Speaker 1: Hey, Bessie's Hello Sunshine. Today on the bright side, it's
Speaker 1: an all new shelf life. We're talking ambition and going
Speaker 1: after your big dreams with author Kate Fagan. Her debut novel,
Speaker 1: The Three Lives of KK, is the January pick for
Speaker 1: Reese's Book Club and was one of Time Magazine's most
Speaker 1: anticipated novels of twenty twenty five.
Speaker 2: It's Thursday, January thirtieth.
Speaker 1: I'm Simoan Boyce, I'm Danielle Robe and this is the
Speaker 1: bright side from Hello Sunshine. We have another shelf life
Speaker 1: coming your way today. You may recognize Kate Fagan's name.
Speaker 1: She's an Emmy Award winning sports journalist and commentator who
Speaker 1: made her mark on ESPN, frequently appearing on Around the
Speaker 1: Horn and Outside the Lines. She's also a New York
Speaker 1: Times bestselling author, known for What made Mattie Run, The
Speaker 1: Reappearing Act, and All the Colors Came Out. Now, she's
Speaker 1: stepping into a new territory with her first novel, The
Speaker 1: Three Lives of KK, and it's all ready Orese's book
Speaker 1: Club pick for January. Though it's fiction, the book is
Speaker 1: structured like a memoir, offering an intimate look at what
Speaker 1: it's like to chase big dreams. Because, let's be honest,
Speaker 1: we all have that seed within us, don't we. This
Speaker 1: story follows the journey of an elusive novelist who, for
Speaker 1: the first time, decides to reveal her true identity poof
Speaker 1: Trust me, you'll want to be along for the ride.
Speaker 2: Ultimately, it's a story rooted in friendship, love, and boldly
Speaker 2: pursuing our passions.
Speaker 1: Let's bring her in, all right, Kate, calling in from Charleston.
Speaker 1: Welcome to the bright side.
Speaker 3: It's good to be here.
Speaker 4: So you are known.
Speaker 1: For writing nonfiction, but this time you took a really
Speaker 1: big leap with a fictional memoir. And I call it
Speaker 1: a big leap because at one point you admitted that
Speaker 1: you didn't think you had the brain for fiction, which
Speaker 1: I need to better understand. But you said you weren't
Speaker 1: sure how to tap into your imagination, and yet here
Speaker 1: you are proving yourself wrong. What was happening in your
Speaker 1: life life when you decided to really go for this
Speaker 1: and take the leap.
Speaker 3: I think I was just.
Speaker 5: At a turning point of sorts, even though I wouldn't
Speaker 5: have known that at the time, where I really was
Speaker 5: ready to not focus on sports and journalism anymore. And
Speaker 5: I could have been good continuing to do that, especially
Speaker 5: with everything happening in women's sports, but I also knew
Speaker 5: it was time to try something different and learn a
Speaker 5: whole different area, and that for me, the one that
Speaker 5: had always been calling to me was fiction. Like it
Speaker 5: was always the thing when I was like what industry
Speaker 5: would I love to like crack into, and it was fiction.
Speaker 3: It was always like I always came back to that.
Speaker 5: So I had tried so many times, but not with
Speaker 5: like my whole self, like.
Speaker 3: Not fully invested.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and then and for lots of reasons, we can
Speaker 5: get into like stories I was telling myself. But finally
Speaker 5: I was like, no, I am going to try I'm
Speaker 5: going to try this. I'm to try it for real.
Speaker 1: Now, how do you get past such a deep limiting
Speaker 1: belief because saying that you didn't think you had the
Speaker 1: imagination for it, that's a that's a pretty.
Speaker 4: Big barrier in your own mind.
Speaker 1: Did you have a conversation with somebody that set it
Speaker 1: off for you or what was the spark?
Speaker 5: I think what really was a turning point for me
Speaker 5: was setting out on this draft and like committing to
Speaker 5: myself that no, matter how the dicey plot points got,
Speaker 5: no matter how much I would write myself somewhere that
Speaker 5: I was like, that's not working, no matter no matter what,
Speaker 5: I was going to get to the end. So I
Speaker 5: put parameters in place to overcome what I thought was
Speaker 5: like a limitation of imagination and other problems I thought
Speaker 5: I had from the outset.
Speaker 4: That makes sense, and just.
