Zibby chats with bestselling author Sara Goodman Confino about BEHIND EVERY GOOD MAN, a deliciously entertaining 1960s political rom-com about a DC suburban wife who catches her husband cheating with his secretary… and decides to run the political campaign of his (very handsome) opponent in a Senate race. Sarah highlights the research and her personal connections to the novel, including insights from her elderly relatives who vividly remember the era. She also reflects on the evolution of her characters and the themes of motherhood, self-discovery, and resilience. Sarah reveals that she recently left her teaching career to focus on writing full-time, and touches on her previous novels and upcoming projects.

Transcript:

Zibby: Welcome, Sarah. Thank you so much for coming on Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books to discuss your novel Behind Every Good Man. Congratulations. 

Sara: Thank you. 

Zibby: I really love this book. I love your voice. I love the characters, the unexpected things, the mom, the kid, I mean, all of it. It was so fun and the Jewish element and women's empowerment, I mean, all of it.

So many great themes. Such a fun story. I would turn pages the whole time. So thank you for this one. 

Sara: Oh, thank you. I had a lot of fun writing it, honestly. Just researching it, just everything. It was great. So, tell listeners what your book is about, please. So this one is set in 1962. We have our main character, Beverly Diamond.

She is a 27 year old wife and mother to young children, and her husband is running a Senate re election campaign in Maryland for a sitting senator, and her father's a retired congressman, and she walks into her husband's office and catches him cheating with his secretary, you know, the ultimate cliche.

And he tries to be like, Oh, well, you know, since we had kids, you're not paying attention. She says, Nuh uh and kicks him out. And he tries to frighten her and is like, well, you're going to have to downsize. And I did a lot of research with a lawyer friend. He actually was totally bluffing on that. And she says, well, no, I'm not downsizing. I'm going to get a job. And he's like, well, what are you going to do? And she realizes the one thing she knows is politics. So she goes to the opposing candidate and says, if you want to win this thing, I'm your new campaign manager. And it's just so much fun. I really enjoyed writing this one. I've loved rereading it.

Like this is my favorite thing I've done by far. 

Zibby: Oh, I love it. 

Sara: I think every author has to say that with every book, but it's true. Like this one really is my favorite.

Zibby: I mean, it would sort of take the wind out of people's sails. If you were like, this book is okay, but like, read my last one. You'd be like, okay, so where did this idea come from for you?

Sara: So, I think it piggybacked a little bit off of my most recent one, which is Don't Forget to Write, which I'm going to tell the little backstory of that idea. 

Zibby: Yeah, yeah. 

Sara: The day that one came out, my editor emailed me and was like, what's next? And she had just rejected my previous idea that I was 40, 000 words into, and I was not thrilled about that.

And a bookstagrammer had actually called me the Marvelous Mrs. Confino that morning. And I joked that I was going to put that on my classroom door, which I did. I had to peel it off yesterday and ripped my nails. It was my last day of teaching yesterday, which is intense. But I had that Mrs. Maisel idea.

And my editor said she wanted a character with similar vibes to my previous heroine, but not a copycat character. And I was like, I have no clue what that means, but okay, I'll try and figure that out. And we were on the beach and I just had this Mrs. Maisel feeling in my head and I loved the idea of the early 60s when everything was so bright and colorful and pre Kennedy assassination, but there was still a lot going on beneath the surface that kind of wasn't being addressed yet that we knew was going to reach a boiling point.

So I had fun with that era for Don't Forget to Write and when it came time to do the next one, I just had this idea of a scorned woman in my head and I wanted someone who could get revenge without it being, like mean and evil. She was just going to stand up for herself and do the right thing for herself, for her family, for everyone, really.

And I don't know, I got that idea of the cheating husband and then I wanted something that she could do. I didn't want it to be like, oh, I'm just doing this for me. And I don't know, the politics thing just kind of came up. I definitely realized once I sold the book that I knew nothing about politics in the 1960s, so I had to do some research there.

But one of the more fun things, too, is my aunt and uncle have actually been my research team for the last two books. They are 87 and 91 right now and remember literally everything. It's crazy. Like, my uncle graduated from UPenn Dental School. in 1958. So for Don't Forget to Write, he knew everything about Philadelphia and the Jersey Shore in that era, and then they moved down to D. C. after that, and so he just knew everything. So like, I remember I would text him sometimes and just be like, how did you get from here to here before they built this road? And he'd send me a map, and how long it would take in 1962 to get there, and like,.. How do you know this? So that was really a lot of fun getting to use them for family.

