Speaker 1: Hello Sunshine, Hey, besties. Today on the bright Side, New
Speaker 1: York Times bestselling author Rainbow Rawl joins us for this
Speaker 1: month's edition of shelf Life. She's been called the best
Speaker 1: thing to happen to young adult literature, and she's here
Speaker 1: to share how music inspired her new book, Slow Dance,
Speaker 1: plus the importance of storytelling now that her early work
Speaker 1: is the subject of controversy. We'll get into that and
Speaker 1: so much more. It's Tuesday, August twenty seventh. I'm Simone Boyce.
Speaker 2: I'm Danielle Robe and this is the bright Side from
Speaker 2: Hello Sunshine, a daily show where we come together to
Speaker 2: share women's stories, to laugh, learn and.
Speaker 3: Brighten your day.
Speaker 1: Okay, Danielle, Is there a specific soundtrack, album or song
Speaker 1: that just really lights you up creatively gets the juices flowing?
Speaker 3: Okay? Creatively?
Speaker 2: No, Because when I'm creative, I can't hear music.
Speaker 3: I need silence. I have to be in my thoughts.
Speaker 3: I can't even hear other people's voices.
Speaker 4: Not even in instrumental music.
Speaker 2: M mmm. I just like complete silence. But I have
Speaker 2: soundtracks to my life. You're gonna laugh. The first one
Speaker 2: is Lauren Hill Love. I think that was my first
Speaker 2: album ever, Oh.
Speaker 3: Such a good first album.
Speaker 2: I love that I flew to Toronto to see her
Speaker 2: for one night because I missed the LA concert and
Speaker 2: I was like, I'm not missing this live.
Speaker 3: I don't know, but the soundtrack incredible Pink Misunderstood.
Speaker 4: Mm hm.
Speaker 2: I played that over and over and over again when
Speaker 2: I was a kid and my mom took me to
Speaker 2: see the concert, and I remember thinking, like, this is
Speaker 2: what a woman is like. It was just like, oh
Speaker 2: my god, she was so strong and amazing. And this
Speaker 2: is kind of funny, but Broadway Broadway is a soundtrack
Speaker 2: to my life, Like all the shows remind me of
Speaker 2: my childhood, and my mom would take me to these
Speaker 2: plays and I just have such great memories of that.
Speaker 3: They make me smile, like which shows for you?
Speaker 2: We saw so many like Sweet Charity, Guys and Dolls,
Speaker 2: Fiddler on the Roof, Lion King, like I literally saw everything,
Speaker 2: and I saw Donnie Osmond was my first real I
Speaker 2: always say that John Stainless was my first crush, but
Speaker 2: the realty is that Donnie Osmond was my first crush.
Speaker 2: And I would beg her to see Joseph and the
Speaker 2: Technicolor dream Coat.
Speaker 4: Because of him. That's amazing.
Speaker 3: How about you save me from this embarrassment.
Speaker 1: You know, I think it's interesting that you brought up
Speaker 1: your youth and the soundtracks that you still listen to
Speaker 1: as a kid, because to this day, those are still
Speaker 1: the songs that generate the most emotion, passion, heart within me.
Speaker 1: So I think about the soundtrack to The Parent Trap,
Speaker 1: that movie I loved so much, and I just takes
Speaker 1: me back to watching that film with my friends and
Speaker 1: all the inside jokes that we had from that movie.
Speaker 1: I also would agree Broadway shows Rent is like a
Speaker 1: soundtrack to my high school five hundred and twenty five thousand,
Speaker 1: six hundred minutes we all saying that at my friend
Speaker 1: Erica's house growing up. It's how I learned math. Yes,
Speaker 1: that's really where it all started. And then it it
Speaker 1: evolves and it changes, you know, Like lately, I've really
Speaker 1: loved this song by The War on Drugs called I
Speaker 1: Don't Live Here Anymore, and it just I don't know,
Speaker 1: this is going to sound so corny, but I don't
Speaker 1: know how else to explain it.
Speaker 4: It just has main character energy.
Speaker 1: It's such an energizing song that just makes you feel
Speaker 1: really empowered and like you're you're the star of your
Speaker 1: own movie.
Speaker 4: You know what's.
Speaker 2: Interesting you say that is I always find like when
Speaker 2: I date different people, they bring new music into my life.
Speaker 2: And like, I had never listened to gospel music before,
Speaker 2: and I dated someone who loved gospel, and now every
Speaker 2: Sunday here I am listening to gospel and it puts
Speaker 2: me in such a peaceful place.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's really inspiring music. Really, it can change our
Speaker 1: mood so quickly, change mood, change your life, our guest today.
Speaker 1: She also uses music as a source of inspiration. Rainbow
Speaker 1: Rowl is an award winning author who incorporates music into
Speaker 1: a writing process by creating specific playlists for each of
Speaker 1: her characters. I love this so much because I love
Speaker 1: creating a specific playlist for cities that.
Speaker 3: I really do and then I walk around and listen
Speaker 3: to them. You have a Paris playlist, a London playlist.
Speaker 1: Well, you might recognize her as the author of the
Speaker 1: number one New York Times bestseller eleanor in Park. It's
Speaker 1: a love story about two Starcross misfits, and she made
Speaker 1: separate playlists with an A side and a B for
Speaker 1: both of those characters.
Speaker 3: I really loved Eleanor in Park.
