>> Shari Werb: But why you're here is for this very special program. And I'm honored to introduce Edan Lepucki, the New York Times bestselling author of the novels "California" and "Woman No. 17". Lepucki's work has been published in the Los Angeles Times, McSweeney's Quarterly Concern, Esquire, The New York Times Magazine, and The Cut, among others. Today, she'll be talking about her latest novel, "Time's Mouth," which was long listed for the Joyce Carol Oates Prize. Peng Shepherd is the bestselling, award winning author of "The Cartographers" and "The Book of M." Her novels have been featured in The New York Times and the Los Angeles Times, and on Good Morning America, and they have been translated into more than ten languages. Her work has been optioned for television and film, and her latest novel is titled "All This and More." They're in conversation today with S. Kirk Walsh, the author of the best-selling novel "The Elephant of Belfast." And she writes for The New York Times Book Review. Texas Highways and elsewhere. Walsh is also the founder of Austin Bat Cave, a nonprofit that provides free writing workshops for students in the greater Austin area. Currently, she is at work on a second novel about Detroit during the summer of 1943. Enjoy the festival and let's welcome the program. [Applause] >> S. Kirk Walsh: Thank you, everyone, for being here today. And yeah, it's just awesome to see such a wonderful turnout for the celebration of books and authors and reading. So yeah, I just am honored to be here. So thank you. And thank you to all the staff of the National Book Festival. So before I move into my questions, I'm just going to do two-- In case people haven't read our authors books yet, just to give you a little context for our conversation. So first we'll start with Peng Shepherd. "All This and More" is an inventive new novel about a woman who wins the chance to go back in time and fix her biggest mistakes, to create the life she always dreamed of and lights things on fire. But when things start to go wrong in her perfectly crafted new future, and she discovers signs that someone else may be trying to tamper with their faith, she must decide just how far she'll go to get her happily ever after or risk losing it all. And "Time's Mouth" follows an orphan who becomes a leader of a remote cult of mamas in Northern California, and then unfolds into an expansive, multi-generational narrative about motherhood, time traveling women, trauma, abandonment, and haunting questions about what we leave behind and what stays with us and what is passed from one generation to the next. Traveling outside the margins of traditional narrative, both of these novels are wildly imaginative in how the authors animate and explore the time space continuum. The myriad possibilities and the consequences of roads taken and roads not taken. So, yeah, both of these books, as you know from the title of the panel, deal with Time Travel, and I just wanted to kind of begin our conversation, kind of talking about the origins of the novels. But it seems like a fairly common human desire to either want to relive or rewrite the past somehow to either erase or in some cases, understand one's pain. And I just wanted to if you could talk about why you centered your novels on this idea or desire. >> Edan Lepucki: Do we-- >> Peng Shepherd: Are we-- >> Edan Lepucki: You have to go first. >> Peng Shepherd: I have to go first. >> S. Kirk Walsh: Go in whatever order. >> Peng Shepherd: I-- Well, I don't know. Do you want to start us off or should I? >> Edan Lepucki: Okay, I'll do it. [Laughter] I always joke that if I could go, if I had a time machine, I would go there. I would step inside and I would go to the self that thought that a time travel novel was a good idea. And I'd say-- >> Peng Shepherd: Oh, that's a good answer. >> Edan Lepucki: It's going to be a lot harder than you think it is. But I wanted to write a book about this precisely as you said, Kirk. I had, you know, as long as-- once I got enough years under my belt, I started to really long for moments of my past. And the moment that felt the most kind of delicious and unreachable was the first moments with all of my children. When I started it, I had two, and when I finished it, I had three kids. But that first moment of when you, you hold that tiny little being. And when I first got pregnant, I had a friend who said, you know, I don't want to relive my kids’ lives like they're in their 20s now. I did a great job. It's over. And it's, you know, it's ongoing. But he said, if I could have just, like, ten minutes with my son when he was five, I would give anything for that. And at the time, I didn't understand that. But after I had my kids and they grew up and now my oldest one is 13 and my youngest one is five. I understood that longing, so I really wanted to explore that on the page. It's kind of wish fulfillment to, you know, obviously, I can't time travel to my past. I can't go back to college. I can't go back to these little moments. But I wanted to explore the fictive possibilities of that. [Applause] Yeah, yeah. >> Peng Shepherd: I like that you said wish fulfillment, because I think all this and more was a little bit of that, too. And I think it, like, really started in earnest for me. Sorry. I can tell that as I look between both of you, I'm just, like, changing the amount of microphone that's-- Yeah. So I really started to think about the novel in earnest basically right when lockdown started, when the Covid pandemic started and we all went from, you know, the world was just 24/7 race to a standstill overnight. And we were all in our houses just like waiting. And I think at that point, for a lot of us, it was really hard not to like ask yourself, am I happy with-- Because before you were too busy, right? We were all too busy to ask that question, and then we suddenly had a couple of weeks or a couple of months of just, you know, having nothing to think about. But the choices that we had made so far and where it had brought us to today. And so I started thinking of kind of like a magic reset button. I think a lot of us had that feeling, too, of like, if only there were a button I could just push, we could go back a little bit and everything would be better, right? We surely would do a much better job the second time around. And that is how the idea of this game show, which is the vehicle through which my character is able to go back in time and revisit her past decisions. She gets put on a game show that can send her back to very important moments in her life. And I just started to think, you know, like what would I change about my own life? And I'm going on and on, but yes. So yeah, it was a it was kind of born out of, I don't want to say, it was born out of the pandemic, but it's not a pandemic book in that it is not about the pandemic. The pandemic doesn't