Embedded - 310: While Loops Dressed up for Halloween

Episode Date: November 15, 2019

Aimee Lucido (@AimeeLucido) is a software engineer and children’s book author. Her first book is Emmy in the Key of Code about music, learning to code, and fitting in. We spoke with Aimee about writing, programming, publishing, and putting beautiful words together. You can get a copy of Emmy in the Key of Code from Booksmith, IndieBound, Barnes & Noble, Target, or Amazon. The music playlist can be found in Google Play or Spotify. Aimee’s website is aimeelucido.com. She also writes crossword puzzles for American Values Club and New Yorker. Some other authors and books we talked about: The Crossover by Kwame Alexander The Red Pencil by Andrea Davis Pinkney, illustrated by Shane W. Evans Pulitzer-prize winning Kendrick Lamar After the show, I asked Aimee about resources for learning to read as a writer, she suggested looking at the KidLit Craft Blog. Thank you to our Embedded Patreon supporters, particularly to our corporate patreon, InterWorking Labs (iwl.com).

Welcome to Embedded. I am Eliseo White. I'm here with Christopher White. Have you ever dreamed of putting pause on your engineering career and becoming a children's book author? I do. I admit it. Amy Lucido did do it. Not just dream about it. Hi, Amy. Thanks for joining us.

Hi, I'm so excited to be here. Thanks for having me. Could you tell us about yourself? Yeah. So my name is Amy Lucido. I was working as a software engineer in Silicon Valley for about six, six-ish years. And the entire time that I was working as a software engineer, I was also kind of in my nights and weekends pursuing a career as a children's book author. And I was doing this just kind of as a hobby, but I also kind of harbored a secret desire or not so secret desire to get published. I was so I sort of continued to make progress on it, but I never quite got to where I wanted to be until I got my MFA. While I was getting my MFA, I started to write a book that speaks to the sort of dual side of me, this text side of me, but also this literary, artistic side of me. And that's what birthed the book Emmy and the Key of Code, which I'm talking about today. Emmy and the Key of Code is a story of a 12-year-old girl named Emmy, who is the daughter of two musicians. And she loves

music and she thinks in music, but she feels like she's not actually a good musician. And so when she moves to San Francisco for her dad's job as a piano player for the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra, she decides, I'm not a musician. I'm not good at music. I am just going to take a computer science class instead. And not only does she end up loving computer science, but she actually ends up reconnecting to her love of music through her love of code. And so the story is told in verse, but the idea is as she learns to code, the poetry in the book starts to incorporate if statements and while loops of the coding language Java, sort of to mimic her thought process, but also in the hopes that a kid reading it would sort of accidentally learn a little bit of code along the way.

Well, that covers the show. Actually, no, we have so many more questions for you but we want to do lightning round where we ask you short questions and we want short answers and if we're behaving ourselves we won't ask how and why and are you sure um are you ready okay i'm ready what music do you listen to when you code i can't listen to music with words. I need anything without words. So typically classical or one song on repeat. Pantser or plotter? I have goalposts. So sort of like pillars that keep up the plot. And then I pants between the

pillars. What were some of your favorite young adult authors? As a kid, I adored Matilda. So the author Roald Dahl, I guess, although I know he's problematic at this point. But I did love Matilda. And I still really, really love The Golden Compass and anything that Philip Pullman writes. Do you have a preference between across or down? As a direction?

Well, as a crossword puzzle yes okay i solve downs better i think that it crosses so downs uh when you were in elementary school what did you want to be when you grew up i had like a million things i wanted to be i wanted to be a painter which is funny because i can't paint um i wanted to be a singer and a dancer. I wanted to be an author for a long time. I wanted to be a teacher. I wanted to be an astronaut for a period of time. I was the kind of kid that wanted to be 8 million things. I still want to be 8 million things. Yes, I totally agree with that. If you could teach a college course, what would you want to be 8 million things. Yes, I totally agree with that. If you could teach a college course, what would you want to teach?

I would want to teach reading as a writer, because I think you can learn so much about writing just by reading books and thinking critically about them. All right. Then let us get to the questions. All right. You were a software engineer. You started with that. Yes. What did you work on? you have an Android app and you use Facebook Messenger, you're probably using features that I wrote. And that was really great because I got to work on something that I used. So if I ever found a bug or if I ever wanted a feature, I could just build it. Then I went to Uber and I worked on the driver app for about two years. And we were trying to focus on humanizing drivers to riders because I think sometimes there's a bit of a barrier between the, the rider and the driver. And so a lot of our job was trying to make sure that the riders are aware that the person in the car with them is another

person. Um, and then, and then I switched over to Uber eats, which was sort of like, like messenger in that it was something that I used all the time. And so I got to build things that I actually like wanted to use on a daily basis. And it was an Uber that you started getting a degree at night. Yes. Well, technically I was still at Facebook, but it was just the very tail end of being at Facebook. Um, I started going, it wasn't quite, it wasn't quite night school.

It was, so I went to get a low residency masters of fine arts. Um, and so it was at a program called Hamlin University, which is one of the, it's one of like two, maybe there's three programs that give you an MFA specifically in writing for children and young adults. And it doesn't make you relocate to get it. So it's a low residency program, which means you go there for 10 days at a time and you basically do like author camp. So you have workshop in the morning, then you go to readings, and then you have lectures and panels. And an agent will come and talk about what it means to be an agent. And you do that for 10 days. And at the very end, they assign you an advisor. And the advisors are these very prominent authors in the kid lit world.

And those are your mentors for the rest of the semester. And so you write and you send them what you write, and then they give you feedback. And I did that for two rest of the semester. And so you write and you send them what you write and they give you feedback. And I did that for two years at the very tail end of when I was at Facebook. Most of it was when I was at Uber. How much of your homework over the semester consisted of stories of your daytime co-workers acting like children? Probably not a ton. Although I did write- But that wasn't a no. It wasn't. It's not a no. Because I'm writing for kids specifically. I feel like I write a lot about things that I went through as a kid that I still haven't gotten

over as an adult. But those emotions that you have as a kid, they never really go away. And so every time you're in a group of coworkers, and, you know, you feel excluded or something like that's, that's going back to a feeling you had as a 12 year old. And so I wrote about it from the perspective of a 12 year old, but you know, the kind of snide comments or the comments that are like compliments, but aren't really compliments. Those definitely come from more sources than just, you know, the, uh, the mean girl back in, back in middle school or whoever it was. You gave an introduction to Emmy in the key of code, the book you wrote. And I, I have to say it was super annoying because it was a book that I just wish I'd written. It was just so, it was so, I identified with it and I felt very much like this was, this

was what people should read. Oh my gosh. Thank you so much for saying that. That means a lot. Thank you. I sat down to read it yesterday and I thought, well, you know, I'll peruse it for a bit so I have enough to talk about. And then I just sat there for two hours and read the whole thing cover to cover. It was great. Thank you. Yeah, that's the benefit of it being written in

verse is it has fewer words than like your average prose novel. So you really can read it in two hours. But when I found out it was written in pro in, in free verse, I was just like, oh no, oh no, no, no, no. Cause I never read poetry. It's too hard. It's too dense, but you made it like good code. Thank you. Oh my gosh. Thank you so much. That's like the best compliment. Um, yeah, it's, it's funny cause you say that you never read verse and I never, I didn't really either. Like the first time never read verse. And I never, I didn't really either. Like the first time I read, so as a kid, I love Shel Silverstein. So I read poetry. But, you know, I mean, that's a very, that's a very specific kind of poetry.

