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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.

Yeti Stereo Microphone: 0:33

Hello, and welcome to gaze reading. What's the T I'm your host, Jason it is Sunday. It is time for afternoon tea, because why not? We have two guests on the show today. Hannah Silva talking to me about her book, my child, the algorithm, and then Tom peon talking about his book, something close to nothing. Both of their bios are in the show notes. You could head on over to our YouTube channel. And watch this episode over there, as well as a bunch of our other episodes, you can like it. Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. And be the first to know whenever a new episode drops, make sure to follow us over on social media.@gaysreading. We have new giveaways all the time. There's always something fun going on. And because it is the holiday time. a fantastic gift. For someone you love Is a subscription to aardvark book club. And I am so excited to be partnering with aardvark book lab to provide an exclusive introductory discount. New members in the United States can join today. Enter the code gaze reading at checkout and get their first book for only$4 plus free shipping that's aardvark bookclub.com and use the code gaze reading all one word links in the show notes And welcome to gays reading Hannah and Tom.

Jason Blitman: 1:54

well, Hannah Silva, I am so excited that you're here joining me for tea, what I will call tea, but really it's coffee.

Hannah Silva: 2:01

It's your morning. However, it's my afternoon. So I've got tea.

Jason Blitman: 2:05

So you're like, properly

Hannah Silva: 2:07

I'm serious about this. Yeah, you said tea? I've got tea.

Jason Blitman: 2:11

I know, this is so perfect. Can tell me, how do you take your tea?

Hannah Silva: 2:14

A whole variety of different ways. It depends how good the tea is. Similarly to coffee, like if it's really good, I'll have black. But if it's, if I'm having black, then it'll be weak, but a proper nice tea leaf, yeah.

Jason Blitman: 2:27

you can like

Hannah Silva: 2:27

yeah, but otherwise on a daily basis, I'm just, builder's tea. Do you call it that there?

Jason Blitman: 2:32

I don't

Hannah Silva: 2:33

You don't know, no. Builder's tea. It just means it just means rubbish cheap tea with milk. Just like standard tea that builders will be drinking, so it's Yorkshire tea. I say rubbish, it's not rubbish, it's fantastic, but Yorkshire tea.

Jason Blitman: 2:45

Yeah, I get like the equivalent would probably be like like bodega coffee that you'd get at like the corner store.

Hannah Silva: 2:52

don't know

Jason Blitman: 2:53

Yeah.

Hannah Silva: 2:54

is, but

Jason Blitman: 2:55

bodega in New York city is like the place that sells like chips, but also sandwiches and also

Hannah Silva: 3:00

Yeah. Just

Jason Blitman: 3:01

A deck of cards

Hannah Silva: 3:02

You're like cheap as you can possibly get it these days. Yeah.

Jason Blitman: 3:06

Now that I know how you take your tea, thank you for joining me here to talk about your book You My Child, The Algorithm. The back of the book says my child, the algorithm is a playful and provocative exploration of queer single parenting and love in conversation with an AI algorithm and a toddler. So tell me, what are you what's your T? What's the T? Tell me your T, your E, your A.

Hannah Silva: 3:26

These do not sum up the book entirely, but here we go. I'm very bad at doing that. But yeah, tea. I've got time. I went with time because time appears in we, we have different experiences of time. Yeah, anyone with a baby or a small child will tell you time just can go incredibly slowly and also incredibly fast. But, getting through the minutes can be excruciating. Similarly, getting through the minutes of heartbreak. is um, painful. I remember thinking at the time, like it's not one day at a time. It's it's one second at a time, one minute at a

Jason Blitman: 4:00

Hmm.

Hannah Silva: 4:01

And then in a more, talk about queer time, about doing things in a kind of different order. I, have a weird life where I feel like I retired, got married and retired in the countryside with a dog in my twenties. And then, it turned it all on its head and then got with a woman, had a kid with her and then found myself living my best queer single life late thirties into my forties now. So yeah, we often do things in a queer order, I think. Swimming in the sea, that's its own sea time. Different countries and ways of experiencing cities. You have different times. So yeah.

