104. HELENA HAYWOODE HENRY: Writing Squid Game meets death row & AI in the legal system

This week on LiteraryHype Podcast, Helena Haywood Henry joins me for a fascinating conversation rooted in her debut novel. "Last Chance Live!" is about a girl competing in a reality show where teens on death row can win a second chance at life, but if America doesn't vote for them, they'll be put to death within the week. This sparks so many questions about if it could happen and AI's role in the legal system. We're breaking it all down in a thought-provoking conversation.

FOLLOW HELENA

BUY THE BOOK
Bookshop
Amazon
LibroFM

Transcript

00;00;03;22 - 00;00;10;14
Unknown
Hi and welcome to Literary Hype. I am Stephanie, your literary hyper minute. Back with another author conversation for Literary Hype podcast.

00;00;10;18 - 00;00;29;13
Unknown
If you've been around here for a little bit, you know, I love introducing you to debut authors. And today we are talking to a debut author with a very hard hitting Wiley novel, and that is Helena Haywood Henry. And her book is called Last Chance Live. So this I think Squid Games. But for death row inmates

00;00;29;13 - 00;00;43;27
Unknown
So these teenagers are competing on a TV show where America's voting to decide who gets to stay and keep trying to redeem themselves a little bit to get out of their death sentence. While others who are voted off have seven days.

00;00;44;00 - 00;00;59;07
Unknown
It is a heavy topic, but is very important. And this is a really great conversation with Helena about so many things affecting our society today. So without any further ado, here's my conversation with Helena Haywood. Henry.

00;00;59;10 - 00;01;03;26
Unknown
Well, welcome to Literary Hive. So exciting to get to talk to you about your debut book, Last Chance Live.

00;01;04;03 - 00;01;07;04
Unknown
Thank you so much for having me. I very much appreciate it.

00;01;07;07 - 00;01;15;18
Unknown
So this is your debut book and you get to be at the biggest Y.A. book festival. I'd ask what that's like, but it hasn't really started yet. This is the first thing of the day.

00;01;15;21 - 00;01;17;12
Unknown
But what is it like for you to get that invitation?

00;01;17;16 - 00;01;41;11
Unknown
It is a thrill. It is such a privilege and a tremendous dream of mine. I have been stalking and falling all face for a very long time, for years and years. And it's hard to believe that I'm here with so many authors that I've admired for so long, for so many booksellers, and I'm so excited to meet and to get to see readers and people who appreciate young adult fiction as much as I do.

00;01;41;16 - 00;01;46;12
Unknown
So for anybody who hasn't seen Last Chance live in a bookstore or on social media yet, what is this book about

00;01;46;19 - 00;01;55;07
Unknown
teens on death row who compete in a reality TV show where America votes for one contestant to receive freedom and forgiveness and eliminates the rest?

00;01;55;09 - 00;02;01;14
Unknown
It's getting compared to Squid Game. What's it like for you to have that kind of a comparison for your debut

00;02;01;14 - 00;02;42;02
Unknown
It's an honor, and it's a tremendous gift because I started writing Last Gens Live in 2017 or 2018, so years before Squid Game came out. But it's a hard concept to really explain. So having a property like that come before publication. But after I started writing, it was really helpful to help translate the idea. I would say Last Chance Live is less on the spectacle of death, and more an existential examination of who we are as individuals, what we are as an American society, and where we are going both as individuals and as a society.

00;02;42;04 - 00;02;57;13
Unknown
And that's one thing that's in the Good Read reviews a lot, is that, oh, I thought this was going to be more about the game show, but it it really is more about eternity and her inner turmoil and her inner struggle and how she sees the world. So why did you decide to do it in that way instead of focusing more on the show?

00;02;57;20 - 00;03;24;20
Unknown
So the book, my hope was to take a premise that is entertaining and exciting, and I hope the book is all of those things, but also to position Eternity Prize winning character as an everyman character. The concept coming from the 15th century morality plays that we used to get taught in high school, so many of everyman and a few others and a theme continued in our culture through characters like Charlie Brown or Homer Simpson.

00;03;24;23 - 00;03;58;03
Unknown
There's people that we see and experience as everyman characters who are stand ins for all mankind, representing the universal circumstances that we were all in and the experiences that we have. But rarely is an everyman character, someone like a Trinity Price, who is a black, overweight teen from a disadvantage background, who is really struggling with the circumstances that she's in and her internal rage, this fair hope and derailed dreams.