But when I think about poetry as an adult, I think of a certain kind of poetry. And it wasn't until I started reading novels and verse that I was like, oh, wait, poetry can be really, really cool. It can be musical. It can be understandable. It doesn't have to be like intentionally obtuse or obscure. And it's funny because when the first time I read a novel in verse, I didn't realize that it was a single story. I thought it was a book of poetry, like a Shel Silverstein book of poetry.

And it wasn't until I was maybe a quarter of the way through it that I was like, wait, why are characters coming back over and over? Like this is, so I ended up having to go back to the beginning and reread it, realizing it was a single story. I mean, there are books in verse, I didn't know. Yeah. So, so the first, one of the first ones that I read was actually a book called The Crossover, which is written by someone named Kwame Alexander, who, if you haven't read this book, you, you absolutely must. It's, it's one of the first middle grade novels in verse in existence. It won the Newberry and it's also written by the guy who is now my publisher. Um, and so what I, what, when I was writing my, when I was writing Emmy,

um, I, I was sort of using the crossover as a mentor text because, you know, so his book combines basketball and music, and I was combining code and music, which are all things that people don't think of as the same. But when it's presented in a book, it somehow makes sense. And so I highly, highly, highly recommend that one as like, if Emmy has wet your palate for novels and verse, that is definitely one to check out. Is it the rise of hip hop and rap that allows more free verse to happen so i have a theory my theory is that there is a there's a lack of books for um like blooming readers um that are that are high interest so that are that are interesting stories but not like overly complicated text or like like the words aren't complicated so the same way that like graphic novels are drawing in younger readers or maybe more reluctant readers, I think novels and verse have the same power because

from the outside, these books look just like any other book. They look like they are thick. They look like they have chapters. They look like they're for teenagers as opposed to like little kids. But because there's so much white space, you can move through it really quickly and feel like a really confident reader even if you're not. So I think that the reason that that's the reason I think verse novels are kind of experiencing a bit of a renaissance right now. I also do think there's probably something about how exposed we are to music these days in a way that I might not have been as a kid. I mean, I guess I had the radio, which I listened to as a kid, but even that it wasn't so much like, you know, I, my parents drove me to school and we could turn the radio on or off, but here, but as I've gotten older,

I feel like I'm like more and more exposed to music. And I think that because music is that kids are listening to so much music and because kids are probably way more up to date on what current music is than maybe some adults or myself definitely um i do think that that there is that music kind of becomes a like a doorway into into verse especially with things like like hamilton which i think kids in particular have really taken a shine to. I adore Hamilton. Things that are so text heavy. And I see a lot of videos of kids rapping Hamilton. And that makes me so happy because what is Hamilton but Shakespeare?

I mean, it's literally Shakespeare. Or gosh, who? There was a rapper that just won like a Pulitzer Prize or some really big prize. Kendrick Lamar. Kendrick Lamar. His lyrics are, they're absolutely genius. And so I think if that's the kind of brilliant music that kids are listening to, then I think that absolutely is an entryway into poetry. And I can totally see that verse novels sort of are the bridge, I guess, between music and poetry and literature. Okay, so I do see that bridge. What about the overlap between poetry and code?

Yeah. So I've always had these two sides of me, this technical side that loves puzzles and that loves code and loves to kind of dive deep into a technical problem and not emerge until I've solved it. But I've also always had this love of language and this love of words. And everyone would hear these – whenever I would say that I was a software engineer but that I was writing a book, people would be like, oh, those are such opposites. And even in college when I – because I double majored in computer science and literary arts and people would say, like, oh my god, those are absolute opposites. And I see why people say that. But to me, they never seemed like opposites. And I think why people say that. But to me, they never seemed like opposites. And I think because code to me was never math.

It was always a language. And I think when people think of code, they think of like ones and zeros and like, you know, like the crash output you get when you have an error in Microsoft Word and like calling Comcast. Like everything is scary and terrible and, and confusing. And I think there's elements of, of coding that do get down into the weeds and like deal with binary and deal with like wires and circuits and like, but that's just, that's not what I've done in my career. And so when I think of code, I don't think of that at all. I think of, I literally think of words like Java is all language. I think of like documentation. I think of like a well-designed like variable name as silly as that sounds. But to me, coding was all about language. And I thought that people whose work I most admired

were the ones who were good communicators. And so I was reading a book called The Red Pencil, which is by Andrea Davis Pinckney. And it has nothing at all to do with code, but it's written in verse. And for some reason, when I was reading it, the way that she used colons and new lines and tabs and spaces reminded me of the coding language Python. And it struck me all at once how similar the two are, because both poetry and code are things where we ascribe meaning to punctuation or to white space or to a single word. And then we, like, use that word over and over again. And every time we use it, we're reminded of that original meaning. And I used to get these emails from recruiters, believe it or not, that would be like, if you dot are looking for a job, you dot apply to, and it's like, it was, it gets so ridiculous, but also I like,

you know, like a recruiter is not necessarily a technical person, but they understood the coding syntax enough to write this ridiculous email. And it kind of struck me that how human readable it can be. And I thought no one had ever consciously done that before, or at least not to my knowledge. And I figured if anyone was capable of telling a story through the language of code, it would probably be somebody who was a good writer and also a good software engineer. I was like, well, why can't I tell that story? And so I decided to give it a try. And I think it was pretty successful. And so hopefully through the course of the book, people sort of realized that these two things that seem like opposites don't

actually have to be. I totally agree with that. They don't have to be. And I do tend to think good code should be story-like. Yeah, absolutely. It's funny as I was reading it, because I was trying to relate to my experience as a kid learning computers. And I started with computers way younger than most kids, for better or for worse, probably slightly for worse. But I was probably five or six when I started playing around with basic and stuff. And Emmy is a sixth grader in the book, so she started a little later. And she makes these connections with music and stuff. And I don't remember making a connection with anything.

