Michelle Glogovac (00:01.15)
Hello Angela.

Angela Brown (00:03.872)
It's good to see you again.

Michelle Glogovac (00:05.52)
It's so good to see you. It feels like it hasn't been that long, but it's probably been, what, six months since we've seen each other in person. Yeah. June. Yeah.

Angela Brown (00:09.25)
We agree.

Angela Brown (00:13.066)
Yeah, I think it was like earlyish summer. yeah, I was like, I think it was like June, May, somewhere right around there. So yeah.

Michelle Glogovac (00:20.244)
Yeah, so it's been almost every six months, so we were due for another get together because it was six months before that too. I love it.

Angela Brown (00:23.694)
That's true.

Angela Brown (00:27.182)
Yeah, we'll keep that on the schedule.

Michelle Glogovac (00:30.272)
I like that. Can you reintroduce yourself to everyone since you are a repeat guest? Those are a few.

Angela Brown (00:35.918)
Sure, thank you for having me again. I'm Angela Brown. I'm the author of the novels, Olivia Straps is Running Out of Time, which came out last year and a new novel called Some Other Time. Yes, I play with the theme of times, we can time, which we can talk about. Some Other Time just pubbed this week. So I'm excited to talk about it. Thank you very much, I appreciate it.

Michelle Glogovac (00:58.57)
Congratulations. And I got to read it last year.

Angela Brown (01:03.704)
This is the fifth last year, which is exciting and fun. Those very first readers, you know, it's always nerve wracking. So I was happy you were one of them.

Michelle Glogovac (01:13.376)
But it was good and I was rereading my review this morning of what I put and it all came flashing back of I know this isn't a thriller, but my stomach was in knots of my God, what's going to happen?

Angela Brown (01:24.014)
It was, it's, there are a lot of twists and turns in the book, again, not frillary, but it's, there's a lot of playfully, I think, unexpected twists. And that's what I hope at least.

Michelle Glogovac (01:39.294)
Yes, and it's kind of like a play on It's a Wonderful Life, which I love.

Angela Brown (01:44.502)
A little, yeah, me too. That's when I very, very, very first mentioned the idea to my editor that was really like brief elevator pitch. But I basically said something to that effect. Like it's sort of like a contemporary play on it's a wonderful life.

A little bit, but not really. But that was, I've always, that's always, you know, the idea for the story came out of a lot of places, but that was definitely one of them. That's always been one of my favorite stories. And I love, love the idea of a butterfly effect narrative and just the ripple effects that we create in characters and books or in real life, just from the choices we make. I've just, it's just a topic that always interests me. I'm a structure.

Michelle Glogovac (02:31.162)
So we should give everyone a synopsis of like what the book is about without the spoilers, do you want to give us your elevator pitch now that it's written and published?

Angela Brown (02:39.712)
I'm not good at giving elevator pitches about my own work because I want to talk too much about them. So Some Other Time is the story of a woman named Ellie Baker who is on the brink of divorce with her husband Jonah. They've been married for about 20 years and they're just at a turning point. Their only child has recently left for college and their relationship has changed a lot. And for a lot of different reasons, they've decided it's time to split.

So the family flies down to Florida to tell her, Ellie's, retired parents, Bunny and Frank, that they've decided to get divorced. Everyone is second guessing this. No one, including Ellie, is sure if this decision is right. And through a magical turn of events, Ellie, shortly after her announcement, wakes up in an alternate version of the present day.

one in which she and her husband Jonah were never married. And she has the opportunity for one week to see the impact that her choices, and particularly her choice to marry her husband, what the effect of them has been, not only on her life, his life, her parents' life, and really everybody else that she's associated with.

Michelle Glogovac (03:52.828)
It's so good and it's probably something that many of us ask. I'm sure we all ask this of ourselves at one point or another of like, what if I didn't do this? What if I didn't make this decision? Then what would have happened?

Angela Brown (04:05.122)
Yeah, yeah, it's well, it's funny the I've always like I said, I've always loved Butterfly Effect stories and I'm one of those people to like I really try to think a lot about the choices I'm making whether they're big or small. It's a big conversation we have with our kids a lot like the choices you make every day the way you talk to people your actions like they have a very real impact on the world both good and bad. So, you know, you have to really think about them. So it's something I take very much to heart.

But it was funny, the exact narrative, I knew I had wanted to write a Butterfly Effect story for a long time. I never knew if I would because it's rather ambitious. They're not the easiest things to write. I sort of wanted to pull my hair out more than once while writing it. But the idea for the actual story came to me this one evening. I can't remember if I've ever told you this.

