SPEAKER_00 0:00

It doesn't make sense to me that I'm formless baby. I wanted to tell people who worried about a lot of my stories that were about older people. That my generation reads books. That they're quality books. For people my age because and about people my age because we're still buying books and reading books.

SPEAKER_01 0:30

Welcome to the Write It Scared podcast. I'm your host, Stacy Fraser, a formerly repressed creative soul, turned fiction writer, story editor, and author accelerator certified fiction book coach. At Write It Scared, we tell the truth about why writing a novel is so hard by acknowledging that most writers grapple with two stories. The one they want to put on the page to the best of their ability, and the often subconscious internal story that prevents them from doing it. This show is designed to help you identify and rewrite the internal narrative holding you back while you discover and write the story you want to tell and learn all the tools to help you do that successfully. Join me each week for a new episode where we'll talk about writing to deepen our understanding of the craft and of ourselves as writers. Writing a novel is an inside job that we do not do alone. Welcome to Write It Scared. I'm glad you're here. Let's dive in. Hi, writer. Welcome back to the Write It Scared podcast. I'm your host, Stacey Fraser. I'm really excited about today's episode because it's a reminder that it's never too late to follow your curiosity and write the story that has been tugging at you. My next guest, Jean Indy, published her debut novel, Houses of Detention at 79 years old. Proof that creative dreams don't have expiration dates. Jean and I talk about what it's like to write and publish later in life, and how she mined generations of family history to inspire her fiction, and the joy, as well as chaos, of turning personal stories into something universal. She shares openly about experiencing rejection and persistence in the long road to seeing her book in print, plus why she believes that it's the perfect time to start writing, no matter your age or stage of life. If you've ever wondered whether you missed your chance, this conversation is going to remind you that stories and the people who write them are timeless. But before I give you Jean's bio, I want to let you know about an exciting opportunity coming up with Write It Scared. If you have been dreaming of finishing your novel, but keep getting stuck somewhere between the ideation phase and actually typing the words the end to a draft, I want to personally invite you to join the Draft It Scared group coaching program. This is my small group coaching experience designed to help you move from overwhelm and second guessing to real consistent progress on your book. You'll get accountability, structure, and the kind of story development support that actually keeps you writing, plus a community of writers who get it. The enrollment for the spring 2026 cohorts opens soon with sessions starting in January, and you can get on the interest list now to be the first to know when the doors open. So if you're interested, head to writeitscared.co forward slash draft it scared to learn more and sign up, and I will pop a link in the show notes as well. All right, let me give you Jean's bio. Jean Indy is a native New Yorker who writes fiction largely based on her immigrant Jewish family in the Bronx, though she currently lives in Brooklyn, which she believes is a foreign country for anyone from the Bronx. Jean is a former newspaper reporter, press secretary for the New York City government, and several local politicians. She's also been involved in marketing, a VP for Citibank, and was a professor at St. Francis. Jean has 25 short stories in print and in online magazines and anthologies in the US and England. Houses of Detention is her debut novel. Hi, Gene. Thank you so much for coming on the Write It Scared podcast. It's wonderful to have you with us today. How are you?

SPEAKER_00 4:10

I'm great. Thanks for having me. I'm really excited to be doing this.

SPEAKER_01 4:16

So today we get to talk about your debut novel, Houses of Detention, which was published in April of 2025 by Apprentice House Press. But before we roll into talking about your novel, I would just love for you to share with our listeners more about your journey to becoming a writer and a published author.

SPEAKER_00 4:35

Was always a writer. And I always that writing was going to be my key to acceptance. When I was a fat little kid in summer camp who didn't get picked for teams, I wrote poetry. I wrote st I wrote, excuse me, I wrote stories, and that was the way I could get into the social life. So I I wrote for most of my life. And then there was a point after a while where I stopped and went over to the dark side. I was a newspaper reporter. I did press for the city of New York, for the agencies. I did publicity for a whole bunch of nonprofit organizations. So I was always writing something. And at some point, the 70s were over, and it was time to start paying the bills. And like, okay, I'm I've been on the side of the angels long enough. And all these people who seem to be waiting for divine intervention to balance their budget. Nah. Time to grow up. So I went back to school and got an MBA. And I wound up at Citibank. I was a vice president. And then I was my son was born. I stopped doing that and I started teaching. But I taught in the business department, first at Temple and then St. Francis. And at that point I started writing again. It just began to make sense that I had the time. And I was writing for business magazines, and I'd kind of said, this is really boring. So I slip over and start writing stuff that I wanted to and got back into it.

