Rita Mae Brown - Feline Fatale
New York Times bestselling author, Rita Mae Brown, joins me for this episode to chat about her latest mystery Feline Fatale. Feline Fatale is the thirty second book in the Mrs. Murphy series. The book centers around a fight and murder in the Virginia House of Delegates.
It takes Mary Minor “Harry” Haristeen and her beloved pets to solve the case. Rita Mae and I of course have a chat about politics, life events, research for her books and numerous fun and educational topics. Have a listen to my chat with one of the best mystery writers in the business, and my dear friend, Rita Mae Brown. Enjoy!
Listen to Episode #208 Now:
BIO:
If you are reading this, it means you too managed to be born. How we come into this world affects our experience of the world, and I hasten to add that none of us asked for the adventure. However, once here on earth, it is often delightful and occasionally destructive.
My entrance occurred on November 28, 1944, and the cats, hounds and horses of the world rejoiced. The humans didn’t give a damn. What do they know?
Born almost on the Mason-Dixon Line, three miles north in Hanover, Pennsylvania, I have had to live down this three-mile error all my life. Nonetheless, Hanover is home to Hanover Shoe Farm, what I think is 4,000 acres and 1,000 Standardbreds. If not, it should be. I arrived at the right place even if it is Yankee territory. Technically, therefore, I am a Yankee. I’ve been called worse.
Mother, Julia Ellen Buckingham, possessed the best eye for a horse I have ever witnessed. By now, I have had the good fortune to rub shoulders with some of the leaders in the Thoroughbred, Saddlebred and Quarter Horse world, but Mother still leads all for her ability to really see a horse. She haunted the tracks and there were many in Maryland in those days, plus children were allowed on the premises. Now, the sight of gambling is considered too risky for tender darlings. They, however, see bodies blown to bits in film and on TV, and no one bats an eye. I learned a lot on the black stretch of those country tracks as well as Laurel and Pimlico. I owe to Mother. Fortunately, I did not inherit the gambling gene unless you consider a career in the arts, probably a bigger gamble than Mother ever took in her life.
Gambling operates under the premise that greed can be satisfied by luck. In Mother’s case it wasn’t greed by money. We needed it. Her uncanny ability to read horses meant that she usually came home with pin money, as she called it.
Dad worked from sun-up until after sundown, so he missed out on these forays. His voice was so deep it could roll back the tide. What a handsome man with his blond hair, which darkened with age, his gray eyes and his massive forty-two-inch chest and huge arms, all muscle. He had birdy legs, though, so I teased him unmercifully. He gave as good as he got, but what he gave me more than anything was a tempered view of life: don’t ask too much of people but ask a lot of yourself. He died on July 13, 1961, barely fifty-six years old. I miss him to this day.
I went on as we all do. I earned scholarships to the University of Florida but got kicked out over integration. Naturally, that’s not what the administration said. It sure wasn’t my grades. Those were bitter, duplicitous days, and whenever people wax nostalgic I remember (because I can flip through the turnstiles of nostalgia, too) institutionalism, racism, sexism and other encoded behaviors that served to hurt people.
You can hurt me. You can hate me, but do it because you know me, not because I’m a member of a group. Anyways, people aren’t grapes --- you can’t weigh them in a bunch, but I guess it’s easier than dealing with people as individuals. There, I’ve solved the riddle of prejudice: it saves time.
I hitchhiked to New York, got a scholarship to New York University, Washington Square College, thanks to Dean Henry Noss, who overlooked my thick Southern accent and went by my test scores and my interview with him. I did have to take remedial speech to remedy the accent --- cultural imperialism but effective for advancement.
Got my first library card at five, so reading for college didn’t faze me. Reading in Greek did. Latin was okay. I wallowed in the Classics department as well as English. I had the supreme luck to be taught Greek by the late professor Larissa Bonfonte Warren and Shakespeare by Professor Richard Harrier. I also attended Professor Iris Love’s lectures whenever possible. My Restoration Drama professor, whose name eludes me, also set my feet on the path of righteousness --- well, maybe not righteousness but on the trail of understanding. It’s one thing to adore a novel or play. It’s quite another to understand structure and evolving metaphor, if that applies. I learned.
On and on, I studied until the letters piled up behind my name, Piled Higher and Deeper, Ph.D. I was not cut out to be an academic, which was glaringly apparent to all who taught me. Creative people do not belong in the university because the process is antithetical to the analytical process so necessary for proper scholarship. Even now there lies an uneasy truce between English department scholars and the Writing department.
I flung myself into the world, and though bloodied and bruised, I never crawled back to the university. That doesn’t mean from time to time I haven’t filled in for someone, and as recently as spring of 2006 I finished up a two-year stint as Visiting Faculty at the University of Nebraska in Lincoln. But I’m formed now. I can be in the university without being sapped creatively, and truth to tell, I like teaching.
The Vietnam War raged. My classmates came home in body bags if they found the body. My friends, including some women who had been in field hospital units under fire, changed irrevocably. Some for better, some for worse. That war changed us all. Anyone of my generation who trusts government probably has an I.Q. that would make a good golf score.
Almost against my will, I was drawn into politics. Mother, very political and very effective, showed me that, exciting though it was, I wasn’t Mother and preferred personal life to political.
Anyway, there I was now hailed as the Mother of the Feminist Movement, the Gay Movement. Meanwhile, I worked full time and then worked at night on political issues. They bored me if for no other reason that they were about cities and I belong in the country. Doesn’t mean racism, sexism and all those -isms don’t exist out in the country, but somehow getting the hay in before the rain takes precedence over dumping all over someone else. Or so it seemed to me and still does.
My first book of poetry, THE HAND THAT CRADLES THE ROCK, came out in 1971, published by New York University Press. Another book followed in about two years time, SONGS TO A HANDSOME WOMAN. Then the novels started. RUBYFRUIT JUNGLE came out in 1973, published by Daughters Press. No book reviews. No anything except it sold like the proverbial hotcakes, and this without ads. Word of mouth. In truth, word of mouth still sells novels and films. Advertising can bump up the opening night, as it were, but after that it’s one person telling another, the person behind the counter at the bookstore saying, “I read this great book. Try it.”
Off and running, although still poor since I was paid $1,000 for RUBYFRUIT. Later, when Daughters sold RUBYFRUIT to Bantam Books (I’m still there and also at Ballantine, both are under the aegis of Random House), they gave me half the money, and when June Arnold died, her business partner at Daughters gave me the rights to the books that I own and ever will until the ninety-nine year copyright expires. I may expire with it.
The list of my novels will be at the end of this bio, which is expanding at an alarming rate.
Well, on I wrote as will be obvious. I was accused of affairs, of a variety of misdeeds. I can only say I wish I had slept with everyone I am accused of. And as for other exciting to-do’s, why deny them? All that stuff makes me seem so much more exciting then I really am.
If you read the list of books, you will quickly figure out that I couldn’t possibly have done any of that stuff or I wouldn’t be productive. If you read STARTING FROM SCRATCH, you will also realize that addictive or self-destructive behavior isn’t in my make-up; the ability to withstand drudgery is.
I worked in Hollywood. I received Emmy nominations. I came home as soon as I could and bought what I always wanted --- a farm in Virginia. My natural father’s family came to Virginia when the earth was cooling. I’m still here. They couldn’t get rid of me. Why bother? When a state in current times manages to encompass Lyndon LaRouche, the Bobbits (since gone), Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, Arthur Ashe (since departed this world), former Gov. Doug Wilder, now mayor of Richmond, Warren Beatty and Shirley MacLaine (also left) and God knows how many others, I’m small beer. Besides, I’m fun.
Well, anyway, I could go on but will spare you. I’m the master of the Oak Ridge Foxhunt Club and I also carry the horn, which means I am a huntsman. We don’t kill foxes, so don’t get your knickers in a twist. They are too smart even if I did want to dispatch them to The Great Fox in the Sky, and I don’t. I don’t want to kill anything really, which isn’t to say I haven’t had moments when wiping out someone hasn’t crossed my mind. Keeps going though so I get over it.
I used to play polo, sandlot polo, and I started the Blue Ridge Polo Club, the first women-only polo club in America. It’s still going strong. I miss it so much that sometimes I am close to tears, but I can’t afford the horses given that I am feeding my hunters and the hounds. Again, image differs from reality. You can play polo for what it costs to play golf, but it’s a hell of a lot more dangerous and therefore more exciting.
If I was really good as a little girl, I could play with my grandfather’s, PopPop Harmon’s foxhounds. If really, really good I could sleep with them. Now I go to the kennels and play with them everyday, and on a few occasions I have slept down there. The smell of them intoxicates me, and I love to hear them sing.
I have also slept with sick horses, usually on a cot outside the stall. Always happens on the coldest night of the year. Doesn’t happen often, thank you Jesus.
