Rebecca
Hey Nat.

Natalie
Hey Bec.

Rebecca
And hey Marissa.

Marissa
Hi.

Natalie
This is so exciting.

Rebecca
We’re talking to Marissa Stapley about her new book, Lucky, and just having a good old chat. Thanks for making the time for us. You were just busy this morning, you were helping a friend move.

Marissa
Yeah, just helping a friend move. I’m trying because I’ve been so busy with other things, but my friendships are so important to me and people have been there for me so much, you know, for various reasons. So I just have to clear my schedule sometimes and help a friend out.

Rebecca
I do associate that with you — you have tight friendship groups, don’t you? And tight writer support groups. I feel like I have looked at you as a model for that, the importance of keeping your community.

Marissa
Yeah, it’s important — and yes, I do. I have my writer friends, and then my civilian friends, and… you know? Lately, I’ve been appreciating the civilians more just because the writing life has been so intense, and you kind of move into this different level, too, where it’s sort of hard to talk about, in a weird way. This thing has happened that everybody wants to happen to them.

Rebecca
So I just want to back up for a second, because I feel like the last time I saw you, didn’t we run into each other at No Frills?

Marissa
Yeah.

Rebecca
It was so very regular. We were both running around with our baskets.

Marissa
Yes. I think that was the last time I left the house before we all got COVID for Christmas. Or no…?

Rebecca
It was before Christmas. It was before even your book had gotten so big.

Marissa
So it was like, really weird, right? I was like, “I have a secret, and I can’t tell you.”

Rebecca
Maybe. You definitely didn’t reveal that secret. So can you walk through the last couple of months?

Marissa
Yeah, so back in September, Lucky had already been released in Canada and was releasing in the US in December. I’ve never made any traction in the US sales-wise with my books, aside from now The Holiday Swap, which I also released — I co-wrote a rom-com with a friend — and that was doing very well. Then my agent and editor took me out for dinner and gave me news — I don’t think I could possibly have been more shocked. Everybody wants to be a Reese Witherspoon Book Club pick. It’s like winning the lottery as an author, but I, especially with Lucky, just never dared to hope for something like that. It just came out of left field and they said, “We have something to tell you, your life is going to change.” I couldn’t even imagine what they meant — I have to tell you, I thought maybe they were like, “We’re dumping you. Sales have gone badly.” I was thinking, “This seems so weird. There’s champagne, what’s happening?”

Rebecca
But who knows.

Marissa
And then they said it’s a Reese’s Book Club pick for December, and everything did change. I just remember that night, I immediately started to cry. I was so overwhelmed. I just wanted to go home and tell my husband. I called him and told him, and he had no idea what it even really was, which was funny. He was like, “Uh… great,” and then by the time I got home had Googled and couldn’t believe it. The thing about this was it was September and the news was going to be released by Reese herself on December 7, the day that book came out in the US. I was under strict instructions not to tell anyone: my husband, my kids, that’s it. So I lived in this really weird world for three months. I did tell my best friend. I had to — the first time we talked I was like, “How can I have a friendship where I don’t know if you guys would be able to keep a secret like that.” I did, and then told my dad, and that kind of thing, in that really tight inner circle. But anybody else — like I’d run into you at the No Frills, and you’d be like, “So how are things going?” “Oh, things are going really well.”

Rebecca
Actually, you did a great job of just shooting the shit about something else, and we had a good conversation. That was a good con.

Natalie
À la Lucky.

Marissa
I think a lot of people (when I finally did tell them) said, “Oh, thank goodness, I thought you were mad at me.” I wasn’t talking to anybody because I’m not good with secrets. I’m not. Another friend was like, “I can’t believe you kept this. Do you have a third arm, or have you grown something? Because for you to have kept the secret for three months, something must have happened to you.” And then of course, that became the focus — keeping the secret. Then on December 7, this huge news, first Canadian author ever, and they’d flown us to L.A. last minute (which was just an incredible turn of events) to go to a party with Reese Witherspoon, which was incredible, and she’s great. The book hit the New York Times. It’s been two months on the Canadian bestseller lists, and everything’s just been like a dream, like winning the lottery.