My uncle, actually, when I told him the premise for this book at first, said, Oh, you should have her catch him at the colonial manor motel. I'd never heard of this place in my life. And I was like, what, what is that? And he tells me like what restaurant is sitting on its property right now. So I know exactly where it is.

And he said, Oh, that's where everyone used to go to cheat. And if you cheat, and if you looked at the book, it was all like Abraham Lincoln and George Washington signing into the motel. And that actually became the climax scene of the book. My favorite chapter in it is with the colonial manor motel. And it was just this little thing that I would have never known about if he hadn't.

So I actually dedicated this book to that aunt and uncle because they, I couldn't have done this without them. They're fantastic. Oh, and they're very excited about that. So that's fun. 

Zibby: I love, by the way, when the daughter Debbie, when she's talking about cheating and she's like living with a cheater and she's like, what, you saw a cheetah and I didn't, let's go to the zoo.

Oh my gosh. So funny. 

Sara: So my friends who have read this are all like, oh, so that's max. My now four year old. I'm like. Yeah, pretty much. Okay. By climbing into mom's bed. We just got him out of our bed by buying a cot for our room that he now can get in. It's. A lot, but there's definitely some influence with the kids there.

So my seven year old is very excited that the whole thing with learning to ride a bike is in there because that was definitely him and he wants me to tell everybody that, you know, the five year old son is based on him. 

Zibby: You know, it's so funny, you know, as we're talking, it's like graduation season and I was on Instagram per usual and saw an old friend of mine who I've sort of lost touch with posing in a photo with her.

And I was thinking to myself, like, that kid slept in her bed for so long, like, and she was like, I don't know if he'll ever stop sleeping in my bed. And I was like, yeah, I don't know either. He's pretty old. And I was just looking at the two of them and I'm like, I bet he stopped sleeping in her bed by now.

You know? Like, yeah. You know what I mean? Like, it all, it all works out in the end. 

Sara: There's so much like that with motherhood. Like, I remember freaking out that he wasn't walking yet at almost 15 months. And, you know, you don't see anybody crawling in the grocery store. Like, they all eventually walk. But especially when it's your first, you're just like, oh no, like, everybody else is doing this and you aren't.

And, you know, he eventually walked just fine and never stopped. And yeah. 

Zibby: We had a, a late walker too. Can we talk about the mom character in this book? I think she's one of my favorite characters and definitely reminds me of several women I know very, very well. But I love how you, the evolution of her character and how she's portrayed in the beginning and how she sort of turns a corner and why and what we realize about her and then like the penultimate act and all of it.

Like so awesome to have a mom like that because she must have been born. Right, when was she born? Like 1920ish or something? 

Sara: Uh, a little bit earlier even. 

Zibby: So tell me about her and sort of the role of the wife as you see it in those generations. And crazy, by the way, that the main character is only 20, Beverly's only 27.

I mean, it seems like, She's so in her element. She must be in her 40s, right? 

Sara: Definitely feels like that now with how, you know, you hit 40 and suddenly you're like, okay, I don't really care if you don't like me anymore. Like we're good. It's fine. You know, some of that I think definitely comes from the banter between me and my mother.

We have like fans on Facebook. It's hysterical because people just love how we bicker with each other about literally everything. And you know, some of it's an act, some of it, you know, How we actually are. And there's just that role of the Jewish mother who, you know, she's got to pick at you a fair bit because that's just the way it is.

What they do, but it's also loving. And I think my favorite interaction between Bev and her mom is actually when they're getting ready to go to Rosh Hashanah and Bev has gotten everybody else ready. Everybody's ready to go. And she realizes she forgot to buy herself a dress and her mother just goes and pulls one out that she bought for her and says, I remember what it was like to have to put yourself last.

And, you know, I think we don't. See that a lot of the time until we become moms ourselves and realize how much sacrifice there really is in being a mom. Like when your kids are little, you kind of give up who you are in a lot of ways. And it's hard to find that again sometimes. I mean, I definitely have struggled with that partially because we had my second son in May of 2020.

So right in the midst of COVID and everything. And, You know, I was entirely a mom during that period because there was no one to help me. And, I mean, my mom did come over. We were a bubble together. But, and I did spend his first year teaching while wearing him. It was me and a baby head on Zoom, which, you know, it's good birth control for the teenagers.

