- [Narrator 1] "By the River" is brought to you in part by the University of South Carolina, Beaufort, learning in action discovered.

The ETV Endowment of South Carolina.

Community Foundation of the Lowcountry, strengthening community, Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at USCB, The Pat Conroy Literary Center.

- [Host] New York Times bestselling author, Kristy Woodson Harvey is also a blogger and a co-creator of "Friends & Fiction".

Her novel "Under the Southern Sky" follows two childhood friends on a journey of self-discovery, love and family and their childhood home of Cape Carolina.

- I'm Holly Jackson.

Join us as we bring you powerful stories from both new and established southern authors as we sit by the river.

(bright music) ♪ Hi, it's another beautiful day here at our waterfront studio.

Thanks so much for joining us here for "By the River".

This is our love letter to Southern writing.

We're bringing you powerful stories from new and established South Carolina and Southern authors.

We're here with the author of "The Peachtree Bluff Series" and "Under the Southern Sky", Kristy Woodson Harvey.

Kristy, thanks so much for coming here, we are super excited about this to learn all about you as a writer and the books you have coming up, the ones that have just come out.

So let's go ahead and begin with "Under the Southern Sky".

As people are seeing this, is pretty much fresh on the bookshelves.

- [Kristy] Yes, it is.

- So tell us a little bit about who's involved in this and what the reader might take away.

- Well, first of all, thank you for having me and your love letter to Southern writing, that's magical.

I will remember that.

(both chuckle) I love that.

Well "Under the Southern Sky", it's my favorite book I've ever written.

I've actually been thinking about this one for a long time, almost five years.

And it's a story about an investigative journalist named Amelia, who inadvertently discovers that a cluster of frozen embryos belonging to a childhood friend of hers and his late wife have been deemed abandoned.

So she is then put in the sort of unenviable situation of having to tell Parker, her childhood friend about these embryos, knowing that it's gonna be kind of a painful thing to bring up to him.

And then he has to decide what to do with them, of course, and this is effectively the last remaining part of this woman who was the love of his life, who he really has not been able to move forward from at all in the past three years.

So the story is written from the point of view of Amelia, the journalist and Parker, the father of these embryos.

We also get to see snippets of Greer, who is the deceased wife through her journal entries.

And then we get to hear from Amelia's good Southern meddling mama, who's named Elizabeth and all of the secrets... And all of the characters in the story have a secret.

And as the secrets are revealed, what ultimately ends up happening to the embryos comes to light.

- Now, you've been writing a lot, so tell me where this idea came along the way.

- So about five years ago, I had a friend who came to me one night at a party, and she said that she had just been to a doctor's appointment.

She had just had twins via IVF, and she had some leftover embryos.

And she said, "I never thought about that we were gonna have to figure out what to do with our children to her at the end of this process."

And she said, "A lot of people are going to be going through this, and I think you should write a book about it."

And it was one of those things that so many people tell you when you're a writer, "Oh, you should write a book about this," or "I have this story," and most of the time you're like, "Oh, great."

And you usually smile politely, - Yeah.

- But this was, I knew right away, it was like one of those lightning bold moments that I was like, "Yes, this is something that I wanna talk about," but I didn't really know what the story would be around it.

And I knew we had to raise the stakes.

I knew that a couple deciding what to do with their frozen embryos was probably not going to be a story that was gonna be people turning pages, but I knew there was something around that that would be.

And so I thought having a mother that was gone and a father kind of left behind grieving and carrying on this legacy of his wife's would be maybe sort of a more interesting story.

So then you add a good Southern town and a girl that he's loved since childhood who's the one that sort of puts the story together, and it was a really fun story to write.

- Well, I'll tell you, it's intriguing from the very beginning, because I know with me, I was reading it, I'm a, I don't know, maybe 10 pages in and go get my phone, I'm like, "I need this to be on silent because I don't want this to go off.

(Kristy laughs) because I need no interruptions during this."

- Thank you.

- So it's really an exciting book.

- Thank you.

- Let's back way up - Mm-hmm (affirmative) - and talk about you as a child and when just the writing bug came in and just how you continue that on, and maybe who inspired you along the way?

- You know, it's funny because as a child I didn't know I wanted to be a writer.

I was an avid reader, I read all the time every book I could get my hands on.

And before I could read, my mom would talk about reading to me all the time and how I never, it was always one more story, one more story, one more story.

But I don't know, maybe I just never thought about the people who were writing these books or it just wasn't something that I really considered to be a career option necessarily.

And actually, even when I was in high school, I thought I was gonna be a science major in college.

And so my senior year of high school, I got a column in my local newspaper and I just loved it.

