The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – The Magic of Lemon Drop Pie by Rachel Linden

Episode Date: August 2, 2022

The Magic of Lemon Drop Pie by Rachel Linden “Heartfelt, heartwarming, joyful, and uplifting. You can't go wrong with a Rachel Linden book.”—#1 New York Times bestselling author Debbie Macomber An uplifting novel about a heartbroken young pie maker who is granted a magical second chance to live the life she didn’t choose. . . . from the bestselling author of The Enlightenment of Bees. Lolly Blanchard's life only seems to give her lemons. Ten years ago, after her mother’s tragic death, she broke up with her first love and abandoned her dream of opening a restaurant in order to keep her family’s struggling Seattle diner afloat and care for her younger sister and grieving father. Now, a decade later, she dutifully whips up the diner’s famous lemon meringue pies each morning while still pining for all she's lost. As Lolly’s thirty-third birthday approaches, her quirky great-aunt gives her a mysterious gift—three lemon drops, each of which allows her to live a single day in a life that might have been hers. What if her mom hadn’t passed away? What if she had opened her own restaurant in England? What if she hadn’t broken up with the only man she's ever loved? Surprising and empowering, each experience helps Lolly let go of her regrets and realize the key to transforming her life lies not in redoing her past but in having the courage to embrace her present.

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. 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 roller coaster with your brain now here's your host chris voss i got my arms and legs all in the same chair whatever the hell the announcer just said hi folks welcome to the show this is chris voss the chris voss show welcome guys we certainly appreciate you keep your arms and legs and i don't know.

I always skip that FAA stuff they always tell me because I've heard it a million times. And I don't know. I think I have kind of a macabre sort of approach to a sort of fight club approach to flying where the plane's going down. You know, the survivability is probably low. But that's another topic for another day. But welcome to the show, friends and family. We certainly appreciate you guys. Remember, the Chris Voss Show is the family that loves you but doesn't judge you.

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Let's see, goodreads.com, Forrest S. Chris Foss. Also, big groups on LinkedIn and also our LinkedIn newsletter. People love that thing over there. Go to my big consulting, coaching, all that kind of crap I do over there on Chris Foss Leadership Institute. And you can pick up my book over there as well. Today, we have an amazing multi-book author on the show and she has her latest novel coming out. It's going to be coming out August 2nd, 2022. Got to love all the twos in there. The Magic of Lemon Drop Pie. I'm just getting

hungry thinking about it. Rachel Linden is on the show with us today. She'll be talking about her books and her latest book, What's Inside and why you want to pick it up today and pre-order it so you can take advantage of it, be the first one to read it on your book club there. Also, you may want to just pick up a pie while you're reading it and eat the pie. We'll find out if that's appropriate from her to eat a lemon drop pie while you're reading the book. It seems like that would be just a great pairing. Rachel is a novelist and an international aid worker whose adventures in over 50 countries around the world provide excellent grist for her writing. She is the author of Ascension of Larks, Becoming the Talbot Sisters, and The Enlightenment of Bees, because we all know bees really need some enlightenment at this point, really. Currently,

she lives with her family on a sweet little island in the Northwest where she enjoys creating stories about hope, courage, and connection with a hint of romance and a touch of whimsy. Welcome to the show, Rachel. How are you? I am doing great, although we are melting in the Pacific Northwest because it's 95 degrees and it doesn't get that hot here. So everyone's buying fans and popsicles and moving into their basements, but otherwise we're doing great. We're not used to the sun. We're like vampires. Yeah, that's true.

You guys get a lot of rain and up there. I know my friends in the Northwest, that's why they drink all that coffee. That's why Starbucks comes from up there is because, you know, it's a bit depressing. In fact, my friends in the Northwest used to tell me that they have Sundays and those are the rare days that sun comes out and they take work off or something. Is that true? Yeah. Everybody goes outside. As soon as you see the sun, you and they take work off or something. Is that true? Yeah. Everybody goes outside.

As soon as you see the sun, you run outside. Unless it's 95 and then everyone cowers in their home or goes swimming in the sound. So we've been swimming in Puget Sound, which is like 55 degrees. Oh, that's beautiful. That'll cool you off. That'll cool you off. Beautiful Puget Sound. It sounds like London.

There you go. So give us your dot coms or places people can look you up on the interwebs to get to know you better. Oh, yeah. So the easiest one is RachelLinden.com. It's my website and they can sign up for my newsletter. And I'll even give them a free booklet of recipes from my childhood and my travels around the world. Recipes I love and make frequently if they subscribe. And then Facebook and Instagram.

