Totally Booked: LIVE! In this special episode of the podcast (in-person at the Whitby Hotel with a live audience!), Zibby interviews debut author (and creative force behind @nycbookgirl), Morgan Pager, about THE ART OF VANISHING, a wildly inventive and deeply moving love story between a museum employee and the man in a masterpiece hanging on the walls. Morgan delves into her journey from Broadway assistant to publishing professional, balancing social media, a day job, and her creative life online. She also shares how her childhood summers studying art with her grandmother helped spark her imagination, and then delves into the book’s enchanting premise—stepping into paintings and falling in love inside them—as well as themes of visibility, growing up, art, and self-doubt.

Transcript:

Zibby: Welcome. 

Morgan: Thank you. 

Zibby: Yay.

So I have to say, when I started my podcast in 2018, you were already up and running at NYC Book Girl, I wanna hear when you started that. And she had all these followers and was posting the coolest things, and I was like, how does somebody do that? And then I ran into you Sag Harbor in a bookstore.

Yeah. I was like, oh my God, you're like a celebrity. Lemme take your picture. So I made her take a picture with me, and now here we are. 

Morgan: Very fun. I get recognized in very bookish locations exclusively. So a bookstore in Sag Harbor was exactly the right place. 

Zibby: I was there for it. Um, okay. Well back up at NYC book Girl.

Yes. Tell, tell us how you got started and then we'll end up with your, with your novel. 

Morgan: Absolutely. So I started NYC book Girl in 2017. I was working at the time as an assistant to a Broadway producer. And was loving it, but the job was very hurry up and wait. So when she needed me, she needed me. And when she didn't, she was the only other person in the company.

So it's just the two of us. And so I felt like I needed something that was my own creative outlet. And I kind of got into the world of books to Gram and heard that people were getting books sent to them by publishers and I was making nothing at the time. So I was like, that would be a great way to not spend all my money on books anymore.

Um, and I just jumped right into it. I feel like I went in with no plan. The handle I wanted was available. I just started taking pictures on my iPhone, and then I quickly learned how to create content that would interest people, how to share more of myself in the way that I was responding to what I was reading in a way that would draw people into my platform specifically.

And I made an amazing community of friends from it, so I became friends with other influencers in the city. With other people working in marketing and publishing, um, and with other readers who I would run into at bookish events like the Brooklyn Book Festival and things like that. Um, I never expected it to grow so big.

I always remember that one of my best friends asked like, oh, like, you've got two or 3000 followers now. When do you feel like you'll be done with this? And I was like, I don't know, at 10 k maybe. Like, there was gonna be an end date on it and now it's become my whole life. So he and I were both clearly out of the.

Out of the, um, right. Spitting range there. But yeah, so I've been doing it for eight years now and it's taken over completely. I now work in publishing and this is my first novel. And I like to say that I'm a professional bookworm because I, books are my career, my hobby and my passion. 

Zibby: It's amazing. And my, my, my son just asked me the other day, he's like.

Mom, what do you do in your free time? And I was like, I don't have any free time. I was like, I work but my work is my love. And Exactly. And he's like, no, when you have no work, what do you do? And I'm like, I read. 

Morgan: Yeah. 

Zibby: So, uh, so yeah, it can take over. 

Morgan: Same boat. 

Yeah, absolutely. 

Zibby: We've really like figured out the secret of life here.

Morgan: I know. I think, I think it's the right way to do it, but I dunno, maybe there are people out there who are like, don't monetize your hobby in every way, shape and form. And to them I say whatever. 

Zibby: Um, when did you decide you wanted to be an author? Was that something that was a through line all the way or something new?

And then when did this iteration of the book come to be? 

Morgan: Absolutely. So I've always been like a highly imaginative storyteller. As a kid, I always wanted to play imaginary games and I obviously was a huge reader from the moment that I could, there's nothing better than like being able to read a chapter book by yourself for the first time and get to experience the characters and their wins and their failures.

Um, so I, I knew from the start that books were really important to me and I kind of weaved my way in and out of how I wanted writing to fit into that. I had a blog that was really active when I started NYC Book Girl, where I wrote more personal essays about my life and my mental health and the books I was reading, and always on the side I would be working on something.

