The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Pickleballers by Ilana Long

Episode Date: November 26, 2024

Pickleballers by Ilana Long Amazon.com A pickleball newbie looking to recover from life’s swings and misses crosses paddles with love in this debut romantic comedy. Meg Bloomberg is in a pickle. When Meg’s ex turns out to be a total player, she and her bestie take off for a mood-lifting pickleball excursion to Bainbridge Island. It’s supposed to be an easy lob, a way to heal, not the opening serve to a new courtside romance that’s doomed to spin out. No matter how Meg tries, she can’t shake her feelings for Ethan Fine. A charismatic environmental consultant and Bainbridge local, Ethan seems like the real dill. But when Meg discovers that Ethan is sabotaging her home court, she decides the match is over. It’s time for Meg to take control of her own game. And maybe, just maybe…love will bounce back.About the author Ilana Long is the author of PICKLEBALLERS, a romantic comedy. Preorder for Novemeber 12, 2024! A pickleball newbie looking to recover from life’s swings and misses crosses paddles with love in this debut romantic comedy. Other books: ZIGGY'S BIG IDEA (Kar-Ben, Lerner Publishing, 2014) noted for its “dialogue-driven approach” (Kirkus review.) Several of her non-fiction essays are published in CHICKEN SOUP FOR THE SOUL (2016-2021) Simon & Schuster. Ilana is the author of a regular column for "The Tico Times", Costa Rica’s national English language newspaper, readership 12,000. Besides writing, Ilana travels and lives abroad, hikes, paints, acts, sings, teaches, and parents her twin teens.

You wanted the best. You've got the best podcast, the hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show, the preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. The CEOs, authors, thought leaders, visionaries, and motivators. Get ready, get ready, strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms, and legs inside the vehicle at all times, because you're about to go on a monster education rollercoaster with your brain. Now, here's your host, Chris Voss. Hi, this is Voss here from thechrisvossshow.com. And the Our Lady Sings and That Makes It Official. Welcome to the big show, my family and friends. As always, for 16 years, going on 17, over 2,100 episodes,

the Chris Voss Show Podcast. You can go see it at chrissvossshowpodcast.com. Thank you. Good night. No, I'm just kidding. Anyway, guys, just go watch the show over there. Anyway, we're live with an amazing young lady and amazing prolific author on the show. We're going to be talking about all of her books and some of the works that she's done.

And you're going to be excited to buy every damn one of them or else. I don't know what that means. Today we have Lana Long on the show with us today. We're going to be talking about her new book that taps into the hottest trend in exercise. And it's also great for dating and meeting people. Pickleballers is the name of the book and it just came out november 12th 2024 for those of you who are going to write me 10 years from now on youtube and say it's not new stop it look at the date on the video for christ

sake ilana is is a famed author she's written a number of different books that she has out she the pickleballers book that we'll be talking today is a rom-com. She's written a number of different books that she has out. The Pickleballers book that we'll be talking about today is a rom-com, or as some people call it, romantic comedy. As Gen Z calls it, I don't know, a bunch of random emojis. Her other books include Big Idea, Ziggy's Big Idea, I'm sorry, noted for its dialogue-driven approach. Some of her nonfiction essays are published in chicken soup for the soul. And she's a regular columnist for the Tico times, Costa Rica's national English

language newspaper leadership, 12,000 or I'm sorry, readership, there's a camera in a lot of leaders, readers. We're in the leadership. Yeah. That's one of the things she, Besides writing, she travels and lives abroad, hikes, paints, acts, sings, teaches, and parents. Her twin teens. Oh, my God. That's a job right in and of itself.

So, welcome to the show, Alana. How are you? I am doing super today. How are you doing? I am doing super. The comedy is just rolling as we were- It's rolling. We had more fun in the green room, but we'll see how this it's roll we have more fun in the green room

but we'll see how this goes we did a whole show in the green room before we can we should have taped that part but we should have we should have really done that so i want to tell give us the dot coms where do you want people to find you on the interwebs to get to know you okay my website is ilana long i l a n a l-G dot com. And I'm at Instagram at Ilana Long Writes. So give us a 30,000 hour view of what's inside your new book. Okay, so

this is a romantic comedy. And of course you're never going to guess, but it's about pickleball because it's called Pickleballers. It's about a woman named Meg and she goes through this recent divorce, and her friend Annie drags her out on the pickleball court because, you know, where else are you going to go to lift your spirits? And that's the place she goes. Absolutely.

