Poured Over: Kelly Link on The Book of Love

By Jenna Seery / February 13, 2024 at 6:00 am

“If you write about a person, you’re writing about that person because they’re special.”

The Book of Love by Kelly Link combines fantastical elements, varieties of love and a supernatural bargain — all set in a picturesque seaside town. Link joins us to talk about what led her from short stories to her first novel, how she created her magic system, the influence of music on her writing and more with guest host, Kat Sarfas.

This episode of Poured Over was hosted by guest host Kat Sarfas and mixed by Harry Liang.                 

New episodes land Tuesdays and Thursdays (with occasional Saturdays) here and on your favorite podcast app.       

Featured Books (Episode):
The Book of Love by Kelly Link
White Cat, Black Dog by Kelly Link
The Scandalous Confessions of Lydia Bennet, Witch by Melinda Taub
Your Utopia by Bora Chung
The Blacktongue Thief by Christopher Buehlman
The Hearts of Horses by Molly Gloss

Full Episode Transcript

Kat Sarfas

Hello, I’m Kat Sarfas, bookseller at Barnes and Noble. Today we are joined by the brilliant Kelly Link. Kelly is the best-selling author of the short story collections. Stranger Things Happen, Magic for Beginners, Pretty Monsters, Get in Trouble, a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in fiction, and most recently White Cat Black Dog a Barnes and Noble speculative monthly pick. Among other honors, she has won a Hugo Award, three Nebula Awards, a Shirley Jackson Award, a Lucas Award and a World Fantasy Award for her fiction, and was one of the recipients of the 2018 MacArthur Genius Grant. She is the co founder of Small Beer press, and the owner of Book Moon an independent bookshop in East Hampton, Massachusetts. The Book of Love her long awaited debut novel is both epic and intimate, haunting and intoxicating tale of love, death and magic. And one I can’t stop talking about. Kelly, thank you so much for being here with us.

Kelly Link

It’s absolutely my pleasure. Thank you for having me.

So many know you as like a master of the short story. And I don’t say that lightly, and author that sort of wields the weird and surreal as a very powerful and enjoyable tool. Your stories have captivated and enchanted so many readers. So I have to ask what led you to Laura, to Daniel, Mo, to Susanna to Lovesend and this dizzying and generous first novel?

Wow, thank you. I am a short story writer. And I think I will always think of myself that way. But I am part of a local community of novelists. I do a lot of my writing with other people, when circumstances permit with other writers. And the two writers that I write the most often with are Holly Black and Cassandra Clare. And I think that in part, I began thinking about novel writing, because I wouldn’t say I’m intimately engaged, but I am a very close up bystander of people who year after year, produce these really fantastic novels, and that I love to read. I also for years ran a small press with my husband. And I edited many of the novels that we published. And I think at a certain point, after you listen to people talk about novels, and you work with writers who are publishing their novels, and if you love novels, as a reader, you start to think this seems like it would be worth exploring, I guess what, what can I do in a novel that I couldn’t do in a short story. And the second part of that is, when Random House, bought my collection, Get in Trouble. They bought a second book, a novel. And the reason why I sold them a novel was, the writer Holly Black said to me, you are going to write a novel accidentally, if you don’t write it on purpose, and it would be much, much better to write one on purpose. And that made some sense to me. And I work really well, at the deadlines for particular editor, and I thought, left on my own, I’ll write the accidental novel. But if I sell it, then I will have to write it. And I had some ideas that I had been thinking about for a long time. I originally thought that I would write a short ghost story novel. And I think that I will do that. That will be my next adult project. But I had been thinking about these kids coming back from the dead. I had been thinking about it as a trilogy. And what I thought when I put aside the ghosts story novel, because I thought I don’t have the heart for this right now, for whatever reason, I can’t find my way in. But what if I began to think about the problem of how to make a trilogy into one into one book. And I often begin a project by thinking about a technical problem. And so in this case, the technical problem was how to condense something. That should be three books and the one book and as you can see, the one of the parts of that solution is well, it’s going to be very long.

Generous.

Yes, you said long away that and I thought you could just say long.