I mean, to be able to say whatever I wanted to say every week in the newspaper and people read it and they wrote me letters about it, and I thought there's really something to this.

And I always had had a lot of different interests.

And I started to realize if I'm a writer, I can write anything.

I'm not just pinned into this one career for the rest of my life, I can live a lot of different lives as a writer.

And so I went to journalism school.

Said a million times I only wanted to tell real people's stories.

I was never gonna write a book.

I got a Master's in Literature.

Was never going to write a book.

And then I was about 25, I guess when my first story idea sort of hit me and I was like, "No, no, no, no, no, no, this is not what we're gonna do," but it just wouldn't let me go.

And so I sat down and I started writing and I actually wrote several manuscripts before I ever even thought, Hey, how does one get a book published to be totally honest with you?

And there was something about that third one that I wrote that I felt like I kind of found my voice a little bit more, and I thought this is something that I might actually want to pursue.

And so I ended up signing with the literary agent for that third manuscript I'd written, but ended up winning a writing contest for another manuscript that I was working on at the time, and it ended up being my debut novel, "Dear Carolina".

So it was...

I mean, it's a ton of hard work.

I make it sound like it was so easy and it just happened.

And it wasn't, there's tons of rejection.

For the one agent that wanted me, there were a million that didn't, then for that contest I won, I'm sure there were a ton of editors that would never have bought that book, but it's so interesting how if you sort of stay open to it, your life really can lead you in very different directions than you thought you were going to go, and it's just been such a gift all of it.

- That's great.

This is season four right now of "By the River", and there's always this one question I ask at the end, and it's usually about advice for college students, because we usually have a whole crew of college students here from the University of South Carolina Beaufort, but I've kind of shifted a little bit and I'm always asking people about teachers 'cause I've grown to understand that every author seems to have a teacher story.

- Yeah.

- And there's like some teacher who maybe told them that they were a good writer or inspired them in some way.

Do you have a teacher that might come to mind that may have said something that might've given you a little bit of confidence in this?

- Yeah, oh my gosh, so many.

I've had so many incredible teachers.

Several come to mind.

One is Sister Mary John, who was the principal of my Catholic school - Uh-huh (affirmative) - when I was growing up.

She always really thought that I was a good writer and really tried to... She would actually like sort of pull me aside and work with me on my writing 'cause she thought I was good at it.

I never really thought about it honestly then, but it was great because if she liked you, it was good, if she didn't, it was not good.

- Right, right.

(Kristy laughs) - So she was probably one of the first, but I had just some amazing teachers in high school.

One was my tennis coach, Coach Myers, but he was also my AP history teacher.

And I mean, he definitely inspired my writing.

He pushed me very hard and you know, I would turn in these papers that anybody else would have given me an A on and he would be like, "Go back and write that again.

That is like a solid B minus from you."

Like, "Go, do it again."

And he just really inspired me.

He also really inspired me to be able to speak, I think because he made us public speak all the time and he really, really inspired me to do that.

And I had an amazing AP English teacher that I am still sort of in touch with, Michelle Reinhardt Klein, and she was great.

And they really, I felt like, kind of just gave me a lot of help and inspiration.

No one has ever asked me this question, by the way, this is a really good question.

Can you feel (talking over each other) - Hard hitting questions.

- I know.

It's incredible.

It really is great.

And then I had some really good college professors that helped me along, but I actually had someone that sort of recruited me for journalism school at Carolina when I was kind of on the fence between science and journalism.

And I actually ended up, it was into more of this program.

It was like a TV journalism program and I ended up going a different way, but I still feel like he really helped me see that, like this was a path that I wanted to go down.

So I could go on all day.

- [Holly] Yeah.

- I've had incredible teachers and a lot of people that really helped me to learn and see what I was good at and what was possible that.

- That's great.

Let's shift gears a little bit and go to social media.

- Yes.

- And I know that you've really gotten into that.

(Kristy laughs) And it seems like it's such an important time to do that because so much of what you've been doing over the past, I guess, year and a half almost has had to be virtual.

- [Kristy] Yes.

- So talk about just getting into that and the different kinds of connection that you make with readers and that sort of thing.

- I have sort of a love, hate relationship with social media, because like I would rather be writing than doing pretty much anything else, but I've always done it and I've enjoyed it because I've always liked to interact with readers that way.

I actually have an interior design blog that my mom and I started about 10 years ago.

So I was actually doing a lot on sort of the internet side of things long before I was writing, which I think was kind of a benefit for me and during the pandemic, oh my gosh.

I thought about debut author so much because I thought if you don't already have this built-in platform, how in the world?