Rebecca
So life really does feel different?

Marissa
It does, and then it doesn’t — I mean, I still have to write another book. People are more interested in what that other book will be. I’m still sitting in my office a lot of the time. Writing is still a fairly solitary existence, and the world has definitely not changed. Yes, we went to L.A., we had this incredible week, we came home, we got COVID.

Rebecca
Did you get it in L.A., do you think?

Marissa
No, it was after two weeks. I think it was just doing the rounds in the neighborhood. That was a reality check.

Rebecca
We got it too.

Natalie
So this is four books later for you though, right, if I’m understanding your story? Because Rebecca obviously knows you that much closer, so I’m just following, I’m like a voyeuristic eye over here checking it on your cool thing. But that means essentially you’ve been chipping away at this experience — I mean, today’s episode is all about reframing success. You’ve been chipping away at this sort of progression towards this experience of success. Does it feel different? You’ve just expressed how the largesse of the situation right now feels different. But even just the experience of having written this book, of how it feels compared to the other characters in your other books — is there a different connection you have to this text because of the success attached to it? Any of those questions.

Marissa
I have to say, I always felt like something special was going to happen with Lucky. I think it’s because I wrote it when my mom was sick — my mom passed away of cancer, and this was a book I dedicated to her, and she read it. I had it in my mind that something special was going to happen because my mom was so special. My agent actually sent it out to US publishers on the day of my mom’s funeral, and I was like, “Something amazing is going to happen,” and it didn’t. It really didn’t — like it really didn’t sell very well in Canada, and I did have this great film/TV deal. There’s still a lot of great film/TV stuff happening, but what I thought was going to happen didn’t happen. I was at this point where I was thinking, “Wow, my mom passed away, and something special did not happen with this book. Wow, I guess magic doesn’t exist.” I was framing it in that way. It was really tied up with my mom. I was about to maybe have a more rational relationship with these types of magical thinking beliefs —and then all of a sudden, out of nowhere, and against all odds, Reese Witherspoon gets her hands on it, picks it for her book club. So now, I’m not going to be very logical anymore, ever. I’m always going to be like, “Magic! Magic!”

I needed it — four books in. The rom-coms were doing well. I was planning another rom-com on my own, and that was the path I was heading in. As much as I love writing the upmarket commercial books that I do, I was thinking, “Well, they haven’t like they haven’t lit the world on fire, sales-wise.” So I was getting into some screenwriting. I was reframing success, and I’ve done that at various points in my career, because I’m not the type to ever give up. But I thought, “Ok, rom-coms, scriptwriting, this is what I’m going to do. Maybe someday I can go back to these types of books again.” And it seems like every time I do that, something happens to pull me back to writing these books. So this has happened, and now I’m in it again, and I’ve found huge success. That’s great. I feel very secure right now in my career, and it just feels like such a gift to get a chance to do the thing I really love. It was really uncertain, and for that, I feel lucky. I do feel weirdly close to her — like, she saved me. I don’t know. It’s not rooted in the real world. It’s a funny thing.

Natalie
That’s so interesting.

Rebecca
This is the book you wrote in the hospital room, beside your mom?

Marissa
Yeah. I had to write another novel. My mom was like, “You’ve got to keep writing. You can’t lose momentum now. You have to keep writing.” This book was due, and I had another book I was working on — I abandoned it. Lucky just came to me, and was a very straightforward book to write, for me. I didn’t find it easy, because no books are easy, but I never got lost. I never was like, “How’s this gonna work?” I knew this was, “Here’s the lottery ticket. It’s the journey with this ticket.” I just had to decide exactly what would happen with the ticket at the end. But it was a lot of fun, right?

Rebecca
Yeah, it seems like you had fun writing it. It’s a fun twist-and-turn kind of book that I could see being, “What’s the next thing that’s going to happen?”

