A conversation with YA fantasy author Laura Sebastian (ASH PRINCESS, out now from Delacorte) all about worldbuilding.

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Transcript of Podcast episoDe 16: Interview with Laura Sebastian, YA Fantasy Author

Mary: Hello, this is Mary Kole and "The Good Story Podcast" helping writers craft a good story. With me, you will hear from thought leaders related to writing and sometimes not about topics important to writers of all categories and ability levels. Here is to telling a good story.

Hi, welcome to the Story Mastermind workshop. Today, we have Laura Sebastian, author of the "Ash Princess" series, which now has three books, right?

Laura: Three books, yeah. It's...

Mary: She is reaching us from London. And why don't you tell us a little bit more about yourself, Laura?

Laura: Yeah, so I am an author. I've been writing since I was 16, I think. "Ash Princess" was my 10th completed book and my first published book, so it was a long publishing road. I felt like everyone before got a little further along the road and then I got lucky that I got to publish all three books, which is a milestone in and of itself.

And, yeah, the series is about a young queen named Theodosia who's been held hostage since she was 6 years old and her country was taken over. And it's about her slowly realizing that no one's going to save her. And that if she's going to get out of this terrible situation and save her country, she has to start figuring out how to save herself.

I have two books coming out. The first is an adult fantasy that's out next summer called "Half Sick of Shadows" which is an Arthurian retelling of "The Lady of Shalott", and that's kind of a funny one to talk about because that was the first book that I finished.

Mary: So some of those nine manuscripts that went into a drawer actually hopped out again.

Laura: I mean, I think this is going to be the only one that does but, yeah, so it's kind of funny to talk about that. And then I have a new YA series that's going to start at the beginning of 2022 about triplet princesses who have been raised to marry the princes of the surrounding kingdoms and take over the entire continent.

Mary: Very cool. And so it sounds like some historical settings are an inspiration for you.

Laura: Yeah. Oh, definitely. "Ash Princess" is very much ancient Greece and ancient Rome inspired with Vikings thrown in for fun. And the new YA series is a little bit more... It's a little mixed because I'm drawing from stories all through history because that's kind of my go-to for inspiration. But I think setting-wise, it's very much 17th Century Europe.

Mary: And then... Arthurian...

Laura: That's an interesting thing because we've run into this with my editor because it doesn't really exist in any specific time and that was intentional because I think Arthurian mythology has shifted with every new retelling of it. And so I'm drawing primarily from Tennyson where it's Victorian times. So it kind of takes on the values of the Victorian era. So it's a lot of that, but there's some modern touches, I think, to it, too, that kind of make it relevant today as well.

Mary: Well, I'm actually really excited because this sounds like very fertile ground for a lot of kind of meaty world-building discussion. And we do have somebody in our group who's historical inflected and we'll get into that a little bit later.

But yes. So let's kind of come down from above the big picture view. When you get an idea, is it the period that inspires you? Is it some legend? Is it some mythology? How do you, sort of, get within reach of your ideas?

Laura: So, for me, it always starts with character. I actually come from an acting background, so I've been acting since childhood. And my favorite thing to do with acting was always building the character. And so I always start off with motivation and trying to figure out what the character wants and what they're willing to take to get that. And that's usually where, like, the first seed of the story comes from.

And so world-building for me kind of fills in as I go along. I'm very much a pantser. I [inaudible 00:04:39], like, plan anything as I go. Sorry, I've just got the dog treats here to keep them occupied. So, yes, I very much plan things as I go and as I go through the drafting phases. I like to think of it as painting. My first draft is very much a sketch. There's not a lot of world-building detail in it.

And as I go through for sequential drafts, that I tend to add a little bit more definition, and shading, and color. And that's when it really, I think, comes to life, and I think that's a good way to avoid info-dumping because if you put it all in during the first draft, it tends to clump together. But I think if you do it a little bit at a time, it tends to be easier for the reader to digest as well.

Mary: Yeah, I mean we're definitely talking about, you know, how to avoid getting it all down in the first chapter, you know, sending the story to a screeching halt before it even begins and kind of when the big elements of world-building need to be sort of established by so that you can sort of run with the story.

But I'm actually surprised to hear that you're a pantser. Can you tell me more about how that works with something as logical and kind of, you know, that I tend to think of as, like, really thought out as world-building?