Not really, they would sign out if my mother's are Kim, but it really kind of is finding yourself back in your element and figuring out who you are outside of just being a mom and figuring out all of that, and I think it's interesting how Beverly initially doesn't see that with her mother. She sees her mother as kind of selfish and her mother is very like, I am the most important one.

And. By the end, she definitely sees more of herself in her mother. She sees that struggle going on. And, you know, when she first moves in, Millie paints it very much as, Oh, I'm here to help you. That's all I'm doing. And it takes, I don't want to spoil anything. But Bev eventually realizes that Millie has also left her father, and she's now got to get her parents back together.

So that idea of, you know, you look at your parents marriage as an outsider, even though you grew up in it. And I think that there's a lot of growing up in that and sort of recognizing what your parents went through and seeing yourself in that sometimes. That's really eye opening. Like seeing my mother as a grandmother has been a really cool experience for me because there's that meme, you know, when I was growing up, you'll get what you get.

And my mom as a grandma, you know, okay, darling, would you like your grilled cheese cut into hearts or stars? And you look at that, you're like, you were not my mother, like, what? And, I just, I love being able to see that change, that relationship, and just, I'm seeing her in a new light, and I think that a lot of that came through in this book.

Zibby: I love that. Wait, you mentioned, and I saw on, in our group chat, that you are no longer a teacher. Why did you, what happened there? 

Sara: So, I've been teaching for 21 years, right now, and while I love it, the end goal was always to be writing. So part of the reason when I decided not to go into journalism, I called my mother crying from a parking lot at the University of Maryland, what, 23 years ago now, and was like, I don't think I want to do this.

And I like the idea of teaching because I knew I wanted to write. I considered law school and knew if I became a lawyer and ever wanted to have a family, I was never going to have time to actually sit down and write a book. So I loved having the summers to write, but I kind of thought that each book would be about the same level of publicity and work and that I'd be able to keep doing this.

And it's definitely exponential, not linear, when you have more books out, which, It's a lot right now. I am also struggling to have any time to write because my four year old is still napping at daycare sometimes, which means he's up until 10 o'clock at night, which is a nightmare, as most of my writing time happens after the kids go to bed.

And my husband just took a job working as an archivist for a musician, and so he's on the road a lot. And when he's out of town, I have zero writing time. I get just. My kids are four and seven and they need a lot. So right now it just made more sense to take a step back from teaching and see if I can make this work full time, which I teach primarily electives.

I teach journalism, creative writing, and I run the newspaper. So I teach those kids for multiple years. So having to tell them that I wasn't coming back next year was, I mean, I cried, they wound up comforting me. I thought they were going to cry, but they got it. And that was a really. special moment for me.

I had one of my journalism students say, you taught us to follow our dreams. How can we not be happy when you're following yours? And I bottle water works. I started bawling. They threw me a going away party the other day. It was the cutest thing. I wear a ton of leopard print. They had little leopard print party hats and they did a pinata.

I mean, they really went all out. And the gift that they gave me, they got me a notebook. They know that I plot on paper and they all signed it. So I would remember them when I'm working and it just, it was really sweet. So it was a hard decision, but I also couldn't justify getting this far in my writing career and then having to stop.

So, you know, I took a year of leave. I can take up to three years of leave and we'll see what happens. And if it doesn't work, I'll go back, but fingers crossed. We'll see what happens. 

Zibby: Wow. So take me back a little bit to the other books. Talk about your first novel and get up to this one. 

Sara: So my first novel is not the same as my debut novel, actually.

I only know a handful of authors and I think you may be one of them, actually, who got their first novel published. 

Zibby: No, no, no. I did not get my first novel. 

Sara: Okay. 

Zibby: Are you kidding? 

Sara: Okay. 

Zibby: No. 

Sara: So that's not just me. 

Zibby: No. 

Sara: My debut for The Love of Friends was the fifth one that I wrote. So I actually self published two back a million years ago, one of them is still in print, one isn't, and then I scrapped one of them, landed an agent with my next one, which never actually sold, and then For the Love of Friends was my debut, which is a story of a 32 year old single girl who is in five weddings in the same summer and starts a blog to deal with all the craziness, and you can tell immediately where that's gonna go.