Or drinking at the bar. One of the hours works, yeah. And she does that, too. So, you know, a few months later, she's really involved in the community, and she finds out that they're going to tear down her community pickleball courts. And the person who's heading that initiative happens to be the sexy environmentalist who she had this sort of romantic fling with. And hilarity ensues and sexual tension and yada yada. Darrell Bock Hence the rom-com.

You definitely, what inspired you to want to write a book entitled Pickleball or is it about the sport a bit? First of all, I love pickleball. I'm kind of obsessed. Like a lot of people who you might meet who play pickleball, they kind of get in the zone and they play for hours and their whole bodies hurt and then they still don't stop. But that's kind of where I'm at. And so I wanted to do that. But I started writing this during the pandemic because I really needed something uplifting. And Pickleball was one of those few places where I could get outside, be six feet apart, and sort of be with people. And I'm a big extrovert, in case you couldn't tell. Maybe you just really needed something

to slap around. I think we all needed that after COVID. Just whack the boop out of the ball. Yes, exactly. And some people that needed some. Anyway, don't resort to violence, folks. That's bad. No, no. That's bad.

Just keep it in your brain. So pickleballers. Most people don't know that the pickleball originated with the Aborigines in the 1600s, and they would actually take little on pickles and they would slap them back and forth come on now and it was later taken up in the serengeti by people in africa who formed the sport and they actually created a real ball from it um yeah it also comes from the town pickleball in i'm just making up shit where up shit. Where are you going with this? I'm going to stop you right there because pickleball started on Bainbridge Island, Washington in 1965 with Joel Pritchard and his family,

who later became a Washington state senator. And he was in his backyard. And I have been to those original courts. I really recommend it. It's it's super super cool and possibly named not after pickles but after their pet dog who might have been named pickles we don't know ah so it was named after the dog we need to find out if pickles was neutered because if he had no balls pickles balls or lack thereof. That's terrible. Not sure what that means at all, but we always have these centers pushing their damn sports on us. I don't know.

I'm just joking around. I'm sure he's a wonderful center. But pickleballers. So you found a love of the sport. A lot of people have fallen in love with it. In fact, it's been funny to watch its evolvement. My friend got into it during COVID, and he would take pictures of his Apple Watch, and he was burning like 2,500 calories. And, yeah. Yeah, that's for sure.

I mean, I was thinking, and I put this in one of my books, I think, that pickleball makes you feel 10 years younger, adds 1,100 friends. And it's just one of those things where you feel good, you make friends. And really, I feel like pickleballers have so much energy because they're always playing and so many injuries. Oh, yeah. I guess there's injuries. Note to self, don't take up pickleball. That's one of the reasons I don't ski.

I used to watch, I used to watch What's-His-Face. Why can't I ever? I've done this reference a million times on the show. Sonny Bono. Oh, yeah. Ever since that Sonny Bono accident, me and Teresa skiing, we're not working together at all. But pickleballers, I mean, it got huge. And it was kind of fun to see for a while because I remember when snowboarders came out and ski resorts banned them.

They're like, oh, this is evil, this new technology. This is not skiing. Who are you people? You are polluting our lot. And kind of like the tennis people kind of had that. Yeah, it's the same sort of thing. And also people thought there was like a stigma, you know, that pickleball is for like older people. But now, you know, like the biggest growing age group, it's like 18 to 34 right now.

In pickleball, people are playing pickleball. Young people are playing and they're good. And it's, you know, it's pro. They're thinking of making an Olympic sport. Oh, God, yeah, it's Olympic. Yeah, for real. It's getting big. Pickleball in the Olympics.

Because tennis is in the Olympics, right? I don't know. I used to play tennis. How much people are like, give a shit about tennis anymore. It's rough. Rough there on the tennis court. You know, all guys are standing around going, hey, you guys are taking over our courts? And you're playing with some little ball and you're've had this pickle around or something you have had to you've

had to set up court sharing and everybody is just like this kind of sort of fake polite you know oh no you guys go ahead no no you guys go ahead but behind the scenes it's a lot more i know the one thing with tennis is when i used to play tennis as a kid because clearly i don't know people in the audience like he has it for 10 years um 20 years but when i used to play tennis as a kid, because clearly I don't know. People in the audience are like, he has it for 10 years, 20 years. But when I used to play tennis, you used to get, I mean, you used to get a real burned sweat going really quick. I mean, it hooks you up running around the court. I imagine it's kind of similar with pickleballers because you got to run around that court.