Kind of creative. Some of them were just like glorified journal entries where I was trying to work through something, but like a character was having the problem that I was having. Um, and it wasn't until the pandemic and lockdown that I really started playing with writing more seriously. I joined a writing group that one of my friends formed as a way to gather.

All of our friends virtually on a biweekly basis. Um, so people from all walks of life who had never even thought about writing before were sharing their writing. And it was in that group that kind of the seeds of the idea for the Art of Vanishing came to me. And what set that one apart from everything else I was playing with, was that I could see from the beginning of the story to the end.

So a lot has changed in the book since I started writing it, but I knew. What the like opening concept was, and I knew what the last beat was gonna feel like and that felt unique to me from all of the other things that I'd been working on. So I was like, let's stop and actually look in this story. And then, yeah.

So I was gonna say, and now tell everybody what the story actually is. Yes, absolutely. We've 

Zibby: kept you waiting long enough. 

Morgan: Yes. So it is set in an art museum and it is about a new museum employee and the subject of one of the paintings on the walls. And Claire, our museum employee, learns that she has the magical ability to step through the frames of the paintings and into their settings.

And she develops an unlikely relationship with one of the subjects of one of the paintings who is John Matisse on Andre Matisse's son. And they have this seemingly impossible love affair set against the backdrop of all the different paintings in the museum. But of course, there are tons of forces. Both inside the museum and outside the museum that are keeping them apart.

And so it's up to Claire to kind of decide which version of reality she's able to stay in. 

Zibby: Such a good premise. Right. 

Morgan: Thank you. 

Zibby: So creative and the way that you do it. So she, she doesn't just have the ability to go into the one painting. People in paintings can go into each other's paintings. So it's like a whole nother universe.

Morgan: Yeah. So within this museum at night, after all the patrons have left, the subjects of the paintings are kind of freed from their jobs, their day jobs of sitting in place. Um, so they have this like wild and vibrant life within the paintings themselves of different friendships and relationships. And so Claire and John are able to explore all of his world together.

Zibby: Um, you have a funny part about the, the partying and, uh, and all of this, um, hold on, let me find it. Is it this one? Here, I'll read this. Uh, I haven't, this is, this is after Jean and, and Claire are, you know, in the painting, having the time of their life. I won't give away the relationship, but it gets quite spicy, um, for an in, in painting relationship.

Um, I haven't felt like this in forever she said, this is what I always thought growing up was going to feel like one big party. I couldn't have been more wrong. I don't think I've ever felt like this. I said this is Jean. 'cause they alternate perspectives. Um, instead I ask a question, what has growing up felt like?

Like one long string of responsibilities. She let out a sigh and she took a big swig of her drink. Like there's always something I'm falling short on, always something I'm behind on, always something I didn't do well enough. I know I'm too young to feel this way, but it seems like life is already passing me by.

Claire chewed on her bottom lip, but it's not all bad. Of course, sometimes life is beautiful and awe inspiring in ways I never could have expected. I just have to remember to take the time to see it. I think we all feel that way sometimes. I said even in a place like this where it feels like there's nothing but time.

Morgan: Yeah, you can share that with your son the next time he asks what you do in your free time.

Zibby: Just might, sometimes I read him books to help him fall asleep at night, but I won't admit whose books they are Anyway, um, but I found this concept so interesting because the book has this very cool idea behind it.

And yet the concepts are so rooted in reality, like who hasn't felt like they're not doing a good enough job sometimes, or the pressures of the world. So talk a little bit about that. 'cause it actually made me feel a little bit sad for you when I read it, because I was like, oh no. Is she feeling like that she's doing a good job?

Morgan: Oh no. Oh, I mean, definitely. Yes, of course. I felt that, um, haven't we all, especially as I was talking about earlier, the balance between social media and writing and work and life. I, there's constantly like some ball that's gonna not rise as high as the others. I don't dunno if I'll admit that they fall, but I, I feel like Claire has things in her life that have forced her to grow up faster than others.

So she's 21 when she says this, which is maybe a little early to be having that realization. Um, but I was writing this in 2022 and 2023 at a time where the pandemic was really closing in on us and we'd just come out of lockdown and I felt like I saw a lot of other young people having that experience as well.

