0:04

Gaze reading, where the greats drop by. Trendy authors tell us all the who, what, and why. Anyone can listen, cause we're spoiler free. Gaze reading. From poets and stars, to book club picks. Where the curious minds can get their fix. So you say you're not gay, well that's okay. There's something for everyone. Gaze reading. Hello. Welcome to gaze reading. What's the T I'm your host, Jason Blitman. And on today's episode, I have some tea with author Abdi Nazemian talking to me about his new book desert. Echos. Our new series, what's the T. Is others talking to us about their books. Describing their book in three words, using the letters T E and a. It's been super fun so far. And thank you for being on this journey. If you like, what you're hearing share us with your friends, and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. And. All of that is greatly appreciated. It gets us on more people's radar. Make sure you're following gays, reading on Instagram at gaze reading. We have a giveaway for desert echoes happening right now for the next few days. So make sure to check that out. And I have to say, if you ever are looking for a teacup. Say on your podcast that you don't have a cute teacup. I'm so grateful. To some dear friends, Lauren, Ashley, Meghan. Who have all sent really beautiful teacups my way. So that I can have fantastic teacups and essentially props for my tea time with these authors. So thank you for being here and here is my. What's the T. With Abdi

Jason Blitman: 1:53

Do you have a cup

Abdi Nazemian: 1:54

do. That is the theme,

Jason Blitman: 1:56

I, it's so funny because I don't have a cup of tea, however, on the first episode of this, I complained that I don't have a nice teacup.

Abdi Nazemian: 2:09

Oh, no.

Jason Blitman: 2:10

of my best friends sent me a gift that literally arrived 15 minutes ago.

Abdi Nazemian: 2:17

And it's a cute teacup?

Jason Blitman: 2:18

It's a Jonathan Adler teacup!

Abdi Nazemian: 2:20

Oh my god. That's much cuter than mine. I don't know what, mine just says Creative Fundraising Advisors. I have much better teacups. It's for some reason I picked this

Jason Blitman: 2:32

Listen, it's cute! It looks like it was handmade.

Abdi Nazemian: 2:35

It does, I know.

Jason Blitman: 2:37

This one was made in Portugal.

Abdi Nazemian: 2:41

Ooh.

Jason Blitman: 2:42

very expensive, but Jonathan Adler was my first guest gay reader on the show.

Abdi Nazemian: 2:46

No way. I love that.

Jason Blitman: 2:48

And so it's both a mic, it's an homage to my first guest gay reader and to tea time. So

Abdi Nazemian: 2:54

I

Jason Blitman: 2:55

it hasn't been washed yet. I literally just got it. And so it's just a prop for right now.

Abdi Nazemian: 3:01

love it.

Jason Blitman: 3:02

Abdi, how are you today?

Abdi Nazemian: 3:04

I'm great.

Jason Blitman: 3:06

I love your big fiddle leaf behind you.

Abdi Nazemian: 3:09

Oh, that's a hat. No, I'm kidding.

Jason Blitman: 3:14

Where did you get it? I need it. It would be an amazing ad.

Abdi Nazemian: 3:18

My husband got that fiddle leaf, and it's very healthy, which is a miracle.

Jason Blitman: 3:23

This is my hot tip for the day. You know, Who has fantastic plants, Ikea.

Abdi Nazemian: 3:31

Oh, interesting.

Jason Blitman: 3:33

they're live and they also have fake plants. So I think most people think they're fake plants, but they have a real living plant section and I got a couple of fiddle leafs from them and they were like 20 bucks and they're expensive plants.

Abdi Nazemian: 3:48

Are they? See, I wouldn't even know. Now I'm married to someone who really likes to do all the house stuff. He's very into home decor and all that stuff. So I haven't thought about buying furniture or plans or anything like that. I just love that he does it and everything looks beautiful.

Jason Blitman: 4:03

don't have to worry about it.

Abdi Nazemian: 4:05

And I write books.

Jason Blitman: 4:06

And you write books, including

Abdi Nazemian: 4:08

it's just cool. Yes, there it is. Yes, the Desert Echoes, the desert where we met.

Jason Blitman: 4:15

The desert where we met. I know.

Abdi Nazemian: 4:16

think A fun thing I haven't shared about the cover for Desert Echoes is that when I first got the art for it, I sent my editor an email freaking out with delighted glee that the faces, there's three figures in it and they have no facial features. And I was like, it's so cool. It's so mysterious. It's so like ghostly. It speaks to the themes of the book. And then I immediately get an email back and it's Oh, this is a work in progress. They're going to add faces. And I was like, And then, but actually my reaction inspired them to keep it as is, and so they left it the way it was, which is unfinished and mysterious and odd, and I think it really captures the spirit of the book and is unsettling. The main character has one eyebrow and nothing else. It's really cool to me.