Speaker 5: To double down in this imagination things. I think it
Speaker 5: is a I think people could relate to this idea.
Speaker 5: When I say that I didn't think I had the genation,
Speaker 5: it was because of how frequently I heard authors at
Speaker 5: their book talks or talking on podcasts talking about how
Speaker 5: they were as a kid and that they were like
Speaker 5: out in the yard make would make believe friends, and
Speaker 5: like the friends would talk to them and they would
Speaker 5: have a whole story, and like they and everyone would
Speaker 5: keep using this idea of like I have this rich
Speaker 5: imagination and like I just like had zero overlap with that.
Speaker 5: Like I would sit in the audience and be like,
Speaker 5: that is not my experience, Like my brain was always
Speaker 5: sort of working overtime, but in it like taking real
Speaker 5: life thoughts and like looking at them from every angle,
Speaker 5: and like I didn't think that was imagination, and so
Speaker 5: I had a disconnect about what imagination was as I started.
Speaker 2: This project, What were you like As a child?
Speaker 5: All I did was play basketball, like I you know,
Speaker 5: and that is like its own sort of creativity and imagination,
Speaker 5: But it's not the kind that we talk about when
Speaker 5: we think about painting or art or writing or music.
Speaker 5: It feels like very It's a very physical expression and
Speaker 5: can often be associated with like determination and hard work
Speaker 5: and not as much imagination in creativity. And so I
Speaker 5: just had this story about myself that I was like
Speaker 5: analytical and I was like detail focused, and I had
Speaker 5: all of the attributes of like somebody who can make
Speaker 5: themselves a successful athlete. But I never saw that translating
Speaker 5: to the kind of flourishing creativity that I think we
Speaker 5: often talk about.
Speaker 2: I think everyone is creative, but I think we kind
Speaker 2: of get shoehorned into these binary boxes in society where
Speaker 2: it's like if I'm a basketball player, I can't be creative,
Speaker 2: or if I'm an accountant, I can't be creative. But
Speaker 2: I think deep down it's in our DNA, like we
Speaker 2: had to be so creative and innovative. Our ancestors to
Speaker 2: get us out of certain situations and to get us
Speaker 2: to where we are now, and you just discovered it
Speaker 2: later on in life. That's okay.
Speaker 5: Yeah, And I think I also, you know, I think
Speaker 5: a lot about this idea of like finding your passion
Speaker 5: and thinking that that is a one off thing that
Speaker 5: you have to have your whole life, as opposed to
Speaker 5: being passionate about certain things for periods of time and
Speaker 5: then being able to move on and have that be
Speaker 5: an asset and not a detriment that you're like you
Speaker 5: can't stay too long or like you didn't commit fully,
Speaker 5: but like trying to actually harness that maybe I'm not
Speaker 5: the person who can do the same thing their whole life,
Speaker 5: but how can I make that work for me rather
Speaker 5: than feeling like I'm just flitting from thing to thing.
Speaker 1: It's encouraging also to hear that it's really a mindset,
Speaker 1: I think, to sort of echoes among people feel as
Speaker 1: if you're either born with it or you're not, and
Speaker 1: your story proves that you can really tap into it.
Speaker 5: Yeah. I think really unlocking different life levels of what
Speaker 5: my brain could do in terms of creativity was really
Speaker 5: satisfying in the process of it, because I think maybe
Speaker 5: a lot of aspiring writers or even writers, they inside
Speaker 5: their minds, it looks like you're building a story. And
Speaker 5: I really had the experience of almost chipping away at
Speaker 5: the story. So it's felt more like sculpting than it
Speaker 5: did like pottery.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Well, this theme of pursuing your passions and facilitating your
Speaker 2: dreams is woven throughout this book. And I know that
Speaker 2: it's not a memoir about you. It's not a memoir
Speaker 2: about your life. However, you do share the same first
Speaker 2: name as the titular character, so I'm curious because I
Speaker 2: do know that you incorporated bits and pieces of your
Speaker 2: own perspectives and your own experiences into this book. Yeah,
Speaker 2: where does Kate Fagan end and Kate k begin?
Speaker 5: I really think from the opening paragraph, it's like I
Speaker 5: infused myself into this little girl who she is on
Speaker 5: the opening pages because she's Kate k this famous author.
Speaker 5: But in chapter one you see her as like a
Speaker 5: nine year old girl.
