The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – The Story Of… by Shirley B Novack

Episode Date: January 23, 2023

The Story Of... by Shirley B Novack This is the story of Jacob Kalinsky, born in Koretz, Poland, in 1904 to a mean-tempered tyrant of a father and a sweet and loving mother. At the age of twelve, Jacob's mother, Sarah, dies, and Jacob, along with his nine-year-old brother, is sent to live in the care of a brothel run by a loving madam named Jordanna. It takes Jacob's father three long years to send for his sons. During that time, Jacob suffers many indignities, but when he was raped by a Polish soldier, it molds his life. The shame of this event remains his secret, never to be shared with anyone. That is, until a day, many years later in America, fate brings the Polish soldier back into Jacob's life.

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. It's a monster rollercoaster with your brain or whatever the hell he said. Welcome to the show. Hi, folks. I'm Chris Voss with the chris voss show.com hey we're coming here with another great podcast who knew we'd do another it's only been uh 13 years why are we going on

14th year or something holy crap i'm getting old for this maybe do you ever get too old for a podcast i don't know maybe it's possible maybe if i die i'm gonna do this podcast from my coffin if i die people you're just gonna tune in and you're just going to hear worms chewing. You're going to be like, this isn't funny at all. Maybe it'll be funny. You'll be like, he got what's coming to him. I don't know. My trolls will love it. They'll love the podcast then.

It'll be called the Down Under Podcast. Wait, that's Australian. Maybe I'll get buried in Australia and then it'll be a double entendre or I don't know, whatever. The hell, I skipped English. I flunked it, actually. So, guys, welcome to the podcast. We certainly appreciate you guys being here.

We've got an amazing author on the show today. But in the meantime, remember, guilt your friends, relatives, and loved ones into signing up to a subscription for the Chris Voschow podcast. Guilt is the gift that keeps on giving. Remember that, folks. I think all the ladies know what I'm talking about. Guilt. Guilt. Guilt and shaming.

Keep those guys in line. So guilt people into signing up for the Chris Voss Show podcast. Go to youtube.com forward slash Chris Voss. Go to goodreads.com forward slash Chris Voss. Go to all those places on the internet. It's a big LinkedIn group. It's all that stuff that we do. She is the amazing new author of the book called The Story of dot, dot, dot.

And that's the dots themselves. I forget what they call this. But it doesn't say the story of dot, dot, dot, D-O-T, D-O-T, D-O-T, D-O-T. It's dot, dot, dot. So the story of dot, dot, dot. Shirley B. Novak is on the show with us today. She's going to be talking to us about her amazing new book. And it's historical fiction.

So we're going to get into some of that, and we're going to learn some things. Shirley is a first-generation daughter of Polish and Roman. I'm sorry, Roman. she's the daughter of Roman immigrants. Hey, there you go Shirley I just opened up a whole new venue for a whole new book. Caesar was my great great great great great great grandfather.

She's the daughter of Polish and Russian immigrants, not Roman, but I mean maybe down the line she was. I don't know. Maybe she's Caesar or what was that other guy, the Stoics that I listened to? Anyway, she originally graduated from Fisher College in Boston with a degree in laboratory science and worked in fetal surgical research.

But after marrying and having three children, she went back to school and graduated from Newberry College with a degree in interior design. Well, she's done everything. Now she's an author. And she has a successful interior design practice since 1985, but her passion for writing was never far from the surface. This past year, she became a public published author of historical fiction. The book The Story Of is getting rave reviews reviews and a second book is in the works. She resides in Framingham, Massachusetts.

I mean, she could have been born both places. I don't know. With her husband, Barry, and their precious Havanese, Stevie Nicks, which is funny because last week we just had the Stevie Nicks, but I heard her on. Welcome to the show, Shirley. How are you? Thank you for having me. I'm great.

There you go. And yeah, so give us your.com so people can find you on the interwebages, please. I don't know which one. Okay, well, I'm on Facebook, ShirleyNovakAuthor.com. And then I have S-Novak, S-N-O-V-A-C-K, and Associates.com. That's my own website. And Sobonoe, S-O-B-O-N-O-E, at AOL.com.

There you go. There you go. This is funny. There's a note here, actually. You open a seasonal gourmet candy store in Cape Cod to make sure my children always have summer employment. Do you actually do the work there? Well, we built a house in a resort area on Cape Cod, and they had a seasonal marketplace with 24 shops and boutiques,

but they had no candy store. Wow. And I really needed an excuse to spend the whole summer there. So I offered to open a candy store, and they had entertainment every night of the week. And Cindy Lauper, in fact. Oh, wow. Cindy Lauper was my neighbor.

