Karen Dukess - WELCOME TO MURDER WEEK

[00:00] Cindy: Welcome to Thoughts from a Page, a member of the Evergreen Podcasts Network. I'm Cindy Burnett, and I am so glad you're here. I personally select and read every book featured on the show so I can bring you thoughtful spoiler-free author interviews.

[00:24] Whether you're deciding what to read next or looking for deeper insight after finishing a book, you're in the right place. I hope these conversations will enrich your reading life. In addition to the podcast, I write a monthly column, Buzz Reads, featuring my top five picks for each month which is linked in the Show Notes.

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[01:05] I am so grateful.

[01:07] Today, Karen Dukess joins me to chat about Welcome to Murder Week. I love this trend of lighter mysteries that we are seeing in the book world. They are so much fun to read, so engaging and Welcome to Murder Week is one of the better ones that I have read.

[01:20] Karen is the author of The Last Book Party. She lives outside New York City and in Truro on Cape Cod where she interviews some of today's most acclaimed writers as host of the Castle Hill Author Talks.

[01:30] I hope you enjoy our conversation.

[01:34] Welcome Karen, how are you today?

[01:35] Karen: I am great.

[01:37] Cindy: Good. I'm so glad you're here because I really enjoyed Welcome to Murder Week. It was a really fun and engaging read.

[01:43] Karen: I am so glad because that's really my main goal when writing it was to have fun and to make a book that would be fun for readers.

[01:49] Cindy: Absolutely. So before we dive into my questions, would you give me a quick synopsis of Welcome to Murder Week?

[01:55] Karen: Sure.

[01:56] Welcome to Murder Week is a story about 34 year old Cath Little and a few weeks after her estranged mother dies, she discovers in her mother's papers that her mother had booked the two of them to go spend a week in an English village participating in a Solve a Fake Murder Mystery Week.

[02:13] This was completely uncharacteristic that her mother would do this and that her mother would want her to go because they had a rocky relationship to say the least. But unable to get a refund Cath goes on the trip,

[02:24] it's something very out of character for her to do. She shares a cottage with two other solo travelers, also American,

[02:33] and they together team up to solve the fake murder mystery. But at the same time they solve the real mystery of why Cath's mother wanted to go.

[02:43] And it's sort of a play, it's sort of a send up of some golden age detective novels and the murder mysteries that you see on BritBox and Masterpiece Mystery. And yet the heart of it is a story about this woman and her mother.

[02:57] Cindy: I really enjoyed the mixture of the light mystery and the murder week that they were going on. And then Cath’s story about trying to figure out and understand her mother better and understand why she was in this little village.

[03:09] Karen: Yeah, I really, I initially started out focused on the fun aspect of the story, but then I love a story that has a real emotional heart to it as well. And so I was having fun creating this fake murder mystery and all the Americans that had gone there to participate in it.

[03:24] And then the story of Cath's mother kind of evolved and I think became the heart of the story.

[03:29] Cindy: After I was reading your book, I want to go on one of these murder weeks. I think that would be so fun.

[03:33] Karen: Yeah, I've never done one either. I've never even done a murder mystery evening or a game at people's houses. But I would love to.

[03:41] Cindy: I agree with that. I think it would be a ton of fun. Well, what kind of research did you do?

[03:45] Karen: Well, I did research sort of backwards because 

[03:49] This story was inspired by a trip that I took to the Peak District, that's where my story takes place, with my sister.

[03:56] I had finished a novel that was about to go on submission and my sister and I went on a week-long trip to the Peak District. We rented a little cottage.

[04:04] We spent a lot of time walking around these beautiful footpaths that go all through England.

[04:09] And the trip was astounding to me because I had been, I've traveled a lot and I had traveled to England, but I had never been to the English countryside. And I felt like I had stepped into the pages of my favorite English novels.

[04:21] And I also stepped, felt like I had stepped into scenes from these mystery shows that I'd seen on BritBox and Masterpiece Mystery.

[04:29] And my sister was in the same mindset and so everything we were seeing was through the lens of fictional characters.

[04:36] So we were walking across a field and I felt like I was Elizabeth Bennet going, you know, to visit my sister.

[04:43] And we were on the moors, and I felt like I was Jane Eyre. Even at one point. I had never seen moors before. I was very excited, and I threw myself down on them, like pretending to be Jane Eyre.

[04:53] I didn't even realize that moors are really wet and boggy.

