Speaker 1: Hey fam, Hello Sunshine. Today on the bright Side, we're
Speaker 1: talking murder mystery. Best selling author and the June pick
Speaker 1: for Reese's Book Club, Ali Condy is here to discuss
Speaker 1: her new novel that's creating lots and lots of buzz.
Speaker 1: It's Thursday, June twentieth. I'm Danielle Robe.
Speaker 2: And I'm Simone Boyce and this is the bright Side
Speaker 2: from Hello Sunshine, Simone.
Speaker 1: Today, We're joined by best selling author Ali Condy, and
Speaker 1: she's known for her wildly popular young adult book series
Speaker 1: and recently she released a new murder mystery. The Internet
Speaker 1: is a Blaze. It's called The Unwedding and it is
Speaker 1: a June Reese's Book Club pick. Everything about this book
Speaker 1: and the story behind it is giving Lemonade by Beyonce.
Speaker 1: Let me explain. Author Ali had a twentieth wedding anniversary
Speaker 1: trip planned, and obviously this is supposed to be romantic
Speaker 1: and relaxing and a celebration of her commitment to her
Speaker 1: and his commitment to heart. But in a twist of
Speaker 1: terrible fate, she and her husband get divorced and she
Speaker 1: finds out that he's still going to go on the trip,
Speaker 1: but he's going with another woman. So Ali decides she's
Speaker 1: going to go on a trip too, and she arrives
Speaker 1: at this hotel and immediately finds out that there's a
Speaker 1: wedding going on. Can you imagine how gutting that would be?
Speaker 1: So brutal? Oh my gosh, this is such a wild backstory.
Speaker 1: I can't believe it. But here's the bright side. Okay,
Speaker 1: Allie's sitting at the bar by herself, people watching, and
Speaker 1: her imagination is taking over, and she thinks, what if
Speaker 1: there was a murder here and I was the only
Speaker 1: person that could solve it. You know what's funny is
Speaker 1: that's not the kind of murder I'd be thinking about
Speaker 1: on a trip like that. But I'm glad that she
Speaker 1: has an imagination because that moment inspired her to write
Speaker 1: and publish what has become her first murder mystery, and
Speaker 1: now she's the June pick for Reese's Book Clubs. So
Speaker 1: talk about turning your mess into your message.
Speaker 2: I mean, I'm so excited to hear all of this
Speaker 2: in her own words, because stories like this where someone
Speaker 2: took life's bitter lemons and turned it into sweet, sweet lemonade,
Speaker 2: they're always so epic, right, Danielle Hm. I mean it's
Speaker 2: such a universal experience, right, Like, if you've been on
Speaker 2: this earth long enough, it's going to happen to you. Danielle.
Speaker 2: Can you think of a time when you turn something
Speaker 2: tragic into magic? Anything come to mind?
Speaker 1: Yes? And mine also has to do with a man.
Speaker 1: My ex boyfriend years ago broke up with me on
Speaker 1: a beach in Cabo, and then subsequently we spent the
Speaker 1: next ten days together with both of our families there,
Speaker 1: which was brutal, and I had to move out and
Speaker 1: I was so broke and I didn't know how I
Speaker 1: was going to move into an apartment, And that whole
Speaker 1: experience set me on like an amplification of my career.
Speaker 1: I started sending out cold emails and started doing digital
Speaker 1: media work and moved into and decorated my own apartment.
Speaker 1: And previously I had found a pro con list that
Speaker 1: he made about me, and one of the cons was
Speaker 1: that he felt like I couldn't just like get stuff done.
Speaker 1: And that year I got the most done ever. I
Speaker 1: did a triathlon, I made the most money I had made,
Speaker 1: and I was.
Speaker 2: Really sticking it to him getting dumped on a beach
Speaker 2: in Cabo with all of your family watching. That sounds
Speaker 2: like the beginning of a great novel. To me, I've
Speaker 2: always wanted to write a novel about it. But let's
Speaker 2: talk to somebody who's actually done it. We are here
Speaker 2: with the June.
