Benjamin Abravenel, author of 'The Past, Again' - Debut author discusses learning from history, hybrid-publishing, and keeping busy in retirement

0:00Your will or trust needs more than an AI template. Legal Zoom offers guided tools and attorney support with no hourly rates. Visit today. Legal Zoom provides access to independent attorneys and sell service tools. Legal Zoom is not a law firm and does not provide legal advice. Acast powers the world's best podcasts. New school year, new podcast obsession. Hit play on this. Hey, this is Kim Holderness. And this is Penn Holderness. And we have a podcast called Laugh Lines. You know, we're all getting older and sometimes it's fun just to laugh about it. We've laughed about insane 90s song lyrics, unhinge summer jobs, and designing the perfect Gen X retirement home. We also have some meaningful conversations about fighting Alzheimer's, understanding ADHD, marriage, parenting, empty nesting. If this sounds like you, welcome home. You're safe here. So we called our show Laugh Lines for, you know, the lines that show up on our face because we're getting older and we're laughing. But also because we have a literal Laugh Lines. It's a place you can call in and very true to us.

1:01It's a landline. You could leave a voicemail. Yep. I'm a Laugh Lines. We actually love hearing your voices and we feel so lucky that our audience is growing older with us. So what are you waiting for? Go check out Laugh Lines. It's available in all the usual podcast places and also on YouTube. Yes, I have to wear a bra and hard pants when recording this show because we put it on YouTube. With the sacrifices we make for our listeners, honey. Seriously. We hope you join us soon. Acast helps creators launch, grow, and monetize their podcasts. Class is always in session at eCast.com. This week's episode of Rites' routine is sponsored by the Quick Book Reviews podcast. If this show takes you behind the scenes of writing books, the Quick Book Reviews podcast takes you into what makes them brilliant. It's all about the authors too. You can join Philippa, who for the last six years has been chatting to some of the biggest authors around and discovering their newest work. If you're a reader looking for new book recommendations

2:02and getting to know your favorite writers, this is the perfect show for you with in-depth chats and spoiler free book reviews in perfect bite-sized chunks to fit easily into your day. Philippa gets into all the fun questions too, finding out what authors like to eat, where they wanna go on holiday, and the gossip about bits of their life that you won't find anywhere else. You've got interviews to catch up on with Adele Parks, Abbie Mukaji, also David Baldacci, and ones coming up over the summer include exclusive chats with Karen Slaughter, Leigh Child, and CJ Tudor. All that with some very speedy book reviews, getting right to the heart of all the newest stuff out there and the best ones for you to read. The Quick Book Reviews podcast is a lighthearted look at authors and what you might love about their new book. You can get two episodes a week, or wherever you get your podcasts. Just search for the Quick Book Reviews podcast.

3:02[♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ Hello, welcome along to a brand new episode of writers, routine. This week we're chatting to Benjamin Abravanal, who practiced medicine for 35 years, before finally publishing a story filled with a message that he's very passionate about. The novel is the past again, and we talk about why writing it helped him fill a very tricky time of life. When I first retired, I was really upset and depressed, like I was going to miss my patients, and I was going to miss feeling like I do something important. But being a physician, especially the type I was, it could be really, really stressful. And I just, I didn't miss the stress. I enjoyed the extra time. It was really, it was something I had in the head since I was five years old, because I was pushing myself, you know, high school, college, medical school,

4:03internship, residency, fellowship. And to have that time free, at first it made me very anxious, but then it was really, gave me freedom. Also, you can hear how he researched by finding real life experience. So in San Francisco, I practiced medicine. I had patients who grew up Jewish in predominantly Arabic and Muslim countries, and they told me what it was like. And I had one patient who suffered through the far-good, the program, Ian Baghdad in 1941. And so I had that in my mind. And I also knew how Mistraki Jews were treated in the early stages, the early years of Israel, compared to the Ashkenazi Jewish pioneers. Now they were treated as second class citizens. I just, I had prayed about that, and I knew about it. And certainly growing up Jewish and in Santa Barbara, it's my personal experience. It's all on the way with Benjamin Abravanel

5:05in a brand new episode of Rites' routine. [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ Yes, welcome along to the show. My name is Dan Simpson, and this is Rites' routine. It's where we take a look inside an author's working day. We see what they do, where they do it, in particular, when they do it, clover's in the name. I'd rather give themselves the best chance of just getting words down on the page. If you enjoy the show, if we have helped you at all in over 400 episodes, you can always support us by pledging, by sending something on co-fi or Patreon. And it really helps us carry on and helps me bring you these chats with all different types of authors finding out how they do it, more or less every week. It's Patreon and co-fi. It would be fantastic if you could support the show there. Find links in the episode notes wherever you are. This week, we're chatting to Benjamin Abravanel, a debut author who started writing his novel, The Past Again,