I suppose if you want a list of all that I’ve done, you can read my curriculum vitae, which has to be posted somewhere on the site. They don’t impress me. You work hard. Keep your nose clean and you’re bound to get ahead.
What I have done that I care about is I have cherished life. I’ve rescued by now hundreds of cats, dogs, foxes and hounds, and found homes for them. Too many stay here, so I am wearing the same dress and shoes I wore twenty years ago. So what? I was never going to make the cover of Vogue anyway. I have also rescued some horses, which is harder, and I have one wonderful guy from the Thoroughbred Retirement Fund, an organization that should be supported by all who love horses.
Life matters more than any painting, novel, film, or great big diamond. Don’t get me wrong, I love Turgenev and I could re-read his HUNTING STORIES once a month. But to actually enable a creature to survive, thrive and do what it is bred to do, for me, is my greatest glory.
Sneaky Pie was a rescue, and look what has become of her, the egotistical twit.
Oh, my age. I suppose I should say something about being older than dirt. Well, I’m working on it. I love it. As long as you’re healthy and have a job, life is really good. Yes, I look like my grandmother. My body hasn’t aged yet, the face has gone, but like I said, I was never going to make the cover of Vogue. And in those moments when a flicker of vanity hits me and I think, “Damn, I need a facelift,” I remind myself that there’s a starving hound someone has abandoned and I must catch it, feed it and restore its confidence in the hound-human bond. So what if I look like hell? My heart is full, and I wish the same for you.
Transcript:
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Announcer: This is Pet Life Radio.
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Announcer: Let's talk pets.
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Tim Link: Welcome to Animal Writes on Pet Life Radio.
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Tim Link: This is your host, Tim Link, and I'm so glad you're joining us today.
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Tim Link: I am so excited about this show because my super duper friend is going to be on, and we're going to chat and chat and chat, not only about her latest book, but life in general.
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Tim Link: Of course, we're talking about Rita Mae Brown.
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Tim Link: We're going to talk to Rita Mae about her latest book, Feline Fatale.
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Tim Link: It's the latest in the Mrs.
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Tim Link: Murphy series.
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Tim Link: So we'll find out what the gang is up to in the book and all the mysteries going on.
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Tim Link: And then, of course, talk to Rita Mae about writing and life and everything in general.
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Tim Link: So super duper time.
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Tim Link: Always excited to talk to my friend, Rita Mae Brown.
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Tim Link: So everybody hang tight.
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Tim Link: We'll come back right after this commercial break.
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Tim Link: You're listening to Animal Writes on Pet Life Radio.
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Announcer: Let's talk pets on petliferadio.com.
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Tim Link: Welcome back to Animal Writes on PetLife Radio.
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Tim Link: Joining me now is New York Times bestselling author and part of the Mrs.
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Tim Link: Murphy's mystery series.
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Tim Link: It is Rita Mae Brown.
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Tim Link: Rita Mae, welcome to the show.
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Rita Mae Brown: Well, I'm glad to be back.
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Tim Link: Yeah, we're always excited to have you back, my friend.
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Tim Link: Obviously, you keep us entertained with all the book and the writings and the mysteries going on, but I always love talking to you in general about life and what's going on without getting too deep into it, but just scratching the surface on everything.
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Rita Mae Brown: Well, yeah, I can advertise myself as the sage of Virginia.
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Rita Mae Brown: But it's so good to hear your voice.
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Rita Mae Brown: And this book is so much fun, I got to say.
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Rita Mae Brown: I'm delighted to talk to you about it and you give me time.
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Rita Mae Brown: But I'm sitting here looking at you and I've got it open to page 18.
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Rita Mae Brown: And on the right is one of Michael Galatly's fabulous drawings.
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Rita Mae Brown: He's just been a joy.
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Rita Mae Brown: We've worked together for, you know, what, two decades now.
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Rita Mae Brown: And I'm going to say this wrong.
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Rita Mae Brown: Maybe your wife knows how to say this because I'll bet you don't either.
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Rita Mae Brown: Lobotan, the red high heels that sell for over a thousand bucks a piece.
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Tim Link: Oh, my God.
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Rita Mae Brown: When you're looking at these high heels and this woman walking away from you with really quite good legs.
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Rita Mae Brown: And I thought, Michael, you devil, you really had a good time with that drawing.
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Tim Link: It is so bizarre.
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Tim Link: I know you and I have talked about my telecom days and working for AT&T.
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Tim Link: And for good or bad, we used to sell phone systems and they were called the Merlin system and they had distinct ring.
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Tim Link: And I got to the point where I could hear a ring of a phone.
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Tim Link: This is how sad this is.
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Tim Link: But I could hear a ring of a phone and know if it was one of my Merlins that that was ringing.
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Tim Link: And so this is the same thing about these shoes.
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Tim Link: My wife and I catch that because I remember watching the show.
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Tim Link: I won't mention the name of the show, but watching the show years ago.
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Tim Link: And it's the first time we saw these red sold shoes, these fancy, you know, beautiful shoes.
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Tim Link: And so we learned all about them.
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Tim Link: You're right.
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Tim Link: I can't pronounce it, but I see them.
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Tim Link: And it's like, you know, where's Waldo?
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Rita Mae Brown: And when we're watching a movie or a show, it's like there's no doubt in my mind that the designer, who, of course, has a great career, was cribbing off of Louis XIV because he had red sold high heels, you know, so you can hear the king clicking all over Versailles or wherever he was.
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Rita Mae Brown: It's amazing to play shoes, what it means in society and what it means in this book.
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Rita Mae Brown: I mean, I can't say that I've ever concentrated on clothing or that much before, but I had I just had a ball doing it and I learned a lot.
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Rita Mae Brown: And I learned that I am never, there's nobody ever going to make a drawing of me or have photographs of me because I'm always in my riding boots.
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Tim Link: Yeah, I was going to say, as long as you have a good wearing comfortable riding boot, you're pretty good shape, I would think.
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Rita Mae Brown: Yeah, I am.
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Rita Mae Brown: I am.
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Rita Mae Brown: And you know, those things like I am, if you're in boots for hours and hours, you might as well have a made to your foot.
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Rita Mae Brown: Yes, you're going to pay for it like you're going to pay for these heels, but oh, you will be so happy.
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Rita Mae Brown: And they last a long time.
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Rita Mae Brown: I know most everybody, it takes a while to learn this.
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Rita Mae Brown: Like when you're young, you really don't.
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Rita Mae Brown: But sometimes, you know, you get in your middle thirties and you realize my feet hurt.
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Rita Mae Brown: I don't want to live like this anymore.
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Tim Link: Well, I tell you, getting on the topic of shoes, you know, when I was growing up, this tells you how old I am, but the Chuck Taylor Converse high tops were the thing.
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Tim Link: And only time I had a pair that I could wear that was my own was when I made the fifth grade basketball team, we were required to have a white pair, but you can only wear them in the gym.
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Tim Link: You weren't allowed to wear them out.
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Tim Link: And so I had a older cousin who had a side job and he would buy a pair and we were the same size.
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Tim Link: And after he got tired and wanted a new pair, I would get his hand me downs and I would have the purple or the red or whatever the Converse, you know, Chuck Taylor style.
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Tim Link: Now looking back at it after years, you're right.
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Tim Link: My flat feet would never be able to handle it because those, you know, they're cloth high, you know, cloth high top shoes and they have a thick rubber, like Goodyear bottoms.
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Tim Link: Very uncomfortable, but stylish.
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Tim Link: But yeah, after all these years, I look at those and think, yeah, I remember those.
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Tim Link: And yeah, there's no way in the world I could wear a pair of those today.
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Rita Mae Brown: Speaking of age, happy birthday.
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Tim Link: Thank you.
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Tim Link: Thank you.
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Tim Link: Yeah, it's good to be 21 again and again and again and yeah, things are good.
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Tim Link: Life's good.
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Tim Link: And you know, another trip around the sun.
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Tim Link: So I am blessed.
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Rita Mae Brown: Well, I think we all are.
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Rita Mae Brown: Back to shoes.
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Rita Mae Brown: One of the things the animals can't really understand in the book, why are people spending money on shoes?
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Rita Mae Brown: And you know, Harry being Harry is looking for a pair of Timberlands because hers are wearing out and she hates to spend money.
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Rita Mae Brown: But I mean, I guess it is funny, if you're walking on four feet, you just can't understand what we go through, but we can't understand how well balanced they are because we're always sort of tottering whether we know it or not.
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Rita Mae Brown: But it's interesting in this book that the person who wears these shoes is a newscaster who is no longer doing the news.
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Rita Mae Brown: She's in her early 50s, quite good looking, and she's been elected from one of the districts to be a delegate in Virginia.
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Rita Mae Brown: We have a House of Delegates and then we have our Senate.
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Rita Mae Brown: That's the way our state is divided up.