Speaker 2: That was the first Rainbow Rawl book that I read,
Speaker 2: and I read it so many years ago. I actually
Speaker 2: didn't know it was Rainbow Rawl, like I was just
Speaker 2: reading a book. And so now we get to interview her.
Speaker 2: It's a pretty cool moment for me. But she's such
Speaker 2: an accomplished author. Eleanor in Park was her second novel
Speaker 2: after Attachments, and some of her other bestsellers include Fangirl
Speaker 2: and carry On. So these and some of her other
Speaker 2: books became canon for young LGBTQ readers.
Speaker 3: And here's something to note.
Speaker 2: In recent years, Eleanor in Park has actually been the
Speaker 2: subject of controversy. It's been banned in some school districts.
Speaker 2: It's part of that larger book band that's been sweeping
Speaker 2: the country. What's pretty upsetting to me is that a
Speaker 2: lot of those books that are banned center around LGBTQ
Speaker 2: characters and people of color. So I definitely want to
Speaker 2: ask her about that.
Speaker 1: I can't wait to hear what she says about that.
Speaker 1: And she's clearly not letting any hater solower down. Just
Speaker 1: this summer, she released Slow Dance, which she considers like
Speaker 1: a sister book or a companion piece to Eleanor in Park,
Speaker 1: and it follows the love story of a boy and
Speaker 1: a girl, Shiloh and Carrie, who, as teenagers, promise each
Speaker 1: other that their friendship will never change. Everyone thought they'd
Speaker 1: end up together too, but as the years go by,
Speaker 1: things inevitably change, and Shiloh and Carrie go fourteen years
Speaker 1: without speaking, and now, as adults, the two reconnect and
Speaker 1: try to find their way back to where it all began.
Speaker 1: I really enjoyed this one, and there's of course a
Speaker 1: playlist to go along with the in true Rainbow Rale fashion,
Speaker 1: which we'll be linking in our show notes.
Speaker 2: All right, let's bring her in, The Woman, the Myth,
Speaker 2: the Legend, Rainbow.
Speaker 3: Oh Raoul, Welcome to the bright Side.
Speaker 4: Thank you, Thank you so much, Rainbow.
Speaker 2: Before we really get into things, I have to tell
Speaker 2: you what a big fan I am of yours. We
Speaker 2: get to have a lot of conversations with authors on
Speaker 2: this show, and I don't think I've ever been so
Speaker 2: excited for one.
Speaker 4: Oh, I love your work. Oh, thank you Rainbow.
Speaker 1: We were just chatting about your connection to music, and
Speaker 1: I think that's something that really defines you and distinguishes
Speaker 1: you as an author. And your latest book is called
Speaker 1: slow Dance.
Speaker 4: That's right. Can you share the significance behind that title?
Speaker 4: How did you land on it? Oh?
Speaker 5: That's interesting because sometimes I have the title from the
Speaker 5: very beginning, and then I get very jealous and guarded
Speaker 5: of the title because I feel like someone else is
Speaker 5: going to steal the title before my book is done.
Speaker 4: This time, I did not.
Speaker 5: I was just calling it now and then because the
Speaker 5: book is sort of split into things that are happening
Speaker 5: in the now and things that were happening then. And
Speaker 5: no one liked that title. Literally, no one liked it,
Speaker 5: and so I had to come up with something. And
Speaker 5: it's so difficult to come up with a relationship be
Speaker 5: title because there are infinite relationship be books. It's interesting
Speaker 5: when you come up with the title, you're not actually
Speaker 5: looking for a title that no one has had before.
Speaker 5: Titles can be repeated, but you wouldn't want to pick
Speaker 5: a title that like, because you know Twilight and everyone knows.
Speaker 5: So I'm surprised that there were not really very many
Speaker 5: books just called slow Dance. And I thought it worked
Speaker 5: great because well, first of all, there's literally slow dancing
Speaker 5: in this book. It's not a lie it's not a
Speaker 5: red hearing. And also it really describes who they are
Speaker 5: and what the path their relationship takes. It's a slow
Speaker 5: burn for them.
Speaker 2: So the idea of music is interesting to me with
Speaker 2: your work because you incorporate it into your stories and
Speaker 2: you've said that music becomes the soundtrack to your books.
Speaker 2: But do you listen to music as you write them
Speaker 2: as well?
Speaker 5: I do, And I now know that that's kind of
Speaker 5: unusual that many writers can't listen to anything with lyrics
Speaker 5: as they're writing because the lyrics get in their heads.
Speaker 5: I've always been able to do it, and part of
Speaker 5: it is that I don't hear the lyrics, So I
Speaker 5: can listen to a song a thousand times and not
Speaker 5: really know the words because I just I'm just hearing
Speaker 5: kind of the vibe of it.
Speaker 4: I don't clock the lyrics, So yeah.
Speaker 5: I do. I try to find a song always that
Speaker 5: fits the feeling of a scene, and then it becomes
Speaker 5: an emotional key for me because you cannot stay in
Speaker 5: the scene the way that you want to, especially if
Speaker 5: you're writing something difficult. So I would really use music
Speaker 5: as like, I'm always going to listen to this song
Speaker 5: when I write a certain scene and would help me
Speaker 5: kind of fast track into that emotion.
Speaker 1: Again, the playlist that you crafted for your latest book
Speaker 1: has everything from Joni Mitchell and You Too to Journey
Speaker 1: and Outcast.
Speaker 4: I mean, you are running the gamut. I love your range.
Speaker 1: So how do you incorporate a song into a scene
Speaker 1: or a character?
