Read and Write with Natasha
This podcast discusses writing life, reviews books, and interviews authors and industry professionals.
Read and Write with Natasha
Biblical Stories in Modern Times With Jean Blasberg
What happens when ancient biblical narratives collide with Wall Street ambition?
Author Jean Blasberg takes us on a fascinating journey through her literary trilogy, culminating in Daughter of a Promise- a bold, contemporary reimagining of the David and Bathsheba story set in the high-stakes world of investment banking.
The conversation reveals how Blasberg transforms this ancient tale of power imbalance into a relevant examination of workplace dynamics, consent, and unexpected love. Her Bathsheba (renamed Betsabe) is a young professional navigating a complex relationship with her powerful boss during the isolation of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Most compelling is Blasberg's decision to give voice to a character largely silenced in biblical tradition, crafting the novel as a wisdom letter from mother to future son.
We explore the challenges facing authors who incorporate biblical themes in today's publishing landscape.
The industry's reluctance to embrace religious references - despite their profound influence on Western literature - creates both obstacles and opportunities for writers willing to pursue unconventional projects.
Similarly, Blasberg shares her thoughtful approach to writing across cultural boundaries, working with sensitive editors while creating authentic characters outside her own experience.
For writers struggling with marketplace pressures versus artistic vision, Blasberg offers liberating advice:
"Write the story that's burning to come out." Her journey from traditional expectations to finding her unique voice serves as inspiration for creators navigating today's complex publishing environment.
Ready to discover how timeless stories can illuminate contemporary issues?
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➡️ P.S📘 If you love stories with mystery, identity, and a touch of the mystical...
You’ll want to read my new novel, Karma Unleashed—a supernatural suburban thriller set between two cultures.
📚 Grab it on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0FH6GZX6N
When I got a review on Goodreads that someone was really upset that Betsabe and David end up together in the end, that that was just not a satisfying ending. And so you know I don't necessarily worry about that review because I don't think that's my target reader. But you know, if you are upset with the way it ends, that's just the way it is.
Speaker 2:Hi friends, this is Read and Write with Natasha podcast. My name is Natasha Tynes and I'm an author and a journalist. In this channel I talk about the writing life, review books and interview authors. Hope you enjoy the journey. Hi everyone, and welcome to another episode of Read and Write with Natasha. I have with me today Jean Blasberg, who's the author of the award-winning novel Eden, and her work the Nine shares her thoughts on ambitious parenting, boarding school writing, secrets and more. Her latest novel, daughter of a Promise, is a modern retelling of the legend of David and Bathsheba, completing the thematic trilogy she began with Eden and the Nine. So, jean, so nice to see you and, as we were just chatting earlier, I love biblical stories and I'm excited to talk to you about them. First, jean, I want to ask you about the concept of a trilogy. When you first published your first book, eden, did you have in mind that you're going to write a trilogy, or this is just came as part of the process?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I had no idea. I thought if I wrote one book I would be satisfied. I did not have a trilogy in mind but as I continued to write and find some inspiration in biblical symbols or characters, I did notice that I kind of had a thematic thread going through my work the parent-child relationships, familial relationships that were so prevalent in Genesis but also amplified throughout the Torah and Old Testament. But then I started to feel like I've created wonderful setting and characters. So kind of like Elizabeth Stroud did with Olive Kittredge.
Speaker 1:I take some of the minor characters from earlier works and I made them major characters or I made them reappear and I had some revisitation of setting from my earlier books.
Speaker 1:So it was really something that came upon me during my writing of my second and third novels. That actually made it fun and I really think that as a reader I love to get into an author's work and notice things that feel like hidden treasures and little winks to me, that I get it from a previous work and I thought I would try to offer that to my readers and also make the writing process kind of fun. I've got now I feel like I've expanded my imaginary world from a summer beach community in Eden in Rhode Island, to this New England boarding school, milia in New Hampshire, and now with the third novel, daughter of a Promise, I've set it for the most part on Wall Street in New York City. So places that have people that kind of are in similar patterns in their life, from education to their summertime, to their professional lives, and it seemed to kind of complete this imaginary world. So I really enjoyed that.
Speaker 2:So your latest novel is the retelling of the story of David and Bathsheba. Can you? And when I first studied the story of David, and Bathsheba.