happen in the book, but I think it's got a lot of very relatable feelings because we were all, I think a lot of us were feeling those sort of things and making, questioning where we were in life. Were we happy with the things we had done so far? Are there ways that we should change? Should we even change things? Or maybe we should just go outside for five minutes. Stand in the grass, then come back inside and Zoom a friend with some wine. You know, rather than blowing up our lives and moving cities or changing jobs so that that's kind of how it came to be. >> S. Kirk Walsh: But I think kind of a common phrase that we heard during the pandemic was about the pivots, people making pivot decisions. And it's interesting in your book, obviously, there's a lot of different pivots. >> Peng Shepherd: Yes. Yeah. >> S. Kirk Walsh: And one thing that I was struck by, and maybe just the notion of the human impulse to want to relive moments that it kind of starts in both your books, somewhat innocently, but then it almost becomes something seductive, almost addictive in terms of where it leads your characters. And I wondered if that was something you were thinking about in terms of that it can kind of begin as something positive, but then sort of swing into a darker corners say of the story. >> Peng Shepherd: I think so, right. Because if somebody gave you the power to go back and change things about your life, I think it would be totally terrifying to make the first choice. It would be so terrifying. And then it would be really, really scary to make this second choice and then kind of scary to make the third choice. And then eventually it would get to the point where you probably would be changing things that you didn't even need to change just to be changing. It'd be very hard to not be drunk on that power. And at least in all this and more, that is part of what is happening to the main character. In the beginning, the question really is like what are the really big regrets I have that I would redo if I could? And by the end, the question is sort of how far is too far? >> Edan Lepucki: "Time's Mouth" was the first book that I wrote that I wanted to have a protagonist and an antagonist. I thought, wouldn't it be fun to try sort of a classic storytelling technique? Originally, the book started with my protagonist, and when I went to edit it, we decided my editor and I thought, wouldn't it be interesting if you told-- Can you tell a time travel novel chronologically? So let's start with ultimately the villain of the novel. And at the opening of the novel, Ursa, who goes on to start an all-female cult in the woods of Santa Cruz, these women come around her and watch her time travel and feel kind of euphoric around her. But when she first learns that she has this gift, she's just a teenage girl in Connecticut, and ultimately, she runs away to San Francisco and she doesn't know anyone. And it was interesting. I had written so much of the book when I decided to start this, start the book chronologically, and start with her kind of origin story. And what I realized was, yes, at first, she ultimately goes on to abuse her powers, as I think, I don't want to say anyone would, but many of us would. But at the beginning, she's just a lonely, scared girl who's suffered a lot, and the feeling that she gets when she can access these moments gives her some sense of agency in the world. And she's able to connect with these other women because of it. And she doesn't realize exactly what the consequences will be. And so it's very important to me to have the reader access that first, so that you could kind of connect or empathize with her and as you watch her kind of fall farther away from goodness. >> S. Kirk Walsh: And was it just thinking about an antagonist villain character? Like, was it hard to write knowing that she's kind of going to become an unlikable character. And I guess in your novel, Wren might be kind of that. I don't-- Yeah. Contrary unexpected character. But yeah, just I think sometimes in literature, there's always comes this question of the unlikable character and how-- I mean, I think both of them really come to life in their contradictions. >> Edan Lepucki: I mean, I always bristle at the idea of an unlikable character, because I think I also really love to read an unlikable character. The only thing I require of my characters when I'm reading is that they're interesting to me, so I don't need to have a beer with them. I just want to be intrigued and compelled by what they're doing. But in this case, I was thinking, well, what's and I have written characters that I thought were perfectly likable that I many readers hated. So I don't know what that says about me, but in this case, with an antagonist or a villain I had to think about like, what does that mean? It's beyond, it's not likeability, unlikability. And what I came to is that a villain is somebody who knows that they've done something wrong and does not change. And that was really useful for me because I actually really loved writing Ursa. Again, I don't know what this says about me, but I didn't have any trouble kind of accessing her or writing her voice or her selfishness or her viciousness was kind of fun to write, and I could tap into it, because I think we all can tap into those parts of ourselves. But it was a little bit difficult to come to the understanding of like, oh, this is the moment when she realizes all the things that she's done wrong and she's still going to keep doing those bad things. That was harder for me to get to. >> Peng Shepherd: I sometimes find that moment, though, that villains have, like, especially relatable, though, because I think, the thing about a really good villain is when they really, really-- Because all villains want something. And if the story is being told right, you really feel that want to. And it makes sense to you because usually what a villain wants, if it's a good villain, it's something that probably you want too and you might not go as far as they would, but we all understand that want. And so I think when they hit that moment, if it's a good villain and they decide not to stop, to keep going, it's sort of-- It's almost like what we wish that we could do ourselves, you know, if we were less kind or more brave or something like that. So I don't know, I often don't think characters are too unlikable either. And I think I especially like a good villain because there's just something really, you can really identify with the want of a villain in a way that sometimes you can't with the hero, because the hero is more focused on what is right and what is good, and the villain is all just desire. >> Edan Lepucki: Yeah. That's a good reading. >> S. Kirk Walsh: When you were both writing these books, did you ever have, like, a favorite villain from another novel that you were thinking about to kind of