Speaker 1
Yeah, well, I think it's more interesting, you know, I mean, which is not at all a knock on like a reference book or something, because you need those. But it's, I'm much more interested in the entertainment side of reading a book, right? Like I want people to read a book because it's, I read books for entertainment. I think we're writers, I think we're entertainers. And so I see myself as an entertainer first, which means that I'm not here to pass along a package of facts to you that you're gonna then walk away with and implement. Like I don't care about that at all. So yeah, it's just, and so, but that is, it is a little bit of a kind of an uneasy thing, but I would also say it's really helped. Like you can, even with this tree collector's book, you know, there were people that said to me like, well, it can't just be about tree collectors. Maybe it could also include some sort of fun facts about trees and some growing tips. And I was like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. We need to dig into the nerdiness and weirdness of people who collect. And this happened with Wicked Plants as well, which is a book about kind of poisonous plants. And my publisher at one point we had this meeting and they said, you know, it's not just wicked plants, it's plants that are weird or interesting or unusual. And I'm like, nope, these are plants that can kill you. Like we need to embrace that. I need everyone on board with, this is a book of plants that will kill you. Like we need to go, we need to go there. If you guys aren't ready to go there, if we water it down, no one's booking me on NPR for some watered down book about plants that are in some way, why are they weird? Like they have purple leaves, like that's weird. Like, no, no, I have collected stories of specific people who died or nearly died because of their encounter with this plant or an attempted murder or a war got started or whatever. Like I've collected stories about specific people who had specific very bad encounters with truly terrible plants. Let's own it. So sometimes publishers really in a weird way want to sort of back off, water it down, try to blob me a peel and I'm like, ah-ha, people will be interested. And this is actually very true with art too. People will be interested in your weird specific thing. I don't try to be all things to all people. There's a wonderful artist named Nicholas Wilton who's sort of a guru, particularly among abstract artists. And he talks about this, like really get in touch with your preferences. I like this, I don't like that, I want this. And weirdly, the more specific you get, the more appealing it is to people because they can connect to your weirdness about it. And then they want to know more about it. If you try to just be all things to all people, we're bored.