Speaker 4: Specifically?
Speaker 1: What comes to mind is when Shiloh and Carrie are
Speaker 1: dancing to Hey y'all.
Speaker 5: So usually there's not music already playing in a scene.
Speaker 5: In that case, I'm trying to think of the song
Speaker 5: that would play in the soundtrack of my head as
Speaker 5: I'm writing this movie, right, Yeah, But then in this book,
Speaker 5: there's a lot of times when music is playing, and
Speaker 5: so it's fun to think about what song is playing
Speaker 5: at that moment, at that date, and what it's going
Speaker 5: to be to the characters, you know, what meaning will
Speaker 5: to them. So in that scene, Hey y'all really doesn't
Speaker 5: fit where they are. They're having this very tense emotional
Speaker 5: moment and they're slow dancing, and Shiloh doesn't even realize
Speaker 5: they're slow dancing to a very fast song. So does
Speaker 5: this seem to be like the perfect song to show
Speaker 5: the dissonance she was feeling like if you can't hear heya,
Speaker 5: you are really in your own head.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So I do a lot of work with an
Speaker 2: organization called Family Equality, and their mission is to advance
Speaker 2: equality for LGBTQ plus families, And just this past weekend
Speaker 2: I did a shoot with them for one of the
Speaker 2: coolest things I'd ever seen. It's called the Rainbow Book Bus.
Speaker 2: So the Rainbow Book Bus, just to describe it, is
Speaker 2: literally a school bus painted all rainbow with artwork by
Speaker 2: LGBTQ artists like murals, and it's filled with bann books
Speaker 2: from LGBTQ plus stories characters. And these two guys drive
Speaker 2: around the country and stop in cities where these books
Speaker 2: have been banned. So I get on the bus and
Speaker 2: it's covered in rainbow raul books.
Speaker 4: My books are banned in a lot of places.
Speaker 3: Well, I was going to say you're a rock star
Speaker 3: on the bus. I was actually going to say, like,
Speaker 3: you are the Oprah of the Rainbow Book Bus.
Speaker 4: That's awesome.
Speaker 2: It was so cool, and I knew I was about
Speaker 2: to interview you, so I was so excited. But your
Speaker 2: stories means so much to people. What does it mean
Speaker 2: to you to create a world that people can really
Speaker 2: see themselves in.
Speaker 5: When you're writing, I think you I have to shut
Speaker 5: out the world, and I try to make the story
Speaker 5: as specific as possible, because I think that the stories
Speaker 5: that connect are not the stories where you say, I
Speaker 5: want as many people as possible to relate to this
Speaker 5: and understand it. And it's more like, make the story
Speaker 5: so specific, specific, specific, specific, that the characters feel real.
Speaker 5: And then I think those specific stories are actually the
Speaker 5: stories that click hard with people. So I'm really closing
Speaker 5: people out as I'm writing, and I'm trying not to
Speaker 5: think of what people will say so that I can
Speaker 5: write something that feels real and authentic and true. And
Speaker 5: then I push it out and hope and I just hope.
Speaker 5: And for me, the biggest compliment is when someone really
Speaker 5: picks up what I'm putting down, when they get it,
Speaker 5: not even that they like it, but when I can
Speaker 5: just tell they get it by the way they're speaking
Speaker 5: to me, that it's harmonizing with them, it's resonating. That
Speaker 5: is the best feeling. It feels like I accomplished something.
Speaker 2: You mentioned that a lot of your books are banned
Speaker 2: in certain places. They are so I read the other
Speaker 2: day that the American Library Association is tracking a record
Speaker 2: number of book bands across the country. Most are targeted
Speaker 2: at people of color and the LGBTQ plus community. And
Speaker 2: part of the reason I love books so much is
Speaker 2: I was able to see myself in stories when I
Speaker 2: was at my lowest or my highest point, and I
Speaker 2: think these book bands strip that from people in so
Speaker 2: many ways. There were thirty three hundred books banned last year.
Speaker 2: What are the consequences of book banning?
Speaker 5: What I think the worst part is is that people
Speaker 5: need the freedom to think and to feel, and so
Speaker 5: when you're restricting what people can read, you're really trying
Speaker 5: to restrict what they can think, and you're also kind
Speaker 5: of gaslighting them about what reality is. And I don't
Speaker 5: think that my books are appropriate for every kid. Eleanor
Speaker 5: in Park is my most banned book. I would not
Speaker 5: hand my book to a twelve year old. But I
Speaker 5: think when you have kids who are sixteen seventeen, the
Speaker 5: same age as of the characters, they're experiencing the things
Speaker 5: that the characters are and they want to process it,
Speaker 5: they want to think about it, they want to have
Speaker 5: feelings about it, or they're watching other people experience these things.
Speaker 5: And I think if you're like, you can't even read
Speaker 5: a book about that, it's almost like you're telling them
Speaker 5: that their reality is not allowed to exist, that they're
Speaker 5: only allowed to be reflected in this false way and
Speaker 5: they're not allowed to process what's actually happening to them.
Speaker 5: The reason Elimore Park gets banned is because of her
Speaker 5: stepfather is harassing her. And I think when Eleanor in
Speaker 5: Park gets banned, you're really telling girls like Eleanor what's
Speaker 5: happening to you is too ugly for you to even
Speaker 5: speak about. It's too ugly for anyone else to empathize with.
Speaker 5: Your story is just too foul, too ugly, too hard.