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Rita Mae Brown: She's a Republican, and she's not, I would say she's not hard right, but she's fairly right wing.
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Rita Mae Brown: Because she has, everybody in the state knows her, of course, she just got in in a minute.
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Rita Mae Brown: She's in there trying to get things done that sort of agree with party principle and a couple other things, maybe not.
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Rita Mae Brown: I had so much fun doing the research.
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Rita Mae Brown: I mean, apart from just the clothing.
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Rita Mae Brown: How smart is it for a woman today to be a Republican?
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Tim Link: That sounds like a very loaded question.
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Tim Link: I don't know if I want to answer that.
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Tim Link: You tell me.
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Rita Mae Brown: I mean, the Democratic Party is clogged with women.
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Rita Mae Brown: And I'm glad of it.
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Rita Mae Brown: I think this is hardly a complaint.
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Rita Mae Brown: But you can move better or be recognized quicker in the Republican Party because there aren't a lot of you.
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Tim Link: That is very true.
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Tim Link: And I'll just say I wish there was one female Republican from my state that I would hear less from.
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Tim Link: I'm just leaving it that and I'm moving on from politics.
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Rita Mae Brown: I've started to have an affection for because I can't believe anybody's that outrageous.
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Rita Mae Brown: I just can't.
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Rita Mae Brown: And then I think, well, you know, we live in odd times, so be it.
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Rita Mae Brown: But what starts this book off and then I mean, you can ask me whatever you want, but it starts with snow in the hope for spring, but it's just not coming.
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Rita Mae Brown: And a young Democratic delegate, a man who works with one of Harry's best friends, that Ned Tucker is her best friend and Susan Tucker is her real best friend, so to speak, her girl best friend.
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Rita Mae Brown: And this fellow's name is Aidan Harkness.
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Rita Mae Brown: And Aidan, you know, he has the chance to rise.
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Rita Mae Brown: He's attractive.
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Rita Mae Brown: He's saying all the right things, the cultural right things, et cetera, et cetera.
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Rita Mae Brown: And he and this, the lady, the very good looking lady that was the newscaster, Amanda Field, they just go at one another hammer and tongue down there in front of everyone on the floor.
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Rita Mae Brown: And he calls her a bitch.
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Rita Mae Brown: And oh my God, everything blows up.
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Rita Mae Brown: I mean, he just loses his temper.
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Rita Mae Brown: He can't help it.
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Rita Mae Brown: And she walks across in her high heels and slaps him.
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Rita Mae Brown: So that's pretty much what gets the book going.
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Rita Mae Brown: And these two are just at one another.
00:09:33.600 --> 00:09:37.100
Rita Mae Brown: You know, if she says apples, he says bananas and vice versa.
00:09:37.460 --> 00:09:44.060
Rita Mae Brown: And you begin to realize why it's so difficult to get things done when people get in these postures.
00:09:44.680 --> 00:09:52.620
Rita Mae Brown: Neither one is necessarily a bad person, but both of them have their eye on the news and having a big career.
00:09:52.740 --> 00:09:53.720
Rita Mae Brown: Well, she's ahead of them.
00:09:54.060 --> 00:09:56.300
Rita Mae Brown: I mean, she really knows how to manipulate the media.
00:09:56.660 --> 00:09:58.340
Rita Mae Brown: And I had a lot of fun with that.
00:09:58.360 --> 00:09:59.220
Rita Mae Brown: I did some research.
00:09:59.240 --> 00:10:00.940
Rita Mae Brown: I love to go down to our state house.
00:10:01.540 --> 00:10:09.440
Rita Mae Brown: So it'll be interesting to see how people respond to this tension, for lack of a better word, because I think it's all around us.
00:10:09.840 --> 00:10:11.420
Tim Link: Well, that's what I was going to ask you, obviously.
00:10:11.440 --> 00:10:13.480
Tim Link: I love when we talk about research.
00:10:13.500 --> 00:10:22.840
Tim Link: I mean, I think you do it better than anybody, because it's not a matter of just putting some characters in there, familiar characters in there, and putting together a mystery surrounding it.
00:10:22.860 --> 00:10:30.680
Tim Link: But you come up with an idea and a topic that's a modern day topic, and then you do the deep dive research.
00:10:30.820 --> 00:10:41.200
Tim Link: And so the question is, how did you go back, going down to the state house, going down and learning more about the ins and outs of everything to blend this nicely into the book, Feline Fatale?
00:10:41.300 --> 00:10:46.080
Rita Mae Brown: Well, I'm about an hour and a half, maybe an hour and 45 minutes from the state house, so it's easy to get there.
00:10:46.400 --> 00:10:49.040
Rita Mae Brown: When you walk in that room, it gets you.
00:10:49.280 --> 00:10:50.360
Rita Mae Brown: It truly gets you.
00:10:50.640 --> 00:10:53.120
Tim Link: Yeah, because the history behind it, sure.
00:10:53.780 --> 00:10:54.980
Rita Mae Brown: Jefferson was in there.
00:10:55.200 --> 00:10:58.820
Rita Mae Brown: I mean, you're where these giants walked.
00:10:58.880 --> 00:11:04.920
Rita Mae Brown: And even more common, you wouldn't know our, now he's the late governor, Jerry Belisle, but that was another giant.
00:11:05.300 --> 00:11:11.680
Rita Mae Brown: And Doug Wilder, who's still alive, the first black elected governor in America, as far as I know, the only one.
00:11:11.880 --> 00:11:22.740
Rita Mae Brown: I mean, the guy that became the black governor in New York, I think, the fellow before him, it was the guy that got caught in all the sex stuff, whose name just as Casey, was probably merciful.
00:11:23.320 --> 00:11:24.880
Rita Mae Brown: There's not been another elected one.
00:11:25.040 --> 00:11:34.420
Rita Mae Brown: So this is a very odd state, I mean, we're seen as, you know, the center of the Confederacy and all this kind of stuff, which you being a Georgian can understand very well.
00:11:34.520 --> 00:11:36.100
Rita Mae Brown: And yet we're so odd.
00:11:36.400 --> 00:11:41.580
Rita Mae Brown: But then again, so are you along very different lines.
00:11:41.800 --> 00:11:44.540
Rita Mae Brown: I have never met a normal Georgian, let's put it that way.
00:11:44.680 --> 00:11:46.100
Tim Link: Thank God I wasn't born here.
00:11:46.120 --> 00:11:50.460
Tim Link: Maybe I was instilled, my Indiana roots maybe helped me out a little bit.
00:11:50.920 --> 00:11:53.020
Tim Link: It's a different world here for sure.
00:11:53.900 --> 00:12:00.920
Tim Link: And like most major cities, the Atlanta metropolitan area is quite diverse compared to the rural areas.
00:12:00.940 --> 00:12:04.100
Rita Mae Brown: Show me a Georgian that doesn't know how to have a good time.
00:12:05.300 --> 00:12:09.900
Rita Mae Brown: I mean, you just go down there and you sit and somebody's gonna come up and start talking to you.
00:12:10.120 --> 00:12:15.180
Rita Mae Brown: And the next thing you know, the two of you are going somewhere, you're going to a party, you've been invited somewhere.
00:12:15.320 --> 00:12:17.060
Rita Mae Brown: I mean, I just can't believe it.
00:12:17.080 --> 00:12:18.140
Rita Mae Brown: It's so fabulous.
00:12:18.300 --> 00:12:21.600
Rita Mae Brown: Again, I've never ever had a bad moment in that state.
00:12:22.320 --> 00:12:24.920
Rita Mae Brown: I've had some bad rips in mine, but not yours.
00:12:25.340 --> 00:12:31.920
Rita Mae Brown: But you look around and you see this, and you see that your state house is different than ours.
00:12:32.040 --> 00:12:34.000
Rita Mae Brown: Ours has a certain amount of restraint.
00:12:34.200 --> 00:12:41.760
Rita Mae Brown: I always say living in Virginia is as close to the Cotswolds as you will get, that part of England, because that's really what we are.
00:12:41.940 --> 00:12:43.460
Rita Mae Brown: And there's a certain restraint.
00:12:43.700 --> 00:12:48.320
Rita Mae Brown: So when he loses it and calls this woman a bitch, that just doesn't happen here.
00:12:48.560 --> 00:12:53.680
Rita Mae Brown: With my sort of little opening the door, like, no, it hasn't happened yet, but it will.
00:12:53.920 --> 00:13:08.800
Tim Link: Yeah, and I loved when the intro to the book, how you led into all this, because it is, I would say, you always have something unique to start the book with, but this one seemed to be like apropos for the times and really hit you.
00:13:09.280 --> 00:13:11.640
Tim Link: For me, it hit me in the face a little bit more.
00:13:11.800 --> 00:13:20.800
Tim Link: And then we got into what I would determine what the solving the mystery and everything the felines are doing and all the other wonderful stuff that goes along with it.