Yes, I mean, like, I’m almost like embarrassed to show people I have this beautiful arc here that has all these wonderful quotes on it. And just a great description and it is so beat up because I feel like I kind of lived and breathed this book for a very long time and it just was like a constant companion. And now that you’re saying like that it was like there was a trilogy, it makes me almost want to go back and like, find those beats because I guess, yeah, now that I’m thinking about it there is there’s arcs. And there’s like there is a flow. And there were points where I did almost feel like okay, well, that wrapped up in that. But now what, like what’s happening, you know, and then and then But then the story continues. So that’s really interesting. I don’t think I’ve ever had anyone say that, like that. That’s how they are approaching, that’s how they approached a novel.

I don’t think, I’m sorry about this, I think it would have been hard to pull off in a trilogy. But I had an idea for a middle book, which involved not quite a standalone, because the characters would have been the same, but they would have been more or less inside of a historical romance. Oh, which would have been a ton of fun to write. And I, you know, this book is, in some ways, my love letter to the romance genre that I don’t work in. But that as a reader has given me enormous pleasure. But when I thought about writing a historical romance novel, I thought, I’m still a reader of that I’m not sure that I’m a writer in them in that genre in that format.

In a way with Marianne, you kind of were able to sort of embody a romance writer, and a character and a series of books and, and other books. And so that’s, that’s lovely, it’s a nice little sneak in there. For you.

I don’t think it’s a spoiler to say that a secondary character in this book is a romance writer, a very successful one, who does follow that sort of, in many respects, punishing schedule of putting out you know, a book a year or more about one character, following their sort of their love of life. And, you know, part of the pleasure thinking about that is if you write about the same characters over and over again, even if each book has a happy ending, you know that the next book happens because something bad has happened or something bad is going to be happened, because that’s what happens in books, bad things happen, and people sort of navigate them.

Yes. And I think that’s even something and I’m trying to, I’m remembering like, I think that’s even a point in the book, where it’s like, Oh, poor, poor Lavender has to now she’s going to be kidnapped again, or she’s going to make something terrible. I’m sorry, something else terrible is going to happen to you. But this is just the way it goes. And this is how the series goes. And this is what the readers want. And I have to provide, and I’m thinking we even say somewhere and it’s where it does say like, you know that that character, the romance, Marianne, where, you know, she’s written, I feel like you do give a number. It’s some astronomical amount of books and you think to yourself, like how can anyone possibly write that many, but that is exactly what the schedule of romance writers, that is exactly what they do. So that’s crazy. Well, I love that. And so now I want to talk a little bit about the town I love when a town sort of becomes a character in itself. And so the Book of Love takes place in this fictional town of Lovesend Massachusetts making this novel kind of close to home in a way. If home you know, we’re full of magic and vengeful and eventual goddess, the best fictional worlds are always hard to leave. And this one is really dazzling. What, what was your inspiration for Lovesend.

Lovesend is a coastal town in Massachusetts, and, you know, this is going to be a little bit of a digression. But my husband is from Scotland. I grew up in Miami, we both lived beside, you know, an ocean. And we now live in Western Massachusetts. There’s no ocean here, although there weirdly are many seafood shacks, places to get a lobster roll.Hopefully, you know, being driven the same day from somewhere on the coast. And they’re quite good. But I think that when I was imagining a town that I would like to write about, I thought about the fact that both of us are surprised that we no longer live in a city or a town beside the ocean, and how much I love the ocean. And so I wanted to, I knew that I wanted the ocean to be in the book. I knew that I wanted a town that felt something like where I live. You know, I live in Northampton, Massachusetts. I work in my bookstores in East Hampton, Massachusetts, and they’re both relatively small towns. My husband is constantly reminding me that we live in a rural area, you know, I think, well, it’s a college town. It’s like, well, it’s a rural area. Yeah. And you know, we’re both accurate. There are a lot of bookstores. There a lot of quirky restaurants.

Checks all the boxes.