Speaker 1: RBC pick Ali Condy. She's talking love, marriage and mystery. Ali,
Speaker 1: Welcome to the bright Side.
Speaker 3: Thank you, Thank you so much for having me.
Speaker 2: Ali. I was really struck by the real life inspiration
Speaker 2: behind this book. I mean, did you have anyone specific
Speaker 2: in mind when you were writing this murder mystery? That
Speaker 2: is such a great and perfectly loaded question. Yeah, I
Speaker 2: mean clearly I did. Like as you mentioned, you know,
Speaker 2: we'd been divorced.
Speaker 4: It was clear I wasn't going to be going on
Speaker 4: the twentieth anniversary trip with him, and yet still somehow
Speaker 4: it hurt. Everything I was reading was saying, get yourself
Speaker 4: out there, be comfortable, being on your own, all of that,
Speaker 4: and I thought, absolutely so I took myself on a
Speaker 4: trip and it was just harder than I expected. I
Speaker 4: did miss him. I particularly missed my children. That's the
Speaker 4: hardest part of divorces. You're no longer with them all
Speaker 4: the time, and as a parent and a mother, that
Speaker 4: feels very foreign.
Speaker 3: It feels completely wrong.
Speaker 4: I still haven't gotten over that part, but I realized, oh,
Speaker 4: I shoot, everyone else is here with someone else. And
Speaker 4: I was used to being alone on book tour. I
Speaker 4: thought I could handle it just fine. But I also
Speaker 4: didn't have the purpose of book tour. So it was
Speaker 4: just me eating food, kind of looking at my phone,
Speaker 4: looking around, and yeah, that inspiration for the main character.
Speaker 4: That's pretty much the opening scene of the book is
Speaker 4: how I was feeling. And then, of course I didn't
Speaker 4: solve any murders. None of that happened, but I did
Speaker 4: start looking around and paying attention and feeling sorry for myself,
Speaker 4: kind of like, oh.
Speaker 3: They're so happy, look at that couple.
Speaker 4: And then it deteriorated pretty quickly into well, I don't
Speaker 4: think they're going to make it. You know, you start
Speaker 4: you start being pretty honest with your assessments of everyone
Speaker 4: around you, and you often when you're traveling, you do
Speaker 4: have kind of that whole microcosm of human life, like
Speaker 4: there are people who are super happy, there are people
Speaker 4: who look miserable, different family groupings, different couples, different ages
Speaker 4: of couples, all of that, and so as the weekend progressed,
Speaker 4: it got more and more fun, the people watching, and
Speaker 4: pretty quickly I had the thought, oh, man, if there
Speaker 4: were a murder here, I'd be the only one who
Speaker 4: could solve it because I'm the only one who's been
Speaker 4: noticing everybody else, because I don't have anyone else to
Speaker 4: pay attention to.
Speaker 1: Well, what did you discover about yourself in the writing process,
Speaker 1: because to me, it felt like there was a little
Speaker 1: bit of therapy here, even though it is a novel.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean absolutely there was.
Speaker 4: And you know, I have kids, and I'm really conscious
Speaker 4: of how how I talk about the book, so you know,
Speaker 4: their dad is a great dad. I'm not trying to
Speaker 4: in any way take him down or shame him or
Speaker 4: make him look like any thing bad at all.
Speaker 3: But the pain was real. And you know, this book is.
Speaker 4: Coming out now, but I've been remarried for almost a year,
Speaker 4: and so the book always comes out a little bit
Speaker 4: past the experience if you are writing anything that you're
Speaker 4: kind of going through the time. But in that sense, yeah,
Speaker 4: I mean it feels like I definitely wouldn't have had
Speaker 4: the idea to write this particular murder mystery without that experience.