Oh, wow. And one day she came into the candy store. My kids did work it. They ran it. And we were very, very popular because who doesn't love candy? And one day Cindy Lauper came in, and she was going on David Letterman the next night, and she wanted to bring gifts for everybody in the band, David Letterman. And we had mushroom truffles.

Oh, wow. She was very concerned that if kids were watching the show, they would get the wrong idea about the mushroom truffles. So we said, no, 12 o'clock at night, little kids aren't up. Anyhow, she was leaving for Japan to go on tour. And she asked if I had any boxes. And I said, I do at my house. And so she came over the house and she took all the boxes on my garage.

And my son said to her, who was a little boy at the time, and he said, Cindy, today is my sister's birthday. You want to see what I'm giving her? To which Cindy reached in her purse and took out her very first tape of True Colors. Oh, wow. I know. I know. And she explained the cover, and she said, I would like to leave this for Abby, wow. I know. I know. And she explained the cover and she said,

I would like to leave this for Abby, who is my daughter. Let me sign it and leave it for Abby for her birthday. But you have to promise to not call any radio stations

because Michael Jackson was coming out with his new album in September. And so hers was delayed a couple of months because of that. I mean, this is an amazing, you know.

Now, this is before True Colors was released? Yes. Wow. This was in August. Wow. And True Colors came out, I think, November or December. She probably wants a tape back now. That still gets hair play, I think, now, doesn't it?

So the following night, she goes on David Letterman, and we had put together, like like a can of golf balls. They were chocolate truffle golf balls. And I told her, I said, don't take the chocolates out of the box until you give it to him. Did I lose you? No, I'm here. Okay. And so the next night she goes on David Lettermanman and she says, oh, my God.

And she hits herself in the head and says, she told me to take the chocolate out of the box first and I didn't. But it was very funny. There you go. It was simply sweet. There you go. I have lost. True colors. Wow.

The original tape of that. We have the original tape and the cover was black and white. I think that song and her other song, Girls Just Want to Have Fun, I mean, it still gets radio play today. You hear it everywhere. You know what? She was such a sweet person. You have me.

I can't find you. Okay, I've gone. Okay, restore. Anyway. Oh, okay. She was just such a nice person because they used to have talent contests for the children, and she would always be a judge. She was just a really nice person.

Yeah, she's always seemed really nice. I see her doing that Cialis commercial. Not Cialis, but it's a thing for the skin condition. Scroces. Yeah, would not want to have that. commercial, not a salus, but it's a thing for the skin condition. Sclerosis. Sclerosis. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, would not want to have that.

So let's get into your book. Let's talk about your book. What motivated you on to write this book? I'm just trying to find you back again because I don't have it. Probably one of the tabs that are up there. I'm looking. Okay. Anyhow, I always knew I could write, and my father had a very unusual story,

and I always wanted to write it, but I wanted to make it fiction. I wanted to make it nonfiction because I have a brother who's a historian, and he insisted I make it nonfiction. But it wasn't that interesting, nonfiction. And I started it about 10 years ago, but then I put it down, and then I picked it up and I put it down, and I decided that it was going to have to become historical fiction. And once I began, which was two years ago, once I started writing, it just flowed.

It just came out of me. And it was like something took over. And every day I would just write, write, write. And it was a good story i mean my father the first three or four chapters of the book are true where my father was raised by a very nasty horrible tyrant of a father but a sweet and loving mother. There you are. Okay. And when he was 12 years old, his mother died. And he had a younger brother who was nine.

His father took he and his brother and put them in the care of a brothel and said, I'm going to America and I will send for you when I have enough money. While he was in the brothel, he was raped by a Polish soldier. Oh, my God. Yeah, when he was 15. And the rest of the story is that this is all true. And then he came to this country. And I had the good misfortune of meeting his father in my lifetime, and he was as evil as they came.

Wow. So the only names in the book that are not made up are his stepmother and his father because they don't deserve it. They deserve to be known as the horrible people they were. Wow. So you're kind of outing some people you didn't like then. Oh, I hated them, but I didn't make them out to be any nicer in the book. They were horrible people. Wow. Yeah. So I started with that and that gave me a good foundation to start with. and then the rest of it, it was easy to make up a lot of it because I think I had a good beginning.

So how long overall did it take you to write the book? Once I began, I'd say a year. Wow, there you go. I'd say a year, and I actually went to Ellis Island, and I found my father on Ellis Island. Oh, wow. And, yeah. Wow.