There are a lot of kids. You know, there’s a lot of really weird retail spaces, some very fancy. And I think the thing that has changed about the place where I live, and I think this is true for a lot of people is, over the years, it’s become more expensive. And so when I write about Lovesend, one of the things that I wanted was also to capture that sort of feeling of a small town that has access to some really beautiful to the natural world. Maybe it has a strong bike culture, it has these quirky restaurants, but it’s not yet hit that point where the locals are priced out. It’s still accessible. And so for me, you know, it’s the kind of town that would be paradise.

I was gonna say, I’m like, sounds like exactly like the kind of place that we all wished existed.

And, you know, I think they exist for pockets of time, and then they disappear again, as you know, the world gets harder in other places.

You’ve done a justice, you cemented it in book form.

I did. I wanted, I wanted to preserve sort of that feeling when we first came here. And I say this realizing, when we came here, it was already beginning to change. But you know, things, things are constantly changing everywhere. But this, you know, this this, to me is sort of the novel version of the kind of small town that I’ve been lucky enough to live in for going on 20 years now.

Wonderful. So talking characters. So as much as I feel like the town has its own character, this is an impressive ensemble of characters that are in this book, and I loved how you jump around, there’s lots of points of view, I love how readers can just sort of delve into the minds of so many. And I loved how you label each chapter, “The Book of…” I can’t help it, I guess, maybe because I’m a bookseller. But I do kind of think of our lives as like a you know, it’s a book, it’s our book, you know. And so I love that each chapter, you know, The Book of Susannah, Book of Daniel, Book of Mo, and it does kind of put you in this this mindset of like, this is their own book, their stories, their motives, their desires, their struggles. And they’re all so different from each other. Like, I felt like every character was almost like, as I’m sure you did this, as most writers do. But it was just like that springboard for another character. And so I got to ask, and I know, I know, it’s, it’s terrible of me to ask this, but did you have a favorite person to write? Did you have a character where there was like, a particular inspiration that you took for them? And I know, it’s like asking you to choose amongst your children. So I know this is a wicked question. But when you have such an impressive ensemble, I have to think did was there one character that stood out? Or was there one character at a time you enjoyed more than others…

There are two characters that that are sort of pulled from my life, in terms of the dynamics between them. Susannah and Laura, not entirely, they’re sisters, they’re very close in age, they have a contentious relationship. The older one, Susannah is kind of a disaster. And she has a slightly younger sister, Laura, who knows what she wants to be what she wants to do has a real sense of the way that the world should work. Parts of their relationship is definitely drawn from the kind of relationship that I had with my sister, when we were teenagers, we fought constantly, we did not understand each other’s point of view, we had very different sense of our place in the world. So that aspect was comfortable where leader right from even though it’s a, there’s a lot of fighting in their relationship, that dynamic was a comfortable one to explore. And I will say, Now, my sister is wonderful. I have a great relationship. But I sort of knew some of the boundaries of that relationship and some of the ways that they played off of each other. I love all of the characters. Thomas is somebody who has been alive for a long time, he sort of navigates almost between different kinds of voices, you know, he’s been alive for such a long time, English was not his first language. So he has different registers that he speaks in, depending on if he’s talking about his past, if he’s, you know, sort of speaking to people who don’t know who he was when he was first alive. And I found the that register the more historical voice really pleasurable to write in that I felt very far removed from myself, but that it was a very weirdly strangely easy place to write from. And then there’s another character, Bowie, who is kind of a mystery, who has come back from the dead with a few of the other characters, but is not really the person that they once were. And I found Bowie easy to write as well, I think, in part because his point of view was so strange that I was able to get outside my own head, when I was working in Bowie’s voice.

And thinking about what you were saying about not only just the, you know, the, the different voices, but you do have quite a few characters that are old. And I when I say old, I mean, like ancient level old, and you do even speak about how they were what they are now is not what they once were. And so having, you know, evolved, and so it is interesting, because to, you know, think about how, you know, they are speaking in one way, and knowing that is that is that throw, you know, to their former self, and now, you know, I’m kind of trying to meld their current situation or their current self and what they’ve evolved into. I did love when a Bowie asks what’s a muffin? And, you know, again, that’s simplicity of guess this is these are new things. Well, they might not seem new to us, when you are 1000 years old, or 500 years old, these things are new there, you know, and I think that that must be so enjoyable to really sit down and think if I’m 1000 years old, what do I know?