00;03;58;05 - 00;04;20;14
Unknown
So eternity. The reason for the focus on her is because eternity price is really all of us. The hope is that last year's life serves as a mirror that reflects our own reflection, and shows us what the full range of the human experience is, and the full range of what we hold on the inside and what that produces in our society.

00;04;20;19 - 00;04;25;25
Unknown
Since you said that this came before Squid Game, what was your initial inspiration for this story?

00;04;26;00 - 00;04;52;03
Unknown
So three things. One was those traditional everyman tales. The second was this is very boring and lawyerly, but I used to practice law. And there is, resolution passed by the American Bar Association, which is basically the group of lawyers in America, and they passed a resolution noting that in light of emerging neuroscience, showing that the human brain does not stop developing until 25.

00;04;52;05 - 00;05;25;24
Unknown
The jurisdictions that still have the death penalty should reconsider the application of the death penalty to people between the ages of 18 and 21, at a minimum, right now, current Supreme Court jurisprudence after 2005 says we do not execute people for crimes committed, are under 18 for 18 and up for a game. And the way that we experience death row as a society and the way we experience executions is society is usually we'll see in the news, so-and-so, you know, inmate is 54 and being executed today by Alabama.

00;05;25;26 - 00;05;45;13
Unknown
But often that person who's executed has been on death row for decades and decades. The crime that they are being executed for, they committed sometimes and they were 18, 19, 20, 21. So that was one source of inspiration. And then the last piece was there was a young girl that I met when I was a student at the University of Pennsylvania.

00;05;45;16 - 00;05;56;26
Unknown
She was in a match for a class rise volunteering in, and she was an absolute star. She belonged on TV. And to my knowledge, she's had nothing like the journey and experience that a Trinity prizes have.

00;05;56;29 - 00;06;01;28
Unknown
and the likelihood she was ever going to be able to access its privileges was almost nothing.

00;06;02;01 - 00;06;15;03
Unknown
And that's part of why eternity lives Rasheeda as it grows up, or she does as a young person growing up in the shadow, this of the University of Pennsylvania and wanting to be a part of it, but really having no path to get there.

00;06;15;06 - 00;06;18;25
Unknown
And then you touched on being a lawyer, because I did want to ask about the legal research.

00;06;18;25 - 00;06;46;28
Unknown
There is a lot of like, legal processes and like what her options were. Did you have to do specific research on that, or is that something that you knew already from your background? A lot of research. My background had nothing to do with criminal law or, death row capital punishment system, any of that. But what I did want to do is with some understanding of how to make a book, and that it's not going to be perfectly or a perfect reflection of how the system works.

00;06;47;00 - 00;07;08;25
Unknown
Make sure that the crimes that the contestants committed were consistent with the capital statutes. Each state has making sure that the states that they come from are the states that really reflect where America is at with, death penalty implementation and, researching just how death row works. What is it like to live on death row? What is it like to be executed?

00;07;08;25 - 00;07;22;05
Unknown
What happens to what? What's the food situation? I'm always very concerned about the food. What? What are we eating on death row? So, yes, a tremendous of that of research for this book. What was the most surprising thing you came across in your research?

00;07;22;07 - 00;07;31;01
Unknown
Oh, that's a great question. I would say the most surprising was how states.

00;07;31;03 - 00;08;12;00
Unknown
Implement their executions and the ways that we don't recognize how painful and how harrowing the actual experience can be, because there's a lot of shortages. There's a lot of gaps in whether it be procuring the drugs needed for execution, whether it be and how we administer and what personnel are available to assist with that. And, you know, we sort of live our lives with this privilege, many of us, of accessing sufficient care, maybe not like the best, but sufficient care, sufficient help with whatever we go about in our lives.

00;08;12;01 - 00;08;32;18
Unknown
Dental help or educational help or whatnot. We get good teachers. We get good dentists. And when these people reach the end of their lives, I think there's a question as to whether they are receiving sufficient care in that same way that the a decent amount of what we should be offering someone if we're going to take their life

00;08;32;20 - 00;08;47;16
Unknown
you mentioned the food situation. Eternity does talk about food quite a bit. So talk a little bit about the like last meal topic conversations that she has and like the, the Domino's Pizza and why food is so important to eternity.