Yeah. I mean, it's great. It's like ping pong, but you're standing on the table. So you really get a lot of fast action and it's very close. And you're almost always, at least at my level, I play with a partner always. Some people play singles, especially if you're younger and you can cover that whole court. I cannot. But we go through, I mean, I go through bottles of water and bananas and peanuts because I just need to keep hydrated and fed the whole time. I'm just like, sounds like when I have the girlfriend

over, I don't know what that means. Anyway, you wrote the book and is this a new character? I know you've written several other, but how many books do you have by the way? So we can get a plug in for those. I have, I probably have like 10 of the Chicken Soup for the Soul books are where my nonfiction essays are in those. And I have Ziggy's Big Idea, which is the children book. This is my debut novel that is being published. I have two other novels that I've written, and I'm waiting for them to find their place. And I have a sequel coming out to Pickleballers and it's called Pickle Perfect. And that is also coming out with Berkeley and Penguin Random House Publishing.

So that will be out in about one year from now. So you made quite the, you know, I see all the chippin, chicken, chippin? What the hell? Chicken soul for... Chicken soup for the soul? So Chris is suffering brain damage at the end of the day. Chicken wings, chicken bones. Chicken soup for the soul. You damage at the end of the day chicken bones chicken soup for the soul you've got a lot of things the magic of dogs i love that

book that's my favorite one i've got two the magic of dogs yeah two of my stories are in that one yeah okay two stories inside the book uh i mean the magic of dogs something that can love you and then take a giant puke on your floor. Yeah. There's that. The Empowered Woman, step outside of your comfort zone, making me time. And I like how there's a coffee there. I think that's coffee. Yeah.

I can imagine it's coffee because I'm prejudiced towards coffee. I don't need any hot cocoa. A lot of those stories are about my travel experience. I've lived in other countries and i i was an english teacher for a while but i taught at international school so i worked in costa rica and i worked in mexico i lived in costa rica for five years and i finally just stopped teaching just last year so that i could pursue this dream i've had all my life of being this writer so i'm a full-time writer now so you're basically like fuck these kids i'm writing my own book exactly just kidding

no i love you kids if you're listening we love you we love you teachers love you teachers the greatest my mom was a teacher for 30 years and so is my sister and they're you know the amount of love and work and i mean their own money too my mom i call her and she's like yeah i just spent 250 at the craft store buy all these cool things for elementary school kids. And I'm like, you get reimbursed for that, right? And she's like, no. And I'm like, wow. Sometimes. I wouldn't say all the time.

I would just send invoices. I just thought I would just send invoices to all the parents. That's what I do. The teaching is a lot of outpouring. But I got to tell you, though, I had just an amazing experience at my book launch on Tuesday night during the cyclone bomb, okay, which happened here in the Pacific Northwest. And the wind was blowing, I was going across the I-90 bridge on my car, it was blowing back and forth. And, you know, I swear to you, tree branches were hitting my car. And, but that's not what I'm

talking about. What I'm talking about is the launch when this guy comes up to me afterwards and he has two kids with him and he says oh hey i don't know if you remember me but i was your student and it was almost 30 years ago and i do remember him and he said something very nice he said you know what i do now in my i i train people to public speak and he said it was a large part because of your class and because you're teaching. So I will say, like, after all these years to come and find me at my book launch, I was just like, oh, my God. See, now, if I was a teacher, they would hunt me down and be like, you're the one who used to hit me. You deserved it. My mom has that all the time.

I could be at the store or something with her and people come up and be like, do you remember me? And they're so excited to see her and inspired by her or whatever. And I always joke that my mom's probably thinking in the back of her head, you were the shit kid. In fact, I think she's done that at least once where she's like, that was the worst kid that was in my class. It seems like maybe they were better for their exposure to my mom, and hopefully my mom influenced them to be better people. You know, I found that the students who were kind of tough in my class were actually like these really strong people who ended up doing like really crazy, amazing things.

So sometimes you never know what's going to happen. Like you, Chris. I think if I met any of my parent teachers, they would be like, yep, turned out exactly the way we thought you were. Complete disappointment. We've heard the podcast. Yeah, you clearly flunked English. And yeah, but it's good to know.

