franchise or or Sex in the
Speaker 1: City or something like that, then then I would start
Speaker 1: having to split fifty cents on the dollar with the magazine.
Speaker 1: But when the picture actually went to HBO when it
Speaker 1: was developed, you got another payment. Yeah, exactly when they
Speaker 1: when they started the day they started shooting, with the
Speaker 1: first day of principal photography, I got another check. Okay,
Speaker 1: did you have any other stories option that didn't ultimately
Speaker 1: go to screen? Oh? Yes, Um, those were all for
Speaker 1: TV movies because you know, there was even before the
Speaker 1: true crime boom of the streaming era with Making a
Speaker 1: Murderer and whatnot. Um, there was always a demand at
Speaker 1: like the forrom the A and E Channel or from
Speaker 1: from from Lifetime you know, for for a quick grip
Speaker 1: from the headlines movies, and so quite often the reported
Speaker 1: stories like the ones I did for New York Magazine
Speaker 1: got option. There was one about John O'Neill, the FBI's
Speaker 1: terror asm expert who who died in the World Trade
Speaker 1: Center attacks. That was optioned. It never got made into anything.
Speaker 1: And then the murder of Ted Ammen out in the
Speaker 1: Hampton's he was a huge multi millionaire whose wife hadn't
Speaker 1: killed That that got made into a movie, but not
Speaker 1: my story. Someone else's the Vanity Fair story got option.
Speaker 1: And then the story of Carlina White who solved her
Speaker 1: own kidnapping one day she she uh one day she
Speaker 1: did a little legwork and saw that the woman she
Speaker 1: thought was her mother had actually kidnapped her as a
Speaker 1: baby from the hospital. That was an amazing story that
Speaker 1: got made into a Time a Lifetime movie, but again
Speaker 1: not my story. It was somebody else's story. So but
Speaker 1: they all everybody's sort of putting little bets on the table.
Speaker 1: So they pick up these stories every now and then.
Speaker 1: And how do you end up leaving New York Magazine?
Speaker 1: UM I had written Lost Girls, which was a success.
Speaker 1: Um it was a you know, briefly a bestseller, it
Speaker 1: got option for the movies and eventually became a movie
Speaker 1: this past spring on Netflix with Amy Ryan that I'm
Speaker 1: really proud of. UM. But UM, the magazine at that
Speaker 1: time went bi weekly. Instead of being coming out every week,
Speaker 1: it was coming out every other week, which meant that
Speaker 1: they need fewer people like me to write the big,
Speaker 1: longer stories and cover stories. And so they started talking
Speaker 1: with each of us about how our roles might change.
Speaker 1: And I thought, well, this is the right time for
Speaker 1: me to you know, write elsewhere, and to to write
Speaker 1: continue writing for New York but also right for the
Speaker 1: New York Times magazine, to write for Wired. UM. And
Speaker 1: so I did I UM, I moved on and then
Speaker 1: I quit very quickly got recruited by Bloomberg Business Week
Speaker 1: to be an investigative reporter for Bloomberg Projects reporter for them.
Speaker 1: And that was an amazing job, a wonderful job because
Speaker 1: I could write really exciting, entertaining, propulsive narrative feature stories
Speaker 1: for for Business Week magazine, but the subject matter could
Speaker 1: be new and fresh to me, and I would learn
Speaker 1: something new every time. And because it was Bloomberg, it
Speaker 1: was worldwide. I was no longer just writing about the
Speaker 1: New York metro area. I was flying all around the
Speaker 1: world writing about stories. And it was shortly after I
Speaker 1: started my job there that I first had that first
Speaker 1: phone call with Lindsay and Margaret, with the Galvin family. Yeah.
Speaker 1: One of the things I said to them was, I
Speaker 1: just started a new job. I can't exactly walk a
Speaker 1: way from it, but anyway, it all goes slowly anyway.
Speaker 1: Books take forever anyway, so let's keep talking. And that's
Speaker 1: how it happened. So you ultimately did quit Bloomberg. I did.
Speaker 1: They're very good with book leave at Bloomberg, but they're
Speaker 1: at a totally different model. They the people who go
Speaker 1: and write books for them. They are beat writers who
Speaker 1: have a certain expertise, Like they read about Jeff Bezos,
Speaker 1: or they write about Instagram and they break away for
Speaker 1: six weeks and write their book about Instagram and then
Speaker 1: they come back. Whereas I was having to learn about
Speaker 1: schizophrenia from the from scratch and so I had to
Speaker 1: go away for too long. But I love those guys.
Speaker 1: I'd write for them again. They're okay. So you referenced
Speaker 1: the family. What is your family look like? Your personal
Speaker 1: family Um, I'm I'm married. My wife is Kirsten Danis.