Laura: The thing I really, really like about pantsing is that it's very much playing the "what if" game, which I think was the game my parents played with me when I was kid. When I didn't understand the consequences of my actions, they, like, taught me to play the "what if" game, which says a lot about me as a child, that I did not naturally think of others.

But, yeah, that tends to be what happens when I go through my drafting. I'll be like, "Oh, okay, so this seems to..." I think with the magic system specifically was, "Okay, so what does this world look like because these people have magic? So how widespread is the magic? And what does that mean for the average person's day to day life?" And so the more you ask those questions and the more you can answer that in yourself, I think the more real the world starts to feel for you and for the reader.

And so we ran this up a bit with my second book because the first book is very focused in one land that has magic. And so as I said, it's very ancient Greece inspired and then, in the second book, they go to a different country where no one has magic.

And so I had to start to think about how that world, even though they existed at the same time, how it would have progressed differently? And, you know, so the answer is that they have more scientific discoveries under their belts because they haven't been able to rely on magic so they've had to figure out ways.

Like the example I always used is one of the groups of people who had magic in the first country is water-based magic, so they can summon and create and manipulate water. But when I was thinking about how that would affect this country where there is no magic, it made sense that they would have figured out a way to have indoor plumbing because they don't have that easy just snap my fingers and water appears. Magic. They have to kind of figure out how to compensate for it.

So I think it's about asking those questions, and kind of brainstorming, and figuring out how to answer them in the book.

Mary: And so when you think about establishing rules like that... For example, you know, obviously one world, you can summon water. In another world, you need to, you know, work within the framework of realistic water.

So I know that you sort of come up with stuff as you go along, but what's your read on the amount of rules that make sense to create a world that feels immersive? You know, because you can go very minimal and then readers are confused. You can go completely overboard, and readers will just be swimming in information. So how do you kind of find that line of what's enough to sort of build a story on foundational...?

Laura: So I think that's something that really comes in getting other people reading because I think that was something that really was a challenge for me. And as I mentioned, I wrote nine books before this one, and I think the issue I always ran into was that I was not someone who's comfortable sharing my work with others. So I think it kind of stopped the progress in a lot of ways.

So once I started getting other people reading it, they could be, like, "Oh, so this magic thing, you have a conflict here. Like, it doesn't make sense," or, "I'm not getting enough of this," or, "I'm getting too much." And so I think that's a thing that really comes from getting the opinions of people you trust.

Mary: And do you ever go further the story and then change the rules or bend the rules or reverse the rules?

Laura: Yes. So that was something that was really helpful. My editor really gave me very tight deadlines for my first book, and it was tough but I'm really glad she did because I had first drafts of all three books done before the first book came out. So I was able to kind of make some last-minute changes and, like, make sure everything worked, which I think was pretty invaluable.

Mary: So you knew it was going to be a trilogy right away? Was that, you know, part of the sale that you were able to do that?

Laura: Yeah, I mean I was hoping. I think there's always that chance that it won't work out and so my agent wanted to sell it as a series. And by that point, I think I was a little bit scarred from my previous attempts. And I was like, "Yeah, it'll be a series. Sure."

We decided to outline them very vaguely, so I think my [inaudible 00:10:56] for the second book was, like, maybe a page where I had, like, some idea of what would happen. And then I got to the third book, and it was barely a paragraph. I was just like, "They go places, things happen to them, there's a battle, and the end." And that was kind of all I really had, and luckily my editor trusted me with that because, like I said, I'm really terrible at planning things.

Mary: I think that is really... Because we had a conversation with an author who was really strict into outlining, so it's really interesting to hear, you know, the other perspective.

Let me ask you this. So let's take a look at how you find your information and how you sort of cherry-pick. If you weren't familiar with a certain mythology, like you said, you know, "Mixing mythologies, that's my thing," right?

So you have your character. You have maybe some idea of a story. You know, there are these triplets, and they're going to be forced into marriage. Then, when it's time to layer in the world, how do you enter just the sheer amount of research and kind of sourcing and...? Yeah, how do you approach that?

Laura: You know, I love research books. I love reading historical books. So I have a few, like, go-to authors that I really like. And so usually, if one of them hasn't covered what I'm looking for, I kind of just do a little bit of research and try to find something that's along the lines of what I'm looking for. I can't remember the name. Unfortunately, I don't have any of my books with me because they're still somewhere...

Mary: ...[inaudible 00:12:51].