It just was this thing that, oh, okay, this is the thing that i'm learning and i kind of felt jealous that she had this connection that i didn't seem to make until until later years kind of thinking about this sort of stuff um yeah i just found that really cool that she was inspired sort of tangentially yeah i don't you know now that i think about it i don't know how much of a connection i was making when i was learning to code either if anything i was just it felt like a logic puzzle yeah yeah and the logic puzzles don't always activate the well i was going to say good variable name part of your brain but the the linguistic arts part of your brain there is separation, although if you can do both, it's far better. Right. Yeah. And I think that's interesting because I look back at my very old code,

like when I first was learning, and it doesn't make sense. Like the logic is there, it works, but it's hard to read. And I think that's something that you actually acquire as you get older and as you develop your communication skills. I mean, we've all worked with somebody who writes brilliant code that works perfectly, but that the next person who goes in has no idea what it means or what it does. Has your writing influenced your coding? I think so. I think I put a lot more effort into things like documentation or like, I think I'm pretty good at coming up with variable names, for example, or method names, because I mean, like, That's the hardest problem. I know, they say like the hardest problems in computer science are caching and variable names. So I got 50% of that for my MFA. I think I should have had it paid for by my companies. But I do think that I

also think something that I was kind of surprised by as I started, like entering the workforce is how much of my job is like presentations or, or writing emails or like just convincing people that my, my way is the right way or like whatever it is. And those are things that I definitely got from my MFA or from my literary arts degree more than my computer science class. Okay. What about the other way? How much has coding influenced your writing? Well, I mean, I wrote a whole book on it, so clearly some. It's funny. I did it – like people were saying for years they were telling me to write a book about girls coding. And I was always like, yeah, okay, fine. Because most of the books that I'd read about girls coding were either like nonfiction.

So they were about a specific woman coder. Or they were like not accurate about it um and that and or like i mean we've all read those books that are like that are like you know here's an evil tech company and everyone's really really sexist and and like and like oh this poor girl like this is why she leaves the tech industry and like that was just like like i obviously i've experienced some sexism, but that was not the overarching emotion for my time there. And so I was always like, okay, fine. I'm going to write a book about girls coding. What's that going to be?

Like another biography of Grace Hopper? Great. I adore biographies of Grace Hopper. No shade there. But I was like, that just isn't something that I want to do. But I think that's sort of why the idea of Emmy jumped out at me and became something that I really wanted to write about because it's not about coding. It's about just like a girl who's trying to figure out what she loves to do and about friendships and about like teachers and mentors and family. And so coding is just like a tool. And I think, you know, I was trying to

figure out what to do for a second book. And I was like, well, I have to do something else with STEM. I have to do something else with STEM. And I'm not. Like my second book has nothing at all to do with STEM. But I think I felt like I needed to because that was like my brand or whatever with this first book, as if like you have a brand after one book. But that's sort of what I felt like I had to do. But I think the reason that that never felt right to me is the same reason that it never felt right to me to write books about girls in STEM in the first place, because that wasn't what drew me to the idea. I think it's interesting to hear you say that, because I was going to say when I was reading it,

I didn't feel like it was a girls in code book and this is designed specifically to inspire young girls to get into coding. I mean, it can do that, but I was connecting with the musical aspects and the story as a whole and the code was there and it was cool and interesting, but it was just a hook as part of, uh,

you know, a necessary part of the story and how those friendships developed and stuff. So yeah, no, I didn't feel like it was like a preachy here. Here you coding is great. Everyone should do it kind of thing. Thank you for saying that. I mean, that that's definitely, it's nice when like your intention sort of comes through in the book. Cause that that's definitely what, that was definitely my intention. Like the code was not there. Like it can teach code, but it's, it was there because

that's how she thinks. Was, did it cross your mind, I just don't want to write about women in STEM? Because, oh my God, there's so many people talking about it, and it's such a fraught subject, and it's my life, and I just don't care anymore. I don't want that to speak from experience. I'm sorry. No, absolutely. And I think that's why I was sort of like, every time someone was like, oh, girls in STEM are so hot right now. Like, like, you should absolutely write a book about that. It'll sell like gangbusters. I was kind of rolled my eyes. That was like, it's my life. Like, it's not like I could write something sensationalist, I guess, and like, maybe sell books, but like, you can't predict the market like that. And even if I tried, I don't think I could spend years working on that because it just doesn't, it just doesn't strike me as interesting. Like, like, I mean, how could I get myself up in the morning every day to write that? Because like, like, it just has to be something that you believe in so strongly. And I didn't have

like, it's like what you said, like, I was doing that every day. Like, why would I want to write a book about that again? And I think actually, like, looking at Emmy, the part that was probably the hardest to write or the most, the part that I, like, kind of pushed back against myself with the most was writing about the character Francis. Because he's the character who is sort of the, we could call him the sexist in the book, but I don't even really quite see him that way because I do think that he just has been given some bad ideas. He's a kid. He learned things the wrong way. And I think he is like, by the end of the book, I think he's like trying to be better. But even with that, I was like really struggling. I was like, do I even want to include this? Is this something that I want kids to like, like this could deter kids from learning from wanting to code this. I mean, but at the same time, I don't think you can really

tell a book, a story about girls in STEM without at least like addressing that that's a thing they're going to experience. But I think that was probably the part where I was kind of like, oh, do I really want to do this? You know? I think it was the right decision because it certainly feels real. I mean, even the sexist part aside, I remember those kinds of kids and being discouraged from doing anything quote unquote smart as a kid. Right. Right. And the feeling that they're only discouraging you when in fact they're just discouraging everyone. It's not about you. Yeah. Yeah. yeah yeah totally sorry we're giving a spoiler spoiler yeah we should put a spoiler before we even start talking maybe we'll put it on the top of the show i mean it isn't no but you

know people it isn't really spoiling i don't think because it's the book is about the characters i want to ask some questions that are definitely detailed. Okay, we will ask that. Okay, so all of that aside, did you mean to write an introduction to Java programming? Was that a goal or a byproduct? That was actually a goal from the beginning. Because part of the reason I... So the thing I think I've gotten the better, better at as I've, as I've like been writing more and been in publishing more is I think I've gotten

better at, at, at identifying a hook when the hook hits me. Um, cause I think for a long time I was writing because I was like, Oh, that's interesting. That's exciting for me. But it's, but like, I think I've gotten better at identifying when something is, um, going to be interesting to publishers. And I obviously am in no way an expert on that, but I think we've gotten better at it. And so one of the things that I sort of thought as I first had this idea was, if I can teach a little bit of coding, if I can make this like a real, like something that a teacher could teach, like in conjunction with a computer science class, that is a hook. And so that was actually