But my husband and I, we're not high school sweethearts or anything like that, but we've known one another our entire lives. We're friends from high school. And we met on our very first day, very first block of freshman year in the back of Mrs. Yard's English class. He said hello to me and asked me if I wanted to like not take notes, which I was like a note taker and a real studious kind of gal. And asked if I wanted to play cards instead in the back. And I said, yeah, I do actually.

And that's a really, that's a completely true story. We played the game war on the floor in between our desks for like the first, you know, semester of freshman year. And that's how we met. And then we caught up many, many years later in adulthood. But anyway, several years ago, it was right after my son had been born. My husband and I, and both of our kids were sitting outside on this really nice summer evening. And it was just like a really nice time in our lives. It was kind of like,

A lot of things that we'd been working toward for many, years were finally there. We'd been working and saving for a really long time to buy a home and we had just purchased it and moved in. I'd gone through really unpleasant fertility stuff for many, many years and then finally had my second child and he was there with us. It was just like all these things were finally there and our life just felt like this is it. Like this is what we'd been waiting for.

Angela Brown (06:22.496)
And we were talking about that and my husband said something to the effect of, isn't it funny that if we'd made one different choice, if when we were 14 years old, I didn't say hi to you and you didn't say hi to me, that literally none of this might exist. Like there might be a completely different family living in this house right now. And it was like a really simple comment for him to me, but it was also really profound to me.

And when he said it like that night, the idea for the story start, it wasn't all there, but like it started to kind of unravel itself a little bit because I was like, he's right. That's really funny how one little choice could really change so much. So.

Michelle Glogovac (07:04.128)
And there's so many little choices along the way that could also just deter. I mean, I think about it, you know, I think back to like college decisions of where you decide to go. And I'm going, well, what if I had made a different decision than my career path would have been totally different, which then means that I wouldn't have been at the conference where I met my husband. Like, you know, there's all these little things that, yeah, if you made these one different decision.

Angela Brown (07:08.216)
Yes, paralyzing.

Angela Brown (07:33.155)
Mm-hmm.

Michelle Glogovac (07:33.308)
none of it would all have fallen into place the way is today.

Angela Brown (07:37.014)
Yeah, yeah, it's something I think about a lot. And so it was it was fun for me to write a story kind of rooted in that. And particularly, I wasn't sure at the beginning how I wanted to execute the story. There were a lot of different types of drafts where it wasn't a woman getting divorced. There was one early draft where she was a widow. There was one that was like very thrillery. Like I wasn't entirely sure what I wanted her

moment to be and then I thought divorce is kind of an interesting one because it's you know her really thinking about her family and stuff so I ended up becoming really fun to to play with her perspective on realizing how seemingly insignificant things really did matter in the end. It was fun.

Michelle Glogovac (08:28.228)
And it was also a story of her really figuring out what she wanted to do because she was a stay at home mom for all of these 20 years and now their daughter is off in college and she's like, what do I do? And I think that can resonate with so many too of whether or not you're a stay at home mom. Like when they leave, there's a big empty hole of, okay, I mean, I look at before we were getting on, like how busy we both are with our kids and

Angela Brown (08:41.165)
Mm-hmm.

Michelle Glogovac (08:56.958)
You know, just this week alone, last night we had Boy Scouts, tonight we have Lego Robotics, tomorrow there's a Boy Scout dinner, then Friday there's a father-daughter dance, then Saturdays, it's constant. And so once they're gone, you're going to be like, I have time. I'm not running around. What do I do with myself? And that's a big struggle for Ellie in this book of what do I want?

Angela Brown (09:06.166)
Yeah, it is.

Angela Brown (09:15.864)
Yeah.

Angela Brown (09:22.144)
Yeah, it was funny. So somebody was asking me recently, like, have you ever been home full time with your kids? Like, is that where I said, no, I haven't. I'm fortunate as a full time writer, I have a lot of flexibility to be around for pickups and drop offs and slipping through activities and all of that. But I've I've literally worked since I'm 16 years old. I've never not, but.

To your point, I thought it was interesting to make her a woman who, and I was very conscious to make sure that it was her choice. was never her husband's choice telling her like, you stay home with the kids or anything like that. Like it was very much a choice that she.

made and I think some many women do that she was I really want to dedicate myself to this I want to be here with my daughter and there's backstory that she had a previous career and a previous job and she chose to leave it to be to be with her daughter and then when her daughter grows up as children do as you hope

She's really left with nothing or so that's how she feels at least. But it was interesting because I've never been in that situation myself. I do have two kids, but my kids are not college age. I have a two and a half year old and my daughter will be nine in like three weeks, which is crazy.

