Hannah McKinnon is an award-winning author of eight women's fiction and beach read novels with Simon & Schuster. Her notable titles include The Summer Club, (July 23rd), Message in the Sand, The View from Here, Sailing Lessons, The Summer House, Mystic Summer, and The Lake Season. Her latest release, The Darlings, came out on May 2nd. Previously, she published two YA novels, Franny Parker and The Properties of Water, with FSG Macmillan. Hannah resides in Fairfield County, Connecticut, with her family, where she enjoys spending time in her backyard, chasing chickens, wrangling rescue dogs, or at the lake. Follow her on Instagram at Hannah McKinnon Writes and Twitter at Hannah McKinnon.
Key Discussion Points:
Introduction and New Book Announcement:
Introduction of Hannah McKinnon and her new book The Summer Club, releasing on July 23rd.
Overview of her career and previous titles.
Family Dynamics and Character Development:
Discussion on Hannah’s approach to exploring complex family relationships in her books.
Insights into the themes of family stress points and creating relatable characters.
Writing Process and Settings:
Hannah’s approach to incorporating settings as integral parts of her stories.
Research and personal experiences influencing her New England settings.
Publishing Journey and Challenges:
Hannah’s transition from middle grade books to contemporary women's fiction.
Overcoming challenges in the publishing industry, including dealing with rejection and maintaining a balance with social media.
Advice for Aspiring Writers:
Importance of perseverance and doing thorough research on the marketplace.
Using acknowledgements in books to find potential agents and publishers.
Conclusion: Hannah McKinnon shared valuable insights into her writing process, the importance of setting in her novels, and advice for aspiring writers. Her candid discussion about the challenges of the publishing industry and maintaining authenticity in social media presence provided a relatable perspective for both new and seasoned writers.
Hannah McKinnon is an award-winning author of eight women's fiction and beach read novels with Simon & Schuster. Her notable titles include The Summer Club, (July 23rd), Message in the Sand, The View from Here, Sailing Lessons, The Summer House, Mystic Summer, and The Lake Season. Her latest release, The Darlings, came out on May 2nd. Previously, she published two YA novels, Franny Parker and The Properties of Water, with FSG Macmillan. Hannah resides in Fairfield County, Connecticut, with her family, where she enjoys spending time in her backyard, chasing chickens, wrangling rescue dogs, or at the lake. Follow her on Instagram at Hannah McKinnon Writes and Twitter at Hannah McKinnon.
Key Discussion Points:
Introduction and New Book Announcement:
Introduction of Hannah McKinnon and her new book The Summer Club, releasing on July 23rd.
Overview of her career and previous titles.
Family Dynamics and Character Development:
Discussion on Hannah’s approach to exploring complex family relationships in her books.
Insights into the themes of family stress points and creating relatable characters.
Writing Process and Settings:
Hannah’s approach to incorporating settings as integral parts of her stories.
Research and personal experiences influencing her New England settings.
Publishing Journey and Challenges:
Hannah’s transition from middle grade books to contemporary women's fiction.
Overcoming challenges in the publishing industry, including dealing with rejection and maintaining a balance with social media.
Advice for Aspiring Writers:
Importance of perseverance and doing thorough research on the marketplace.
Using acknowledgements in books to find potential agents and publishers.
Conclusion: Hannah McKinnon shared valuable insights into her writing process, the importance of setting in her novels, and advice for aspiring writers. Her candid discussion about the challenges of the publishing industry and maintaining authenticity in social media presence provided a relatable perspective for both new and seasoned writers.
This is our last of three Encore episodes and because it is literally summer now, we thought why not bring back the queen of the summer beach read, hannah McKinnon, and has a new book coming out July 23rd titled the Summer Club. It is a fresh beach read about a group of outsiders threatening the status quo at an exclusive New England beach club, which is plenty for me to just go pre-order it right now and you should too and enjoy the episode. Welcome back to Writers with Wrinkles friends. Thank you for joining us for episode 30. Today we are excited to welcome author Hannah McKinnon to the podcast 30. Today we are excited to welcome author Hannah McKinnon to the podcast.