Trapped in some other dimension, like, well, people came up with movies, and you know, all this other stuff? Yes. What would it be like to sit in that movie theater for the first time.

And kind of experience that that jump, you know, and in time, but then also that that sort of evolution? Like and I you know, I love how even you know with I love how, you know, he is sort of the deviant in a way and then but it’s like, he wasn’t always that way. And you know, and I think that kind of showing darkness changes us but also just experience changes us.

Trauma changes us, relationships change us, love changes us. Yes, there’s a great deal of fun thinking about even minute changes, the big changes, that goofy changes, you know, and of course, and also the parts of us that feel essential, you know, the that we hold on to the longest.

You get into these characters’ heads, these particularly like the, you know, some of our teenage protagonists, it can be frustrating, but at the same time you’re like, that’s exactly what I do. And it’s like, maddening, you know, but at the same time, again, everyone has, I think you even have characters who will say that say like, oh, yeah, I know, I’m stupid now. But I won’t always be this way. And it is that like realization that like, I know what I know, because of my experiences and what I’ve what I’ve dealt with, but as you have lived 100 years I have lived it, you know, 16,18 like, give me give me grace to sort of, you know, continue on sort of a different a different trajectory. But speaking of love, I love the quote, I think Leigh Bardugo has a quote that she gave for this book, calling it an eldritch Our Town, which I felt like I saw that and I was like, That’s really interesting. And then I read it and I was like, Yes. Like this is if I was to have like a short pitch like a book sale and just like what is this book? It was? I was like, that’s a great. I don’t know how she thought of that matchup, brilliant. So again, yeah, I was just like, that’s a great. That’s just like spot on the title of the book, The Book of Love. I do feel like while it is like you say that quote. And then you look at the title and you’re like what, but it is so fitting, because you do go into so many forms of love through while all this chaos is happening. And I think if you can tell yourself, it’s lives love, there’s romance. There’s familiar love, there’s platonic love, there’s the ill fated love. And this love, you know, sort of transcends and doors and twists. And it takes you on this journey on sort of the meanings of love. So I’m gonna end this is a big question. So I’m going to ask you, how do you look at love? And how has that changed since writing this novel? Since you’ve done so much and you’ve gone on so many journeys?

That is a great, tough question. You know, it feels simplistic to say this, but I would like to think that that the best organizing principle as I get older is to sort of live by love, to tell the people that I love that I love them, to celebrate the things that I love, or, you know, the books or the music, the people who are doing extraordinary things to sort of, I guess to recognize that love is not a bad way to organize your life. You know, the other organizing principle that I am deeply invested in is that, you know, Wrath is the anger is also sort of a useful organizing principle that we should be angry about, about certain kinds of things, you know, that that if that anger can be in kind of fuel as well, but not to let anger crowd out love.

But I mean, in a way, I mean, not all anger, I should preface by saying that, absolutely, I think anger can, I mean, there is love there, I mean, to be angry about something means that you had to have had an immense amount of love for that thing to begin, right. So it’s like it even when, even in the darker elements, there’s still love. And I think that’s, you know, hearing you talk about your how much you enjoy writing the characters of Thomas and Bowie. And I really, you can kind of, you know, easily make put these love threads with the different characters in that one. It did take a beat before I was like, no, no, this is another this is just another form of love. Like there, yes, there is like hatred there. But there once wasn’t, and that sort of that fuel for that like that revenge that again, that like all consuming came from a place of love. And so again, it’s just love reform, it’s like an all it all. It all starts, you know, with love, and so to hear you kind of say like, we should organize our life by love and to understand love in all its different forms, you know, and how it can manifest maybe in good ways or bad. If that’s how we understand where it came from. It is a simple way to sort of understand life, organized life, however you want to say.

And it was a great organizing principle for a book. The thing is, is there is there a love story here, even if you know it is it’s not, it’s not what we would think of as a passionate love or a sexual love. But to think what is what is the love story?