SPEAKER_01 6:54

I love that. So definitely a very analytical career path, right? In business and in teaching and all of that stuff, but doing some fiction on the side. So what inspired you to write this? This is your debut novel. It is how long have you been, how long had you been working on it? How long did it take you to write it? And what inspired you to write it?

SPEAKER_00 7:20

Okay, this is my first novel, but I had 25 short stories that have been published in a whole variety of online and print magazines, both here in the States and in England. And I was a short story writer, and I started joining writers groups and things. And you know, I was the one who wasn't working on a novel. Most of my writing came out of memories of my family growing up in the Bronx in an immigrant Jewish family. And based on a prompt, I was in a writing group in Italy, in Florence, and I started writing what I thought was going to be another short story about a cousin of mine who had been sent to a form school when we were all teenagers. And it started growing and it kept going. This was a cousin I've known my whole life, and like, oh God, now I'm writing a novella. Now, if there's anything that's harder to sell than a short story, it's a novella. Nobody wants a novella. But it kept going. And then, you know, all of a sudden, my God, I've written a novel. And then it had to be cut back because it was an epic. It was like, am I gonna have volume? It's like But anyway, that's what it came it's about oh four years, maybe, from that first prompt to realize this was to go and keep going and where it was gonna stop. And then there was the trying to get it published, which you talk about writing scared. That's the hardest part of all of this. Getting your work published, and then once it's published, promoting it. I mean and I I took public relations for some known politicians and all. It's like, oh my god, I want I want me, I want a PR agent. Nobody. It's it's really the worst part of it. Well, let's say I'm so good at being here. It's great that there are people like you who can give writers like me a chance to get their work known.

SPEAKER_01 9:51

Oh, absolutely. It's my favorite, my favorite part. So with the and this would be a really great time for you to share what the novel is about. What do you want readers to know?

SPEAKER_00 10:03

Okay, it's well, like I say, it's an immigrant Jewish family. The eldest people c fled the Nazis, settled in the Bronx in the late 30s, 40s, and did fairly well, and started businesses, and then they're American, the next generation, they're American-born children. One of whom uh pushes the boundaries too far and winds up being sent to a reform school. Now, I know what is a nice Jewish girl doing in a reform school. This isn't supposed to happen. And that's the way it starts. What if, you know, what's a girl at Rebecca doing here? And this is what happened to a cousin, and who would have said to us, she I mean, she wasn't a criminal, she wouldn't have been sent away today, but at the time she was incorrigible, her mother had died, her father had a lot of trouble fitting in with the family. The father is a major character. He was a Talmudic scholar in Europe. He was very well respected for his knowledge of Judaism. The main family, the Rosans, they were merchants. They ran around making money. But when everybody and he would never have given them the time of day in Europe, when everybody came to America, all of a sudden, there's a money grounding society. The fact that he could quote the Torah did not mean anything. The fact that the rest of them, the other family, could make money, well, welcome to the US. Everybody was very pleased. So he marries into this family, there's a lot of conflict. After her mother dies, Rebecca starts running away. Does a little shoplifting, a little underage, drinking, the kind of activities that nowadays would probably get you put into family service or some kind of a guidance counselor. But at that point you're talking about a family that didn't know how the rules went. There's one adult, the American born and who is a high school graduate, and it's the big deal, but she didn't know how to deal with the system. And they wind up sending this girl to a school. Now that's the part of it, that's as much of it that's really fact-based. I did have a cousin. She was sent to this school. Her father did have problems with the rest of the family. The second half of the book, first of all, it's about her experiences at this school, which nobody wanted to remember. I started calling her. She's not alive anymore, but I called her daughter, her brother. Oh, who knows, you know? Judy was here and then she wasn't, and then she's back. Like the girl was gone for two years. But so that I pretty much made up. I do remember being taken to visit the school and there were ducks there. I was very impressed. There were ducks and duckshit has a big role in a whole it's got a whole chapter to itself. That and telling my mother, wow, when I'm Judy's age, can I come here? Which she is not pleased. Then the rest of it where he the father remarries to an Orthodox woman and what their life is like from there and the conflicts between the Orthodox woman and the family she marries into and how it all progresses is the rest of the We weren't Orthodox. I did want to show that Jews are not uniform. There's a whole lot of difference, and I wound up calling a and getting a sensitivity editor, like what if it's a divorced Orthodox woman, you know, when she gets divorced, does she take off her wig or not? Like who knew it? How long do their skirts have to be? I live in Brooklyn. There's a big Orthodox community not too far from me. And I thought, oh my god, I'm gonna have a whole bunch of faceta marching down Eastern Park. What things when I said this to someone, they went, you should be so lucky, that'll be great. I mean, no, we don't want to alienate his people. But then it progresses there through the death, and it finishes with the main characters going out on their own to become, take their place as American-born women looking for their role in society.