[04:57] And it just put me in this very buoyant, joyous mood.

[05:02] And it was only when I came back that I decided that I would write a novel about Americans going. And I came up with this idea of the fake murder mystery stories.

[05:11] So luckily, I had taken a lot of pictures when I was in England, but I hadn't been there with the aim to write a novel.

[05:17] So I was only there for a week. But I used a lot of the places that I had been and the experiences I had had to fuel this novel. And I looked back at the pictures a lot, and then I did a little research.

[05:30] You know, reading up.

[05:31] Cindy: And this is a very different book than your debut was. So was it interesting writing a mystery?

[05:36] Karen: It was. I never expected to write a mystery. I like reading mysteries, but I wouldn't say I'm a huge reader of mysteries. I read a lot of golden age detective stories and other mysteries while I was writing this book.

[05:48] At some point, I felt like, how am I gonna do this? I don't know how to write a mystery. And one of the things I did for research was I read.

[05:55] I watched a lot of episodes of Midsommar Murders, which goes back to the 80s,

[06:01] and some of them are very dated. But there were so many of these short mysteries. And you could really see in one episode. By watching each episode, I could really see the structure of how they were set up, because they're kind of formulaic.

[06:16] And I'm like, oh, okay. So you need to have one person that has a whole lot of people with a motive to kill them, and then you kind of go through them,

[06:23] make it seem like each one is a murderer, and then you figure out why they're not.

[06:27] And so that was helpful. And at one point, I just thought, okay, let's just get started. I got to pick a victim. And then once I was doing it, I had a lot of fun.

[06:37] And I thought about the fact that although I'm not a huge mystery reader, the novels that I love that are not categorized as mysteries often have a mystery at the heart of them.

[06:48] A lot of literary fiction, even just there. It's usually the mystery that keeps us reading. You know, either the character is trying to figure out something or there's something troubling the character.

[06:58] I mean, Jane Eyre is not shelved in mystery, but there's a mystery there for sure.

[07:04] So I felt like I ended up with a kind of genre blending novel because I wasn't really thinking about genre. I knew I had to create a mystery in this story and then I ended up with a real family mystery as well.

[07:15] But I wasn't. Other than the fake mystery part of it, I wasn't really trying to conform to,

[07:21] to a particular genre.

[07:23] That said, when I was finished, I remember talking to my agent and I was like, is this book going to be shelved in the mystery section? Am I a mystery writer now?

[07:30] And he was like, I think.

[07:33] Cindy: Well, I know writing a mystery can be tricky. I worked at Murder by the Book in Houston and was surrounded by mysteries, which was so much fun. But also listening to authors talk, you have to hit the right notes on pacing.

[07:44] You have to feed in the clues in the right amount of time so that everybody can figure it out as they're reading. And they're not like, where did this come from?

[07:51] But you don't want to just give everything away as well.

[07:54] Karen: Yeah, but I think that you do that in a non mystery as well.

[07:58] Like my first novel, The Last Book Party, it does have a mystery in it. It is definitely not a mystery. There aren't people trying to solve a mystery. But there's a secret that someone has and it just gets discovered and you still have to do the same

[08:10] Thing is you have to, you know, you don't want it to come out of left field. You want whatever revelation happens in a novel to feel surprising but also inevitable.

[08:19] And so I love that part of novel writing, when you kind of realize what you're writing towards,

[08:25] you can then go back and plant little seeds along the way so that it has a logic within the novel.

[08:32] So I think that writing a mystery,

[08:35] yes, it's different, but it's also not that different to writing a novel that just has some sort of secret propelling it.

[08:42] Cindy: That's a very good point. I hadn't really thought about it that way. And you're right, many books do have mysteries in them, even when they're not classified as mysteries. Yeah, I loved the fake murder mystery aspects.

[08:52] As I referenced earlier,

[08:53] the way you had the various townsmen and townswomen participating and how it was awkward for some of them but fun for some of them. Was it just a ball to create all of that?

[09:02] Karen: It really was. I mean, I just wanted to have fun writing this novel,

[09:07] I really just indulged myself, and I was just entertaining myself and hoping it would be entertaining to other people. You know, when I was young, when I was a teenager,

[09:17] I think I was in 10th grade, and a friend and I read the novel Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier, which we just loved, and I still love it.