Beth McMullen:
Hannah is the award-winning author of eight women's fiction and beach read novels with Simon Schuster. Her titles include Message in the Sand, the View from here, sailing Lessons, the Summer House, mystic Summer and the Lake Season, and recently released the Darlings, which came out on May 2nd and is doing great. She previously published two YA novels, franny Parker and the Properties of Water, with FSG Macmillan. Hannah lives in Fairfield County, connecticut, with her family. When not spending time with family and friends or writing in her home office, she can be found in her backyard chasing chickens, wrangling rescue dogs or at the lake. Visit her author website at wwwhannahmckinnoncom, or on Instagram at Hannah McKinnon Writes, and on Twitter at Hannah McKinnon.
Beth McMullen:
Thank you so much for joining us, hannah. We are very excited to have you here. Oh, thank you for having me. Ladies, this is a treat. So full disclosure. Hannah and I have known each other for a long time. We met because Hannah lives down the street from my parents and our mothers are good friends, and I know that my mother listens to the show, so she will appreciate the shout out.
Hannah McKinnon:
Oh, that's great, Hi Eva.
Beth McMullen:
So what's funny, though, is that we met kind of randomly and we were both trying to be writers and we both sold our first books pretty much at the same time.
Hannah McKinnon:
We did, we did. That was so crazy. We had had our first children and we're selling our first books around the same time.
Beth McMullen:
Right, and I have this very distinct memory of you coming over to my mother's house when we were visiting from California and the kids are like crawling around on the floor, you know, eating whatever's on the floor, because they were really little and you had your. You had your past pages and you were like I don't know what to do with these, what am I supposed to do with these? And we were sitting on the couch looking at the past pages and we were just cracking up because we were like we're such posers, nobody knows what we're doing and the editors treat you like you're supposed to know all this stuff and the kids are like eating dirt. I have that memory just so embedded in my head. It was so funny. That's hysterical.
Hannah McKinnon:
You remember that. I totally forgot about that, but now it's all roaring back.
Beth McMullen:
Those same kids are now graduating from high school.
Hannah McKinnon:
And going to prom and heading off to college. It's unbelievable. It means that you and I are getting old Beth.
Beth McMullen:
Yes, oh well, yeah, I mean, every morning I'm like yep, that noise you hear, that's my knees.
Beth McMullen:
You know what it is? It's just another wrinkle forming knees. You know what it is?
Beth McMullen:
It's just another wrinkle forming. Absolutely, it's so funny. Well, we have you here because we have some hot off the presses questions for you. Oh, you know what I want to do. First, I want you to tell us a little bit about the darlings, which just came out on May 2nd so very recent release and just give us a little elevator pitch for that.
Hannah McKinnon:
Yes. So the Darlings is a multi-generational family story and it focuses on three women and the setting is in Chatham, cape Cod, and it's in the house called Riptide, which has been in the family for over 60 years. And we open with Andy Darling, who is the youngest, over 60 years. And we open with Andy Darling, who is the youngest. She is in her forties, recently divorced, heading back to the beach house Riptide for her younger sister's wedding, the absolute last place she wants to be, being fresh off of a divorce with a teenage daughter. Then we have Cora Darling, who is the mother of Andy and the daughter-in-law of Tish Darling. Tish is the matriarch and it's with Tish that Riptide began. And although she's technically still owns the summer house, she has not been there in 50 years. She and Cora do not get along at all. There is a longstanding family secret that has been kept between the two women and it's about to be unleashed this summer, just in time for the family wedding.
Beth McMullen:
Your books are great at the family stress points and creating the perfect storm of all the things that are coming together to create family chaos. Which leads very nicely to our first question, which is that you explore complex family dynamics and relationships in all of your adult books and your YA books as well. So what draws you to these themes and how do you approach them so that they're fresh every time, so that you're getting sort of new insights into human dynamics?
Beth McMullen:
Welcome to therapy, hannah. Welcome to therapy.