You can find me on either of those. Rachel Linden writer and author Rachel Linden. So are any of those recipes lemon drop pie? Oh, okay. So lemon drop pie. So everybody that's reading this book is saying they're getting really hungry when they're reading it and all they want, they just want pie at the end. You were telling me that you've been doing intermittent fasting, so you're really primed. So here's the book. And in the back, I actually, my editor had me make a recipe for lemon drop pie, create it in my kitchen. So yes, it is in there.

So you can finish it. And then when you're hungry for lemon drop pie, you can make it because the recipe's in there. And I had a couple of duds, but the end result was actually super yummy and easy and delicious. And we ate so much lemon drop pie and lemon pie, like all the mistakes we ate as well. So there was a lot of lemon pie in our house. I'm imagining Amazon when when you order in Amazon, they're going to have one of those things. Other people bought pie, you know, down at the bottom,

they put on the screen. Like purchases, like many people bought a pie with this purchase. With this book, yeah. And I think, you know, I think you sit on your porch, you read this book, and you eat pie. And it's like a perfect pairing. Yeah, it's awesome. I think it's great.

Hi, folks. Chris Voss here with a little station break. Hope you're enjoying the show so far. We'll resume here in a second. I'd like to invite you to come to my coaching, speaking, and training courses website. You can also see our new podcast over there at chrisvossleadershipinstitute.com. Over there, you can find all the different stuff that we do for speaking engagements. If you'd like to hire me,

uh, training courses that we offer and coaching for leadership, management, entrepreneur ism, uh, podcasting, corporate stuff, uh,

with over 35 years of experience in business and running companies as CEO. Uh, I think I can offer a wonderful breadth of information and knowledge to you or anyone that you want to invite me to for your company. Thanks for tuning in. We certainly appreciate you listening to the show and be sure to check out chrisfossleadershipinstitute.com. Now back to the show. So what motivated you on to write this book? You know, I was on a flight from Nashville to Seattle and I scribbled on a Delta Airlines beverage napkin, what if we could redo our three biggest regrets?

And that was the beginning of the story. It just captivated me, this idea of what if we, what if there was a magical way to redo the three biggest regrets in life? Then I started writing the story in the spring of 2020 under lockdown in Seattle when the whole world was experiencing a lot of hard things. And this book became particularly relevant because it's all about what do we do when life hands us lemons? How do we make lemonade? And how do we take a hard thing that we haven't chosen and make a good life afterwards? Or how do we make lemon drop pie when life gives you lemons? Yes.

Wink, wink. Yes. Good job. Good job picking up on that. I love it. I love it. The magic of lemon drop pie. Magic of lemon drop pie.

So tell us about some of the main characters and maybe how you chose them and ran with them. So the main character is Lolly Blanchard, who is a pie maker and she gives up a, an engagement ring and her dream career in London. When her mom dies unexpectedly, she goes back to Seattle to their sweet little neighborhood of Magnolia. And she is taking care of her dad and her younger sister, Daphne,

and she's trying to keep their family diner afloat and it is not doing well. And she does not love her life, but she's trying to be dutiful. And then 10 years later, she's given the magical second chance to redo her three biggest regrets and see if she can sort of recapture the life she's always longed for and the love of the man, Rory, her childhood love that she can't seem to forget. Ah, that alpha in her youth. And so the scenario that you set up is really beautiful. I mean, that's kind of a thing that I think all of us would like to do is go back and like, oh, man, could we go back and change some things?

I think we're all kind of hard, unless you're like a real bad narcissist, I suppose, where you're like, you know. I meet people sometimes. Tell me this, because I'm sure you had to think about this sort of thing when you were writing the book. But I'll meet people sometimes, and they don't always say to me, but many people will say to me, if I had to go back, I wouldn't change a thing. And I'm like, I don't know. I did some pretty stupid, evil, bad things. I didn't really mean to be evil, but looking back, I was like, that was not the best choice I could have made at the time. And you know, I honestly, if I could go back, I would change probably a lot of things, but you know, hindsight's always 20. So, so was that an aspect

you looked at in the book where, where, you know, people really should maybe sometimes take a hard look. I mean, I think maybe you're in denial if you say, you know, well, that's perfect. There's nothing you can go back and change. I don't know. I think that's true. I think we are in denial if we say, oh my gosh, you wouldn't change a thing. But I think the real message of the book, which I think is particularly relevant in 2022, is that we cannot change the past. All we can do is go forward with what we've been given and make the best life we can. That's very true. back, she's living in the past. She's living kind of stuck because she doesn't want to accept what her life has become, what life has handed her. And, and then what she's learning as she goes back and experiences these three days where she made a different choice is that every choice we make has unexpected consequences. And so, so I do think all of us have things that we would change, but the reality sitting here today is that we cannot change the