a part of the original. And actually one of the very first things that I did was sort of decide that I was going to have her understand all of the words in public static void mainstream bracket bracket arcs by the end. And I think once I gave myself that backbone, it was like, this is the curriculum. She needs to learn all these words. I'm not going to branch too far outside of this curriculum because there's only so much space in the book. But if I give myself those boundaries and I make that the goal, then at the very least, I have like a framework. But that was an initial goal of it, was to teach a little bit of coding. Did you have a particular person in mind as an audience as you wrote? A niece, nephew, son, daughter? 45-year-old white male. I think I write for my 12-year-old self. Like I was like a pretty happy and well-adjusted kid. Like I don't want to, you know, paint this picture of me as like some kind of like lonely sad sack. But I do think that I was like a pretty happy and well adjusted kid. Like I don't want to, you know, paint this picture of me as like a, like some kind of like lonely sad sack. But I do think that I was like, loneliness was like a very strong emotion for me as a child. And I, and like, I just remember feeling that way

so strongly. And so I think like, there are still these things that I'm dealing with now as like a 29 year old woman that I'm I was dealing with when I was 12. And I think that I write the books, the way I've sort of phrased it in the past is I write the books that I need to write in hopes that someone else needs to read them. And I think that I'm like working through my own, like, not like traumas, but just my own, like, you know, those insecurities you have as a kid, the same things that you were dealing with when you were 12, you're dealing with now. And, you know, I write, I write that because that's what I'm thinking about. And that's what, what, what I could have used when I was 12. And I hope that there is like still a 12 year old in the world who reads this book and like feels like they needed it. Like that's, that's what I hope. How long has the

book been out? Just about a month and a half. It came out September 24th. Okay. And you went on book tour. I did. Like an actual book tour across the country. Yeah. It was pretty fun. We went to six cities.

We went to Minnesota or Minneapolis, St. Paul, Chicago, Boston, New York, Sarasota, Florida, and Seattle. And we did that in 10 days. It was a lot of traveling. How did you, I mean, this is, and you've got a fair amount of press and publicity. How did your publisher decide, how did you get them to invest so much money in promoting your book? I mean, that's a great question. Well, the main thing is that I have a wonderful agent. Her name is Kathleen Rushall. Like this is a, an advertisement for her. She's amazing. She works at, she's an agent for the Andrea Brown Literary Agency, which I also highly recommend.

They're like a great agency and support system. And I'm like, I, I would would I would believe strongly in any agent that works at Andrea Brown. So so part of the reason that I think they are supporting the book and the way that they are like without getting too much in the weeds of like publishing details is so that the book went to auction, which is which is basically when like multiple houses want to buy it, which is like really, really lovely as an author who had been like trying to get published for like, I know it's like you try so hard to get published for so many years. And like all of a sudden, like you go from having like 75 rejections on, like I had 75 agent rejections

before I started getting offers on my book. And this was like the fourth novel I went out with. And I also went out with a picture book at one point. So I had my fair share of rejection. But it's pretty funny to's like a guarantee of anything, but it means that there's demand and like multiple people think it's a good idea. And so I think when you have that kind of validation, you maybe trust a little more that they're going – that like the book has a market or has a demand. And so they're maybe more willing to put more money into it. I think also, like, and like, I really don't know the answer to this. I think that I do. I have a theory here where because the imprint that I. Because like every book, like there's only, this is the sixth book that this imprint has put out over the span of a year, because that's all, that's a whole lifespan of the imprint. It's been less than a year. You went with the startup publisher? Well, not a startup publisher. So, okay. So the way that the publishing industry sort of works is you have these like big house publishers and they're like the really big ones like Scholastic and Harper and Simon & Schuster and Hachette. And then you have ones that are like still large and still reputable, but are not like

the huge ones. So mine is Houghton Mifflin, which I think falls into like a larger midsize category. I don't really know because I've only met like my team. So I'm at Hoden Mifflin, which is like a large ish publisher. But it's, but it's the Versify imprint. And so Versify is brand new, but it's, it's, it's attached to Kwame Alexander's name, who is like one of my literary heroes and is, has like a very successful career. And so even though it's kind of a startup imprint, it's backed by a very large house and it has the cachet of Kwame's name. Plus, I really trust him as an editor, as I love his work so much. And also his editor for the crossover is my editor for Emmy. And I really trust her. So we did go with like kind of a startup, but also, and so there's like, there's two sides to that. There's like the side where it's unproven, but there's also the side where,

you know, they really want to succeed. And like your success is their success. They're really invested in your success. So that's part of the reason that we that we went with them was because of that I think another reason that it is that they they put some oomph behind it is uh is because I've been putting oomph behind it and like I've I've made it very clear that I am gonna go and market the heck out of this thing and like I am gonna pull going to pull every string I have. I'm going to be tweeting about it all the time. I'm going to put my own money into it too. Like I do things like print stickers. I like, like a lot of the tour was funded by our, by us too. And so like we're, if we're willing to do that, then they're willing to put more, put more energy into us as well.

So I think, I think there's, I think there's a lot of factors that play into like, like what publishers decide to push and what they don't. And I by no means have all the secrets. I'm just theorizing here. But I think there's probably some truth to it. Did getting an MFA make this possible? I mean, could you have done this without it? I probably could have gotten published without it. So the reason, let me go back a little bit. The reason I decided to get an MFA is because I had sort of reached what I felt like was a dead end in my attempts at publishing. So I had written a full-length novel, like a dystopian ya you know not a trilogy but like like it was basically kind of everyone's first attempt at a novel which is like it's gonna be the next the hunger games because it's i mean it's exactly the hunger games every like it's the same way that when you're like an early budding like artist or like a painter you'll you'll um you'll copy

existing artworks uh as an author, you do basically the same thing, I think, where when you're first starting out, you're just copying the stuff that you've read. And so I was doing that. And so I wrote this book. I thought it was amazing. I tried to get it published. I got like a bunch of people very nicely saying no. And I was like, okay, maybe this book wasn't as good as I thought. I'm gonna write another book. And I wrote another book. And this is a book that I actually still go back to thinking that it has merit and that one day I'll return to it and actually get it published. But and I started to make some more, some more progress and have more success with that second book. And I had some people saying like, this is really interesting, but or people were saying like, send me more pages or some people were saying like, if you do this, this and this, then I will consider signing you. And I, but I, but like at that point I had probably amassed 70 rejections.