Hannah McKinnon:
Well, you know that that might be it. I perhaps it's. It's cathartic, honestly, I don't. I never know how to answer that question, cause it's not like it's a conscious decision for me.
Hannah McKinnon:
I think, when I really am honest, I look back to my sophomore year in high school and I was in a psychology class and it was the first class besides creative writing that really clicked for me. And I remember my teacher in creative writing saying that there are only three themes in literature there's man or woman versus themselves, man versus man or man versus nature. And I just remember thinking what does he mean by man versus man or woman versus woman? What does that even mean? And then I took the psych class the same year and I was like, oh okay, there's a lot of inner workings that go on here, and I think that's just true in my novels, because they're character driven more than they are plot driven really. And so when you're dealing with a character driven story, you're kind of on that external journey they're taking through the pages with the plot, but you're really also on an internal journey with them, and with that comes their history and what brought them to this day, and that comes through their family, their relationships, their friendships, their love lives, and it's just something that has always fascinated me and it just ends up coming through in my stories.
Hannah McKinnon:
Each one I write. I hope it's fresh. I don't know, I think it gets harder with each book that comes out to keep it fresh, but my hope is just that I'm creating characters that are relatable and situations that people might be going through in their own personal lives. And you know, at the end of the day, let's face it any family holiday or reunion is ripe for the picking with material, so it's endless, right? Yes, absolutely.
Beth McMullen:
I like, too, that you manage to cover different generations, so it's not all 30 somethings or early 20s. You're hitting people that represent different generations, so you get a slightly different view onto the same situation, which I think you do really well. It makes it interesting for an array of readers. So you can come in and be relating to this 30 something character and then 10 years go by, you read a different one and you're like oh, now I relate to this character over here. That's a. It's a great way to keep those readers coming back over and over again.
Hannah McKinnon:
Well, I think also, beth. I'm aging, so I started writing in my 30s. Now I'm in my early 50s, so I think my character, their bottom baseline age, is moving up along with my own. I've got my readers on now.
Beth McMullen:
No, I know we all do. Just, you know. Point of reference Everybody's got their readers on. I have like within an arm's reach of me. I have like 20 pairs because I'm always losing them.
Beth McMullen:
Oh, it's so funny. Right before we came on I couldn't find my read my my glasses. I put them down and I was like one and Beth called and I'm wandering around. I'm like, oh my god, where are my glasses? I have like a million pairs and they were where I always put them. They were in the exact same spot I always put my glasses and yet I wandered around like a crazy woman in the room and the room's not that big.
Hannah McKinnon:
No, these were on my head right before our Zoom and I spent 15 minutes looking for them. My husband's like um. She's like.
Beth McMullen:
I'm not telling her, I know, let her, let her stumble into a reflective surface and then she'll be like oh yeah, there they are on top of my head. Oh boy, that is true, though it becomes a different experience when you're when you yourself are, are are changing, and then you're writing younger characters. Suddenly it's a different. You have to take a different approach because you're needing to make sure that it is true to what a young person now would be, as opposed to somebody when we were actually young, all those you know eras ago 150 years ago.
Hannah McKinnon:
Yeah, it's a stretch.
Beth McMullen:
You know what you guys have grown up during the Taylor Swift eras.
Hannah McKinnon:
Yes.
Beth McMullen:
I'm like obsessed with Taylor Swift right now.
Beth McMullen:
Lisa is bringing every single thing in the universe back to Taylor Swift. Oh, I love that.
Beth McMullen:
I love her so much.
Hannah McKinnon:
Oh, my teenage daughters. We are all about T-Swift Anytime we're in the car, even if it's for two minutes, we squeeze in part of a song.
Beth McMullen:
Well, did you see? Sorry we're, I'm totally digressing, but did you see any of the clips from the show last night in Nashville? No, I didn't. You haven't because you're a grownup. So I will tell you. It was a pouring rain and she performed for three hours in the pouring rain and there's like one scene where she's singing and in the background there is like a bolt of lightning and I'm just like, oh, she's amazing.
Hannah McKinnon:
He is literal rock star.
