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Hi Cara, thank you for returning to the show.<\/span><\/p>\nHi Vivien, I\u2019m so happy to be here.<\/span><\/p>\nI\u2019ve been looking forward to this so much especially as I just read your new release No Matter What and I loved it.<\/span><\/p>\nI absolutely loved it and I\u2019ve got lots to say about that but let\u2019s go this way.<\/span><\/p>\nSo your newest release is called No Matter What and even before it was released it was a big hit.<\/span><\/p>\nI love a success story so please, please will you tell us all about it? Will you share how long it took to become a bestseller and what happened with the librarians before the release? Oh gosh, this was such a wonderful honor, the biggest honor of my career to date.<\/span><\/p>\nWhat happened with the librarians is there\u2019s something called the library read list and No Matter What was the March top pick and it\u2019s very coveted in the publishing industry because it\u2019s not a curated list, it\u2019s simply popular demand and it\u2019s voted by librarians who have read your book which means that No Matter What was popular voted as the top pick for March.<\/span><\/p>\nOnly books a year are chosen for that and it was an honor beyond what I could have imagined.<\/span><\/p>\nIt didn\u2019t even occur to me it was possible and then suddenly I was told that it had happened.<\/span><\/p>\nIt was an unbelievable honor and it\u2019s made me so happy to go into every library I\u2019ve been into since then.<\/span><\/p>\nI feel just thrilled.<\/span><\/p>\nAs for being a bestseller which was probably heavily influenced by the library reads because it\u2019s kind of a taste making list and it indicates to a lot of booksellers what books to buy and even put on their shelves, it became a bestseller in the first week.<\/span><\/p>\nIn the first week? It did, yes.<\/span><\/p>\nWow, Cara, that\u2019s amazing.<\/span><\/p>\nIt really, really is.<\/span><\/p>\nI still feel like I\u2019m on a cloud when I think about it.<\/span><\/p>\nI can believe you.<\/span><\/p>\nIt must be hard to come down from that because it\u2019s such a grassroots vote, isn\u2019t it? What the librarians thought should be the book of the month for March and there it was no matter what.<\/span><\/p>\nBut let\u2019s tell everyone what no matter what is and also that it is part of a series, isn\u2019t it? Not in a strict sense but in some other sense.<\/span><\/p>\nCan you explain about no matter what, what it\u2019s about and then in what way it\u2019s part of a series? Yes, absolutely.<\/span><\/p>\nNo matter what is a romance, we refer to it as romance expansive because it has a lot of story lines that have to do with not romance and just life in general.<\/span><\/p>\nThe book is about a married couple who the opening scene is we\u2019re seeing them having very hard times.<\/span><\/p>\nShe finds Elise and that\u2019s how she knows he\u2019s planning on moving out.<\/span><\/p>\nThe book deals with the ramifications of traumatic accidents they\u2019ve been through and navigates through love languages, communication styles, what it means to love someone for a lifetime and the ways in which we change and adapt to both life and love as we grow older.<\/span><\/p>\nAs for its place in this series, it\u2019s very loosely referred to as a series because there\u2019s really only one character that ties it will ultimately be four books.<\/span><\/p>\nThere\u2019s only one character that ties all four books together and he\u2019s very lightly in this third book.<\/span><\/p>\nBut in my mind and in the soul of these books, the first one Ready or Not was about unexpected pregnancy and dealt with birth.<\/span><\/p>\nThe second, Promise Me Sunshine, was about the death of a friend and what it means to fall in love while you\u2019re grieving so that book is about grief and death.<\/span><\/p>\nThis book, the third, is about PTSD and how we handle traumatic moments in our life and move forward.<\/span><\/p>\nThe fourth is about body autonomy and self-perception and what it means to see and be seen as you fall in love.<\/span><\/p>\nSo it\u2019s these four greater themes that I think are unavoidable over the course of a lifetime and what it means to fall in love at these different stages of life, which is how I view the four being very connected to one another.<\/span><\/p>\nWow.<\/span><\/p>\nAll in the romance genre.<\/span><\/p>\nSo that\u2019s unusual, isn\u2019t it? I mean, did you have trouble with your publishers convincing them that this was an okay thing to do?<\/span><\/p>\nWell, not my publisher so much because at this point they trust me to be able to pull the rabbit out of the hat.<\/span><\/p>\nI will say that people who haven\u2019t read my books often struggle to understand how they can fit into the romance genre and think of them more as sometimes people call it women\u2019s fiction or book club fiction.