And there are many. So your magic system is very interesting. And I love delving into new magic systems. And I love that your magic system was sort of there was this. Like it’s centered around a hunger, that like magic is that you it’s like a hunger and that you consume? And that’s how you kind of create? How did you come to that? How are you like, this is how I’m going to create my magic system. I’m always fascinated by how I mean, because it’s infinite, you can do anything. But to say like this is by magic, and it can do infinite things. And it’s like a bit it comes from a place of consumption like it comes in, you have to consume you have this hunger to order to create.

And that you have to live with. I had spent many, many years thinking about what magic stands in for I don’t love when it is to clear what the real-world correlation is for something that is fantastic. I don’t want to think that there is a one-on-one relationship, let’s say, in a vampire, and you know, whether it’s sickness or some specific kind of trauma, I want there to feel that there is a dimension there that is larger than just the vampire is a metaphor for something. At the same time, I think when you work with a fantastic, you have to recognize that people are going to make their own correlations between what a fantastic element in a book might relate to in the real world. And they’re going to go for the thing where it resonates the most with them. Yeah, that’s true for the writer as well that the writer is coming in with a sense of something that troubles them, or interests them about the real world something that maybe a fantastic element would change, you know, or dramatize or maybe replace, you know, you’re looking what or how would this work in the real world? And so, obviously, magic is always kind of a standard for power, right that some people have, some people don’t, some people have more of it. And oftentimes, I think that that kind of stands in for money, you know, for while, some people have a lot of magic, some people have very little. The more you have, the better off you are. And I think what I wanted to do a little bit was to sort of bring, bring part of that into greater relief. The thing about money, thinking about money is thinking about money. If you have enough of it, it creates more of it, right? Yes. And so I thought the thing about magic school is you know, we have this idea that magic school should always be really complicated and sure, maybe sometimes it is but what if you had had sort of a magic system where you know, anybody who had been given access to it, it sort of create more of a, you know, what if what if the limitations were not as complicated as they often are. And then the thing is, once you take an idea with it and sort of run with it, you think, well, there are complications here. They’re just not the complications that you would normally think of, again, with this method, it’s very, it’s just that it changes you as a person in the same way that I think unlimited access to money would change a person, right. And or power to your power. Yeah, I do think that these kids in the book are special, in the same way that all kids are special. You know, any, if you write about a person, you’re writing about that person, because they’re special. But they don’t. And I don’t think it’s a spoiler to say this, but they are not given access to magic because they’re special. They’re given access to magic, because there’s something that somebody wants from them.

So it is a little bit of its tool that’s being wielded.

Yeah. And that doesn’t mean it wouldn’t be super cool to have it, it doesn’t.

I know. And I think that what’s great is kind of, you know, watching these characters figure that out for themselves, like figure that out that this is a tool, and yes, I’m being used. But that doesn’t mean that I can’t take that power back and yield it for something else. And I think that’s that journey that our, our lovely, lovely children, lovely teenagers go through is maddening at times, but also very satisfying. At the end to sort of see it kind of almost made me feel like the kids are going to be all right at the choices. You know, like I was like, okay, all right.

We’re gonna be okay. You know, there’s something wonderful that Holly Black when said to me about the kind of the virtue maybe, of writing about people’s lives who are going through adolescence is when they screw up, it’s terrible, but you don’t think, well, that’s it forever, you know, you screw it up, it’s over, you think the kids are getting a second chance, you know, they get a second act, they may, in fact end up being very different people from the people who made the mistake that we’re reading about. Whereas when you read a book about a person in middle age, messing up in a big way, you think, well, that’s it, you know, it’s gonna be hard to come back from that one. And that, yeah, I think it’s writing about anybody in adolescence, one, you know, it’s a liminal space, it’s a space in which great change is possible. You’re writing about people who are figuring out things about themselves, and they’re really excited about it. So they make wonderful protagonists, but also, anyone who’s reading a book has gone through adolescence, right. You know, it’s a it’s kind of a country that everybody has visited. And I think that’s not as true the experience of middle age, maybe is, and I’m not saying that it’s, you don’t have a singular experience as a, as a teenager, you do. But I think because when adult readers encounter adolescent protagonists, you know, it’s a little bit like, I found it very hard to write about Northampton or, or the place where I live now, for about 20 years, it took me a while to figure out how to write about Massachusetts. And I think I had to be here a certain time, amount of time. And at least for me, as a writer, it is it took me a long time to figure out how to write about experiences that I went through. And so maybe when I might be I’ll be writing a lot more stories about middle aged people.