[09:24] And we watched the Hitchcock film a bit, which we loved, and we had so much fun loving it, but also playing with it and making fun of it. And one of my happiest early writing memories is when the two of us wrote a short parody of Rebecca.

[09:38] And I remember working on my part of it in the bathtub with a spiral notebook and just having fun and just being silly. And that is the same feeling with which I approached writing the fake murder mystery.

[09:51] It was just fun creating characters, you know, some who were very earnest about it, some who were very cynical about it.

[09:57] Those townspeople. And then I also just had fun creating these Americans who were real Britbox fans. People who just were thrilled at the thought of going to England and playing at this and being serious and trying to win, but also just having fun.

[10:12] So it was. Yeah, I really enjoyed it.

[10:14] Cindy: So how did you decide to have these three Americans coming to the Peak District?

[10:19] Karen: So, It's funny, when I came back from England,

[10:22] I decided I wanted to write a story about Americans going to the Peak District and seeing the world they were encountering through fictional characters the same way I did, and sort of play with that of what's real, what's not real, what's a cliche.

[10:34] And my initial idea was to write about members of a writing group going together, because I like the idea of putting together people who are very different in age and background,

[10:43] but they have something in common that brings them together.

[10:46] I think that makes for a really interesting dynamic. And my three characters are really different. We've got Cath, the main character, who's 34 and single,

[10:55] and Wyatt, who's 40, who's works unhappily in his husband's birding store and his husband sends him on this trip,

[11:04] and Amity, who's 50, who's a romance writer, who's recently divorced and having some writer's block.

[11:10] So these characters initially appeared to me when I was writing about them in a writing group. And I'd heard authors before talk about how a character just kind of appears and fully formed.

[11:20] And that had never quite happened to me before, but it did in this one. And maybe it happened because I was in this kind of open,

[11:27] playful mood. But Wyatt and Amity just kind of, like, showed up at the writing group one day, and Wyatt was complaining about his husband's obsession 

[11:36] And Amity was complaining about her writer's block.

[11:38] And I ended up doing the mystery because I was telling a friend,

[11:43] I think I'm gonna write my next novel about this writing group that goes to England. And she was like, great idea, but what are they gonna do there? I thought, well, that's a really good point there.

[11:53] Writing is kind of boring to write about.

[11:55] And so then I decided to make the murder mystery and have Cath end up sharing a cottage with these two people.

[12:03] And so they came up fully formed. And then I write very intuitively. I don't plot things out first. And these characters just kind of evolved. And then I realized, once I got going, that I wanted Wyatt and Amity to each have an arc, that what happens to them is helpful to Cath and her journey,

[12:20] but that they also have an arc of their own, that this week sort of is significant for them in their own lives as well. So I had a lot of fun with them.

[12:27] Cindy: I bet you did. I really enjoyed all three characters. And they're very different, which was great.

[12:32] Karen: Yeah, they are. I mean, they never would have met each other. And I think there's something very freeing, you know, about going.

[12:39] Not just traveling away from home and going abroad, but being with people that know nothing about your history. They have no assumptions about you. And I think for each character, they were very much themselves.

[12:50] They just got there, and they were just who they felt, you know, they were just being very much themselves with each other and very open and honest in a way that kind of made them become fast friends in the course of only a week.

[13:03] Cindy: And I agree with you that they're people that wouldn't have probably bonded if they had met on the streets elsewhere. But bringing them together in this place worked so well.

[13:11] Karen: Yeah.

[13:11] Cindy: And then Cath and her mom. Tell me more about creating that storyline.

[13:15] Karen: So that storyline didn't come right away.

[13:19] I knew that I wanted Cath to not be into the mystery thing. You know, it wasn't interesting to think about. Well, everybody's there because they love mysteries. So Cath was sort of cynical and a little bit reluctant.

[13:29] Like, why did my mother do this?

[13:32] She went partially because she couldn't get a refund and partially because she was kind of struggling. It's hard to grieve someone that you weren't close to.

[13:39] You know, I think she felt like she had grieved her mother already because her mother had left her as a child, left her to be raised by her paternal grandmother,

[13:48] and then was only kind of in and out of her life intermittently.

[13:53] And so there had already been a lot of grief with that relationship. So Cath thought she had grieved her mother, but I think it's just actually harder to grieve someone that you're not close to.

[14:02] And so I wanted her to sort of be intrigued by why her mother wanted to go there and somewhat resistant. And that aspect of the story just kind of evolved.