Speaker 4: I wouldn't have had the idea to kind of go
Speaker 4: for it. I don't think, because I don't know if
Speaker 4: you guys have experienced this. I hope you haven't, but
Speaker 4: I think we all have where you lose something really,
Speaker 4: really profound and then it almost feels like you have
Speaker 4: nothing left to lose. Yes, and so in the past,
Speaker 4: where I might I might have been precious about it, like, oh,
Speaker 4: it'll be so embarrassing if I write this book and
Speaker 4: it doesn't do well, or oh, I should stay in
Speaker 4: my lane and write young adult or children's books, which
Speaker 4: I love and still plan to write.
Speaker 3: Instead, I thought, well, the worst has.
Speaker 4: Already happened, you know, I don't It's fine if I
Speaker 4: fail at writing a book.
Speaker 3: Harder things than this exist in the world.
Speaker 1: Your main character, Ellery has had more than one rough
Speaker 1: patch in her life. Why did you want to center
Speaker 1: your main character in tragedy like that?
Speaker 3: I think she's also centered in a lot of joy.
Speaker 4: But yeah, this is her tragedy era, right, and so,
Speaker 4: but it's not her first tragedy era. And unfortunately, and fortunately,
Speaker 4: I guess for character growth and for personal growth, we
Speaker 4: don't have a quota, right, Like, we don't have a
Speaker 4: quota of bad stuff that happens to us. I think
Speaker 4: when I was growing up, I felt like, Oh, everyone
Speaker 4: probably has one or two really bad things happen, and
Speaker 4: that is just not the case at all. I learned
Speaker 4: that pretty early on when I was a high school teacher,
Speaker 4: Like some kids would come to me and I felt like, Oh,
Speaker 4: my word, you're twelve and you've already met what I
Speaker 4: feel like should be your quota for life. And then
Speaker 4: some that's just not the way life works. And so
Speaker 4: I was kind of showing like, she's been through some
Speaker 4: hard stuff, but also it might keep coming, and so
Speaker 4: how do you deal with that? How do you keep
Speaker 4: moving forward even when some hard things have already happened
Speaker 4: to you? And the same thing is true wonderfully of joy.
Speaker 4: There's also no quota in that. Yeah, And so even
Speaker 4: when you're.
Speaker 3: Down and out and the darkest thing you can think.
Speaker 4: Of has happened, you will be there's that great phrase,
Speaker 4: surprised by joy, and you will be. There will be
Speaker 4: things that happen that keep happening that are great too.
Speaker 4: So I wanted to show that a little bit as well.
Speaker 1: ALI Something that my friend group has been discussing over
Speaker 1: the last few years as some people have gotten married,
Speaker 1: is keeping their maiden names versus taking their married name.
Speaker 1: And I found this particularly interesting because you posted about
Speaker 1: the emotional struggle with wanting to put your maiden name
Speaker 1: on the book after your divorce, but you were told
Speaker 1: no because your identity as an author had already been established.
Speaker 1: How did you deal with that?
Speaker 3: That was tricky. I love that you noticed that post.
Speaker 4: So when I got married, I mean, I've been dating
Speaker 4: the same guy since I was eighteen, and I entered.
Speaker 3: That marriage at the ripe old age of twenty one. Wholeheartedly.
Speaker 4: There's no way I thought that I would not have
Speaker 4: this name for the rest of my life. And then
Speaker 4: I had a baby at twenty four, so it pretty
Speaker 4: quickly also became connected to my children.
Speaker 3: I made that connection. Honestly.
Speaker 4: I made that decision in a sort of pure of
Speaker 4: heart way. But yeah, the ramifications were tough because I
Speaker 4: asked if we could change it back to my maiden name,
Speaker 4: which is Ali Braithwaite, which is a little unwieldy, but
Speaker 4: I also liked it. I was that person for a
Speaker 4: long time, and I did completely understand the publisher's decision.
Speaker 4: We all at the end of the day, we all
Speaker 4: want to sell books. We all want to make sure
Speaker 4: that the book is successful, and I'm not trying to
Speaker 4: sabotage that, but it became a.
Speaker 3: Second choosing of that name.