Beth McMullen:
Anyway, well, this is actually a perfect question, because your book the Darling centers around Riptide, the beach house. So tell us how you research and incorporate your settings into your writing and how they impact the story and the characters look for settings as characters.
Hannah McKinnon:
When I start out writing, I don't write with a plot in mind and I don't plot ahead of time, so for me it's usually starting with a character in a place, so the setting takes on its own personality.
Hannah McKinnon:
For certain, I think when I first started writing women's fiction, I ended up writing a lot of New England locales, because that's where I grew up, that's where we spent family vacations, and I've done a lot of traveling too, and in the beginning I would research, I would set up shop, I would go up to westerly Rhode Island or I would camp out for a little while on the Cape and I would just go up there and take notes and get a sense of town and the kind of people that not only live there but the people who also traveled there, because they're very, very different and I don't have to do that as much anymore Now.
Hannah McKinnon:
I think that either I've been to some of those places enough and know them well enough, intimately Some of them like the Cape or I imagine you know what I don't actually have is fact, and I fill in because a lot of them do share a lot of character traits, but for me I think Beth was talking about family dynamics and messy, complicated family relationships, and so I always like to think of the setting as being something that can absorb all of the aftershocks, if you will.
Hannah McKinnon:
You're in this beautiful, luxurious resort area on the Cape or you're up in the lush mountains of New Hampshire and everything is so idyllic and you're immersed in nature, and I think that that's very healing. And for me, we have all these family members coming together who are all such good people at their core, but they have done some bad things to each other over the years or they've disappointed each other or or even disappointed themselves. And the setting is so important because I feel like it can absorb a lot of that emotion and provide, ultimately, a place of healing for a lot of these characters and a place where they can come together and work through all of their crap together.
Beth McMullen:
Really, I think that you have done a really good job carving out that New England, setting space as your own, because all of your adult books take place in that general geography, yes, and I think it. I always think of like that them as like the Nantucket books even though they haven't all taken place, obviously, in Nantucket but that sort of feeling of that kind of you know, preppy New England thing that I think really resonates for a lot of people, especially if they've never spent time there. It's like this introduction to this area that you hear a lot about, you see on TV, so that, I think, is marketing wise. I think that's you know, whether you did that on purpose or not has turned out to be a great benefit. Oh good.
Hannah McKinnon:
I'm glad. I think for me it's just it's what I know, it's what I love and it just it's in my back pocket. So it comes in handy for sure. But it is fun. Like you were just saying, beth, you know people who live on the West Coast or the Midwest who haven't perhaps been out to this area. Some of the comments or messages I get from readers will say I can't wait to travel now to the Cape, or oh my gosh, we've got to get the family out there to New Hampshire and Maine. And it's funny because I'm like, oh, maybe I have like a little travel thing going on inside that I didn't intend, but it's really I think you should do the tours, the book tours.
Hannah McKinnon:
I'm going to have to set up some nice little beach town shops. Yeah, I love that.
Beth McMullen:
That is so. That's so great, and it's because I am familiar, having grown up in that area myself. It's fun to revisit it and to go back and to feel immersed in that, in that geography, so I think that works really well in your novels. So I think we said this earlier I have known Hannah for a long time and we published our first books right around the same time, so she's been on this publishing journey for a bunch of years. We ask this of a lot of our authors who come on the show. But what are some of the challenges that you faced in your publishing journey and how did you overcome them, go around them, kick them to the curb? What are the things that stand out for you as the hurdles that you needed to jump over?
Hannah McKinnon:
Yes, there are so many. Where do you start? You know, look, we're all so lucky to do what we do, right? I mean, I love coming in the office every day and writing in my pajamas, with the dogs under feet, you know, after I get the kids out the door to school. We really are fortunate.