00:13:20.840 --> 00:13:27.560
Rita Mae Brown: Well, while we're on the phone, I will let you know and your readers, this is the first book where I had to have a sensitivity reader.
00:13:27.580 --> 00:13:28.900
Rita Mae Brown: No kidding.
00:13:29.500 --> 00:13:34.620
Rita Mae Brown: I don't know what has happened to the First Amendment, but I think publishing is somewhat forgotten.
00:13:34.820 --> 00:13:39.560
Rita Mae Brown: But anyway, I have a trans character in here, a trans man who I adore.
00:13:39.940 --> 00:13:41.840
Rita Mae Brown: Totally, I mean, I'm just crazy about him.
00:13:42.300 --> 00:13:49.020
Rita Mae Brown: But he was in the same sorority as Amanda Fields, the woman who's the elected official, which was Delta, Delta, Delta.
00:13:49.040 --> 00:13:51.540
Rita Mae Brown: Of course, I had to use my own sorority.
00:13:52.900 --> 00:13:56.480
Rita Mae Brown: And then he has this, realizes he has to lead a different life.
00:13:56.500 --> 00:13:57.440
Rita Mae Brown: You don't see all that.
00:13:57.640 --> 00:14:00.540
Rita Mae Brown: You just hear about it in bits and pieces as the book goes on.
00:14:00.960 --> 00:14:04.660
Rita Mae Brown: But they were sorority sisters, and now she calls him her sorority brother.
00:14:04.720 --> 00:14:05.500
Rita Mae Brown: And he loves her.
00:14:05.540 --> 00:14:07.240
Rita Mae Brown: I mean, they love one another, they do.
00:14:07.400 --> 00:14:14.780
Rita Mae Brown: But it's interesting because here she is a Republican and the far right, of course, is very unhappy with anything trans.
00:14:15.040 --> 00:14:18.480
Rita Mae Brown: And she just flips the bird at all of them, even though she's a Republican.
00:14:18.640 --> 00:14:28.740
Rita Mae Brown: So she's a very unusual character, but it's also a very unusual relationship because of the ways in which they knew one another and are now in another place.
00:14:28.980 --> 00:14:33.380
Rita Mae Brown: And I keep thinking, you know, more and more of us are going to have these experiences.
00:14:33.800 --> 00:14:35.300
Rita Mae Brown: God knows what we'll make of them.
00:14:35.460 --> 00:14:38.160
Rita Mae Brown: I mean, just because somebody's trans, what is that?
00:14:38.180 --> 00:14:40.700
Rita Mae Brown: I mean, they have a distinct personality.
00:14:41.080 --> 00:14:46.720
Rita Mae Brown: Being trans is just a fact of their life, but it changes everything for many people.
00:14:47.100 --> 00:14:50.240
Rita Mae Brown: It changes their responses, rightly or wrongly.
00:14:50.540 --> 00:15:01.480
Rita Mae Brown: And I had, that was interesting to grapple with because it's not the center of the story, but it's one of the things I'm most like about Amanda, that she wasn't going to turn her back on her friend.
00:15:01.900 --> 00:15:08.320
Rita Mae Brown: Now she can weaken about other things, but in terms of turning on him, because he's now him, never.
00:15:08.580 --> 00:15:09.460
Rita Mae Brown: She would never do it.
00:15:09.660 --> 00:15:11.620
Rita Mae Brown: And I think if you love people, you don't.
00:15:11.640 --> 00:15:14.280
Rita Mae Brown: You just have to accept whether it's difficult or not.
00:15:17.200 --> 00:15:18.480
Tim Link: Yeah, I would agree with that.
00:15:18.480 --> 00:15:23.660
Tim Link: I think it's a matter of ignorance to a degree, and I don't mean that in a totally negative way.
00:15:23.680 --> 00:15:36.040
Tim Link: It's just the fact that if you're not educated to that point, if you don't know, if you're not around particular genders or sexualities, then you have a certain amount of ignorance and people are afraid of being ignorant.
00:15:36.240 --> 00:15:37.360
Tim Link: We'll just put it that way.
00:15:37.720 --> 00:15:40.260
Tim Link: And so yeah, I'm your philosophy.
00:15:40.660 --> 00:15:45.240
Tim Link: Life is life, love is love, and let's just try to survive it all together.
00:15:45.260 --> 00:15:55.260
Rita Mae Brown: What's interesting too about this character, Lucas is his name, is he's close to the mystery, but he doesn't know it.
00:15:55.900 --> 00:15:58.060
Rita Mae Brown: So he actually becomes endangered.
00:15:58.720 --> 00:16:02.420
Rita Mae Brown: I had some fun with that too, because he's just blind to it.
00:16:02.780 --> 00:16:07.260
Rita Mae Brown: It would never occur to him, but it doesn't occur to anyone else either until it's too damn late.
00:16:07.920 --> 00:16:25.600
Rita Mae Brown: And I had a certain amount of fun with that because you're playing with, have you ever noticed, and I'm sure your listeners have noticed this, that sometimes everybody knows what's going on in somebody's life or somebody's relationship or with their children, and they don't see it because it's right under their nose.
00:16:26.020 --> 00:16:27.880
Tim Link: Why do you think that is nowadays?
00:16:27.900 --> 00:16:30.960
Tim Link: Because I always reflect back to my childhood.
00:16:31.260 --> 00:16:37.400
Tim Link: We may not have known everything that was going on with every family on the block, but we knew every family and we knew their kids.
00:16:38.460 --> 00:16:41.260
Tim Link: Yeah, we all were in the same pot together.
00:16:41.280 --> 00:16:44.440
Tim Link: And now, truthfully, I wave at my neighbors.
00:16:44.460 --> 00:16:48.300
Tim Link: I know the two closest to me, at least by name.
00:16:48.700 --> 00:16:50.620
Tim Link: And that's about as far as it goes.
00:16:50.900 --> 00:16:53.360
Rita Mae Brown: Well, we have become scattered in ways.
00:16:53.400 --> 00:16:57.760
Rita Mae Brown: The family unit isn't as physically close as it used to be.
00:16:58.120 --> 00:17:03.920
Rita Mae Brown: And social control isn't as firm as it used to be when we knew one another in our communities.
00:17:04.420 --> 00:17:07.520
Rita Mae Brown: And the way we knew one another was really through our churches.
00:17:07.880 --> 00:17:09.780
Rita Mae Brown: I mean, sure, where you lived and all this and that.
00:17:09.920 --> 00:17:16.040
Rita Mae Brown: But the churches were, and the synagogues, were the central place where people met.
00:17:16.520 --> 00:17:20.300
Rita Mae Brown: And if somebody was in trouble, you knew it in that church and you took care of them.
00:17:20.540 --> 00:17:24.760
Rita Mae Brown: And now, I mean, I'm sure it's the same thing if you're in a mosque, you know one another.
00:17:25.320 --> 00:17:28.200
Rita Mae Brown: But that has vitiated quite a bit.
00:17:28.440 --> 00:17:32.180
Rita Mae Brown: So we bump around a lot of times and we really don't see things.
00:17:32.540 --> 00:17:35.820
Rita Mae Brown: And sometimes, Tim, I think, we don't see what we don't want to see.
00:17:36.080 --> 00:17:37.740
Tim Link: Yeah, absolutely, absolutely.
00:17:38.240 --> 00:17:39.400
Tim Link: I can attest to that.
00:17:39.420 --> 00:17:47.420
Tim Link: When I was switching from a year at telecom to working with animals and communicating with them, et cetera, a lot of people could not deal with that.
00:17:47.580 --> 00:17:50.380
Tim Link: And some had to label it in a way they felt comfortable with.
00:17:50.760 --> 00:17:57.320
Tim Link: And others, I brought about a whole new group of individuals who loved and supported what I was doing.
00:17:57.480 --> 00:18:06.160
Tim Link: And so I think that's very apropos, you know, we turn our heads if we don't want to know about it, thinking that the less we know, the better we are off we're going to be.
00:18:06.380 --> 00:18:08.860
Rita Mae Brown: Well, and also we won't be called to do anything.
00:18:09.620 --> 00:18:10.240
Tim Link: That's right.
00:18:11.660 --> 00:18:16.400
Tim Link: Like Sergeant Schultz used to say, I know nothing, I see nothing.
00:18:18.260 --> 00:18:20.480
Tim Link: Rose, boy, I'm really dating myself on this show.
00:18:21.680 --> 00:18:22.680
Rita Mae Brown: I'm older than you are.
00:18:22.700 --> 00:18:24.700
Rita Mae Brown: So don't, really, you're in good shape.
00:18:24.960 --> 00:18:25.740
Tim Link: There we go.
00:18:26.220 --> 00:18:27.520
Rita Mae Brown: Actually, I love getting older.
00:18:27.540 --> 00:18:28.560
Rita Mae Brown: I have no complaints.