Jason Blitman: 5:04

I think when there are specific images of people on covers, I think it is almost unfair and a disit's unfair to the reader and a disservice to the author because let us use our imagination. And so when there's a little bit of guidance for our imagination and yet nothing fully fleshed out. We get to fill in the blanks.

Abdi Nazemian: 5:26

The artists often ask for like comps. They're always like, what actors do you imagine in these roles? Send us comps before we make the art. And I'm always like, there really are no actors for all these Iranian roles. Here's a picture of me when I was 17. Here's my dad when he was 17.

Jason Blitman: 5:40

Hashtag the problem.

Abdi Nazemian: 5:42

Exactly.

Jason Blitman: 5:43

here. All right, Abdi, what's the tea? Tell me about Desert Echoes.

Abdi Nazemian: 5:47

The T is Desert Echoes is my sixth novel. My fifth YA novel. I'm very committed to writing YA, very queer, very Iranian, very. Hopefully ambitious YA that lots of adults love, too. And this one is about Cam, who's an LA based teenager, and it takes place in two different time periods, his freshman year and his junior year. His freshman year, he falls madly in love with this mysterious new student named Ash, who's an artist who loves to disappear into the desert, and they take a trip to Joshua Tree together with Ash's family, and on that trip, Ash disappears. It's so precious. And in his junior year, Cam's been grieving for two years. There are still no answers to what happened to Ash. No one knows what happened. And Cam's dealing with a lot of guilt, grief, shame that he may have had something to do with it. And he takes a school trip back with his best friend to Joshua Tree. And there he's faced with all the memories and the healing begin.

Jason Blitman: 6:45

Do you have three words to describe your book or no?

Abdi Nazemian: 6:48

I was told the three words have to begin with T E N A.

Jason Blitman: 6:50

them?

Abdi Nazemian: 6:51

I thought of them and now I feel like I forgot them. But yeah. I'll think of them again.

Jason Blitman: 6:56

I have three that I would put on you, but I want to hear yours.

Abdi Nazemian: 6:59

Mine, I was gonna say for T, I was gonna say teen and maybe teen angst, if that's allowed to be a word. I mean, It is obviously YA. It's about being a teen. It's about that feeling of first love. It's about the angst of first love and also first grief, whether grief looks like a breakup, death, but that first broken heart. So I think just that word, teen angst was my T. My, my E was, oh, this is so silly, but my E was just going to be everything because really so much of this book is about, it was inspired by me going to Joshua Tree when it was the first summer my kids went to sleep away camp and I felt very lonely. And it was also the summer that the Supreme Court started to, Go real conservative and start taking Rights in alarming ways and I went to the desert on July 4th weekend Which was actually a very empty time to go especially since it was a heat wave so it was like a hundred ten degrees and I really the whole book came to me in this wave of I suppose like inspiration the muse some kind of spiritual awakening and I think a lot of the book is about like expansiveness about living in the questions about opening yourself up to not knowing any everything to spirituality. And I think we live in a very like a world that wants every question answered these days, like a world where everyone thinks that they can hold all the knowledge of the world in the palm of their hand. But really what interests me is like how beautiful it is not to know and to let go a little. That's

Jason Blitman: 8:29

It's interesting. I was talking to an author recently about just binary thinking and how things live in a binary world because in that way, there's the possibility of being right? Because you're right or wrong. And if there is an answer, then you can be right. You know? So I think people want answers because, you

Abdi Nazemian: 8:48

People want answers. Yes, people want binary thinking. People want, people definitely want to be

Jason Blitman: 8:53

Mm hmm.

Abdi Nazemian: 8:54

And this book, a lot of it is about, there was a quote by Rilke that really inspired me from Letters to a Young Poet where, I'll misquote it, but he basically says we can never have the answers. What we have to do is live the questions and love the questions. And maybe through doing that, we grow into the answers. But, To me, that's such a useful quote as we live in this world and to really love the thing is to love the questions and to love the path. And, it's so important. You can't, we can't be so result oriented.

Jason Blitman: 9:25

Yeah. It's funny, I'm not a religious person at all, but I think that a lot of religion stems from questions that are either unanswerable or not answered, and that's the point. And I feel like we've lost that.

Abdi Nazemian: 9:38

I'm not at all I don't belong to an organized religion, but a lot of this book was inspired by me going to Al Anon. It deals with themes of addiction as well in the book, Cam has a father who's an addict and he starts to recognize his own patterns. And I resisted Al Anon for a long time, I think because of the higher power piece and the God being such a big part of all 12 step programs. And once I had this kind of awakening and let go, I came to realize how unhealthy it was for me to try and control everything and to not have faith in a higher power. And I think it's something that. As a queer community, we need to talk about more because I think a lot of us feel traumatized by what religions have done to us but in the absence of them, we lose our spiritual core and we seek to control everything and we slowly destroy ourselves in the process. So, you know, We have to find a new way of talking about these things.