And it was mildly inspired by a few friends weddings. My best friend and I are great now, but there was a full year where her ringtone was the Darth Vader theme music. Her wedding was a lot. So, I mean, she read the book before it even went to my agent, but when it came out, she kept calling me and being like, Oh God, I did that to you, didn't I?

And I was like, little bit, but we're good now. And then my second one kind of grew out of that. One of my favorite things that authors do is when they bring back characters from a different book and it's just kind of an easter egg for people who read a lot of the same stuff. So, the grandmother in For the Love of Friends was a huge fan favorite.

She is loosely inspired by my own grandmother, who is a total nutjob, which she's 97 now. She was a nutjob 40 years ago though, so it's not like it was an old age thing. She's always been. So that one, She's Up to No Good, is the story of Jenna, who's 34. She's actually Lily, the main character in For the Love of Friends first cousin.

And her husband springs a divorce on her. And she's kind of lost for about six months. She moves back in with her parents. She doesn't know what she's doing with herself. And her grandmother shows up and is like, come on, we're taking a road trip to my hometown in Massachusetts. And Jenna agrees to go because her grandmother otherwise is driving herself at 87 with no driver's license, which, you know, As one does.

That one was inspired by my grandmother who announced the same thing at 91 and I had a one year old at the time and was not going to drive her 10 hours. But I started thinking, where would I have to be in my life to be like, hop in the car, we're gonna go. Because I've done a couple road trips with my grandmother, which, you know, were interesting to say the least.

And that one is a dual timeline so they get grandma's backstory and she starts talking about her first love who she wasn't allowed to marry because he wasn't Jewish. And she eventually, Jenna meet the younger character meets her grandmother's first love's great nephew and of course sparks fly there and the two storylines eventually converge together.

And then don't forget to write the one that kind of led behind Every Good Man is set in 1960, like I said, with the Marvelous Mrs. Maisel vibes, and it opens with a 20 year old girl, Marilyn, who gets caught making out with the rabbi's son, by which I mean everyone catches them because they go crashing through a stained glass window during the middle of Shabbat services, and her parents try to tell her that she has to marry the boy, and she's like, no, it's 1960, not 1860, and we only kissed, I'm not doing that.

So they send her to her great aunt who is a matchmaker in Philadelphia to kind of straighten out for the summer and her great aunt is not what she expected and that one is a whole lot of fun. So, and then here we are. 

Zibby: Oh my gosh. Wow. So a lot of divorce in these books, but you're not, is there divorce in your family?

You're not divorced or were you divorced before this? 

Sara: I'm not. No, my mom keeps being like, okay, we got a couple of divorces and my next one is actually about a widow. She was like, should I be worried here? But I think part of that is when you're looking at characters, especially if you want to incorporate kids in any way, if you want to have a romance element, well, there's got to be something that happens so that they can actually find love again.

If they're already happily married, the romance element kind of fizzles out right there. So I think that's kind of why I did that. 

Zibby: But wait, tell me more about your next one. 

Sara: So my next one, which I'm not that far into because children are not sleeping in my house right now. I don't have a title yet, but it has sold.

It is 1916, in the same era and my main character is a 30 year old widow. Her husband died two years earlier and her mother moves in to help take care of the kids for two years. And after two years, she says, you know what? I'm ready to do this on my own. She sends her mother home. And a couple days later finds her mother in law on her doorstep with five suitcases, and she announces she's moving in.

So she tries to get rid of her, and fails miserably at that, and then realizes the only way she's getting rid of her mother in law is to marry her off. Only to discover her mother in law is also trying to set her up sometimes with the same men. And they eventually find common ground. It's a fun one so far.

I'm really enjoying writing both perspectives on that one, and seeing where it goes. 

Zibby: Wow, that's so great. And you're at Lake Union, which is a, an Amazon publishing thing, which I also write under. So how has your experience been in general terms? You know, 

Sara: They've been awesome to be honest. Like I kind of, we sold at auction, we had three different authors and I went with Lake Union because they promised they'd be able to market it in ways that a lot of the big five publishers weren't going to be able to with a debut author.

Yeah. And they've really come through on that. I mean, uh, Don't Forget to Write hit number two in the entire U. S. Kindle store during first reads, which was crazy. I will say the coolest thing that happened with that, when it was number two, Freda McFadden had the numbers one, three, and four books. And she actually reached out to me, congratulated me, and told me she was downloading Don't Forget to Write, which was the classiest thing ever.