Speaker 5: And I think at sixteen, at fourteen, at fifteen, at seventeen,
Speaker 5: at eighteen, you need to start being able to process
Speaker 5: and think and talk about things. You might not be
Speaker 5: in a position where you can talk to your parents
Speaker 5: or even a teacher about it. So to be told
Speaker 5: that you can't even read about it, yeah, I feel
Speaker 5: like it's restricting the way that people think.
Speaker 2: How did you react when you found out that your
Speaker 2: book was banned?
Speaker 5: Yeah, the first time, I was really devastated, and everybody
Speaker 5: wanted to talk to me about it, and they wanted me.
Speaker 5: I felt like people wanted me to have this sort
Speaker 5: of fighting spirit and to be proud a little bit,
Speaker 5: like people kept saying it was a badge of honor,
Speaker 5: and I felt really horrified and I felt I think
Speaker 5: I said earlier that the biggest compliment is to feel understood,
Speaker 5: and so the very worst thing that can happen is
Speaker 5: to feel like people don't understand what you're doing. And
Speaker 5: so to see my words and to see Eleanor's story
Speaker 5: being called pornography, oh, I felt really deeply, deeply upset
Speaker 5: by it. And it took, you know, maybe a year
Speaker 5: to get to the point where I felt like I
Speaker 5: could talk about it and without getting very defensive and
Speaker 5: personally feeling attacked. And even now sometimes last year, Eleanor
Speaker 5: in Park was read at in a Canadian legislature somewhere
Speaker 5: and someone sent me the clip and they were reading
Speaker 5: out of context to this scene, and I just went
Speaker 5: right back to how I felt in twenty fourteen.
Speaker 4: I just felt so under attack.
Speaker 5: And to hear my words being used against librarians, you know,
Speaker 5: that's the worst too. It's like the librarians who recommend
Speaker 5: my books are being called out for recommending them and
Speaker 5: just to see myself being twisted that way. Oh, it
Speaker 5: was just awful and I don't feel like maybe I'll
Speaker 5: ever really get over it, and I think it makes
Speaker 5: me not a good warrior for it. You know, you
Speaker 5: want to be someone out fighting for books and fighting
Speaker 5: for banned books, and I don't feel like I can
Speaker 5: always be that person because I get too much like
Speaker 5: I'm under attack. So then, what do you think is
Speaker 5: the best way to fight back? We all have different
Speaker 5: roles to play. I think the people in the front
Speaker 5: line are the librarians, and I find them to be
Speaker 5: so courageous, and you wouldn't think that a librarian should
Speaker 5: be fighting for their job by recommending a book. I
Speaker 5: feel like as parents, it's important to be active and
Speaker 5: to talk and to be part of what's happening at
Speaker 5: our schools. For authors, I think maybe the best way
Speaker 5: to fight back is to continue to write your stories
Speaker 5: and not to hear those voices telling you not to.
Speaker 5: Because you don't want your life to be hard. You
Speaker 5: want to feel like your books are going to be
Speaker 5: in libraries. It's very easy to hear those people in
Speaker 5: your head and think, oh, well, I'll just leave that out,
Speaker 5: or it'd be easier if this character didn't make this choice,
Speaker 5: ord be easier if this didn't happen. So one of
Speaker 5: the things I feel like I need to do is
Speaker 5: just keep writing things that feel true to me.
Speaker 1: We need to take a quick break, but we'll be
Speaker 1: right back with more from New York Times best selling
Speaker 1: author Rainbow Rowl. And we're back with Rainbow Rowl.
Speaker 2: Rainbow, just like so many of your characters who take
Speaker 2: this hero's journey, I read that you took one yourself.
Speaker 2: You were diagnosed with a thyroid disorder and it made
Speaker 2: you question whether you'd be able to ever write again,
Speaker 2: And in an pointerview, you said it made you unable
Speaker 2: to trust your brain again. I'm wondering what that was
Speaker 2: like and how you think about it now.
Speaker 5: I had hyper parathyroids disorder, So the parathybroid kind of
Speaker 5: sits next to the thyroid, and it's your monitor for calcium,
Speaker 5: So if you need calcium, it sends it into your blood.
Speaker 5: And basically my lever was stuck on go go go,
Speaker 5: So I was just being flooded with calcium all the time,
Speaker 5: and it was starting to build up all over my
Speaker 5: body and it was being robbed of my bones, so
Speaker 5: the tumor was sending it out of my bones into
Speaker 5: my body and it was kind of clogging everything up.
Speaker 5: I was getting weird deposits, my bones were breaking and
Speaker 5: not healing. And then the mental thing that was happening
Speaker 5: is I was just losing. Like I would have a
Speaker 5: conversation with someone and then the next time I saw them,
Speaker 5: I'd have the exact same conversation and I wouldn't realize
Speaker 5: I was repeating myself and they would. So it was
Speaker 5: just sort of felt like holes were opening up in
Speaker 5: my brain and no one could really tell me what
Speaker 5: was wrong, and so I just started to be very
Speaker 5: quiet about it. And I did feel that maybe I
Speaker 5: couldn't write a novel again. I was just physically I
Speaker 5: had very little samina. Mentally, I felt like I couldn't
Speaker 5: hold a novel necessarily in my brain. It's a lot
Speaker 5: to hold an entire novel. And it was strange because
Speaker 5: your brain is who you are.
Speaker 2: Well, the good news is that you were able to
Speaker 2: fully recover.