But when the story started to come to me, I was mentioning it was right after my son was born. And because of a lot of what I'd been through, my daughter had been an only child. There's like six and a half years age difference between my two kids. My daughter had been an only child for a pretty significant stretch of time. And we were so thrilled when my son was born, obviously we were just over the moon for him and he's the best. But there was this real tug at my heart too, because I knew that in order

Angela Brown (11:10.646)
to welcome him, there were gonna be parts of my relationship with my daughter that I would have to kind of let go a little, right? Like she wasn't going to be the baby anymore, she was going to be the big kid now. And so I was having a lot of feelings at the time of just knowing there are things that I have to let go because she's one just growing up and like I said, she's the big kid now. And so I was thinking about a lot of those things like,

what must it be like, you know, when you reach this stage, whether you're a stay at home or whatever, however you fill the hours of your day, a mother is a mother is a mother, you know, we're all over the place and we're never not thinking about our children and planning and, you know, doing all the things. And then it's just like full break, stop. So I thought it was, it was a good...

way to play around with her character and the emotions she's experiencing. But I was able to draw parts of it, I think, just from my own emotions at the time of, know, when you have kids, one minute they're running around in diapers and the next minute they're like, you know, asking for Taylor Swift tickets.

happen? Where's the one with the little, you know, plastic toys running around and stuff? So yeah, I drew some inspiration for my own life too.

Michelle Glogovac (12:36.968)
Yeah, Taylor Swift, yes.

Angela Brown (12:40.846)
We have a lot of that in our mouths right now.

Michelle Glogovac (12:42.88)
same, same. Yeah, because my daughter is, she's almost nine and then, yeah, yeah. And then my son turns 10 in three weeks. So yeah, they're probably right about the same. Yeah, it's crazy.

Angela Brown (12:48.494)
I was gonna say our kids are really rich.

Angela Brown (12:57.824)
Yeah, yeah, but I liked I liked her character very much. I think Ellie is simple, right? Like she she's the type of woman to me who I feel like in real life gets overlooked a lot, because she's just a stay at home mom. And she's kind of the one that everyone knows they can call on all the time to do the bake sales and do you know, they do all the fundraisers and stuff.

But she doesn't feel as valued because she feels like that's all she's done when other people are doing that plus, you know what I mean? So I thought she was exciting for me to look at, to see the feelings that existed inside of her in those circumstances.

Michelle Glogovac (13:46.942)
It reminds me of I interviewed Nora Dahlia, right? The pick-up. And how in her… Yeah, in her book she talks about how like even the school counselor, the principal is like, hey, mom, and that's how the mom is referred to. There's no name. You're just mom. That's your identity. That's who you are. And that's it.

Angela Brown (13:52.299)
yeah, yeah yeah yeah. I'm covering by the way.

Angela Brown (14:03.586)
Hello.

Michelle Glogovac (14:15.928)
And how that is the way that you might feel when you get to that point of, yep, I show up and this is what I do, I pick up and drop off and I'm the PTA mom and I'm the room mom and I do all the things, but there's still so much more and where does your identity leave that? How do you mesh it together and still have your name and be more than mom and be known as more than mom?

Angela Brown (14:20.845)
Yeah.

Angela Brown (14:29.859)
Yeah.

Angela Brown (14:42.574)
Yeah, and figuring out how to be happy, I think, in that next stage of your life, in that next stage of your marriage, and just how things change, you know, and how we sort of adapt and evolve with them. Right.

Michelle Glogovac (14:59.284)
Yeah. And I love, I gotta say, I did love Jonah. I thought he was so sweet.

Angela Brown (15:04.822)
He is sweet. I really liked him. Yeah, had a few people tell me they were frustrated with Ellie because he's such a good guy, right? But I think that was important to me though, because one, it's funny, somebody very close to me who always reads really copies of my books, she said something like, she was like, you always write really nice guys.

Michelle Glogovac (15:10.784)
Made me a little mad at Ellie. I'm like, what are you doing, you fool?