Jason Blitman: 4:36

so true. And I think like the time, in the sense of we are living in a time where you can use

Hannah Silva: 4:43

yeah.

Jason Blitman: 4:44

So it's really about great work. Great choice. Great choice. Let's have your E.

Hannah Silva: 4:52

Yeah, this one. I wanted something upbeat for this one. Energy. Energy, enthusiasm, excitement. Yeah, the, yeah, the kind of energetic sparkly kind of words. Because it feels so playful. And it's funny to say energy, when I also talk about insomnia a lot in the book, certainly nobody would accuse me of having consistently high energy

Jason Blitman: 5:21

energy can

Hannah Silva: 5:22

but yeah yes

Jason Blitman: 5:24

of energy propelling you

Hannah Silva: 5:26

yeah, absolutely. And I think it does, it moves forward. It was, it was a time that, my backstory was a bit sad but my present story was actually quite exciting. And for a first time, I'm just exploring. Yeah the play of being a parent the delight of it, the delight of dating and sex. And I and I also wanted a book that talks about parenting quite a lot about queer parenting and queer families and alternative ways of parenting, and it also talks about fun and friendship and dating and sex. And I think there's still often a bit of a separation between Parenthood and sex and fun. And I have noticed, like, when I'm talking about my book, I seem to be talking about one or the other, or, the, this. And they are weird subjects, in my book artificial intelligence and queer parenting, and, the fun single life and they do all come they're all part of it, yeah.

Jason Blitman: 6:22

They all

Hannah Silva: 6:22

yeah,

Jason Blitman: 6:23

And I think back to the word exploration, I think that's another great

Hannah Silva: 6:27

you go. That's a better one.

Jason Blitman: 6:28

Words. It's just there's Much an exploration of language, of life,

Hannah Silva: 6:33

Yeah, absolutely. And I've always I've never quite understood the writers who write because they have something to say I tend to write because I don't know what to say and I don't know what's going on and I tend, if I have a question about something or I'm thinking about something, pondering it, strug, struggling with it that's why I want to write about it, to explore, as you say, yeah, to work it out. If I already know what I think, then I get bored writing about it. Yeah.

Jason Blitman: 7:04

every once in a while I'll talk to an author who writes a thriller or a mystery or something and they don't even know the ending because they're Uncovering

Hannah Silva: 7:14

yeah, now that amazes

Jason Blitman: 7:16

to me I think well, it's too it's right. It's both things It's oh there they are exploring it themselves. But also I'm like, how do you know that you're gonna have an ending?

Hannah Silva: 7:24

yeah, it's scary, yeah, I mean it's much harder if, yeah, a complex kind of thriller plot, I'm like that seems a lot harder than, I mean I knew what was going on because I was living it, I vaguely knew what was going on, yeah.

Jason Blitman: 7:37

Oh, that's so funny and what's your a Yeah,

Hannah Silva: 7:40

my A is alternative intelligence.

Jason Blitman: 7:43

we all

Hannah Silva: 7:45

the subtitle of the book is an alternatively intelligent book of love. And I stole that phrase, alternative intelligence from Jeanette Winterson, who wrote about AI some years ago in 12 Bytes, and she said, let's not call it artificial intelligence. Perhaps alternative intelligence is more accurate and we need alternatives. And I also love that as I've started, even, since writing the book as well, I've started applying this idea of alternative intelligence to alternative human intelligences, neurodivergences, different ways of thinking and writing. So yeah, it's not just the alternative intelligence of the AI. It's also mine and my child and yeah, and alternative models of making families and lives.

Jason Blitman: 8:32

Thought of life in that way because there, there's no such thing as one size fits all,

Hannah Silva: 8:38

No, absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. And yet our society is built for one size, and it's really hard to operate outside of that. Yeah.