Speaker 3: How did that come about?
Speaker 2: You know?
Speaker 5: It was a detective nurse practitioner who figured out what
Speaker 5: was wrong with me.
Speaker 4: I'm a fat person.
Speaker 5: And I think it was very easy to look at
Speaker 5: the things that were going wrong with me and assume
Speaker 5: that there must be like, you know, we'll change your diet,
Speaker 5: exercise more arrest. Oh, you must be under stress. So
Speaker 5: it was this nurse practitioner who noticed that my calcium
Speaker 5: was persistently high and had me get it checked. And
Speaker 5: then this tumor was discovered. And when you have a
Speaker 5: tumor on your parathyroid and it's removed, you bounce back
Speaker 5: almost immediately. And you have a couple of days of
Speaker 5: going through withdrawal because your body is used to heavy,
Speaker 5: heavy calcium. You feel like you're you're actually shaking because
Speaker 5: you think you need calcium and you don't. But then
Speaker 5: it was just like, within a month, the bones that
Speaker 5: had been fracturing were healing again and I wasn't in pain,
Speaker 5: and I felt almost like lights were going on in
Speaker 5: my head just like And I don't really understand how
Speaker 5: you're able to bounce back from it, but I did
Speaker 5: feel like I could write again, I could think again.
Speaker 5: I'd always had a brain that could hold a lot.
Speaker 5: I was lucky, yeah, and it was my strength right,
Speaker 5: And I did feel like I was just feeling stronger
Speaker 5: and stronger and stronger to where I could write a
Speaker 5: complicated novel again, and I could work on four different
Speaker 5: things at once, and I didn't feel like I necessarily
Speaker 5: had to check my notes as much.
Speaker 4: I felt like this return to strength and air and
Speaker 4: oxygen and vision.
Speaker 1: I read that during that same period you thought that
Speaker 1: perhaps your best work was behind you.
Speaker 4: Definitely.
Speaker 1: Now that Slow Dance has been released and with such
Speaker 1: a warm reception, what does this book symbolize for you?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 5: I did feel that way. I felt that way conclusively,
Speaker 5: Like it wasn't just like I suspected it. I felt
Speaker 5: pretty sure of it. I would look back on a
Speaker 5: book like Eleanor and Park and think, I don't think
Speaker 5: I'm ever gonna have that. Do you ever feel like
Speaker 5: you don't have dexterity in your fingers, maybe out your cold,
Speaker 5: and you're trying to do something you normally do and
Speaker 5: it's like, oh, my fingers aren't quite working the way
Speaker 5: they did. I felt like I'd lost my dexterity for
Speaker 5: language and for describing things, and that I could still
Speaker 5: be a pretty good writer, but maybe I would never
Speaker 5: be able to handle characters with the same deafness that
Speaker 5: I had in the past. Honestly, I felt pretty good
Speaker 5: about it.
Speaker 4: Anyway.
Speaker 5: The Wind Blows my book, which came out a few
Speaker 5: years ago after my surgery, I did feel really good.
Speaker 4: About that book.
Speaker 5: But I think this book I felt very much in
Speaker 5: my full power. I even felt like I couldn't have
Speaker 5: written this book before, if that makes sense, Like maybe
Speaker 5: in some ways I'd gotten more powerful or more deft,
Speaker 5: or that I had a better depth of understanding of
Speaker 5: certain things. And I felt when I was writing this
Speaker 5: book really full throated, like the connection between my lungs
Speaker 5: and my brain and my voice and my hands were
Speaker 5: just if I were speaking this book, it would have
Speaker 5: been in a really loud, clear voice that everyone could understand.
Speaker 5: I felt like this power was rushing through me. That's
Speaker 5: not to say that it's like the best book, but
Speaker 5: I did feel like for me, it was as good
Speaker 5: as anything I'd written, and I would be just as
Speaker 5: proud of it to hand it to anyone.
Speaker 2: I'm going to switch up the energy and brag about
Speaker 2: you for a second, so you know. I'm a big
Speaker 2: Rainbow Rawul fan, and I saw a Vox article with
Speaker 2: this headline, Rainbow Raoul is the best thing to happen
Speaker 2: to young adult literature in ages and she signals the future.
Speaker 4: Wow, I don't recall that well.
Speaker 2: I think that you've in many ways redefined the genre
Speaker 2: of YA. But what I find really interesting is that
Speaker 2: you didn't set out to write YA novels.
Speaker 5: I did not know I was writing adult and I
Speaker 5: thought that eleanor in Park was an adult novel. It
Speaker 5: was published as an adult novel in the UK before the.
Speaker 2: US, and so how did it turn into this genre
Speaker 2: that is so synonymous with you?
Speaker 4: Right?
Speaker 5: I had a very difficult time selling Eleanor in Park
Speaker 5: in the US. My published Sugar who published Attachments, passed
Speaker 5: on it and it was delayed, and for a while
Speaker 5: it looked like is it even going to come out?
Speaker 5: And then so the editor who bought it in the US,
Speaker 5: her name is Sarah Goodman. It was her idea, and
Speaker 5: it was partially because of the weltnar Stars YA was
Speaker 5: shifting a little bit and she had this idea of
Speaker 5: you know, maybe this could be a YA book. And
Speaker 5: it's funny now, but the question then was, well, it's
Speaker 5: set in nineteen eighty six and we're not sure that
Speaker 5: teens will be able to understand what's happening and will
Speaker 5: relate to it, and so maybe it should be adult
Speaker 5: because of that, because of the nineteen eighty six and
Speaker 5: I remember thinking, like, a teenager can read Little Women
Speaker 5: and not be like where are the cars?