Marissa
Right, yeah, and I wanted it to be a TV show. I still do. I had that very firmly in my mind, I actually wrote a pilot before I even started writing the book. I was trying to convince my agent to sell that terrible pilot. She kept saying, “Well, you know, I think this could be a book.” I was like, “This is not a book. It’s a TV show.” And now, I can’t really talk about the TV stuff, but certainly people do believe that it could be a TV show — quite strongly. So we’ll see what happens there.

Rebecca
I could see that for sure. Can you give the elevator pitch of Lucky?

Marissa
Lucky is about a con artist with a heart of gold who finds out she’s in possession of a winning lottery ticket that’s worth hundreds of millions of dollars. On the same day, she finds out the FBI is on her tail, and her partner and boyfriend have ditched her, and she’s in deep trouble. And she has to run. It’s a pretty neat elevator pitch, I will say.

Rebecca
That’s a good elevator pitch! I could see Reese Witherspoon wanting to play that character.

Marissa
I think so too. I mean, Lucky is 27.

Rebecca
I mean, if you age her, then.

Marissa
I mean, that age was kind of important, 27, you know? Because a lot of my characters are not that, I think she’s my youngest character. She makes a lot of judgment errors that I think wouldn’t necessarily be believable with an older woman. I think she doesn’t want to be what she is, which I think if somebody was my age, you’d be like, “Really, you’ve managed to get this far, and you don’t want to be a con artist?” I think part of it is Lucky doesn’t want to be a con artist. When she’s older, by the way, I see her more attached to the fact that she’s a great con artist. She tries to not be a con artist, but I imagine Lucky 10, 15 years down the line missing that high. So that would be an interesting iteration of her.

Rebecca
Right. If she evolved. The last couple podcasts, we’ve been talking about this idea of multiplicities — all the characters we have inside ourselves. Do you like that concept for yourself? You’re the soft mother (somehow I always associate wanting mothers to be soft), or the savvy businesswoman — but then I was also thinking a second question, how you turned that concept, with Lucky having to make up all these personalities for herself?

Marissa
Well, I remember back when I first wrote it, and my editor and agent and I went out for lunch and my editor said something like, “Of all your characters, this one, I think she’s most like you,” and I remember being kind of offended later. I was like, “Do you even know me? I’m most like a con artist?!” Later, I realized that what she meant — and I should have realized at the time — was the determination, the resilience, like I’m constantly reinventing myself and constantly trying different things with all of my books. I’ve written Mating for Life, which was really about motherhood, and a softer book. Then Things to Do When It’s Raining, which was kind of an epic romance. Then I wrote The Last Resort, which was a thriller, and then I wrote Lucky, which is kind of a combination of all of those things — a family/drama/thriller type. I don’t do the same thing twice, which is sometimes to my own detriment, because it’s challenging for marketing, but I do contain all these characters inside of me, and I just keep trying different things. I think that that is very much like Lucky.

Rebecca
Do you go, “These are the new constraints I’m going to use for this novel?” Are you really explicit about that to yourself? Or do you just do like, “This is what’s unfolding inside of me, and I’m just following it.” Do you impose the constraints right off the get go?

Marissa
No. You can try to do that with a fictional character. I know authors will say, “Well, the character wanted this,” and some people might roll their eyes. But that is sort of what happens, you’ll be trying to write a scene where you’re imposing certain constraints on your character, and it will be terrible, and the dialogue will be stiff, and it’s boring, and then the whole scene is not working. And that’s when you realize that’s because this is something the character wouldn’t really do, and you’re trying to make them do it. That’s how you get to know them. It’s an interesting process. You can sketch who you think your character is, but I don’t get too picky on those details, because I think they come out in the first draft — and then editing, you start to realize their motivations more and more.

Rebecca
Right, and even the genre that you’re fitting into, do you feel like that emerges as you’re going?