be your inspiration? Not inspiration, but just sort of like possibility. >> Peng Shepherd: Well, that's a good question. >> Edan Lepucki: I'm coming up empty. >> Peng Shepherd: Yeah, I don't know. >> S. Kirk Walsh: I mean, I think a lot. Well, I really like Victor Laval's The Changeling. >> Edan Lepucki: Oh, yeah. Great book. >> S. Kirk Walsh: Yeah. But I think the blank might be just because the characters are dimensional. You know, they're not one thing. >> Edan Lepucki: I have this composition book from graduate school that has, like, things I wrote down, many of them unattributed. One of the things that's in that book is voice is the amalgamation of books read, which I just love this idea of everything you read, whether you liked it or you didn't, kind of enters your writerly DNA. And so I think there's some of that there of every single villain I've ever read obviously informed the book, but at the same time, I've been asked, like, who would you want to play this role in the movie? And I'm like, well, this is a real person, so I don't know who's going to play them. Like when I'm writing a book, they are real people to me that I've thought about so long in a sort of a deep level of like what their consciousness and their longings. So I don't usually have an inspiration of somebody fictional or real because they exist. It's almost like, who would play your mother in a movie? You're like, how much time my mother have? [Laughter] >> S. Kirk Walsh: Well, I think there's probably some writers in the audience. And I think for me, when I was reading your books, what I was really impressed by was kind of the rules of the time travel. They're quite different from each other, but also kind of like the world building. Like both are very convincing and like, was it something that you, like, kind of gave yourself parameters when you first started drafting? Or did the rules of the world kind of present themselves through the revision process? Because I think that's one of the hardest things with speculative fiction and the kind of time travel that your characters are doing. I've never experienced myself. Like they're so imaginative. >> Peng Shepherd: Well, I think in my case, it was great to have such a good editor because when I started, as I said before, so all this and more, it's about a woman who gets to go back in time and she gets to change her past and she does it through this game show. And so in the beginning, I just had-- I was really excited by the idea of being able to allow readers to, like, jump between paths and you help choose what she chooses. And that can change the story based on your options. And so I think I turned in like a 700 page first draft to my editor, and it had like 150 choices that you could make as the reader about how Marsha changed her life and where she would end up. And my editor was just like, no, like, no. >> S. Kirk Walsh: How did you take that news? >> Peng Shepherd: She was so right. I mean, yeah. I have a really good relationship with my editor, and I also I'm always really excited to get her feedback, even if it's a lot of work. It always is a lot of work because my first drafts are really messy, and so I'm always expecting like really, really big notes. And and so the big note was just we gotta-- No. [Laughter] But she was actually the one who came up with the idea. She said, it's a game show, right? So there should be ten episodes like a season of TV. And that will also give you a really clear structure, because part of the like, the difficulty in writing a book that has multiple paths is that because I'm letting you choose, you can go any which way. And then in the case of all this and more, sometimes you can go backwards if you don't like something you've chosen. And so it was so complicated to like make it all work. And no matter where you're going, if you're jumping sideways or backwards or forwards, there still has to be like a feeling of progression in the story and like a sense that you are getting to an end and there's going to be a price to pay and like something's got to give, you know. And so she said, let's make it ten episodes. And so that way, you know that you're counting down to like, the big finale. And at which point all of Marcia's choices, wherever you end up in the finale, like that's going to be her real life, for better or worse. And I think that when she gave me that note, that really helped me take the book down from 700 pages to, like, a normal sized book. And, you know, we cut the choices a lot. I think you get to make about ten choices maybe in the book to help decide Marcia's fate. But yeah, it was a big revision. >> Edan Lepucki: I can't. As I was reading your book, I was like, this was a doozy to write, but it works. It's amazing. I am not a fan of outlining, and I actually think the number of actual outliners out there is small. That's my anecdotal evidence. So I have the, lay the track as the train is coming down it philosophy. And I think a lot of the world building happens from just being in a scene. And I'm very into concrete details. So like especially when you're working with something that's not real, you're like, okay, so they're going to go back in time. What is it going to feel like in the body? So very quickly I figured out some things. One to go back in time. It makes you sick afterwards. And that just happens kind of naturally. Like I had a character do it and then throw up right away and I was like, okay. But that was useful because then it would mean somebody wouldn't be time traveling constantly because they would have the flu afterwards. Pretty early on, I realized, so my characters realized they can go back in time to moments of their own past. It's not like back to the future situation. They have to be alive during the moment. Or maybe not. And so I wanted to make sure they weren't going back in time constantly to recent events. So on the fly I decided, okay, it takes two years for the membrane that keeps the time to like, thicken. So you can't go back in time for anything that's more recent than that. And that I found and helped me kind of shape the story. Once I had my editor, Dan, he was enormously helpful in me thinking further about the consequences of the time travel, because I hadn't really taken it as far as I could take it in terms of, you want to have these real world consequences. So being ill is great, but what else could happen? Are there things happening in a room when you time travel? If things get really powerful and somebody is very good at this time travel and people are witnessing her do it, is there a danger there? And that idea of real world danger really, like, ignited this book in a really fun way. But I had to rewrite my book so many times. I think a smarter person could have written it fewer times, but I only have this brain. So I think whenever you're building a world like