Um, of, of pieces of life, forcing them to admit to what growing up is really like. Um, but then there's also some like whimsical part of myself that wanted to live out this version of Claire's life too, of getting to run around with a cute guy and a bunch of amazing paintings and party until dawn, um, and not feel like that weight of responsibility too.

Zibby: Did this, was this one of those things where you were in a museum one day and you're like, wouldn't it be really cool if I could just jump in there? And the next thing you know, it's on my lap. 

Morgan: It starts so much farther back than that. My grandmother was an art history major. She is the coolest person in the world.

Um, she's had many different careers and she now works as an architect with my grandfather. But I used to go up and spend a couple weeks every summer at their house and. Every summer she would choose a period of art for us to study. Uh, that was like the kind of 9-year-old that I was, that this is what I wanted to do.

Um, so she would choose a period of art for us to study. She's also handicapped, so she was born without half of one of her feet. And so steps are like gold for her, so she really reserves them. So at the end of the summer, we would like save up all the steps for a museum trip and we would go see the art that we had been looking at through books and online all summer long.

And she was the one who taught me to really look at the art as if. It's a story and coming from a period of time where it's talking about real people, um, and real things. And so this is all in her honor. Um, she also is from the Boston area, so we did go to this well, Stewart Gardner Museum, where I am obsessed with the unsolved art heist at the ISG.

And I was like pondering one night. We're just never gonna know who took those paintings, which is why the book's not set at the ISG 'cause I didn't wanna try to solve that heist. Um, but one night I was like, you know, who knows who took those paintings, the people in the other paintings on the walls, like, they saw it happen.

And it was really that like, train of madness that led me to this story. So. 

Zibby: Oh my gosh. So were there, is there a painting that if you could jump into, you would go. 

Morgan: Um, amazing question. The one that they have the most fun in in the book is lab Bono Deve, which is another Matisse painting that's also in the same museum.

And it is like rainbow and all of the figures are maybe nude, but they're all different colors and they're wearing like flowers draped around their bodies. Um, and so that was the one that was like the wish fulfillment for me of like getting too experience. What, what a world that looks nothing like. Our world would feel like if you could step into it.

Zibby: I think I might bypass stepping into a photo of all nudes. 

Morgan: They're like pink and purple and yellow and blue. 

Zibby: So I'm sure it's beautiful. Yeah, I'm just saying if I had my choice, um, crushes and desire and all of that, also play a role. Of course in this, in this story. Um. And, uh, writing about desire and romance is also often a challenge.

And I'm curious about how you found a way to write your way through it. And also if you share this uh, this self-doubt, if you will. Um, what if I am no good? I rubbed the back of my neck. I'd never tried anything like that. I didn't know if I could hack it, Jean, or it's Jean. Jean. I've read every book in this place and most of them are really bad.

And even then I enjoyed reading them. I won't care if it's not very good. I'll love it anyway. And if you hate it, we don't have to tell anyone else. It can just be for us. 

Morgan: Yes. Um, so that's a, a part where Jean's talking about maybe writing. I do think I, I share that doubt. I was talking about this with, um, Sasha, you're lovely, um, employee on the way in here, but there's a lot of rejection involved in publishing a book.

So it does just take one Yes. To make it through. It takes a yes from an agent and a yes from an editor, but on the sidelines of that there is so much other No, that comes into the conversation. Um, so I can't remember if I wrote that in the first draft or the 10th draft of the book? Um, maybe the first, but I think there's something that you have to tell yourself about the fact that your book might not be for everyone, but it's gonna be for someone that powers you through the process of writing.

And then in terms of writing about love and desire, John and Claire are. Both young and John is like 117 or something like that because he's been in this painting for so long. Um, but there's like a newness to their relationship and a freshness to that. And I feel like I just really tried to play with like my memories of how strong and how important every relationship when I was 17 and 18 felt.

Um, or 21 or 25. Um, and, and to keep that in their relationship too. 

Zibby: FYI, there is no cell service when you're in a painting. 

Morgan: Um, so for which becomes an issue for Claire. 