Laura: Yeah, but there's a book called... Oh, I can't remember what it's called but it was specifically about Empress Maria Theresa who is the empress of Bohemia, I believe. And she had a lot of kids that she married off into various advantageous situations that benefited her country. And they all had these, like, terrible lives.

So it was, "Thanks, mom." The most famous of those children was Marie Antoinette. And actually Marie Antoinette was the second daughter who was supposed to marry King Louis. The first one died, like, right before the wedding, and so Mary Antoinette had to, like, step up and like...

Mary: Which one got the better end of that bargain?

Laura: I mean they all have such terrible... They've all had such, like, terrible, terrible fates.

Mary: So you found some historical inspiration. Now, it sounds like you maybe took an interesting character element from that—the mother's ambition—and you added it to "what if" pile. But ordinarily, like, how closely might you hew to borrowing from history or do you just use that as inspiration and then you put your own spin on it?

Laura: Oh, I think it has to be very much a jumping-off point unless you're writing, like, actual historical fiction because otherwise, I think you've got to tell all these tricky, factual inconsistencies. Then I think, especially when you're writing fantasy, it gets a little messy. So take the inspiration but then let the rest go.

Mary: That's what I say about my editorial feedback sometimes. I'm like, "You know, like, I... wrapped up... Take the wisdom. Leave the..." So I did a podcast with Gail Carson Levine, and she was talking about her research process a little bit. She was writing something very, very... The book is "A Ceiling Made of Eggshells". Have you read it?

Laura: I'm familiar with it. I'm like a huge Gail Carson Levine fan.

Mary: It's fantastic, but her research process was really interesting. She hewed very, very close to the history. Like, it may as well have happened. It's just the person was fictional, and it was kind of the late 1400s in Spain. And she said that she read about, you know, obviously the setting but she also looked at, like, paintings from the era to get a sense of, like, little details that she could weave into her scene-setting.

Do you use anything like that to sort of flesh out a world once you're kind of in creation mode?

Laura: So I realized I do tend to kind of think of worlds as artistic styles in a way, and I think that tends to kind of correspond more than an actual era. For reference, I think my Arthurian is very much Pre-Raphaelite style art. It has that kind of feel to it, and I think the YA series is rococo. It has that kind of feel to it.

When the author understands it, it becomes clear to the reader even if it's not on the page itself.

Mary: So, here, you're talking about more like a tone or a mood.

Laura: Yeah.

Mary: How do you reflect that? So you say, "Okay, rococo, that's what I have in my head." You're not going to put that on the page obviously. So how do you go about... Is it word choice, syntax, kind of tone of the setting description?

Laura: I think it's a little bit of everything. I think it's something that you end up internalizing as the creator, and it kind of ends up on the page in unforeseen ways.

And, again, you know, I'm coming from an acting background. So we used to do these character sheets when we are preparing for worlds, and we would write down, you know, what the character eats for breakfast and, like, what their favorite song is, stuff that the audience is never going to know about because it's not in the script but you're able to kind of create this full human character.

And I think the same is true of a world. If you know that as the creator and as you're writing, it kind of naturally comes out in the book.

Mary: How much of that would you say makes it in rather than being in the drawer?

Laura: Well, that's another thing because I think we were talking earlier about info-dumping and kind of front-loading world-building. You know, I think about it as a painting and I think, when I said that you start off with a sketch, that includes those guidelines. When artists are creating a painting, the first step is to kind of create the guidelines in order to kind of see it themselves. And the audience is never going to see those guidelines. Those are just for the artist.

And I think those world-building details that you put there in that first info dump, I think they're necessary for you as the author and you can kind of keep them in mind and bring them back in throughout. But I think in order for your reader to understand the world, you have to understand the world, and I think that's a big first step.

Mary: No, that's very, very useful. And then so let's say we have a historical world, whether it's deep history or kind of more recent history. We've had some questions about, like, how much historical detail do we need in order to sort of make that world come alive and make sense to modern readers who maybe don't know some of the customs of the world? Because you could, again, go down a complete rabbit hole and be, like, "Well, did you know that bidet is [inaudible 00:18:54]." And then, like, it doesn't matter to the story that you found this cool detail about bidets.

So, kind of, what is some information you consider to be kind of, like, on a need to understand basis in order to make a historical world relevant to modern readers?