<\/span><\/p>\nBut once they read them, I think they really do see that the romance is the spoonful of sugar.<\/span><\/p>\nIt\u2019s the base landscape to explore what can be really scary and\/or unsettling themes.<\/span><\/p>\nBut in my opinion, life is hard enough and I certainly don\u2019t need a reminder of how life doesn\u2019t always wrap up like a perfect pretty package.<\/span><\/p>\nAnd so for me, what I like to do in these books is create a safe playground where people can explore these topics, these real topics in a way that rings true and speaks to their personal experiences while being able to wrap it up safely so that they aren\u2019t left feeling betrayed by what they\u2019ve learned.<\/span><\/p>\nWhat they feel is that they were able to explore it and learn something and kind of end it appropriately so that they don\u2019t have to carry it on into their life.<\/span><\/p>\nThey can carry the glow of the book into their life.<\/span><\/p>\nThey don\u2019t have to carry the pain that they might encounter in the book.<\/span><\/p>\nThe pain concludes the glow gets to go along with it.<\/span><\/p>\nWow.<\/span><\/p>\nWell, I want to confirm a few things about that.<\/span><\/p>\nYou\u2019re not just speaking, ideally speaking, idealistically, because my experience of books is really important.<\/span><\/p>\nI have some personal experience that I do want to share.<\/span><\/p>\nBut before that, I want to say how my book club responded.<\/span><\/p>\nSo they read some pretty heavy books, which I have to admit, I can\u2019t read.<\/span><\/p>\nThey choose books set in a war landscape and some pretty difficult books and I just tend to avoid them.<\/span><\/p>\nI was very interested in how they responded to your book because no matter what, it\u2019s a difficult topic.<\/span><\/p>\nIt\u2019s PTSD and imminent separation, perhaps divorce.<\/span><\/p>\nAnd it\u2019s written about -something people, isn\u2019t it? About how old are the characters in the book? I think he\u2019s like young s and she\u2019s late s.<\/span><\/p>\nYes.<\/span><\/p>\nSo in my book club, ladies were an old ladies group.<\/span><\/p>\nSo their response was illuminating because they appreciated the book so much and they definitely were processing their life experiences through the palatability of your presentation.<\/span><\/p>\nAnd they raved about the book.<\/span><\/p>\nI mean, they absolutely raved about the book.<\/span><\/p>\nAnd they don\u2019t usually do that.<\/span><\/p>\nWe discuss the book and we hurry on to dessert and not in this instance, as you know, because you were there to talk to them, which was wonderful, absolutely wonderful.<\/span><\/p>\nSo that was the one piece that I wanted to say.<\/span><\/p>\nAnd the angle that you come into with romance, what is that? How would you describe that? Can you?<\/span><\/p>\nOh, I\u2019ll try.<\/span><\/p>\nWell, I first have to say that speaking with your book club was one of my favorite events I\u2019ve done for this book.<\/span><\/p>\nAnd it\u2019s extremely validating because this book in particular, there\u2019s not that many.<\/span><\/p>\nIt\u2019s an established trope.<\/span><\/p>\nMarriage in trouble is an established trope in romance.<\/span><\/p>\nBut it\u2019s pretty small, the number of books that fall into that category.<\/span><\/p>\nAnd the feedback I\u2019ve gotten about what it means to write a love story for people who aren\u2019t falling in love, but they\u2019re recommitting to their love and going through, you know, phase two or three or four or five of a marriage as opposed to phase one, which is meeting and falling in love.<\/span><\/p>\nThat has been extremely validating to me as a writer, but also as a married person.<\/span><\/p>\nI\u2019ve gotten just to sort of see love through my reader\u2019s eyes in whatever stage they\u2019re in it.<\/span><\/p>\nAnd that was extremely validating.<\/span><\/p>\nAs for the angle with which I approached this book, I thought that everything I write, I want it to feel true to life.<\/span><\/p>\nI\u2019m not interested in big, unbelievable romantic scenes, you know, elaborate, lavish weddings or huge public declarations.<\/span><\/p>\nOh, but it is.<\/span><\/p>\nYes, exactly.<\/span><\/p>\nI\u2019m really interested in the granular human-to-human moments of communication where love is actually watered.<\/span><\/p>\nI think everyone kind of knows by now, but, you know, a huge romantic gesture means nothing if you don\u2019t connect to the person who\u2019s giving you that romantic gesture on an almost cell-to-cell level where you\u2019ve started from the ground up and you\u2019ve communicated about who you are and what you need.<\/span><\/p>\nOkay, so how do we turn that into a book is the question I asked myself then, and so much of it is through my personal experiences.