I've been doing it for like four or five years. And I was like, I don't know how to do these changes. I don't know. I don't know how to do what they're asking. And so I, at the same time, I was starting to feel like I was burnt out of software engineering. I was at Facebook at this time and I had just had like a bad review or like a bad day or something. And I was like, oh, maybe I should just quit. Like I should just become a writer full time. But I was at this point, I was still single. I didn't really have the funds to do that. And so it's like, okay,

like think rationally. If you were to quit today, what's the first thing you would do? And what I decided was I was going to intern for a literary agent. And so I did that and I really liked it. And at the end, the agent was like, so you could try to become like an agent if you wanted, but I think where your strength is, is in writing. And so if that's something you want to pursue, you might want to consider getting a low residency MFA because they'll help you get to the next level. And you don't have to quit your job. You can do it from where you are. And so I did that. And it was probably the best decision I ever made.

Like, not only did they teach me how to write, but they taught me how to read. They taught me what to read. They taught me, like, how to think about literature as part of like the political conversation. And they kind of reminded me why it matters to write books for kids. Plus, I met so many wonderful, talented authors who I consider my friends now. And like a lot of the people that I talk to like on a daily basis are people from this program. Not to mention the fact that before the program, I had never read a novel in verse before. Like I would never have even thought to write one because I didn't know they existed. And so the MFA is like really the reason I was able to write

Emmy. Now, that being said, it's expensive to get an MFA. It's really time consuming. Not everyone can take on more debt or has a tech job to subsidize a writing career. So I don't want to say that an MFA is critical because there are so many people in the world who publish beautiful, beautiful books without getting an MFA. But for me, it was invaluable. I probably could have gotten published without it, but I don't think it would be as quickly, and I don't think it would be with a book that I'm as proud of. When I first wrote the introduction for the show, I asked if people would ever thought of giving up on their engineering career to become an author. And you corrected me because you didn't want to be thought of as giving up on engineering. How do you think you would go back?

So, yeah, so I did correct you because I think I've been struggling a bit with this decision to pause software engineering, partly because I still think of myself as a software engineer. I still love coding. I don't ever want that not to be a part of me. And I don't ever want to like remove the option from the table of, of going back if I wanted to, like if the financial need ever arose or if I just like felt an over, like, like if there was ever like a startup company that I just really believed in, I would maybe want to go do that. And also just, I just never want to say never, like I don't want to plan my life out too far in advance.

So, so I just, I just, I sort of just mentally, cognitively, I'm trying to just not, not think of it as like a closed door. I, I, that being said, I don't see myself going back anytime soon. I, I want to have kids. I want to be able to, I don't want to be a stay at home mom, but I want to be, um, like maybe like a part-time stay at home mom. Um, I want to be, I want my writing to be like something I'm very serious about for a long time. And, but I, but I could totally see myself like, you know, fast forward, like 15 years, if I do have kids and they're in school and I have multiple books out and I'm just feeling like I need to change, maybe I would go back to

a startup or something. I also use coding in my regular life because I make crossword puzzles. And I spend, whenever i'm coming up with a theme that is particularly challenging i will usually code some way of like scraping my dictionary and um like checking which words have certain properties so like i'll make like like advanced regex kind of um things for my crossword puzzles and so I'm using that on a regular basis. I also have like coded various piece, various, like various things for Emmy promotion. I would also at some point be interested in like making YouTube videos, teaching various coding aspects through, through the language of, of the book or like the characters of the book or something like

that. So I, I could totally see myself like incorporating, like, like I've always thought of coding as a tool, the same way I think of writing as a tool. And it's always going to be a tool in my tool belt. And so if there's something I want to create one day that requires code, then I have that, I can use that. And so like if one day I, you know, if someone ever approaches me with like a startup idea, they need, they need someone to code for. And the idea really, really speaks to me, then I could totally see myself going back into it. But probably not for like at least a decade. Like, like I want to like have my kids first and kind of do that part of my life. And then, and then we'll see what happens. Was it scary to quit? Did you already have the book published? I mean, did you? How long were you?

It was quitting was very scary. I to the point where I did part time first, like I went down to about 21 hours a week, I did or something that I did three to 24 hours a week, I did three days a week for about three or four months before I quit full time. I had sold the book back in May of 2017. No, is that true? 2018, May of 2018. And it wasn't until like, about six months later that I decided to go part time. And it wasn't until four months after that, that I decided to quit. And, and the main reason that I, that I quit, that I didn't, that I didn't just keep doing part-time a little longer was because of my travel schedule more than anything. I, I had my honeymoon coming up. I had, my husband's family is Greek. And so we had a bunch of weddings in Greece on back-to-back weekends right after our honeymoon. So between just my honeymoon in Greece,

I was going to be gone for six weeks. And then on top of that, I had my tour coming up. I had... If I was lucky, I would be invited to conferences and school visits and all this stuff, which has happened. And so I, I don't think I could have even held down a part-time job, even with, um, even with, uh, with the amount of travel I'm doing. It just like, it wouldn't have been possible. Like I would've gotten fired. And then on top of that, even when I was doing part-time, I had another reason that I was able to make this work is I had just gotten hired onto the staff of crossword puzzle writers for the New Yorker, which is a really lovely gig because it's consistent.

It's like a monthly thing. It also pays pretty well. And so that, and like the amount of time that I was spending on those puzzles, plus all my promotion and revisions and stuff for Emmy was basically taking up all my, like, the extra two days a week I had from working part-time plus my weekend. So I was still working four days a week, um, in addition to my three days a week of my, of my tech job. And it was, and that wasn't, that was without even writing my next book. So I was totally at full capacity plus weekends and I wasn't even writing. And so I was getting really frustrated by this. I felt like I wasn't making progress in my goals. And I was stressing about all this upcoming travel. I was like, how am I going to make this work? And then a couple of like financial things happened.

And my husband and I just kind of sat down and we're like, look, I think I need to do this. Like I, I like worst case scenario, I hate it. And I go back to work like in a year, but I want to take a year to just do it. The other thing is because we do want to have kids soon. It's like, this is, I've always said I wanted to write full time for a year before I had kids. And so it's like, this is basically the only, only chance I have. I have, I have the best circumstances that is possible to have. I would be the only reason not to do it is because it's scary. And that's not a good reason.