Jason Blitman: 10:35

Mm hmm. What's your A?

Abdi Nazemian: 10:38

My name was just going to be my name, Abdi.

Jason Blitman: 10:42

There are so many A's!

Abdi Nazemian: 10:44

But look,

Jason Blitman: 10:45

It could also be Ash.

Abdi Nazemian: 10:47

oh, it could be ash. Of course, one of the characters in the book. Only I said that because obviously these, all my books are very personal. This one is very personal. It's not about me, but it is inspired by my first boyfriend, the relationship I had with him, the grief I felt when he died, the feelings of guilt I felt over the fact that my life was ruined. Was going in this beautiful direction and how could he be gone and I'd be thriving You know that survivors guilt that so many people who know grief know all too well. So yeah, I mean I poured myself into it So that's my a and I stand

Jason Blitman: 11:22

I love it. All three of my letters have come up in this conversation so far. So mine were trauma, echoes and addiction.

Abdi Nazemian: 11:31

Ooh Yeah, yours better

Jason Blitman: 11:34

No, that's a No, yours are great too. It's not a competition.

Abdi Nazemian: 11:41

Trauma see you're right. It's not a competition.

Jason Blitman: 11:44

it's not.

Abdi Nazemian: 11:45

Yeah

Jason Blitman: 11:48

okay, I have another important question that's completely unrelated. If the book was called Dessert Echoes, what would it be about? It's Bodhi's

Abdi Nazemian: 12:00

It's actually funny because the character of Bodhi who's cam's best friend and the other he's In the triangle of the book, the other important character is an aspiring chef who's always talking about food and reality shows. So I feel like Dessert Echoes is really Bodhi's

Jason Blitman: 12:13

book.

Abdi Nazemian: 12:14

I have so many desserts of choice, but my true dessert of choice is ice cream. And if I were for this book, I would certainly, oh yeah, ice cream all the way. Ice cream over everything. Plus maybe a scone, but I consider a scone like breakfast, not dessert. But it is,

Jason Blitman: 12:29

No, you're right. You're totally right. And yet, but it's also dessert. Like a muffin is cake.

Abdi Nazemian: 12:34

it's both. Yeah, muffin is basically cake. But no, I would pick I would pick Persian ice cream, which is the best. It's got like saffron and rose and pistachio. It's very fragrant. Oh God, see, I can't even talk. When I say the word very now, I just hear that very demure, very mindful thing and it's driving. I can't even say the word very anymore without

Jason Blitman: 12:55

for her.

Abdi Nazemian: 12:56

I mean, Good for her, except for the fact that everyone around me actually, I think our son has stopped now, but for a long time after that, he said every, he said that. 20 times a day, and I'm like, oh my god, I just hear it in my head non stop, Gary

Jason Blitman: 13:08

things are blips though. They really are. Like. You look at something like Pokemon Go, it was around for eight minutes. It was like everyone was doing it and then it was

Abdi Nazemian: 13:18

Yeah, and then people started to disappear into oceans and deserts and bang into walls because they were following their

Jason Blitman: 13:24

Right.

Abdi Nazemian: 13:25

That could be what this book is about. Ash is found playing Pokemon Go.

Jason Blitman: 13:29

isn't that the guy's name in Pokemon?

Abdi Nazemian: 13:33

textbooks know that, I don't know.

Jason Blitman: 13:33

I think it is. I think that's the main

Abdi Nazemian: 13:36

don't know.

Jason Blitman: 13:36

name in Pokemon. Oh, how weird, that's my

Abdi Nazemian: 13:40

Divert Echoes cracks me up. That is really funny. What's your dessert? Do you have a dessert of

Jason Blitman: 13:45

I am a cookie guy. Give me a chocolate chip cookie.

Abdi Nazemian: 13:48

I don't like cookies. I like reject almost all cookies. Is

Jason Blitman: 13:53

My issue with ice cream is today, in this day and age, they serve you like a softball size. No matter where you go, there's no small amount of ice cream that's served to you.

Abdi Nazemian: 14:05

Oh, that's interesting. I mean, Certainly if you go to like other countries, that's still, they're still smaller.

Jason Blitman: 14:10

Yes. Here in this, in the, around the corner, anywhere I were to go get ice cream, I'm just like, I don't want this much ice cream.