Speaker 1:It just occurred to me that this is such a modern story. It's really about an older man and a woman that he's very attracted to and who he summons, and a really imbalanced power dynamic in a relationship, and the rabbis and scholars have debated for years whether it was a consensual coming together, whether this first liaison, this sexual attraction, was one-sided or two-sided, and it's hard to know because the original text is really written in the third person with regard to David's point of view. So when I read it, not only did it feel modern, just like another Me Too story, but it also felt like the woman's voice was completely missing and I was interested in creating a story in her first person voice and getting her reactions to everything that happens. So a lot of biblical retellings. You know you were you and I were chatting earlier and you said you love the red tent. Anita Daymont took the story of Dina and set the story really in the biblical times, so wrote a character in the worldview and in the context of the life she led then.
Speaker 1:What I've done is taken the plot of the story and taken the characters from the story and made them modern, contemporary human beings in the year 2019 and put them in New York City and living on Wall Street. So my young Bathsheba her name is Betsabe and the boss, the head of investment banking or the head of mergers and acquisitions in the investment bank in which she's working, is David, and I've kind of taken the capitalist version of a king and a rainmaker and he's the one that has his eyes on this young woman and obviously it's not an appropriate thing to do in the workplace, but he has his eyes on her for quite a long time. Covid happens during the timeframe of my novel and kind of created an opportunity for them to sequester together and for this relationship to intensify and blossom in a way that really wouldn't have been possible under the scrutiny of society. So I've taken these characters, I've taken some liberties. In the original biblical story Bathsheba's married to a general in David's army, uriah the Hittite, and in my contemporary retelling she's got a very age-appropriate love interest, not a husband, but David deals with him, he works at the same firm and in a way is a general in David's army.
Speaker 1:I've introduced Nathan the prophet as Nathan, the chief counsel in the firm that gives David all of his advice and condemns him for when he does things wrong and the pregnancy that really starts David's scheming and his self-preservation instinct occurs and, as people might know, there's tragedy and loss that occurs as well. I've taken that tragedy and loss and made it the catalyst that really gives Beth my Bet Sabe wisdom at an early age. She's only 23. She learns quite a lot in this year. Her life is broken open to her internal intuition and her wisdom and I really end the year with her ability to do anything with her life. She's a strong, powerful woman who has many options and decides to well. I don't I won't give any spoilers, but for those who read the novel or for those who've read the Bible, know that she does end up with David and bears the future king of Israel in Solomon.
Speaker 2:Fascinating. So the first two novels did. They also have biblical references.
Speaker 1:They did, but they didn't parallel the plot the way the third one does. So in Eden. I'm playing with the idea of paradise and what is paradise? And I have a family with four generations of women who all spend summers in Eden, this summer home, and they do have the names of the biblical matriarchs, so it's Sarah, Rebecca, Rachel and then also Leah. So I do, I toy with the idea of paradise and then also the cyclical nature of families and the cyclical just cycles in nature, and then with the nine.
Speaker 1:It's the story of a woman, a very determined I call her a well-meaning helicopter mom. She sends her son off to this very fancy boarding school, thinking it will be the key to his future. And the story from the Bible that I use as a launching pad is the story of Hannah and Samuel, where Hannah had fertility problems, went to the temple to pray and pray for a pregnancy and bargained with God that if he were to give her a pregnancy and if she were to bear a son, she would turn him over to the temple as soon as he was weaned. And so I have a woman in contemporary times with fertility issues and raises child as if it's her job, with the idea that turning him over Well, and it's really the idea of the faith a parent has in turning their child over to the world at a somewhat young age.
Speaker 2:So, jean, what is what inspired you to write biblical stories Like, why biblical stories? Was it due to your upbringing or you felt a need to tell these stories?
Speaker 1:That's a great question, natasha. The story that really boiled inside of me that was the plot of Eden. I think it's been inside of me for a long time. It's really kind of my own Genesis story. And 20, I think it's 20 years ago now I converted to Judaism.
Speaker 1:Part of that conversion process was steeped in a lot of study and classwork, which I've continued to this day with the group at my temple in Boston who I became very close with, and we study Torah in an interesting way. We, our class, is called a Midrash class, where we're actually answering the questions in the white spaces of the stories or asking you know, for example, what did Bathsheba think when this powerful king summoned her to come? We, you know, we we studied the Torah for um with an eye towards the missing information, and so I was in the process of formulating this novel, both in my head and, I think, in just early drafts on paper, and I was in the process of studying, and I've always loved literature. That adds the complexity of being in conversation with earlier foundational texts. The Bible is just a shortcut to a much deeper character study and or a situation or a trope, if you will.