6:05in moments of time snatched from incredibly busy weeks. It asks the question, could the horrors of Jewish history happen again in 21st century America? And it tells the story of Judah Cohen, who, whilst living in sun-drenched California, stumbled onto the truth of the Holocaust as a child, and he's been running, really, from his Jewish identity, never since. It uses the story of Judah and his family across different parts of the world. To get you thinking about that question, can history repeat itself somewhere you would never expect somewhere you think you're safe? We talk about the part of publication. Benjamin was advised that this would never probably be released, but yeah, it's out now. You can get it. So what steps did he take to publish it? And why with that, he's expecting to lose quite a bit of money,

7:07but it's probably fine with that, as long as the message gets out there. Also, you can hear about the professor that he enlisted to help edit it, what he learned from her, and then following from her advice, how hard is it to take on feedback and then change your writing style for a huge amount of words? It's all on the way. Quite an interesting one this week, I think, with Benjamin a braveness, and we start as we always do with what he sees around him in the place where he sits down to write. Hmm, well, I've kind of written this book over a span of maybe eight to ten years, and I didn't really get serious until I sent my retired four years ago. I was a physician working 60 hours a week for about 32 years, but I've always loved novels, I loved stories, and I always read these novels and thought, I wanna write mites, I wanna write a story myself. It doesn't seem that hard. I mean, maybe I wrote was rubbish, but I had fun writing it.

8:07So in the first section of writing this book, perhaps while you were still at work, where would you normally be when you were writing if you were at the day job for such a long time? I would sit in the family room where we have kind of the library alcove, and with the kids screaming and the wife screaming, I would just kind of enter my little world of, to me writing is almost God-like. You create people that don't exist. You create characters and situations that do not exist except in your mind, and I would just kind of start writing. I had such a firm idea of what I wanted to say that. It just kind of all came out. And then when you sent me retired, as you said, and you were kind of taking it more seriously, were you going back to the alcove? Maybe did you set yourself up like a proper writing place with a desk and everything to be quite official? Yeah, when I finally finished the first rough draft,

9:09which is about as rough as one could imagine, I worked with a professor at Stanford, and she, I had her go over and edit it, and we made massive changes. And at that time, I went from 60 hours a week to 10 hours a week, and we have a bottom floor that I always kind of wanted to work in. It's filled with thousands of books. It has this 1910 desk that my wife's cousin inherited from Germany, this huge 1910 desk. That's really beautiful. And I envision myself sitting at this desk, and that's what I did. And I just went over her recommendations, and I changed things. And so that was a much more isolated place, and it's filled with windows and books, and it overlooks the garden that I obsess over and work on.

10:15To me, it was never work, because I just, I kind of, the work part was the editing, but the creating, I just kind of, I really fell in love with my characters, and I changed the end at the last minute. Yeah, I think we'll get to all the nuances of when and where you're changing. That's always fascinating. So when you're on your desk, and you know at this point that, well, you've spoken to an editor who's going to help you out about this, so then you're in the desk, you are taking it seriously. Aside from looking at the window, and you can obsess over your garden, what is there that's like rightfully around you, perhaps? Would you have plot points anywhere? Like a whiteboard or one of those detective inspector cork boards that help them trace all the lines so they can catch the killer? Not really, it was all my head, but the woman who edited the professor at Stanford,

11:16she also is a luddite, and she wanted everything on paper. So I would drive to San Francisco, which is about 10 miles from where I live, north of the Golden Gate Bridge, and I would handle the 300 pages of paper, and she would mark them up, and then she would, I would come back weeks later, and I would look at, I would go through the paper, but I was typing on a, God see, I'm so ignorant about computers, it was, I guess, I don't know if it was Microsoft Word, I guess that's what it was, I don't know. It was a computer and I would type. So when you've got this idea that you're going to take it seriously, and you've actually said you've got out a rough first draft, what made you turn towards this person at Stanford, how did you find them? Why were you so sure that they could really help you out of whatever Maya you were in?

12:17She, I actually wanted, I emailed another woman who I'm liking on her name, but she wrote a novel that gained some success called Pictures at Exhibition, I think. It was a Holocaust novel, and there aren't a whole lot of, there aren't that, there's very few novels that touch upon the issue that I wrote about, you know, the issue I wrote about was, whether the atrocities of Jewish history in Europe can occur in America, and the pot against America is the only one I know really by Philip Roth, and I'm not comparing myself to Philip Roth, but so this novelist was too busy, but she recommended this other woman who teaches creative writing at Stanford, who had a very famous father-in-law named Wallace Stegner. Her name was Lynn Stegner. Wallace Stegner, who was some very famous American novels.