Speaker 3: And I think on that very.
Speaker 5: First page where I put her in her favorite Tom
Speaker 5: and Jerry's shirt, I feel like I sort of embodied
Speaker 5: her for a second and then she became like and
Speaker 5: then she went off on her way so I mean
Speaker 5: that is to say that I think right from the beginning,
Speaker 5: I needed a shell of somebody, and all I could
Speaker 5: think of were like these like memories that had stuck
Speaker 5: with me for reasons I wasn't sure of, just like
Speaker 5: pieces of things, and I kind of gathered those up
Speaker 5: and made the character of k K, who was born.
Speaker 3: Annie, and I think then she just like became.
Speaker 5: Her own person from there, Like I would never do
Speaker 5: some of the things she did, but I really relate
Speaker 5: to them.
Speaker 1: You've described this book as seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo
Speaker 1: meets firstly Wins, two of my favorite novels that I've
Speaker 1: read in the past few years. So pretty great setup
Speaker 1: for people who haven't read it yet. Can you describe
Speaker 1: the plotline of the book?
Speaker 5: Yes, So, The Three Lives of KK is about our
Speaker 5: main character, kate K, and she's the most famous author
Speaker 5: in the world. She's written this trilogy of books that
Speaker 5: have sold over one hundred million copies, and it's this
Speaker 5: dystopian franchise that has been made into blockbuster films and
Speaker 5: all of the cultural phenomenon that comes with something like that,
Speaker 5: except no one has ever known who Katek actually is
Speaker 5: because it's a pseudonym that she has written under, and
Speaker 5: despite magazine profiles and journalists trying to get to the
Speaker 5: bottom of who this Kate k is, the public has
Speaker 5: never known until this book, The Three Lives of KK,
Speaker 5: which is the memoir of explaining to you going back
Speaker 5: to her childhood and taking you through the twists of
Speaker 5: fate and the trauma that has happened that has led
Speaker 5: her to reject credit for this trilogy and this cultural
Speaker 5: cachet that very few people would walk away from unless there.
Speaker 3: Was a reason for it, and this book tells you
Speaker 3: the reason.
Speaker 2: It's time for a quick break. We'll be right back
Speaker 2: to shelf Life with Kate Fagan. And we're back with
Speaker 2: author Kate Fagan.
Speaker 1: I think one of the things that readers will be
Speaker 1: really drawn to, and I say think because I was
Speaker 1: really drawn to it. It's the way you play with
Speaker 1: the idea of truth and perspective throughout the novel, and
Speaker 1: specifically tapping into the way we see ourselves, because I
Speaker 1: think oftentimes we see ourselves really differently than other people
Speaker 1: see us. Why was this something that you really wanted
Speaker 1: to explore?
Speaker 5: Well, I think really this choice that I made at
Speaker 5: the beginning to frame this as a memoir. I did
Speaker 5: it only for the reason of just knowing that as
Speaker 5: somebody who has published memoir, I would understand the format
Speaker 5: and it would help me find.
Speaker 3: A voice in this piece. And so that was really
Speaker 3: the motivation.
Speaker 5: But then it started to help me along the way
Speaker 5: really ask questions about if I have this first person
Speaker 5: story being framed as a memoir, so you're getting everything
Speaker 5: from kate K's perspective, I was like, I've done that before,
Speaker 5: Like I have written that kind of book. I wrote
Speaker 5: a book about coming out on my college basketball team
Speaker 5: that had tension in it, and in the aftermath of that,
Speaker 5: I had people in my life, specifically like my mom
Speaker 5: and dad who were like, that's that one scene where
Speaker 5: you called us and you told us, we don't that's
Speaker 5: not how we remember it. And so I really was,
Speaker 5: in the process of writing Katek drawn to the idea
Speaker 5: of wanting to give readers like another level of understanding
Speaker 5: of our main character, because it'd be one thing for
Speaker 5: people to read, say, my memoir, and it'd be another
Speaker 5: for them to like go out to dinner with me
Speaker 5: and my mom and then understanding that like, oh, like
Speaker 5: here's the memoir and the story we told, and here's
Speaker 5: how the story is received within that memoirs world felt
Speaker 5: like a totally other door to open for readers. And
Speaker 5: I really wanted that because I don't think anybody in
Speaker 5: this in k K is an unreliable narrator any more
Speaker 5: than we are all misremembering small things or our brains
Speaker 5: are like putting us in different places and memories.