past. All we can do is try to do better. I'm sorry. Does it end up as one of those situations where if you change the past, the future changes as well? Yeah, it does. It does. Because she's experiencing, she's not going back into the past. She's experiencing a day in her current life as if she'd made a different choice. And so there are some unexpected things in each thing that she's thinking, oh my gosh, if I had only made this choice, it would have ended up this way. There are actually some very unexpected things that she realizes as she's experiencing it. And one of the points is that you don't know what comes of our choices. The choices you didn't make, you don't know what will come of them.

What you know is what you've got now. Awesome. So that probably leads to some interesting adventures, I'm sure. Yeah, there you go. Yeah, I mean, I think this is something a lot of people consider. And, you know, some people think, well, if I made that choice, the grass would be greener on the other side. We always have a grass is greener on the other side sort of thing. Unless we kind of, I don't know, get, get in what was it called presence or get in present state where you're, you're grateful.

But, you know, we all do things like, you know, I've done things where I'm like, I really wish I would have kept doing that. And yeah, stop doing that. And that would have been better. But I don't know, maybe, I don't know, maybe instead of all the booze I drank when I was younger, I would have had a heroin addiction instead. I don't know. I'm just doing some jokes here, but tell us, tell us a little bit more, maybe tease out some plot lines or scenarios maybe that are in the book that you think people will like to hear. One of the things that people are really enjoying is the plotline involving lolly's great aunt gert who is kind of her sensei her guide she's the one that gives lolly the lemon drops and she's very mysterious she's this character she wears flamboyant clothing and has had quite a dramatic

life and interestingly aunt gert is very strongly based on my own great aunt katherine who is started out in appalachia in a dirt poor berry farm, and then worked her way up to being a professor in New York City and traveled with the UN and just led this fabulous life. And so I always wanted to put her in a book. And when I was writing this book, I thought, oh my gosh, this book needs an aunt K. So aunt Gert was born and people are loving the Aunt Gert characters, just kind of forging her own path and making her own way and helping Lolly understand what it means to follow your bliss, which is not just looking for happiness, but it's paying attention, being honest and seeking joy. And that's one of the biggest themes in the story is Lolly trying to figure out how she pays attention, is honest and seeks joy in her current circumstances. Ah, is that, you know, I don't want to give away the ending, but is that kind of one of the lessons of the book? The, you know, following your bliss and trying to find joy as opposed to trying to find the grasses greener on the other side, maybe?

Yes. That is the main one. That pie. Like you get a pie if you get that lesson by the end. That is, that is an awesome lesson to learn in life. Gratitude, being grateful for what you have and realizing that sometimes the grass is greener on your side of the fence. Everyone always thinks that the grass is greener on the other side of the fence. Well, people have it better, especially in our Instagram world where people, I heard a comedian say once that when our archaeologists dig our society up someday, our culture up someday, they'll be like, it's really weird. They're all smiling in pictures.

They're really a happy culture, you know, because, you know, everybody puts on this faux sort of thing. And, and, you know, a lot of people, I see breakups, I see divorces, I see all sorts of things that have with people because they're like, well, I just want what's better. And people are constantly going for better, and then they never find it. And then they end up unhappy and going unfulfilled in life because you're like, you know, you can only choose better. Sometimes you have better. You just have to find the joy.

I think we had an author on one time, and her book was about finding joy. And it's like you're asking the question every day. Are you happy? Did you find joy today? Like, don't worry about becoming a millionaire so much as like, were you happy today? Did you enjoy the time you had above ground and stuff? So you based the character on your aunt, I guess. My great aunt.