Jason Blitman: 8:48

Yeah, but it's, even it's such a, I feel a little stuck in the metaphor of size but even the people who do traditionally fit in a specific box, a specific size, or whatever. There are other alternative things about people that, sure the shirt might fit but the hat doesn't, or right, or the shoe doesn't, or there's no, we're still also different and there are still ways of thinking about things in a different way or being

Hannah Silva: 9:15

Yes, exactly. People can have very conventional on the outside lives, but the way they think. Is just different and I love that's, I can't talk about that in a book in, in, in a way. I feel like there's a real absence of communication about what goes on inside our mind. How we think, if we see image or if we hear language over and over or, I don't know, but it's one, it's a weird thing that we don't really. Talk about maybe we just assume it's the same for everybody, or we don't talk about it much, or it's hard to verbalize. And, I'm sure like we, we will have these conversations sometimes where you find out that someone like never sees image or only sees image, or I find all of that really fascinating.

Jason Blitman: 9:57

Yeah. I the book itself, the fact that it is a memoir written in concert with AI is very cool. And also, I gotta say, very scary, Hannah. Was there ever a moment?

Hannah Silva: 10:12

of the uncanny valley ness of AI.

Jason Blitman: 10:16

Yeah. Yeah. Did you ever feel like you're sharing too much or, oh wow, this actually is spitting out? Information that makes more sense than I would have or Yeah

Hannah Silva: 10:35

yeah, again, like at the time I wrote, firstly, I wasn't, it, I wasn't using an AI that had been developed by a company such as OpenAI or Google, or, any of the above, so I wasn't concerned about giving my language or ideas, away in, feeding the machine in the way that it certainly happens with those companies now. The conversation about the AI being trained on pirated books hadn't really emerged at that point either. So yeah, it was such early days, there wasn't the discussion about it that there is now. And there also wasn't, some of the really terrible practices. I'm sure there probably was, we just didn't know about it. Yeah, I'm sure there was, I'm sure there was.

Jason Blitman: 11:18

Yeah, it's, there's something too about, you did, this is such a terrible example, but it's almost like being a smoker and then 20 years later finding out that smoking is bad for you. Do you know what I mean? Like you did this thing with AI and then all of a sudden you're like, Oh, wait a minute. This

Hannah Silva: 11:35

Here are the

Jason Blitman: 11:35

a thing in society. That's going to be a very different

Hannah Silva: 11:39

I do feel,

Jason Blitman: 11:41

Sure.

Hannah Silva: 11:43

but there's been a lot of negative reaction to AI from writers and writers unions. And I totally agree with it in terms of the the big tech companies and what they're doing and how they're profiting of writers and, absolutely. But at the same time, I'm a little bit worried about the kind of blanket negative approach to it or the blanket ban on it, or, the fact that there's like generally like writing competitions, writing journals, all sorts of places now will just say, please confirm that no part of your entry is written by AI. So my book wouldn't be eligible for all of these things.

Jason Blitman: 12:22

You're also, you also make it very clear

Hannah Silva: 12:23

it's very, I do it in, my book is not written by AI and it's very clear what is AI and what is

Jason Blitman: 12:28

Yeah,

Hannah Silva: 12:29

all of these yeah, it's very clear how I used it. And I think that's quite important or it was important for me for that book anyway. Um, but yeah I would just wonder if I would like writers and creative people, to be able to play more of a role in developing AI, in thinking about anti racist AI, in looking at that kind of discriminatory language, in questioning like how can we make a creative, surreal, queer, neurodivergent AI, how can it come together with The ways in which our minds work to create something new how can we explore thought but when these companies are, controlling it and developing it for very specific purposes and taking out all of the glitches and the queerness, I call it, all the strangeness, the so called hallucination, the repetition, a lot of the things that I have so much fun with in the book they're certainly not being developed for that purpose. At this point.

Jason Blitman: 13:21

And that is the tea.

Hannah Silva: 13:23

that's the tea. Okay.

Jason Blitman: 13:26

So fascinating. No, it's so true. And I think the book does such an interesting job at just exploring. You know.

Hannah Silva: 13:34

Playing. Yeah.

Jason Blitman: 13:36

I love that. Hannah, congratulations on the

Hannah Silva: 13:39

Thank you so much.