00;08;47;19 - 00;09;07;26
Unknown
Well, food is so cultural and important to all of us, right? We have comfort foods that we go for. We have foods that are a reflection of our history and our families and our traditions, and the loss of that aspect of the human experience for people who are incarcerated is something I think we don't really contemplate very much.

00;09;07;26 - 00;09;46;14
Unknown
Like what is Thanksgiving like on death row? I wanted eternity for for eternity. Food is really a reflection of the best parts of her life and the memories that she cherishes and holds on to and and the things that she's really afraid of losing. Right? So as she stands at this position on the precipice of the unknown, watching her dreams be derailed in real time, watching herself experience consequences for the rage and despair and fear that she harbors the food that she is focused on is really a proxy for understanding all that she's about to lose.

00;09;46;14 - 00;10;07;06
Unknown
Everything that that goes along with it. And dominoes might be just dominoes or some people, right? For other people, it's their birthday party every year. It's what their mom brought home when dinner was short and quick. And, it's a representation of love and celebration. So that's part of why food is a big theme in last June's life.

00;10;07;10 - 00;10;21;20
Unknown
You touched on how it's like finding out for her in real time, but there are some flashbacks. So how do you settle on how you wanted to structure this story? Yeah, that was a lot of thought and a lot of processing with my incredible editor, Stacy Barney, for whom I'm so grateful.

00;10;21;23 - 00;10;37;21
Unknown
The the goal was to make sure that the the two stories don't compete with each other, but also making sure that the book gave sufficient attention to why eternity is where she is and who she is, and what experiences she had.

00;10;37;21 - 00;11;04;05
Unknown
She had in different spheres of life in school, in her internships, in her home, in her community. That all coalesced into this moment. And I, I wanted to give sufficient attention to that because, as you know, the book is about the show, but it's not about the show. It's about us. It's about America, and it's about all of the factors that are a part of that.

00;11;04;05 - 00;11;09;11
Unknown
And so her back story is just one prism through which we can assess those things.

00;11;09;14 - 00;11;15;28
Unknown
This is a Ya book and this is a very heavy topic. So why write this story for teens specifically.

00;11;16;02 - 00;11;30;25
Unknown
write for teens for a few reasons. One is personal and the other specific to the book. For me personally, though, I am not 17, I feel like I am forever perpetually 17, and the mindset of a young person really makes sense to me.

00;11;30;28 - 00;11;53;16
Unknown
But the other reason that's unique to this story is I think Last Chance Live is for teens and adults of all ages. Really just anyone who is a human. Because eternity is standing at the intersection of a fundamental question that Ya poses and a fundamental question that adult literature poses. And I would say that the fundamental question of why is usually where am I going?

00;11;53;18 - 00;12;27;13
Unknown
And the fundamental question of adult is usually, how did I get here? And eternity is asking both because she's a death row inmate. I also wanted to invite younger readers into contemplation of these topics. With the focus and the heaviness being on the death topics. Not gruesome deaths type things. Because I think increasingly our world is not allowing young people to just stay young and to just live a simple, unbothered, uncomplicated existence.

00;12;27;13 - 00;12;49;20
Unknown
I think increasingly in an age of AI, in an age of rising authoritarianism around the world, in an age of political complications, social complications, educational complications, young people are going to be forced to contend with. Who do they want to be and what sort of country do they want to build in a way that earlier generations have not had to?

00;12;49;22 - 00;13;08;04
Unknown
And so I wanted Last Chance Live to really serve as an invitation. If you don't have a clear entry point as to how do I think about my country, how do I think about myself and my role in it? What is my sense of agency? Where does hope come from? For this book to be a starting point, to orient yourself in your own rights and in the rights of others.

00;13;08;06 - 00;13;13;27
Unknown
And that's going to be the important work of young adulthood and of teams and teen readers.

00;13;13;29 - 00;13;32;22
Unknown
It's like you looked at my questions because I didn't want to ask about AI in the legal system as well. Boy, yeah, you touch on that in this book. Yes. I've heard the sentence was partially algorithm decided. So talk a little bit about how the legal system is using AI and your thoughts on what should be done in that kind of situation.