Yeah. What does she think about that? Did she? Well, she's passed away. So I don't know. Oh, she passed away? Well, she's passed away, so I don't know. Oh, she passed away? Okay. Yeah. She passed away at 93, about 15 years ago. She lived a remarkably long life. I want to go back to what you were saying though about this finding joy in the grass being greener, because

I think sometimes our grass isn't greener and it still doesn't change how we have to approach life. We still have to have gratitude. And one of the things that Lolly is learning that Aunt Gert is telling her is you have to look for every spark. Even in the darkest night, you look for the spark of joy and you follow that. And I mean, sometimes things are very difficult. Sometimes things are very painful and we can look at other people's lives and go, wow, it does look better over there. And that doesn't change what we need to do, which is look for the spark of joy and look for the spark of light and keep following that as best we can, even in difficult circumstances. And that's what Lolly does. And that's what I'm hoping readers will also take from it. Yeah. I've had, I've had friends that

have made vast amounts of money and been incredibly successful in business and then experienced a life-threatening cancer. And you know, and you, when you look at them from the outside, you're like, wow, you're really successful. And then you find out that maybe their, their health is constantly under attack from some sort of thing or, or they have some home strife, et cetera, et cetera. And, you know, there's, I don't think there's anybody go through this life with a perfect life. I don't, I don't know. I haven't met them yet, but you know, we all seem to go through challenges and stuff. And so there's haven't met them yet, but you know, we all seem to go through challenges and stuff. And so there's the paradigm of that brain. Like you mentioned that we have to,

we have to go, Hey, uh, you know, this is this, this be happy for what you have. And sometimes you, you might be living your best life. It's kind of funny on social media. Cause everyone looks at each other and goes, I wish I had their life. And you know, Oh, Oh, you know, so-and-so's husband's takes them to France every whatever oh, oh, you know, so-and-so's husband takes them to France every whatever. And you're like, but so-and-so's husband's cheating on them with the three other mistresses. So, yeah, you never know what's going on. You never know. And like we filter our own lives to only show the best things.

I found a filter this week that turned my hair pink. Oh, really? That was amazing. Yeah. But, you know, we, we feel that we only see the filtered version and nobody understands that the human condition, what it means to be human is that there's suffering and there's loss and there's pain and there's all kinds of stuff that comes with it. And it's not about avoiding that because we can't avoid it. We'll have ups

and we'll have downs, but it's about what you do with it when it comes that determines what, what kind of life you're going to make. And so does she get back with the man she originally loved? Or can you tell us that? I can't tell you that. I can't tell you that. You're going to have to read it. I brought that up because I knew you wouldn't. And I just wanted to tease it as a factor in the book where people are like,

I need to buy the book to find out. You're really rooting for them. And there's a lot of kind of a Romeo and Juliet feel for a while where it is not going well. And then you're just going to have to read it to see it because it feels impossible. You're going to have to see what happens. And then you she hadn't broken up, as I mentioned before, the only man she ever loved and surprising and empowering. So it sounds like there's a lot of inspiration people get and some good life lessons that people are going to get in this book. I hope so. But also it's just an uplifting read. It's the kind of read you want to take on an airplane. It's the kind of read you want to take on vacation. Book clubs love it it there's book club discussions in the back of the book club kit but it's it's just a it's like i always promise a happy or at least very hopeful ending so you leave feeling satisfied like oh okay not like oh my gosh life's such a bummer but okay there's beauty and goodness in life despite difficulty it's not like a great

lesson book and then plus you got a recipe for lemon draw pie. Lessons in pie, what's not to love? Yeah, I mean, pie. You had me at pie, really. So you've written four books in total. Is that correct? I have. I actually fifth because my fifth one's with my editor right now,

but nobody's seen that one yet because it'll come out next year. Is that one apple pie? Well, no, but it does take place partly in Paris. So that's fun. Ah, well, that's the food over there is quite excellent. So how was maybe writing this different for you than your three prior books? Or was there anything you did differently or maybe some sort of style that you used differently? What did you take from writing this book that maybe was an improvement or enhancement from your other books?

Well, I've never written a book during a pandemic. So that was different with, with two small children, not in school locked in our little apartment in Seattle together. So that was different. I, I developed a certain type of resilience and ability to block out noise, specifically small child,

yellow, small children yelling and putting their hands under the door. So yeah, but this one has a little bit more magical realism. So I've got I've got like good selective hearing now where I think the house could possibly burn down and I would just be sitting there like plodding away, which is not necessarily good. So this one has a lot more magical realism than the others. My other ones all had some element of magical realism, but this is one that has more. And I really enjoyed that. And magical realism just sort of enhances.

So it's not fantasy, but it takes some themes in a story that takes place in real life. And it makes, it brings in a sense of wonder or a sense of transcendence and while teasing out kind of emotional, emotionally resonant themes for readers. There you go. There you go.