Jason Blitman: 13:40

Thank you for sharing it with the world. It's such an interesting experiment slash showcase of what AI can do, but also how it can relate to us in our real

Hannah Silva: 13:55

absolutely. And I think it's not about we don't need to hold AI up against humans. It's not about how human it is, but it can maybe do something different that humans can play with and can tell us about ourselves

Jason Blitman: 14:06

Yeah, and to be very fair, it also shows its flaws.

Hannah Silva: 14:11

Oh yeah. Yeah.

Jason Blitman: 14:16

Like breasts

Hannah Silva: 14:17

brea I

Jason Blitman: 14:17

again.

Hannah Silva: 14:17

really call a lot of breasts a flaw, but, ha.

Jason Blitman: 14:21

Fair, totally fair. Oh my God, that's so funny.

Hannah Silva: 14:24

ha. Ha.

Jason Blitman: 14:25

Anyway, thank you so much for being

Hannah Silva: 14:27

Thank you for having me.

Jason Blitman: 14:29

I'm so glad that we were finally able to

Hannah Silva: 14:30

yeah, me too.

Jason Blitman: 14:32

enjoy the rest of your tea.

Hannah Silva: 14:34

yeah, just admiring

Jason Blitman: 14:35

my coffee.

Hannah Silva: 14:36

Yes, this is an excellent cup. It doesn't go cold. It's the right shape.

Jason Blitman: 14:39

Oh, I love

Hannah Silva: 14:41

I've even got a

Jason Blitman: 14:42

Oh, that's very

Hannah Silva: 14:43

got a lid for it.

Jason Blitman: 14:44

You do. Is it a

Hannah Silva: 14:45

very

Jason Blitman: 14:46

is it like a wooden lid?

Hannah Silva: 14:47

No, it's the same material. It's pottery. Pottery Barn

Jason Blitman: 14:50

Oh, like a ceramic. Oh, I don't know why. It's like giving,

Hannah Silva: 14:52

wood. Is it giving

Jason Blitman: 14:53

a wooden lid. Yeah. No. The mug clearly is ceramic, but it looks like, because of the color green, it looks like it would have a really beautiful wooden top on it. I don't know. My imagination just decided

Hannah Silva: 15:03

Lovely. Yeah.

Jason Blitman: 15:04

That's all. Hannah, thank you for being here.

Hannah Silva: 15:07

Thank you so much for having me. Absolute pleasure.

Jason Blitman: 15:09

a wonderful rest of your day.

Hannah Silva: 15:11

You too.

Jason Blitman: 15:11

Tom Pion, I'm so happy to have you here.

Tom Pyun: 15:13

So good to be here, Jason!

Jason Blitman: 15:15

Welcome to Tea Time. You are here to talk about your new book, Something Close to Nothing. Tom, tell me, what's the tea? Do your letters just actually properly describe your book? Or do you want to give like an elevator pitch first?

Tom Pyun: 15:31

Sure. I could try to give an elevator pitch. And I've never been a professional sales person before, but I feel like a first debut author is like good practice for that, like going door to door and selling things. But it's about a gay couple in San Francisco, gay male couple in San Francisco, Win Kang and Jared Cahill. One is Korean American. One is white and they're in their thirties and they're professionals and they're They're having a child via surrogacy, a surrogate who is currently in the book in Cambodia. And so the book starts out, it was with them getting ready to fly off to Cambodia to meet her, and she's about nine months pregnant. And right before they They take off when the Korean American character decides he doesn't want to be a father anymore. And that kind of catalyzes them going on to their own individual paths of mayhem, fun, chaos, etc.

Jason Blitman: 16:29

And so what are your letters? What's your tea?

Tom Pyun: 16:33

T is

Jason Blitman: 16:34

Yes. Transgressive. Great. Oh, love. Tell me, why transgressive?

Tom Pyun: 16:40

I tried to push some of the boundaries in it around how, I was interested in Exploring in first person, the tensions that can arise from an interracial relationship.

Jason Blitman: 16:53

Another good T word.