Speaker 4: While I can go by Ali Braithwaite in my private life,
Speaker 4: my public life has to be Ali Condy. And so
Speaker 4: I kind of made my peace with that thanks to
Speaker 4: as many things in my life, friends coming through and
Speaker 4: saying so some wonderful things I hadn't thought of myself.
Speaker 4: But another author who's been very successful said, you know
Speaker 4: that name. I don't think of your husband when I
Speaker 4: think of that name. When I think of your name,
Speaker 4: I think of you. I don't think of any association
Speaker 4: with anyone else. And I realized, oh, there's this whole
Speaker 4: professional sphere. They don't know him at all. This is
Speaker 4: all me, and that then I suddenly felt like a
Speaker 4: really exciting space to step into, like, oh, yeah, I
Speaker 4: built this sort of you know, and spouses are supportive,
Speaker 4: they're great, But I built this independent of him, and
Speaker 4: that wasn't a space he ever really chose to come
Speaker 4: into with me, and so that felt freeing.
Speaker 3: And then I also realized the.
Speaker 4: Connection with my kids, I want that connection and I
Speaker 4: think naming is about connection. Sometimes people choose new names
Speaker 4: because they don't feel connected to.
Speaker 3: The name their parents gave them, and that's great.
Speaker 4: And at this point I realized, oh, the connection's not
Speaker 4: about an ex spouse anymore. It's about my readership and
Speaker 4: my children. So that felt good.
Speaker 1: There is a legacy that you're building for your kids.
Speaker 1: And I have never met your ex husband, so all
Speaker 1: I know is Ali Kandy.
Speaker 3: Well there I go. Yeah, so that feels great.
Speaker 1: You know, there's this sentiment from the book that I love.
Speaker 1: The main character Ellery says, everybody has a shadow. So
Speaker 1: there's a light and there's a shadow. What does the
Speaker 1: shadow mean?
Speaker 4: The shadow is just to me, it's the part that
Speaker 4: everyone would just prefer to keep hidden. And that doesn't
Speaker 4: even necessarily mean that the shadow is a bad thing,
Speaker 4: but it's the part of you that you feel like
Speaker 4: it's best to keep this to myself or I don't
Speaker 4: totally want other people to see this until I trust them.
Speaker 4: And sometimes it is a dark thing too. You know,
Speaker 4: I've met people who have some dark secrets, and right
Speaker 4: I've met people who don't, but they're very private about
Speaker 4: certain parts of their life.
Speaker 3: And so that's kind of what I was thinking of.
Speaker 4: Everybody does have a shadow, and for the purposes of
Speaker 4: a murder mystery. Is that shadow a dark thing? Or
Speaker 4: is that shadow just the part they want to keep hidden?
Speaker 4: And what does that mean as she's trying to figure
Speaker 4: out who might be a.
Speaker 2: Ca I love it. I think we should have more
Speaker 2: shadows in the world. I want to see more people's shadows.
Speaker 2: I agree, Yeah, like I can think of so many
Speaker 2: famous people. I'm like, I want to see what your
Speaker 2: shadow looks like.
Speaker 1: We need to take a quick break, but we'll be
Speaker 1: right back.
Speaker 2: Stay with us. We're back, So Ali. One of our
Speaker 2: special treats that we like to give our Brightside bessies
Speaker 2: is a reading from the author herself. So we've selected
Speaker 2: a passage that we would love for you to read
Speaker 2: to us. Can you go ahead and give us some context?
Speaker 4: Yeah, I'd love to do that. And I love this
Speaker 4: passage that you suggested that I read. It's not one
Speaker 4: I've been able to read a lot because I can't
Speaker 4: get through it without crying. So we'll see how this goes.
