Hi, Kate. Welcome to our next podcast.

Hi. Thanks so much for having me.

So happy to have you here. Tell us a little bit about yourself.

Well, I am Kate Claiborne and I am very lucky to have been writing romance for several years now. I write contemporary romance and my ninth book is about to come out this spring, and I'm really excited about it.

I was sharing with you that Beginner's Log, which was your first book, was actually one of those pandemic reads that I read early in the pandemic with my book club, and we loved it so much that we became. To your ultimate fans. We went through the rough of the series and then we've been following here. Every time you put a book, we're like, oh my gosh, we'd have to read it. And so I am so excited to chat with you 'cause this has been like six years in the making for

Oh, that is such an honor. And whenever someone mentions any of your books to you, it's really special. But whenever someone mentions your first book, it just it gets you in a different way. That's your baby.

It's a great book club book for listeners to how I'm familiar, beginner's Block is about a group of friends who win the lottery and. Things happen and it's a romance and it's such a great conversation because at that time, if you think about a pandemic, we were stuck in house.

Yeah.

were, some of them in different types of employment. I think I was in between jobs and I was like, what would I do if I win the lottery right now?

why not think or talk about that?

Yeah, so, but today we're talking about the Paris match which is, it's an interesting premise. I, again, your books are, they're just, the character is so rich and we have a setting it set in Paris, but there's a sense of like groundedness about the characters and where they are going. And we have this interesting setup where our main care female main character is going to her ex-husband's. Sister, former sister-in-law wedding, a sister-in-law that she has seen grown up. And so it's more like a little sister, big sister relationship, but they've been divorced amicably as we as she likes to boy now. But it's still an awkward situation. And then the best man is like grump in some ways. He's the ultimate grumpy sunshine. And he, we know he has feelings for her, but it's. It's a kind of, that we love because I like you so much that I'm gonna hate you meet cute.

He is very tortured. Yes,

so we have this week long, wedding situation that they have to come together because the sister-in-law, Emily, has maybe got some cold feet and so she doesn't wanna have the wedding. And Griffin is no, we need to have a wedding. We need to have this now.

yes

Did I explain it right?

You did. I think you did a great job. It is a book about a very awkward family dynamic and a book about a woman who really works hard to make peace with everybody and about a guy who is just not really interested in peace at all.

No.

A fighter.

he's like the ultimate, setup for like explosive. Because he's so guarded and he's so like tight, he's just gonna explode. It's about fireworks,

I really enjoyed writing him because like a key thing about his character is that he has been. Such an intentional hermit for so long. Like he really has been kind of isolating himself from society pretty much. And so putting him in this environment of Paris is just such a huge test for him. And, not only having him in all these social situations, but also having him confronted with the first person in a long time who truly makes him feel something. He was a really fascinating character to write.

Yes, and talk to us about the setting because it's in Paris, which is where we wanna go, but Paris makes a big deal. Like it's a big presence in the setting. It's not just place, it, there's a purpose. Why, talk to us about the process of writing Paris as a character and, trying to get it right, which is a hard job to do.

I wanted to think about Paris is a city that many people have a lot of really strong associations with and often those associations are like very romantic or that they picture Paris and they're picturing like that sparkling Eiffel Tower or, the most beautiful images they've seen in photography or on TV or something like that. And I think Layla, who went to Paris on her honeymoon in her previous marriage she. I think kind of related to Paris in that way as like this sort of perfect shining romantic city. And I think the reason I wanted to write about it is I wanted to write about the experience of seeing Paris through kind of a different set of eyes, I guess, when you're understanding the city in a different way, when. Layla herself is more grown up this time when she encounters the city. And so I think she's experiencing it in a whole new way, and I thought that was a really neat thing to think about in terms of this city that is so loaded with romantic

I think Paris and New York are. Hard cities to write because people have very strong emotions. Like they're very, there's a strong, they might have memories, they might have been presented different ways in the media. They might have think it's one way. In Paris it's very, it's difficult because you also have the language, you also have nuance of it's a different culture that's not Americanized and looking for the American lens, like what it looks like. And the French may see it very differently and. Confronting that and even, I love Griffin. It's like nobody learned how to speak French. They just assume English. He is I've been practicing French.

Yes. Griffin.

He's been dual language.

has been home studying for weeks, preparing for this.

yes. Which it's points out a lot of French don't like when people American go in and just explain it in English,

Yes.

so,

Yeah, and I think that like in addition to, Layla wants to go to this wedding and be the perfect guest, I think she also tries really hard to almost be like the perfect tourist. And I think Griffin he sort of forces her to be a different way in, in a lot of different ways.

Yes. And we also have to think about, Layla has been pretty much escaping her life for the past two years, since the divorce. Like she is a hospitalist. She's actually just joined different hospitals, trying to be the best doctor she can be to serve those places, fix a problem and a leave, and not having a place like a concrete place to stay. And I think even. Even there was, like, at the beginning, she's I heard a medical emergency. I'm gonna go and do it. I'm, I got my medical license, I'm gonna share with,

yes.

A sense of she being a doctor has been such a crutch. It's a good way to avoid life helping others. And I think it's getting confronted, even Griffin, in that moment we like, you need to get out of the floor. What was that,

yeah. I think Layla is she sees herself as a problem solver. But I think that she has become, like when we meet her in the book. She has become really self-sacrificing in the interest of solving problems, and she's kind of lost herself as a result of that, I think.