Hannah McKinnon:
But I think one of the biggest myths for me when I started in this industry was once I was published, that would be it. It was like this moment, you have now been crowned and you shall publish forevermore, and I think for me that was a pretty rude awakening. I did two middle grade books with FSG Macmillan and I wanted to segue into contemporary women's fiction and I was terrified to do that. I didn't know how to do that. I didn't know if I needed an agent first. I didn't know if I needed to look at a publishing house first. I had published two previous novels, but they were not the same genre. So for me, I think, learning that you are constantly reinventing yourself and that's just the way it is being a writer was a big lesson, and it's something I'm still learning.
Hannah McKinnon:
The biggest and most obvious, I think, thing that writers, or aspiring writers, need to keep in mind is. It's an industry laden with rejection, and even though I did transition to women's fiction and I'm writing about a book a year and still going, you never know if that's going to keep going. And I have a drawer full of books I mean that could be another podcast in itself books in a drawer. I have a number of books from my early years where I wrote some YA and picture books never got published, probably never will come out of those drawers either. And even now you know writing. I'm working on a new book for next year and I'm on, I think, my third draft and I'm only like 50 pages in and I've been working on this for several months. So you really have to be prepared that you really have to be prepared that you are going to constantly be pushing yourself to produce new material, to segue into a new genre and know that rejection is just part of the process and not get too bogged down by it or too worried about it, that you just have to keep writing. I think that would be one piece of advice I would give to any aspiring writer.
Hannah McKinnon:
The other thing that I still struggle with that for me is a big hurdle is the balance now of social media. Because I know, beth, when we first started, I was still snail mailing manuscripts in. I was just starting to email them to potential agents and editors. And now here we are we've got Facebook and Insta and Twitter. And now here we are, we've got Facebook and Insta and Twitter.
Hannah McKinnon:
And I look around and I'm in awe of how many authors, especially in my genre and women's fiction, who just seem to be branding themselves and doing so very successfully. And it's interesting because I aspire to do that. And yet I'm completely terrified by it at times too. Because I'm looking at some of these authors, I'm like, all right, here's their book tour and here's their latest release. Oh, and there's their daughter in her senior prom dress. That's a great dress.
Hannah McKinnon:
Or here they are making cookies and challah bread for the holidays and I'm like, oh gosh, do I need to bake cookies? Do I need to get my kid in a prom dress? Should I put on a sundress and go outside and walk the dog with my book? And it's just, it's so hard because it's not who I am personally and it's exhausting. And if I honestly, if I did that, you would see me walking the dog coming out of the woods like, excuse the dirt and the leaves. We saw a squirrel. There's nothing pretty about it going on here and I keep thinking, hannah, you need to really push the social media more, and it's something that I need to get comfortable with, because it is a fine line between inviting people completely into your personal life and creating this sense of reality star a little bit versus, you know, doing the work of writing in your office and getting through those pages and getting a manuscript in on time in its best shape every year, and striking that balance to me is daunting at times. It's brutal.
Beth McMullen:
I feel like a lot of the times when you see like I see people what you're, you know what you're talking about. What you're talking about, you know authors.
Beth McMullen:
I know friends I know are just are making these reels for you know TikTok and you know I'm not on TikTok you know whatever on Instagram and I just sit there, like honestly, in my bed in my pajamas with my readers just going, wow, that seems like a lot of work to me and I'm like I'm just going to go back to my Taylor Swift reels. This is like too much. I need to feel good about myself again, so I'm going to go watch some Tay-Tay. I am so with you. It's just a lot.
Beth McMullen:
It just feels inauthentic for me because I'm never. I don't have a dog, first of all, but it would be crazy if I was out walking the dog in a sundress, because I don't have one of those either.
Beth McMullen:
So, but no, there's definitely, there's definitely this feeling of their lives are clearly curated and presented to you in this package that goes with their brand and, at the same time, you're supposed to accept that this is the way that they really live and function. And I don't know. I find I'm totally with you, I find it. I don't know how to, how to do the puzzle. I don't know how to untangle it. I don't know if it's worth it. I have always struggled a lot with social media. I'm not that person.
Beth McMullen:
I think we should. I should just take a picture of myself like this and just to cross it right hot mess, please buy my books. That's my new brand.
