New York Times bestselling author Jo Piazza returns to the podcast, this time to discuss her explosive new #tradwife murder mystery, EVERYONE IS LYING TO YOU. Jo describes her deep dive into the “trad wife” influencer phenomenon and shares how motherhood, friendship breakups, modern identity, and the glossy but unsettling world of social media shaped this novel. She also explores the blurred lines between performance and reality online, the unspoken rules of mom culture, and the personal cost of curating a perfect life.

Transcript:

Zibby: Welcome, Joe. Thanks so much for coming back on my show this time to talk about everyone is lying to you. Congratulations. 

Jo: Thank you. I'm so happy to be here. I always love talking to you. This was the highlight of my week. 

Zibby: Aw, you too. And by the way, I think this might be my, one of my favorite books of yours.

So good. Could not put down. No, seriously. I mean, not only is the plot fun and all that, and I am deep in the influencer world, so I feel like very interested in all of this stuff, but also just all the ways you talk about. Marriage and the day-to-day life of like motherhood and just the things that you don't necessarily talk about.

I don't know. You scatter that about in such a way that I feel immediately understood. Anyway, 

Jo: I love, 

Zibby: I really loved it. 

Jo: It's really great. Thank you. Thank you. That, yeah, I, uh, you know, this was so fun to write, I gotta say, and I told myself going into this, 'cause I read it really fast. I was like, you're just gonna have a blast.

Okay. You were just gonna, you were gonna write the most bananas influencer thriller you can think of. Go. That's your, that, that's your project. And I, I wrote it in about four months, I think. 

Zibby: Oh my gosh. Well, it's really, it's really good. And I think there's that sense of. Listening to you talk, like you're just talking, like you're just explaining what it was like to go to Mombom or whatever it's called.

And like you're just explaining, you know how embarrassed you're to be scrolling Instagram and like spying on someone and wondering if they're spying on you. Like this whole thing, we just, we all are doing it alone and so the expose of it all is really kind of funny. Um, okay. Back up. Tell everybody what everyone is lying to you is about.

Jo: Yes. Yes, absolutely. So I. I've been covering influencers for five years now on my podcast. Under the Influence. I never thought I was gonna become some kind of weird influencer expert, but here we are. Here we are. And I became fascinated with the trad wife phenomenon. You know, the kind of domestic goddesses that whose lives always look perfect, and they've got the gorgeous white flowing dresses and white houses, and nothing is covered in dirt, even though their kids are running barefoot through a yard filled with chickens all of the time.

But I wanted to kind of,.. 

Zibby: And a three-legged goat and whatever, 

Jo: and a three, yeah. I, I, I, I did include a three-legged goat. Like I said, with this book, I was like, can you just make it crazier? And I'm like, there's a three, there's a three-legged goat and there's an AI baby at one point. 

Zibby: Yes. You never know what you're gonna get.

Jo: Well, kind of like with the world of influencers, you never know what you're going to get. It just seems to get crazier and crazier, and I truly believe that influencers are our new celebrities. I mean, our attention is so focused on this small screen in our hand that like it is just a perfect world for a thriller.

And I wanted to pull back the curtain on this beautiful life and show what's really behind it. Like who is lying to you and what do we believe about people's lives. So we have two best friends from college. One of them has grown up to be a journalist, Lizzie, the other one, Beck's. Rebecca has grown up to be a very beautiful, very famous like multimillion follower, trad wife, influencer, and she lives on this gorgeous ranch.

Somewhere out west, we are very, it's very hazy. They're, they're out west somewhere and with her husband, gray and her, many, many, this says someone from the East coast. Yes. Yes. Some somewhere out. Somewhere out west, out there. Well, well, because also, it's not any one influencer. I mean, it's kind of a combination of so many different influencers.

This could be Wyoming or Idaho or Utah. We don't know where it's, but Rebecca is living on this ranch with her. Very handsome, but. We never really see him. Cowboy husband, gray and her many, many children, raising chickens, raising kids, homeschooling, home setting, all of the things that we see on our Instagram feeds all the time.