00;13;32;27 - 00;13;38;02
Unknown
Boy, that's a big question. I get asked about AI, and we could talk forever about that. So

00;13;38;02 - 00;13;58;15
Unknown
capital punishment in America is is not algorithm decided in the same way that other crimes are. Yeah. The New York Times is a fantastic reporting on how criminal defendants are often subject to AI identified sentences, in a way that we don't see quite in the capital punishment system.

00;13;58;15 - 00;14;33;24
Unknown
But we could get there. The question it raises is whether the black box of the judge's mind, where you don't really know what's going on inside, what biases, what preconceived notions, what experiences are informing his decision is that superior or inferior to the black box of an algorithm defined sentence? One of the things that the executive producer of Last Chance Lai's notes in the book about this algorithm in sentencing question, is that the algorithm is usually not going to give Johnny from Compton and Johnny from Pleasantville the same sentence.

00;14;33;24 - 00;14;56;24
Unknown
There. And even if their crimes are similar, even if their previous history is relatively similar, there's ways that your location and your circumstances and whatnot are going to impact that. I think that, boy, I think my views on AI are probably I don't know how popular they would be. I, I'm with Socrates on this, and here's what I mean by that.

00;14;56;24 - 00;15;18;19
Unknown
Socrates once noted that the he thought that the decline of the oral tradition and its replacement by writing was bad, that it led to a de skilling of the human mind. The oral tradition required you to really know and contain vast amounts of information and writing took that information out of your brain and put it on a paper, not requiring you to hold it anymore.

00;15;18;21 - 00;15;32;29
Unknown
I think I across the board, I know that there's there's ways that are desirable to society. I'm sure I know the medical profession benefits other professions. Most of us are not in the medical profession. Most of us. Most of us are, I think. I imagine I've never used AI to my knowledge, but,

00;15;33;02 - 00;15;35;20
Unknown
most of us are not out here like creating new vaccines, right?

00;15;35;20 - 00;15;41;23
Unknown
Most of us are like cheating on our high school essays. Right? So I guess so,

00;15;41;24 - 00;15;58;24
Unknown
I think that it's it's accelerating a de skilling, akin to what Socrates was concerned about with writing versus the oral tradition that is dangerous for humanity and the descaling that we see is going to be reflected in all sorts of industries, including the legal profession.

00;15;58;24 - 00;16;00;28
Unknown
And I I'm concerned about it.

00;16;01;01 - 00;16;19;28
Unknown
I think that's a lot of us, especially those in creative spaces. Yeah, it feels like it's taking the soul out of, you know, writing and art and becoming such a big topic of conversation in the art community scientifically, of what's okay versus what you should avoid. And yeah, context. And people don't need to know how to do anything anymore.

00;16;19;28 - 00;16;28;04
Unknown
Right? You don't need to know how to analyze a text, how to think critically, how to write an essay, how to because it'll do it for you. You know,

00;16;28;11 - 00;16;42;18
Unknown
that's, I don't know if you're into anime and manga, but the book talk girls have discovered one piece least recently. And, like, all these guys are like, what? They're reading one piece with media literacy focused and, like, understanding these complex topics.

00;16;42;18 - 00;16;50;16
Unknown
Like, what do you mean? Book talk understands this row where we're not all mindless, that are not a monolith. Yes,

00;16;50;19 - 00;17;08;01
Unknown
so when you're writing the story, we don't find out Eternity's crying for a very long time. So talk a little bit about how you decided what her crime was going to be, and why you decided to withhold it from the audience for so long. Oh, boy. These are such fantastic questions. I'm so grateful to get to chat with you.

00;17;08;04 - 00;17;30;28
Unknown
I'll say I'll do it in reverse. I withheld her crime for the same reason that I withheld everyone's crimes in the show and the in the book on the show, the structure of the show is American Idol ish. There's a bottom two, and if someone is in the bottom two voting ranking, then they get their crime revealed and then America decides between the two crimes I just saw which is the worst and who's got to go.

00;17;31;00 - 00;18;02;23
Unknown
And once the contestant is eliminated, their sentence, their death sentence is implemented within the week. I wanted everyone's crimes to be withheld to give the reader to the opportunity to meet and experience these people without an understanding of who and what they've done and who they are and what they've done. And to see that the feelings and the, the range of what humans hold on the inside is something that we all share, is something we can all identify with.