Laura: That's really tricky because I think so much of it depends on the readers and on the author. And I think that [inaudible 00:19:21] authors are going to approach that the same way. And I think, you know, if you go through the tunnel of, like, reading [inaudible 00:19:30], you'll see that a lot of them, even if you look at like a book you love, you'll see some of them are like, "Oh, the world-building was too dense. I couldn't get into the world-building," and then someone else will be like, "I couldn't get enough that I wanted 10 more pages on the world-building."

And so I think you have to kind of... You're never going to make everyone happy, and again it just comes into getting a [inaudible 00:19:51] from readers you trust.

Mary: I've always said that it's better to sort of overwrite and then pare back rather than have a really skinny plot or really skinny character development or world-building because then at least you've done the work and it's just an issue of whether or not you keep it in.

Laura: It's a lot easier to cut than it is to add.

Mary: Exactly. So you find yourself sometimes overwriting maybe on some of the details and then just sort of, you know, giving it a nice summer haircut.

Laura: Exactly.

Mary: And would you say a world that's more familiar to us, whether it's recent historical or just, you know, like a setting like London where people feel like they have a sense of the place, maybe needs less world-building than a world that's totally foreign-seeming?

Laura: Yeah, it's interesting. So I've definitely talked to friends of mine who write things like contemporary fiction. And there's this myth I think that contemporary fiction authors don't have to world-build but they also have to world-build either if they're writing, you know, the suburbs in middle America, a lot of people don't know what those suburbs look like. And so I think you have to kind of leave little breadcrumbs that kind of work for everyone no matter what you're writing. But I think, you know, it is a difference in creating a world from scratch and kind of building into real-world stuff.

And, yeah, I think, you know, there's a reason contemporary books tend to be much, much, much shorter than fantasy, and a lot of that is world-building. So you do have the freedom to kind of really dedicate time and space to that, and I think the readers when they're picking up a fantasy book or science fiction book or any historical book, they really know what they're getting into. They're prepared to kind of immerse themselves in that world, and so I think you do have that freedom.

Mary: And to your point, I mean, the word counts tend to be longer, and we talked in another conversation about kind of redirect expectations that people aren't going to show up to a contemporary chicklet book with sort of the same mindset as they will to hard, science-fiction, or high fantasy, or kind of a time traveler historical.

What I would love to know is to connect it back to character. In terms of world view, can that also inform world-building? To your example of the suburban American kid maybe, is getting to know the world sort of synonymous with getting to know how specific characters see their own world?

Laura: Oh, absolutely. If you're describing a palace, it's going to look very different to a princess than it would to the serving boy sweeping the floors. They're going to have very different views of different spaces. They're going to notice different things.

Yeah, I mean I think the boy sweeping the floors would probably notice, you know, where dust is going to... He's going to notice more of the mechanical things. Whereas a princess who's been born and raised there might not notice most things because she's lived there. She won't even notice, you know, the color of the curtains because she's seen those curtains every day of her life. Whereas, someone who's walking in for the first time might be like, "Oh, those curtains are really unusual. Let me describe them for you."

In choosing the point of view, character is really important when you're figuring out how to world-build, especially if you're working on a book that has multiple POVs. It's an important question not just in terms of plot but in terms of setting which character is the most interesting character to get that viewpoint from.

Mary: That's a great point. I usually say it's the character in the scene that has the most ground to cover emotionally. But to your idea, it could also be the character through whose eyes the setting really pops or there's something really interesting to notice about the setting.

Laura: I think your point is probably a little more in terms of choosing who has the POV but I think in choosing what the setting is because I don't usually know what the setting is until I sit down. Unless it's like, "Oh, they're going to the market," so the next thing has to be at the market. But if I'm trying to figure out like where a confrontation scene is going to take place. I might not know right away, and that might be something I think about when I know who's POV it is, trying to figure out where it's most impactful for the character and for the world to kind of set that scene.

Mary: That's a really good idea. And then when you revisit a scene, let's just say, you know, we have this, like, high throne room that we're familiar with. If we go back in, you obviously don't need as much scene-setting. How do you handle a description of the setting for repeat visits?

Laura: That's a really interesting question. I'm thinking about my first book, "Ash Princess", because that one really only has a handful of settings which was intentional because it's designed to feel kind of claustrophobic for the reader because it's very claustrophobic for the character and I really wanted to convey that.

So in that, I kind of wanted to emphasize the repetition there, and I think that worked, but yeah I think it's something to think about when you're repeating the settings is thinking about how it's going to make the reader feel as well and what details they remember what details they don't remember.