And I also love that she's a hospitalist because people don't know what that is. I work in the medical field, not, no, I'm not a doctor, but I'm familiar with that term, but it's so, it's so not no, unless you work in the hospital, in a hospital setting, you understand that this is a, this the actual profession. They might have no idea. It's not like cardiothoracic surgeon or, or family doctor

Yeah it's lesser known, but it's like such an important role for patients that are hospitalized for a long time. It's like those doctors again, like they are often solving. Sort of a set of problems that like, don't really have anything to do with what the specialist is treating. Right. And so I thought it was it really spoke to who Layla is as a person and what she's drawn to in her, in, in kind of all areas of her life.

Yeah, it's like the project manager of care, and in some ways she's project managing, fixing Emily's problem,

yes, that's right.

I think it like it really, again, your books bring so much richness and they're great for book club. I even Paris Match. I think it's a great book club book just because it brings to the richness of the characters, the art, and there's a lot of discussion that you can have and how does apply to you, your life? And we're, yes, Emily is in her twenties, but most of the characters are in her thirties. So they have some sort of like life experience and their choices are very different than being young.

I did want, like that was really important to me when I was writing this book that I wanted Layla to. Feel very much like a grownup, but at the same time, like it, it really recognizes and honors that like even grownups don't have everything figured out yet. Or, they think they've handled something in a really adult immature way, but they kind of realize it's causing them more pain or they need to rethink how they live or whatever.

Yeah, I think your thirties is like such an interesting, it just, I'm in my forties now, so the thirties tend to be like your twenties. You're trying to figure out how to make the world and how to be ambitious and get the place. And then the thirties you kind of realize no, I have to make life decisions. I gotta marry, I gotta have babies 'cause the biological clock is happening. I gotta be, well, my career gotta be earning, gotta go to the right place. And there's a lot of pressure and I think Layla's. Grappling with the pressure of a marriage that was not, that did not work anymore. And like grappling with the career, like what career is she's gonna have because she's living with instability. She's like jumping around to different hospitals. Yes, she has a job and yes, she's a doctor, but she doesn't have the stability of saying I'm setting roots here. And that's part of it, like in my thirties, I spent. Five years jumping around jobs. Like I was in New York and I was like doing gigs and I was doing temp. And I landed in the job that I am now in my late thirties. And it's a whole new career that I had no expecta, no experience, but that was part of the thirties. Like you realize that oh, is this where I wanna stay? Or this is where I wanna go. And in your forties you're kinda like, you just let it go. Like it's not that serious,

Yeah, I think Layla is like in a process of remaking her in a lot of ways.

like it's not that serious and it's, I think it, she's gonna get there. She's not in that messy middle

for

I do, and I think Griffin is a not messy middle too, in his own way. It is just basically, two forces coming together.

Yeah. I mean I think he's been able to hide from that sort of decision making for a long time. But Paris kind of forces him into

Yes. He had to travel to Paris.

He has to travel, he has to talk to people.

He has to order things. He has to figure out like what is going on.

Yes, it's all very challenging for him.

Oh. So Kate, let's talk while you're reading life, what kind of books do you tend to read?

Well, I have to say, I try to be like a pretty expansive reader. I try to read from lots of different genres. Romance is like my most read genre still. I still read, pretty much every night I am reading like right before I go to bed, I'm reading a romance level. But I also try to read lots of other things because I feel like that keeps my imagination pretty alive. So I just finished a book, I think it came out maybe last year called Ola by Goodman. Did you read that?

I heard about it. It's one about a thousand years old or something like that. It's like a mythology

no, this one is like she, she's like this French Noble woman in the 16th century and she gets stranded on an island. So there's like a survival sort of a section of the book that is sort of like survivalist, but it's also just about like some of the forces she's subject to as a woman during that time. And I mean, it was just something really different, like not the kind of thing I would normally read, especially that like survival aspect, but. I was like really turning pages late into the night. I really enjoyed that. I'm also like, I also read when I can, I try to read a bit of nonfiction, so I'm currently reading a book about the philosophical origins of anxiety, is really interesting. But again, like even when I'm reading that stuff, like I am also always reading. A romance novel like always.

so we gotta talk about what kind of romances you read, because Romans is such a vast genre. So what's your. Genre of choice, like which one is like your micro, if it shows up where there's a trope or contemporary, historical or specific I buy it, what's your auto buy?

Okay. Well, I'll say that I really like the two sub genres. I am most often found reading are contemporary and historical. And I think that's probably just because those are the. Two sub genres that I started with. And so I think I always end up like gravitating back toward that. But I do read paranormal I read some romantic supe, like I, listen, I really love romance, so I'll read. But I love, yeah, I love contemporary and historical and often am drawn to those two sub-genres in terms of tropes. Like a marriage in trouble which is not super common, but like whenever I see one, I wanna read it. So really recently I read I guess it was last year now, Tara Deitz left of forever. I loved that, even though it was like the couple was already divorced, but it was really like they're putting it back together and I love that. So I really enjoy that. And then I have some authors that like whenever they have a new book come out, I'm gonna get that book if that Yeah,

I love this. Kate, tell us you can find it online.

You can find me on Instagram at Kate Claiborne author, and I'm also on Threads. You can find my me at my website, kate clayborne.com. And those are the main places.

Thank you, Kate, for being on the show.

Oh, I love talking to you. Thank you for having me.

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