It doesn’t move that benchmark forward.

Yeah. There’s something about that, that territory or that country of adolescence, which, you know, I am ready to go back and think about some of the ways that I was a person in the world, when I was a teenager.

For me, having children, I think makes it like, I’m sure everyone thinks about their adolescence, but it definitely makes I think it put it more into focus of who the things I did and the ideals I had and who I thought I was, again, it all had a purpose because it you know, it leads you to kind of you know, who you are and where you see yourself now, I love that you just said you’re like oh, you know the kids are gonna get like, you know, their kids are gonna be all right. Because I will tell you this entire book, I did not know if the kids were going to be bought. You know, and I think this is this is this is a great thing. You know, when you do get to experience it, because I think when you read so many books, you can’t help but kind of started Oh, I think I know where this is going, Oh, I think I, you know, I can see this is this is going to happen. And I, I think maybe because of the fantastical element and because of the rules of this game that they were playing and how it was going to work out. I will, I will say up in like, the last one a couple chapters when it when it finally starts to, you know, everything’s things are starting to settle. I had no idea what was happening. Everything was going to be all right. And I knew it might not be all right, but like, you know, what is all right, like, is it right for that character? Like is it like is that except like, maybe for someone else, that would not be acceptable. But for that character like that, that sort of ending was going to be okay for them, or that’s what that’s the ending that they needed, whether Well, I wanted it for them or not. So thank you for that for keeping me for keeping a very like, and like this is are they going to be you know, these decisions and is everything going to eventually fall into place. Again, not necessarily in a neat way, but in a way that it’s going to, you know, it has to in a way that is good for for those characters or for what they are, what they needed for what their journey needed to be. So love that. Thank you. Speaking of love, and other things in the book, I wanted to talk to you about music. So there’s a lot of music references throughout the story. I loved thinking about that it was like John Cage to Taylor Swift and Barry Manilow to St. Vincent, and our characters, our main protagonists, they’re in a band. So how has music influenced you or influenced your writing? You know, just in general, but also when you were when you were writing this? Did you have like a playlist in your head?

I do, because this book took eight years to finish the playlist evolved over time. But yes, I listen to music when I work, I find it very hard to work without some kind of background noise. And music is sort of the best, the best noise you can sort of put in your ears, at least for me. So there are actually two playlists, one on Spotify, one on Apple Music that go along with the book and wonderful. It’s not quite the entire playlist that I listened to while I was working on The Book of Love. But it is representative. And that was a lot of fun to sort of make those make those public.

Yeah, and I think, I mean, you talk about songs. And it does it like when you listen to a song, it transports you and to based on how you’re feeling for that. So your feelings for that song puts you in a different mindset. And then that can just I think that’s just incredible, because every reader then comes to it differently.

Yeah. And it is part of the reason also why the book is quite long, because you know, music is collaborative, even a lot of the time at least there are you know, singer songwriters who do everything themselves, but the effect of music is still often aural, you know that there’s more than just one voice more than just one guitar that in the same way that the characters have differently, relationships with music, some of them are in a band together, I wanted there to be a kind of choral effect in the novel to have all of these different voices, and rhythms, the way that you have in music. Just create that as much as I could in a book.

There is that thread, and I feel like that, you know, it does flow it does feel like it does feel like a song and I because there are different elements to your point there’s, I mean, there’s like a classical component and do you have a character who just wants to play you know, every instrument that you can get his hands on versus, you know, then again, the collaborative the band, which had wonderful names that would I’m gonna see if I can remember my hands both know you my two hands both hands both know you I fabulous name for a band. And then the fact that it just like ties into their characters names is just is I love I love a good poem. So I will very much appreciate that. But it does it just and I you know, of course I can’t help but then like, Oh, it’s just music is a love language in itself. And you know, and it’s this sort of like gift that we give ourselves that we could give each other. There was also karaoke, and that is, I guess, another form of music that we can enjoy. It’s you know, not always doesn’t always have to be terrible, but I think it’s fun and I think it’s just again, I guess silly kind of a release of whatever we’re feeling whether we want to shout from the rooftops or you know, sing a sad song. So I’m going to ask you, do you enjoy karaoke and if so, do you have a go to song because it felt like a lot of the characters in here or had their own go to songs it makes me think is one of these go to songs your go to song?