Because when I was getting other reads for things, they'll be like, "Oh, I didn't realize there were three doors there even though it says there were three doors in the room earlier on." Like, you do have to kind of remind readers because they are getting a lot of information so repeating descriptions I don't think is bad.

And I think it's, again, one of those things where I'm all for putting as much description in earlier drafts as possible and then taking it out as it becomes redundant.

Mary: And it also must change based on the context of what's happening in plot. You know, the throne room could look glittering and full of promise at the beginning and ruined and like a cage at the end.

Laura: Yeah, they might start noticing things as the character's journey progresses for sure.

Mary: Yeah, that's really interesting. And so you talked a little bit about acting and the character exercise, sort of fleshing out some of these things that we may never see. You know, it's kind of like behind the scenes work.

Do you do any similar exercises for the world-building that, you know, obviously your process is not to outline? Do you do anything that is a little bit methodical in addition?

Laura: Nothing like active, but I do think that, in those early stages, there's a lot of what feels like procrastination that happens. There's a lot of, like, you know, making interest boards and like arranging like soundtracks and all those things that feel like procrastination. But I don't think they really are. I think they're kind of filling up the gas tank before you embark on this road trip and I think it's a necessary step.

And so I think even if you don't... I very rarely will refer back to those things as I write, but I think it helps to kind of understand it even before I start writing.

Mary: And what are you looking for there, visually and in terms of audio, mood, or...?

Laura: I think a lot of it is mood. I think it comes down to mood and just kind of I think looking for those sparks of inspiration. And I think you never really know where you're going to find them but I think they come back to weird times, too.

You know, when you're in the middle of the book and you're working on a scene, you might remember the feel of that song that might come back to you or you might remember that random dress thing you saw on Instagram and think about the...yeah, on Instagram and think about that. These things might come back in ways that you didn't quite expect.

Mary: Yeah, a lot of the creative work is back brain. I like this idea of kind of putting as much possible inside the system because you can't like force an idea out. You can't just be like, "Ugh," you know, and then like the perfect idea always comes to you. It's not, unfortunately, that reliable. But things that you end up collecting.

So how long would you spend... Sorry, how long would you say you spend kind of collecting?

Laura: I think it depends on the book. I think, you know, as I mentioned with the Arthurian, I've been working on that off and on for 13 years now. So I think with that it takes a lot longer than "Ash Princess" which was...you know, I think I started writing that in the fall of 2015 and it came out in the spring of 2018.

So it was a much quicker turnaround. And so I think it really depends on the book and I think "Ash Princess", I just started writing almost immediately after I came up with the idea. And so that was one that I very much figured out like flying by the seat of my pants really.

Whereas the other books... Like, there's one I'm working on now that's been... I've been like pre-working on it for almost a year, and so I think there's stuff like that, too, where I think some books just take a little longer to marinate than others.

Mary: Especially when you're trying to tie a lot of ideas together. The Arthurian, if you are comfortable sharing about it, can you tell me what drew you to that specific mythology and that specific slant on it? Because one would say that it's a pretty crowded space, right?

Laura: It is. And especially I think recently in the last few years, we've had a lot of Arthurian retellings and it's a very old story. But I think this was one that I always... I was initially drawn to it because I read "The Lady of Shalott" poem in high school, and I really connected with it as a very depressed teenage girl. It seemed very romantic and very beautiful.

And as I got older, I re-read it in college and I was like, "This poem's kind of messed up. This is not a nice poem." And so I kind of started, you know, interrogating my own feelings about it and the poem itself. And I also started reading more Arthurian books and I realized a lot of them were not very feminist-minded so to say. A lot of them are really problematic.

Mary: You're being so diplomatic.

Laura: I mean there were like three women in the Arthurian mythology really and none of them really get like good stories honestly. Like, one of them destroys the country by having an affair, the other one is just like an evil sorceress who's trying to seduce her brother, and then the third is I guess the Lady of the Lake who just like gives them a sword, and that's all she does.

Mary: Whoa, whoa, whoa. Seducing your brother. You have a dog named Cersei, so I just want to...

Laura: Sorry, Circe like the Greek goddess but... But, yeah, Circe.

Mary: Sorry, Circe.

Laura: But I've [inaudible 00:31:45]. But, yeah. No, so I wanted to kind of think about the kind of three women of Arthurian mythology in that regard and kind of give them a new story that kind of gives them their own room and their own agency. And luckily now I think there are some more that have kind of that bend to it but I still felt like this specific story hadn't been told and so I really wanted to get it out there.