[14:15] I didn't quite think it up. It's just kind of the magic of story writing when things just sort of unfold and sort of midway I kind of came up with what,

[14:24] what was going to be revealed and you know, there's a little romance in the story. And I had a lot, a lot of fun with that.

[14:30] Cindy: I thought that was a ton of fun to read about as well.

[14:33] So you mentioned that you don't really outline ahead of time, you just sit down and write.

[14:38] Karen: Pretty much, yeah, I do.

[14:40] I mean, my first novel, The Last Book Party,

[14:43] as I was in a writing group and I was working on that novel and I didn't even really understand that you could write that way.

[14:50] I'd been a journalist for years and a speechwriter and I had always done some fiction. I did fiction as a child, I did fiction in college. But then between college and around age 50,

[15:03] I was always starting and stopping with fiction. And I think one of the reasons I didn't follow through was I thought I was supposed to have it all mapped out before I wrote it.

[15:10] And it wasn't until I was in a writing group that I learned that no, a lot of writers write intuitively. They let the story unfold, they let their conscious mind blend with their unconscious mind and they discover the story as they go.

[15:22] And that was a revelation to me. And that's really the way The Last Book Party evolved. And so this story, I did have to do a little more plotting with the fake mystery.

[15:32] You know, I knew I had to have that. I couldn't completely wing it. But still the story kind of, I just kind of let it go.

[15:39] It's a really fun way to write. It's also a really nerve wracking way to write because there's no guarantee that it's all gonna come together into a story.

[15:47] Cindy: Well, and you probably just have to do more editing on the backside.

[15:51] Karen: Yes, definitely. Yeah. I mean, the first draft is really figuring out what the story is, and then I go back and create it again and again and again.

[15:59] Cindy: Makes sense. Well, what surprised you the most when you were writing Welcome to Murder Week?

[16:03] Karen: I think what surprised me was the way I was able to blend the two mysteries in this story. The fake murder mystery wouldn't be solved by this group of people if they weren't also trying to solve the real mystery.

[16:16] And the real mystery wouldn't be solved if they weren't trying to solve the fake mystery.

[16:21] And I'm not sure how I managed to do that. I mean, people say, how did you weave the two together?

[16:25] And it wasn't. It seems like this sort of thing you would have to map out, but I didn't. And that is sort of the magic 

[16:33] Of writing.

[16:35] And it also amazed me how well, I've gotten some, you know, great early reaction to the novel. And I guess this isn't a surprise in the writing of it,

[16:43] but I'm pleasantly surprised by how much people seem to enjoy these characters.

[16:48] In The Last Book Party,

[16:49] even people who liked the novel were like, I love the novel, but I don't really like these people so much. So I was, like, really happy that I wrote people that people liked.

[16:57] You know, not that I don't feel like you have to like characters to like a novel,

[17:02] but you have to want to spend time with them. So, there can be an unlikable character that is so compelling that you stay with them,

[17:09] but if they're unlikable and they're just not pleasant to be around or to hear their thoughts, then it's kind of not fun. So I was just very happy that I created these people that a lot of early readers have been like, I just want to hang out with them.

[17:24] Cindy: I agree with that. Yeah, they would be so much fun to hang out with.

[17:27] Karen: Yeah, I want to hang out with them.

[17:28] Cindy: Yeah, exactly. I think all of these light mysteries are having a moment. It seems to me like a lot of people who have written other types of fiction are now writing light mysteries.

[17:37] Do you agree?

[17:38] Karen: Yes, absolutely. And that is something that's so interesting to me because I did not write this novel trying to catch a trend. I mean, I'd completely just came back from the trip and wanted to write the novel.

[17:50] And it seems like right now I see so many. I mean, Laura Lippman has a cozy mystery out, Murder Takes a Vacation, which I just read.

[17:58] There's a writer named Jess Kidd who has a book out called or it's coming out soon, Murder at Gull's Nest. Maybe it just came out.

[18:04] Cindy: It just came out. Yes. It was a fun read, which was fun.

[18:07] Karen: And.

[18:08] I also think that,

[18:10] I mean, a lot of people seem to want reading that's kind of escapist and fun right now. Cause there's just so much to be distraught about going on in the world.

[18:17] And I feel very lucky that I'm out there with that kind of book right now.