that, at least for me, it just requires a lot of revision. Because I think it's Jane Smiley who says, it's not your job to judge your work. It's your job to understand it. So for me, revision is all about a process of understanding what is this book about and what is it trying to do, and how does the time travel work. And maybe it takes me seven years to understand, but that was my process. >> S. Kirk Walsh: And do you know how many drafts you did? >> Edan Lepucki: I love a pretty sentence. So I have a lot of Barbie drafts I call them because they look great, but they cannot stand up. They just tip over. So I do a lot of-- [Laughter] I do a lot of rewriting as I go, so I probably did three substantial revisions. The biggest one being like almost like a lot of rewriting from page one. But along the way there were all these like-- >> Peng Shepherd: Wait, so you're like, polishing. >> Edan Lepucki: It doesn't make any sense. >> Peng Shepherd: No it doesn't. Oh my God. [Laughing] Like, polish it and then like cut the-- >> Edan Lepucki: So I have to write in the order that I think a book should be read. Like I can't be like, I know what that scene is. Let me write it. I'm too neurotic. I got to write it that way. And I can't move forward if, like, the paragraph really bothers me. So I end up erasing a lot of terrific similes. [Laughter] But you got to honor your process, right? >> S. Kirk Walsh: And do you know how many drafts you did for your book? >> Peng Shepherd: I'd say four big ones. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. >> S. Kirk Walsh: Well, yeah, I just encourage everyone if-- For me, it was really interesting to read these books together. As I said, they're quite different, but similar in terms of, yeah, just the mechanisms and the structure of these books. But one thing that I was struck by a similarity was that the time traveling. There's containers in a way, whether they're visible or not, and even there is a membrane of sorts. And there's a bubble that kind of is constructed by quantum physics. But for me, I kind of experienced both of those containers as being almost, what butterflies and Chrysalis kind of figure into your book. But this kind of womb like. And I just wonder if you could talk about that choice of something transformational. Like were you kind of thinking about birth or transformation as you were thinking about time travel and how you were executing it on the page? >> Peng Shepherd: Was I thinking about birth? No. I mean, no. [Laughter] Well, that's why I looked at you, because. No, no, I mean, well, because, I mean, a lot of your book is about, like, motherhood. >> Edan Lepucki: Yes, some might say that "Time's Mouth," the title could just be another word for vagina. [Laughter] You guys are going to remember this panel for the rest of your life. But I think, I never said and I did not set out to do that. But my book is a lot about motherhood, and I think I didn't intend this, but as I was writing these scenes of somebody going and tunneling or transporting as two different characters who can both have this gift. There was a lot of that imagery of, you know, surfing through a tunnel. And at first, I don't think too hard about any of that stuff. I'm just sort of writing. And I let, as Flannery O'Connor says, the meaning kind of accumulate through the text. And then after a while I was like, okay, I'm noticing it. It means something. But I was playing with a lot of those that imagery and that metaphor, because I think there is this idea of central to the story is this notion of parenthood or specifically motherhood, but fatherhood too, and the loss that is embedded in the role of parenthood. Like, they're like, here's this beautiful or worm like child and you're going to love it so hard. And if you do your job, okay, obsolescence is built into the job. So your child is meant to leave you and you only live with your child for a very small portion of their life. For such a strong relationship, you're really not day to day. Usually, you know everybody's different. But that is such an intense idea to me that you're you're raising a child for them to leave you. And so that loss is so central to the book and is so central to our understanding of time also. So I think that's why that imagery was there before I fully understood it. >> Peng Shepherd: I also wonder if, because in your case, you'd probably say you'd say tunnels. And in my case, I'd say the bubble which is where-- it's like a bubbled section of are going back in time within this bubble. And I'm wondering if on some subconscious level, we also did that, we made like smaller containers because I think it's easier to amplify the meaning and kind of make it more emotional in these little containers. Because if it's just like, like you said, they can't go back to moments where they weren't. And in my case, it's not the whole world that's jumping back in time with Marsha on this game show. It's like just her, her you know, ex-husband, her daughter and her best friend. It's only happening to these people. And I think that lets you really examine what these kind of choices would do, how it would affect not just the main character, but also the lives of who the main character loves. Because even without a quantum bubble in our own lives, if you make a choice, a major choice, it's going to affect the people that you love. If you want to move across the country or you want to have another kid, or you want to change jobs, that is going to change the lives of people you care about. And so I think when we shrink it down and we're just focusing on something that's happening in a tunnel or in a moment or in the bubble, it was just easier to really explore, like the emotional impact that being able to go back in time to these previous moments would have on the characters. >> S. Kirk Walsh: Yeah, definitely. Well, just the emotions of guilt and regret and forgiveness are undercurrents in both your books, and I couldn't help but think about the 2022 movie Everything Everywhere All at Once. >> Peng Shepherd: Oh, I love that. Yeah. >> S. Kirk Walsh: A mother daughter relationship, you know, is at the heart of that movie and how-- Yeah, just that what you're saying, Edan, that there are inherent limitations to parenting that probably can never be corrected on either side of the relationship. And I just thought it was interesting that both your books examine those limitations in a very real way. >> Edan Lepucki: It seems to me that the time travel stories that are the most successful are ones that they use time travel to animate something that has nothing to do with time travel, and a lot of times it is a familial or romantic relationship that needs to be repaired or reconnected. Like, I'm thinking of Charles Yu's book, How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe. That's just a father son story, really. Same