You can't go on tour.

- [Holly] Right.

- You can't do things like this.

How in the world would you sell your book if you didn't have social media?

So I think for... We can say a lot of negative things about social media, but I also think that it has really given us connection during a very difficult time namely some other author friends, Mary Kay Andrews, Mary Alice Monroe, Patti Callahan Henry and Kristin Harmel and I started a weekly web show on Facebook called "Friends & Fiction".

And we were going to do it for like a couple of weeks just for fun 'cause we weren't going on tour, and we actually had our one-year anniversary recently and it's just going strong and this incredible community of readers has come out of it.

And I mean, I don't know what we would've done without them during this time, because not only are they sort of bolstering our careers along, but they also have just been such a huge support system for us.

And we've been such huge support system for each other, I think, and just it's helped me be more productive.

I've gotten more writing done 'cause we were all kind of writing each other this whole time.

Like, yes, it's hard, but we're writing today.

- [Holly] Yeah, yeah.

- Do it, quit complaining.

But they've been... And it's just amazing to me.

I mean, I think about these people who five years ago, if you had told me that, like they would be some of my closest friends, I would have been like pssst, they would never even say hello to me.

(Holly laughs) So it's amazing where life can take you, but it's been so great, and I think we'll keep doing it for a long time.

- Yeah, it's really grown.

And I love to see some of the moments that come out.

I mean, there's some emotional moments, there's a lot of funny moments and it's really a community.

- It is.

It's such a community, that's the word for it.

- You getting a little more high tech in there.

- Yes.

- Yeah, is that you doing all that editing?

- Well, we've got a tech guy now.

- [Holly] Okay, wow.

- When we decided to really go for it.

- Let's do this, right?

- So I gave my publisher really big credit.

They really saw the value in the show early on and they made some investments in it and really helped us kind of get on our feet and got some advertisers now.

- All right, cool.

- So it's been great.

And we have a tech guy and a managing director who helps us - That's awesome.

- with the podcast and it's been great.

I mean, we never imagined.

We were, oh my gosh.

When you look at that first show, we were so terrible.

We had no idea what we were doing and we still have no idea what we're doing.

- Uh-huh (affirmative).

- We have someone that knows what they're doing.

- But you're better at (indistinct) - We're getting better.

(Holly laughs) We're getting better.

- I love it.

Another thing that I've really gathered through these four years of doing this show is I'm so intrigued and impressed and just admire the fact that all you authors are friends and I mean, you get together, you write together, you hang out together.

Tell me about that comradery that you all have.

- Okay, so I have to tell you that is one of my biggest surprises in being a writer because it's a competitive field, - Yeah.

- it's hard to break into.

It's hard to stay around.

It's something that you're always sort of really grateful for your next book and you never take anything for granted.

And so I just sort of assumed that it would be a little bit more cutthroat than it is, but I feel like that has not been my experience at all.

I mean, I have, oh my goodness.

I cannot tell you the number of authors who have just helped me along the way, who've given me advice, who have interviewed me, especially during now that we're doing all these virtual things, we'll do events together or will bring me along in their live event or whatever it may be.

I mean, there's such a great sense of comradery.

And you know, at the end of the day, they're the only people that really understand what you're doing and what your life is like.

And so it's been great to be able to find that real network and friendship with a lot of really incredible authors.

And it's truly one of the biggest gifts that I found.

And as I said, one of the biggest surprises.

- Yeah.

Well, tell us a little bit about what your life is like.

I read this great article about your dad hanging up the hat - Yes, yes.

- to tour with you.

- Yes.

- Tell me how that experience was having dad along.

And it sounds like - That was amazing.

- he was really spoiling your son a lot.

- Oh my gosh, yes.

So when my first book came out, my son was three and I wanted to go on book tour and we couldn't really figure out how to do that.

And so the first year it was kind of a small book tour, it was brand new author and it was basically like, where do I have family and friends that will like put me up and invite people to come.

- Right, right.

- And then by the second year, he had grown a little bit and I was gonna go on a big book tour and I just could not bear the thoughts of leaving my four-year-old, but I couldn't take him with me 'cause it wasn't like my husband could take a month off of work.

- Yeah.

- And so my parents were like, "Okay, well we'll go with you."

But in order to do that, my dad had to not run for mayor again.

(laughs) And he had been doing that my entire life almost, - Yeah.

- almost half of my life.

- So it was a really big decision and it really meant a lot to me that he would do that.

And it wasn't just because of those four weeks that I was traveling a lot more and touring a lot more and it's been incredible just to have them so much more available and we live five hours apart from each other.

So that time is really special for us to get to...