Yeah, exactly. Exactly. And so we decided to just do it. Are you writing now? Do you have the time? Or are you just so full of publicity? Some weeks are pretty busy and full of publicity. But I have managed to do a pretty major revision of my second book in the last about like month and a half in between, like right before the tour, a little bit during the tour, right after the tour. I'm pretty good at working on planes too. So I do a fair bit of work on planes. So I've told my editor, I'm going to get it back to her in about a week. And at this point, I'm feeling pretty much done with it. I just have like a couple of, there are recipes in my second book. And so the main thing I have to do is, is like, is like fix the recipes,

but those are sort of those kind of stand separate from the book. So the book itself is in pretty good shape, I think. So I owe it to her in like a week. So I have a week to get this thing finished. So I but I am writing I am writing. Are you? So writing used to be something you did outside work. And so it was a passionate, fulfilling, amazing, I don't want to call it a hobby because that's too little, but vocation that you had to carve out time for. Are you worried that it will become a job you hate because you just have to do it all the time? I mean, hobbies and careers are hard. Yeah. No, I absolutely do think about that.

And actually, one of the things that a lot of writers have said is like, when writing becomes your career, you need a new hobby. And I've actually started taking on – so I played piano for 10 years as a kid and I quit. I like wrote a whole essay on like why I quit and all this stuff. And so plug for my newsletter. I post things about like piano. So if you want to sign up for my newsletter, you'll get thoughts like that. But so I recently started picking up piano again. And so that's sort of become my, it's the only thing I do that's nonverbal. Everything else I do is like all about words. But piano is like just sound. And so it's, that's the only thing I do that's nonverbal. Everything else I do is like all about words. Um, but piano is like just sound. And so it's, it's, that's sort of the thing I do to kind of like unwind when, when my career becomes too overwhelming. Um, but I, I do worry about like what happens if I, I guess I don't worry so much about hating it. I worry about, um, like, like

the anxiety of it. Like, like when you have two things you care about, if one thing's going badly, then you at least you have the other thing. But when, um, but when like you have one thing that's getting all your focus and like all of your time is spent thinking about books, it's like when, when books like, like if something bad happens in the book world, then, then that's your whole life. And like, I know I was going through this period of time, like maybe like a month and a half before the book came out where, you know, like debut authors gets, I mean, every author, but I think debuts because it's their first one and maybe a little more intense. They get so in their head about like, you know, am I getting

enough attention? Do people like the book enough? And somebody very wise said, no one's going to praise your book for as long as it took you to write it. Yeah. But I was getting really in my head about this. And I was like, oh, this like, like, like, and like, I couldn't even say that they hate it. I could say the people don't like it enough. And so I was getting, but, and, and that, that's sort of what worries me is when I don't have the tech job, it's like, I get so anxious and I spiral about stuff like that. So I don't necessarily worry that I'm going to hate it, but I worry that I'm just going to like, it's going to make me crazy. I can see that. I was thinking more of the blank page problem of every day I have to write something, where before I might, you know, code and in the back of my brain, I would be thinking about what

I was writing. And then when I actually got to the blank page, it would all spill out because that's what I've been doing all day in the background. Yeah. Yeah. I think, you know, I think that there's definitely some element of truth to that. I think that the way I've been at least so far working around it is I have enough projects going on that are not just the writing. Yeah. I can. Yeah. Because like there's promotion for Emmy, there's, there's travel for the book. There's crossword puzzles. I also, I play piano, I cook, like I, you know, I run with my husband. So there's enough other things that I'm doing that like, if, if you know, if I'm getting frustrated with one project, I switch to another one. And the other one might be a picture book. It might be an adult romance.

It might be like a chapter book series. Like whatever it is, like if I can switch and they're different enough that they don't feel like it's the same thing, even though it's still the blank page. I have a question from one of the folks in my writing group. Cecily mentioned that young adult novels have a reputation for passionate and sometimes rabid, in not so nice a way, fans. What has been your experience and how do you deal with fans? Well, I am not famous enough to have a ton of fans yet. Hopefully one day. I think also, so technically my book is middle grade. So young adult tends to be like 15 to 18 and middle grade tends to be like eight to 12. You may notice that there's a bit of a gap between 12 and 15. And that's actually like, in my opinion, a problem with like the kid lit space is that

there's not a whole lot of books written for ages 12 to 15, but that is a separate podcast. But because my, my quote unquote fans are like younger, they're, they're not on Twitter. They're, they're not like, like if I get, if someone reaches out to me, it's usually like super, super, super nice. Like I have yet to have anybody say anything like negative about the book. Like I think the most negative thing anyone has said even in like my like worst Amazon review, someone called it like anti-transhumanist or something. And I was like, I don't even know what that means. I think he was commenting on – there's like one thing I, there's one kind of throwaway line in the book about souls and how if you download your brain into a thumb drive, it could be,

you basically be a soul on a computer. And someone's like, this is too atheist for me. And I was like, okay, that's fair. Like, I guess I am atheist and therefore it probably came out in my book in a very subtle way. So that's probably like the most or like and like maybe one person's commenting and like commented on pacing at one point. So it's like when that's like the most negative thing people are saying, at least like like to your face and like in reviews, it's like like you really can't complain. You know, it's been it's been really people have been super, super nice. But I also think that the more famous you get, the more books you put out, the more open you become to angry fans or rabid fans. And I think especially if you're writing a series and you have books that exist that people love, and then you're tasked with- They have their headcanon and you didn't do it the right way. Exactly. Exactly. Exactly. I think that becomes like very high pressure. I don't write, or at least so far, I have not written anything. Well, actually, I shouldn't even say that. Nothing that I have sold is meant to be a series. So I do have things that I would like to be serieses, but they are unsold as of yet. But I think once you're tasked with the idea of, like,

making more content with preexisting characters, that's when people can get angry or just, like, sad. Because it's a good problem to have, right? Because that means they love your characters so much that they're so real to them that they have all these opinions on like what should happen to them. Like that's kind of beautiful. But it just like it hasn't happened to me yet. Maybe one day, hopefully one day.

You mentioned reading the Amazon reviews and I saw on Twitter you were looking at Goodreads. Yeah, I checked. That's crazy. You cannot do that. I know. I know. Everyone says not to. I saw that you reviewed it yourself, which I thought was hilarious. I reviewed it like the moment that i knew i had a goodreads page i was like i'm gonna review

my own five stars at this point it's like kind of embarrassing maybe i should probably take it down no no it's great i i do check i feel like i actually have a pretty thick skin when it comes to reviews so because i i think also because i've because i've made i've made crosswords for so long and those get reviewed and I always read those and I like, and I, I put so many out that like some are not going to get good reviews and that's fine. Um, and I think that, and I think also I've been lucky enough that the reviews have been good. And so like, if something starts, something does get negative, then it's like, well, that's one person's opinion. Um, I think it'd be very different if like I put a book out and people just like really didn't like it. Like that would really hurt. But I do check partly just because checking makes me less anxious than not checking. But I