with "Interstellar," which I don't know if you could argue is time travel per se, but it really is a story about parenting. Kindred is a story about all kinds of things, but it's also about a marriage. And I think without that piece, the time travel feels inert. >> S. Kirk Walsh: And Peng, if you could talk a little bit about the structure of your book, because for people who haven't read it, it is a choose your own adventure. But like as a reader and a writer, we were talking about earlier, like I was thinking about Nabokov's Pale Fire because he kind of sends you down a rabbit hole with his footnotes. And yeah, I just. Did you have, like, index cards on the wall or. >> Oh my gosh. >> How did you do it? >> Peng Shepherd: So yeah, I'm also not an outliner. I think was it E. L. Doctorow who said, it's like you're driving down a dark road or something and you can only see as far as the headlights, but you drive further. And so the headlights. So that's that's also how I write, which was a very interesting way to write a book like this. So first of all, I tried to write-- I've had people ask me, did you write one part of the story first and then go back and do the other ones? And I did not. I tried to write them all at the same time, because I was worried that if I wrote one path completely through first, that there would be no way that it wouldn't feel like the right path, if that makes sense. And I want them all to be right, because they are all versions of Marsha's life. And that's how we are too. We all, if we had just made different choices at certain times in our lives, our lives would be very different. There really is no one right way for our lives either. And so I wrote all the paths at once. And then to your question about the index cards, I actually, I did not have an outline or like a map or anything like that while I was writing it. I only made the map at the very end to give to my editor so that she did not just get the manuscript, see it, and then just like jump out the window. [Laughter] I had the map because I wanted to prove that it does all link up. It does make sense. This is how you get through it. Don't pay-- >> Edan Lepucki: You've received your author's book. One, jump out the window. Two, get ready and edit. [Laughter] >> Peng Shepherd: Yeah. Yeah, I don't know. I mean, looking back, maybe I probably should have done it with an outline, I think. But but I was just really worried again that if I-- I started trying to map it out before I had written it, that it would start to feel kind of engineered, you know, because that is what I would be doing. I would be engineering the paths of Marsha’s life, and that's not how any of us live our lives either. We have to make decisions in the moment based on our emotions and what feels the most true. And so I thought, if I can somehow hold all of the versions in my head without notes, that must mean that all of them are true for her, right? Because I won't forget them because they're authentic. >> S. Kirk Walsh: And Edan, did you-- I mean, once you've written several drafts, were you using any kind of visual aids for your different timelines and moving from character to character? I mean, it also is a lot to hold as a writer. >> Edan Lepucki: Yes, probably similarly I should have and I did not. I tend to do-- If we're going to get really nerdy about it, I will write. I'll write on my computer. I write directly on my computer. I listen to music. There we go. >> S. Kirk Walsh: What kind of music? >> Edan Lepucki: I listen to music with words, you know? I know. Controversial. >> Peng Shepherd: Controversial. >> Edan Lepucki: I did a little playlist on Powell's Bookstore's blog about the music I listened to while writing "Time's Mouth," which I kind of can't listen to anymore because it was ruined by writing. But then when I'm done writing what I've written for the day, I will go to what I call my writing log, and I'll kind of write out what I wrote. And then I have a journal where I make like a storyboard. I guess it's kind of like reverse outlining is the term of what it's called now, where I make a storyboard of, you know, what I've written, what came before that, what I think is going to happen next. And I put arrows and that helps me kind of visualize how the pacing of the story most of all, and you know what's going to lead to the next thing. But because each section, until a certain point is sort of self-contained, I would just focus on that part. And it was easy for me to kind of keep it all in mind. >> S. Kirk Walsh: Well, one question I had, just like I said, these are very imaginative novels. And as a writer, do you feel like you're attracted to the wild and the weird, like, is that something that you're kind of that's where you'll find an opening in terms of discovering character? Or is that your natural impulse? >> Peng Shepherd: Yeah, I think so. I don't know if you did. Did you do an MFA in creative writing? >> I did. >> Okay. I did an MFA at NYU. And I remember-- The programs are getting better now. They're more genre inclusive. And they're starting to understand speculative fiction. But at the time I was there, I was trying to write, you know, stuff that had science fiction and fantasy elements in it, and that's just what I like. So that's what I grew up reading. You know, I started reading science fiction fantasy as a kid. So it's like my first love. It's where I feel at home. And then when I got to the MFA, I started reading a lot more literary fiction, gained an appreciation for it, and I feel like my style is kind of somewhere in between the two now, but so when I was in these workshops, I was writing, you know, stories that were emotional and had complicated characters, but also had magic in it or also had people's shadows disappearing or something. And I do remember a professor once being like, this is so good, but have you ever just like, thought about writing something normal? [Laughter] And he, well, actually, it was funny because he said it and my first reaction was just like shock because I was like, honestly, no, I'd never have thought of that. Like, I didn't even know I could do that. And it turns out I can't. I can't, because I think the books find you and like, the books choose you, you know, and and I don't think, you know, when you set out to write something that you're-- If I tried to write something normal, I just don't think I could but I think part of the appeal of science fiction and fantasy or like weird stuff, I just call it weird stuff, of weird stuff in books is that we're reading because underneath it all, we're trying to understand the character. We care about the characters, like what they're going through, if they succeed, if they fail. We're trying to connect with the people. And I think sometimes if you add in a weird thing, it makes it almost easier to examine that the emotions