00;18;02;23 - 00;18;27;14
Unknown
And we all don't. We don't all make the same choices, right? But we could see how a human could get there when we understand the feeling. So that's that was part of it. I wanted them to be really be people with who are not defined by what they had done. And one thing that comes to mind is Bryan Stevenson of the Equal Justice Initiative, who's a tremendous Supreme Court litigator and does incredible advocacy work with death row inmates, real ones like TV show ones.

00;18;27;16 - 00;18;51;01
Unknown
He talks about the question of whether these people are more than the worst thing they've ever done. And I think that's a question really, for all of us. Right? Are we all more than the worst that we've ever done? I wanted to fraternity's crime. I wanted her crime to be a reflection of the deepest type of hurt that humans hold.

00;18;51;03 - 00;19;06;24
Unknown
It's rarely random sometimes, but there's usually a thread, some string that's connected between what we do and either something that happened or something we internalize our experience and prompts it. So I'm not going to go further with that one. Oh yeah, I'm like, it's real hard to ask that question.

00;19;06;27 - 00;19;27;13
Unknown
Yeah, I was boiling exactly. But also like it's an important. Yeah. Part of it. Yes. Of her crime. Yes. Because it's like I had a feeling I was like the whole like about maybe halfway through I was like, oh no, oh no, I think I know what she did. Oh no, please don't. And I was real close. Not quite the real real close.

00;19;27;13 - 00;19;29;05
Unknown
And I was like, okay,

00;19;29;08 - 00;19;33;12
Unknown
We'll talk off camera because I'm curious what you're. Yeah. What you're anticipating. I'll add in it. I

00;19;33;19 - 00;19;59;06
Unknown
So you also talked a little bit ago about going to Penn, which is Eternity's dream, and she wanted to go to Penn. So how much of yourself did you put into your characters? That's a great question. I, I'm laughing because I was actually just talking about this with another author, JL of House of Marion, and I was telling her how I it's hard to write eternity in some ways because she and I are very, very different.

00;19;59;06 - 00;20;25;02
Unknown
As you might gather, this is not autobiography, and in a lot of ways I don't. I don't identify with her and I don't understand her experience. And JL said to me, Helena, eternity's you. And it has something to do with pizza. I did not realize you were that confused and I, I see what she's saying. I think that the parts of eternity that I put myself into, some of it is biographical, the pan and whatnot, and just understanding.

00;20;25;10 - 00;20;46;01
Unknown
Through that young girl I worked with what it is like to live in the shadow just a few blocks from the institution. But I think it's also existential eternity. Is it? Every man character in eternity is on death row? Because in a sense, we are all on death row. I am on death row. And what I mean by that is we've all done terrible things.

00;20;46;04 - 00;21;06;20
Unknown
Hopefully not murder. Hopefully not the types of things that contestants of Last Chance Live have done, but we've all done things that are wrong and we all are headed to a grave at some point, hopefully not soon. And because of that, we all need to contend with the questions that eternity does. Where am I going? What have I done, and what is the cost?

00;21;06;22 - 00;21;21;21
Unknown
How am I paying for the things I've done? How does forgiveness work and can I be forgiven? And so I think the parts of eternity that do intersect with me as an individual are those existential everyman questions.

00;21;21;24 - 00;21;33;28
Unknown
instance, your debut, we got to get to know you, Percy. Yeah, a little bit. I don't know if it was on your website or your bio or something, but it's said you spent too much time thinking about your kids, NATO, The Sims, your father, and Ninja Turtles.

00;21;34;01 - 00;21;40;08
Unknown
Oh, wow. Yeah, you did some digging. I know where I do my research. Yeah, he's over there.

00;21;40;11 - 00;21;45;24
Unknown
like, this is a really interesting. Yes. So which of those do you think about the most?

00;21;45;24 - 00;22;15;00
Unknown
Obviously, kids are a big part of it, but not the others. Yeah. You think about the most. And how does that come about? How are these your Roman Empire? Oh, how are these my Roman empire? Okay, I think about The Sims a lot, despite the fact that I've not been able to play for, I don't know, like ten years or something, but, part of why I feel like such a part of the author community, even though I haven't met a lot of authors yet, is I see that a lot of us play The Sims, and I think there's a through line there.