SPEAKER_01 15:37

Wow. So it sounds like it is kind of a family saga that is wrapped around the immigrant experience of being in America and the culture clash that happens because of that and how that affects the younger generation. Yeah, it sounds fascinating. And it sounds like your cousin was her storyline was a was a huge inspiration for a piece of this book. And you're drawing on a lot of your own family experiences here in a very biographical way in in peace.

SPEAKER_00 16:13

Yeah, and we did all live together. We all lived in a three-block radius in the book I call it a rum Privatstedt in the Bronx there. Everybody was connected. Wherever you went, whatever you did, there was an antern and go or grandparent who could either protect you or tantal on you if you were doing something you weren't supposed to.

SPEAKER_01 16:40

Yeah. So did you ever worry about using information and and experiences that happened, you know, to to your family members or to yourself, but especially your family members, did you ever have a hard time using them in fiction or worrying about mining your family's history to put it in this book? Did it ever make you uncomfortable?

SPEAKER_00 17:05

Did and I didn't want to offend people, but first of all, the cousin I'm writing about is no longer alive, which made things easier. All of my short stories are based on family members exaggerated and changed. And you know, when you're writing your own history, you get to be the star. So that's nice. And oh, this is like you when you were writing your play. You know, I also I I've got a younger brother who's a doctor. My brother the doctor in this Jewish family. And in the book, I'm an only child. He's God, it's not there. She had uh people who were drafted to be a you came back. I killed them off because enough with this character. They didn't they don't care. I was very, very surprised, not necessarily pleased, but daughter daughter of this main character, who said that her mother never really she knew her mother had been sent away, but she didn't know too much about it. Her brother, who said, you know, she was here, she was gone, and nobody seemed to have specific memories, and I did send it to the daughter to see what she felt about it, and she thought it was all fine. And the rest of the the brother hasn't read it. I sent him a copy and he said it doesn't look like the stuff I like to read. I gave it to somebody. My cousins, a couple of them have said, Well, we bought it, you know. I said you're supposed to write a review of it once you buy it, not just buy it. But they weren't particularly interested. I do know of a lot of people who've written books, stories based on their family, and it can cause problems if you're writing about people being involved in criminal activities. Uh have enough background material. I have a friend who wrote a book that said these people had stolen money from her mother, and they sued, and she's got all these documents saying, yes, that's true. I did start off with my short stories, knowing that I have a very litigious family. Lots of lawyers, lots of people who know their way around the port system. And a lot of it is about their parents who are no longer alive. Which makes it easier. And oh yeah, my mom was a funny old lady. One of the stories is about an aunt who's complaining that somebody stole her girdles. Now, who's gonna go steal an old lady's girdle? But their mother did complain about things like that, and we all thought it was very funny. So when I exaggerated and have the whole mystery of the missing girdle, everybody thought that was okay.

SPEAKER_01 20:31

So you've been drawing from family experiences for a long, long time. And so no one in your family was probably surprised at the source of inspiration or or pieces of those threads that have come forward in the novel, right?

SPEAKER_00 20:46

Right. There's someone in every family who keeps the history and knows the stories, and who you go to to say, gee, was Aku Joe related to that? What? And I'm the one in my family who for some reason remembers the stories. I do remember my father telling me stories about his childhood in Poland when he was young before he came over. Now, I'm sure my brother heard the same stories. My cousins, when we get together, we'll tell these stories, but I know more of them than anybody else, and I don't know why I keep that. I must say, having written this novel and one more short story that I just finished. I finished. I think I'd written everything I catch and I now have two or three st short stories that have nothing to do with it with Jews, have nothing don't take place in the Bronx. I'm very yeah. That's where I'm Going. I'm gonna write stories that don't take place among Bronx Jews. These are other types of stories.