Speaker 4: But it is one of the few passages in the
Speaker 4: book that is taken directly from real life. So in
Speaker 4: this passage. She has a son named Ethan, and they
Speaker 4: have been on a family vacation prior to the divorce
Speaker 4: to Universal Studios and had a really wonderful time and
Speaker 4: he ended up getting one of the Harry Potter wands
Speaker 4: and that's been kind of his favorite thing since they've
Speaker 4: returned from this trip. And then it's now post divorced,
Speaker 4: and they go on a little drive. She and her son, Ethan,
Speaker 4: they live in Colorado, and there's a lot of beautiful places,
Speaker 4: and he has her taken to one of those beautiful
Speaker 4: places and something else happens, and so that's the setup
Speaker 4: for this scene. So again Ethan is the child and
Speaker 4: the main character is the mom. After they'd returned from
Speaker 4: the trip, Ethan asked her repeatedly to take him to
Speaker 4: a lake up in the mountains that they sometimes visited.
Speaker 4: It was a beautiful spot, blue water, perfect green pines,
Speaker 4: a sandier beach than you usually found in Colorado, a
Speaker 4: long wooden dock stretching out into the water from which
Speaker 4: you could launch kayaks or paddleboards. The day she'd finally
Speaker 4: gotten around to taking Ethan had been mum. After their
Speaker 4: trip to California later in the year, when the air
Speaker 4: and water were cool bordering on cold. There hadn't been
Speaker 4: many people at the lake. Ethan had climbed out of
Speaker 4: the car with a sense of purpose. Wait for me, buddy,
Speaker 4: she said, trying to make sure she had her keys
Speaker 4: and phone, But he was off, stalking intently out onto
Speaker 4: the dock, since he had a pension for jumping into
Speaker 4: bodies of water. Fully clothed, she hurried after him, worried
Speaker 4: he'd gotten it into his mind to go for a swim.
Speaker 4: But Ethan stopped at the end of the dock and
Speaker 4: turned to look at her. It was then that she
Speaker 4: saw he was holding his wand she hadn't noticed that
Speaker 4: he'd brought it in the car. His blue eyes and
Speaker 4: the blue tshirt he was wearing in the blue water
Speaker 4: behind him all brightened and deepened one another, and she thought,
Speaker 4: this is impossibly beautiful. He is impossibly beautiful, mom, Ethan said,
Speaker 4: urgency in his tone. Mom.
Speaker 3: To her surprise, he handed her the precious wand mom,
Speaker 3: turn me into a fish, Oh, Ethan, she said, her
Speaker 3: heart breaking. I can't.
Speaker 4: I'm so sorry. No, Mom, he said, you can. It
Speaker 4: built and built the urgency in his voice. Then the
Speaker 4: distress the break in her heart until she thought they
Speaker 4: would both shatter inWORD or outwards. She didn't know, but
Speaker 4: neither of them could bear this much pain, this much want,
Speaker 4: this much failure. Mom Eth had kept saying, tears in
Speaker 4: his eyes, Mom, please please.
Speaker 3: Turn me into a fish. When he finally realized that
Speaker 3: she couldn't. Oh, how she hoped he didn't think it
Speaker 3: was that she wouldn't. They got back into the car
Speaker 3: and drove home. They wound down the forest roads in silence,
Speaker 3: both of their faces tears stained. She hadn't seen the
Speaker 3: wand since he had never asked to go to the
Speaker 3: lake again, she had thought that day that it was
Speaker 3: the worst she could possibly fail. Somewhe she'd been so
Speaker 3: absolutely wrong.
Speaker 1: Thank you for that. Ali. Before you read, you said
Speaker 1: that you usually cry when you read that passage. What
Speaker 1: special meaning does it hold for you?
Speaker 5: Well?
Speaker 4: I tried not to read it too much because it
Speaker 4: was a real experience that happened, and I'm not it's
Speaker 4: hard to revisit. Frankly, my son is neuro divergent and
Speaker 4: we had that experience post divorce, and like I mentioned earlier,
Speaker 4: it's one of the few real experiences I put in
Speaker 4: the book, and that was just such a feeling that
Speaker 4: day of he desperately wanted this thing, and he truly
Speaker 4: thought I could grant it to him. He thought he
Speaker 4: had all the elements there, he'd brought the wand we'd
Speaker 4: gotten to the place, and then he was asking me
Speaker 4: to transform him into something else, take him away from this,
Speaker 4: and there was I could not do it, you know,
Speaker 4: there was no way for me to do that. And
Speaker 4: as a parent, I mean, that's one of the hardest things,
Speaker 4: is when you disappoint your child or when they desperately
Speaker 4: deeply want something and you cannot give it to them,
Speaker 4: even though you would love to be able to do that.