00:18:29.100 --> 00:18:31.680
Rita Mae Brown: I mean, it takes a little while to straighten up in the morning.
00:18:32.120 --> 00:18:36.820
Rita Mae Brown: I mean that, and even though I do stuff and I try to ride every day and that kind of stuff.
00:18:37.400 --> 00:18:41.980
Rita Mae Brown: You know, you've been around a long time and it's like the shoes, your feet hurt.
00:18:43.560 --> 00:18:47.560
Rita Mae Brown: You've been standing on those feet for decades, but it's okay.
00:18:47.820 --> 00:18:49.080
Rita Mae Brown: It really is okay.
00:18:49.100 --> 00:18:56.080
Rita Mae Brown: And that's another thing that I play with in it, particularly this series, is we have this Irish Wolfhound who's very young.
00:18:56.280 --> 00:18:58.880
Rita Mae Brown: He's maybe just a year to a couple months now.
00:18:59.240 --> 00:19:01.860
Rita Mae Brown: And the other animals around him are much older.
00:19:02.120 --> 00:19:05.360
Rita Mae Brown: And he's seen everything for the first time, and they're such sweet animals.
00:19:05.720 --> 00:19:09.400
Rita Mae Brown: He just, a lot of it, he just doesn't understand, especially people.
00:19:09.660 --> 00:19:12.340
Rita Mae Brown: Like he can't understand, why do they have shoes?
00:19:12.640 --> 00:19:14.520
Rita Mae Brown: Why are they walking on two legs?
00:19:15.080 --> 00:19:17.020
Rita Mae Brown: And the others try to explain it to him.
00:19:17.040 --> 00:19:26.980
Rita Mae Brown: And I do have fun with that, because I would think, and I actually think animals know a fair amount about us, but there have to be things about us that are just absolutely bizarre to them.
00:19:27.180 --> 00:19:28.240
Tim Link: Yeah, I would say so.
00:19:28.340 --> 00:19:33.600
Tim Link: And I love the combination, you know, so we're talking about Feline Fatale, that's the name of the book.
00:19:33.960 --> 00:19:45.840
Tim Link: It's a mystery, a death of a young capital employee, and we tie in all the political figures and introduce a lot of new figures in here, characters, I should say, into the book.
00:19:46.100 --> 00:19:54.660
Tim Link: And then we have our feline, you know, fatale, and we have all the other wonderful animals that help solve this mystery along with Harry.
00:19:54.740 --> 00:19:57.920
Rita Mae Brown: Well, at the very end, the animals don't really solve it.
00:19:57.940 --> 00:20:02.200
Rita Mae Brown: I mean, they smell, they know something's going on, but they aren't quite sure of what it is.
00:20:02.420 --> 00:20:12.320
Rita Mae Brown: And it's at the very end in one of the hallways of the Virginia House of Delegates, the hallway going down to the, what I would call the forum, but you know, the big room where you sit.
00:20:12.520 --> 00:20:17.380
Rita Mae Brown: They know something is happening, but they don't know how it got transmitted.
00:20:17.820 --> 00:20:27.320
Rita Mae Brown: So until one of the characters runs out the door to save his butt, they know something's wrong, but they don't know until the minute that guy runs out the door and then they got it.
00:20:27.540 --> 00:20:36.780
Rita Mae Brown: And that was fun, too, because usually they'll figure things out ahead of time, but there was no way they or anybody else could really figure this out, even though it was right in front of their faces.
00:20:37.800 --> 00:20:39.900
Tim Link: Well, as we say, always look to the animals.
00:20:39.920 --> 00:20:47.060
Tim Link: If you want to know the truth, if you want to know just what's going on around you, take a look at the animals, because you're right, we often don't know what's in front of us.
00:20:47.060 --> 00:20:51.060
Tim Link: Even our right foot in front of our left, we don't always know, no matter what shoes we wear.
00:20:51.080 --> 00:20:59.740
Rita Mae Brown: I remember one of my friends one time, she was just so tired, she looked at her feet and she couldn't remember the word left, so she said, my other right.
00:21:00.240 --> 00:21:06.620
Rita Mae Brown: I mean, it's funny, and she wasn't in drugs or drunk or anything, she was too dog tired to use a phrase.
00:21:06.980 --> 00:21:09.620
Rita Mae Brown: But which brings me back to another thing about this book.
00:21:09.920 --> 00:21:19.000
Rita Mae Brown: One of the cats, of course, is Tudor, the fat gray cat, who says she's not fat, gets behind the bookshelf because she's upset because she wasn't taken where she wanted to go.
00:21:19.480 --> 00:21:29.960
Rita Mae Brown: So at home, she gets behind the bookshelf and pushes all the books off that particular shelf, which I'm sure some of your listeners, their cats, have done it, which is just a really rotten thing to do.
00:21:30.140 --> 00:21:40.220
Rita Mae Brown: But what was also on that shelf was a picture of Harry's grandfather, who was in the Navy and was on a destroyer, and a picture of him on the ship.
00:21:40.920 --> 00:21:43.500
Rita Mae Brown: And fortunately, it's not broken, and she picks it up.
00:21:43.880 --> 00:21:51.520
Rita Mae Brown: And she looks at the picture, and she realizes she doesn't know that much about her grandfather's life, as much as she loves him.
00:21:51.880 --> 00:21:54.900
Rita Mae Brown: And then she begins to wonder, would we do that today?
00:21:55.260 --> 00:21:59.480
Rita Mae Brown: Would we volunteer to save our country today, like my grandfather did?
00:22:00.440 --> 00:22:04.720
Rita Mae Brown: So she gets herself, her mind going in directions that hasn't gone before.
00:22:05.260 --> 00:22:08.400
Rita Mae Brown: But it's a worthy question, and she doesn't even know what she would do.
00:22:08.680 --> 00:22:11.780
Rita Mae Brown: I mean, she didn't live through Pearl Harbor or any of that.
00:22:11.800 --> 00:22:14.960
Rita Mae Brown: I mean, yes, there was 9-11, but that's not really quite the same.
00:22:15.160 --> 00:22:17.500
Rita Mae Brown: That wasn't an attack from a recognized state.
00:22:17.840 --> 00:22:25.300
Rita Mae Brown: That was a terrorist attack, which is quite different, because you can't negotiate with terrorists, whereas you can negotiate with another state or go to war.
00:22:25.420 --> 00:22:33.580
Rita Mae Brown: But I had an interesting time with that too, because I think, Tim, the further away we get, the more in danger we are.
00:22:33.600 --> 00:22:34.940
Tim Link: Explain that to me.
00:22:34.960 --> 00:22:36.280
Rita Mae Brown: Because people forget.
00:22:36.480 --> 00:22:37.700
Tim Link: Okay, I see what you're saying now.
00:22:37.760 --> 00:22:39.040
Tim Link: Yeah, absolutely.
00:22:39.060 --> 00:22:39.400
Rita Mae Brown: Yeah.
00:22:39.680 --> 00:22:45.200
Rita Mae Brown: And the men would be working in the fields, the young men in their 20s or so, I would see shrapnel scars.
00:22:45.440 --> 00:22:46.800
Rita Mae Brown: Now, I didn't know what they were.
00:22:46.880 --> 00:22:50.700
Rita Mae Brown: I asked my mother, why does Uncle Kenny have all those scars on his back?
00:22:50.720 --> 00:22:55.660
Rita Mae Brown: And she would say, well, you know, he was in a foxhole and he lifted up a little bit and they got him.
00:22:55.940 --> 00:22:56.980
Rita Mae Brown: And it became real to me.
00:22:57.000 --> 00:23:07.060
Rita Mae Brown: And there were some other friends of my parents who were older, they were the World War I generation pretty much, who were missing a limb or had, you know, some damage that you could see.
00:23:07.080 --> 00:23:14.340
Rita Mae Brown: And it, little by little, because you're a child, you don't know, but you begin to understand something terrible happened.
00:23:15.080 --> 00:23:18.700
Rita Mae Brown: And then as you get older, you study it, you learn about it.
00:23:19.080 --> 00:23:29.600
Rita Mae Brown: And I think now the young are so far away from that kind of damage and drama and sorrow because so many died, they have no sense of it.
00:23:29.980 --> 00:23:32.980
Rita Mae Brown: So a bit of an uproar seems like the end of the world to them.
00:23:33.200 --> 00:23:36.720
Rita Mae Brown: And truthfully, it is the end of their world because they've never seen anything.
00:23:36.980 --> 00:23:38.500
Tim Link: Yep, that makes sense, that makes sense.
00:23:38.520 --> 00:23:46.600
Tim Link: And I think with our attention spans and going on right now, especially the way the world is, we tend to forget sooner than later.
00:23:46.620 --> 00:23:52.520
Tim Link: You know, even if there is a traumatic event going on within days, it's like nothing ever happened.