Speaker 1:So I saw in as I was drafting Eden and Eden wasn't the original title all sorts of ways I thought it would be richer and more interesting if I did use some allusions to like the grander universe and the grander canon of work, and I do also think that the Bible, and in my study I felt comfort in kind of a perverse way, that the families are fairly dysfunctional and the familial relationships in Genesis are dysfunctional, and that we've been struggling as humans for such a long time and never quite perfecting what it is to have a relationship and that is what the definition of humanity or being human is is to try to do better but have self-compassion for our imperfectness. So in my desire to write about parent-child relationships or familial relationships, I saw no better reference point than maybe one of our earliest pieces of literature in Western civilization that has to do with writing about family relationships. I think I've answered that in a really long-winded way.
Speaker 2:But I mean I love it as we're. You know, I'm obsessed with stories from you know the Old Testament, because I studied them growing up. And which takes me to the other question, which is what was the reception of? You know, when you pitch your story as a biblical story and how people are accepting it, where many people are moving away from religion and at the same time, I noticed there is a higher acceptance of, at least currently of, let's say, greek mythology and literature, and it's, I mean, I don't know, I didn't do a study, but they seem to be more popular than biblical stories. And how do you tackle that? Yeah, when people's like, oh, I don't want to read about the Bible, or oh, come on, you know, like how people think of it. So I'm just curious.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you're spot on with your question, natasha. So in talking to agents and people in the publishing industry, I was advised early on not to use the word Bible, religion or biblical. And I would also say that a high percentage of my readers don't even click with the biblical references and when I attended book groups maybe 50 or 60 book clubs for Eden I'd show them and go through the biblical references and it would be like a light bulb all of a sudden going off with all these people who'd already read the book. So in terms of the publishing industry and the reception, the answer was to just don't use the word Bible or religion. That it's a red flag and a turnoff which I found sort of disappointing. I got a five-star Kirkus review with the with the poll quote this is a sagacious and wonderful retelling of a biblical love story and I decided to put that right on my front cover. So, being with she Writes Press and a press that I'm really in partnership with my publisher, I can do that. I think if I was with a traditional publisher they may have said let's not use that biblical word. But and I've also had people say oh, that's interesting, you bring your faith into your writing and I wouldn't say I'm bringing my faith into my writing, unless you consider Judaism to be the study of texts which it sort of is. I'm bringing in a very early foundational piece of literature and that is how I'm treating the Old Testament or the Bible.
Speaker 1:When I was actually in middle school I went to a great school. We read the story Bible just in order to get kind of those foundational stories and plot lines down so that we would pick them up if we were reading James Joyce or Herman Melville. So I'm very grateful for that early understanding that a lot of literature references the Bible. But I've also recently taught a course called Making Ancient Myths your Own in which we've examined the prevalence and kind of the resurgence of retellings and primarily retellings of Greek mythology. They are very hot right now both in theater and in literature. You've got Hadestown and you've got Circe and all sorts of visitations of Greek mythology which I don't think is as verboten as the Bible. I mean we don't have to look much further than the news to see how the Old Testament for some might feel like just one arm's length distance from a really lightning rod topic. I don't see it that way. But you know, publishing is a business and they stay away from too many risky things.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean I think with also the Greek mythology there is the children's series Percy Jackson and introduced a lot of kids as well to Greek mythology, and I know it from my children, and so in school they teach Greek mythology right.
Speaker 2:So I remember my son had to do a whole project about Greek mythology and you know, maybe this is kind of a controversial question to ask, which is why aren't they also teaching biblical stories, not in terms of religion but as terms of literature, because literature is still influenced by biblical stories and even the jargons that we use now. For example, I saw the writing on the wall which is the story from you know, daniel, or you know, like David and Goliath or others, the belly of the whale, yeah, like Noah, and all of that, and I realized that the younger generation, they don't know anything about these stories and there is a shift to not tell these stories for fear of offending right, but at the same time they're missing out on the literature aspect of it that affected a lot of parts of the civilization, both Eastern and Western. So you know what's your say about this.