Mary: And that's why you chose an adult audience for that one.

Laura: Yes. And we've been back and forth a bit with that. We did a little back and forth, but I think that having the main... The story that I was telling, it made more sense to frame with them as adults and they're fairly young adults but they are early 20s.

Mary: Okay. And so do you think this is the approach to take into mythologies that have sort of been done? Because that's something you hear in publishing. It's like, "Oh, Greek myths," or, you know, a story inspired by this anecdote in the bible for example. Some of these archetypal stories, they loom large. They factor large.

I mean you found this great entry point into something that has a lot of sort attention already paid to it. How would you recommend sliding into a fairly well-traveled mythological road?

Laura: I think it's a two-pronged thing that somehow contradicts itself, but I think you have to understand the market and you have to know what else is out there. You have to read widely in the market that you're getting into. So you have to know... Like, I read a lot of Arthurian stuff. I wanted to make sure that I knew what that landscape looked like, and I wanted to make sure that my book fit into that landscape.

But I also think you have to know that no one's going to tell the story that you're going to tell. And so you are bringing something unique to it just in that regard. And it's always a question of... I think no book exists on an island. It's always in conversation with the other books around it, and so you have to figure out what the story you're telling brings to the conversation.

And I think that goes beyond even myths. I remember when "Ash Princess" was getting published, a lot of people told me that fantasy was dead, that YA fantasy was dying, and I think they were very wrong about that. It's still clearly going strong, but, yeah, that was something I was told a lot and I think even then you have to know what your book is saying in the conversation because it is a conversation.

Mary: I mean, the two prongs do seem contradictory but I think that's exactly right. You have to be aware of what's out there, and you can do your thing as long as, you know, you're not surprised at the end of writing it by, "Oh, this already exists, and I should have read in this category."

The writers who say they can't read because they don't want to pollute the well, you kind of got to know what's around you, right? They are trying to be the island but it's an archipelago.

Laura: And I'll use an example there because, like, I mean, I read pretty widely in YA and we initially... There are magic stones in "Ash Princess" and we initially called them Godstones. And my agent, when she read it, she was like, "You know, I just realized in Rae Carson's book, there are magic stones that are also called Godstones." And so because we were like, "Oh, we have to change that," but it's one of those things where you just have to be aware because you have to kind of know what's going on and you might inadvertently end up kind of having the same story or the same mythological aspect or something you just want to make sure about your book, because it is a very crowded marketplace. Fantasy and publishing it looks in general...there's a lot of books out there. You can't read all of them, but it helps to kind of understand where your book sits.

Mary: If you know, you can make a pivot or, if you find out that your Godstones did exactly the same thing in your book as these Godstones did, you could shift the world-building a little, shift the magical logic and kind of save yourself a little potential heat on Goodreads.

Laura: Exactly. Yeah, so I think it's really helpful. I think you do have to read what you're writing to understand how... Because I think you also have to think about your readers. Chances are the readers who are reading your book aren't only going to be reading your book. They're going to be coming to it with this wealth of knowledge from all these other books, and so you have to kind of understand that as well.

Mary: Those traders. No, that's amazing. Is there anything more for the general portion of our time together that you'd like to say about world-building. Did we not cover something you've been dying to share?

Laura: I can't think of anything off the top of my mind. I feel like your questions were very thorough, but I think it is a lot of kind of internalizing the details and then kind of figuring out what's needed as you go along.

Mary: I would say that's very, very sage advice from our guest, Laura Sebastian. This has been Mary Kole in a Story Mastermind Workshop. This was an awesome conversation, and I really want to say I appreciate you doing this. You don't have... move across the ocean.

Laura: Likely right now, I mean there's nothing much to do for the past few days, so this is a nice distraction for me from the four walls of this place. So thank you.

Mary: Thank you so much for listening. This has been "The Good Story Podcast," with your host Mary Kole. I want to give a huge shout out to everyone at the Good Story Company. You can find us online at goodstorycompany.com, and the team is Amy Holland, Amy Wilson, Jenna Van Rooy, Kate Elsinger, Kathy Martinolich [SP], Kristen Overman, [inaudible 00:38:05], Rhiannon Richardson, and Steve Reiss. Also a shout out to our Patreon supporters. And to everyone listening out there, here's to a good story.

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