'The Road to Tender Hearts' with Annie Hartnett

I'm a best-selling author, Annie Hartnett. Annie, welcome to the show. Hi, thanks for having me. Thank you so much for taking the time to come on. So you have a new book out, but before we kind of take a look into that, tell us a little bit about who you are and what really sparked your interest into becoming a storyteller. Sure, yeah. So I am, I became, I started writing when I was in college and I wrote a short story for a class. I went to Hamilton College in upstate New York and I wrote a short story in class about the chess player Bobby Fischer haunting the backseat of a Honda Civic. And the teacher really liked it, Chris Kennedy. He's a great writer and poet. And he told me that I should maybe consider getting a graduate degree in creative writing. And I had never even heard of such a thing. So it changed my life, that one conversation. Wow. And now look at you. It's like, thank you so much. You know, it's always nice when you have those people that believe in you and they can see more than you can see for yourself at that time. But all of that comes to fruition. And so you do have, like I said, you do have a new book out. It's called The Road to Tender Hearts. And the cover alone reminded me of Little Miss Sunshine when they were pushing the station wagon. But essentially, it follows an older gentleman who is on a mission to be reunited with his high school crush. lot of people have been raving about this book. I looked at the reviews. They say it's emotional. People have been crying. You've pulled everything out of everybody. So tell readers a little bit about this story. Yeah. So yes, there is crying. My goal is to make people laugh. So I'm happy if people cry too, because I want you to feel something. But I write, I tried to write sort of A dark comedy where every bad thing can happen to a family. That was my original emotional goal for the book. So it's about, as you said, an older man named P.J. Holiday who is reading the obituaries for his friend, and he sees his friend from high school is in the obituaries, and he realizes that if that man is dead, the woman that man married is single again, and he decides to drive cross-country to win her back, and he ends up taking along with him his... Thank His recently orphaned great niece and great nephew, and then his semi-estranged adult daughter, Sophie, comes along because she's worried about her dad taking care of the kids. And also along for the ride is Pancakes the cat, who is a cat with the ability to predict death. Um, so it's, it is kind of like Little Miss Sunshine you. in that it's like a ragtag group of misfits who come together to. Yeah. And you can never go wrong with cats. Like, I feel like nowadays, a lot of books are putting like cats, talking cats, some, something cat related in a book. And I think it just, it gets everybody entertained because you can never go wrong, you know, with the internet pancake. I mean, you can't, can't go wrong with that. So what was the, I would say the best part about creating this story? The best part, I mean, I had written this book after a very difficult year living in Providence, Rhode Island, moving into a house where every bad thing that couldn't go wrong in a house happened. We had our neighbor stabbed her sister. We had two floods. We had two gas leaks. We had rats in our We had... Uh, the, we had tree, three trees that the tree guy, he came to cut down the white mulberry tree that was bringing the rats to the yard. And he said, but these three trees are going to fall in your house. And one of those trees did fall. It did not hit the house. And then we, um, and then a teenager crashed. His car at the base of our driveway and died. And during that year, it was 2020 2021. I had a new baby, and no childcare and the world was being 2020, you know, so it was, for me, I had all this anxiety because I was felt so hunted by the house and by everything going around me. So we moved, I went on Zillow, I looked like, where could we move? That's not here. And so we moved outside, so we moved over the border to Massachusetts, to this town called Lakeville, Massachusetts, moved into this rental house. I was so relieved to be there, but I still had all this anxiety after being hunted. So I thought, okay, I will put all this anxiety into a book, and I will try to put every bad thing that could happen to a family. And I will try to make it as funny as possible. And around the time I had read about Oscar the cat, who was a cat who lived in a nursing home, who was predicting people's deaths. He predicted over 100 deaths in his time in the nursing home. So I wanted there to be a cat. So I started with the cat. So the best part was really just like getting to work out my own anxieties and then trying to make myself laugh first and then hopefully make other people laugh. As soon as you started listing all that stuff, I said, I bet this was in 2020. And I was like, I feel like 2020 was that year where like it just did everybody in for like doomsday. Yeah, it was a cursed time for sure. And so what's next for you on this literary journey? You know, now that you've kind of worked out the kinks and the anxiety in this book, are you going to maybe make it like a book two with his journey? Or do you think you're going to venture off to something else? Yeah, people are have been asking me for a sequel. Maybe at some point, I'm working on another book now that's also set in the same part of Massachusetts, not in the same town. So there might be sort of, you know, Stephen King often works within an area. And sometimes you'll see characters from one book show up in another book. So I might meet do more something like that. I feel like I'm happy with how that how the road to tender hearts ended. So I appreciate people People wanting a sequel, but I'm not. there yet. So I don't have any more hauntings to inspire. Yeah, you know, I mean, it was, it was a fun book to write. So never say never, but I'm working on a new project now, which is also a dark comedy. I mean, all my all three of my books are dark comedies. So they're all a little bit twisted a little bit. A little bit. I have a very dark sense of humor. So And usually those that have, like, the mutual sense of humor like that will, like, get it, which I think is why, like, the reviews are so great, you know, with these books. And so, Annie, before I let you go, is there anything else that you would like to say to fellow book lovers out there? Oh, well, just before I got on this, I was reading what is somewhat an old New York Times article. It's an opinion article about how thinking is becoming a luxury. And so and that's what the article is called. So you could look it up. And I was just thinking about, oh, we got to keep fighting for our minds. Like you really has to be. And the article compares it to junk food, junk food becoming really available. So, you know, fighting to make sure that you make time for reading. That's on all of us, I guess. So for me, I'm going to continue to fight for my mind and I want everyone to keep fighting for their mind and make sure that you take time every week to be reading because it does feel good when you actually do it. And you're contributing to that because with all these awesome books, you're contributing to people kind of, you know, getting off into a different world, which people need from time to time with everything, you know, that's kind of going on right now. It's like a nice escape, you know, instead of doom scrolling, pick up a book. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. It'll make you feel better than doom scrolling. No one calls it doom reading. So that's very true. Well, Annie, thank you so much for sharing your story with us and hopefully no more hauntings wherever you go from here. And I wish you the very best. And thank you for coming on to take time to chat with us. Thank you for having me.