Angela Brown (15:34.614)
Like Andrew in your first book, he was just like a nice guy and Jonah's just a nice guy. was like, I don't know, I'm very lucky. my father and my husband, they're just good people. Like guess I'm just inspired by having good men around or something. But I think, some readers who I've spoken to, like I said, what was the deal with Ellie? He was so nice, what a catch. Like what was she doing? But I think the point for me is,

making him exactly that way because when you're married to somebody for 20 odd years, of course that person's wonderful, presumably because you've stayed married to that person for that longer. So one hopes in the best of circumstances, right? But when you're in it, sometimes you lose sight of seeing it that way. And I think that's just

reality, you know, you're you're with your spouse all of the time and you're you know, like there's this one paragraph in the book that I really liked and even when my husband that he left he was like that is in fact very relatable. Where you know, it's just like you forget that that's the person you fell in love with because marriage is just you know, yelling about the dishwasher being broken again some days like you're just caught in the cycle of

the days and just trying to like hold everything up all the time. And so I didn't want to make him a jerk or like an unlikable

because to me that's kind of the point. Like people sometimes love each other, but they drift apart because they forget how good they have it. They forget, you know, and I think that's what a lot of the novel is, is Ellie having the chance to hit the reset button and gain a fresh perspective on what her life already is and to maybe stop longing for a past that's not there or aspiring toward a certain future, but just realizing, you know, this is right.

Angela Brown (17:34.312)
you know, this is this is what's good right now. So yeah, like you.

Michelle Glogovac (17:37.184)
I think it was also, I think it was a good reminder too that I felt like Ellie didn't communicate with Jonah in the way of, know, this is how I'm feeling and this is what I want. And like, would that have made, would that decision have made a difference if she had just said, hey, you know what, I think I'm losing myself or I want more or what if I go get a job or what do you feel about this or, you know, and obviously we all love Jonah because Jonah would have been all cool.

Do it.

Angela Brown (18:06.99)
He would have cared. He would have supported it completely. I agree. But I think that's, you know, for many women, I think sometimes when it comes to talking about our, those types of desires for like things we want for ourselves career wise or otherwise, and just like the identities that we sort of thought we would have, but maybe haven't, you know what I mean? Just accepting ourselves at different phases in our life.

I didn't know that we talk about that quite as much in day-to-day life. I don't all the time, I probably should. And that's part of the point too, I think we get so caught up in the day-to-day and we get so busy and I think she's a character who is very real, at least in my eyes, but she's frustrated, but she's also, she's sad. She's sad that this stage of her life that she loved.

is over. And I think whether it's motherhood and seeing a certain stage of parenting or, you know, our kids like being in a particular stage, moving on, or any other different part of our life, like I think we all have a part that we cling on to and wish like, this is the sweet spot, I don't want this part to end. So there's a really quiet

grief about her too that feels very relatable to me because it was funny like in my first novel Olivia Strauss is running out of time the protagonist in very different circumstances grapples with similar themes I think that she's at a point in her life where she realizes I thought I'd be somewhere different

And I thought the future I was walking into would be different. And she wants to kind of, I think, reach out and grab on to her future and become the person she wants. Whereas Ellie, in some other time, I think just wants so badly to go back into the past and to hold onto it again because she loved it. So, I don't know, I think we tend to do both those things probably.

Michelle Glogovac (20:17.824)
Something you mentioned of wanting to go back into it. I think that when we're living in this moment, especially as moms, that we don't realize it because we're doing so many of the things until years later. Like I'm looking back, we recently had a digital frame. We got it. It was a gift. And so I've been loading on, there's like 500 photos and it goes all the way back to when the kids were babies. And living in that, my kids are a year and three weeks apart. So it was like,

Angela Brown (20:29.816)
Yeah.

Michelle Glogovac (20:47.04)
crazy time all the time and I'm looking at it going, you know, I wish that could have those days back, but you don't realize, I'm going to cry. like, you don't realize it while you're living in it until now you don't get to, you know, have those little warm bodies. Goodness.

Angela Brown (20:55.33)
with perspective.

Angela Brown (21:04.142)
Yeah. I had a lot of those moments while writing this. And yeah, I mean, that's really what it is to me with Ellie's, oh, geez, keep getting this, with Ellie's character is, she's important to me because she made a choice. She wanted to dedicate herself to her family. And now she's reached the end of it and is thinking, what now?

what do I do? You know, she just feels so, so lost in her grief of that those good times being over, that she doesn't have the foresight in that moment to see how good it still is and to see how much she is still needed. Right. And I like writing about women who just feel to me,

Michelle Glogovac (21:52.128)
Yeah.

Angela Brown (21:59.244)
just like everyday heroes, you know, like, and that's a big theme in the book that's significant in my own life is, you know, not feeling like, sometimes we feel like everything we do in our lives have to be so enormous and big and fireworks and spectacular. And I'm a person who really feels in my heart of hearts, like there's real beauty in just having a simple life.

Like just wake up every day and do the right things and love the people you choose to love and just like put some good energy out into the world. there's something to be said for those people too, not just the movers and the shakers and you know, all of that, which obviously is also of value too, but.