Like, that is such goals right there. So that was very cool. Uh, my editor just left, which I am nervous about, but the new one seems great so far. And yeah, I've had no complaints. They've been wonderful. 

Zibby: Amazing. Well, this feels very cinematic, I have to say. I feel like there could totally be even like a little series about this character.

Have you shopped it around or is that? Oh, on the list of things to do? We've had little nibbles on all four so far. 

Sara: We haven't actually gotten anywhere with any of them, but we have had a little bit of interest, so we'll see. You know, sometimes it moves. It's a lot of hurry up and wait in this industry.

Like, um, we'll see where it goes. I keep joking, I would be happy to, like, let them set it on Mars if they want to make this. I don't care. Like, I'm fine. 

Zibby: I really liked how you had a Jewish woman character, family, how you wove in Rosh Hashanah, and all the things, right? I feel like in my book Blank, which it's the same thing people commented, like, how nice that you don't have like a stereotype of a Jewish family, and I, I'm like, why do we have to say it?

Really? Like, are there that many stereotypes? And so, yeah. Normally I wouldn't say that, you know, I would just say how great that there's a Jewish family, but I'm wondering if you've gotten that comment as well and, you know, in today's day and age, I know you have the part about, you know, the receptionist saying, uh, the, the boss saying the receptionist is Jewish and she shouldn't work there and, you know, you've referenced, uh, All the exclusion of country clubs, which I know very well and all that.

So tell me about that and sort of where you are with that in terms of the world at large. 

Sara: So the country club incident actually happened to my grandmother in 1967. She went to get a job. I'm not going to name the country club, but it still exists in the D. C. area. I drove past it a couple of weeks ago and might have stuck up a certain finger, it's fine, but she went to get a job there, and they were like, oh, we love you, you're perfect, we just have to get rid of the other one, she's Jewish, and my grandmother ripped up her application and said, you don't want me either then, and walked out, and that has just become family lore at this point, but I loved that.

And when I wrote that, I finished this book well before October 7th. I had no idea how timely it was going to be when the book came out. You know, it's funny with my first book. So for the love of friends, I made my character half Jewish on purpose. I was not sure that people were going to read a book about a Jewish girl who is in these weddings and everything.

And I was nervous about it. And nobody said a single word in 2021 when that one came out. So I thought, you know I'm just going to go for it. This is my experience. And then the kind of bizarre thing that led me to all of these Jewish authors who I'm now connected with is I did the Jewish Book Council for She's Up to No Good, which is a great organization that hooks Jewish authors up with speaking engagements around the country.

I had a fabulous experience, but I'm watching all these presentations. And like 90, 95 percent of the books are about the Holocaust. And I'm sitting there like, hi, I write happy, funny books. Please don't kick me out. Like, am I allowed to be here? And it was just really interesting. And then later I was talking to Jean Meltzer about the same thing.

And we were like, we write happy books. No one dies in our books. Like it's all good. And we really came up with this concept of how we need more Jewish joy and, you know, suffering is part of our heritage. Half of our holidays are about people trying to kill us, but there's more to our experience than that.

We're not just our suffering. And I think the black community has a very similar, you know, experience with publishing, to be honest, where people are much more interested in the sad stories, the stories of trauma and suffering and not the happy stories that are there, that are important to tell as well.

So that really has become a driving factor for me in some of these stories. People are like, are you going to keep writing Jewish characters? Well, yes, I am. I think we need more happy Jewish stories out there. I got a comment from a book club, but it It took, I'd say, close to a month to try to figure out if it was a compliment or an insult, honestly.

It was a group of women in Texas, they had no Jewish friends, they didn't know any Jews. And, what they said to me that they liked about whichever book of mine they read, I don't even know if it was She's Up to No Good or Don't Forget to Write, was that my characters were Jewish without that being their entire personality.

And at the time I was like, I don't know what that means, but I'm gonna smile and nod and say cool, thank you. Thanks But the more I've read, I'm starting to understand what they meant, because there are definitely some books out there where it's almost like the Barbie movie, where like Ken's job is beach, where you see some characters and it feels like their whole personality is just Jew, like written across their chest.

And I think it's important, especially right now with all the antisemitism, with all of the demonization, that people see that we're people above all else. Like, we are, You know, we go to a different kind of house of worship. We celebrate some different holidays, but we're people. And I think that gets lost sometimes, which it shouldn't, but it does.