I feel that you’ve seen right through me. I do. I do love karaoke. One of the things that I love about it is, you know whether you are at a karaoke night with good friends or with people that you don’t know that well, but you’ve all gone out together, you sort of learn a lot about somebody you don’t know, by the way they sing by their sort of attitude about singing, by what they pick, and with friends that you do know, and you hear them saying, it’s often a real surprise, you think I know, you could sing or, Oh, man, I didn’t know that you couldn’t sing. But that was so amazing. But I also love it because I don’t think that music should always be professional, or serious. You know, I think that people bring a lot of themselves to a song when they sing at karaoke, and they change that song for me. I don’t know, if you’ve ever listened to somebody sing a song. And you’ve thought about that song before that way. Now, now, I will never be able to stop.

And it’s similar in a way where you know, everyone can read a book, and they interpret it in their own way. And then you know, you are here listening to your favorite songs, and you obviously are interpreting them with that, you know, in a certain way, and why you somehow think that the world interprets them in the same way. And then yeah, it takes care of karaoke is that it breaks all down all walls. The true selves. And the fact that yeah, it can be music is, is interpreted just like stories, just like anything else. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

Community activities are not allowed to be, you know, you have to get over your fear or your shame, which I think is always wonderful that you know, people will celebrate you for being brave. It sends to Apple Music, I think, put in the thing where you can look at the lyrics to a song. Yes. You know, at least for our household, it means there’s a lot there. There are occasional karaoke nights. Yes. But my go to public number is Elton John’s Goodbye Yellow Brick Road. It’s a good one. I think it’s a lot of fun to sing out loud. Yeah.

There’s a lot of emotion there. You can do quiet, you can get big. I like that.

And you know, it’s got the incredible line, “back to the howling old owl in the woods, hunting the horny back toad.” And I just I have to celebrate any song that has that lyric. And then an amazing thing to get to sing out loud.

Wonderful. We started this conversation talking about, you know, you were sort of this short story writer. This is a place that you really enjoyed writing, you enjoy writing short stories, and now you’ve written this, I feel like 600, 640-page novel. So what are the highs? What are the highs? What are the lows versus each? Was there something you missed when you were writing this that you were like, if I was writing a short story, this is what I would be doing right now.

It’s it was a little bit like those highway ads that you used to see for residential neighborhoods. If you lived here, you’d be home by now. So I would think if I was writing a short story, like I’d be done by now. And so I would go, I would sneak off and write a short story, which is how I ended up with…

I read a little something you wrote about how White Cat Black Dog came about. And I thought that’s so funny, because I feel like every single one of us can identify with that procrastinate, like when you’re, oh, yeah, I have a project and you’re just like, I like I need to break down into bites. I just can’t work on this right now. And then doing some other tasks because you’re like, well, I can do this, and it will make me feel good. And then I will go back. And I was like, wow, you literally did a collection of short stories. That was your like, procrastination task. You’re like, let’s do this, which is equally just amazing. But the fact that you know, most people’s procrastination task is like I’m gonna wash the dishes…

I would you know, procrastinate from the novel by writing the short story but then I would procrastinate on the short story by doing some dishes, which nobody in your house is gonna complain if you’re like, I’m sorry, I was procrastinating by doing the dishes. They are gonna be like, this seems good.

I’m doing this and it’s not what I should be doing. It does add value to my surroundings, to whomever. Again, I feel like I’m being very greedy asking this but you did tease to it a little bit. Not that you haven’t just written a 640 page novel, but I was gonna ask what’s next? Not that this isn’t, that you shouldn’t, you know, take a break. But I’m gonna ask because you did tease to it.