There you go. Quite the history. And so what are some of the things or tease-outs we can tease out about the story and some of the plot that goes on? Well, my father came to America, and at 16 years old, he was told he could not stay with his parents he had to get a job and move out and be in his own and all he wanted to do was go to school he really wanted an education but his father said no way wow so he learned to trade and he became a very well-known furniture maker.

This is true. And so in the story, I have him maybe 20 years later being approached in his shop, and it turns out it was the Polish soldier who raped him. Wow. And that's not that unusual that that could happen because so many people immigigrated to boston wow so that's incredible so then i that did not happen actually oh it didn't actually happen that part did not happen i was like wow that's a hell of a freak of fate yeah so then the rest

is about getting revenge on the polish soldier and the twists and turns. And there's a love story in there, of course. And there's murder and mayhem. Murder and mayhem, you say? Murder and mayhem. Murder, you say? Murder and mayhem. Yeah.

My two favorite things in Vegas. I don't know what that means. But he was just the sweetest, nicest guy in the world. He died on, his funeral was on the 4th of July years ago, and we thought no one would come to the funeral because it was the 4th of July when 300 people showed up. Wow. And 300 people went to the cemetery, and 300 people came back to my house. It was such an homage to him.

And the eulogies that they gave were very funny because he did not care. I mean, he always wore like overalls and T-shirts and jeans and T-shirts. It was part of his profession. But he cared about not going gray. So when he died, we found, what is the hair dye for men? Hair clip for men? Whatever. No, it was, we found hair dye in his night table drawer. That he cared about, but nothing else.

I mean, he was funny. He was just a very nice, sweet guy. And what he taught his children is that no matter what you do, you have to be respectful. You have to be honest, and you have to be respectful. And you have to be educated.

Yeah, that's true. Education is good. I've learned that. Yep. And that's what he did. So I thought he deserved a book. There you go. There you go. So is he the main character in the book then?

Yes. There you go. But his name is Jacob in the book, and that was not his name. What sort of lessons do you think people are going to come away from? Do you think they're going to learn anything from the book or concepts? You know, we talked in the pre-show in the green room about how the title of the book is The Story of dot, dot, dot. Let's cover also why you named it that. Because so many people that came to this country at the beginning of the 20th century were immigrants from Eastern Europe.

And they all have a story. You know, there are so many stories. I think my father's is more unusual because he was raped. You know, that does not come into play most times. But other than that, the stories are just, people did what they had to do to survive. And they had great work ethics. And you either became a criminal or you became a respected immigrant.

It was one or the other. And he just was very highly respected and never made waves. And so he has a book. There you go. And I loved it. I loved doing it, and I've already started my second book. Now, is the second book going to be a continuum of the story?

Following his family. Okay, so the next generation legacy the next generation but it's totally fiction huh totally fiction no historical fiction this time yeah i'll i'll well yeah i'd say 95 fiction but of course i draw from what i know and i you know so it starts with his funeral and then it moves on from there. But it's all fiction. Wow. Well, maybe, you know, you establish a character that you can keep writing through several books. I want a movie.

Oh, there you go. Movie. I want a movie. There you go. The Story of. I mean, it sounds like a great movie title. Yeah. People keep saying to me, you know, this would make a great movie.

I've already got a cast. I just don't have anyone to write it for me. Well, it's a matter of time until somebody comes along and throws an option behind it from Hollywood. Yeah, it's getting great. I mean, really stellar reviews. Yeah. I just, I'm amazed. Yeah.

Here's one off of Amazon. The Story Of by Shirley Novak captured me on page one. It didn't release me until the last page in Epilogue on page 249. She brings us to Poland in the early 1900s with the life of a small boy who lives in poverty, but worse, lives with an uncaring and hateful father. Wow, crazy. I mean, dropping kids off at a brothel to escape Jewish persecution and flee to America, it's kind of crazy.

You dump your kids at a brothel. So we tried to figure out how he knew about the brothel, but when his wife died, he probably went there like every week. Oh, okay. And he probably figured the women there, you know, women go to take care of kids, so dumped them all. I don't know. I just would not leave my kids at a brothel.

I mean, that's just like an interesting choice. Well, I wouldn't treat my kids the way he treated them anyhow. Wow. He treated his grandchildren the same way. Oh, really? Oh, yeah. We would go to visit him on weekends when I was a little girl. And it could be snowing out.

It could be pouring out. And he would raise his cane and threaten to hit us if we came in the house. I do that to the neighborhood children. Do you do that? I become known as Clint Eastwood's get-off-my-lawn sort of people on social media mostly. I wave my cane at them.