They'll come on the road with me or, and now my son's in third grade, so it's a little harder to take him out - Mm-hmm (affirmative).

- the whole time I'm gone, but for them to be able to come stay and have those special times with him just makes it really easy for me to like walk out the door.

- Yeah, definitely.

- [Kristy] Yeah.

- Talk about your support system and also who are the first eyes on your drafts or is it family members, friends, other authors?

- Yeah, well, support system wise, my husband is a superstar.

So like I have to say that because I mean, I made our life very complicated very quickly.

(laughs) I mean, I went from like stay at home mom and making dinner to like a deadline all the time.

Like obviously COVID has been different because I haven't been touring.

But I think in 2019 I did something like 87 speaking events or something.

- Oh, wow.

- So he never complains, he never...

He in fact, would be the first one if I'm like, I've just been gone too much.

This is a good opportunity, but I can't.

And he'll be like, "You have worked for this.

You go.

Like you need to go do this."

- [Holly] That's great.

- And actually this year he took some time off of work so that he could drive me around and go on tour with me, so he's the best.

But in terms of who reads my work, it's always my mom first.

She gets my like really ugly groves, terrible first draft, and she'll make some like kind comments on it, but also will be like, "It's amazing, it's the best thing you've ever written."

- Right, so once you're past that, then she gets real.

- And I need that.

- Okay, you need the praise.

- I need a person to tell me how amazing I am, even when I know it's not amazing.

- Yeah.

- And then she and my aunts actually really, and truly are kind of the only people that really read them.

I mean, outside like my agent and my (indistinct) and all those kinds of people, but they are really the only people that read the books before... - Are they ever hard on you?

Are they ever saying (talking over each other) - Yeah, yeah.

I mean, they'll definitely give me like criticism and actually "Feels Like Falling," which came out last year.

I had originally written before my "Peachtree Bluff Series" and all three of them were like, this is not your best book.

Like you really need to work on this.

So I wrote "Peachtree Bluff" and then went back and completely rewrite "Feels Like Falling", send it back to the tribunal.

And they were like, "This is a Kristy Woodson Harvey book.

This is it.

Like you did it this time."

But they just didn't feel it, and I'm sure that was really hard for them to say.

And actually we were all at the beach together and they had to kind of like sit me down and be like - Oh.

- you know, this is your best book.

And it was okay 'cause I knew I already (talking over each other) for "Peachtree Bluff Series" so who wasn't that big of a deal?

Like I knew I had time to work on it and make it better.

But I thought about scrapping it all together.

And my agent was like, "No, no, no, no, - [Holly] We can still work with this.

- It's a great book.

You just need to..." And I had grown a lot in four years.

I mean, I hope I become a better writer and I had more to say about the world.

I think my characters had more to say and I changed them a lot and so.

- Yeah.

- You gotta be able to take the criticism though if you're gonna be a writer.

I mean, a lot of people are gonna tell you.

And then even when you put out something that you love and you're really proud of a lot of people are gonna tell you how terrible it is anyway, and you just have to go, "All right, okay."

- It's going to hurt in the beginning, but it's going to get easier.

- Yeah, I don't think it ever gets easy.

I mean, I think it gets easier, but it never gets easy for someone to say something like hurtful about your book.

- Right, right.

- And people are just mean, like (talking over each other) - Especially online because they're not face-to-face and they feel like there's not a person, - Yes, yes.

- there's not a human and a heart.

- But I'll tell you, that's one of the greatest things about author friends, because you can send them your like mean review and they totally know how you just felt, - Yeah, because they dealt with something like that before.

- And they totally can say, you know, that it's (talking over each other) - This is what you should say.

- Yeah.

(talking over each other) a similar relation side.

- Yeah, and we'll all say what we wish we could say back.

- Exactly.

- And really we just ignore it and pretend like we never saw it.

- Yeah, exactly.

(Kristy laughs) I love it.

All right, so tell me about the design blog.

Is that really now kind of just more of a fun thing with mom?

- It's a business for sure.

- Okay.

- I mean, we actually work with all the like designers - I don't see how you're doing all the stuff.

- and architects and photographers and... Well, and that's what I mean when I say like I don't write from nine to five because there's a lot of business in that goes into that.

Mom does all the photos, which is so hard because getting all those permissions and everybody's - Right.

- you know, that's really difficult.

So I do the writing and then we kind of split up the business stuff with like our partners.

And we do some very select projects, interior design projects.

- Yeah, and I noticed on your social media, you just kinda mix all that into one.

- I do.

I totally do.

- And do you have any plan to maybe divide it up are you like... - It is absolutely incredibly hard to build those kinds of platforms.