Zibby: Which becomes an issue. Um, there are lots of twists and turns at the end, and there's a whole extra layer of why Claire feels so torn between these two worlds.

And in a way, a lot of us can feel torn between two opposing worlds. What do you feel most torn between these days? 

Morgan: Oh my goodness. I feel. So torn between how much of myself to give to my writing career. So I'm balancing a full-time job, my social media career, and my writing career on top of trying to be a person and a wife and a friend, and show up for my family, and the my loved ones. Um, so I feel like I fight a daily battle between when to say no and who to say no to and not wanting that person to be myself. Um, because that's the first, that's always my first instinct is to give myself to everyone else. Um, but I feel like I'm in, we're two months out from pub and I'm in this moment where like, this is the first and only time, my first book is gonna come out. Um, and I hope 20 years from now I've published five books. And I look back on that and I'm like, how cool that I tried all this fun stuff. 

Zibby: Why only five? 

Morgan: Oh, okay. Sorry, 10. Maybe we'll be on like a two book a year cadence. Um, but I do, I do want to give myself the space to say yes to the things like this that make this process so special and getting to share it with you and with all of you as well.

Um, so that's the internal battle that I fight on a daily basis. 

Zibby: I feel like there's no good solution to that. 

Morgan: Yes. 

Zibby: But it would be so nice if there were 

Morgan: No, absolutely. 

Zibby: Um, when you write, do you feel like, like how did you write this book? Did you have certain deadlines each day? Did you have a word count?

Like how did you go about it? And if you are to approach, are you writing another book? 

Morgan: Mm-hmm. 

Zibby: And will you approach it in the same way? 

Morgan: Yes. Um, so I've tried every way of writing a book and it's changed for me what's worked. I've tried the daily word count goals. I've tried some people swear by morning pages of waking up at 5:00 AM and starting their day that way.

My brain is not alive at 5:00 AM and if it is, it's with anxiety. So it's not in a good place to be writing. I need to like work out and clean my house before I'm in the right place to do that. So what has worked for me is the weekend. So I block six to eight hours every Saturday and every Sunday to write.

When I started this one, as I said, I knew what the idea was, so I did a bunch of research at the beginning and I had a vague outline of where the story was going. Um, and so I followed that as I wrote my way through, and I followed that same work pattern for all of the revisions and as well, um, of just like letting myself know that weekends were my time.

There's some stuff that has get turned around faster. So for my copy edit, I did the weeknights as well, but that was really my system and I've been doing that for book two. So I am working, I'm a third of the way through my next novel now. Um, and I feel like that has worked really well for me is just knowing that Saturday and Sunday are my time.

And then my husband knows that as well, and my friends know that too, so they kind of know when to ask if I'm available as well. 

Zibby: And can you give us a sneak peek? 

Morgan: Oh, absolutely. Um, so this one is. Historical fiction. It also plays with maybe the magic that women have that people don't look close enough to see like what Claire has in Art of Vanishing.

And it is about two real magicians who performed with their husbands at the turn of the century, um, who performed all over the world and very different kinds of magic. One does very big showy magic, and one does a quiet like mind reading act. So it's about an imagined friendship competitor between these two women.

Zibby: Ooh, that sounds good. 

I mean, there's so many things in the book that could lead to. So many other conversations. Even this notion of invisibility, Claire being at first, you know, on the janitorial staff at the museum, the invisibility of certain jobs, the invisibility of certain women, when you get to a certain phase of your life, the invisibility of that, who helps you, who doesn't?

So did you have that all consciously, or was the title just like afterwards and you're like, well, that, that kind of works. 

Morgan: Well, the title was definitely, um, a group project between myself, my editor, and my agent of me throwing every possible art related word out there. Um, and us seeing what stuck and. So that definitely was piece of a piece of it.

Um, but I definitely knew the whole time that I was looking at like what women can do that other people are maybe not looking at. Um, and I think Claire doesn't look at herself for a lot of the story, and John teaches her too, which is ironic because he's the one whose job is to be looked at. So I definitely think there's a piece of that that's playing with it.

But the art of Vanishing was not its title. Throughout the whole process. 

Zibby: What was it? What was it? 