13:20One of them was the angle of repose. I think he might have won the Pulitzer Prize, and she clicked and she was really, really helpful. The moment when you get your first draft back from Lynn, and she is gone to her with the fine tooth comb, I can't imagine, you know, pouring your so much work into this thing, and then getting it back, how much of a, like an unwelcome shock, I guess at times, of some of the things that she would have you change? You know, the first thing I call, when I spoke to her, I called her and I said, it's terrible, isn't it? It's just good scarbage and sandwich rush, because I have no formal training in writing. I mean, because I was a doctor, I majored in all science, but I've always loved novels and writing, but then I forced myself to learn the science to become the doctor, but I didn't really particularly like the science.

14:22I always was attracted to writing and novels and plays, and you know, and I, nobody had read it, nobody else had read it, and I was afraid she was gonna say, just give up on this, this is like garbage and you're wasting your time, but in fact, she said, this is actually really pretty good, and you have a lot of promise as a writer. I mean, I'm still, everything I do is solitary and isolated. I don't have a writer's group. I just write in solitude, but you know, I was anxious as hell that she was gonna say, you're wasting your time and your money, but she actually said, you know, you actually hold promises a writer, and this was actually not bad at all, and she worked with me. And then at the end of it, I said,

15:22I mean, is there any chance that this could be publishable at some point? And she said, absolutely, but you'll never get a publish because nobody publishes novels anymore. You're a white male Jewish writer, and nobody's going to publish you because you're a debut novelist as well. And that held true. I mean, to this day, I'm not sure if what I wrote is any good, but I've gotten some positive feedback. I don't know. I've enjoyed writing it. It has a very important message for me. When she did get it back to you, what were, without going into too much detail because I imagine that might give away some of the plot, what were the general overarching things that she did want to fix that you were doing? Is it mainly plot-wise? Was it structure, language perhaps? Structure, where there was a lot of didactic writing in it.

16:25Like I had to teach or prove a point that was really too abrupt and too obvious, and I had to get rid of it all. Those were the two main issues. We changed the beginning. She thought that I would have a more powerful beginning with boy discovering the pictures of the Holocaust. Structure and also getting rid of other didactic writing. Is it tricky to just get rid of something like that? This is your first go. I agree with her. I knew it was bad. I know. I get that it's bad, but if you think that you've wanted to do this for quite a long time, if I may be so bold, it's not like you're 20, right? So you've read for so long, and you have an idea of how you do it, but yet you're told that it's way too digactic. So it's way to teaching and trying to get the message across.

17:28It's really hard to just stop and start that tap and completely rewrite it in a new tone, surely. Well, there's two conflicting feelings. One is that everything I write is gold and wonderful, which is absolutely absurd. And the other is, I can tell this is shitty. Excuse my language, but this is bad, and it should go. And so my more reasonable side said to me, she's right. I know she's right. Get rid of all this kind of didactic, forced writing and make it more natural and make it develop more naturally. I mean, to this day, I'm just, I have a red, I actually have a red it in a few years. So I mean, I did, I did do a lot of editing in the past six months ago, but I haven't read the entire novel because I got sick of reading it. But to this day, I'm not sure how good it is. And if the dialogue seems natural, you know, it's funny.

18:30I get so many opinions from so many different people. And somebody said, who likes it? And I said, well, I've had a lot of family and friends like it. And they said, well, that's why they like it. They have somebody objective read it. And I have and some people will have good and some people did. It's like any other writing, I guess, I don't know. I'm very anxious about whether it's any good or not. I don't know. I would say, I've never spoken to an author who doesn't feel like that because like the nature of writing and trying to get it out there is quite youbre stick. It's like, I have this idea. This idea needs to be read by a lot of people. So therefore you have to think it's the best in the world. But also, as you say, it's something that you personally have poured over well for the best part of 10 years. So it's natural that like you don't know if you're any good, right? I know that's so too, but I haven't had any training in writing. I mean, you might have read a novel. And why are you writing it then Benjamin? Why have you? Why are you putting it out there? Why can't this just be something that's purely for you?