do limit myself in terms of how many times I can check. So I don't let myself check more than once a day. I check only the first thing in the morning. It's just like, I know, I know. I sound, I'm pretty, I'm pretty, I also like, I mean, this is definitely like my OCD acting up. Like I also like, you know, wake up in the middle of the night and check that the oven's off. So like, but like, it's not, it is definitely not a problem right now. And so until it becomes a problem, I will continue scratching that itch. As someone with significant anxiety that I relate highly to you, you're compartmentalizing the check-in. That's great. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yes. Crash. I try not to read the reviews. It happens like once a year. Yep. Okay. So a question from Thomas, are there differences in the structures and ways you thought about coding that differed from your non-writing coworkers? And same question the other way, at school, were there differences in the ways you processed and thought about writing that were different from your non-coding writers? I do. I think so. I think with coding, I really emphasize readability. I emphasize, because I think I have some coding friends that emphasize like brevity. And so their goal is to

make the code as short as possible. And so they'll like, you know, every time there's a new function that comes, like, because Java is doing some, like, kind of functional language stuff as it increases and as, like, the versions increase. But I always really struggled using functional programming because I just, it doesn't feel as human readable to me. And so I would do the more verbose thing just because I felt it was easier to read. So I would get into arguments about that where we would just debate whether brevity was better if it was the same efficiency, but less readable. So we would get into base about that. I also think that I approach writing from a fairly technical standpoint. Like I think that I, I don't know how to, how to describe this, but I think like, I think I'm pretty good at pulling out like craft elements. Like I'll be reading a book and I'll be like, oh, interesting. They started that, they started the book with this, with like this type of sentence. And now they're

ending it with the same type of sentence or like, here is a line that pops up four times. And like they, you know, this works because the first two times you're setting the pattern, the third time you are heightening the pattern and the fourth time you're breaking the pattern or like things like that. Like I, I feel like, I feel like, and I think this is also just something I got from my MFA was like an ability to like analyze writing and kind of think about it from like a technical standpoint. And I think the books that I love are the ones that are like technically intricate. And so I do wonder if that comes from my tech background. It also just could come from my MFA where we are kind of taught to read analytically. I think another thing that kind of maybe bridges the gap between the two is

because I have these two sides, I think I'm pretty good at like drawing connections between things. So like every time I learn a new word and like another language, for example, I'm like, oh, it's just like this word in English and this word in Spanish or whatever. And I think the same thing happens with like writing or coding. Like anytime I see, I learn something new in like a coding context or a writing context, I will like consciously make the connection to like the other thing. And I don't have any examples of this. So it's going to sound very vague. But,

but that's something that I do think I do that, that like that, that like not a lot of writers who don't code or coders who don't write do. Cool. Christopher, you had spoiler questions. It's sort of spoilery. So, so let's see. Christopher, you had spoiler questions. It's sort of spoilery. So let's see. There are a few passages I just wanted maybe for you to tell us how you were inspired to write it or what was on your mind. And you can totally tell me to go away. And then I had a few questions. So I walk inside like I'm a chord resolving.

That was just an amazing little phrase. And I was wondering how you came up with that. I think this is sort of goes back to what I was saying about how, because I have these two things i'm constantly making connections between them and so like like metaphors like that came fairly easily to me and sometimes i really liked one and i would like save it i'd be like i have to use this somewhere i don't know where i think i'd originally that one had originally been like i'm a compass and it's magnetic north which i still like as a metaphor but it just didn't fit for the character. And it's interesting because I'm writing the second book now, which sort of combines food and Judaism, which is like a very, very different from Emmy, but also not too different. And one of the things that my editor has said is that I have too many metaphors. And I think partly because I did so many in Emmy, but they worked in Emmy because I legitimately do think in music. I played piano for so many years,

but I don't have the food background that I would need in order to think in food the same way. And so I think the ones in my second book are forced right now. Hopefully, they will not be when the book becomes published, but right now they are. But I also, I'm glad you liked that phrase because I also really liked that metaphor. The next one I liked was sometimes the best dungeons are the ones that look like palaces. And that's where Ms. Delaney is describing. I think it's a part of where either she's describing or it's a description of her experience with working in a startup yes is that straight from yes straight from that it yes uh yeah it's funny because so like that that same negative amazon review it's it's it says that the book

is like this tech utopia book which i think is really funny because i think that particular shows that it's not because that like this if like an author insert in the book, it's probably Miss Delaney. Because what she's going through is very similar to what I was going through as I was writing it. With this desire to leave this tech industry world and do something with similar or same skills that just has a little more meaning to her. But it's funny because that fairy tale was a pretty late insert. And I remember writing it and finding it tough to write because I felt like I was being so mean to tech. Because I do love tech. And I loved working in tech. but I also had these very complicated feelings about it. So at the very least, putting in this form of a fairy tale and kind of using these very gentle metaphors about dungeons and palaces was at the very least, like, at the very least, it gave me a little bit of distance to talk about it.

Yeah, yeah. No, that resonated with me pretty well. I'm really glad. And the last one, which I thought was really cool and you don't have to say anything about it. It's just, I wanted to have it out there. Four loops are just wild loops dressed up for Halloween. It's syntactic sugar.

I felt like I couldn't say syntactic sugar. But yeah, it is. struggling with practicing that and and that really connected with me because i've struggled with music a lot um but was was there a particular thing you had you didn't mention which piece he was working on i think was there something you had in mind because emmy describes it as very angular and and sort of dissonant to start with and then she starts as she listens to it more she starts to to engage with it but was there a particular piece and you had in mind or was it just kind of like there's lots out there that like this there's no particular piece but it was sort like like i was in this one music theory class in a high school that i i like really did not connect with it was i don't know it might have been like a theory class on atonal music and i like really struggled with hearing any song that was atonal. I just couldn't

pick out the through line. And I felt this way with like, um, anything by like Bella Bartok, anything there, there was this one flute piece. I can't remember specifically the name, but it's called like, its name is the density of platinum or, or so it's called like density 121.5 or something it's like but it's the density of this of of this particular flute um of this particular like flute that it was played on it was like made out of like a different kind of metal um but we listened to it over and over again and i the first like five times i listened to it i was like this is the worst song i've ever heard and then like the sixth time i would start to hear little little things that I thought were interesting, or like, I mean, and just every, so like, there's those are the pieces that were kind of at the forefront of my mind, although those are not symphony pieces, honestly, especially if it was like not one of like Haydn, Beethoven, Bach, Mozart, especially as I got into more contemporary composers like Debussy or Liszt or – not that Liszt was contemporary, but Debussy is fairly contemporary. Oh, yeah.