And she writes to Lizzie and they, they've been estranged. They haven't talked in 15 years. They had a big falling out. She writes to Lizzie and says, Hey, I wanna give you this big interview, this big exclusive. And Lizzie writes for a women's magazine. She's kind of struggling like a lot of people in media and.

Beck invites Lizzie out to a mom influencer conference called Mombom. And the two of them reconnect. They have this great night together, and then suddenly the next morning, Rebecca's husband ends up dead and Rebecca is missing and Lizzie has to solve the murder to perhaps, you know, save her best friend and her friend's kids, and also to figure out what the hell is happening in this bananas influencer world.

And I gotta say. You and I were at Mom 2.0 together. 

Zibby: I, I was gonna say together. 

Jo: Together. I was gonna say last year. 

Zibby: Gonna, that is the last time we were together in person was at Mom 2.0. And now here we are with Mombom in your book. 

Jo: Yes. Yes. And so we were, we were on that panel at Mom 2.0 and I actually, I love influencers and influencer culture.

I respect the hell out of female influencers, they've created a multi-billion dollar business for women by women. That is completely disrespected by most of the world because it's by women for women. But there's also a lot of hilarity in it, and like there are some things that end up in the book, like I literally saw or overheard, and then maybe enhanced for everyone is lying to you.

Zibby: Oh my gosh. Well, we might need an offline debrief of who said what and uh. And all of that. Oh my gosh. So the two of them are estranged in a way that Becks had sort of abandoned her, this best friend, best friendship. 

Jo: Yes. 

Zibby: And those are kind of the wounds when you have such a close friend, especially in the college years.

And that is your whole life where it's hard to just get over. Right. And so not only. Is she in her trying to cover this for the magazine, which she feels is like sort of on his last legs anyway, but she has to get over her past hurt, which is so hard. Um, and you have a line early on where you say, I'm wounded in ways I can't possibly explain. 

Jo: Yeah. 

Zibby: Which I love because aren't we all like isn't, isn't that like the most universal line in the book? Right? 

Jo: Yeah. 

Zibby: So talk about how to get over all those past hurts. Because in this case, it has to be both personally and professionally and kind of all at once. 

Jo: Well, I, I don't think that we have enough language to talk about friend breakups, to be honest.

And I, I, my friends are the back backbone of my life and I've had many friend breakups that I still think about. 

Zibby: Mm-hmm. 

Jo: More than I think about the breakups, my, my romantic breakups, they haunt you and they wound you and they stay inside your soul. Because I think most of the time, I mean for the majority of our relationships, our friends mean more to us than those romantic attachments.

And yet we live in a culture that talks about break romantic breakups constantly, and I, I don't know about you, but I have been, been ghosted by a friend before. And that also, I mean, it just sticks with you. It sticks in your gut in a really particular way. And so this friend that ghosted Lizzie, isn't just any friend.

She's someone that she can watch her life on the small screen because she is an influencer now. So she like sneaks peeks at this. She doesn't know how she feels about it. And then all of a sudden when she reappears in real life. Lizzie wants to do this for professional reasons, but also to heal. 

Zibby: Mm-hmm.

Jo: Really? And so she has all of these confusing motives going out out west, uh, to Mombom. But then they also fall into a very particular, very comfortable pattern because even with old friends, I think they are almost always a soft place to land, even if we've had really difficult issues with them. And you and I are recording this a little bit early, but the White Lotus finale just happened with the very toxic friendship between between the three women.

Zibby: I did not see the finale yet, so just don't. 

Jo: No spoilers. No spoilers. But we've watched this friendship all season. Watch the ups and downs, how they love each other, how they hate each other. And yet in a lot of ways they fall back immediately back into their own patterns and they are very comfortable with those patterns.