Marissa
Well, I just never consider genre. I find publishers do that a lot, and I always am just trying to write novels. I’ve always found it quite frustrating that there always seems to be a push — specifically for female authors, it would seem — to say it’s a genre. I am a little bit sensitive, but sometimes there’s a veiled genderized contempt. An author can just write something and it doesn’t have to be placed into this box. Mating for Life and Things to Do When It’s Raining, they were not meant to be considered romance. I had a cousin recently text me and say, “I can’t wait to read Lucky. I’m sorry, I haven’t read any of your other books, but I don’t like romance.” I was like, “I don’t write romance. I haven’t.” But that’s just what it’s considered and how it’s been packaged.

Natalie
We use the word reframe on this podcast a lot, and obviously in our relationship with each other. Even as I’m hearing you describing the way that you sort of analyze — well, what you just said there, right? You’re reframing how you’ve presented something to the world, versus how somebody else has potentially packaged it. When we’re thinking of reframe here, we’re looking at how we maneuver our way through life’s big stuff and small stuff — everything that ends up feeling a bit hard. You’ve already shared about your mom, and that experience obviously was one that took a lot more than just a one time reframe. That’s an ongoing process, 100%, I can only imagine. But trying to find new words to get to the other side of a hurdle, as a writer, that’s your money, right? I mean, your words. Have you had to do any sort of personal reframing work in your writing life?

Marissa
Yeah, I had to reframe the way I was either being defined or how other people were seeking to define me, how that affected me, and how much I would care about other people’s framing of me and my career. At the beginning of my career, I was so worried about what certain high up members of the writing community might think, or what readers would think, and I would read every review on Goodreads and take them all to heart. I’ve totally reframed that, none of that matters. My mom, she once did say to me, “What other people think of you is none of your business.” It’s such a good piece of advice, but it’s such a tough one if you’re a writer (or any person in the public eye, an actor or anything like that), if you want to know what people think of you, you could completely destroy a day just seeing good reviews and then seeing one bad one and you think, “Am I what that person is saying? Is this book this and that and the other?” I had to just completely free myself from that. I don’t read those reviews. It’s funny because it takes time and a certain amount of maturity, but I love having a writing community. I love having writer friends, but it doesn’t bother me that I’m not friends with everybody in the writing community. Certain people in the publishing community who think that commercial fiction is not worthy of literary acclaim and that kind of thing, it just doesn’t bother me anymore. I think it’s all about just reframing it. It’s ok, it doesn’t mean anybody’s a bad person. It doesn’t mean I’m a bad writer. It doesn’t mean anything. It’s just a different frame.

Natalie
That’s so helpful. That’s such a great reframe.

Rebecca
Do you even pay attention to the good reviews on Goodreads and stuff? Does that have a huge impact? Or would you say, “That’s nice, but my value is not there either.”

Marissa
You know what, I like it when people tag me in a really nice review. Unfortunately, sometimes people will tag you on Instagram on a not great review, and I’m just like, “But why? I didn’t need to see this.” Unfortunately — and all my writer friends will agree — we wish those good reviews had more power. We don’t know why they don’t. I could read 30 five-star reviews, and then read two three-star and a one-star and be completely demoralized. I don’t know why that is. We all agree, you just have to stay away from them. It’s this weird temptation, like forbidden fruit — where you’re like, “Maybe I’ll just just read one,” but you always end up…

Natalie
Finding the hurtful one.

Marissa
Seeing something you shouldn’t see. It doesn’t matter who you are. It happens to all authors. I also know it’s not because I’m a bad writer — I know I’m not a bad writer. I think I clicked on the fact that I know that Reese Witherspoon really loved my book, and I met her and she told me, and she looked in my eye and she was very specific about what she loved. So that good review I do hold onto. There’s certain people that you hear from, or if somebody goes out of their way to send an email to me and telling me why they love my book — those will mean something. But the good Goodreads reviews, they have no power. It’s too bad.

Rebecca
Can you tell the story — unless it’s too embarrassing, but I thought it was so sweet — when you were like, “Oh, I realized my skirt was on backwards?” I felt like that was so human and beautiful, and I was like, “Oh, Marissa, yes!”