19:31You've got it down and it just sits on Microsoft Word for you to read whenever you like. Very simple because there's a message in the novel I want to come across. I want American Jews to know that America may not be exceptional. That we take our life for granted and that it's our history as Jews to have people chase after us over and over and over again. And we need to be aware of this in America. Americans and American Jews, we think we're different than other countries in the Europe. And in ways we are, there's a diversity here that's unknown in other countries except maybe Canada and Australia because we're country of immigrants. But whether the atrocities against Jews can happen in this country, I'm not sure if we're exceptional or not. And the novel touches upon this consideration. I wonder if have the events of the last few years

20:35while the conflict in Israel has been obviously much more front and center across international media than it has been for a while before that. Did that give you a bit more to perhaps get it out there and get your message out? Sure, but I wrote the novel way before October 7th. But yeah, it's very timely. But you know, I grew up, I grew up, I marinated in the Holocaust. I was born 13 years after the Holocaust. And all my mother's, hand son uncles and cousins were lost in the Holocaust. And you know, I thought it was distant history. But when I went to Europe, when I was 22 years old, the usual American backpacking through Europe, I started to see graffiti that made me nervous. And then when I was in Europe about 20 years ago,

21:36the graffiti became much more pronounced. I started seeing star of David equals swastika. I started seeing really, really nasty, virulent anti-Semitic stuff. And if the graffiti is any kind of barometer of society, I was being to realize that, yes, our history may be repeating itself at least in Europe. This is a grander question. And it's quite early on in the conversation for this. But so you've written a novel with this message in mind. What do you hope someone would gow of it from reading it? That the history of the catastrophes involving Jews in Europe, it can happen anywhere, including the United States. Your will or trust needs more than an AI template. Legal Zoom offers guided tools and attorney support with no hourly rates. Visit today.

22:36Legal Zoom provides access to independent attorneys and sell service tools. Legal Zoom is not a law firm, which is not provide legal advice. It's fall in Jeep country. And during the drive into fall sales event, get a great deal on four by fours that refuse to be contained, like Jeep Wrangler. Confidence built into every drive with the most awarded SUV ever, Jeep Grand Cherokee, and freedom that can't be denied with the open air freedom and Jeep gladiator. After 85 years, it's no surprise that Jeep became America's SUV brand. Get a great deal during the Jeep drive into fall sales event. Jeep is one more awards over its lifetime than any other SUV brand, even the Jeep Grille or Registered trademarts of FCA US LLC. Forming a business seems easy until influencers, forums, and AI give different advice. Legal Zoom has helped 5 million business owners get it right. Because after 25 years, we know what getting it wrong can cost. We stand behind every formation we file, and we'll be there after you've launched. When you need a legal hand, visit Legal Zoom.

23:37Legal Zoom provides access to independent attorneys and sell service tools. Legal Zoom is not a law firm, and does not provide legal advice. I got rid of the really didactic stuff, and I tried to just made it come out more naturally in the dialogue. And one thing I've learned, and Linus taught me, is that people can understand what's going on in novels without it being so obvious that people internalize their thoughts when they're reading the novel. And some of the ideas they'll develop in their own minds and appreciate. It doesn't need to be so obvious and overtly written in the novel. Does that make sense? Yeah, absolutely. I guess it's a version of show you don't tell, isn't it? Yeah, but you know, that's so funny. The whole show don't tell, because the more we'd novels, the more I see there's just so much tell. It's, yeah, I think it's a fine line,

24:40and in deciding things try to develop more naturally and not obviously. It's a trusting of the reader, I think, which, and absolutely. Which maybe, I think maybe that's tricky for a debut author to latch onto and to do, because, well, you don't know who your readers are. You don't know how this will be received. You've got a message that you want to share. So there is an element that you do want to look, hey, make them, make them be aware of what it is. This is what I'm saying here, where I think you learn, don't you, is that if you do put a drip things in, you can let a reader figure out for themselves. He don't have to hit them over the head with things over and over and over again. The two characters in my novel, a man and a woman, have a very different history. One of them grew up in Santa Barbara, a third generation, Santa Barbara. And Santa Barbara is about as safe and warm and carefree as an American dream can be.

25:41And the other character, the wife, was born in Iraq. And I don't know, a lot of you would have known this, but Iraq was 25% Jewish, 100 years ago. But Baghdad was not Iraq, Baghdad was. And she went up in the Far Hood, which was a program against the Jews. And then she moved to Israel where Mithrahi Jews, Jews from Arabic countries were discriminated against. So she has a totally different background than her husband. So when ugly things start happening in Santa Barbara, they understand it very, very differently. But I tried to bring that out in a more subtle way than I initially wrote it. So the show is right as routine Benjamin. Just take us to yours then. I guess from when you would radically drop down your hours at work and you were going to spend some time properly dedicating yourself to writing a novel, how did you plan your day? Just take us through a day in the life of you writing