Morgan: I really loved the night shift because I think there's something magical about the word night, so I definitely play with that. At one point it was all nighters, which my husband was like, that sounds like a sleepover.

And I was like, good point. Um, it's also a great play at MCC right now, so it's. And then we played with words like, um, it set in Gallery 19, so like night in gallery 19, things like that. Um, and then I always really loved Vanishing Point, which is an art term, but there is not a vanishing point in this painting.

So it would've bothered me forever had that been the title. Um, so Art of Vanishing kind of brought all of those, and I bet it would've bothered so many other readers. I know me being like, yes, they'd be really valid in there. 

Zibby: Uh, so if Claire's superpower is this ability to go into paintings, what would you say your superpower is?

Because everyone has one. 

Morgan: My goodness. Um, my like, flippant answer is my ability to pick, pick up a hobby. Like I love to pick up a hobby, but, um,..

Zibby: Like what? 

Morgan: I went through a flying trapeze. Stage I, during COVID, I went through a cross stitching phase. I have to like keep myself out of a ceramic studio 'cause I feel like that could be a really dangerous one for me.

Um, so that is my like. Haha answer, but my real answer, which we've been talking about today, is this idea of like balance and organization and fitting everything in. I'm a Virgo and I think that my ability to keep all of my thoughts and desires and resolution streamlined and then slot them into a calendar is the thing that makes me special.

And it's the thing that has always kept me on task in terms of like when I know that I want something, I figure out how to go out and get it. So.. 

Zibby: That's a very important trait. Um, lastly, with NYC book, girl. What are the secrets to Instagram? 

Morgan: Oh my goodness. Um, just like,.. 

Zibby: Tell us the whole thing. 

Morgan: Yes. Okay. So we'll be here for like another hour.

Um, great question. Uh, I think the biggest thing that I've seen over the eight years is that it changes. So what the platform wants from you in terms of like what your followers want and are gonna engage with and is gonna give you better engagement. Keep shifting, and you have to keep your eye on what content is working for other people, and then figure out how to tell that in your own voice.

So people will come to content and engage with it once because it's interesting, but they'll stick around because they like who you are as a person. So you have to figure out how to take what's working for someone else and translate it into your voice in a way that's sustainable to do over and over again.

And then building community is like a big piece of what makes it rewarding and what keeps you there. So I love when I get to meet people in bookstores who are like, Hi, I'm Zibby Owens. And I'm like, oh my goodness, there you are. Um, but I, I find that, like the friends that I've made, there were people at my wedding who were friends that I had originally had been internet friends who I'd made on Instagram.

Um, so I'm so lucky to have had those friendships come and it's been so wonderful as I've been promoting the art of Vanishing and then moving into this period of like really heavily promoting it to have all the support from those people as well. 

Zibby: We once had someone come to spend the weekend and my daughter was like, oh, how do you know them?

And I'm like, well, I met them online. 

Morgan: And she's like, I thought we weren't even supposed to talk to strangers on night. I, when I first invited one of my friends. To come stay with me. My parents were like, are you sure she's not a serial killer? And I was like a serial killer who's been waiting for the long con of me inviting her to come, like she didn't invite me.

Zibby: Yeah. So, yeah, like if they're serial killers, they're serial killers who read all the time. 

Morgan: Yes. She really likes books for sure. 

Zibby: So maybe we'd be friends anyway. 

Morgan: Yes. 

Zibby: Um, last question. What advice do you have for 

Morgan: aspiring authors. Oh my goodness. So the difference between someone who wants to write a book and someone who has written a book is someone who stayed with the whole process.

So you need to pick an idea that you're gonna love enough that you're gonna wanna write the whole book and keep going through the nose and through the days where you feel like the story is not gonna come together. Um, but I think the thing that makes me a good writer, and the thing that's made me an even better writer since I finished the Art of Vanishing is being a reader.

Um, that's obviously a core tenant of who I am as a person, but I think reading is like the warmup for your brain to get you into writing. So make sure that you're reading of all different kinds of people and all different kinds of stories, um, and thinking critically about them as you think about writing as well.

Zibby: Amazing. Well, congrats on your debut. 

Morgan: Thank you. So excited for you for the Art vanishing. 

Zibby: Coming soon.