00:23:52.540 --> 00:24:01.480
Tim Link: And it's not the fact that we pull our bootstraps up and move on, it's more the fact of, okay, well, what happened last week is done and dusted.
00:24:01.520 --> 00:24:03.780
Tim Link: So let's not even worry about it.
00:24:04.060 --> 00:24:09.500
Rita Mae Brown: No, I think the media is an extraordinary problem and the stir is the pot.
00:24:09.820 --> 00:24:11.720
Rita Mae Brown: And the animals don't quite get that.
00:24:12.140 --> 00:24:15.080
Rita Mae Brown: I mean, because they're not, the news doesn't mean anything to them.
00:24:15.520 --> 00:24:20.640
Rita Mae Brown: You know, whereas Harry and her husband can get glued to the set about something, they don't understand it.
00:24:21.080 --> 00:24:24.220
Rita Mae Brown: They only respond to what's real and what they can see.
00:24:25.480 --> 00:24:27.860
Rita Mae Brown: So that also makes us different from animals.
00:24:27.880 --> 00:24:33.060
Rita Mae Brown: I mean, we can become very upset with something that's happening halfway around the world.
00:24:33.320 --> 00:24:34.580
Rita Mae Brown: And in some ways, that's good.
00:24:34.860 --> 00:24:39.920
Rita Mae Brown: We have empathy, we have concern, but in other ways, it just adds to this burden of fear.
00:24:40.440 --> 00:24:43.780
Rita Mae Brown: I mean, if it's halfway around the world, really, what can you do about it?
00:24:44.640 --> 00:24:47.960
Rita Mae Brown: But if it's down the block, there's a good chance you can do something.
00:24:49.620 --> 00:24:52.580
Tim Link: As always, try to live an animal's life.
00:24:52.980 --> 00:24:54.840
Tim Link: Live a dog's life and you'll be happy.
00:24:54.860 --> 00:24:55.600
Tim Link: That's what I say.
00:24:57.380 --> 00:25:07.860
Tim Link: We're gonna take a quick commercial break and we'll come back and have a, continue our conversation with Rita Mae Brown, talk about the book Feline Fatale, and also just talk more about life in general.
00:25:07.920 --> 00:25:09.020
Tim Link: So everybody hang tight.
00:25:09.280 --> 00:25:10.920
Tim Link: We'll come back right after this commercial break.
00:25:11.080 --> 00:25:14.340
Tim Link: You're listening to Animal Writes on Pet Life Radio.
00:25:20.109 --> 00:25:26.049
Tim Link: Hi, this is Tim Link, animal communicator and pet expert and host of Animal Writes on Pet Life Radio.
00:25:26.169 --> 00:25:28.789
Tim Link: Have you ever wanted to know what your pet is really thinking?
00:25:28.809 --> 00:25:32.029
Tim Link: Do you want to find out if they truly understand what you're trying to tell them?
00:25:32.169 --> 00:25:35.689
Tim Link: Ever wish you could build a better understanding and closer relationship with your pet?
00:25:35.769 --> 00:25:36.769
Tim Link: Well, now you can.
00:25:36.969 --> 00:25:40.589
Tim Link: Learning to communicate with animals is a four-part on-demand workshop.
00:25:40.809 --> 00:25:58.529
Tim Link: In the workshop, you'll learn the essential techniques that are necessary to communicate with animals, including what is animal communication, breathing correctly to achieve the perfect state to communicate with your animals at a deeper level, using guided meditation exercises and methods to communicate with animals, and how to send and receive information from your animals.
00:25:58.749 --> 00:26:08.989
Tim Link: So if you're wanting to learn how to communicate and connect with your animals at a deeper level, visit petliferadio.com forward slash workshop and purchase and download Learning to Communicate with Animals.
00:26:09.069 --> 00:26:09.949
Tim Link: You'll be glad you did.
00:26:21.028 --> 00:26:27.508
Tim Link: Welcome back to Animal Writes on Pet Life Radio.
00:26:27.848 --> 00:26:34.108
Tim Link: I continue our conversation with New York Times best-selling author Rita Mae Brown and her book, Feline Fatale.
00:26:34.628 --> 00:26:35.808
Tim Link: Of course, it's part of the Mrs.
00:26:35.828 --> 00:26:37.688
Tim Link: Murphy Mystery Series.
00:26:38.048 --> 00:26:40.968
Tim Link: It's the 32nd book in the series.
00:26:41.368 --> 00:26:43.668
Tim Link: Now, Rita Mae, does that astonish you?
00:26:43.848 --> 00:26:49.728
Tim Link: Does that make your typing and writing fingers hurt or is it something in between?
00:26:49.748 --> 00:26:52.288
Rita Mae Brown: It astonishes me, it does.
00:26:52.468 --> 00:26:58.368
Rita Mae Brown: I mean, I've got over 70-some books now out there and we're not counting the screenplays, but just books.
00:26:59.028 --> 00:27:00.948
Rita Mae Brown: And I can't stop writing.
00:27:00.968 --> 00:27:06.088
Rita Mae Brown: I mean, clearly this is some kind of, I don't know what it is, but I just can't stop.
00:27:06.528 --> 00:27:07.868
Rita Mae Brown: And I love the research.
00:27:07.988 --> 00:27:11.868
Rita Mae Brown: I mean, that's part of what draws me on, just go nuts over research.
00:27:12.388 --> 00:27:14.348
Rita Mae Brown: And I check other people's research too.
00:27:14.368 --> 00:27:18.028
Rita Mae Brown: Like I'm reading Philippa Gregory's Normal Women, which is unbelievable.
00:27:18.528 --> 00:27:19.568
Rita Mae Brown: It's nonfiction.
00:27:19.588 --> 00:27:25.328
Rita Mae Brown: I've read all of her fiction and had the great joy of serving on a panel with her for the New York Times.
00:27:25.968 --> 00:27:28.308
Rita Mae Brown: So she reads Latin, of course, so do I.
00:27:28.588 --> 00:27:32.028
Rita Mae Brown: So a lot of what she's researched, I know because I've read it.
00:27:32.688 --> 00:27:35.068
Rita Mae Brown: And her research is impeccable.
00:27:35.568 --> 00:27:39.408
Rita Mae Brown: I am so overwhelmed with people that do a good job.
00:27:39.608 --> 00:27:42.708
Rita Mae Brown: Obviously Churchill, I mean, that research was beyond compare.
00:27:42.728 --> 00:27:44.788
Rita Mae Brown: And of course he had his Latin and Greek.
00:27:44.808 --> 00:27:48.308
Rita Mae Brown: So he had no problem knowing where to go to get stuff.
00:27:48.348 --> 00:27:55.948
Rita Mae Brown: And he's in a country that has saved stuff from the time of Harold who got the arrow in the eye.
00:27:55.968 --> 00:27:58.308
Rita Mae Brown: I mean, we've got papers even before that.
00:27:58.768 --> 00:28:00.008
Rita Mae Brown: We don't have that here.
00:28:00.668 --> 00:28:01.588
Rita Mae Brown: We have some things.
00:28:02.148 --> 00:28:06.528
Rita Mae Brown: But remember after 1865, a lot of what was in the South was burned.
00:28:07.848 --> 00:28:09.268
Rita Mae Brown: So there's a lot we don't know.
00:28:09.728 --> 00:28:14.048
Rita Mae Brown: And that's interesting too, when you try to do research or you go back a little bit in time.
00:28:14.588 --> 00:28:16.368
Rita Mae Brown: But a lot we don't know about genetics.
00:28:16.828 --> 00:28:23.088
Rita Mae Brown: I mean, yes, if you do 23andMe, maybe you can find out medically, but stuff you don't really know about your families.
00:28:23.528 --> 00:28:28.828
Rita Mae Brown: Harder for black southerners than white, but it can be pretty hard for white too, depending.
00:28:29.228 --> 00:28:35.488
Rita Mae Brown: Because so many records got burned because of the fear that when the Yankees occupied us, they'd kill us.
00:28:35.508 --> 00:28:37.008
Rita Mae Brown: We'd be traitors and we'd be killed.
00:28:37.348 --> 00:28:42.448
Rita Mae Brown: Which is what the Brits planned to do in the Revolutionary War, which doesn't really get taught to us very much.
00:28:43.048 --> 00:28:47.468
Rita Mae Brown: But I look at all this and I think we're still so new.
00:28:47.828 --> 00:28:49.248
Rita Mae Brown: There's so much we don't know.
00:28:49.268 --> 00:28:54.448
Rita Mae Brown: And we focus on our little 200 and what, 50 years of history or whatever it is.
00:28:54.808 --> 00:29:01.368
Rita Mae Brown: And we think it's the center of the world, but it's really not in, like if you read about St.
00:29:01.388 --> 00:29:14.028
Rita Mae Brown: Hubert, if you read about people who lived and their attitude towards animals and how they helped us with animals, you realize why nobody in the Western world is ever going to eat dogs.