Speaker 2: Like.
Speaker 5: No one in this book is like purposefully trying to
Speaker 5: lie to you about their memories. They might be lying
Speaker 5: to characters within it for their own purposes, but and
Speaker 5: so I just really wanted to show how our memories
Speaker 5: can be like throughout without any nefarious intent, can really
Speaker 5: cause different, can cause harm in one case, or can
Speaker 5: send us on a path that we had no necessary,
Speaker 5: no intention of going down until life shifted in that way.
Speaker 2: Kate, as you've been talking, I had this realization, and
Speaker 2: that is this thing that you thought was your flaw,
Speaker 2: your perceived inability to foster an imagination or this idea
Speaker 2: that you were kind of stuck in this memoir space
Speaker 2: and wanting to break out, that perceived flaw actually became
Speaker 2: your superpower with this book. Because the fact that you
Speaker 2: wrote it in the memoir format, which is something you're
Speaker 2: so familiar with, is actually what makes it so distinct
Speaker 2: and fresh for the reader.
Speaker 5: It's kind of a cool realization to have when you
Speaker 5: realized that you had certain skill sets and other parts
Speaker 5: of how you operate that you thought wouldn't work for
Speaker 5: a medium. I really think it was like halfway through
Speaker 5: something clicked where I realized, like, oh, you think the
Speaker 5: nonfiction part of your brain is like, is an onus
Speaker 5: in this? Actually it is unlocking. It could unlock so
Speaker 5: much more if you let it. And like an easy way, yeah,
Speaker 5: an easy way to illustrate that is that, like whenever
Speaker 5: I would have to do profiles of people for a magazine,
Speaker 5: like usually an athlete, I'm on overdrive. Whatever time I
Speaker 5: get with them. Sometimes it's only like three hours or somethings.
Speaker 5: It might be like two days, and you're just like
Speaker 5: observing everything because you're like what matters, what matters?
Speaker 3: What matters?
Speaker 5: Right?
Speaker 3: You're like, Okay, what kind of coffee? How did they
Speaker 3: call for that cab?
Speaker 5: You're just you're desperate for the observation that you think
Speaker 5: unlocks them as a person, so desperate that often you're
Speaker 5: like trying to put things in places that don't work,
Speaker 5: just like make connections. And like halfway through writing this book,
Speaker 5: I was like, oh my gosh, like I have people
Speaker 5: that I'm right and anything. I can make up any
Speaker 5: detail I want and it can unlock something. And it
Speaker 5: was like, Oh, that part of my brain over there, Like,
Speaker 5: let's bring that part in because that is going to
Speaker 5: be very helpful here. And so that made writing this
Speaker 5: at times like a joy because it felt like, for
Speaker 5: the first time I was like, Oh, I can do
Speaker 5: creativity in my own way, and that was really nice.
Speaker 2: I think that's such a beautiful message and realizing that
Speaker 2: the things that we think are flaws could actually be
Speaker 2: these latent superpowers. Having come from a career where you
Speaker 2: observed the lifestyles of these high profile athletes, did you
Speaker 2: take any observations from your work in that realm and
Speaker 2: incorporate it into the relationships between the characters in terms
Speaker 2: of ambition and how it impacts the characters. Yeah.
Speaker 5: I think as a journalist, when you're very close to
Speaker 5: physically and oftentimes or like connected to people you would
Speaker 5: write a profile on.
Speaker 3: I mean that right.
Speaker 5: There is like someone who is high achieving, somebody who
Speaker 5: is like being received by the world in what many
Speaker 5: people believe is like the most the wonderful way you
Speaker 5: could like these elements of fame.
Speaker 3: And value and money.
Speaker 5: And I think there's two things that I saw with that.
Speaker 3: I saw the strain it put on their lives.
Speaker 5: Even the strain of like letting somebody like somebody write
Speaker 5: a profile on you. That's a strain because you are
Speaker 5: surrendering so much of how the world will perceive you
Speaker 5: to being filtered through somebody else, and like that that's
Speaker 5: really hard thing to like let happen.
Speaker 3: And then also just the strain on their lives.