I should send my kids to your house. No, don't. Please don't. I mean, I like kids as long as they're somebody else's. That's how I work. No, I was born to be a mother. Yeah, yeah. Being a mother is a great thing.

So what else can we tease out about the book? Any interesting other plot twists that take place that we can tease out? With novels, they're kind of hard because you can't really give away too much in the middle and the end. I know. Like you can with a historical book. Well, at the beginning

of the book, so I'm not giving too much away, he goes to Ellis Island. And he was quarantined there because they thought he had tuberculosis. Yeah. And they kept him there for several weeks. And this did not happen. he meets a nurse there that he falls in love with and take it from there there you go there you go he hasn't seen her

for years so there's still a love story somewhere in here there are two love stories in there ah there you go there you go what an interesting journey and history, right, of your family. What does your family think about it, those who are still around? Well, my brother, the historian, who's published 14 books. Oh, wow. He still stuck on the fact that it's fiction. But he gave me kudos. He said that he really enjoyed reading it.

Well, tell him to write his own damn book if he doesn't like it. I've asked him to write me the dirty novel my whole life. I've said, this is, you know, his book on Obama just came out. That's his last book. Oh, there you go.

Yeah. He's a tried and true Democrat. Okay. Okay. And so he put out a book on a bomb we had a speechwriter for a bomb on the show we've had a number of people from all the white houses nixon i don't know if we've had anybody on from ford we had i think we had some people on from reagan we had a couple people on there they advised about six white houses uh for foreign policy and stuff so we had some interesting people on the show,

but it's always interesting the work that goes in behind it. So planning a second book, do you see books beyond the second book or are you taking them one book at a time? One book at a time. I'm old. That's how I am. It took me 54 years to write my first book.

It took me 75. It took you 75. You're not 75. I'm 76. took me 75. You're not 75. I'm 76. Oh my gosh, you're really young looking. Yeah, I joke that since I waited until 54 to write my first book, at this pace

I'll be 108 when I write my second one. You haven't done your second one yet? No, we're still working on all the concepts. There's a lot of ideas kicking around. Look what you're doing. Yeah, podcast. You've got a major podcast.

Yeah, 13 years. You meet wonderful people. I do. I meet the most wonderful people. We'll do three podcasts today. And I learn so much from everybody. It's interesting. I get to talk to people about their lives, their journeys, and it's cool.

You know, you could probably pack everything in. You could probably just put all my interviews in a book or all my best interviews in a book, the best interviews of the Chris Foss Show. Yeah. There you go. I don't know. Is anybody going to read that? I don't know.

You guys can write me and tell me. Anything more we want to tease out or touch on about the book? I'm afraid to give away too much. Yeah, you can't give away too much. There are a lot of twists and turns in it. You know, it, yeah. It's one of those things with novels. There's not a lot you can tell because otherwise, you know, like, you know, so what happens at the end?

You know, and you're like, well, no one's going to buy the book now. They know the ending. So that's kind of what we have. No, I know. I mean, ending the book was probably the hardest part for me. Really? Yeah. I did it as an epilogue.

Okay. Okay. So you think the book's over, and then there's an epilogue. Is the epilogue a lead-in to the next book? No. Okay. Well, that's kind of a tease out there. We've got to find out what that is now.

We've got to go buy the book. You've got to go read the end of the book. And then you don't have to read anything else. So is it hard to be a first-time author? Did you study anything? Everyone says, oh, it's so hard. How did you get published? It's ridiculous. You know, you must have sent it

to a million publishing companies. I didn't want to self-publish. But I couldn't just go to Random House or Simon & Schuster and say, hi, here I am. You know, I've got a book. They would throw it out. They wouldn't even look at it. So I did my due diligence

and I found a publishing company that does hybrid publishing which is they do everything from soup to nuts however you have to put a little bit of money up front and i mean really a little money and they don't take a dime until you've made that back. Oh, wow. That's pretty darn good. I know. And they were just a delight to work with. They let me design my own cover. That's good. A lot of big publishers don't let you pick a title or design your cover.

Yeah. I've had people on the show. They're like, I'm like, that cover's really cool. And they go, yeah, I don't like it. I wish that I didn't have to deal with it, but I didn't have a choice. And I'm like, what do you mean you didn't have a choice? No, they don't let you design your own cover. That's what I was told.