Speaker 1:Well, I mean I completely agree with you. I mean you can even look at somebody's interpretation of the separation of church and state, right? I mean not wanting to mess with the gray area, and I completely support the idea that you miss so much of the symbolism when you're reading some of the great classics. Um, if you don't have, if you don't have a foothold on some of those references, then again, you know, we could talk about whether the classics are taught that much anymore in school, because there's just a movement towards, you know, a certain history being of a white or like the Western civilization. What's typically been taught should be completely rethought, and you know I'm open to those ideas as well. I'm just saying that might explain some of the trend.
Speaker 1:I'm recently rereading Middlemarch with a class and you know both references to mythology and to the Old Testament just prevail, and George Eliot really does use what I talked about earlier, a shorthand for her themes, by referencing stories and characters outside her work that are in the greater canon, and it's so effective. But you have to wonder how many readers are going to make the time to look up every reference and and to not have somewhat of an idea going into the literature it's. It's a shame, um, you know, you can't really read James Joyce, or, um, I would argue, you know, even like Toni Morrison. And there's just so many great writers who are alluding to the story of Exodus, or to the story you know, to the New Testament as well. So I'm with you, natasha. I don't know how we start the campaign, but we want to make the Bible popular again.
Speaker 2:So what are you working on next? Are you going to continue with the biblical theme or completely different?
Speaker 1:Yeah, so a minor character in Daughter of a Promise is Tamar, who she's called Tamara in my novel. But she's David's only daughter and she has quite a story and a story of an upsetting story, I think the second half of David's life. He does a few upsetting things, both in terms of his approach to meeting Bathsheba and also his treatment of his daughter. So I've been writing fiction around that character and trying to see if I can do her story justice in a contemporary setting. But I'm also working on a lot of nonfiction. I don't know if I've told you, natasha, I recently moved from Boston where I raised my children and we sold our home, and I'm out here in Wisconsin starting up a regenerative farming system, and so I've become fascinated with this journey on the land and also just our nation's food system, and so I'm writing a lot of nonfiction, both about my experience but also about transparency and the fragility of the food system that we've got in this country.
Speaker 2:Oh, wow, that's fascinating. I was hoping you were going to say I'm working on the story of Samson and Delilah, because this is this is this is what I always obsess about. Like she made him, yeah, she. I mean, if somebody writes a story about how he cuts his hair and you think that's me like, imagine all the the scenes that you can come up with.
Speaker 1:All right, I will study that story and tell you if I'm inspired. Or not.
Speaker 2:But yeah, that's a great one, all right, so what was the reception of the readers, because people always have strong opinion, and did you get any? You know, as, as authors, you always get the positive and the negative. What was something that, um, really annoyed you from the comments?
Speaker 1:I have. I have two things I want to tell you one thing that really annoyed me and one or not annoyed me but kind of made me like scratch my head, and one that I found, and some of the response that I just found, so gratifying. First of all, being my third novel and taking a really long time to write it and the publishing landscape being so different and kind of in turmoil, I feel so grateful that this book is out in the world and that I've completed this arc of my kind of this fictional world. It feels really satisfying to have completed what I think is the best I could do and something that's been reviewed well. Now, as I told you, it's a biblical retelling, so I have the benefit of a plot that already exists and I've figured out a way to tell it in a contemporary way, but I really did try to hold true to the plot. So one thing that was a little bit eye-raising was when I got a review on Goodreads that someone was really upset that Betsabe and David end up together in the end, that that was just not a satisfying ending. And so you know I don't necessarily worry about that review because I don't think that's my target reader. But you know, if you are upset with the way it ends, that's just the way it is. But if you are upset with the way it ends, that's just the way it is. And then a very gratifying review is somebody who really understood what I was trying to do.
Speaker 1:So this novel plays out over the course of 12 months, from June 2019 to June 2020. But my character, betsabe, is telling about the year from some point in the future and the way she's doing it. And the reason she's doing it is in a letter to her unborn child. She's now pregnant with the baby who will become Solomon, but in my story his name is Saul. So she's now writing a letter of wisdom to this future king and to have several reviewers understand that reference, in that her future son will hold the mantle of wisdom, will be the author of the wisdom writings.
Speaker 1:You know where did he get that wisdom? In the Bible, it's stated that God gave him the wisdom writings. You know where did he get that wisdom? In the? In the Bible it's well, it's stated that God gave him the wisdom, and my preposition in writing this is that his mother gave him most of his wisdom. So it's a listen to your mother kind of Interesting, but that that several people understood what I was trying to do there. I was worried. Maybe it was a little subtle. It was possibly one of those things that would go flying over someone's head because it's really hashed out in the first chapter. So you know, sometimes you're reading along and you don't you have to go back and reread the first chapter. It just felt like people got it throughout the book what I was trying to do in terms of giving pearls of wisdom to the future. Solomon.