Marissa
That felt actually really important. I think I’m pretty instinctive now about framing myself. When I knew I was going to have this huge success, I knew that people were going to be jealous, and I knew that people would think things that weren’t true about how I saw myself. So when I went to this party and I met Reese Witherspoon, I thought I looked great. I think it was a pretty good outfit — and then I was taking my skirt off later and I was like, “Oh, wow. It’s on backwards. It’s this whole different skirt, it just wasn’t even on right.” So I decided to put that on my Instagram stories, and I did that because I was trying to reframe myself, just to remind everybody that yes, I’ve been in L.A. for the past few days and it looks like I’ve just become this different person. But the reality is my skirt was on backwards.

Rebecca
I really like that. Does the potential jealousy scare you a bit? That’s a hard one, right? Because you sort of have hit the jackpot, in a sense. People can spend their whole careers and it just doesn’t hit. You hear about actors, they’re asked the question, “Would you keep going if it was this hard? If it was going to be hard, and you weren’t going to hit the jackpot, so to speak?” And, you know, the actor would say, “No, I wouldn’t.” I don’t know how you think about that. I guess that’s reframing, too, but jealousy is a real thing in our world.

Marissa
It is. I know that I’ve felt it. It’s almost partly why I find my writer friends are so dear, because we’ve decided we’re not going to be jealous of each other, we just are going to be happy for each other. But it takes work because publishing is a tough industry. You can tell yourself there’s enough to go around, and there’s enough room in the tent — but I mean, theirs is and there isn’t. There’s twelve Reese’s picks per year. There’s twelve Good Morning America. There are only a certain number of these incredible things to go around. It doesn’t happen to a lot of people. I think in that weird three month ‘I had to keep the secret’ phase, I spent a little too much time worrying about how people might react, and the jealousy, and how it would damage me. Really, I think that people are happy for me. I’ve spoken to people who have been like, “Oh my god, I’m so jealous, I have to tell you, but I’m so happy for you,” and at least admit it. But nothing bad has happened. I think we just all accept there’s going to be jealousy. But I also think, because of the way that I’ve reframed things, maybe a few years ago I would be more vulnerable to there being people who don’t think I deserve this. And now I’m like, “Look, I know there are people who don’t think I deserve this. Who knows if I deserve this? This is a wonderful thing.” I think Lucky is a great book, and I know why Reese picked it, and I’m happy. And that’s all.

Natalie
I had written this one question here — the two of you are different, the way that you both live your life as definitive, that’s the mantle you have taken on definitively as your whole career. I look at you both, because I am a teacher — I sit in a building filled with a lot of people, my days don’t feel solitary by any means. Whereas you’ve already expressed, both of you, that there’s much time that you spend alone in your heads with your characters, but it’s you doing the work. So the trope of the solitary writer life is one thing, but then you have already made mention of this community of people that you keep surrounding you. Whether they’re the community of writers, or whether it’s — I think you call them like the civilian friends, right? So what I’m wondering is, would you reframe that solitary writer trope to maybe be something more like — this sounds so cheesy, but you know, it’s ‘teamwork makes the dream work,’ kind of experience with this book, because it sounds to me like there’s certainly more than you participating.

Marissa
For sure. It does take a village. I mean, the writing part is solitary. But there’s so much more to a book than just writing it. In a weird way, it’s one of the unfortunate things about the publishing industry. In the three months leading up to announcing the book, I would say to my husband, “I know that there are books out there that are beautiful books that are not going to get the attention they deserve, maybe not even get published.” There are any number of reasons why books just don’t take off, but when they do, the book and the beautiful writing and the great story is one piece, you’ve got your publisher, your cover, the agent is such a big part of it, and the editors, and the publicity and marketing. In this case, Hello Sunshine and Reese’s team, and all of the thinking that went into all of the marketing that they did. The book is the commodity in that, but it certainly wasn’t all the book’s doing. It really was a community of people.