I had this one Shostakovich song that I played on the piano that was like – but I loved it by the end. But it took me a really long time to understand what was going on. And a lot of jazz feels that way to me, where I don't get it when I first hear it. It takes a long time for me to get it, but once I get it, I love it. So there was no specific piece, but I had a lot of voices in my ears as I was – not voices, like songs in my ears, but there was no one in particular. You did have a lot of songs in the book. And one of the things that I found difficult was that I didn't know many of them, not having as much experience with classical music as Christos. And so I asked on Twitter if there was a list, and I was happy that you replied and said that there was a Google Play list, but since I don't have Google Play, I moved it to Spotify. Yeah, that's probably better. Most people, I don't know why, I got Google Play as like a

teen and I just never got rid of it. Yeah. How many of these songs did you choose as themselves? And how many things did you change later? Were these the songs from the beginning? Or did they get, like your recipes are doing now, did they get massaged a little later? They definitely got massaged. And they got massaged in different ways. Like the Stevie Wonder song that kind of comes up throughout that, like the title is sort of based on, that was a pretty late edition. And actually the title came first because we were talking about songs in the key of code. And someone's like, oh, just like songs in the key of life. And I was like, wait, what's that? And I looked it up. I was like, oh, like, I know this. I know. I love this album. I just didn't know the title of the album. And so that's why that the particular song Sir Duke came into play. So that was a late edition.

And then once I kind of, because another thing is that until my agent was actually the first person to suggest that Emmy had her own relationship to music, because originally it was just that her dad played the piano. Her mom didn't even have a relationship to music. That came about like pretty close to the end, actually. But it was one of those things where once it happened, it was like, oh my God, how has this not been there the entire time? This is the heart of the book. And that's funny that like that happens a lot with writing. It's like you're dancing around something and you don't get it. And then once you get it, like, this is what the book's been about the whole time. So the songs definitely came up at more as Emmy's relationship to music evolved. And then and so what you said about not knowing all the songs, I actually don't really know all of them either. Like, like, there's some that I chose more for their titles

than anything. And there's some that I chose because of their theme. And there's some that I chose because I just wanted to show that Emmy had like a very diverse musical taste. But like, I mean, her musical taste is basically my musical taste. Like I listened to, I listened to everything. So what I wanted to show that. And so it's, I think it's totally okay if people don't. And this is how I kind of feel about books in general. Like, like I, I mean, with the music jokes in the book and with the coding jokes in the book, I don't think anyone should have to understand any of it. I think the story should work for anybody, even if you know nothing. It was only like, but like, as a kid, I loved books that I loved books that had, like Easter eggs that I could find later on, like, as I read the book over and over again,

you know, things things that I just like, got as I read it more, as I like matured as a reader. And I think that I like, what I hope is that there are, there's like a kid out there who like, who like feels really proud of themselves because they, they got like the joke about the diminished fifth. And they're like, I take music theory class. And like,

I got that. Or they're like, like, I know what this song is. Like, I know, like, I know why you chose this song. There's the

reference. There's a John Cage song, the four minutes, 33 seconds that pops up in song titles. The name is never mentioned, but the titles of poems are called 433 in reference to the song. So if there's one kid who knows this song and gets it, they're going to feel so proud of themselves. But no one's going to not get it and then feel like they they're gonna feel so proud of themselves but no one's gonna not get it and then like feel like like they missed out on like the book you know yeah that's a multi-layered and it was i could i could totally see that i got a few of the music jokes but i knew some were going over my head and and i was trying to decide if i was researching them or going on to the next page and mostly going on to the next page.

Yeah. And that's totally fine. And I think that's kind of what I love about poetry too, is that you can read it really quickly. You can read it in like two hours. Like the audio book is I think three and a half hours. It's short. But if like a class were to study it and, you know, kids were to like write an essay

on a poem, they could and they could actually find that. And that's the kind of like as like a puzzle solver and a puzzle maker, like that's what I like. I like those kind of hidden elements. And so as a writer, I do that just to kind of amuse myself. But like it's also something that I hope that there's kids who like appreciate that too. Even if it's just like as they get older and they like go back and reread it, they're like, oh, I get this now. I didn't get that as a 12 year old. On your book tour, I assume you've been doing some readings. Yes.

What do you like to read? It's funny that you asked that question. The part that I read, my husband always says is not what I should be reading because I read the parts that I think are fun to read aloud, which is often the poems that are rhyming or are like more musical or rhythmic. So like the one, The Beatles, The Monkeys, The Turtles, The Cars, Madonna, Rihanna, Adele, Bruno Mars. I like reading that one aloud. I like reading aloud the part, like anything where I get to sing public static void mainstream bracket, bracket args. I like doing that because it's, you know, you wouldn't, you wouldn't hear the rhythm that I hear by just reading it.

So I do those, but my husband says that I should, but those are not like indicative of what the book is. And so he says I should read ones that are more like story-based. So I've tried reading ones that are more story-based. The problem I always run into, or at least that I just feel when I'm reading those, is I feel like for those, you don't always see why it's in verse when I just read those. And so I always struggle with that where I'm like, you would get so much more out of seeing this. So why am I reading it aloud? Fair enough. We have, have I believe kept you for a little bit longer than we told you we would so I

should probably close up the show do you have any thoughts you'd like to leave us with the main thought that I would like to leave you with is and I this is just sort of me like the thing that's on my mind now. And that's

something that people are talking about a lot in like, especially in the kid lit space in particular is this notion of like letting kids choose the books that they want to read. Like if our goal is to create readers, then we need to kind of let those readers grow on their own terms. And so, you know, if a kid is being drawn to the same book over and over again, if a kid is being drawn to just graphic novels, if a kid is being drawn to just picture books, like that's amazing. And that's beautiful. And like that creates readers. That's all. Our guest has been Amy Lucido, author of Emmy in the Key of Code and the upcoming Recipe for Disaster. You can find them in your bookstore, or you can ask your bookstore to order them for you, or you can purchase them online. There'll be links in the show notes.

Thanks, Amy. Thank you so much. Thank you to Christopher for producing and co-hosting. Thank you to my writing group and our Embedded FM Slack Patreon group for adding a few questions. And of course, thank you for listening. You can always contact us at show at embedded.fm or hit the contact link on Embedded FM. And now a quote to leave you with one of my favorite pieces from Emmy in The Key of Code. I don't raise my hand and ask, what about the in-betweens? What about the things that are not so Boolean?

What about the things that don't feel true, but also don't feel false? I don't ask about them because in Java, those things don't matter. Embedded is an independently produced radio show that focuses on the many aspects of engineering. It is a production of Logical Elegance, an embedded software consulting company in California. If there are advertisements in the show, we did not put them there and do not receive money from them. At this time, our sponsors are Logical Elegance and listeners like you.