So we see something really similar with Lizzie and Becks. And by the time that Becks disappears and Lizzie finds out that she may have actually murdered her husband, who might not be as perfect as the internet has lead us to seem. She's very invested in both saving her friend and saving this friendship, and I think that we can all relate.

I think we've all had a friend like that, a friend that we've lost, or a friend who's just kind of changed over time because the friends that we make in college, I say this all the time, I love my friends from college so much. Most of them I would not have chosen now. 

Zibby: Mm. 

Jo: Because we're very different kinds of people and yet when I see them, they're almost like my siblings because we came up in such a formative time together.

Zibby: Even younger.

I mean, I just reconnected. 

Jo: Mm-hmm. 

Zibby: With somebody I went to grade school with who I hadn't seen. Like you have to like fast forward, I don't know, almost 40 years or so. Now she's like all over the, and I just keep like looking and I'm like, oh my gosh, how can I reconcile this person with the one who like, I totally remember like hanging out in this part of my house with and da dah dah.

I don't know. It's just, it is crazy that we get these time warp views of people, but 

Jo: Well, that's, that's exactly what I was gonna say. It's almost like time folds in on itself. 

Zibby: Mm-hmm. 

Jo: Right? 

Zibby: Mm-hmm. 

Jo: And I had a similar thing recently. We're cleaning out my mom's house because, you know, we're squarely in the sandwich generation.

So much fun to move her closer to us. And I found all of my pictures from grade school. Middle school. And it, it feels like it's yesterday. And I look at these people, I'm like, I haven't spoken to you in 40 years. I have no idea what you're even doing now. And yet it still feels so visceral and feels like it's yesterday.

Yeah. And I thought about that a lot when I was writing Lizzie and Becks. 

Zibby: Oh my gosh. Well, the clues that you give us even early on, so I feel like I'm not spoiling things too much when we see like a makeup covered black eye or we see like a text that she happens to see and she's like, who could this possibly be from?

And maybe it's from the husband, right? We're getting little glimpses into what can be something quite sinister. And when you start feeling that, what do you do with that information? Like at first, I. Ignore. I don't know. 

Jo: I don't know. Well, and you know, this is, this is a question that I think comes up a lot in influencer culture.

We actually, we see people have become obsessed with influencers. There's entire Reddit threads devoted to dissecting their actual lives, to saying, oh my gosh, I actually think. This relationship isn't going as well as they're saying it is like what is happening beneath the surface? We all like of that desire to see these things and so I really, I wanted to play with that and be like, what do you, what if you see something?

Do you say something? Do you do something? What do you do with that information? And also to play with the perfection that. Not just influencers present, but that we all put forward. 

Zibby: Mm-hmm. 

Jo: I think a lot about what I put on my own social media feeds and I try, I hate the word authentic. It's like the worst word in on in the world right now, and I talk about that in the book, but I try to put out real life, but at the same time, you're not putting out the fight you had with your husband or the fact that your 2-year-old this morning had to be wrestled to the ground like a crocodile because she wouldn't take off the bathing suit she slept in before she went to school, which is a thing I'm still getting over from a half an hour ago.

Zibby: On the other hand, is it really so bad to wear a bathing suit to school? Figure battle. 

Jo: It's, it is 30 degrees today. And the, and actually, here's the thing, I would've allowed it, except the bathing suit doesn't have diaper snacks. Ah. So it would've been hard, hard for diaper changers. Otherwise, I've been like, you go, you walk to school in that bathing suit, girlfriend.

Zibby: I honestly, Joe cannot believe you have diapers. Like you still have diapers. I can't believe you still have diapers. Oh my gosh. 

Jo: I know. I know. They're so little. They're so little. But yeah. You know, I think about what we present to the world. 

Zibby: Mm-hmm. 

Jo: On Instagram and social media and how we see other people's lives.

And I think it's a big kind of, you know, mind fuck for moms. Because we think we're seeing people's perfect lives all the time, but they're just curating it. They're just putting a glossy filter on everything. 