Speaker 5: But the so and I tried to inject that into
Speaker 5: the Three Lives of Kate k because whenever you're observing
Speaker 5: closely celebrity of any kind, whether it's athletics or a
Speaker 5: movie or whatever it is, you're you're questioning the value
Speaker 5: of it, You're questioning the experience of it for that person.
Speaker 5: And I wanted my characters to be in that world
Speaker 5: doing the same thing, questioning the cost of fame, the
Speaker 5: cost of their ambition. But then also, as somebody who
Speaker 5: was writing profiles of people, you're also then dealing with
Speaker 5: your own ego as the profile writer, where like you're
Speaker 5: trying you're clearly in a subservient role of some sort, but.
Speaker 3: You're trying not to see yourself like that, And so
Speaker 3: you've got.
Speaker 5: Your own personal dynamics at play with fame and celebrity.
Speaker 5: Because there's not a lot of magazine profile writers who
Speaker 5: don't want their own little bit of all of that.
Speaker 5: So it just becomes this complicated world where people want
Speaker 5: a lot of things, but they're not allowed to communicate
Speaker 5: really honestly about all of the things they're going after
Speaker 5: and desiring.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I love hearing you unpack all this.
Speaker 5: Try to pour it into the book as much as possible,
Speaker 5: all of the obsessive thoughts about all of these things.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's a really healthy way of coping with obsessive thoughts.
Speaker 2: Just write a book. Other people do far more dangerous things.
Speaker 5: Right to do a lot of like really detailed heavy workouts,
Speaker 5: like ninety minute long workouts, and write a book.
Speaker 3: Good coping mechanisms. Yeah, there you.
Speaker 4: Go, healthy ones for sure.
Speaker 1: I want to talk about someone else who's poured into
Speaker 1: you as a writer. I know you mentioned how important
Speaker 1: it's been to share your writing with your parents, especially
Speaker 1: your mom. And I understand she just passed away, which
Speaker 1: is such a profound loss.
Speaker 4: Kate, I'm so sorry, Oh thank you.
Speaker 1: I'm curious how her presence, or even maybe now her absence,
Speaker 1: has shaped your writing.
Speaker 3: I think.
Speaker 5: Starting from the baseline of like having a mom who
Speaker 5: like just who really thinks you're great is like the luckiest.
Speaker 2: Thing ever, and.
Speaker 5: I really don't There's something about how deeply she believed
Speaker 5: in everything I did that felt like it just counteracted
Speaker 5: what the world tells you in a lot of ways,
Speaker 5: like you know, like almost like in a metric way.
Speaker 5: I always think when you talk about like something silly
Speaker 5: like a good Reads review, you've got like the trolls
Speaker 5: who are balanced by the people.
Speaker 3: Who are always in your corner, you know.
Speaker 5: Yeah, And like that having her always in my corner
Speaker 5: and being lucky enough for it to be then your mom,
Speaker 5: because you're like, oh my god, the person who brought
Speaker 5: me into this world also thinks I'm amazing, just like
Speaker 5: gives you a level of confidence that I don't think
Speaker 5: is easy to come by any other way, and that
Speaker 5: is infused in all of my choices. Just knowing that,
Speaker 5: and it's the thing I like, it's like that you know,
Speaker 5: you just can't replace that love. You just kind of
Speaker 5: try to figure out how.
Speaker 3: You're going to keep it in whatever shape you can
Speaker 3: have it.
Speaker 1: Still, absolutely thanks for sharing all that, Thanks for asking.
Speaker 1: We have to take another short break, but we'll be
Speaker 1: right back to our conversation with author Kate Fagan.
Speaker 4: And we're back with Kate Fagan.
Speaker 2: All right, Well, we've reached our favorite part of the show,
Speaker 2: which is where we have our Reese's Book Club authors
Speaker 2: read us a passage from their work. So let's go
Speaker 2: ahead and give our listeners a little peek into this
Speaker 2: scene that you're about to read for us. Will you
Speaker 2: set it up?
Speaker 5: Yes, So I'm going to read from chapter two from
Speaker 5: Annie's perspective. So again, Annie is Kate k our main character.