We'll try and fix what we did wrong next time. Whatever. They, of course, you haven't seen Gen Z yet. So there's that. We love Gen Z. We just like to rib them. We just like to rib them. They'll grow up someday.

So anyway, what else do we need to know about your book? Why are these rom-coms and stuff so popular these days? You know what? I think romance has come just exploded recently. It's just exploded. And my understanding is I do think that the pandemic, you know, we were just isolated. And the way out of isolation, of course, is love. And I think that we're all finding love in our own ways. This sounds really sappy, but I really do believe this. We're all trying. Let's bring out the tiny violin. Okay. No, really.

I do think that we needed a little love. And I thought between the pickleball, which really boosted my athleticism and my community building, and the idea of writing a romance and the comedy that's in that romance i felt very uplifted myself and i really hope that's what the readers take away is that they got a chance to be uplifted right now yeah we need to but we need not as much uplifting after covid and politics and everything else these days we need we need some smiles on the face we also need to learn to love ourselves and each other just a little bit more i I'm not talking about the narcissist on Instagram. Stop it.

It's a healthy love, I guess. I don't know. I'm not a psychologist. But yeah, we need to love each other. I mean, one of the biggest things I see, I mentioned to you in the green room before the show that I put on events for singles. And we have, I think, 3,400 singles in our meetup groups. And people are really looking for love and connection. And in the world of, you know, where everyone's looking at their phones

and probably playing pickleball, you know, it's hard to, not with pickleball. The great thing about pickleball is you can get out and meet people. So we throw, there's one place that we go to that's a brewery and they have four or five pickleball courts out in the back and they have a few other games there. They have some dartboard and then they have, what's that where you throw the sack? Cornholing. Oh, cornhole.

Cornhole. Yeah, that's one. I'm not going near those jokes. They throw the sack there and it goes in the hole. Come on, you said you weren't going near it. You just went and stepped in there. I was just trying to describe the show without being come on it's a big it's big in the south that sport and it's i think it's professional too i've seen videos of them doing the cornhole so anyway it's got uh it's got all those things

there and yeah it's a great venue for meeting people getting out in fresh air that's the hardest thing that we have with our singles is get out and get in some fresh air, meet some people, you know, you know, don't, don't just come out to try and find love. Come on to make friends, build a social graph. That's one of the things that I was saying to you before the show is that one of the biggest, from what I've heard, that one of the biggest first dates around here, especially in good weather here in the Pacific Northwest, is either paddle boarding or playing pickleball, because it's a way to be just fun and social,

and there's very little pressure. And that kind of meets some, I'm an outdoorsy person, that's, you know, I want to be outside and be with people. And I think it's a great way to meet people. And there's so many, you know, it's a sport where you just, you don't have to go with people, you can show up at a court and you meet people. And there's sometimes on a nice day here in Seattle on an outdoor court, there will be 60 people that you are going to, boom, be on the court with and just start playing with and meet them. Seattle, what is that, like two days a year?

No, I'm just kidding. Don't you guys still have Sundaysays up there don't you guys still have go ahead go ahead do your martin go to your i gotta tell you what mark twain said it's so important i think it was about san francisco but maybe it was about seattle he said the coldest winter i ever spent was a summer in Seattle. Sure wasn't Utah. He came through during Trading Places, the book. Or not Trading Places.

Trading, I don't know what the name of the book is. I don't know. I don't know. He met with Brigham Young in Utah. Brigham Young was trying to explain having 75 wives or some damn thing. And then he read the knockoff of the Bible or whatever it was. But yeah, don't you guys still have Sundays up there where basically any day that the sun actually comes out, everyone takes off work and it just becomes a party day? I will say that's not really far from the truth in that when we do have nice weather,

if it stops raining, everybody just puts on their shorts and t-shirts. It could be like 62 degrees, 58 degrees. If the sun is out, you will see people in T-shirts and shorts. Go to a courtroom and the judge is in his shorts. It's all me out. Where do the suits go? It's Sunday. All the Seattle friends tell us that.

I mean, that's why you guys have all that coffee. It's kind of depressing with all that rain. That's beautiful, too. It's the Emerald City because of all the rain. We get these evergreen trees, and it's just green, green, green here. I kind of love it. It's like being back east with all the greenness. I remember when I went to West Virginia with my mom because our family comes from there.