Zibby: Well, I guess the question is like, is it entertainment? And do you have to show, I mean, if this was a TV show, you wouldn't say, oh, this isn't fair on, you know, three's company or like one of these shows that we used to watch growing up, like we wouldn't expect to see, I know we're the influencers are not actors and actresses.

Right. It's like reality TV in a way. Mm-hmm. But it's also mm-hmm. Complete entertainment. And who says you have to like, maybe people don't want that. Like if I were to put all the like annoying moments with my family, like I don't know who that, like what is that giving the world? Why do we need to put that out there to begin with?

Jo: True. I don't know. It is entertainment, but I think the big But here is that. It doesn't always feel like it because the scroll of social media is social media. It's also right next to pictures of your friend's, new baby or their poodle.

Zibby: Mm-hmm. 

Jo: You, it seems like the, this is often real life and like that is kind of the fun house mirror situation of this.

If we were able to view it just as like pure media, like we're looking at a digital magazine. We are looking at a TV show. Yeah. I think there would be a lot less mom guilt and shame.. 

Zibby: Mm-hmm. 

Jo: Involved in it. But we we're still, we still haven't evolved to look at it like that. 

Zibby: Interesting. I feel like I kind, I mean maybe, 'cause there's a lot about influencer culture in this book that when I first started like getting on Instagram, I was shocked by, and I'm wondering if your readers are gonna be surprised by, like, I, I consulted a, a social media person really, really early on.

Like, I don't know, 10, seven years ago. I don't know, something. And she's like, okay, the first thing you have to do is you have to do a photo shoot and you have to bring like 10 different outfits and you have to pretend that you're filming this all throughout the day. And I'm like, what? So I did this one photo shoot.

Turns out I ended up using those photos for years. In fact, sometimes I still use 'em. I'm like, that was actually kind of a good idea. 

Jo: Yeah, of course it was. 

Zibby: In the book. You know, Beck says every Thursday is her time to have the kids put on all their beige clothes and like appear in all these different scenes.

And is that. Is that real? I mean, 'cause that is patently not real, right? Presenting as if it's, I mean, I don't know. I don't know where the line is of what you have to say is true or not. Like does, would it be better if Bex was like this? Well, I, I, I don't, you know what I mean? Like where is the line? 

Jo: There.

There is no line. That's the thing. It's all a gray area and we're all kind of grappling with that, and that's what I discovered about influencers five years ago too when I first started reporting on them, that they do hire professional photographers and videographers to shoot a ton of content. In a single day.

I was fascinated by it. I tried to do it. My whole family ended up crying and screaming by hour or two, like it was done. I was, and that was the moment. I'm like, you can't be an influencer girl. Your family will hate you. But I, and I also still use those pictures to this day, right? Yeah, I really do. They were, there was a really, it was a really nice photo shoot.

Yeah. But I talked to a lot of the big influencers and this is how they live their life. It's like, okay, one day a week. Two days a month, you're gonna shoot all of your reels, all of your content. And maybe you don't have to disclose that, but there are a lot of your followers and fans who think you're just shooting this in the moment that this is your real life.

Zibby: Mm. 

Jo: And I think they feel very betrayed by that, I mean, I have interviewed a lot of the people who run like the Reddit threads. 

Zibby: Mm-hmm. 

Jo: Kind of trying to dissect all of these influencer accounts. They're obsessed with finding out what is real and what is fake, and so I think there is so much curiosity about it and I, I get that.

One of the things that I only learned at an influencing conference last year before I wrote this book was that you can actually rent influencer spaces, influencer houses in order to film your content. You don't have to own the perfect kitchen. 

Zibby: Wait. You kidding? So it's like a film. It's like a film set and you pretend its set.