Speaker 4: And so that's tricky for me to revisit because that
Speaker 4: was a hard and that he really wanted that for me,
Speaker 4: and I didn't give it to him, and it became
Speaker 4: a little bit of a you know, a stand in
Speaker 4: for all of the things he wanted, like an intact
Speaker 4: family and different things that I also really wanted that
Speaker 4: I also was unable to give him. And so that
Speaker 4: that feeling is still kind of with me. Frankly, there's
Speaker 4: still some things that I wish I could provide that
Speaker 4: I can, and as a parent.
Speaker 3: That's really tough.
Speaker 2: It's so hard. What do you say to your kids
Speaker 2: in those moments, because it is really hard whenever your
Speaker 2: kids want something that you can't deliver.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I kind of have to I have to acknowledge
Speaker 4: that it's a valid want. You're not wrong to want this.
Speaker 4: This makes sense that you want this to kind of
Speaker 4: teach them to be able to do that for themselves. Like,
Speaker 4: it's okay to want things. And often the things that
Speaker 4: you want are really good, and you still can't have
Speaker 4: them because someone else is making a different choice or
Speaker 4: the circumstances don't allow it. And then sometimes you can
Speaker 4: acknowledge I want that too, but you don't want to
Speaker 4: put yourself in there too much. You know, it's about
Speaker 4: their want, not about yours. And then I say, I
Speaker 4: can't fix it, but I can sit here with you
Speaker 4: in the wanting. We can be here together, and then
Speaker 4: what's something else that we can control that we can
Speaker 4: maybe do. Sometimes that's the next step, and sometimes the
Speaker 4: next step is not that. Sometimes the next step is
Speaker 4: just Okay, we're still sad. Nothing's going to fix this,
Speaker 4: and we'll just.
Speaker 3: Be here in the sadness for a few minutes and
Speaker 3: not try to move past it till already.
Speaker 2: Ali, have you ever thought about being a parenting coach? No?
Speaker 2: I was like, that was amazing. I learned so much
Speaker 2: just in that fifteen second SoundBite.
Speaker 3: Oh gosh, that's so kind of you, Simone.
Speaker 4: I'm muddling my way through like everyone else, but I
Speaker 4: do really care about.
Speaker 3: It, so I hope that counts for something.
Speaker 2: Yeah, totally. I think the sitting with is the hardest
Speaker 2: thing for adults and children to do, but it's the
Speaker 2: best thing that you can do.
Speaker 1: Oftentimes we need to take a quick break. But when
Speaker 1: we come back, Alie answers your burning questions about the
Speaker 1: unwetding and her writing process, and we're back.
Speaker 2: All right, Allie, are we ready to get to some
Speaker 2: listener questions?
Speaker 3: Yes, yeah, that would be great.
Speaker 2: Okay, First up, we have a question about the setting
Speaker 2: of the book from Karen.
Speaker 3: Hi, Allie, this is Karen from New Jersey.
Speaker 6: I'm a big thriller fan, so I picked the book
Speaker 6: copy right away and I'm loving it. It is so
Speaker 6: so good I can hardly put it down. I love
Speaker 6: that the book was set in Big sur It feels
Speaker 6: like you have a big personal connection to this location.
Speaker 6: How do you choose the settings for your stories and
Speaker 6: how much research goes into that detail.
Speaker 4: Oh, thank you, Karen. I'm so glad you're liking the book.
Speaker 4: And you're right, Big Sir is a special place for me.