00;22;15;00 - 00;22;35;21
Unknown
I think there's a reason that we all gravitate towards this video game, especially for those of us who aren't gamers. I'm not a gamer in any other sense. There's something about the virtual dollhouse of it and the ability to, like, create characters and craft storylines and plots and whatnot. That is just really appealing. So I think about how and why The Sims is very powerful in that way, and also the ways it can be harmful to writing.

00;22;35;23 - 00;22;56;13
Unknown
Sometimes it really helps with my writing, because I think about creating characters in a Sims type of way. Like what? What traits am I putting in and what are their flaws and whatnot, and making sure I'm creating three dimensional people. I think about, you know, I do. I think about geopolitical concerns a lot. I think about TikTok a lot, for reasons that will be very unpopular,

00;22;56;13 - 00;23;29;28
Unknown
Here's why TikTok and they're related to me with tremendous respect for the role that TikTok plays for a lot of people's livelihoods, particularly in the book community. I am concerned about the Trump administration's 180 on it. I'm concerned about the lawlessness that has surrounded the Congress and Supreme Court, all weighing in saying, yeah, we've got this law and TikTok needs to go and whatnot and whatever, and there's tremendous national security risk, etc., and the administration just ignored it, and we all just went along with it because we like TikTok.

00;23;29;28 - 00;23;53;00
Unknown
And he wants TikTok for reasons that I will not speculate because I'll sound like a conspiracy theorist, but I'm concerned and I feel like TikTok should have been a front of the resistance. Particularly when we see that NATO and other international alliances that we have that were our traditional security nets of resisting the types of authoritarian impulses that that this world can summon, we see those breaking down.

00;23;53;03 - 00;24;15;16
Unknown
And so TikTok was one place, in my very humble opinion, that we as a country and as a people could have said, we're going to do the work of being our own NATO. We're going to do the work of creating our own forces of resistance in small, simple ways. But I recognize there's a cost to that. There's a tremendous economic cost for some people.

00;24;15;16 - 00;24;32;20
Unknown
So you may want to cut all of this out. I just know do that so well because like, I love showcasing other perspectives and like different ideas and thoughts that we don't all think the same. And so this might be the only time someone thinks about to go our way. Yeah, yeah. Oh, no. We just got it back and now we get to go.

00;24;32;21 - 00;24;52;24
Unknown
I know I would have liked to see us say, there's a reason that this administration wants TikTok, and it may have to do with the old China, and they have to do with recognizing his reach on the platform and his ability to download information to people. And we're just not going to participate. We're not going to when you sell it and when the law of the land is followed, then we'll get back on right like, but, you know, nobody asked me.

00;24;52;27 - 00;24;59;05
Unknown
Well, you you ask, I did ask, I did ask if you asked. And, Ninja Turtles, which one's your favorite?

00;24;59;07 - 00;25;07;06
Unknown
I think I'm going to upset my boys here, but probably. Probably Leonardo. I think it's Leonardo. You know,

00;25;07;09 - 00;25;19;11
Unknown
part of I think about them a lot is, at the risk of sounding incredibly obnoxious, my anxious helicopter parenting style used to be that I wanted to subject my kids to only the highest of the high quality stuff.

00;25;19;11 - 00;25;53;14
Unknown
Right? Like we're not doing, you know, Ninja Turtles or, you know, Blue's Clues. Whatever we're going to do, know, insert highbrow equivalent here. And then I really want. Thankfully, my boys disabuse me of the notion that I had any control over any of that. They got to have a normal childhood, but I recognize that there was tremendous, for lack of a better term or less snooty term, tremendous high brow value, and a lot of these intellectual properties, including Ninja Turtles and how there's I won't bore you, but like, there's a lot of Socratic material in there, there's a lot of Shakespearean material in there.

00;25;53;14 - 00;26;21;24
Unknown
And I was like, oh, this is brilliant. And I, I'm not wise for not recognizing that. Like, there's just all storytelling has value. High brow, low brow in between all of it is good. And I'm grateful that Ninja Turtles was able to educate me on that and to broaden my perspective and appreciation for all types of art. Well, cooking is an art and according to your Instagram or bio or wherever I was looking at, information about you says you make 8 pounds of crockpot chicken a week.