Natalie
It’s helpful to hear too, because I think that one could apply that very specific reframing to many situations. I said I’m so different because I’m in a school surrounded by so many people, but really, teachers are prone to living solitary lives in their classroom where they become the only voice. It can be a really challenging place for them to then go out and experience any kind of feedback. I mean, just like you guys have Goodreads, teachers have ratemyteacher.com. It’s a place I stopped going to 15 years ago because I was just like, “This isn’t a place that’s healthy for anybody.” And at the same time, we all need feedback. We need a community to help speak to how we’re doing, what we’re doing. So it’s interesting to hear the notion of teamwork as playing out with this book.

Rebecca
Marissa, the idea of second and third chances, the character Reyes. I was interested in that because it’s kind of biblical. We’re good Christian girls, that’s how we were raised. When those themes come up in books, I’m interested. Does that resonate with you in your life, too?

Marissa
I definitely don’t think that I do it on purpose, but of course my upbringing will reflect in my writing. I think with this book, because it was so closely tied to my mom, and my mom was incredibly forgiving — never going to be walked over by a very forgiving person. I was very affected by this conversation I had with a family friend at a holiday, the year before I started writing it. Everyone was having wine, and then I don’t know why it came — I think we were talking about friendships, and I said, “I decided to forgive this friend, and in the past, maybe I would have taken a harder line. But as I get older, I find myself becoming more forgiving.” And she said, “Well, all people do is let you down.”

It was sort of like what Reyes was saying, she just was like, if you don’t accept that you’re just going to be very lonely. Of course, you’re going to forgive people. Within reason — you’re not going to forgive someone for repeatedly doing something that is just totally unspeakable. I think in friendships and family relationships, we have bad days, we have bad moments. Now I look at people who will say things like, “Oh, cross me once and you’re dead to me,” and I’m like, “How the hell do you live like that?” I just can’t, and I stay very clear of people like that because especially these days we’re all just doing our best, and we’re all having some tough days. I can’t imagine. That’s why I jumped to the aid of a friend right now — people need help right now.

Rebecca
Right, like, this is how I want to live. We’ve been talking a lot about boundaries — I like that.

Natalie
Yeah. It’s a nice balance, actually, to reframe it that way. For sure.

Rebecca
Can I read you this one quote, Marissa, and then we’ll wrap it up? This is James Baldwin, and he writes: “The poets (by which I mean all artists) are finally the only people who know the truth about us. Soldiers don’t. Statesmen don’t. Priests don’t. Union leaders don’t. Only poets.” What do you think? I’m interested in this idea that just artists, are we the ones that know?

Marissa
Well, isn’t that interesting? I love that, and I love James Baldwin. One of my dearest friends is a poet, and she’ll always go away from our time together, or anything she does, and she’ll write a poem about it, and it just boils that moment down. I’ve always thought, “You’re really experiencing in a different way.” So I do think writers and artists do see the truth. Or at least they see their truth, perhaps more clearly — or at least we have the luxury of getting to sit and say, “I believe this, I believe people deserve these chances. And I’m going to explore this in a fictional world.” Then people like you will read it and go, “Oh, I see that, that’s made me reframe forgiveness,” or something like that. I got to be able to do that in 80,000 words or something. That’s one of the gifts of the profession, getting to the truth. A lot of people don’t don’t get that opportunity.

Rebecca
I really think it’s also just helping people stay soft. I was thinking that I was getting harder and not wanting to forgive, and then I saw that line in your book and I was like, “No, that continues to be the person I want to be.” It keeps this rejigging inside me. I don’t know.

Marissa
Yeah, I love that. It’s really meaningful to me that it seems to have resonated with so many people, because I felt that people were starting to forget that. We’ve become very wrapped up in our own heads. It’s confusing, right? Because at first, you’re like, “We’re all going through a hard time.” And then it becomes: well, this hard time is never-ending, but still we need to stay soft with each other. I came into the pandemic grieving, basically, so I needed softness badly. I wanted to set that stage for other people to see.

Rebecca
Does it feel like a loss that you couldn’t have had all the success with your mom seeing it? Or have you managed to reframe that one for yourself too — like, she’s with you in a different way and sees it?