Jo: It's an Airbnb that you pretend is your house. I rented one when we were in Cleveland for the eclipse too, because we looked around and we're like. There's all these inspirational quotes on the walls. You're like, oh, it's an influencer rental house. You rent it by the hour. Oh my gosh. And so it doesn't have to be your space.

And it's not just kitchens, it's also like bathrooms for like, get ready with me routines. You'll never see a toilet. They don't have toilets in there. Whereas if I were to put a phone in my bathroom, like the mirror would reflect a toilet at some point, probably. 

Zibby: Mm-hmm. 

Jo: Yep. And like bedrooms for like, you know, wake up with me and even kids nurseries.

So I decided to take that a step further in this book, and I'm like. What if there's a whole shadow house, which is a very fun thing. But again, like the book just kind of teeters on the edge of satire. 

Zibby: Mm-hmm. 

Jo: Because everything in it really is influenced by something very, very real. 

Zibby: That's crazy. I feel like we need to do a field trip to, to an influencer house, do an influencer house or influencer ranch out west so we can feel like we're not milking the cows or whatever.

Jo: Well, I, I gotta say, I just ordered one of those influencer dresses. I ordered the e magazine, milk made dress in order to, um, I'm gonna wear it to all of my book events. I'll wear it to your party if you have a party in June at your house, and I'm gonna go milk a cow in it. 

Zibby: You are not. 

Jo: I'm You sure am. I sure am.

I'm all in. I'm all, I'm all in on this, this promotion. 

Zibby: Oh my gosh. Well, back to what you were saying for a second about sort of the masks that we all wear. I mean.. 

Jo: Mm-hmm. 

Zibby: To get through the day, we have to pretend that we're fine, right. Just to like get through, drop off or whatever. Nobody wants to necessarily hear the dirty la air, the dirty laundry, like hear about all the innermost things until later.

So how do we marry staying close to people being authentic and yet not just like constantly sort of purging, like what is with the masks and do they actually serve us well or do they do us all a disservice and we should all just throw them out? 

Jo: You know, again, it's a gray area. I gotta say there is something to faking it until you make it right.

Especially when you're a parent, because it's like, okay. I can't let my kids know when I'm totally falling apart. So there, there is something to having to put on a mask. What I do truly believe though, is that we need to take those masks off a little bit more often with friends and also acquaintances.

I've tried to get a lot better with when someone asks me like, how are you doing? Being really honest about it being like, you know what? Not great. I just wrestled a child to the ground and 

Zibby: Yep. 

Jo: Was, was terrified their like shoulder was gonna get dislocated from trying to get this. Ballerina bathing suit off of her, which she, it was very cute.

She could be like, it's ma ballerina. And I'm like, God, you're so cute when you're so terrible. But I do, I do think that there is something to admitting the highs and the lows and, and talking about what's working and what's not working. Because when we believe that everyone else's life is perfect, then our expectation gap.

Gets really uncomfortable and we feel like we're doing something wrong. 

Zibby: Mm-hmm. 

Jo: And that's not right because we are all struggling. You're, I mean, you're so good at talking about it. You've been talking about it for so long and in your books with mom, moms don't have time. Right. Being a mom is, and I keep thinking about what Chapel Chapel Round said about, about being a mom on the Call Daddy podcast recently, that all of her friends are in hell.

And it's just a very narrow view, uh, because being a mom is terrible in literally one moment and amazing 30 seconds later. And I think we could talk about, you know, that, that dichotomy that it's constantly changing and I wanted, I wanted to talk about this in, in everyone is lying to you, which is, I mean, it's a thriller.

It's so fun. You can read it if you don't have kids. But I wanted to inject some of this motherhood stuff like. Her kid is literally under the covers in the morning and wakes her up by biting her big toe, which is something that has also happened to me. 

Zibby: And I was like, that is too specific to be fiction.

Jo: Like It's highly, highly specific. Highly specific. And she thinks it's their like dying bass at Hound named Bethany. That was because I always thought that it would be really funny to have a dog named after like a nineties teenager. Yeah. Like Bethany or Kimberly. And so then 

Zibby: I didn't appreciate all the nine, the nineties references.