00;26;21;24 - 00;26;37;24
Unknown
I do. Where on earth I am just I don't even know where this is. I remember the 80s, I text messages, I see, you know, I think that is a text I said on the group challenge, looking stuff up and writing it down. And then I'm like, where did I see that? I think that was in a group chat from last week on my text.

00;26;37;26 - 00;26;58;01
Unknown
I do I make a tremendous amount of chicken, pray for my family because their culinary experience at home is not great. We are. We are stretched to the. And so I make chicken and I steamed some broccoli and then I just do like different things of the chicken, like chicken sandwich, chicken casserole chick whatever. And I kid are like, why do we eat chicken every day of our lives?

00;26;58;01 - 00;27;18;11
Unknown
Can we do something different? And I often say, not in this season of my life. No, this is where we're at. This is what I can do. And we're going to have gratitude that we are fed. Right? We can go. It's it's good to have food. Exactly, exactly. Whether it's like, because my husband is a big like if I left him to his own devices, it would be chicken and rice or steak and rice.

00;27;18;11 - 00;27;40;03
Unknown
Yeah, it would never be anything else. You put vegetables and frozen vegetables in my rice, right? So we can do better. I do love to cook. It's just a bandwidth problem right now. Yeah. There's there's too much. Exactly, exactly. As long as you're fed, you're doing right. Right? Right. This data is not coming from me. What is your favorite crock pot recipe?

00;27;40;09 - 00;27;57;06
Unknown
There's a chili I love to make. It's a little spicy, so I don't. I don't do it now with the kids, but, it's fantastic. So I would say probably that, there's also a few dips and, I like to do what is not a crock pot one, but I there's a French onion soup I love to make.

00;27;57;06 - 00;28;16;08
Unknown
I am all about a, like, deeply caramelized onion. This is so like specific. But that's so it's actually. Yeah it is. It's like sweet and it's buttery and yeah, huge fan. As I had TikTok the other day of some fancy restaurant where it was French onion soup served inside of an onion and you like, slurp. Oh, wow. That's amazing.

00;28;16;08 - 00;28;32;00
Unknown
And I said, it's my husband. He's like, yeah, yeah, find this. Where is this restaurant? I have no idea. Oh, I got a slice there. So it's just like when you go to a fancy restaurant and they give you an onion and you drink the soup out of the. So basically the way they decide what restaurant to eat at all over the world is, does it have an onion soup?

00;28;32;03 - 00;28;42;01
Unknown
I love French onion soup. It is my thing. Good to know if I want to get on your good side. There you go. Exactly, exactly. This restaurant with the French onion. Yeah.

00;28;42;03 - 00;28;44;20
Unknown
the last question we always ask because this is literary hype.

00;28;44;20 - 00;29;16;29
Unknown
What books are you hyped about right now? Boy, I there's so many fantastic books I'm very much very excited for. One is, coming from Penguin coming soon is deadly ever after, secret Astronomers which just came out. JL has a not yet announced book coming. I think it's coming next fall. If I'm correct about the timeline and I can't say anything about it, but I did read it and it is a fantastic and it does something that I think is really unique in the space.

00;29;16;29 - 00;29;43;22
Unknown
It's really examining just a foundational aspect of the human condition and what what we're like and what we all use to fill ourselves to feel whole. And it's just it's just amazing. So yeah, a lot of books, so many exciting books. I mean, that's why we're here. You go for. Yes. Yeah, exactly. The books. Exactly. Well, thanks so much for taking time to talk to literary Hype about your brand new book, Last Chance Live.

00;29;43;22 - 00;29;48;20
Unknown
Thank you so much for having me. I appreciate it.

00;29;48;23 - 00;30;04;05
Unknown
Thanks again to Helena for hanging out with me, y'all. First, very early in the morning. Like, this was first thing in the morning that we met up to have this conversation. If you're interested in checking out Last Chance Live, the links to do so are down in the show notes for you, as well as where to find Helena on social media.

00;30;04;05 - 00;30;06;11
Unknown
So definitely go give her a follow

00;30;06;13 - 00;30;15;17
Unknown
If you enjoyed this conversation, don't forget to subscribe to the Literary Hype Podcast. Give us some stars and share it with a friend. Thanks so much for listening to the literary hype podcast.