Marissa
Yeah, I really try not to think about it. That’s the one thing that I think of. I do have this magical thinking thing going, where I’ll tell myself she’s somehow responsible. That night when I got the news, I said, “Oh, I’m sure my mom is somehow behind this.” My editor looked at me and said, “Marissa, you’re going to have to take the next three months and you’re going to have to own this. This has nothing to do with anybody but you,” even though I spend time talking about the community and all of that. She was like, “You’ve got to believe that you and this book deserve this honour. It didn’t just happen. It wasn’t some miracle.” But I think I do like to tell myself my mom somehow was my guardian angel, because then I feel that I believe she can actually see me. I really thought about it — if she really can’t see this like that, I don’t think I can actually deal with that. I don’t know, eventually we’ll have to reframe it. Maybe the reframe is she always believed that this would happen. I know that she wouldn’t have been surprised at all, which is amazing, because the odds of this were zero. She would have been like, “Well, of course.” So maybe she did see it. She saw it through the lens of her soft motherhood, really — believing that I could do anything.

Rebecca
That’s really beautiful.

Natalie
That’s wonderful. I think she sees, by the way.

Marissa
I do too.

Rebecca
I 100% believe that. What do you do next today? What’s for dinner at your house? Who’s the chef?

Marissa
My husband and I, we share domestic responsibilities — I’d say pretty much 50/50. Frankly, probably more him. He’s amazing, he’s incredibly supportive, and all I have to do is say like, “I’ve got to write, I just can’t do the dinner,” and he’ll do it even if it’s eggs and toast or something. But I don’t mind cooking, I like it. I can’t write now. I just got home, I did the podcast — I only write in the morning. I’m making — you know Alison Roman’s stew, that chickpea coconut kale…? There’s this controversy in the comments, people freaked out because she used two cans of full-fat coconut milk. I just love making it, and I feel like this is so crazy that I’m making it — it’s quite decadent — but that’s what I’m making. I’m making it because my 14-year-old son inexplicably loves this chickpea turmeric-spiced vegetarian stew. This is not how we always eat. Have it with some pita and he’s excited. So that’s what I’m having.

Natalie
And those boys need to eat. My seven-year-old, if he’s going to be anything like what he eats now when he’s 14 — I’d better up my game.

Marissa
Yeah. He needs the coconut milk.

Natalie
I know, I was going to say — it’s going to be the fat content.

Rebecca
Marissa, do you still get up at 5:00 and write?

Marissa
No, I don’t do that. I go back and forth, but most of the time I’m doing that when I’m on a deadline or really in the middle of a book. This year, the past few months, getting up just got really hard. So now I find I’ll get up and I’ll do a workout at 7:00, I like to do that in the morning, and then I’m doing my writing more when the kids go to school — they have been going for the past few weeks.

Rebecca
We hope we hope they stay there.

Marissa
Yeah.

Natalie
Thank you for taking the time to make it such a conversational experience here. This was so fun. I know you two are friends, but I feel like I’ve been very included in this process. It’s so neat to feel included in a book that therthere’s community, in that there are lots of people reading it right now. There’s something lovely in getting to be a part of that process with you. So thanks.

Marissa
Thank you. I hope I meet you around the neighborhood in person, I know we will recognize each other.

Rebecca
In No Frills, maybe.

Natalie
Or Sweet Potato, whatever it takes to get the coconut milk.

Marissa
Yeah, for my coconut milk, I have to get it there. Well, this was such a pleasure. I really enjoyed it. So thank you both.

Rebecca
And thanks, Marissa. It’s just really fun. What did Reese say to you? Can you say what she loved about the book, as our closer?

Marissa
She said, “This is the best character I’ve read in a long time.” Basically, she loved her resilience and she loved how strong she was. She was like, “We have such a vision.” I can’t really say any more. Anyway, yeah.

Natalie
That’s fun!

Rebecca
Well, resilience. Yes, we all need it. So thanks for putting Lucky out into the world.

Marissa
Thank you so much.

Natalie
Bye.

Rebecca
See you.