SPEAKER_01 22:09

It sounds like your experience in sharing pieces of your family in your fiction was was a good experience. Nobody dropped a hammer on you, right? To say like shh, but that you've known other people, other writers, where that's not the case, and that that their families are uncomfortable with them mining those experiences. And so your your thoughts on on how to handle that are appreciated. And I also wonder, I I can't remember where I read this. And it might have been from Anne Lamont. It it was either maybe Anne Lamont, but she wrote something that said to the effect of, you know, if people are worried that you're gonna write them into your fiction, they should be nicer. That's true.

SPEAKER_00 22:57

And Drummond Capote said, Did you not know I was a writer? We just started telling, you know, and his friends started.

SPEAKER_01 23:06

Yeah, we have dangerous creative license written right on our forehead.

SPEAKER_00 23:10

Exactly. And this is my point of view. You're free to write your own book. You know, hopefully they won't. I do have one story that goes way back when I was third or fourth grade or something, really young, in elementary school, having written something about my grandmother, who's in that book in the House of the Detention, and she's this old little white, and it starts off to look at my grandma, and you would think she's Whistler's mother, she's got white hair and bright blue eyes, and you would never think that this woman finishes a bottle of Southern Comfort every week. Then it just went on from there. Looks deceiving. Yes. Uh which she did. One of the very few words she could say in English was Southern Comfort, which is a hundred-proof brandy. And he finished at least a bottle a week. Wow. And yes, sometimes if she finished it early, she'd send one of the kids over to the liquor store, and they knew in the neighborhood that we could they could give us a bottle of liquor that it was for grandma, and somebody would come in and pay them. Anyways, my mother and father go to open school week, and the teacher is telling me, oh, gee, telling them Jeannie's doing well. Look at this story. We're gonna have it in the magazine this year, and they take a look, and it's about my grandma who finishes a bottle of whiskey a week. And my mother goes, No, you can't publish that. And I told the teacher she had some told this. Oh, like I'm in the fifth grade and I'm experiencing censorship. I was furious. And they said, everybody in the neighborhood to neighborhood school, everybody in the neighborhood will know who you are, who your grandmother is. We can't have that. I'm gonna be really angry. They didn't publish that. But years later, I mean, in this book and in a couple of the stories that I've written since that, it talks about my grandmother and the getting the bottle and stealing, you know, drinking. And she would say, But you never saw me drunk. And then and it was only years later that we realized we probably never saw her sober.

SPEAKER_01 25:44

Yeah. When the baseline established and you got any different.

SPEAKER_00 25:48

She was as very she's 90. She's little, she's looking, she's got these big blue eyes. And if somebody was around, she drink from a glass. If she thought no one was looking, she'd drink it straight from the bottles. Wow.

SPEAKER_01 26:04

Wow. Wow. Well, thank you for sharing that. And and she and again, that's wow, a censorship at the in the in the fifth grade.

SPEAKER_00 26:15

Thread go on. Setting up to be a you know adolescent behind.

SPEAKER_01 26:22

So, what is it like to have a debut novel come out when you're in your 70s? I think it's very inspiring for a lot of writers out there that this is this is possible that you can do this. So, would you like to share what that experience has been like?

SPEAKER_00 26:41

It's very bizarre. I always expected to be a writer. I never expected to be this old. And my 79th birthday was a few months before this book came out. And it doesn't make sense to me that I'm almost 80. Until you're s well, you're in your 70s, you're in your 70s. 79 is almost 80, and that's a really old lady. But I'm lucky enough to have been in with a lot of younger writers. I belonged to a number of writers' groups, which I believed in servantly. Please ask me about writers' groups. And people I hung out with were writing, were you know, trying to get their novels published, and I got my novel published. It was the next step. I also thought that I really wanted it positioned as an immigrant story. Because if not Jewish immigrants, although there's a lot going on about Judaism these days, immigration is such a big topic in our country. What happens to immigrants, how they're treated, who succeeds, who doesn't succeed. And I thought the story of the people fleeing the Nazis was the same as people fleeing conditions in South America or Africa, that the Jews maybe we were white, but and that it made a difference. It does make a difference. It was easier for them to To go back I'm sorry, to go back to what was it like to be older? It doesn't make sense to me. I don't understand why my first novel came out when I'm a year away from being 80. It happens the way it's uh happening to people I know who are in their 50s or 60s. I guess if you're in your twenties or thirties and starting out, that's a different world. But if you skip over a little bit to people in their 40s or 50s, it doesn't feel you hang out with people your age, and my closest friends once are both close to my age, and we have old lady conditions, you know. It's like artificial me and it's ridiculous. All of it doesn't make sense. And it doesn't make sense that I that I'm an 80 almost 80-year-old debut novelist.