that the characters are going through and the struggles they're having, because it just makes it suddenly unfamiliar in a way that I think opens your mind. And so, you know, you're just, I just think it, yeah, it opens you up to just explore character and story more deeply than if it's like a very familiar, recognizable world, recognizable situation. >> Edan Lepucki: I agree with that. I think I write just deeply character driven stuff. I love story, I always say I'm a little bit of a plot hound, and so I can't have a story where, like, the dish breaks and someone looks out the window, [Laughter] the story's over. That's not appealing to me. But at the same time, I love prose. That's something that's a value for me as a reader and a writer and I'm interested in characters. Phillip Lopate, I teach him when I teach nonfiction, but he talks about the, when you're writing about the self-using the 'I' but I think this works for any character. They need to be at once specific and legible. So that's really important to me, one that they feel like unique people that are real, that have their specificity and also not so specific, like everybody knows that indie movie that you start watching and you're like, this is not a real person. Like they wear a toaster on their head and they love salsa dancing. You're like cute quirks, but who's real? So I am always trying to balance the specificity with the legibility of like, this is a real person. I will also say I come from what I consider kind of a weird place. I'm from Los Angeles. My parents are so weird. You guys, you would not believe the stories I would tell you. And so and I come from L.A. and it has a sort of a magic to it, but I think every place has a magic to it if you lift it up a little and look for the specificity. So what might seem kind of like normal to me is often not normal to other people. So I guess it's all relative. It's all context, right? >> S. Kirk Walsh: And I had in one of the interviews you talked about that you kind of borrowed some aspects of your father for the character of Ray. >> Edan Lepucki: Yes. >> S. Kirk Walsh: In terms of his jobs and-- >> Edan Lepucki: Yes. So the book starts with Ursa, who starts the cult. She raises. You know, it's an all female cult, but her son is allowed to be there. And he escapes with another person from the cult, and they have a child in L.A. And Ray is, a lot of him is based on my dad. My dad was a location manager, recently retired in the film industry, which means he finds locations to film. He's into something called Reichian therapy, which is a therapy where you go and gag yourself and scream into a pillow. And you can imagine having a dad like that is a struggle. [Laughing] But my dad is, like, far weirder than Ray. I mean, my dad was not raised by a cult, but he was. He's got other things going on. [Laughter] >> Peng Shepherd: Wait. Did your dad know that the character was based on him? >> Edan Lepucki: Yes. He loves it. >> Peng Shepherd: Okay, good. >> Edan Lepucki: He has, like, the biggest ego, and he is just thrilled. It's also a very positive relationship in the book between Ray and Opal, who's the protagonist who also finds out she can time travel, that they are very connected. >> He is such a great dad. >> Edan Lepucki: So he feels like it's us. I mean, in some ways it is. I can't time travel. But, you know. So he's very happy about it. >> Peng Shepherd: This is good. In my second novel, The Cartographers, so I didn't think of this at the time, but my father's name is David. And you started talking about that it actually is your father in this book. So I named the main character's father, David. >> Edan Lepucki: Without even thinking about it. >> Peng Shepherd: I just liked the name David Young. And if you've read The Cartographers, you'll know his name is not David Young. It's Daniel Young. But I named him David Young because I liked it. And my father's name is David. But then in the book, it just turns out that David Young is a terrible father. And then in like the second revision, I ended up like killing him in the first chapter. And I was like, oh, no, I can't like, my father's going to think. Yeah. And so I had to I changed it to Daniel. And then because I was sure that my dad was still going to be, like the father in this book, it's me. And I really, I mean, what was I going to say? If his name was actually David. I'd be like, no, it's not you. [Laughter] >> Peng Shepherd: But it's really not. >> Edan Lepucki: My mother, I should have said this earlier. She likes me to publicly announce that she's a great mom, and she did not abandon me. >> Peng Shepherd: Oh. That's good. Good. [Laughter] >> S. Kirk Walsh: Well, I'll ask one more question, and then I'll turn it. I'll turn it to you all. There are two microphones up here, so if you have a question, you can come forward and ask the question in the mic. And I think because you mentioned the MFA, I also went to NYU, and Edan went to Iowa, but I wondered if there was a piece of advice that you would give to your pre-published self. Now, you both have published three books now in similar places in your career, and I just. Yeah. What would you tell yourself at the beginning, maybe post-graduation? >> Edan Lepucki: I think I would probably tell myself it's going to take longer than you think, and that one should always take the long view of probably anything, but particularly the writing life, which, you know, has its ups and downs and takes a lot of work, and that the best thing about writing I have from the very beginning, which is that you get to do it and that doesn't change, and that, you know, I think before I had any books out, I thought I would somehow be changed by having a book coming out. But in fact, you're the same person and you just have a book out. So I probably wouldn't have listened to myself, but I would have just told myself, keep writing and you're going to, you know, just enjoy that. >> Peng Shepherd: I love that. I'd probably say something similar. I think I would try to tell myself that writing is hard, but it's supposed to be hard, and I don't mean it in a bad way. I mean it in a good way. Writing is hard, but I think I worry that a lot of times at the beginning of a writing career, a writer might really be having trouble with their draft, or they, you know, they have to set a book aside because it wasn't the one, they start a new one. And and I think sometimes feeling that writing is hard, you can mistake that for like, oh, maybe I'm not a good writer, or maybe this isn't the book that I'm supposed to write and you give up. But I think I would tell myself writing is always hard, and it doesn't mean that you're not a good writer or that this is not the book. It just it just means this is exactly how it's supposed to be. You know, like writing is still just as hard now on the fourth book as it was on the