Tom Pyun: 16:54

Yes, tensions. Um, I think we're all like past like the loving legal case and we're all like, yeah, interracial relationships are good. And people should be allowed to be in interracial relationships. It's hard to make these assertions in this day and age. But I think for my readership and our intensive purposes, yes. And I think I wanted to explore the more of the complication of that and some of the yeah. Resentments that sort of build up between interracial couples and all the things you really can't talk about or you don't want to talk about but are thinking and can lead to, you know, resentments, fighting, maybe even breakups. What causes breakup? What are the causes of breakups of money? maybe sex. And I just wanted to add that in there and I felt it was something that wasn't explored a lot in books or movies because it's, it felt a little taboo. Another T word.

Jason Blitman: 17:48

See? This is why it's fun. You're like, wait, they start to just sprout up. But you're right. It's very interesting. Cause like we talk a lot about gay marriage, but not gay divorce and they weren't married, but they were together a long time and there's a, yeah, it's the aftermath of what happens.

Tom Pyun: 18:06

Yes, definitely.

Jason Blitman: 18:07

What's your E tell me your E.

Tom Pyun: 18:10

I was trying to think of something more exciting, but excitement the impetus for writing this book was. I started writing very late in life. I'm 47 now. And I started writing, taking writing classes on a whim at 33, 34, actually 35. I think it was 35. I was doing the math and looking

Jason Blitman: 18:26

What inspired that?

Tom Pyun: 18:27

I have still have a consulting practice. I work with nonprofits and fin foundations on strategy and evaluation. And I had, I started that practice probably five years before I started writing, but I found myself burning out, like really burning out and it was working a lot of hours and also like having a little bit of a spiritual crisis like. I've always put a lot of kind of weight and a lot of my and just linked my identity a lot to my career and just having this existential crisis of is this all and just a feeling that something was missing. So I started to read a blog that said that, The cure for burnout was creativity. So I started taking hip hop dance classes. I really needed to move more. I was like working a lot of hours, sitting at a desk. I took singing lessons cause I sang a lot like in high school and college. And I loved it. And so I wanted to get back to that and I also took writing classes because I think I wrote a couple business plans as like when I worked for a big consulting firm and people said, oh, you're a good writer. Did you know that? And I'm like, no, I did not know I was a good writer. And writing business plans is very different than writing a novel. But it turns out after taking three of those pretty intensely while working, trying to work less, I found it to be very curative of the burnout and Really put me on a different path, but also I learned that I'm a terrible dancer, but I got really into it. Like I got obsessed with it. I was going to dance classes four times a week, five times a week,

Jason Blitman: 19:57

Oh my god. How fun.

Tom Pyun: 19:57

Seeing a chiropractor who was like, what are you doing to your body? You can't move your neck. You can't move. And it was just like, like a fever state. Like around those classes, and so there was the impetus of the plot for the book. And I'm one of these people, someone used to say that people in San Francisco are annoying because no one can just have a hobby. Everyone turns it into some sort of either obsession or they try to make turn into a career and that really resonated with me. I started taking these classes, really enjoying it, trying to publish in like small journals. And then I ended up reading Crazy Rich Asians on vacation. And was like, Oh, I can do this. Like I can write a commercial novel. then, which kind of ruined my life. Because three years later, I'm like, this is really hard. And I'm like, banging my head against the wall, like crying and saying, Oh my gosh, I told too many people I was going to do this. And I can't I have too much pride. I have to like I have to write a novel now. And it took nine years to get it published from the first page to the launch date was it was over nine years, actually.

Jason Blitman: 21:03

So it's funny because for me, my E that I thought of, you said excitement. Mine was existential crisis.

Tom Pyun: 21:10

Oh, that's better. That's better. Because it is, I was going to say the excitement was because I read, because I read Crazy Rich Asians, I had to read a book because of that. I thought, I'm like, I can do this. I wanted to write something really fast paced and commercial. It ended up being more literary than I originally intended, which no one says, but in honesty, it ended up being a little more literary and deeper and darker. Then I really anticipated. I'm like, oh, I'm a dark person. I wanted to write something light and funny and

Jason Blitman: 21:41

Yeah. Like it's, this is not a spoiler, but I will say it is not a rom com. Like it is a, it is a book that It starts as a relationship story and then you see their journeys post relationship and it's not a rom com.