26:42from the moment you wake up to the moment you go to bed. Well, when I was working 60 hours a week, I would just write, I would think about the novel, think about the characters. And then I would just have these snatches of time where I would just start writing. And that was, I worked 60 hours a week to I was 60. And then from 60 to 64, I worked 40 hours a week. So I had a little bit more time, not just snatches of time to write it. And by the time I was 64, I had written a complete manuscript. And right after I retired, I sent it to Lynn. And no, I'm working 10 hours a week. So I have plenty of time. So I was a little bit nervous because I hate being indoors. We're in California. So I use our weather is pretty good. And I love hiking and walking and biking. And I hate the thought of being indoors during the day,

27:44except when I was working. But when I was working on the novel, I would just after Lynn and I sent manuscripts back and forth, I would spend sometimes three or four hours straight just working during the day. On the novel, and I didn't mind it because I really got into the characters and the story. Like I said, I loved my characters. And I just, I actually really enjoyed, you know, writing, like I mentioned, I think I mentioned, you're almost like a god. You're creating these people that don't exist. And these happenings that don't happen, and it's just, it was fun. So I had no problem spending three or four hours during the day working on it. Although it seems like I could do my best work at night. Is there an aim to when you are sat down for three or four hours when you have the time to, are you just writing until you're running out of energy?

28:45Is it a matter of word count? Well, by this time it was written, so I was really training manuscripts back and forth with Lynn. And, you know, I would say, I have to go through 40 pages today of her comments, or I have to change the structure of the story today. So I would give myself three or four hours to do it. I mean, really, after working 60 hours a week for 32 years, having time, when I first retired, I was really upset and depressed, like I was going to miss my patients and I was going to miss feeling like I did something important. But being a physician, especially the type I was, it could be really, really stressful. And I just, I didn't miss the stress. I enjoyed the extra time. It was really, it was something I had in the head since I was five years old, because I was pushing myself, you know, high school, college, medical school, internship, residency, fellowship.

29:48And to have that time free, her first that made me very anxious, but then it was really, gave me freedom. An element of why couldn't I do this earlier? I know that, as you just said, how busy you were, but you clearly got into a moment, you know, feeling like a god and you're really enjoying getting the words out and you've managed a snatch time here and there. How much of you thinks about what could have happened? Had you have done this and, and pursued perhaps more like creative work like this broad brush strokes? I know, and maybe a bit earlier. Never felt that way. First of all, I never would have had the time. I helped raise two children as well. And I never wanted, ever would have had the time. And number two, for some reason, as my children grew older, I had more time to read novels. And it just kind of,

30:53my, just as I was reading more and more novels, my ideas of me writing developed more. And it wouldn't have happened earlier in my life. I was too involved with my career and raising children. I don't feel like I would have been able to do it early in life too. It kind of was an idea that the concept that matured in my mind. By the time I'm 120, maybe I'll be a really good writer. When you are writing, after getting the feedback, how long did it take you to feel like you'd fully absorbed everything and you were in flow when you were writing? And even though you're quite critical of yourself, now I could hear it. But like, before you felt that maybe you had got it and you'd found your voice again. I would say, Lynn really helped me with that. So that was,

31:56so I hired Lynn after I formally retired. And I would say, she really helped me find, I guess it's called my voice and the voice of my characters. Another problem is that you really, it's really important to differentiate the character's voice because you can make, since you're the author, every character sound the same, but saying different stuff. But you really want to create very, you want to make sure that it's very clear that the personalities of each character is very different and their voices are different. And it's not always easy to do. But I would say it kind of developed while I was working with my editor. So this is a novel that you really want to get out there and you're advised by your, I guess, mentor.

32:57Well, it won't be published yet it's out in some form. So just say this through the path of how it came to be there to now how it's available to buy. That was probably the most just not disheartening part of it. I, I do nothing at all about this. And I didn't want to take classes and I, you know, online stuff I just, and I probably should have, because I was super ignorant about the whole thing. So the whole query letter is super important. And my query letter was very weak. And I sent it out to like, I don't know, 50, 60 agents. And because I'm so weak with technology, I had to hire somebody to help me write these letters and do all the PDFs and all this kind of crazy stuff that to this day I don't really understand and get. And but the problem is that the query letter was weak and so I didn't get any agents.

33:59And it was very disheartening, but I did find a hybrid publisher. It's probably the best hybrid publisher in the United States is I'm Kohler Books, K-O-E-A-T-L-E-R. And they take about maybe 20%. And they had their own editor. So I went through another editing process. And he helped me take out more detective stuff. And she really helped me clean it up too. And but you know, with the hybrid publisher, I hate the term vanity press because I'm not doing it out of my vanity. I'm doing it because I feel like I've something to say, a message. And you pay them a certain amount. And believe me, this whole process, I'm going to lose thousands of dollars. But I'm glad I did it. And then I hired a public relations person where I put ads in the largest Jewish newspapers.