Big surprise, huh? And it was just so green. Just everything luscious green everywhere. Except for the alcohol and the stills. That was a different color. Yeah, different. So Pickleballers. So is there a follow-up to this?

Do you see the characters you put in the book continuing through the, you mentioned you might have one or two other books in the can? I do. I do. I have the sequel, and it's already in final revisions right now with Berkeley Publishing also. It's called Pickle Perfect. And it takes two minor, minor characters from Pickleballers, and they become the protagonists of the next story. And two of the supporting characters, rooster and laverne who are these this fabulous

couple in their 70s they move into the second book as well because just they're so fun and i didn't want to let go of them so i had to take them with me yeah i mean i think it's great that you got you have that because you know people people need to people have exposure to stuff so they can you know do it all and find out how romance works. Because it seems like one of the things I find with a lot of my single people is they don't know how romance works anymore. How does this dating work, Chris? No, I don't know that any of us really knows how romance works, you know. You know, it's funny because in the book, I was, I originally did not write it as a romance.

I wrote it as a friendship between her and her best friend, Annie, and it was a comedy. It was a straight comedy. And my agent and my editor said, look, romance is, will really, will really strengthen this story. And so I moved the romance forward, but I still kept that really strong friendship in the background because I felt like those are really important. Romance, hot, heavy, you know, and it's like a strong, strong infatuation, but friendships, those, heavy, you know, and it's like a strong, strong infatuation. But friendships, those are like those bonds that last and last. Yeah. You mentioned pickleballers

and paddleboarding. And what? Oh, and paddleboarding. Yeah, that's another one. Is that really popular up there? Oh, yeah. How does paddleboarding work? Is that like... What'd you say? How does paddleboarding work? Is that the... You stand up on the water.

It's like a surfboard, but it's wider. And you just sit there and you paddle. It's very... You know, paddle. Oh, you're having a moment. For some reason, I was thinking of... You know those little... When we were kids, they had those little paddles.

And it was attached to a rubber ball. It's a pickleball. You said they were all like that. You've got the pickleball in your head, right? Yeah, I'm thinking like, yeah, I've got tennis, pickleball, itis, yeah. I was just setting up the joke that, you know, I do the pickleballing on the first date and then later we do the paddling later. I'm not sure what that means.

I have so much innuendo in this book and, you know, all of it, all of it is in there. I mean, there's no resisting with the word pickle and the word balls. You just can't get away with using those words without just ripping them to shreds. Oh, did I say that? I meant gently nourishing those words. Gently nourishing those words. Did I tell you that I did the voiceover, the narration for the audio book as well? I don't think I did the voiceover, the narration for the audiobook as

well? I don't think I did. Yes, it was really cool. Yeah, because I used to be an actress and a stand-up comic. And so in those days, I did a lot of theater and I actually had narrated a cookbook once. And so I wrote to Penguin Audio and I said, can I do this if I send you an audition tape? And they were like, yeah, sure. And so that was a super cool experience yeah I mean I love it when audiobooks are done by the author it seems so disingenuous I feel if they're not I guess mostly for autobiography I think you got to do it yourself but yeah it's even worse when the book's written by a woman and it's a man doing the audiobook and you're like yeah Yeah, I don't understand that. She transitioned quickly.

We do the jokes on the show. Or the other way, vice versa. It's a free country. People do what you want. So anyway, Alana, it's been wonderful to have you on. Give us a final tease out, pitch out for people to buy the book and whatever dot coms you want them to check you out on. All right. Pickleballers by Alana Long.

That's me. And it's a romantic comedy. It's available at bookstores everywhere and also on the Penguin Random House site. My website is ilanalong.com, spelled I-L-A-N-A-L-O-N-G.com. And you can also follow me on Instagram at ilanalongwrites.

Like, writes. There you go. Yes. Thank you very much, Ilana, forana for coming the show it's been super fun and please come back for your second book we'd love to have you I would love to thanks so much Chris folks order up we're fine books sold called pickleballers out November 12 2024 and watch for the upcoming books from her check out some of her other books she published in the chicken of the soul thing there. Thanks to my audience for tuning in.

Go to Goodreads.com, Fortuness Christmas, LinkedIn.com, Fortuness Christmas, Christmas 1, TikTok, and all those crazy places on the internet. Be good to each other. Stay safe. Or else, we'll see you next time.