SPEAKER_01 29:50

I think it makes beautiful sense. Yes, and I love it. I love it, and I love it.

SPEAKER_00 29:56

Yeah, yeah, no, but the phrase to use when you're adding is that I always knew I'd be a writer, and I never anticipated I would be. It's old and petty. It just goes to show.

SPEAKER_01 30:09

I I think it's just cool that you can follow your curiosity no matter when or where, and see where it goes. Because holy crap, we might lead you somewhere awesome.

SPEAKER_00 30:20

And I have more time now. I'm retired. I wasn't writing when my son was young. I wasn't doing this kind of writing when I was working full-time. I don't think I'd have been able. I'm in awe of anybody who manages to do that with a child, with a full-time job, struggling. Being retired and having children and grandchildren who live in a different city or a house makes it a lot easier.

SPEAKER_01 30:54

Yeah. So I mean I I I say this phrase a lot. You know, you have to apply the lens of your reality to the whatever it is that you're doing. And for us, you know, writing is gonna ebb and flow over the course of our life as as the situations and circumstances around our life change. So you mentioned that publication was one of the hardest parts of the process for you. Tell us tell us why. What was what was hard about it? What did you learn?

SPEAKER_00 31:23

A lot of people send out a lot of rejection letters. It was a little easier, I think, because the short stories are easier to get published. Just go on Facebook and put on submission groups. There are huge lists of places that take that where you can submit your short stories. Once it came to the novel, nobody knows how to do it. It makes me crazy that people are writing books about how to write a query letter. You have to spend as much time writing that letter as you do writing the the novel. It's it's ridiculous.

SPEAKER_01 32:17

It's a completely different skill set, really, to me. It's like copywriting. It's designed to entice, right? Ex explain and entice. It's different than narrative fiction, than writing. I mean, not that that's not designed to entice, but it is in a different way.

SPEAKER_00 32:33

But the publishing industry is in such horrendous shape. It's a very, very tough process to get it done. And you get booked into I mean my opening, my debut was terrific, and I got booked into this bookstore. The next couple of books stores I went to, there were five people in one and ten people in another, and you know, that's that's the way it goes. It's love your book. You'll be very proud. You've got a book. You know, at least I I haven't. My son is v is proud. Your ex will be jealous, which is nice.

SPEAKER_01 33:22

And yeah, that's Did you wind up with an agent first or no? Did not get anything.

SPEAKER_00 33:28

What I wound up with Apprentice House is part is from Loyola University, which I thought was very funny that this traditional Jesuit university was publishing my very Jewish book. But it turned out to be really helpful because lots of people, the Orthodox people in the books, were quote the Bible, and I wasn't really that up on all this stuff. And I said, hey, they must be. I said, Do you know somebody there who knows the Old Testament? And of course they did. They know Old Testament's colors at Loyola. And I got to have somebody who was an expert on the Old Testament who went through all of the things I'd put. I said, You gotta go right. It's like just one dad would be really proud of me. So yes, I was very, very I will put in a plug for Loyola. They have a publishing major at the school. You can take classes in editing, uh copywriting, uh, design and things. And it, you know, I didn't go to them first, but when I went to them because somebody I knew had had their book published, it was great. I think they were very nice, and I was very pleased once I discovered them. I had the ability to really have input on the cover. I'm very pleased with the cover. It is beautiful. What shall we?

SPEAKER_01 35:06

It's very beautiful.