35:01And I don't have a Facebook or an Instagram account or any of that stuff. But you know, we'll see how it does. I don't think it's going to sell more than a few thousand copies at the most. But you know, I'm glad I did it. Is there a view Benjamin that it's all brilliant to take out ads in huge Jewish publications? Is there a need because of the message that you're saying to spread that word further than that? Sure. I mean, if I had $30,000, I can put ads in regular newspapers, too. But I just, you know, there's a limit to how much I want to spend on this. And one of the problems is that I just don't have any media accounts, any Instagram, Facebook accounts. And I don't have, I have a website, but there's, you know,

36:04there's not that much in it. One of the problems is that as you may be tearing to know this, but there used to be a central source of information in our society. And they were called newspapers. You know, everybody read newspapers, whereas the London Times or the San Francisco Chronicle or the LA Times, it was like a clearinghouse of information. Now, nobody reads newspapers hardly. And they get the information from a million different sources. And as you know, a lot of it is not repeatable sources. And so along with the loss of newspapers, there's the loss of book review. There used to be huge sections and Sunday paint in the Sunday section of newspapers that would have book reviews. And now we don't, I mean, in the San Francisco Chronicle, it's so pathetic. They have a book review of maybe one book on Sunday. And so there's a lack of centralized information. And there's a lack of book reviews.

37:05And so it's harder for books to gain notoriety. And to get them out there. You mentioned the query letter that you're sending out to agents. And that it was weak. When did you realize it was weak? What have you learned that it needed to do better in? When people told me it was weak, you have about, I don't know, 20 lines to get the attention of an agent. And there's actually a specialist who can hire and I'll be right, your query letter. But I thought my query letter was adequate, but adequate wasn't good enough. And there's all kinds of like psychological employees to catch the attention of the agent. But you know, agents are suffering too, because they're not making any money, because novels are not selling.

38:08People are on Netflix in America. And they don't read. People don't read novel. People just, they're aren't. If you look at the novels that are selling, there's like 20 authors that are really making money selling their novels. And part of it is that there's just no centralized review of books. The New York Times review of books used to be famous. And, but you know, most people, you know, there's just the number of people reading newspapers has just dropped so dramatically. And, you know, because of the internet and the easiness of, and the quality of TV, he hasn't proved so much that so many less people read novels. It's, it's sad because novels are an entirely different art form, but there's such richness in a good novel.

39:09And it brings so much to the readers. It's fall in Jeep country. And during the drive into Fall sales event, get a great deal on four by fours that refuse to be contained, like Jeep Wrangler, confidence built into every drive with the most awarded SUV ever, Jeep Grand Cherokee, and freedom that can't be denied with the open air freedom in Jeep Gladiator. After 85 years, it's no surprise that Jeep became America's SUV brand. Get a great deal during the Jeep Drive into Fall sales event. Jeep is one more awards over its lifetime than any other SUV brand, Jeep and the Jeep Grill or Registered Trademarks of FCA US LLC. It's fall in America. Make it count at the Ram Drive into Fall sales event. Make it powerful with our strongest Ram 1500 ever. Make it move with the Ram Heavy Duty with an available Cummins diesel and make it go to the distance with a 10-year or 100,000-mile powertrain limited warranty. Hurry in now for great deals during the Ram Drive into Fall sales event. Excludes fully electric vehicles applied to 2026 model-year vehicles non-transferable, visit MoPAR.com for complete details and a copy of the powertrain limited warranty.

40:09Cummins is a Registered trademark of Cummins Inc. Ram and Hemi are registered trademarks of FCA US LLC. We're back with more from Benjamin and Justice Second. If you're picking up any tips along the way, if hearing from a Davey author's story is maybe inspiring you about your own, giving you ideas about what you can do, how you can make it work, well you can support us for bringing you these shows as often as I can. It's quite a bit of work. It's only really me that does this, getting everyone to come on, doing the research, doing the chats, getting it edited, getting it out there. There's a lot that goes into this that gets it in a state so you can listen to it more or less every week. If you would like to support that machine, well you can over on Patreon and Ko-Fi. For Patreon, that's a rolling monthly pledge. It can be anything that you like. It comes through to me. You can get merch there. There is bonus content and there is even a way for your book to sponsor this show too. Also, you can support us on Ko-Fi. That's for a one and done.