Abdi Nazemian: 14:16

Interesting. No, I just, I scream over everything. Yeah, cookies. There's some cookies I like, but in general, very low on my list.

Jason Blitman: 14:23

Okay.

Abdi Nazemian: 14:24

Very

Jason Blitman: 14:25

So we, if we were in the story Dessert Echoes together, we wouldn't be competing for the same dessert.

Abdi Nazemian: 14:32

No, not at

Jason Blitman: 14:33

So we can do it together. If it was like a competition.

Abdi Nazemian: 14:36

would

Jason Blitman: 14:37

If that was a competition and we were in like a Big Brother style.

Abdi Nazemian: 14:42

be really fun. But I feel like it could, a lot of the book could still stay. It would be about Bodhi. It could still have lots of Lana Del Rey references the way it would just be maybe different ones. She sings about soft ice cream in Salvatore. I quote that left and right.

Jason Blitman: 14:56

percent. So speaking of Lana Del Rey, this is she might as well be a character in the book. You have, I wait, you, did you see what you just did?

Abdi Nazemian: 15:06

I slurped my tea.

Jason Blitman: 15:07

And you went like this.

Abdi Nazemian: 15:09

I know I

Jason Blitman: 15:10

You literally put your binky up. I was like that.

Abdi Nazemian: 15:12

I'm like I have a little bit of Maggie Smith in me. I'm a Dame.

Jason Blitman: 15:16

it was just I, it was perfect. It was

Abdi Nazemian: 15:18

Have you seen Tea with the Dames?

Jason Blitman: 15:20

Have it? No, you know what? It's like sitting in my queue as want to

Abdi Nazemian: 15:25

must see Tea with the

Jason Blitman: 15:26

Yeah. Okay. What I was going to ask you is you clearly, there it is. You clearly have such deep admiration for your pop queens and pop icons.

Abdi Nazemian: 15:37

This one's Lana. I'm working on a book that's very Donna Summer infused at the moment. Yeah,

Jason Blitman: 15:43

summer?

Abdi Nazemian: 15:48

no, but it's

Jason Blitman: 15:49

It's about to.

Abdi Nazemian: 15:50

interesting how your brain works. I thought you were going to ask if it takes place in the seventies, like the dessert desert Donna's summer. I didn't even think about that.

Jason Blitman: 15:57

So stupid.

Abdi Nazemian: 15:59

I love it. Yeah, look, music is so important to me. Art is so important to me growing up as a kid who really didn't fit into my environment. I felt like the escape that the arts gave me, the empowerment really meant a lot. And I do infuse it into a lot of my books and also like this book was very inspired by my first, romantic relationship and my first boyfriend. I really bonded over Tori Amos and that was one of the things that really brought us together and that really like vulnerable connection that music helps people make in a fast time. Like when someone loves an artist as much as you and it gives you this common language to discuss your vulnerabilities and dreams and fears and I wanted to put that in there and I think for this generation and certainly for me, like Lana is that artist right now. And I really felt like the characters of Cam and Ash, like they meet in their high school choir when they both write down the same relatively obscure Lana song as a request for the choir to sing. And I just felt like a teenager seeing another teenager put that song down would immediately feel like. I have to know you, who are you? And I just love that. I love exploring what art means to characters. Music makes the people come together. Else have you seen the bourgeoisie and the rebel come together? I ask you that.

Jason Blitman: 17:19

You're right, music, it makes the world go round, as we all learn in elementary school. Everyone go get your copy of, Desert Echoes. It's out now. And depending on when you're listening to this, if you're listening to it around the time this episode is coming out, you can go to the Gay's Reading Instagram page and we're doing a giveaway. We're hosting a

Abdi Nazemian: 17:38

Oh, yay. Thank you.

Jason Blitman: 17:40

on over at Gay's Reading. Abdi, thank you for being here. Thank you for joining me for tea.

Abdi Nazemian: 17:46

Thank you for having me. I actually am drinking tea. It's ginger tea. It's very

Jason Blitman: 17:50

Is it? It's good for your health too.

Abdi Nazemian: 17:53

It's good for your health. I'd rather have it with a scone and maybe with Maggie Smith and Judy Dench next to me, but they're not here.

Jason Blitman: 17:59

Next time.

Abdi Nazemian: 18:00

Next time. That's the tea.

Jason Blitman: 18:02

That is the D. Oh my god, it's so stupid. So happy to see you.

Abdi Nazemian: 18:07

So good to see you. This was fun.

18:09

Abdi. Thank you so much for being here. Everyone. Go check out. Desert echoes. And again, go follow gaze. Reading on Instagram AQI is reading because we have a giveaway for desert echoes happening right now that you don't want to mess. Have a wonderful rest of your day. Thanks everyone buys the next week