And so I like characters like Ellie and I think my first protagonist, again, in a different way, but I think she was like this too, because in a lot of ways she felt like a character who was maybe living too simply and was overlooked. But I think those people are really of value.

Michelle Glogovac (23:15.22)
Yeah, I want to go back to simple. I think I'm one of those people who's like, I need to do something big. I need to keep going bigger. And yet at the same time inside I'm going, I just want calm and simple and like, I need to find that balance. Yeah, I'm looking for that balance. So if you have the balance, let me know.

Angela Brown (23:19.384)
Right?

Angela Brown (23:29.25)
Yeah, it's a balance.

Angela Brown (23:35.758)
I won't do anything. No, I mean, I think that's something I think about in my own life too. Like I try and you and I, we were talking a little bit before about like creating, we're both self-employed, like creating boundaries and you know, between work, life balance and all of that. And just trying to say, this is enough. I did enough today. And now I just want to do simple things. I want to just sit.

and quietly read a book in the sun. Like I just want to go to my kids, you know, basketball game and actually watch it and be there to see it and be present for it. Like just simple moments I think are important, you know.

Michelle Glogovac (24:19.476)
He'd turn those phones off. I do.

Angela Brown (24:23.072)
I have, as I'm sure the majority of people do, have such a love-hate relationship. That's one of my things. We were talking about boundaries and I was telling you a little bit about some of my, I don't know if they're goals, but.

new things I've been setting for myself for the new year. And that's one of them at a certain time at night, my phone goes in the other room and I don't want to see it. Like I just, I just want to hang out. If I'm washing the dishes, I just want to wash the dishes, like feel the water and not be getting 15 news alerts, you know, the whole time. and that, yeah, it's very overwhelming. I am, I'm working on

Michelle Glogovac (24:57.95)
Yeah. Are you working on something next? Of course you are. This is your job. Of course you are.

Angela Brown (25:06.67)
I am, working on a book that, this one's coming to me a little bit slower. I love the idea. It still is playing with, I think, a little bit of the idea of like identity and time, but in a new and fresh way compared to my other two books. So I'm hoping to have that one done like by spring. And then, then we'll see. And then I think I'm gonna take a few weeks and just,

Michelle Glogovac (25:36.564)
Just a few weeks.

Angela Brown (25:38.595)
Just like play around. I have a few ideas in my head for future things maybe, but I'm not sure. Like I just want to sit and play and say, I'm just going to play with this today and just see if anything sticks. we'll see what happens.

Michelle Glogovac (25:54.89)
I love it. Back to back books is a lot, so kudos to you.

Angela Brown (26:01.694)
It's, there's definitely a cadence. I'm incredibly, incredibly grateful. I hope I'm always fortunate enough to, to be able to work at this cadence. It's exciting. but yeah, I'll, I'll be very happy when this next project, when I type the end on it, I thought I did. And then I went back in and started to take apart the entire thing.

Michelle Glogovac (26:29.268)
That's my fear. I'm at a point where I'm like, you know what? I could probably scrap this or do that. And then I went, but then I'm like starting over and dear God, that's wasted time.

Angela Brown (26:32.844)
Come

Angela Brown (26:37.526)
Yeah. My writing process for every book has been, it's been so different for each of them. And this one, I thought each time I think my prior writing process will work. And then each time that book just like gives me a swift kick, it's like, no, no, it's not. Just kidding. You have to find a new way to do this. So this has been this has been no exception. So yeah, I

It's funny, you can kind of, you can just tell, it's like a feeling. feel like, you know, when you're writing something and if somebody else reads it, they'll be like, this is, yeah, this is right. And you're like, it's, there's, something's not there. Like I just know it and I can't explain it until I take it all apart and like brush away all the debris and figure it out. But sometimes I think you just have to do that. It's not always a clean cover to cover draft.

Michelle Glogovac (27:19.541)
Mm-hmm.

Angela Brown (27:32.824)
But yeah, but I'm happy with this one so far. So yeah, another bit of work and then off it goes. Thank you.

Michelle Glogovac (27:39.178)
Good, I can't wait. Where can everybody find you? Where can they pick up some other time? If you were paying attention, it was a January 1st read, but we're now in February.

Angela Brown (27:49.486)
So you can pick up some other time pretty much everywhere where you prefer to buy books. You can find me online. I'm mostly on Instagram at AngelaBrownBooks and on my website which is also angelabrownbooks.com

Michelle Glogovac (28:06.313)
Thank you so much for coming back on. I love getting to chat with you.

Angela Brown (28:08.686)
It was fun to chat with you and to see you. Six months, we'll make a date. Perfect.

Michelle Glogovac (28:14.292)
Yes, love it.