Hannah McKinnon:
You know, I would buy your book, lisa, just for that. I really would, because I applaud the writers who do this. But I just I feel like where I'm at right now with family life balance and work life which, let's be honest, there's no balance. To begin with, it seems exhausting to me to be putting myself out there that much, and yet I also feel like I kind of need to do that. I was watching a reel on Instagram and scrolling through my feed the other day and then I was just looking at posts and Lisa Jewell, uk author, popped up and she was on tour and I loved her post. She said something about what a fabulous, busy day she'd had with all of these fellow fellow authors she's touring with and all the readers they met, and then she said it was such a great day. If I knew how to make a reel, I would, but I don't, so here's a photo.
Beth McMullen:
That is awesome.
Beth McMullen:
Oh, I love that Keeping it real.
Hannah McKinnon:
Yeah, we have to push ourselves, but at the same time, for me, the social media stuff is something I'm still really trying to learn and figure out. What's the balance here?
Beth McMullen:
Yeah, and I think in some regard, we are not obviously digital natives. Our kids have grown up with it. It's like a second language and for us we're always trying to overcome. How do you speak this language? What is the point of speaking this language? It's definitely challenging. We've had a lot of authors who come on say the same thing. It is trying to find your comfort level and the balance and getting something for your book, because a lot of the stuff we do on social media does not sell books.
Beth McMullen:
So what does it get you? Yeah, it's an it's a.
Beth McMullen:
It's a quagmire.
Beth McMullen:
I feel like the authors that do it, and especially authors that are kind of um writers with wrinkles, that that they enjoy it, like I feel, like you know I can, as I'm watching them, I'm like you know what they look like. They're having fun I think they do too, and so I think it's like you know more power to them for doing it and wanting to do it. I think it's a matter of picking things that you enjoy doing and are having fun doing. Then it comes off as authentic. But if you're doing something and you're doing it just because you feel like you have to, then it looks like you're doing it because you have to and it comes off as like you know. Oh my God, please stop.
Hannah McKinnon:
You do. You see that you do, and I think that's the beauty of it, you know. I think it's personality, you know I I'm very much an introverted, extrovert, so I think that for me I'm somewhere in the middle there.
Beth McMullen:
Yeah, I think it definitely plays to the extroverts. The true extroverts are like so happy you can tell they're just having such a good time, and those of us who are somewhere in the middle we're like I don't know about this.
Beth McMullen:
We're hiding behind a microphone with our bed hair and our teeth. We brushed our teeth.
Hannah McKinnon:
We brushed our teeth today.
Beth McMullen:
I want all the listeners to know that we all look fabulous, so just take that and run All right. We have one more question for you, yes, and that is what advice would you give aspiring writers, particularly those interested in writing what you write women's fiction? What would you tell them, just based on your experience and the path that you have followed? What's something that those people who are just starting out ought to know?
Hannah McKinnon:
Well, I think, first and foremost, it's definitely attainable. I think there's this myth that you have to know somebody or you have to have an insider in the industry. I knew nobody. I was an elementary school teacher and I had a baby. And if you really want to do it, you're going to find a way to get yourself to that point. I think that the most important thing, obviously, is to write the book. How many people do you have who will come up to you and say I have this idea and I want to talk to you about it and what do you think of it? And and I was there too, I was one of those people at one point.
Hannah McKinnon:
But you have to write the book. Sit down, do the work, get it written, rewrite it, revise it, edit it, do what you have to do, and then start thinking about a home. I think with women's fiction, the marketplace, it's really far reaching. There's a sweeping amount of material out there in our genre. Whether you're delving a little bit into beach read, if you're delving into literary, if you're going into historical fiction, there's an overlap with women's fiction into all of those other genres. So you need to pick what you think you are most interested in writing. Get that down on paper, have something to show for it and then learn the marketplace.
Hannah McKinnon:
Like what authors do you like to read in your personal time? And then open those book jackets this is what I did and look in the back. Who published them? Find the houses that are publishing similar works and get to know who those agents are. You can tell just by reading an acknowledgments page right and do your homework and then start sending out queries to some of those agents and editors. At the end of the day, it's perseverance. I had enough rejection letters to wallpaper the entire first floor of my house. It took me a few years. But just don't give up. Just keep going and if one project doesn't work out, start another. Keep writing.