first book. But I think that's kind of wonderful because it means that we're doing something meaningful. >> Hi. Thank you both for being here. Congratulations on the 700 page draft. I hope-- Thank you. [Laughing] That's an accomplishment. My question is for both of you. If you-- would you-- having written these types of stories, do you now wish that time travel eventually becomes a thing? Or do you hope desperately that it does not? >> Peng Shepherd: Oh my gosh, no. I hope it does not. >> Edan Lepucki: Yeah, I think it's a cautionary tale. >> Peng Shepherd: Yeah. I think they both are. >> Okay. >> Yeah. >> I guess it's my turn. This is a question for Peng specifically, but both of you can answer. So adding something weird or fantastical may reveal something about humanity in your writing that makes it interesting to you. But I also know from your books there's also formal aspects, right? Multiple points of view and then sort of choose your own adventure thing. Are there particular things about adding those formal aspects into storytelling that reveal story in a way to you, that maybe having a single POV or an omniscient narrator wouldn't? >> Peng Shepherd: Oh yeah, I think it's funny because I never set out on for all of these books. I've never set out to do, with the exception of "All This and More," I did know that I wanted that to have multiple paths, but I don't ever consciously think about how many points of view am I going to have, or how are we going to jump back and forth in time. But I think it's just sort of a process of as I'm going through the draft, I suddenly realize that someone else is talking or that we have to see from someone else, or we have to go back in time to see what happened two years before. And it's just... It always feels like uncovering little secrets. And so I think it's whenever I realize that there's a secret there, that's how it gets pulled in. But it's really more of like an instinct thing than a, like a conscious decision. Yeah. >> I love a good time travel story. So I am curious, were you affected or inspired at all by any previous time travel stories that you have read, or did this just come whole cloth to your mind as you were deciding what to do? Because they do seem very unique ways of time travel, of any that I've read before. >> Edan Lepucki: Once I start writing, I actually avoid anything that content wise is similar. But I do look for structural help if I'm having issues. So before I started writing "Time's Mouth," there were definitely, like I said, the Charles Yu book. I love Kindred, Octavia Butler's book. And then after-- Oh, and the other, I often teach-- I teach at Caltech, so I sometimes try to find some science stories. And I love The Story of Your Life by Ted Chiang, which became a rival. That is a terrific story. And the time travel hinges on tense change. And I think that is one way that just to be so formal, it's formally simplistic and yet so complicated. So that was a real-- >> Complicated. Yes. >> Peng Shepherd: I don't think I, because I also do try to avoid books that I think might be too similar when I'm writing, because I'm worried about absorbing the wrong thing, or so I can actually say one book that I'm very glad I read after the draft, which was The Midnight Library by Matt Haig, because it's very similar. And I think if I had read that before, it would have been very confusing. I think his ends up a little more hopeful and optimistic at the end. And mine's sort of like, it's like the darker version of The Midnight Library, the more cautionary tale of it. But yeah, but that's one I'm very glad to have read. But after. >> Thank you. >> Hello. I was just reflecting on what you guys were saying about like, tying in people that you knew into some of your characters. And I had the question, like, I've noticed that when authors talk about and, like, show creators and stuff, talk about how they came up for ideas with creators like or for their characters, that often the best and most believable characters happen to have come from people they actually know. Right? And I wonder, first of all, if it's on purpose that this happens or it like, just happens by chance. And second of all, if you agree that knowing someone, knowing their desires and stuff makes them a better and more believable character if they come from a real person. >> Peng Shepherd: Yeah. I mean, I think in my case, none of my characters come from real people. I just had that-- I had that funny thing with the dad name thing, but that was a total accident. But I think in general, my characters don't come from real people, but you can like, borrow an emotion from somebody. And I think that's more of what it is. Because even if you were to draw inspiration from a real person like a personality, the book just changes those characters so much, you know? And it's their story, their book. And so by the end, it's really not the same person anymore usually. But yeah, I do think that sometimes feeling somebody's want, whether it's like somebody that you know, or just or like someone from real life, it sometimes that can help you, you know, like, shape the character to start with. Yeah. >> Edan Lepucki: Yeah. This experience was actually the first time I had done it so specifically, and it was mostly just taking some biographical elements because, like, you're right, once I started writing Ray, he's just so different from my dad in all these ways. I do think a lot of what I draw upon is often very personal, but it's not autobiographical. So, you know, I have this character named Cherry in the book who's Ray's partner. She's Opal's mother. They're escaping this cult, and I had to write about what it would feel like to have lived only in the woods of Santa Cruz and then come to L.A. in 1980, what that would feel like. And I had never experienced that, but I was kind of drawing upon my experiences moving to a new place or the immigrants that I know what it was like for them, kind of just coming to a totally new, basically would feel like a new planet. And then trying to transfer some of my own personal feelings into that character, but I think it's not a direct relationship. >> Peng Shepherd: Yeah, I think it's more-- it's like the, the emotional, the heart of it is the, interesting and compelling thing, not necessarily the window dressing of like the plot or, or like specific events. Yeah. >> Okay. Thank you. >> S. Kirk Walsh: Thank you. >> Do you guys-- do either of you have like a favorite, like, type of time travel to read or watch? Like, there's many different like, time travel, like ways that each book goes about it. Do you have a favorite way that a book goes about it? >> Edan Lepucki: A favorite device or something? >> Peng Shepherd: Well, I've got like a favorite trope, I guess, which is where someone goes back in time to like a very emotional moment. Like they, you