Speaker 4: It's a place that I first discovered with friends, and
Speaker 4: so it's been a place I could return to without
Speaker 4: sort of any residual memories or sadness other than having
Speaker 4: been there with friends, which feels really great. And I
Speaker 4: chose that setting because this is a locked room mystery
Speaker 4: or a locked resort mystery.
Speaker 3: There's been a mud.
Speaker 4: Slide and the characters can't get out, and so the
Speaker 4: main character is kind of called upon to solve this
Speaker 4: murder mystery, and the absence of any real authority figures
Speaker 4: and biggsur has that happened all the time where there's
Speaker 4: mud slides, people do get helicoptered out of their luxury resorts,
Speaker 4: and so it didn't feel like stretching things too much
Speaker 4: to have that happen choosing that setting. I also love
Speaker 4: settings where the natural world sort of bumps up against
Speaker 4: man's desire for a high thread count, right like where
Speaker 4: we've got this edge of the world's setting, but also
Speaker 4: people trying to have luxury.
Speaker 3: At the end of the world.
Speaker 4: I think it's just a very interesting place that we're in,
Speaker 4: us human beings, where where we're trying to.
Speaker 3: Push that limit a little bit.
Speaker 4: And one of the other reasons is it's so beautiful
Speaker 4: and it's so dangerous, and that felt like a great
Speaker 4: place to have a murder.
Speaker 1: Okay, I really like this. Next question, we're getting into
Speaker 1: a little more detail on Ali's pivots.
Speaker 7: Hey, Ali, I'm Alicia from North Carolina and I consider
Speaker 7: myself a super reader. I average about one hundred and
Speaker 7: seventy five to two hundred books per year. I'm a professor,
Speaker 7: so I use the young adult books to help me
Speaker 7: stay connected and engage with the students that I teach.
Speaker 7: Of course, I loved your Match series and I was
Speaker 7: very excited when I saw that you now have written
Speaker 7: a adult a fiction and mystery book. And I fell
Speaker 7: in love with the unwedding. You did such a great.
Speaker 1: Job with Ellery.
Speaker 7: I was able to connect with her as a woman
Speaker 7: in a middle age and things don't go as you plan.
Speaker 7: So this leads to my question, was it struggle for
Speaker 7: you to switch to the adult fiction and which genre
Speaker 7: is harder for you to write. I'll look forward to
Speaker 7: your response.
Speaker 4: Thank you, Alicia, that's a very fun question, and thank
Speaker 4: you for the kind words about matched. It wasn't a struggle,
Speaker 4: and it totally was. So it wasn't a struggle in that,
Speaker 4: as I alluded to earlier, I come to the book
Speaker 4: from the character standpoint, so that didn't feel different. It
Speaker 4: felt like, oh, here I am again with a character
Speaker 4: that I want to get to know better and that
Speaker 4: I want to explore a plot with. So that felt
Speaker 4: very similar and not scary. But then it did feel different.
Speaker 4: It felt different because I was talking about different things.
Speaker 4: You know, kids go through hard stuff and they have
Speaker 4: the full realm of human experience pretty early, love and
Speaker 4: jealousy and hard things happening and all the big feelings.
Speaker 3: But when we've lived longer.
Speaker 4: We've had maybe more of a variety of those, and
Speaker 4: so I could talk about divorce and disappointment and long
Speaker 4: marriages and.
Speaker 3: Just a different sort of toolbox.
Speaker 4: But then that felt a little scary to try to
Speaker 4: do right by all of that. And then, of course
Speaker 4: I was totally intimidated to write a murder mystery because
Speaker 4: I'm such a big fan of the genre. I've been
Speaker 4: reading them since I was a child, and I thought.
Speaker 3: Oh, this is hard to do.
Speaker 4: Well, I really want to take this seriously and make
Speaker 4: sure that we care about the characters and their motivations
Speaker 4: and so the mystery makes sense. And so that was
Speaker 4: something I took very much to heart and was new
Speaker 4: for me.
Speaker 2: Yeah, all right, We've got one final question from Josie.
Speaker 2: She wants an inside scoop on your writing approach. Hi, Allie,
Speaker 2: I'm Josie.