I have about half of a middle grade finished, which has a little bit of magic in it, it’s set in Western Massachusetts, and I need to go back to that. But I also have been thinking about a very short novel. And it seems weird to call something a ghost story novel, but I’m not sure there’s really a better descriptor. It’s like Susan Hill’s The Woman in Black, it’s going to be a very short, ghost novel. And, in part, one of the things I’ve been enjoying and planning for is thinking about how to make it as compact as possible to write a novel that is as close to a short story as I can get it, but still do some of the essential work of the novel.

So just like the opposite of what you would say something new. I love a ghost story. I think that again, there’s so many metaphors, when you think of ghost stories and the ghosts that we all carry. And I just, I adore that. So I felt like when you said that I was just I’m gonna be anxiously awaiting, whatever, whatever it turns out to be because that sounds fantastic. And I’m gonna take this opportunity too, because I love to always like sort of round out my interviews asking for book recommendations. It’s always great to hear what other people are reading, other writers are reading. But I feel like I have really unique opportunity to ask you because you’re a bookseller. So you have you’re a writer, but you’re a bookseller, too. So I feel like this is a really, this is a treat for me. So I’m gonna ask you, what books have you read? Or what are you reading now? That you just you just couldn’t stop talking about because I just can’t stop talking about your book. So let’s see what is on your mind.

There is a recent novel maybe came out right before Christmas. Called The Scandalous Confessions of Lydia Bennet, Witch by Melinda Taub. Which is in the, you know, literally following Jane Austen’s character. And it is sweet. It is witty, it is surprising. And it was just a delight. And so I’ve been selling a lot of that. She gets a bad rap and now is one of my favorite characters. You know, thanks to the work of this novel, Melinda Taub’s work. I’m reading Bora Chung’s new collection, I loved Cursed Bunny.

And the new collection? Your Utopia?

I’m really excited about that. And then there’s a writer who has published many books, and the most recent one was called The Blacktongue Thief, Christopher Buehlman. And I was unfamiliar with his books. And now I have read every single one because I liked the The Blacktongue Thief so much. He works in all different genres. He has a vampire novel. He has a medieval saints and devils novel Between Two Fires. And then this new one is an epic fantasy. And I think there is a second book set in that world Coming soon. But I absolutely loved that. And then the book that we saw a ton of at the bookstore because we love it so much is an older book, Molly Gloss’, historical novel The Hearts of Horses. And that is always my go to pick when somebody comes in and says that they have kind of lost the joy of reading or if they’re giving a book to somebody who just doesn’t always enjoy reading. You know, it’s a novel about a young woman as World War One is sort of on the horizon. She is writing from ranch to ranch in Oregon, breaking horses. So it’s about this community of ranchers. It’s kind of a love story. The descriptions of horses and her relationships with them are phenomenal but it is the book that I give to people where I hear back I loved that. We have a lot of shelf talkers on our store but we have a shelf talker that for that book and it says I didn’t know I would love a book about horses this much and then it’s like and Annie’s Grandpa some customer wrote that for us. They’re like my grandfather love this book so much.

And love that I’d love to see this is and this is, you know, when you talk to booksellers, it’s like, you know, we are so attuned to sort of tailoring our picks to what the person is saying, you know, or what do you like, or can kind of almost get an idea when they’re talking to you like, what they might like, what are they holding in their hands? What are they, what did they say the last book they read was, but then there is always that — I think every bookseller has that that book where it’s like, if they’re like, I don’t know, I just, I mean, I’m in a funk. I don’t know what to read. And you’re like, okay, and like every bookseller has that sort of go to like, I don’t know if I’ve ever met anyone that hasn’t loved this book, you know, and for a multitude of reasons. But I feel like only a bookseller would say that, like only books, I want to have that like, oh, I’ve got that book that nobody, nobody would think they would love. Or that surprise pick that like, but then everyone does love it. So this has been a real treat. I love talking to you as an author. I love talking to you as a bookseller. I’m so excited that we’ve gotten to talk about this. This again, I’m gonna say generous, generous novel. And I’m so excited for more people to come to The Book of Love. So Kelly, thank you. This has been a real treat. And The Book of Love is out now.

Thank you so much.