Speaker 2:Do you want to always stay true to the biblical story and not for fear of I guess you know people being offended Because, like in the red tent that we mentioned, she changed the story of Dina, even like her relationship with I forgot her name the guy that she in Dina's version she falls in love with him right, while in the Bible it's a different narrative. Bible it's a different narrative and so you always want to stay true to the biblical story or you think it's okay to just kind of play around.
Speaker 1:No, in a retelling, I think you have the opportunity to stay close and then surprise the reader with a different ending or a different take on things. I don't think there's a rule. In fact, I had a teacher who said she appreciates retellings that have a lighter touch instead of a heavier touch. For me personally, I wanted to stay true to this story because what I found really compelling was the sustenance of this relationship between an older man and a woman that was probably felt compelled to be in the relationship with him. Yet the relationship endures and they stay together when they don't necessarily have to anymore.
Speaker 1:And I wanted to look at kind of that gray area of consent and I wanted to examine what is private in a relationship that people on the outside world don't quite understand, and so I was determined to keep my story as close to the original as possible. I think having writing the story and then having Bathsheba just say, hey, david, it's been great, but see you later, like that, that could have been an ending that a lot of young women in the year 2024 would have been like go girl, you know. But that's not what happens, and I think the more difficult thing is to examine and write about something that we wouldn't completely expect, and why people stay together and what is love, and is love something that helps you endure versus kind of that state of ecstasy? So those are some of the questions and the more difficult things I wanted to play with.
Speaker 2:Were you at any moment worried, you know, in the time of Me Too worried about like being canceled or like. You know that you're not going through with the current narrative? You know you're sort of against that. You know, swimming against the tide, yeah Well when.
Speaker 1:I showed a draft, I went to, I attended a fellowship for a year in which I revised and worked on this novel and at the end of it we had meetings with agents who had read a full draft and gave us some feedback from an industry point of view. Draft and gave us some feedback from an industry point of view. And at the time that this woman was reading my novel, roe v Wade was being overturned. So we were at the stage where we think we've made a lot of progress. We've, you know, just when you think you've made so much progress, it kind of rolls back on you and it's a how many times do I have to get beaten up? Kind of feeling. So you know, there was Me Too and I think it made a lot of progress for women.
Speaker 1:But some women didn't entirely, entirely adhere to that idea that they were completely safe to tell their stories and my young character didn't completely relate with the more staunch feminists at her company and what I was more worried about getting canceled for was for writing from the point of view of a young woman who wasn't of my heritage. So my main character her name is Betsabe Ruiz and she's from a family in South Florida, in Miami, that has a Cuban heritage, she's third generation, but still she's not a white person and I was writing from her point of view because, for many reasons, if you want me to answer that question, I will, but I, if anything, I was worried about getting canceled, for it was for assuming, um the point of view of a person who wasn't didn't look exactly like me yeah, which which is is being taken to the extreme, if you want to hear my humble opinion.
Speaker 2:But you know, because we saw what happened with American Dirt. Are you referring to the American Dirt saga? Do you think this is still going on? Do you think you know the objection to writing from a different perspective? I mean, where do you draw the line? Can you write from a perspective of a policeman where you're not a policeman? Can you? I mean, if you for me, if you open that Pandora's box when you're a fiction writer, you cannot close it. And who can write? Who Can you, as a person of color, write from a perspective of a white person and the other way around it? You know, like there's who sets these, these cancellation rules? Who's the cancellation committee that goes through that?
Speaker 1:Right. I took a lot of care with my main character and I knew that this was going to be a real risk I was taking, but I was determined to do it and do it well. And I think the answer is to create a complete individual and not and and have my individual have an experience and not be speaking for a greater community or population or any type of like. I don't know greater situation than this one fictional character. And I did hire an editor who specialized in cultural sensitivity and we talked a lot about what I was trying to do and what was the most appropriate way for her to express herself. So I did a lot of research and took great care with my character and I do think that if you do it well, it's being done. But I would have to say the publishing industry is really on the lookout for authors who can tell the story of minority experience or minority populations from the point of view of those people, and I'm all you know, I applaud that.