Tom Pyun: 22:01

Totally. Yeah. I love rom coms though,

Jason Blitman: 22:03

100%!

Tom Pyun: 22:04

can't keep me away from Heartstopper, I'll

Jason Blitman: 22:07

Oh my god,

Tom Pyun: 22:07

So it's but I don't think that's really me. That isn't like my soul. My soul is dark and As like hyper as I am today. I think deep down, I really am that. And but I wanted to write something fast paced and exciting that that was a little bit of a roller coaster. And so that's where I got the E word from

Jason Blitman: 22:25

Yeah. Okay, what is your A? Tell me.

Tom Pyun: 22:28

Oh my gosh, I can't believe I'm saying this, but I'm gonna say anal sex. Just to be transgressive, just to push the envelope. There isn't, I don't think there's a ton of sex in the book. It is not like an erotic novel at all. My friend was like, when I said that during a book talk, he was like, Yeah, damn it is not erotic. But there are, there's some kind of sex scenes in the book.

Jason Blitman: 22:47

Yeah.

Tom Pyun: 22:48

They surround they surround anal sex and and the fact that, I hope this isn't a spoiler, but that Jared and Winn do not have anal sex. They don't have penetrative sex and it is one of the many tensions in their relationship. I'd say one of them is a side, just a side. I just learned that term. I didn't know what a side was until my publicist told me that they were sides. And I was like, Oh my gosh!

Jason Blitman: 23:13

We're holding space for the sides.

Tom Pyun: 23:15

Yeah. Yeah. So that's my A, is that too is that too racy for a podcast? I don't even know.

Jason Blitman: 23:22

I don't think so. There's nothing to be ashamed of with, when it comes to anal sex. That's, that was a part of the story. For me I was thinking assimilation, because there is there are themes of that running through the book.

Tom Pyun: 23:39

Yeah, on two dimensions, not on L-G-B-T-Q assimilation into corporate America and also wind's character who is Korean American but grew up in Connecticut, Westport, and,

Jason Blitman: 23:53

there's that's you just gave three examples of why that was my A.

Tom Pyun: 23:57

It's so much better than my, again, so much better than my A.

Jason Blitman: 24:00

No. It is not a competition. We're just sharing. This is, the point of this is to learn more about the story and about the book. through these letters and unpacking it in that way. No, I think that makes total sense. Yeah, I think there's can you unpack a little bit of the, of what it means in terms of assimilation to you?

Tom Pyun: 24:18

Yeah I can just speak from my own experience. A, the book is not based on my life or it's not autobiographical at all. It's not autofiction. I'm single. I've basically mostly been single my entire life. I do not have a child via surrogate. That said think there's something was really exciting about living in San Francisco when I did, because in general, there's just so many queer people in San Francisco, and there's every variety and type and of every socioeconomic class. Bracket two. And when I first moved there in my twenties, that's what I just loved about it. It wasn't a big deal to be like a gay mayor, for example, or to be like a gay supervisor, like a city supervisor. I ended up volunteering as an intern for a city supervisor who was a gay man, openly gay man. And And I just love that idea. And I think it creates all this kind of fruit for different narratives about what it means to be queer in America and queer in a very LGBTQ affirming society. city. And then it also means that there's tensions between intra, like intra group tensions, intra racial tensions. I get not that queers are a race, but like intra group tensions. And how to live like, one thing that I talk about, because with my friends, it's like open relationships versus monogamous relationships. And people have strong opinions on that, and it becomes almost political, right? And spiritual and just question, it makes people question about like their identity and what they what's important to them. And so it's not something I've explored in the book necessarily, but I think it's an example

Jason Blitman: 25:56

Yeah.

Tom Pyun: 25:57

of that and of assimilation and quite frankly, everything I've seen online on YouTube it's, YouTube kind of little YouTube shorts are about straight people being an open relationship. There's a show called Dana and the Wolf that I just cannot stop watching, I think. And it's just about a straight couple who are in a polyamorous or open relationship. Actually, I don't know what the category

Jason Blitman: 26:18

they define it.