(Kristy laughs) - Right.

- And I am (talking over each other) - It's just an all in one.

- But you know, it's funny because I had so much advice when I first started from people.

Now, I have a separate author Facebook and I have a separate author website, but the Instagram is combined in one and I had so much advice at the beginning and people said, "Oh, you have to separate it.

You have to separate it."

But I had all these followers from the design stuff and I was like, "Ah, I don't wanna start all over again."

- [Holly] Yeah.

- So I was like, well, we're just gonna see what happens and it's worked well.

And I feel like, you're just scrolling through, you can skip over something if you don't wanna look at it, right?

- Right, exactly.

(Kristy laughs) I love it.

Okay, so we do still work with the University of South Carolina Beaufort.

- [Kristy] Yes.

- So we have Jeremy in here somewhere.

Let's see.

Here he is, hi Jeremy.

He's been working on our new piece of equipment we're really excited about.

- [Kristy] That's awesome.

- So as these students are working on the show and also kind of studying the show.

So if you would just take a minute to speak to them, that college age student, where some of them were about to graduate, enter the real world, and they're just not quite sure what they're going to do.

What kind of advice would you give that age group?

- Okay, so my major piece of advice is just that I feel like people graduate now and they feel like they have to have their whole life figured out.

And I did not have my life figured out.

I mean, I worked in finance.

I did all sorts of different things.

I got a degree in grad school that I was not planning on getting.

And it did a lot of different things to really kind of figure out where do I want to be now and what is my path?

And I think my biggest advice is you don't have to know right now and you can try different things and find out what your true passion is.

And it might be something completely different than what you ever thought.

And I'm very type A, I like to know.

I like to see, I like to plan.

And I think it's the things that I just have sort of been open to and said yes to that really didn't even necessarily fit my life plan that have really led me to some of the best places.

- And that feeling of not knowing is pretty scary, but... - It's so scary.

It's so scary.

And it's so easy to be on this side of it, like having done what I wanted to do and say, "Hey, relax," 'cause I'm still like, what's next, what's this, what's that?

But when I look back on it, I really do think that every single thing I did along the way led me to where I am.

And so much of it seemed too random and completely not on my plan, but it all kind of combined together in the right way I think.

- And there's something I meant to say.

I'm so glad that I remember before we close and that summer camp.

- [Kristy] Yes.

- So Kristy and I have not... Well, we may have known each other.

- We might not.

- We might have.

I just learned a couple of days ago that we went to the same summer camp in Asheville, North Carolina.

- Unbelievable.

- And then you tell me that you're actually writing about summer camp.

- Yes, yes.

Yes, it's not for a little while.

I'm actually working on a manuscript about summer camp, but I have a book coming out in October 1st and then my 2022 novel is submitted and ready to go, so this is just something I'm kind of working on on the side, but I love writing about summer camp.

- I know.

Such great memories.

I'm gonna have to go back and look at that big, - I know.

- that big picture of all the million kids - I thought we're in it - we might be together.

That would be cool.

If we are, we're gonna have to end it on this show with that.

All right.

Well, Kristy, thank you so much for stopping by "By The River".

We're just honored that you included us on your stop and we're looking forward to all the books to come.

- Thank you.

Thanks for having me.

- Everybody, thank you for joining us for "By The River".

We're gonna leave you now with a look at our poets corner.

We'll see you again "By The River".

(upbeat music) - [Narrator] The lake seems brailled.

Dozens of turtles heads in braided water.

Like a hand brushing against a fabric swap.

Mild wind distorts.

Imagine walking on words on a teletype of turtles turned into alphabet.

What am I trying to say?

No one else is in sight.

I toss bread on the surface, disrupt whatever message as the water bubbles phrase with a riving geese.

As sunset nears, the lake unwinds, the geese honk, their code for more.

- Life I have realized ebbs and flows like the tide outside my old bedroom window.

Some days the wind is too strong and sometimes you're carried along on a gentle breeze.

The hurricanes come, the landscapes change.

Any experts sea man will tell you that in the roughest seas, it's best not to fight the tide.

It's better to let it lead you where it wants to go to let it lead you where maybe you were supposed to be all along.

All those years I was planning and plotting my course controlling my every move.

I wasn't controlling anything at all.

Now I've given into the pull of the moon, to the song of the sea, to the magical divinity that exists under the southern sky.

(upbeat music) ♪ - [Narrator] "By the River" is brought to you in part by the University of South Carolina, Beaufort, learning in action discovered.

The ETV Endowment of South Carolina.

Community Foundation of the Lowcountry, strengthening community, Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at USCB, The Pat Conroy Literary Center.