00:29:15.008 --> 00:29:19.428
Rita Mae Brown: No, really, I mean, I mean, I have to protest example, but it will never happen.
00:29:19.588 --> 00:29:22.428
Tim Link: Because we know the history, we lived through that brief history.
00:29:22.708 --> 00:29:23.908
Rita Mae Brown: No, because St.
00:29:23.928 --> 00:29:26.048
Rita Mae Brown: Hubert told us never to do things like that.
00:29:27.168 --> 00:29:34.168
Rita Mae Brown: Never to be cruel to animals, never to kill a pregnant animal if, you know, if she's healthy, don't do it.
00:29:34.188 --> 00:29:37.928
Rita Mae Brown: You don't hunt an animal who's, you know, what we would say heavy.
00:29:38.528 --> 00:29:40.008
Rita Mae Brown: It's a part of our culture.
00:29:40.308 --> 00:29:48.668
Rita Mae Brown: And even back in ancient Greece, you know, yes, there were animal sacrifices for some gods and goddesses, but that was pretty much the limit of it.
00:29:49.188 --> 00:29:53.268
Rita Mae Brown: There wasn't so much cruelty focused on animals.
00:29:53.428 --> 00:29:54.148
Rita Mae Brown: There was some.
00:29:54.428 --> 00:29:57.468
Rita Mae Brown: I mean, our cruelty seems to be quite focused on one another.
00:29:57.968 --> 00:29:59.248
Tim Link: That's a very good point.
00:29:59.488 --> 00:30:00.568
Tim Link: That's a very good point.
00:30:00.588 --> 00:30:01.508
Rita Mae Brown: It's just odd.
00:30:01.768 --> 00:30:04.668
Rita Mae Brown: Being part of Western culture, it's truly a culture.
00:30:04.908 --> 00:30:12.668
Rita Mae Brown: It's not at all like Asian culture or Indian culture, which would be South Asia, I guess, but still very different from China.
00:30:12.968 --> 00:30:15.348
Rita Mae Brown: And it's not at all like African culture.
00:30:15.368 --> 00:30:18.208
Rita Mae Brown: I mean, we are distinct, but they are, too.
00:30:18.908 --> 00:30:19.768
Rita Mae Brown: But I look at this.
00:30:19.868 --> 00:30:28.448
Rita Mae Brown: But one of the things that is most remarkable about Westerners, particularly those of us that speak English, is our deep love for animals.
00:30:28.808 --> 00:30:30.268
Rita Mae Brown: And they have it in Turkey, by the way.
00:30:30.908 --> 00:30:33.428
Rita Mae Brown: If you go to Istanbul, cats are everywhere.
00:30:33.448 --> 00:30:35.068
Rita Mae Brown: They love cats.
00:30:35.088 --> 00:30:36.568
Rita Mae Brown: And the Japanese love cats.
00:30:37.168 --> 00:30:42.908
Rita Mae Brown: So it's interesting where you find these pockets of real connection to other life forms.
00:30:43.468 --> 00:30:45.328
Rita Mae Brown: And I'm hoping it expands.
00:30:46.208 --> 00:30:54.448
Rita Mae Brown: It's one of the great things I love about the environmental movement, which I don't really always focus on in my books because people don't really need me to preach to them.
00:30:55.188 --> 00:30:57.468
Rita Mae Brown: But how good it is for animals, ultimately.
00:30:57.828 --> 00:31:13.368
Tim Link: Yeah, and I see our love for animals, like you said, not only in the Western culture, but maybe perhaps our Western culture love of animals has bled over as those have wanted to move West or have spent time here, maybe did their university here, whatever it may be.
00:31:13.548 --> 00:31:17.648
Tim Link: The love affair and the culture has blended back over because I see that too.
00:31:17.668 --> 00:31:24.828
Tim Link: I see that a lot in people I know, different cultures and people that are living in the area maybe for a short period of time and then go back home.
00:31:25.148 --> 00:31:36.488
Tim Link: They take that love affair for animals back with them, which I think is part of that blending and better understanding of what the true pleasure it is and the true education you can learn from the animals around you.
00:31:36.728 --> 00:31:40.048
Rita Mae Brown: It's one of the great things about the time in which we are now.
00:31:40.468 --> 00:31:47.648
Rita Mae Brown: We have so many more opportunities than our grandparents or great grandparents, unless they were very, very wealthy, they could take a ship.
00:31:48.008 --> 00:31:50.008
Rita Mae Brown: But we can really pretty much go anywhere.
00:31:50.328 --> 00:32:01.508
Rita Mae Brown: And what you learn, like the first time I was in Japan, I've been to Japan three times, I wound up in Kyoto, which I was overwhelmed with those shrines.
00:32:01.508 --> 00:32:02.728
Rita Mae Brown: You gotta see it to believe it.
00:32:03.588 --> 00:32:04.688
Rita Mae Brown: Thousands of years.
00:32:05.308 --> 00:32:14.768
Rita Mae Brown: But there was a dog tied to a pole, because I guess his mistress, it turned out to be a mistress, because I waited for her, was in the shrine.
00:32:14.788 --> 00:32:17.188
Rita Mae Brown: And it's the first Shiba Inu I ever saw.
00:32:17.208 --> 00:32:19.188
Rita Mae Brown: I couldn't believe how beautiful it was.
00:32:19.328 --> 00:32:24.928
Rita Mae Brown: And the lady came out and I spoke about three words in Japanese, you know.
00:32:25.188 --> 00:32:31.088
Rita Mae Brown: And her English was a bit better, obviously, because we'd been there since 45.
00:32:31.748 --> 00:32:34.888
Rita Mae Brown: And it was just a charming discussion with another animal lover.
00:32:35.348 --> 00:32:40.608
Rita Mae Brown: And that's when I determined I would bring one of these animals back, no matter what it took.
00:32:40.948 --> 00:32:48.068
Rita Mae Brown: But wherever you are, there are these moments where you connect with people over animals or their children or whatever.
00:32:48.408 --> 00:32:53.348
Rita Mae Brown: And you realize about the really great things in life we're pretty much the same.
00:32:53.668 --> 00:32:55.508
Rita Mae Brown: Or that's what I bring out of it.
00:32:55.528 --> 00:32:56.208
Tim Link: And I agree.
00:32:56.228 --> 00:32:56.748
Tim Link: And I agree.
00:32:56.768 --> 00:33:00.808
Tim Link: And I think animals are the great common denominator in that as well.
00:33:00.828 --> 00:33:02.608
Tim Link: I think they bring us together.
00:33:03.008 --> 00:33:06.368
Tim Link: They help us sort of break down the barriers a little bit.
00:33:06.808 --> 00:33:13.928
Tim Link: And then once we have established that we all love animals, then that gives us an opportunity to understand that you're right, we are all the same.
00:33:14.088 --> 00:33:21.488
Rita Mae Brown: You know, it's interesting, is my books are fairly much published everywhere, not in China, not in Russia, which should be no surprise.
00:33:22.248 --> 00:33:25.428
Rita Mae Brown: You know, or some of the Middle East countries, no, I'm not there.
00:33:25.808 --> 00:33:30.288
Rita Mae Brown: You know, I get fan mail or I'll meet people and they want to talk about their animals.
00:33:30.488 --> 00:33:32.688
Rita Mae Brown: And Hungary, by the way, is very advanced.
00:33:33.228 --> 00:33:39.428
Rita Mae Brown: I mean, some of the research on dog cognition is way ahead of us from that remarkable country.
00:33:39.748 --> 00:33:45.288
Rita Mae Brown: But you realize in many ways we lead, but only on certain issues.
00:33:45.288 --> 00:33:48.788
Rita Mae Brown: Like we're still trying to prove that animals have emotions.
00:33:48.928 --> 00:33:49.668
Rita Mae Brown: Don't laugh.
00:33:50.048 --> 00:33:54.368
Rita Mae Brown: There are still some people in the country that want it scientifically proven.
00:33:54.588 --> 00:33:55.828
Rita Mae Brown: It's like, do you have eyes?
00:33:56.328 --> 00:33:57.168
Tim Link: Absolutely, yeah.
00:33:57.188 --> 00:34:05.868
Tim Link: The fine line between the scientific mind and the, we'll say the empathetic mind, the empathetic heart, the spiritual side of things.
00:34:06.368 --> 00:34:07.328
Tim Link: And you're absolutely right.
00:34:07.568 --> 00:34:08.468
Tim Link: They have emotions.
00:34:08.868 --> 00:34:11.268
Rita Mae Brown: But you said spiritual, which got me going.
00:34:11.608 --> 00:34:13.888
Rita Mae Brown: Towards the end of the book, Mrs.
00:34:13.908 --> 00:34:16.008
Rita Mae Brown: Murphy realized that Amanda isn't happy.