know, the last moment that their mother was alive and they could do something that would eventually save her or change something or, But they don't, you know, because that would change everything else, too. You know. I think that's my favorite because it's so-- I don't know, I think it's just such a poignant thing to go back and to know that you have the power to change something, but then you don't, because it's not right. You know. >> Edan Lepucki: This is where you reveal me as a fraud that I don't read-- My knowledge of the time travel genre pales in-- like, people who read time travel are like they're into time travel. And I had this situation when I wrote my first book, "California." I had certain books that were touchstones for me, but I was not a-- I was not a post-apocalyptic reader. And I actually think my naiveté is what made me write one. And then I siloed myself away from them to write the book. And it was only until later I had to come educate myself. What's your favorite? >> I enjoy the time travel where anything you do in the past doesn't like actually change things, but like, you were always meant to time travel. >> Peng Shepherd: Oh, I like that too. >> Edan Lepucki: Oh, that's good. I like that one. I'm going to steal that next time. [Laughter] >> Thank you. >> S. Kirk Walsh: So we just have about five minutes left. So I'm actually just going to ask the last concluding questions. I'm sorry we're not able to get to the last two. >> Peng Shepherd: Come to our signing and we'll answer them there. >> S. Kirk Walsh: Yeah. Before I ask the question, just a reminder that their books are for sale and they will be signing books directly after this session. And as a dedicated festival goer, one of the very best things is to buy the authors book, have them sign it and say hello. So I hope you all do that. So because we're in a room of readers, I just wanted to ask, what is the book that made you a reader? >> Edan Lepucki: Oh, wow. >> Peng Shepherd: A book that made us the reader? Book that made us a writer? >> S. Kirk Walsh: Well, that will come next. [Laughter] >> Edan Lepucki: I mean, I wanted to be a writer my whole life. I never wanted anything else. And that's because I just love to read. My mother and I together and were and are huge readers, so I can't point to one book because I can't remember. I learned to read so early that I can't remember. A pre-literate time. But I mean, of course there were like, if we're going back, like to Judy Blume novels or to L. M. Montgomery, like I read every single book L. M. Montgomery wrote when I was in the fourth grade. I like, became obsessed with, like, tracking down her entire catalog. Shout out to all the librarians who helped me with that one. So my love of reading is really, I would say I want to be a writer, but I was not a person who was-- You know, there's always those people who are writing novels, usually a fantasy novel in high school. There's probably somebody in this room who's like, yeah, I wrote. Yeah, I didn't write books. I just read them and plan to write one one day. >> Peng Shepherd: One day. I don't know. I mean, I don't know if I remember the first one. I remember reading the entire Goosebumps library. You know, I know there's like, 5000. >> There's so many. >> I read them all. >> S. Kirk Walsh: Yeah. And I guess my next question was like, was there that one book or author that kind of unlocked, like, yes, I want to do this? As you both said, like being a writer is a huge sacrifice and commitment. And what was that book that really just gave you that energy? >> Peng Shepherd: I've got one. Do you want to go? >> Edan Lepucki: I was just going to say when I read The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood in college, I think for me, that book unlocked so many things for me. One, the idea that you could be kind of like genre omnivorous. So I tend to read mostly realism, but a lot of the books that I love most of all do something else, that other strange thing. And so that was one of the first books that I read like that. And I also really loved her language play in that book. It was so moved by it. And before that I had been writing mostly poetry. And so that was when I really committed to the life that I had always dreamed for myself. It was reading that book >> Peng Shepherd: So mine's a really random one. It was... It's a very old science fiction novel, I think, from like the 60s or 70s or something called "The Perchance: The Chronicles of Elsewhen" by Michael Kurland and I-- We were on a family vacation, going to the Caribbean. I think I was like nine or something. And you stop in Puerto Rico to change planes, and I went into the bookstore there and was just looking for something to read as a nine year old and the only English book in the store was that book. But also, I don't even know if it was for sale because there was no price tag on it, and it was kind of like shoved behind the shelf. >> Is this a magical story? >> Peng Shepherd: Oh, it is. Actually, this is a really magical story. Okay. So I, you know, like, pull this, you know, and it's like, dusty and, like, warped. And I was like, well, okay, this is an English. The picture on the front is wild. So I'm going to get this. So I took it up to the counter and the guy's like, I don't know, five bucks. Like I don't know what this is. And so I started it on the plane. And by the time the plane landed, I had finished it and turned to my mom and was like, I want to write a book like this. It was about parallel universe. It's about a girl who can hop parallel universes, but she can't control it. And then people are after her and so that-- But the part that gets magical is I just, I loved this book because it was the, you know, the reason that I wanted to start writing and not just reading, but and like I said, it's a book about a girl who can jump parallel universes but can't control it. And over the years, it has disappeared and reappeared on me in ways that, like, don't make any sense. So, like, I know that I packed it when we moved when I was ten, and then we got to the new house. It was not there. But then like five years later, it was on my shelf, which is not possible. And then and like every time I talk about this book, I go home and it's either like not or is there again. And then I just have to wait for it to show up again. So I'm going to go home now and be like, like I know exactly where it is. If it's not there-- >> Edan Lepucki: I want it to come floating down right now. >> Peng Shepherd: Just like up here right there. It's like, wait. [Laughter] >> Edan Lepucki: That's really cool. >> Peng Shepherd: Yeah, I love this book so much. Yeah. >> S. Kirk Walsh: That's all the time we have. Thank you to both our authors. [Applause] >> Thank you, Kirk. >> Yeah. Thank you. >> Thank you. >> Those are good questions. [Applause] >> Thank you. [Music]