Speaker 5: But this is like the name she was born with,
Speaker 5: and she's in Upstate New York where she grew up,
Speaker 5: and this is the moment when she meets her best
Speaker 5: friend best friend growing up, and it's nineteen ninety one
Speaker 5: in upstate New York. What you need to know about
Speaker 5: me and Amanda is that no friendship like ours had
Speaker 5: ever existed. We basically redefined the media, elevated it to
Speaker 5: an art form. Seriously. That's how we felt. We were
Speaker 5: like all young people in that way, in full belief
Speaker 5: that we were revolutionizing the human experience. Those older models
Speaker 5: all failures. Let us show you how real living is done.
Speaker 3: I'll set the stage.
Speaker 5: Nineteen ninety one, summer in upstate New York, small town
Speaker 5: theater camp opening morning. I was standing in line for registration.
Speaker 5: The girl in front of me was wearing jelly sandals.
Speaker 5: I complimented them. She made eye contact and said thank
Speaker 5: you for noticing, which awed me the self possession of it.
Speaker 5: We were nine years old, Amanda Kent ladies and gentlemen.
Speaker 3: Turns out Amanda's home.
Speaker 5: Life is only slightly better than mine. Her mom had
Speaker 5: died giving birth to her little sister, Carrie, and her
Speaker 5: dad spent all his waking hours beneath the hoods of
Speaker 5: cars running a repair shop in the next town over.
Speaker 5: Amanda and her dad they got along fine, but he
Speaker 5: was more like an uncle than a dad, and so
Speaker 5: she was especially close with Carrie, who was four years younger.
Speaker 5: The two were different in almost every way. Carrie had
Speaker 5: light hair and loved playing with dolls. Amanda was essentially
Speaker 5: the person Van Morrison is singing about in Brown Eyed Girl.
Speaker 5: One other thing to know about Amanda. She loved clothes.
Speaker 5: When we were young, she'd want me to come over
Speaker 5: and play dress up. Her dad had kept all her
Speaker 5: mom's old things in a box in the hallway closet,
Speaker 5: clothes and makeup, and other stuff grown up women cared about,
Speaker 5: like pantyhose, which seemed to me like a form of
Speaker 5: medieval torture. Dress up wasn't really my thing, but I'd
Speaker 5: bring a book and sit cross legged on the carpet
Speaker 5: at the foot of Amanda's bed. She never minded my indifference.
Speaker 5: She really just wanted an audience. She would disappear into
Speaker 5: the hallway bathroom and I'd read a few pages. Then
Speaker 5: she'd present herself in the doorway, do a quick spin
Speaker 5: and a catwalk, strutting in and out of the room.
Speaker 5: Nothing subtle in her performance. Clothes made sense on her,
Speaker 5: which one afternoon she explained was the entire point of fashion.
Speaker 2: I love that past so much, Thank you.
Speaker 1: So we talked about how it was important for you
Speaker 1: to include these different povs in your book, and one
Speaker 1: of our listeners has a question about if you had
Speaker 1: a specific lesson in mind for your readers.
Speaker 4: So here's Tia.
Speaker 3: Hi Kate, this is Tia.
Speaker 6: I just finished reading your book, and I love how
Speaker 6: your book includes so many perspectives of people from Kate's life,
Speaker 6: Like there's a chapter from the man Man's POV and
Speaker 6: it was so heartwarming because I just loved reading from
Speaker 6: his point of view. And it seems like you were
Speaker 6: really intentional about what characters were included in your story.
Speaker 6: So I wanted to know was there a lesson or
Speaker 6: a certain takeaway you wanted your readers to understand about
Speaker 6: valuing others perspectives as you wrote the story.
Speaker 3: That is such a fantastic question.
Speaker 5: The lesson wasn't so much valuing other people's perspectives, although
Speaker 5: that is a fabulous lesson. I really wanted to use
Speaker 5: the different points view to show the way tiny miscommunications
Speaker 5: can have snowball effects in our life, and it also
Speaker 5: wanted to use them to expand Kate's world for you.
Speaker 5: And in that way, I felt like choosing points of view,
Speaker 5: even from very minor characters, sort of gave you like
Speaker 5: a bigger.
Speaker 3: Roadmap to her life.
Speaker 5: And the most important one we felt like in that
Speaker 5: endeavor was the point of view.
Speaker 3: At the end and the wonderful question.