Speaker 5: I started reading your matched books and he got me
Speaker 5: to learn about the YA genre, and now I'm trying
Speaker 5: to become a writer. And I noticed that with your writing,
Speaker 5: I become immersed into the world and I just feel
Speaker 5: like I'm a part of the world. How do you
Speaker 5: write those type of scenes? Like what is your technique?
Speaker 5: How do you get it to become that detailed and
Speaker 5: that easy need to read?
Speaker 4: Joseie, that's a great question, and I'm so excited that
Speaker 4: you're going to be a writer. I can't wait to
Speaker 4: read what you've written. I think with writing descriptions sometimes
Speaker 4: it comes to me pretty immediately. And maybe you've had
Speaker 4: this experience too, where you sit down and it just
Speaker 4: it flows. It feels lush, and it feels easy to describe,
Speaker 4: and it feels like it's just flowing. And those are magical,
Speaker 4: magical writing moments, and I definitely have those, and sometimes
Speaker 4: those are pretty pretty automatic, and then other times it
Speaker 4: is just like pulling teeth. And so what I've learned
Speaker 4: to do is I scaffold for later. And what I'll
Speaker 4: do is I'll think I'm trying to write this scene.
Speaker 4: I can picture it in my mind, but it's not
Speaker 4: coming out on paper, and I'll just put the bare
Speaker 4: structure of it there. She's in a forest. There's a smell,
Speaker 4: this is happening. The trees are here. Just all the
Speaker 4: little details that I can, even if they're not coming
Speaker 4: to life, like there's juniper berries on the ground, the
Speaker 4: sky is pink, it is seventy five degrees.
Speaker 3: And so I'll just try to put.
Speaker 4: In every little bit of framework that I can, and
Speaker 4: then sometime later, often it happens after I've gone on
Speaker 4: a hike or a run, or I've been outside for
Speaker 4: even five minutes, I'll go back and flesh out that framework.
Speaker 4: I'll feel like, ooh, I have a little peeing of inspiration.
Speaker 4: I can go back and write that setting now, So
Speaker 4: that would be my most concrete advice, But it sounds
Speaker 4: like you're doing pretty great already. You're already thinking about
Speaker 4: the right things.
Speaker 2: I'm always so impressed by the questions that we get
Speaker 2: from our bright Side.
Speaker 3: Oh my gosh, yeah, those were great.
Speaker 1: Also, can we talk about the super reader, Alicia? One
Speaker 1: hundred and seventy five to two hundred books a year. Incredible,
Speaker 1: so impressive. That is amazing, incredible, Alie, thank you so much.
Speaker 3: Oh, thank you both for having me. It's been such
Speaker 3: a delight.
Speaker 4: I've been listening to the podcast, and like so many
Speaker 4: of your listeners, I already felt like you were my friends.
Speaker 4: You guys are wonderful and I love the community.
Speaker 2: That's an honor for us to hear that. Thank you.
Speaker 1: You were a bestie before, but you're an official bestie now, Ali,
Speaker 1: thank you for that.
Speaker 3: Oh, thank you.
Speaker 2: Thanks so much to our bright Side besties Karen, Josie
Speaker 2: and Alicia for sending in their questions. Ali Condy is
Speaker 2: the author of The Unweedding, which is Reese's Book Club's
Speaker 2: June selection. So go pick up a copy. It's available
Speaker 2: now wherever you get your books.
Speaker 1: We're talking with the summerya pick from Reese's book Club. Next.
Speaker 1: Author Alexin Ferrell Falmuth will be with us later this month,
Speaker 1: so send your questions to Hello at the brightside dot com.
Speaker 1: Listen and follow the bright Side on the iHeartRadio app,
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Simone Boye.
Speaker 2: You can find me at Simone Voice on Instagram and TikTok.
Speaker 1: Danielle Robe on Instagram and TikTok. That's ro Ba.
Speaker 2: Y see you tomorrow, folks. Keep looking on the bright side.