Speaker 1: She's a superstar editor at the New York Times. She
Speaker 1: she um, she and it's investigative reporting stories for the
Speaker 1: Metro section for the New York City section, and her
Speaker 1: reporter just want to Pulitzer. So it's been an exciting
Speaker 1: for her, very proud of her. And our kids are
Speaker 1: seventeen and fourteen. Um, the fourteen year old is going
Speaker 1: to go into high school next year, so they're really
Speaker 1: turning the corner. And we're lucky that way into in
Speaker 1: a sense because um, during this quarantine period, it means, um,
Speaker 1: they aren't three and four years old and running around
Speaker 1: like they have their things to do, and they're they're
Speaker 1: they're cool to hang out with. I actually was listening
Speaker 1: to you talk to Titus Boliver and he said his
Speaker 1: kids were similar ages, and I thought, oh, I know
Speaker 1: what he's I can picture of what he's experiencing. So
Speaker 1: how did you meet your wife? We were in college together,
Speaker 1: but she was always more of a news e than me,
Speaker 1: Like I was like an arts writer writing movie reviews
Speaker 1: and editing the arts publication of the school paper, and
Speaker 1: she was a year younger, and uh, news reporter and
Speaker 1: then eventually became the editor in chief of the Columbia newspaper.
Speaker 1: And then she stayed in We stayed in New York
Speaker 1: and stayed together, and we married many years later. But
Speaker 1: we circled with each other like sharks for many many years,
Speaker 1: and then we married in our late twenties, but it
Speaker 1: was always a relationship then or oh yeah, yeah, we're
Speaker 1: always together since my senior year, since and her junior year. Okay,
Speaker 1: So needless to say, Hidden Valley Road is a is
Speaker 1: both a financial and a critical success. And as we've
Speaker 1: established earlier, as much as you loved it even beyond
Speaker 1: your dreams. So what's the dream? Now? That's a really
Speaker 1: good question. Um I am. I'm delighted to be in
Speaker 1: a position where, um, when I have an idea for
Speaker 1: another book, that the doors might open more quickly than
Speaker 1: they might otherwise, that I it won't just be somebody
Speaker 1: calling up somebody saying, hey, I'd like to talk to you.
Speaker 1: It's the guy who wrote that book calling to saying
Speaker 1: I want to talk to you. So I'd like to
Speaker 1: take that that new situation for a spin and see
Speaker 1: where it takes me. I'm starting, it's starting to dawn
Speaker 1: on me now that um, I could just cold call
Speaker 1: a lot of very smart people out there to find
Speaker 1: out information about new subjects and I and I might
Speaker 1: get the calls returned more often now because I'm the
Speaker 1: guy who wrote that book. So I'd like to see
Speaker 1: where that takes me. And um, I do love drama, dramatic,
Speaker 1: vivid stories about people, and it always starts with the people.
Speaker 1: If it's about a family, so much the better. If
Speaker 1: it takes me into a subject area like schizophrenia or
Speaker 1: or any other subject area where I'm learning something new,
Speaker 1: so much the better. I love books that do that
Speaker 1: every everything from Moneyball to Behind the Beautiful Forevers by
Speaker 1: Catherine Boo. Anything that takes me somewhere else and helps
Speaker 1: me relate to the people who are experiencing those things
Speaker 1: is good in my book. Well, you're very articulate, and
Speaker 1: some writers they can put their fingers on the keyboard,
Speaker 1: but they can't really talk. That certainly isn't you. And
Speaker 1: by my standards, you earned your acceptance at Columbia and
Speaker 1: any event. In any event, Bob, thanks so much for
Speaker 1: doing this. Thanks Bob, I really appreciate it, and I
Speaker 1: highly recommend this book. I wrote about it, and then
Speaker 1: Bob reached out on Twitter. This is not something put
Speaker 1: together by a publicist. This book is truly great. And
Speaker 1: I'm not saying that because I'm talking to you. I'm
Speaker 1: blowing smoke up your rear end. What you had to
Speaker 1: write about it on your newsletter was so kind and
Speaker 1: so flattering. I was just had to reach out to
Speaker 1: you and thank you well as I say the good
Speaker 1: That's one thing I have you. One thing I know
Speaker 1: is if I write something, the person reads it sequentely,
Speaker 1: they get back to me. If I say something not
Speaker 1: so positive, you never know if you're bumped into him
Speaker 1: and said, oh, they read it and any event, thanks
Speaker 1: so much for doing this. Thank you, Bob. Until next time,
Speaker 1: It's Bob left Sense s