[18:22] Cindy: And I agree with everything you're saying. I think it is really nice to have these lighter reads. I am gravitating toward them. But also, as you mentioned, you know, publishing is a long process.

[18:31] So it's not like two years ago you said, okay, I'm gonna write this light mystery.

[18:35] That's what everybody else is writing. It's fun to see that a lot of people were doing the same thing that are coming out around the same time, but obviously not trying to catch a trend.

[18:44] Karen: Yeah, there's just something in the air, you know?

[18:46] Cindy: Exactly.

[18:47] Karen: Yeah.

[18:47] Cindy: But I think that happens a lot. It's just interesting to see what it is that is popular at what time.

[18:53] Karen: Yeah, definitely.

[18:55] Cindy: Did you have a favorite part of writing the book?

[18:57] Karen: Favorite part of writing the book? I had a lot of fun writing the romance.

[19:01] And that's not a big spoiler, you know, if there's a handsome gin distiller, you know, something's gonna happen.

[19:06] I had a lot of fun with that. I had a lot of fun with the banter between them, that was fun to write. I honestly just had fun with all of it.

[19:13] I really did.

[19:16] It was the easiest novel I've written. It was the quickest.

[19:20] Wrote it in a little over a year, which is really fast for me.

[19:23] Cindy: So you mentioned BritBox and Masterpiece Mystery. Do you have any favorites that you watch?

[19:29] Karen: I really love the Anthony Horowitz series. I think they're on Netflix. They're based on the novels. Like, the word is murder. The sentence is murder. I'm probably getting those wrong. But I love Anthony Horowitz's latest series of novels for adults.

[19:45] And the television versions of them. They're so much fun. And they're sort of meta because he has himself as a character in them.

[19:51] And I really enjoy them. And I think they're like The Thursday Murder Club, those stories. And the mystery itself, to me, is not as interesting as the peripheral characters and how the stories are written.

[20:05] The mystery is just kind of like the structure of it. But what's interesting about it is the wit and the playfulness. And I really like those.

[20:14] Cindy: I still need to watch those. We've been watching Ludwig on Britbox. Have you seen that one?

[20:18] Karen: Yes. That's another one. It's really fun.

[20:21] Cindy: It is really fun. We're enjoying it.

[20:23] Karen: Yeah, I like those. So I guess the common thread is the things that have some wit in them, you know, and then not straight up mystery.

[20:29] Cindy: That's what always works well for me, too. I love humor.

[20:32] Karen: Yeah.

[20:33] Cindy: Well, tell me about the title and the cover.

[20:34] Karen: So the title, you know, it's funny. I love the title so much, and it seems so perfect, and it took so long to come up with.

[20:42] I had a list of so many titles, and the title that I submitted to my agent was.

[20:49]  It had the words, I can't even. It had Murder Week in it. But it was something like Your English Village Murder Week or, I don't know, something not very catchy.

[20:58] And I had such a long list. And it was just in the conversation with my agent, when he was ready to send it out on submission,

[21:06] when he just said, well, Or maybe I just said, I don't remember. One of us just said, Welcome to Murder Week. And they were like, oh, my God, that's perfect.

[21:13] That's absolutely perfect.

[21:15] And that's what it is. And I can't believe we didn't think of it sooner.

[21:19] And the cover was a surprisingly easy process, too. The publisher sent me one cover and this was it. And I loved it. I think I made one change. The woman on the cover had red fingernails.

[21:32] And I said, nope, my main character would never have red fingernails. Can you make them blue?

[21:36] And that was it. And we had a title and a cover.

[21:39] Cindy: I love the way her hair weaves through the murder word.

[21:43] Karen: Yeah. Yeah. And I like that it has sort of a retro Nancy Drew kind of feeling, something about the colors of it. It reminds me of the old Nancy Drews that I loved reading.

[21:51] Cindy: I agree. I read all of those and they were so much fun. I was sad when I learned that Carolyn Keene wasn't one person.

[21:57] Karen: I know, I know.

[21:59] Cindy: Not that it really matters, but.

[22:00] Karen: But now I feel like they'll just. Instead of having an army of writers, they'll just have AI write those kinds of books.

[22:05] Cindy: That's true. And I also feel like that literature has advanced so much that people don't really read those totally repetitive stories like the Nancy Drew ones were. But I loved them when I was growing up.