41:10If that's more your style, if you don't want to think about having to do it ever again, whatever that is, absolutely find Ko-Fi.com forward such writers routine. Or Patreon, whatever most suits you. I'd really love to see you involved. You can get links in the episode notes wherever you are. Let's get back to it then, chatting to Benjamin Bravenall, all about his new story. It's called The Past Again. We talk about the name change that helped him tell his story. Also about where he goes from here, having told such a personal tale with a clear purpose, what do you do next? We pick it up, talking about that very first idea for The Past Again. Well, the first thing is about a maybe five or six-year-old boy who's kind of rummaging through his father's study, which is filled with books and magazines and manuscripts. And it's this large dusty study just filled with stuff, because his father is very pedantic.

42:12And he comes across this one book, and he starts filtering through it, relicking at the pictures, because he can't quite read much. And there's, and there's a book on the Holocaust, and he sees this picture of this, of the young mother holding this baby, trying to protect it against this man with a gun. And he just knows from this picture that, you know, his futile, she's trying to protect her baby against this Nazi, and you know that they're both going to be killed in a minute. And she's trying to give this baby maybe 10 more seconds of life. And he looks at it, and he asks, in the other pictures of the Holocaust pictures of, you know, dead bodies and bones. And obviously this is not appropriate for a five-year-old to see, but he runs to his father's thing, what is this? Is this a Halloween book? And his father is totally unaware of the inappropriateness of discussing the Holocaust to a five-year-old, such discussing the Holocaust. And the mother's a gas.

43:13It's like, why are you discussing this with him? This is not right. He can't absorb and understand this. We can't absorb and understand it. And we're adults. How can a five-year-old understand this? And the boy obviously becomes totally freaked out about it because the pictures of the people in the book look like this family. And he falls, you know, as a boy, he stops eating and stops sleeping and really falls apart because he can't wrap his head around what this all means, but he knows it's bad. And after two weeks he comes to his parents and say, I want to be known now as James, not Judah. And it's his way of trying to separate himself from the danger of being Jewish. When did that come to you, the idea of a name change being so integral to a character and their development

44:15through a story? Yeah, this is how people ask me, how did you come up with these ideas? And I say, they just developed as I was writing. They just developed those I was writing. The story of Judah coming across this Holocaust book happened to me when I was a child. So I kind of, they came from my back, you know, so much of a novel is autobiographical in a lot of ways. I grew up in Santa Barbara. And you know, we incorporate our past into these novels. That's where we get a lot of our ideas. And you know, the book takes place in Santa Barbara, I grew up in Santa Barbara. This horrible episode with a little boy kind of occurred with me. Some of the ideas of the boy trying to separate himself from his background happened to me when I was very young. But a lot of the ideas in the novel just came out as I was sitting there typing. Well, how you say that?

45:19I wonder how simple that ever is. So you go into it with this idea and it's also about a biographical about the boy finding the photo. And then it takes us on this journey of, well, two characters who you've already talked about, that grow up in wildly different situations. So they, because they grew up in wildly different situations, they understand. They have a completely different understanding of what's going on to their family. One feels fear and danger. And the other one keeps minimizing it. So when did it become clear to you that you needed two characters like this to fully tell this story? I think as I mentioned that a lot of Americans just until recently, especially American Jews felt like for the first time, you know, 2000 years we found our place. Like American Jews have been so successful in the United States. And for the most part, we felt so safe here. And so much of American culture developed from Jews,

46:21you know, Jews in Hollywood, Jews in novelist, Jews creating the entertainment business. And we felt like we were an integral part of America. And we felt very safe here. So I felt like I had to have another character who was not from here, who grew up in a place that turned against the Jews. And it wasn't Europe, it was a Mithrahi Jew living in Baghdad. And I had a patient who was a Jew who grew up in Baghdad. And she told me the story of what happened to the Jews in Baghdad. They lost everything. And they had lived there for 2000 years. But they were not like American Jews. They always felt like they were walking in the eggshells. Like all Jews did in predominantly Arabic and Muslim countries. And in fact, there was a reason for that because all the Jews have been expelled or kicked out of Arabic and Muslim countries except for Morocco.

47:21So, but I think they needed to have two characters. One of them is an American Jews feeling very, very safe and the other not growing up in America, understanding what was going on with their family because she had seen it growing up in Iraq. What was the process of research? There's so much history that you know and you're talking about Jewish people. And I don't know a lot of any way, just growing up. But there was a need to be a concerted thought and process to, okay, what do I need to know to tell this story accurately? So in San Francisco, I practiced medicine. I had patients who grew up Jewish in predominantly Arabic and Muslim countries. And they told me what it was like. And I had one patient who suffered through the far who the program in Baghdad in 1941. And so I had that in my mind. And I also knew how Mistraki Jews retreated