Jo: Yeah. And then a second later, she's like hugging and kissing this baby's belly because it's so cute and you just can't, cannot do that. Or she loves her husband and he's awesome, but also he's not working. And that's 

Zibby: Mm-hmm. 

Jo: Freaking hard. Yes. Right. Full disclosure, my husband got laid off last April.

Mm-hmm. And so like we've been dealing with that switch to who is the primary parent and what does that look like in your household, which I actually think a lot of women are going through right now as we see the rise of the woman breadwinner and you know, trying to co-parent through, you know, the world being so crazy.

So I wanted to get all of that stuff in there. But then, you know, on the next page. Someone gets murdered in a really grizzly way. 

Zibby: Well, there is a line when you talk about that, that you say about the husband's layoff. Like, we're not gonna acknowledge that the power that this has all shifted and yet it has.

Right? 

Jo: Yeah. 

Zibby: Because there's something about like airing it and saying like, okay, well I do have to go to this conference because I am supporting our family. In fact, I feel like in the book. Like money is a, a big through line. Right? Because 'cause both girls in college were working in the cafeteria and they, you said that, I think you said something like adding street cred to the sorority, like to the tridel or something like that.

In fact, so much so that Lizzie like asks specs when she's talking about like how she's so rich now. She's like, okay, like what are we talking, you know, like how, like how much are you getting paid? Like they can ask each other this. And so like money is something that. I feel like they're both wrestling with whether struggling or just seeing the effects of like, what can money get you?

And then actually, since it's Becks, who has gotten all this money but is not necessarily so happy, like it doesn't bring happiness, so to speak. 

Jo: Mm-hmm. 

Zibby: Like you can get what you've been missing and yet it can destroy everything as well. 

Jo: Yeah, it was kind of rambling. Exactly. Well, no, it's, it's not rambling at all because I think that what we also don't talk about when we talk about influencers, or I don't think that we talk about this nearly enough, is class and money generally.

Zibby: Mm-hmm. 

Jo: And, and so what I have learned about influencers over the years is that it is a very, very rare thing for an influencer to be making gonzo bananas money. Okay. I mean, that is, that is like, it's almost like comparing it to the top 1%in the country. 

Zibby: Mm-hmm. 

Jo: The majority of influencers or people aspiring to be influencers are kind of just getting by.

Zibby: Mm-hmm. 

Jo: And then you have a group of kind of like upper middle class influencers who are doing really well and have turned this into a media business. And then you have the Ganza bananas ones who are like celebrities, but we just don't. We don't talk enough about actually how they make their income, what are they actually getting paid or even amongst our friends.

Zibby: Mm-hmm. 

Jo: Like what do you, what do you make and how do, how do you make your money life work? There's a great substack out there called the Purse, uh, where they dissect people's, just their, their savings accounts, their income, like what they spend. And I'm so obsessed with it. Because I'm just dying to know how other people live and how, like, how, how much makes, makes someone else's life move and work.

And that, that's what I wanted to express with, with Bex and Lizzie, because also. Even though they've been estranged for so long, they do fall right back into that pattern. Yeah. Where they're very comfortable. It's like, I'm gonna ask you the uncomfortable thing. How much money are you making? And what does that feel like?

Zibby: There was a book, 'cause I had this author on my podcast and because it's early in the morning and my brain is not working, I right now, I can't bring it back. But there were receipts every day of how like the fictitious character was like spending all her money and. Okay. I'll think of it and I'll, I'll share it with you.

Jo: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I wanna know, I wanna know. 'cause I, I'm Fas I'm fascinated by, by money. My friends and I actually, in the past, this is something that's changed in the past, like two years. We're very open about money. It's like, what do you, what is your, what is your new salary? Like, how much are you spending on this?

Um, and I think that's really healthy because I, I don't think that money should be a taboo topic, especially among women. 