Speaker 5: Just asked it of Carl the Mailman in one of
Speaker 5: these last switch of points of view chapters, that we
Speaker 5: really wanted to have somebody in the book who is
Speaker 5: showing you ideas about life from a perspective that had
Speaker 5: more experience, because so many of the characters in the
Speaker 5: book are young, and even still young as they're talking
Speaker 5: to you about their younger selves, and yet no one
Speaker 5: is at a point in life in the book except
Speaker 5: for Carl in that final chapter who can really look
Speaker 5: at some of the folly of youth and the folly
Speaker 5: of ambition and these different ideas from.
Speaker 3: Like a different perch. And so it was less about
Speaker 3: like a moral takeaway from the reader.
Speaker 5: But now that I'm kind of talking through that, I
Speaker 5: guess maybe some of the byproduct of it is just
Speaker 5: being more respectful and being more empathetic to the way
Speaker 5: someone else might see something or how something someone might
Speaker 5: impact somebody, because it's so easy to just assume we
Speaker 5: all have the same interiority that's like your default state.
Speaker 3: Until you kind of knock yourself out of it.
Speaker 4: I had to think about that for a second. Kate.
Speaker 4: I think you're right.
Speaker 1: Now, you've crafted the best of both worlds in this
Speaker 1: book by blending memoir and fiction so seamlessly. And I've
Speaker 1: heard whispers that you might be combining your worlds again.
Speaker 1: Can you give us a glimpse as to what's on
Speaker 1: the horizon for you, what's next on your creative journey.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 5: So, one thing that I really purposely did with The
Speaker 5: Three Lives of KK was didn't set it at all
Speaker 5: in the sports world. Didn't want really anything to do
Speaker 5: with sports in this book. There's like a passing reference
Speaker 5: to the Kansas Jayhawks, as like a nod to my
Speaker 5: wife who grew up in Lawrence, Kansas. But other than that,
Speaker 5: it was really purposeful because I had been wanting to
Speaker 5: kind of prove that I could write something outside of
Speaker 5: the sports backdrop as somebody who had been playing basketball
Speaker 5: since I was eight in college, and then it felt
Speaker 5: like it was like, can I define myself outside of sports?
Speaker 5: Was a big question I had, and so purposefully this
Speaker 5: book didn't. And now that I did that, as in
Speaker 5: like write it and feel like it kind of stands
Speaker 5: on its own. I missed the sports like I miss
Speaker 5: I missed that, and I think the thing I'm working
Speaker 5: on now it's another novel, but it's very much set
Speaker 5: in the women's basketball world. There's like a team in
Speaker 5: this long lost team from history because so much of
Speaker 5: women's sports is lost to history from the nineteen fifties.
Speaker 5: And that was like really important to me because I
Speaker 5: just miss being a part of women's sports. Like it
Speaker 5: is like those are those are my people, you know,
Speaker 5: like people who love women's sports, people play women's sports,
Speaker 5: Like those are the people that I want to be
Speaker 5: in relationship with because they hold so many of the
Speaker 5: same values.
Speaker 4: I see that on TV too.
Speaker 1: I feel like that once you write the novel, it
Speaker 1: needs to become a mini series.
Speaker 5: Yes, my joke is always like we did all the
Speaker 5: men's sports. We did the horses, right, Like we got
Speaker 5: the sea biscuits, like we got the air bud, We
Speaker 5: even did the dog. So like now we can do
Speaker 5: some scripted women's sports stories, like there's some there's some
Speaker 5: amazing ones in the history that have just been lost.
Speaker 4: Oh wow, I would have loved to see those growing up.
Speaker 5: Yes, the fact that like a league of their own
Speaker 5: for me was like I had to just put myself
Speaker 5: on their team. Yeah, and even though there was so
Speaker 5: much about it, like I didn't play baseball, at least
Speaker 5: so much. I had to make believe. But their camaraderie,
Speaker 5: I was like, I want to sick. I want to
Speaker 5: be a part of it. It's like that was the
Speaker 5: one that's awesome.
Speaker 1: Kate, thank you so much for joining us on the
Speaker 1: bright Side.
Speaker 3: Thanks y'all, it's been really fun.
Speaker 2: Kate Fagan is the author of the Three Lives of
Speaker 2: Kate k and the January pick for Reese's Book Club.
Speaker 2: It's available wherever you get your books. Tomorrow, we're popping
Speaker 2: off with one of our favorite bright Side best ties.
Speaker 2: It is the original Cheetah Girl, Raven Simon, y'all, along
Speaker 2: with her wife and podcast co host Miranda Miday. Don't
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