Beth McMullen:
The bit about reading the acknowledgements. Yeah, that is some of the best advice I've heard. I mean that was all good advice, but that was really good advice because a lot, you know, I just had somebody else just message me and say how do I find an agent? How do I, you know? And then I, you know, I went through all this stuff but I'm like that is great advice. You know, find the books that you like to read, that you're writing for, and look in the back, that's where the breadcrumbs are Like that's my agent, that's my. You know so and so.
Beth McMullen:
So that's worth starting there and I think, showing up having done some research and be able to say to an agent hey, I saw that you represent so-and-so, this is the kind of book I write. They're going to appreciate that 're not essentially cold calling them that you've done your homework. It's super important to show up being educated, because if you're not, you're just going in the trash. You've kind of burned that possibility.
Hannah McKinnon:
Yeah, know your comps. That was a question I kept getting. Well, who would your comps be? And if you can list other authors that you think you would be in the field of, even if you just aspire to be there, that really helps them place your work and think about you more specifically in that genre.
Beth McMullen:
And this is definitely an industry that likes its boxes. They want to put you in a box, and if you don't fit in a box, they're going to be less keen to take you on, because it's hard to sell you. I remember pitching a book and being told I don't know where this goes on the shelf and that was the end of it, Like it just didn't. It couldn't find a home because it just didn't fit nicely into a box. Also really important to keep that in mind Another way to educate yourself which box is this going to?
Hannah McKinnon:
go into.
Beth McMullen:
Yes, this is all great for people to hear, and I know we have lots of aspiring writers who listen to the show, so this is usually their favorite part when we're like, do this, but don't do this.
Hannah McKinnon:
Yes, well, hey, we were all those people ourselves not that long ago.
Beth McMullen:
Yes, true. So that wraps up our time. We do not want to keep you for any longer, because you have books to write and things to do and reels to make of you walking in a beautiful sundress down a nice gravel road with your dog.
Hannah McKinnon:
I'm going to try to do that. Yes, I may just send it to the two of you. Please tag us. I'm going to challenge myself to do that.
Beth McMullen:
Here I am. You know what you could do, hannah. Oh my God. This is the perfect idea. With taylor swift as your inspiration, I want you to go stand out in the rain and read the first chapter of your book and then bow at the end and say I love you, thanks for coming. That's your meal.
Hannah McKinnon:
You're welcome that is the best.
Beth McMullen:
I need a lightning bolt in the background you know, I just draw one on a piece of cardboard, hold it up, then have somebody in the background, just like pop up with the lightning when it's raining, and if it's not raining, just have somebody off to the side with a hose and like a wind machine.
Hannah McKinnon:
I think we just discovered our first reel for all three of us.
Beth McMullen:
If you did that, you would be my best friend forever. Forget that, like she is out of the picture.
Beth McMullen:
All right. Well, now we know what we're doing for the weekend. This is all very tempting. In some ways, you feel like you do need to go off the rails in order for anybody to pay attention. It's terrible.
Beth McMullen:
It would go viral. I'm like actually like hmm.
Beth McMullen:
Now Lisa's thinking about it. She's going to go off and draw her lightning bolt and get the hose going.
Hannah McKinnon:
We could do this. I'm not sure what the end result would be, but we could do a version of this.
Beth McMullen:
If nothing else, we'd get a laugh. Right, that's right. Sometimes that's worth it. So, hannah, thank you so much for spending this time with us, sharing your insights, giving people lots to think about. We totally appreciate it.
Hannah McKinnon:
Thank you, ladies, this was so much fun. This was the most fun I have had since the book launched.
Beth McMullen:
So thank you for having me today and thank you, listeners, for tuning in. We will see you again next week, june 5th, for episode 31, with a brand new books on Botox and a hot writing tip you don't want to miss. So until then, happy reading, writing and listening.