I had a picture in my mind of little fingers under the doors. I remember my mom reached a point with us, with two boys, you know, she had us tuned out. You have to say mom like about 50 times and tug on her apron or something to finally get her attention. And, you know, we drove our mom crazy. We were pretty rambunctious little kids. So yeah, we had so many great books that were written during COVID lockdown. Maybe we need to have more of those or something for writers. I don't know. More lockdowns? Yeah, that sounds like a terrible idea. But what I did discover was that it was very therapeutic to write this book

because the world was totally uncontrollable. Not that we can ever control the world, but it was especially uncontrollable and unpredictable and kind of difficult. And I was in my room and I could control everything. It was the most beautiful thing to go into the story. There was no virus. There were no masks. I could control what happened. It was like being a little god.

So I'd go in and just be like, oh, this feels amazing. Life feels so normal in this story, which is weird to say because it's a story about something that could never actually happen in real life where a woman is taking lemon drops and like revisiting her past. But that was the most normal thing about 2020 was like writing a magical realism story. There you go. I mean, that's probably, that probably helped to write some of the lessons in the book, you know, taking a painful, you know, going through the thing. I mean, that was probably why a lot of people were always, because they're like, well, I have the time and here it is. In going back to a previous boyfriend, was that maybe something that you, was it, was any of the three lessons, something that you

had considered? No, no. I think I have, I have previous old, I have old flames, but thankfully I can look at them and some of them I'm still friends with. One of them I actually I have, I have previous old, I have old flames, but thankfully I can look at them. And some of them I'm still friends with. One of them I actually related to his younger brother married my younger sister and they are lived happily ever after. But I'm able to look at that and just go, Oh, we wouldn't have been a good fit when you're 18, when you're 16, when you're 20, you don't, sometimes you don't know. And so now I can look at the shape of my life and go, Oh, they're great people. And our life would not have fit very well together.

And then I met my husband in graduate school and just went, oh, gosh, I want that one. And he's just been a much better fit. He's a delightful human and a much better fit for the shape my life has taken. There you go. You always keep the delightful humans. That's always a good place. Yes, keep that. That's a great life lesson. Keep the delightful humans. That's always a good place. Yes. That's a great life lesson.

Keep the delightful humans close to you. We had a novelist on two days ago, and the premise of her story is she gets invited to a wedding. She finds out her ex-boyfriend is marrying what she thought was her girlfriend. And she finds out that they hooked up together. And then it becomes a murder mystery. So, yeah. So I think it was funny when you mentioned that you had that previous thing there. Anything more you want to tease out on the book there?

It'll make you hungry when you're reading it. I'm hungry now. I know. You're going to be really hungry because of your fasting. There's a lot of Danish food because they're running a Danish restaurant, a diner in Seattle. And I didn't intend to do a food theme when I started writing books. And my editor about book number two, she's like, you just need to make this a theme because you just naturally write so much about food. And she told me that she keeps snacks in her drawer when she reads my manuscripts because she gets so hungry. So it should come with a little warning that says like, warning, get snacks ready now,

because I do really love food. I come from an Italian family and so food is love. And so I cook for the people I love. And then I write about food for the readers I love. There you go. Yeah. It's got a food theme. And then also it was fun. It takes place partly in Hawaii and partly in England and Brighton, England. And so you can also, if you haven't been able to travel due to restrictions or the crazy airline stuff that's going on this summer, you can take a little trip and feel like you've traveled. So I was totally traveling in this book vicariously too when I was writing it. There you go. There you go. COVID did some interesting things and out of dark times comes some great things. Well, it's been wonderful to have you on the show.

Thank you for coming on, Rachel. Oh gosh, thank you, Chris. It's been a pleasure to be with you. Thank you. Give us your.coms, wherever people can find you on the interwebs to get to know you better. Oh yeah. So rachellinden.com, my website. And then I'm also on Instagram and Facebook. I think it's Rachel Linden writer and author Rachel Linden. There you go. There you go. Folks, order it up wherever fine books are sold. But remember, stay in those alleyway bookstores.

You might need a tetanus shot or you might get shanked. So order the book up today. It's available August 2nd, 2022. So get your pre-order in. The Magic of Lemon Drop Pie. I'm going to go probably eat pie after this. Anyway, guys, thanks for tuning in. We certainly appreciate you guys being here. Go to youtube.com, 4Chess, Chris Voss.

Hit the bell notification button. Go to goodreads.com, 4Chess, Chris Voss. See everything we're reading and reviewing over there. All of our groups on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, and on TikTok. All those crazy places those crazy kids are playing. Thanks for tuning in. See you next time. Be good to each other.

Stay safe. Bye-bye.