So that's been kind of eye opening to me as well. When, you know, you get some reviews and they're like, Oh, I wasn't familiar with Judaism. And I'm like, but it's a human story. Like, okay. So I don't know, that's been different. But I do have another family anti Semitic story that's going into the next book.

Just to say funny moment, my other grandmother, who died in 2009, she was from Armenia, and very old country, like, you know, thick accent and everything. She was volunteering in a hospital at one point. And she was taking like the lunch or breakfast order for this woman. And she offered her a bagel. You know, she was like, do you want toast or a bagel?

And the woman gets all offended. She goes, I would never eat a bagel. I'm not Jewish. My grandmother just looked at her and was like, lady, do I look Chinese to you? Cause I like egg rolls and like chow mein, you can eat a bagel. And, you know, it's just one of those things, like people really think like that, like that's kind of crazy.

And we're starting to see it again. My seven year old a couple of weeks ago asked me why people hate Jews. And that was just such a heartbreaking moment that he at seven needs to ask that question. So I'm going to keep putting out these happy stories and let him know that our whole history isn't suffering.

And no, not everybody hates us and we're going to try to make the world a little better as we can. 

Zibby: I love that. Amazing. Keep going. I'm sure you have so much advice as a teacher for 21 years, a couple tidbits for our listeners. What advice do you have for aspiring authors? 

Sara: So the best piece of advice I have, I completely stole from Stephen King, but it is the best advice I've gotten.

You know what? If somebody is going to tell you how to be a successful author, he is a good person to look at. In his book on writing, he talked about how you need to treat writing like a job. If you needed money, you'd get a part time job and you'd go. Even if you're tired and don't feel like doing it, you'd go because you need the money.

If you don't treat writing the same way, you're never going to finish a project. And there are so many people who are like, Oh yeah, I'm going to write a book someday and they never put their butts in the chair and sit down and do it. So that is the most important thing. I come and I sit in this room after my kids go to bed, even if it's way, way later than I want it to be.

And I see what I can come up with and some nights it's not much and some nights it's gold. And it really is directly correlated to what time those kids go to like sleep at night, but they'll eventually get bigger and put themselves to bed, right? Like that'll, that'll happen someday. Right? 

Zibby: Yes. 

Sara: Okay, good.

Zibby: And you'll feel like you've been training at high altitudes. You know what I mean?

Sara: Yes. 

Zibby: Because then you'll just be able to crank it out and be like, oh, wow, persistence. 

Sara: I did not think that it'd be easier when they were like infants to do that, but somehow this has been rough, but that really is it. You have to sit down and you have to do it and you have to really treat it like it is something you're getting paid for that you need to do.

Or you're never going to finish a project. And that was really, you know, I used to write over the summer and then once I had kids and they were too young for camp, I didn't have my summers anymore. And I really had to take that advice. The other best piece of advice, and I really wish I knew where I got this and I have no idea, but it's, if you are writing a chapter or a scene and you don't want to write it and you're like, Oh, I have to write this scene to get to whatever I want to write.

Skip it. Cut it out completely. If you don't want to write it, your readers don't want to read it either. And that's really revolutionized my writing. Because I used to write very piecemeal, and I would write like the candy scenes that you totally wanted to, and they'd be like, ugh, I have to get there. And the problem is, that doesn't work.

So that's the other piece of advice that I give all of my aspiring writers. 

Zibby: That's a really good one. Okay. 

Sara: I did not make it up. I stole it from somewhere and I don't know where. So whoever did that, if you're listening, thank you. 

Zibby: I mean, my two cents now that I have slightly older children is that it is crazy.

Anything you get done during this time is like a bonus and there will be lots of time, God willing, to keep cranking out the books. And I feel like there's all this pressure in publishing to like a book a year, keep up the pace or whatever. And like, just cause there's that out there, it doesn't mean your readers forget you.

Like, as you know, as a reader, like we read the stuff that we want by people we love whenever it comes out and we don't say, Oh, it's two years and three months instead of a year and a half. Right. So I would just give yourself, this is totally not my place, but I would just give yourself a little grace.

You're going to get it done and you're going to miss those little cheeks. 

Sara: Anyway. I've already been told I'm not allowed to hold my seven year old's hand at drop off anymore. I'm very embarrassing, apparently. 

Zibby: Oh. Anyway. Well, Sarah, thank you again. I really enjoyed the book. Congratulations and look forward to your next one.

Sara: Thank you so much. 

Zibby: Okay. Thanks.