Speaker 4: Why are they lighting candles?
Speaker 5: Like the idea that a teenager would read a book
Speaker 5: set nineteen eighty six and be so confused or so
Speaker 5: put off by it. I knew that was not going
Speaker 5: to be an issue, but I hadn't thought of it
Speaker 5: as a teen book book. Of course, I was like, sure, whatever,
Speaker 5: you know, let's try it.
Speaker 3: And it was a huge success.
Speaker 4: It was.
Speaker 5: I think it was much more successful as a white
Speaker 5: book than it would ever have been if had it
Speaker 5: been published adult.
Speaker 1: Well, your latest book is your first adult novel in
Speaker 1: ten years, and I know that you bring a bit
Speaker 1: of your own story into every book that you write.
Speaker 1: So how is Slow Dance reflective of your own relationships
Speaker 1: both as an adult and as a teenager. I was
Speaker 1: thinking about this this morning. You know, in the Bible,
Speaker 1: God takes Adam's rib to make Eve. That's a little
Speaker 1: bit what I do.
Speaker 5: I try to find some part of me that I
Speaker 5: can take and build a character around and sometimes it's
Speaker 5: a bigger part than others, and definitely with Slow Dance,
Speaker 5: I was thinking about my own relationship with my husband.
Speaker 5: I met my husband when he was eleven years old.
Speaker 5: I was almost thirteen. We were in middle school, and
Speaker 5: we were just friends pretty much from middle school on
Speaker 5: all the way through high school through college. We didn't
Speaker 5: date until after I graduated from college. And I had
Speaker 5: been thinking because I'd hung out with my husband and
Speaker 5: a friend from high school, Paul, who was an artist now,
Speaker 5: and we hadn't hung out all together for a long time,
Speaker 5: and we had this weekend where we hung out, and
Speaker 5: I realized that my husband, when he was around Paul,
Speaker 5: was more like who he had been in high school,
Speaker 5: and that it had totally changed our dynamics. So when
Speaker 5: the three of us were hanging out together just it
Speaker 5: was like I got a time machine where I get
Speaker 5: to go back and experience him as my friend again,
Speaker 5: not my husband.
Speaker 4: I felt like a real gift.
Speaker 5: So that set me thinking about what would have happened
Speaker 5: if we had never started dating. And that's where Kerrie
Speaker 5: and Shilah were born. These two characters who they're so
Speaker 5: close everyone thinks they should be together, but they never
Speaker 5: cross that. They never figure it out. I feel very
Speaker 5: lucky to have eventually figured it out, but what if
Speaker 5: I hadn't, And that's really where that came. So they
Speaker 5: they're definitely parts of them that are my husband and
Speaker 5: me and our friend, but then they become totally different
Speaker 5: characters as I built the world around them.
Speaker 2: We need to take a quick break, but when we
Speaker 2: come back. Author Rainbow Rowel reads an excerpt from her
Speaker 2: latest novel, Slow Dance, and she answers questions from you
Speaker 2: Don't go anywhere. We're back with Rainbow Rowl. Okay, Rainbow,
Speaker 2: I'd love to ask you to read a little from
Speaker 2: Slow Dance for us.
Speaker 5: Shure, We've had such a serious, serious conversation, like about
Speaker 5: really deep stuff, and now we're going to read kind
Speaker 5: of a light section of this point.
Speaker 3: Here's the thing.
Speaker 2: We also talked about how you are a rock star
Speaker 2: on the Rainbow book bus, so we're going to even
Speaker 2: it out true true.
Speaker 5: Oh, I wasn't complaining. I like to have deep conversations. Okay,
Speaker 5: so let me set it up a little bit. So
Speaker 5: Shiloh and Carrie we're best friends in high school. They
Speaker 5: graduated nineteen ninety one, both of them come from really
Speaker 5: poor families and kind of a rough part of town.
Speaker 5: They really were like there for each other in very
Speaker 5: fundamental ways. But they haven't talked in fourteen years, and
Speaker 5: we don't know why they've been invited to this wedding.
Speaker 5: It's their like their third musketeer. Their mutual best friend
Speaker 5: is getting remarried, and Shiloh still lives in Omaha. She
Speaker 5: lives within her mom's house. She's a divorced mom. And
Speaker 5: about Carrie, he's been away in the navy, and Shiloh
Speaker 5: knows she's going to see Carrie, and we know that
Speaker 5: she really wants to, but she's really nervous and she's
Speaker 5: very afraid for him to see her. Like if she could,
Speaker 5: she would just see him without being seen, that would
Speaker 5: be ideal. She's afraid he's going to judge her. So
Speaker 5: they see each other and Carrie asks her to dance,
Speaker 5: And in the past, Shiloh is someone who would never
Speaker 5: say yes to to dancing with anyone, let alone Carrie.
Speaker 5: Shila's like your friend who never hugs you. That's who
Speaker 5: Shiloh is. So they're dancing and it's a little awkward
Speaker 5: because she has a hard time relaxing. They're both headstrong
Speaker 5: and they're kind of both trying to lead this dance. Okay,
Speaker 5: this is Carrie starting the conversation. We're still dancing, right
Speaker 5: if you want to, she said, I want to. He
Speaker 5: stopped them. Here's good by the wall, away from the speaker,
Speaker 5: you know, Shiloh said, we could just be talking comfortably
Speaker 5: at a table.