But they asked me what I wanted the cover to look like, and I described it exactly to them. And it took about two tries before they got it exactly like what I wanted the cover to look like and I described it exactly to them and it took about two tries before they got it exactly like what I was thinking. You know, it's one of those things where like with my cover I worked really hard on it and I'm

like if I got to sign this thing and talk about it for the rest of my bloody life, I'm having the cover I'm proud of because I don't want to be that guy like five years from now going, I really hate this fucking cover. No, but everyone loves the cover. Everyone told me that this is what really drew them to it. Yeah, it's beautiful.

Is the cover. Yeah. And, yeah, there it is. It's, yeah. It's got two immigrant-looking young men, I think. Yeah, they're going off to the brothel. Yeah, they're going off to the brothel. Oh, they're going off to the brothel. I was going to ask, are they in Poland?

Yeah. They're not in Poland? Yeah, they're in Clarets. Wow, crazy, man. Stories of being left in a brothel. Maybe I should ask my dad why he never left me in a brothel. He left me on the side of the street with a pin on a couple times. Please take him.

I think that was my mom that did that. And you were 24. Yeah, I was 24. I don't know. They were doing that. My mom was one of those people back in the 70s who would leave the kids in the car when she went to the grocery store. The hillside strangle was running around. You know, back then, people just let their kids in the car.

We all did that. Yeah. around. Back then, people just let their kids in the car. We all did that. My mom would put a sticker on the window saying, take one, take all, free, free. She put it on Craigslist too, the free list. They didn't have computers back then. When I think about things we used to do back in

the 60s, we trusted everybody. Yeah, it was kind of a weird time because the Hillside stranglers running around Southern California were just like, Mom, there's like killers and there's all sorts of 70s revolutionary crap going on. Wait, I lived a few blocks away

from where the Boston Strangler struck. Oh, really? Yeah. Wow. You missed out. Yeah, I was dating a young man who lived across the street from where he killed someone. Wow. Good old Albert DeSalvo, yeah.

Wow, craziness. Well, it's been interesting to have you on. Anything more we want to tease out about the book before we go? Nothing about the book I think I've covered as much as I want to give away. want people to buy it and read it and learn how, you know, the value of life, lessons, education. And nothing is impossible because these people came away with nothing and built lives and had children, educated them, and they became successful. Yeah. You know, it's a good immigrant story. I mean, this country is a nation of immigrants.

My great-grandfather came to this country from Germany in the 1800s, late 1800s, and built their lives. They built their homes. My grandfather built his second home and I think his first home in Green River, Wyoming. But they built their own homes. They're just like, hey, we need a home. We'll just build it.

I don't think he does that anymore, right? Are you the first generation? My grandfather came, my great-grandfather came from Germany. So there was my grandfather, my father, and my great-grandfather came from Germany. So there was my grandfather, my father, and then me. So is that third or fourth?

I don't, I get lost. I just, I just call him my great-grandfather, but I'm named after him. So there's that. Uh, Caesar was my great, great, great, great. There you go. I mean, I just, I just invented a whole new third series book for you in history. Didn't we all come from Caesar or Roman times or something? Marcus Aurelius was the name I was looking for earlier.

Well, thank you very much for coming on the show, Shirley. We really appreciate it. Thank you for having me. There you go. You ever those people that when they say Shirley, you must, and you do the whole thing. Don't call me Shirley. Don't call me Shirley.

Don't call me Shirley. I would do that all the time if I was named Shirley there you go gibbshrew.com is wherever you want people to find you on the interwebs please sobano s-o-b-o-n-o-e at aol.com

and snovak n-o-v-a-c-k and a-n-d-A-C-K, and A&D Associates.com. There you go. And on Facebook. Okay. And on Facebook.

And LinkedIn and Twitter and Instagram and all those things. Is it under your specific name on all those? Shirley Novak. There you go. Yep. There you go. Look her up and order the book wherever fine books are sold. Wherever fine books are sold. There you go. There you go. Look her up and order the book wherever fine books are sold. Wherever fine books are sold.

There you go. Stay with us, Alleyway Bookstores, because you might get stabbed or robbed or you might need a tetanus shot after you go into one. They're kind of dark and damp. Anyway, the story of dot, dot, dot came out December 21st, 2021. Shirley B. Novak. Check it out. Order it up wherever fine books are sold. Thanks for tuning in, dot. Came out December 21st, 2021. Shirley B. Novak. Check it out. Order it up where refined books are sold.

Thanks for tuning in, folks. We really appreciate you guys. Be sure to go to all our places on the web and refer the show to your family, friends, and relatives. And thank you for tuning in. Thank you, Chris.