48:22in the early stages, the early years of Israel compared to the Ashkenazi Jewish pioneers. And now they retreated as second class citizens. I just, I had read about that and I knew about it. And certainly growing up Jewish and Santa Barbara my personal experience. Although I have to say that Brian's experience at Granford, Santa Barbara was nothing but great. Whereas my experience at Granford, Santa Barbara in the 1960s, you know, it's a Southern California conservative city down in the 1960s. And there was a lot of ugliness that our family faced, anti-Semitism. And you've spoken about how it all kind of came out as you were writing it. But when did you settle upon what the ending needed to be? When could you feel yourself being drawn towards a final place? That's funny because I didn't know how the, I was gonna end the novel and I worried about it

49:22and I thought about it. I mentioned that I think about the novel while I'm writing it, but I would also, I like to take walks. And I would take these walks and think about the characters in the novel and I couldn't come up with a good ending. I knew the ending was weak, that how I wrote it was weak. So it might still be weak, I don't know. But I, it was at the last minute where I said I have to change the ending. And I changed the ending. So I'll give it a, well, the ending is a little bit ambiguous how it ends. It's not a straightforward. This is what happens ending. So final two questions, I would say. You've got this out, you've, it's gone through hybrid publishing. You are, you've already said that you don't think it will sell a lot. What would you be happy with it doing? I would love it if somebody said, hey, this is actually an interesting novel and it deals with an issue that other novels have knocked out with.

50:26And it's a pretty good novel and it's an easy read. And I want people to know about this novel too. It's a writer review. And I wanted to catch, to catch fire, you know, like I want, wild fire, I wanted to, I would love it if it caught the attention of the pop, of the, you know, the popular attention and people read it. And it'd be great if somebody wanted to make a movie out of it. And lastly, because this is such a personal story that you've worked over for a decade or so, what happens next? How do you pick yourself up and write something different from here? I have another idea in my head, which is completely, totally, totally different. But I don't know if I write it or not. I mean, I really enjoy the act of writing and creating characters and plots. But I'll probably work on it.

51:28But you know, it's been a little disheartening. But I'll probably work on it. That's it for this week's episode of Writers' Routine. Thank you so much to Benjamin Bravenor for coming on. The novel is called, The Past Again. You can get a copy if you lose the link in the episode notes wherever you are. If you want to support the show, you can, over on Patreon and Ko-Fi, anything that you can send our way goes such a long way helping me keep bringing you these chats with all sorts of authors, some of the best in the world. And you can also follow our substack page for a newsletter here and there popping up with just updates about what's happening behind the curtain. You can get in contact with the show as well, writersroutine.com. And I will see you next week with a brand new guest on the podcast. Until then, thank you for listening.

52:28This week's episode of Writers' Routine is sponsored by the Quick Book Reviews podcast. If this show takes you behind the scenes of writing books, the Quick Book Reviews podcast takes you into what makes them brilliant. It's all about the authors, too. You can join Philippa, who for the last six years has been chatting to some of the biggest authors around and discovering their newest work. If you're a reader looking for new book recommendations and getting to know your favourite writers, this is the perfect show for you with in-depth chats and spoiler free book reviews in perfect bite-sized chunks to fit easily into your day. Philippa gets into all the fun questions, too, finding out what authors like to eat, where they want to go on holiday, and the gossip about bits of their life that you won't find anywhere else. You've got interviews to catch up on with Adele Parks, Abbie Mukaji, also David Baldacci, and ones coming up over the summer include exclusive chats with Karen Slaughter,

53:31Lee Child, and CJ Tudor. All that with some very speedy book reviews, getting right to the heart of all the newest stuff out there and the best ones for you to read. The Quick Book Reviews podcast is a light-hearted look at authors and what you might love about their new book. You can get two episodes a week, or wherever you get your podcasts. Just search for the Quick Book Reviews podcast. You've probably been putting off your will or trust for years. Not because you don't care, because hourly rates and a visit to an attorney's office haven't made it any easier. Legal Zoom changed that. Start your will or trust online today, with an independent attorney available to help if you want one without the hourly rates. When you need a legal hand, visit Legal Zoom. Legal Zoom provides access to independent attorneys and cell service tools. Legal Zoom is not a law firm, it does not provide legal advice. Do you remember in school when your teacher had a favorite of everything?

54:34A favorite marker, a favorite element, and yes, even a favorite student. Who wasn't me, so let's move on. I want to talk about their real favorite thing. Kleenex tissues. According to teacher lists, Kleenex is the number one facial tissue trusted by teachers. They're silky soft to prevent skin irritation. And now, with Kleenex snap and go, you can take them anywhere. Stock up on the ultimate classroom favorite. For whatever happens next, grab Kleenex.