Zibby: Hmm. Well, part of Author Life essentially is also becoming sort of mini influencers, right? All authors now are required to quote, have a platform. Talk about other people's books, you know, post about their own books, figure out how to make content.

It's not so easy. I feel like a lot of authors feel very intimidated by this new demand because of course this is a different skillset than writing, which is completely different. And yet it's now part of the job. 

Jo: It's fully required. I mean, I don't, I hustle my butt off on social media to promote these books and through a substack and through my own podcast.

And if I didn't do it, I don't think I'd sell books. To be honest, I don't think that there is enough tradition except for very few rare books that are kind of anointed by the publishing world, right? There's not enough marketing and publicity 

Zibby: Mm-hmm. 

Jo: Space out there. It's just not gonna happen unless you are shouting from the goddamn rooftops.

I mean, we, we talked about Sicilian inheritance last year and it just came out in paperback. 

Zibby: Congratulations. 

Jo: Thank you. And we've sold a hundred thousand copies of that book. 

Zibby: Oh my God. Good for you. That's amazing. Good for you. 

Jo: Thank you. 

Zibby: That's amazing. 

Jo: Um, we just, we just hit that number, but it is because I have been a massive media whore hustle machine for it.

And like, I just like, I, I wanna share that with other writers and other authors who are like, this is so exhausting. This is really hard. And I'm like, I know I see you and I am you. And I'm doing this on a daily basis. And I don't necessarily like it either, but if I want my book in reader's hands, I know this is what I have to do.

Zibby: Okay. But that is a lot of copies to sell that is not normal just because you get on social media. To anyone listening, you will not sell a hundred thousand copies necessarily of your book that is like wildly successful. So you and you are uniquely great at this and have a lifetime of media connections and whatever.

So I just don't want people comparing and feeling like a totally.. 

Jo: No, no, no, no, no. No one should, no one should compare Also, I mean, I'm totally burnt out from it too. Uh, but I've also been like. I've been a journalist for 25 years. I, I can place stories myself. I can get podcast guests. I know how this machine works.

Zibby: Mm-hmm. 

Jo: And still, I do more on marketing and publicity than I do actually writing my books. 

Zibby: Hmm. 

Jo: And I wish that it, I wish that it were the opposite, but I think it is a rare, rare, small group of authors that it can be the opposite for. 

Zibby: Sad, sad, sad. 

Jo: But I mean, that's why what you do, I think is so remarkable with your books.

You are a massive marketing and publicity machine for your authors and that, that, that means so much. And I think the traditional publishing houses do try. Right? But there's so many books. You're publishing so many books. There's only. There's only so much space 

Zibby: I know. If only they weren't all so good.

There's so many good books. 

Jo: There's so many good books. There's also so many good books out there. Right? 

Zibby: Yeah. 

Jo: So it's really, it's really hard to find books. It's, which is why I love promoting books that I love. 

Zibby: Yep. 

Jo: Even on my, on my platforms, just to help people find them. 

Zibby: Yep. Agreed. Well, I really enjoyed this book.

I truly did. It's, again, one of my favorites and I've read, I think almost every book of yours. Have I read every book? I think so. I think so. 

Jo: Well, and I get to see you in July. I'm coming to the bookstore. 

Zibby: Oh, amazing. Oh, I hope I,.. 

Jo: Oh yeah. 

Zibby: Okay. 

Jo: Yeah, yeah. My, my, yeah, my el my, my big LA event is with you. 

Zibby: Oh, yay.

Oh, I'm so excited to have you, Jo. Congratulations. I can't stop thinking about this. I love these characters, and I really want this to be a movie, so I'm hoping that that is in the worst for you. 

Jo: Oh, we're, we're working on it right now. 

Zibby: Okay, good. Good. Good. Okay. All right. Thank you so much, Jo. It was fun.

Jo: Alright, thank you. 

Zibby: Okay, bye.