[22:16] Karen: Oh, I did, too. And I read them much later than I should have. My Parents had old ones in our summer house, and my sister and I would, you know, every year we would read them when we were way too old to read them.

[22:26] But it was just nostalgic and fun.

[22:28] Cindy: Absolutely. And I loved Trixie Belden. Did you ever read her?

[22:31] Karen: I didn't. I never did. But I read Cherry Ames. These were books that my mother had that are about. Each one was a nurse in a different situation, like Cherry Ames, flight nurse, Cherry Ames, dude ranch nurse.

[22:43] And she solved mysteries. And I love those.

[22:46] Cindy: I remember seeing those, but never read them. But I loved all those series growing up.

[22:49] Karen: Yeah, me too.

[22:50] Cindy: Well, before we wrap up, Karen, what are some books that you have read recently that you really loved?

[22:55] Karen: I read a really wonderful book called The Original by Nell Stevens,

[23:00] and it's coming out in mid June, and it's a 19th century Gothic story. It involves an old house and an orphan being raised by relatives who has a talent for painting forgeries really well and does this secretly.

[23:13] And there's an imposter storyline and a queer romance. It's really unusual and really compelling and atmospheric and I love that.

[23:22] And then I'm in the middle of a novel called Aftertaste by Daria Lavelle, which comes out in May,

[23:28] which is really interesting.

[23:30] It's an immigrant story. It's a ghost story. There's a young man, a man who has come from Ukraine as a child, and he discovers that he has this ability to taste and create food that was loved by people who are no longer with us.

[23:46] So he can do this for people who are mourning those people.

[23:50] And it's in the Manhattan culinary world. I think I'm really enjoying these genre blending novels, novels that are unlike anything I've read.

[23:59] Cindy: You know, I'm glad you mentioned the genre blending because I thoroughly enjoy that type of story where it does really cross over. Did that give you any trouble trying to sell your novel?

[24:08] Karen: Oh, that's an interesting question. I think it did, honestly, because a couple of editors were like, I love this, but I don't really know what to do with it. Like, is it this or is it that?

[24:16] But that's the exact reason the editor who bought it at Gallery Books liked it. She was like, I love that it's this and it's that.

[24:23] And I've been really gratified that a lot of booksellers seem to like it because I think it's the book that I'm hoping,

[24:29] in my fantasy, a bookseller would be like, I know you don't read mysteries, but I think you're gonna like this. Or,

[24:34] you know, I know you don't. I don't know. I just think it's different. It's not classifiable. But I do think in marketing, that's a plus and a minus.

[24:43] You know, it has to be embraced in the right way.

[24:46] Cindy: Yes. And it seems like publishers are often wary of the stories that cross genres because they don't know exactly where to put it. Booksellers are always thrilled to pieces because they're, like, great.

[24:54] Something unique and different that I sell to people.

[24:57] Karen: Yeah. So I'm curious to see, like, does this end on the mystery shelf or not? And in some ways,

[25:04] I mean, of course I want it in the front, you know, I want it in the recommended shelf, but, you know, I would hope that people who find it aren't just looking for mysteries, because I don't think it's a classic mystery.

[25:17] And I think even if you think you don't like mysteries, this book is.

[25:21] It's still. I think it could be something you'd really enjoy.

[25:25] So I hope it's just out there, front and center.

[25:28] Cindy: Exactly. Right. As you walk in the bookstore, there is your book.

[25:31] Karen: Exactly. Exactly.

[25:32] Cindy: I always love when I see on Instagram and authors have gone through a bookstore or an airport bookstore and they show themselves pulling their book out, putting it front and center.

[25:41] I'm like, oh, that's the way to do it. Get it out there. Yeah.

[25:44] Well, Karen, thank you so much for coming on the Thoughts From a Page podcast. I really appreciate it.

[25:49] Karen: Thank you. I really enjoyed it. Thanks so much for your interest and support of this book.

[25:53] Cindy: Of course.

[25:56] Thank you so much for listening to my podcast. I would love to connect with you on Instagram or Facebook where you can find me at @thoughtsfromapage. If you enjoy the show and have a moment to rate it or subscribe to it wherever you listen to your podcasts,

[26:08] I would really appreciate it. It makes a huge difference. And please tell all of your friends about Thoughts from a Page. Word of mouth does wonders to help the show grow.

[26:18] The book discussed in this episode can be purchased at my bookshop storefront or and the link is in the show notes. I hope you'll tune in next time.