Speaker 4: We could.
Speaker 5: Carrie said, he didn't like a dancing is better? Why
Speaker 5: because you can talk when you're dancing, but you don't
Speaker 5: have to. Then nobody else can interrupt. Somebody could cut in.
Speaker 5: Nobody's going to cut in. Do you think that nobody
Speaker 5: else wants to dance with me? I think that when
Speaker 5: two people are slow dancing to Hey y'ah, everyone leaves
Speaker 5: them alone. Shiloh frowned. She looked around. Now that you've
Speaker 5: called attention to the song, it's actually hard not to dance.
Speaker 5: Carrie smiled. Oh, yeah, yeah, sort of. He pulled her
Speaker 5: closer and started to sway faster in time with the music.
Speaker 5: Shiloh laughed. Carrie held her tight, moving his shoulders back
Speaker 5: and forth to the beat. Shiloh tried to move her
Speaker 5: shoulders too. She was clumsier than him. She was laughing
Speaker 5: and blushing. This better, Carrie asked. He was grinning with
Speaker 5: his mouth closed, his eyes were light. Shiloh was laughing
Speaker 5: too hard and quietly to answer. Her face fell forward.
Speaker 5: She let him move her hand to the music. She
Speaker 5: rocked back and forth with him and tried to relax
Speaker 5: her neck. Hey yeah turned into grooves in the heart,
Speaker 5: and then to Shiloh's dismay, Marky Mark and the funky bunch.
Speaker 5: Carrie kept them moving. It was easier if Shiloh didn't
Speaker 5: look at him, but she couldn't not look at him.
Speaker 4: Was short.
Speaker 5: She lifted up her chin. He looked like he'd been
Speaker 5: laughing too. Who are you, she asked, I'm a grown man.
Speaker 5: Carrie said like that was an answer. Shiloh laughed some more,
Speaker 5: letting her forehead rest on the far edge of his shoulder.
Speaker 5: She was glad they didn't have to talk, because this
Speaker 5: was a lot to take in, so much more than
Speaker 5: she'd been hoping for tonight, more than just a good
Speaker 5: look at him and a warm conversation, and it wasn't
Speaker 5: over yet. To keep it going, all Shiloh had to
Speaker 5: do was keep her self consciousness at bay. Her self
Speaker 5: consciousness and bone deep desolation. She could be desolate tomorrow,
Speaker 5: and the next day she could table her on wheat.
Speaker 5: Shiloh was getting another hour with Carrie, a bonus hour
Speaker 5: in his arms. Her teenage self could never have predicted
Speaker 5: or even comprehend it how precious this would feel. That
Speaker 5: seventeen year old had a glut of Carrie hours, all
Speaker 5: the Carrie she cared to eat. Carrie was her day in,
Speaker 5: day out, her standard operating procedure. Shiloh hadn't been able
Speaker 5: to conceive of a life without Carrie until That's what
Speaker 5: She had a whole life without him, years and years,
Speaker 5: with no sign of that ever changing. This night was
Speaker 5: an aberration, this dance. Shilah closed her eyes and kept
Speaker 5: her shoulders loose. She kept track of everywhere that Carrie
Speaker 5: was touching her. Thank you so much, Rainbow Oh, thank
Speaker 5: you for asking me. It's fun to read.
Speaker 3: I loved hearing it.
Speaker 1: It's our favorite part of having authors on our show,
Speaker 1: is it Okay?
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's really really cool. Thank you.
Speaker 1: Our second favorite part is when we have some listener questions,
Speaker 1: which we have right now.
Speaker 6: Great.
Speaker 1: Great, We have a question from a listener named Carrie
Speaker 1: from Los Angeles.
Speaker 7: Hi, this is Carrie from Los Angeles. I am such
Speaker 7: a big fan of your work, Rainbow. You are a
Speaker 7: go to author for me. I love how you read
Speaker 7: about the complexities and nuances of all the different kinds
Speaker 7: of relationships people have in their lives. There was quite
Speaker 7: a bit of time between Slow Dance and your last
Speaker 7: adult novel. Was there something specific that sparked the idea
Speaker 7: for this book and Shiloh and Carrie's stories that made
Speaker 7: you think this was the one you wanted to put
Speaker 7: out next, And also, nostalgia plays such a big role
Speaker 7: in the book. Was there perhaps a particular high school
Speaker 7: memory of years that brought on the idea for this book?
Speaker 4: Okay, that's a good question.
Speaker 5: I had gone ten years between writing for adults, writing
Speaker 5: an adult a clearly adult book, and also ten years
Speaker 5: without writing a contemporary book set in the real world.
Speaker 5: I've been writing about magicians and vampires in my Simon
Speaker 5: Snow trilogy. I think part of it is what we
Speaker 5: talked about earlier, that I really slowed down. I took
Speaker 5: four years off from writing novels completely around the time
Speaker 5: of my diagnosis and surgery and before and then part
Speaker 5: of it was I just was very consumed by the
Speaker 5: Simons No Books. I really love those characters, and for
Speaker 5: a while I just kept feeling like the Simon and
Speaker 5: Bass story was not done. And then I needed to
Speaker 5: stay very close to those characters while I was writing them,
Speaker 5: and so I just felt like I was dancing with
Speaker 5: them for so long. And then when I looked up again,
Speaker 5: and it had been ten years, and I'd been writing
Speaker 5: Simon's No Books for ten years. So it wasn't really intentional.