00:34:16.748 --> 00:34:22.588
Rita Mae Brown: She doesn't know why, but the animal, she and Pewter discussed this for a moment.
00:34:22.988 --> 00:34:27.408
Rita Mae Brown: I guess there's a woman who looks like she has everything, but she doesn't seem to be happy.
00:34:27.408 --> 00:34:29.908
Rita Mae Brown: So, you know, it's because of ambition.
00:34:29.928 --> 00:34:35.588
Rita Mae Brown: She wants to be the first woman governor in Virginia, which is not gonna happen after her first term, that's for sure.
00:34:36.248 --> 00:34:42.308
Rita Mae Brown: But how they are able to sense where we really are and we're able to cover it up.
00:34:42.928 --> 00:34:44.528
Rita Mae Brown: You've seen this, of course.
00:34:45.048 --> 00:34:46.608
Tim Link: Yeah, absolutely, absolutely.
00:34:47.448 --> 00:34:49.448
Rita Mae Brown: That I'm utterly fascinated by it.
00:34:49.768 --> 00:34:55.048
Rita Mae Brown: And I'm fascinated with, really with these books because I'm so in love with these characters.
00:34:55.308 --> 00:34:57.088
Rita Mae Brown: I mean, I've lived with them now for what?
00:34:57.108 --> 00:35:00.468
Rita Mae Brown: Close to, what, 35, 40 some years.
00:35:00.988 --> 00:35:03.228
Rita Mae Brown: So they really are in ways like my family.
00:35:03.248 --> 00:35:07.908
Rita Mae Brown: With my mother and my mom and dad really taught me to love animals.
00:35:08.248 --> 00:35:09.648
Rita Mae Brown: Mom was great with horses.
00:35:10.388 --> 00:35:13.148
Rita Mae Brown: Our whole one side of our family is all horse people.
00:35:13.828 --> 00:35:17.528
Rita Mae Brown: And horse people like back to when Cerberus first got imported into Virginia.
00:35:17.828 --> 00:35:19.448
Rita Mae Brown: But mom loved cats.
00:35:20.068 --> 00:35:24.528
Rita Mae Brown: And I guess I think I just learned from her and I learned to be quiet and observe.
00:35:25.028 --> 00:35:27.248
Rita Mae Brown: And if you can do it with cats, you can do it with people.
00:35:27.528 --> 00:35:28.808
Tim Link: That's it.
00:35:28.828 --> 00:35:29.848
Tim Link: Love it, I love it.
00:35:30.348 --> 00:35:43.068
Tim Link: So Rita Mae, when everybody picks up a copy of Feline Fatale and they read through it, there's so much wonderful stuff in here and a little bit of, I call it a smorgasbord of little samplings in here wrapped around this great mystery.
00:35:43.568 --> 00:35:51.108
Tim Link: At the end of the day, what do you hope people gain from this book compared to the others or just in general once they read through the book Feline Fatale?
00:35:51.268 --> 00:35:54.728
Rita Mae Brown: Well, I hope in every book of mine, if you want to learn something you can.
00:35:54.848 --> 00:35:57.428
Rita Mae Brown: Again, I'm not preaching, but if you want to learn something you can.
00:35:57.868 --> 00:36:00.948
Rita Mae Brown: But mostly I want people to recognize their neighbors.
00:36:01.328 --> 00:36:03.548
Rita Mae Brown: I feel like each of my books is a party.
00:36:03.568 --> 00:36:05.968
Rita Mae Brown: You're invited to the party and you get to meet everybody.
00:36:05.988 --> 00:36:10.768
Rita Mae Brown: That's one of the reasons I don't go into this dense psychological detail.
00:36:11.208 --> 00:36:12.568
Rita Mae Brown: I want you to figure them out.
00:36:12.948 --> 00:36:13.968
Tim Link: Yeah, absolutely.
00:36:14.208 --> 00:36:18.908
Tim Link: And I love it because the blend of each character is very unique, very interesting.
00:36:19.088 --> 00:36:20.808
Tim Link: The new characters that come into the book.
00:36:21.008 --> 00:36:22.588
Tim Link: And then you blend in the animals.
00:36:23.108 --> 00:36:28.968
Tim Link: And then you realize, for me at least every time I read your books, I realize and know the research that went into it.
00:36:28.988 --> 00:36:30.668
Tim Link: So how the accuracy is there.
00:36:30.888 --> 00:36:38.788
Tim Link: But yet keeping the entertainment fact and having these little subtle messages that get you to think without, like you said, preaching to the masses.
00:36:38.968 --> 00:36:40.468
Rita Mae Brown: People are over committed.
00:36:40.708 --> 00:36:41.508
Rita Mae Brown: They're tired.
00:36:41.848 --> 00:36:43.928
Rita Mae Brown: Inflation is knocking the poop out of us.
00:36:43.948 --> 00:36:46.348
Rita Mae Brown: I mean, they keep saying it's going away.
00:36:46.368 --> 00:36:47.188
Rita Mae Brown: I haven't seen it.
00:36:47.728 --> 00:36:51.828
Rita Mae Brown: I mean, yeah, it's a little better at the gas pump, but I mean, people are tired.
00:36:52.148 --> 00:36:57.348
Rita Mae Brown: They're tired just trying to pay the same bills they could have paid fairly easily before COVID.
00:36:57.608 --> 00:37:00.108
Rita Mae Brown: You know, we'll never really know what COVID did to us.
00:37:00.128 --> 00:37:02.068
Rita Mae Brown: That's gonna take a long time to figure out.
00:37:02.308 --> 00:37:12.368
Rita Mae Brown: So if I can give somebody a bit of an escape and make them laugh in the process, then I think I've been worth their time and I'm worth their time.
00:37:12.688 --> 00:37:15.088
Rita Mae Brown: I'm not here to be the smartest person in the room.
00:37:15.448 --> 00:37:19.328
Rita Mae Brown: I'm not here to throw around my Greek and Latin, although sometimes I can't help it.
00:37:19.348 --> 00:37:37.028
Rita Mae Brown: I do inflict it on people, but I'm well-educated for an American and that education leads me to realize the whole purpose of writing is to communicate, it's to reach other people, not to sit there and tell them how damn smart you are.
00:37:37.508 --> 00:37:38.528
Tim Link: Excellent, I love it.
00:37:38.548 --> 00:37:42.788
Tim Link: And you definitely do that each and every time and this book is no exception to the rule.
00:37:42.808 --> 00:37:45.108
Tim Link: It's Feline Fatale, it's part of the Mrs.
00:37:45.128 --> 00:37:48.708
Tim Link: Murphy mystery series by obviously the great Rita Mae Brown.
00:37:48.728 --> 00:37:51.148
Tim Link: Rita Mae, always, always a pleasure.
00:37:51.168 --> 00:37:56.168
Tim Link: I can make it like a 20-part series, just sit here all night and chat with you about life.
00:37:56.188 --> 00:37:58.188
Rita Mae Brown: Can I ask you a quick question before we end?
00:37:58.548 --> 00:37:59.268
Tim Link: Absolutely.
00:37:59.708 --> 00:38:05.028
Rita Mae Brown: Are you going to go buy your wife red high-heeled shoes?
00:38:05.308 --> 00:38:08.368
Tim Link: Well, I've learned one thing, you got to keep the wife happy.
00:38:08.388 --> 00:38:19.548
Tim Link: So if she ever wants red high-heeled shoes, I will buy them for her, but I think she's more happy with a nice comfy pair of shoes and having as many critters and plants around her as possible.
00:38:19.568 --> 00:38:22.528
Tim Link: That's what makes her happy and that's what I do each and every day.
00:38:25.468 --> 00:38:26.128
Tim Link: You got it.
00:38:26.988 --> 00:38:28.748
Tim Link: All right, well, we're coming to end the show today.
00:38:28.748 --> 00:38:32.108
Tim Link: I want to thank everyone for listening to Animal Writes on Pet Life Radio.
00:38:32.128 --> 00:38:35.368
Tim Link: I want to thank the producers and sponsors for making this show possible.
00:38:35.508 --> 00:38:45.568
Tim Link: If you have any questions, comments or ideas for the show, you can go to petliferadio.com and we will definitely answer your questions, entertain your comments and bring on the people you want to hear from most.
00:38:45.928 --> 00:38:48.688
Tim Link: And while you're there, check out all the other wonderful shows.
00:38:48.808 --> 00:38:50.568
Tim Link: That's at petliferadio.com.
00:38:50.848 --> 00:38:58.008
Tim Link: So until next time, write a great story about the animals in your life and who knows, you may be the next guest on Animal Writes on Pet Life Radio.
00:38:58.328 --> 00:38:59.128
Tim Link: Have a great day.
00:38:59.728 --> 00:39:02.788
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00:39:03.188 --> 00:39:05.148
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