SPEAKER_00 35:07

Yeah, I know it's gonna come up. But anyway, and the people I know who went with more traditional publishers don't get as much input as I did. So yeah, I was lucky. Once you once you find somebody, and all the people I know who are starting out are going to wind up with small publishers. Small publishers are indie, independents, whatever they are. The small princes are all going to be the way that most of us are gonna get published. And that's that's what life is now, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 35:45

Well, you're not the first author to come on this podcast to have been published by Apprentice House, and not the first one to have had an excellent experience with them either. So yeah, and I think it's a very, very cool way to wrap education into like a real-world experience that results in these beautiful books, books that are now out in the world. So, yeah, another author, it was Alexandria Fulkenberry, who was on last season. Her yeah, her book was uh came out through Apprentice as well. Well, very cool. Well, thank you so much for spending your time and sharing your journey. I just have a couple wrap-up questions for you. When you think back on your writing experience, what is a piece of advice that you've held on to, a piece of writing advice or creative advice that has kind of functioned like a North Star for you? Join writing groups.

SPEAKER_00 36:40

I right and I've gone through I've been in a couple of them, and they are essential. You need other people who understand why it has taken you so long to do this, that it's not a matter of no, I can't type 30 pages. They have been terrific. It's also a great way to vacation, depending on a lot of what I've done. I've gone to writing conferences in Wales and Italy and California and various places. You get to meet people, you get to meet people from all over, of all ages. And the nice thing is that you're viewed as a writer. The great thing about, I always said about some of these conferences is that they don't ask you what do you do, they ask you what kind of writing? Are you doing fiction or poetry? I mean, I was in a grip where the poets were the big shots. Like any place in the world where poets can walk around saying, hey, I'm a poet, I you know, great. What is that you need people who are sharing the experience? They also tell you things about different publishers, different agents, where to try, that there is a key, like any profession, you have to know how it works and where the ins and outs are. Yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 38:12

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 38:13

It's a great place to make friends.

SPEAKER_01 38:15

Yep. It gives you that that sense of, you know, I'm not alone in this. And, you know, I'm not I'm not alone. I'm not screwing it up. Or even if I am, I'm screwing it up and I have good people around me, whatever. You know. But I think that that's as long as it's dirty. And it takes as long as it takes. It does. It absolutely does. And there's nothing wrong with that. And there is nothing wrong with where, you know, for any listener out there who's chomping at the bit and going, I'm not there yet, I'm not there yet, I'm not there yet. It's okay. It's really okay. It it's it's okay to be to be right where you are. Look at all the seasons of life that that you have gone through, right? And all of the the stories that you've gotten to share with the world. And it wasn't the right time to share the novel. It wasn't the right time for the novel to come until later, you know? So each to their own, right? Each to their own. Well, thank you so much for coming on the podcast. Is there anything that you're currently working on that you want to share with listeners?

SPEAKER_00 39:21

Stories that aren't about the Bronx and that aren't about Jews. Okay. They're coming. I've got one that's going to be in something called the Lotus Journal that's going to be out next month. That one's my last story about crazy old people in the Bronx. And there's one that's about based on wearing red high-heeled shoes, that's got no Judaism in whatsoever. It is an old lady story, and looking back at old high-heeled shoes, and that's a finalist and salt competition. But I think I've managed to use that.

SPEAKER_01 40:01

Awesome. And where can listeners find you and your book?

SPEAKER_00 40:06

The book is Housends of Detention. It's available from Amazon or Barnes and Noble or booksellers.com. And you can find a list of all my short stories and everything at geneindyauthor.com, which was my Mother's Day present, the website for my son. He made it for me. Yes. It's a beautifully done website that Josh put together for me. And you can just click on big thumbs up, Josh.

SPEAKER_01 40:41

He just got big thumbs up.

SPEAKER_00 40:44

Yes, yes. The book is dedicated to you. Yes, I've got a wonderful son and grandchildren and pictures of it. They think it's great they built houses with my books. They're fun.

SPEAKER_01 40:56

Well, I will make sure to include the link to your website and to your book in the show notes. Thank you so much for coming on the podcast, being a delightful guest, and sharing your knowledge and experience with us. And I'm sure a lot of people are going to take away a lot of hope and a lot of humor from what you have to share with the world. Great. Okay, thank you. Great to be here. Thank you for listening to the Write It Scared podcast. If you enjoyed today's show, please make sure to hit the follow button so you never miss an episode. And please leave a review. Reviews help other writers like you find the voices and messages they need to hear to continue to write their stories. Let's lift each other up. Remember, you can be scared and still be unstoppable. I'll see you next week.