Speaker 5: It's more like my brain just doesn't usually stay in
Speaker 5: one genre, and it doesn't stay with adults, it doesn't
Speaker 5: stay with teen I'm always thinking like in character, and
Speaker 5: it had been a while since I had an adult
Speaker 5: character whose story felt like one I wanted to tell.
Speaker 5: The question about nostalgia. Part of my job is to
Speaker 5: talk to teen readers for these years, and I think
Speaker 5: that has kept me a little bit closer to my
Speaker 5: memories of what it was like to be a teenager.
Speaker 5: You know, if if you never run into any teenagers,
Speaker 5: maybe you can forget what you yourself was like were like
Speaker 5: as a teen. But for me, talking to teenagers brings
Speaker 5: back the sort of person I was, and I was
Speaker 5: just was remembering that I was kind of a pill,
Speaker 5: you know, I was. I'm very strong opinions, I was
Speaker 5: a very binary about everything. I thought that right and
Speaker 5: wrong were very clear things, and that I was really
Speaker 5: dialed into what was right or wrong. So Shilah really
Speaker 5: was born of those memories of myself as a teenager,
Speaker 5: and I kept thinking of like writing a character who
Speaker 5: had to look back on themselves and had to reckon
Speaker 5: with their opinions and with their behavior as a teenager
Speaker 5: with one of their closest friends.
Speaker 2: Up next, we have Alisha, who was curious about how
Speaker 2: you write female characters.
Speaker 6: Hi, this is Alicia from Salt Lake City, and I
Speaker 6: have been a fan of Rainbow's writing going all the
Speaker 6: way back to Attachments, and I think the thing that
Speaker 6: I love the most is the way that Rainbow Your
Speaker 6: characters feel like people you've known your whole life, going
Speaker 6: all the way back to kindergarten, people you went to
Speaker 6: high school with, people you had your first job with.
Speaker 6: And I'd love to know how you write women that
Speaker 6: feel so lived in, feel so seen, feel like people
Speaker 6: that I recognize myself in, people that I recognize my
Speaker 6: friends in, And how you just write people that seem
Speaker 6: so so real.
Speaker 5: That's a really kind question, but also kind of a
Speaker 5: tough question. Human beings are so much more complex than
Speaker 5: fictional characters. You have like a million pieces of you,
Speaker 5: so you kind of have a lot of things you
Speaker 5: can take out and build around, and you can make
Speaker 5: a million characters that are sort of like you, but
Speaker 5: not really, because you know, we're just so much more conflicted.
Speaker 5: A fictional character behaves with consistency, a human being really doesn't.
Speaker 5: So often I'm taking a little bit of me, and
Speaker 5: I'm kind of taking my problem or my thing, and
Speaker 5: I'm giving it to this character to see if they
Speaker 5: can work it out better than I could. But then
Speaker 5: also sometimes I'm thinking of other people in my life,
Speaker 5: and so I would say, like if there's like an
Speaker 5: actual process that I use. I pay a lot of
Speaker 5: attention to people's voices. I was a reporter for many years.
Speaker 5: When you're a reporter, as you both know, you spend
Speaker 5: a lot of time listening to other people talk. It's
Speaker 5: not really your job to talk when you're a newspaper
Speaker 5: columnist or reporter. And so I got very good, I
Speaker 5: think at hearing people's voices and their patterns and the
Speaker 5: sort of things that make a person sound specific. And
Speaker 5: so I think I'm pretty good in my dialogue when
Speaker 5: i'm writing it at being enough inside of the character
Speaker 5: that that person feels like the same person talking. When
Speaker 5: I'm writing a scene with a lot of people talking,
Speaker 5: I want you to be able to tell who's talking,
Speaker 5: even if it doesn't have the tag, Even if it
Speaker 5: doesn't said, he said, she said. Jones said, so, I
Speaker 5: spend a lot of time thinking about dialogue. I spend
Speaker 5: a lot of time reading my books aloud, and I'm
Speaker 5: always asking myself, would so and so say that? Or
Speaker 5: does this sound like it would really happen. I think
Speaker 5: I'm hard on myself and that I want it. I
Speaker 5: want things to feel real. And I don't know why
Speaker 5: I'm so hung up on that because it's fiction, it's
Speaker 5: not the newspaper. But yeah, maybe that's the thing.
Speaker 1: This has been a masterclass in writing novels. I mean,
Speaker 1: what a treat. Thank you so much for joining us today, Rainbow,
Speaker 1: of course, yes, thank you for having me.
Speaker 4: Thank you. It was great to talk to both of you.
Speaker 4: Thank you. Rainbow.
Speaker 1: Raul is the author of Slow Dance, the August pick
Speaker 1: for Reese's Book Club.
Speaker 2: It's available wherever you get your books. That's it for
Speaker 2: today's show. Tomorrow. Author and psychotherapist.
Speaker 3: Catherine Morgan Schaffler's here.
Speaker 2: She's telling us how we can harness our perfectionism as
Speaker 2: a superpower. Listen and follow the bright Side on the
Speaker 2: iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker 4: I'm Simone Boye.
Speaker 1: You can find me at Simone Voice on Instagram and TikTok.
Speaker 2: Danielle Robe on Instagram and TikTok.
Speaker 3: That's ro Bay.
Speaker 4: See you tomorrow, folks.
Speaker 1: Keep looking on the bright side.