Tom Pyun: 26:19

How they defined it off the top of my head. But I think there is that tension there and in terms of assimilation. And then, for me I grew up on Long Island like Jared, the white character, actually. And, my parents, I don't speak any Korean. My parents were, came over in the fifties. They came over in their twenties. They decided when we were all born that it would be better to teach us English first. And we know how that goes, is that you don't learn the motherland language.

Jason Blitman: 26:47

Yeah.

Tom Pyun: 26:48

And we have, my sisters are named Jeannie, Catherine, Elizabeth, and then I'm Thomas. So that's a really, and that's something that I've really thought about and felt like different would my life be different if my name was like Dongho? Or or I don't know, like some other Korean name. And and I, those are all explicit choices that, parents make to potentially make their lives easier. Slash also, what are the trade offs? So with Win, his name, full name's Winston Kang. I wanted to explore some of that racially and growing up at Westport's even less diverse, probably than long where I grew up on Long Island. And what, and I think for me, it's I. And now that I'm entering middle age, I feel like a real disconnection with my like heritage and I'm trying to like, right now, reconnect with that, potentially learn Korean and live there potentially for a little while and just get back in touch with it. I feel that's something I've realized now that assimilation probably has had a lot of advantages for me in terms of like access and who knows but making other people feel comfortable. But now I'm also seeing kind of the price I've paid

Jason Blitman: 27:58

Sure.

Tom Pyun: 27:58

not something I explore necessarily in the book because a lot of other things are explored in the book, but it's something that I'm going through now. I wrote this book literally 10 years ago and I feel like a completely different person now. That's the thing about how long these time horizons are. It's wow, I wrote this book and it really captured what I was going through at that time. And a lot of my insights and feelings and thoughts. I feel so much has happened with the election, with elect, two elections, a pandemic, and I'm in a very different place now. And that's okay. I still love the book

Jason Blitman: 28:29

I am so excited for you. Something Close to Nothing is out now, wherever you get your books. How has tour been? Are, is there anything that's surprised you so far?

Tom Pyun: 28:42

A couple things. One, I had the best publicist in the entire world. And I'm just gonna do a shout out to her. Amelia Posanza, Lavender Public Relations, because, I had very low expectations for the reach of this book and she just did a lot, ended up getting a review in the LA Times and a shout out in Washington Post and I got into all these bookstores I could never get in on my own and I can't guarantee those results for you but she really made my dreams come true and I just love her so much and she got me on this podcast. I'm grateful for her and publicists aren't supposed to get shout outs but I feel like I'm going to break that norm and

Jason Blitman: 29:17

That's okay, they absolutely should.

Tom Pyun: 29:20

And we become friends, and I just think she's a cool gal, and she's so smart. She's so much smarter than me. Every time she says that, I'm like, you're so much smarter than me. Two, it was a lovely experience. I got to do these readings in these bookstores that were a dream. I love you and me books in Chinatown in New York Powell's in Portland, that's, that was amazing. Skylight Books in LA and then Fabulosa, which is the LGBTQ book store in the Castro in San Francisco. I really felt that support and love of community and And also with the pandemic, I know we're pretty far out of it, but I think there's a lot of lasting effects in society. So just being around, seeing a lot of people I hadn't seen in a long time and just showing a lot of support on social media. And it's just been a really lovely experience. I think I could just cry about it actually. It was really beautiful. And it's made almost all the pain of writing a novel worth it. Almost all the pain. It's huge. But, um,

Jason Blitman: 30:15

so glad to hear that! And as you are in the trenches of this next one, harness those emotions and feelings to help buoy you through.

Tom Pyun: 30:26

Thank you. I will.

Jason Blitman: 30:27

Tom, thank you so much for being here. Thank you for tea time with me.

Tom Pyun: 30:31

Jason, thank you so much. This is such a joy.

Yeti Stereo Microphone: 30:34

Thank you, Hannah. Thank you, Tom. Everybody. Thanks for joining me today on this extra special what's the T Sunday. And I will see you at our regularly scheduled time on Tuesday for our season finale of gays reading. Have a great rest of your day, everyone. Bye.