Speaker 1:I applaud the proliferation of authors who are being published, who were never published before, and I hope that that continues. And I hope that that continues, but not at the detriment of everybody trying to walk in other people's shoes and to have the compassion, both in writing and reading, about situations outside our own situations. So, yeah, I think if you're going to do it, you have to do it with great care, with great care, and yeah. So anyway, it's a little bit of a. That's what I was walking on eggshells about, more going into this process than worried about the biblical story, and, to tell you the truth, those two things in combination were probably a great reason why I wasn't the most attractive, my book wasn't the most attractive for the traditional publishing houses, and why I am going and kind of take taking the onus on myself and my own reputation with she Writes Press, because they love the book and it. They're all about stories that kind of the big five probably has no interest in for one reason or another, like this one.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, I heard that a lot on my podcast and you know many authors are going through alternative platforms for publishing for the same reason. But so, before we conclude, do you have any final, let's say piece of advice for someone who wants to try something different in publishing and maybe are worried to do so? I interviewed an author who deleted 100 pages of his manuscript because it was set in a country that he's not related to in terms of his heritage. And I read the book and I told him that there was a big hole in your book because I didn't know what happened in that country. So he was so afraid of being canceled that he I personally think that you know deprived the author, the reader, from these kind of experiences. So what do you tell someone who wants to take this risk but are really worried about the onslaught of online attacks?
Speaker 1:Well, I think you have to. It's all in the context of what an author's goals are. So this is my third novel. My first two novels were very well received and I have a platform of readers and an audience that I felt pretty comfortable would be excited for a third novel from me. I again, my goals are not necessarily the same commercial goals that one might have if they were a debut author seeking out a traditional book deal. My goals are more to connect with my readers and to create art that I feel really excited about and feel like it's a contribution and that there's nothing out there that kind of already exists contribution and that there's nothing out there that kind of already exists.
Speaker 1:So, with that said, I would write the absolute best manuscript you can. In any case, if it's going to get published whether it's through a hybrid press or self-publishing or traditional publishing it's going to have your name on it, it's going to be out there forever and it has to be the absolute best. So don't delete a hundred pages because you're nervous that people will kind of cancel you because of it. Figure out a solution and fully flesh out your setting and your manuscript. You really even if you feel like you're being cast aside from the traditional presses. Don't use that as an excuse to not have your manuscript be the best it can absolutely be. You know the environment doesn't need trees cut down to print words on paper that aren't the absolute, absolute best they can be. And there are just so many books coming out now and so many titles in the world that you really won't ever find a market or a readership unless it's the absolute best it can be.
Speaker 1:So, that said, I think you just have to be true to yourself and create the art that excites you and not really be too concerned with your audience. You can hear all the little voices in your head Well, this won't sell, this won't go over, and that's really limiting. If you're creating art, I think you have to have a different voice, an authentic voice, and really like to be true to yourself is to not be mainstream and to write the story that's burning to come out. Write the story that's burning to come out. Obviously, during the editor, the editing and revision process, you can smooth some things out and you can make some choices around identity of characters, but first and foremost, I think, is being true to your own art and kind of your, if you have.
Speaker 1:If you're going to spend the time that it takes to write a novel, it has to really come from the heart and has to be a product of I don't know sacrifice in a way and surrender, and so I don't. I would say to get rid of that commercial marketplace point of view while you're writing and really write what you believe is the best you can do in the way you want to express it, all those golden nuggets that come out when you do that will be preserved in the final work. You can go back and edit and make revisions as you see fit, but I wouldn't worry about the marketplace until you're done and you've created the absolute best thing you have in you.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's very good advice. So before we conclude, Jean, how do people can reach you? What's the best way to reach you?
Speaker 1:Okay, so my name is Jean Blasberg and my website is jeanblasbergcom. I've got links to my books there, as well as on social media. I'm Jean Blasberg author and on Substack you can find me at Jean Blasberg. So my website is really the best place because it's got links to all those other places and I'm pretty active on everything.
Speaker 2:Ah, cool. Yeah, I'm pretty active on Substack. I love it. I'll add you now, All right. So thank you very much, jean. This has been amazing and fascinating discussion and I wish you the best of luck and for anyone who's listening or watching. Thank you for joining us for another episode of Read and Write with Natasha and, until we meet again, thank you for tuning in to Read and Write with Natasha. I'm your host, natasha Tynes. If today's episode inspired you in any way, please take the time to review the podcast. Remember to subscribe and share this podcast with fellow book lovers. Until next time. Happy reading, happy writing.