<\/span><\/p>\nThis book is not autobiographical at all, but I was thinking, okay, I feel so much daily romance with my husband, and it\u2019s not something you splash onto a movie screen, but I feel that it waters our marriage.<\/span><\/p>\nAnd so I was wondering, how do I put that into, how do I novelize that? And so I\u2019m thinking of these issues.<\/span><\/p>\nThey\u2019re going through, oh, they\u2019re having communication problems.<\/span><\/p>\nMaybe they\u2019re falling into bad habits here, but then it hit me.<\/span><\/p>\nNo, they\u2019ve been through something.<\/span><\/p>\nThey\u2019ve been through something traumatic, and it changed the way they could see each other and communicate.<\/span><\/p>\nAnd that did come from my life.<\/span><\/p>\nAnd as I was writing, I was thinking, oh, man, I\u2019m really nailing this PTSD storyline.<\/span><\/p>\nThis is amazing.<\/span><\/p>\nI\u2019m channeling it.<\/span><\/p>\nAnd then as I\u2019m writing, I was thinking, oh, no, I think this is from my own experience.<\/span><\/p>\nAnd through writing this book, I was able to recognize that I probably needed to go to a therapist and talk about PTSD with them.<\/span><\/p>\nSo Roz\u2019s character arc through this book, her journey with PTSD, very closely mirrors my own.<\/span><\/p>\nAgain, it\u2019s not autobiographical, but it came from my empathetic imagination, and it comes truly from me into the book as well, which is always kind of the angle I try, not even try, it\u2019s the angle that ends up showing up in my books is I\u2019m in there somewhere.<\/span><\/p>\nYou are in there, but the character, Roz, in No Matter What is so different from you and has such a different voice from you that I was actually almost shocked by the transition from reading No Matter What to the acknowledgments at the back where you come into your own voice and speak from your own voice.<\/span><\/p>\nAnd I go, what just happened here? And I was like, wow, and might be impressed that you were able to pull that off.<\/span><\/p>\nAs you know, I\u2019m a psychologist in my training background, and the authenticity, psychological authenticity, is a number one aspect for me when reading a book.<\/span><\/p>\nAnd you just pull that off.<\/span><\/p>\nAnd then I just want to be absolutely sure to say this as well, because, Kara, this is very meaningful for me personally.<\/span><\/p>\nMy son who died, he was an artist, and the life drawing scenes in the book would normally have me just close the book because it\u2019s too hard for me.<\/span><\/p>\nI mean, your book is about PTSD, and then you put in a life drawing scene as well, and I\u2019m going, I don\u2019t know if I can manage this, but it\u2019s my book club book, and I\u2019m the one who suggested it, and so now I have to read the book.<\/span><\/p>\nAnd I was in the middle of that debate, but reading, and the next thing, I\u2019m laughing out loud.<\/span><\/p>\nI mean, really, the comedic scenes in No Matter What are unbelievable.<\/span><\/p>\nAnd of course, they do that in movies, don\u2019t they? They paste, where you have a particularly intense scene, and then they give you a little break with some comedic value.<\/span><\/p>\nAnd you naturally, it seems like naturally, crafted that into No Matter What, and there I am, reading a book about PTSD, and there\u2019s my trigger with the life drawing class, and instead of closing the book, I\u2019m drawn along, and I\u2019m laughing, and I\u2019m metabolizing what I\u2019ve been experiencing, and I\u2019m now in a completely different place with all of that after reading No Matter What.<\/span><\/p>\nWow.<\/span><\/p>\nWhich is what I wanted to do on the show here.<\/span><\/p>\nOh, sorry, go ahead.<\/span><\/p>\nThat\u2019s what I wanted to do on the show here, because mostly I\u2019m not talking to fiction writers, I\u2019m talking to people who\u2019ve written non-fiction about these kind of topics, and yet your own book treats the topic of PTSD so successfully.<\/span><\/p>\nAnd I was wondering, how do you manage that balance?<\/span><\/p>\nYou know, it came, again, from a very real place, because that\u2019s actually what drawing has done for me.<\/span><\/p>\nAnd I think, in general, in terms of balancing the dramatic elements and the humor, so much of what romance does is deal with intimacy, and anyone who\u2019s experienced genuine intimacy knows it often comes with a complete lack of dignity.<\/span><\/p>\nThat\u2019s a good point, you could be a writer.<\/span><\/p>\nThere\u2019s so much meat on the bone there.<\/span><\/p>\nYou imagine going to a figure drawing class and having it be this romantic, well lit, candle lit experience where everything is, for lack of a better word, so sexy.<\/span><\/p>\nAnd then, if you\u2019re me, you actually go to this class and there\u2019s suddenly a naked man under fluorescent lights and you\u2019re like, \u201c<\/span><\/p>\n