The Dual Timelines & Unique Perspectives of Lisa Montanaro’s Debut Novel -105

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Kristi Leonard [: 00:00:03

Welcome to Author Express. Thanks for checking us out. This is the podcast where you give us 15 minutes of your time, and we give you a chance to hear the voice behind the pages and get to know some of your favorite writers in a new light. I'm one of your hosts, Christy Leonard, owner and host of Writers in the Wild Retreats, nonfiction voice over artist, and president of WFWA. I'm excited to share with you a little about today's guest.

Kristi Leonard [: 00:00:35

Lisa Montanaro is part no nonsense Italian American New Yorker and part sunny Californian. She has a unique background as a performer, teacher of deaf students, lawyer, coach, speaker, and author. She writes book club fiction featuring complex characters, breaking barriers, and fighting to truly be themselves despite obstacles in their way. Her debut novel, Everything We Thought Was True, releases in January. Lisa is also the author of a nonfiction book, The Ultimate Life Organizer. She serves as webinar host for the Women's Fiction Writers Association and is a member of its diversity and inclusion committee. When not writing, Lisa enjoys cycling and hiking with her veterinarian husband, tending to her garden, and chasing after her rescue dogs. Welcome, Lisa.

Kristi Leonard [: 00:01:30

So great to have you.

Lisa Montanaro [: 00:01:32

It is so good to be here with you. I'm very, very excited to be in conversation with you.

Kristi Leonard [: 00:01:37

Yeah. It is unusual for you to be on the receiving end. I happen to get the chance to work with you with the Women's Fiction Writers Association. And as the webinar host, you are usually the one asking the questions. How's it feel?

Lisa Montanaro [: 00:01:52

This is a wonderful switch where someone else takes control, asks the questions, and I don't have to control the mic. So this will be a nice chance for me to sit back. And I'm really excited that it's with you. This is my first podcast interview for my debut novel, and it's so special that it's with you. So I'm excited.

Kristi Leonard [: 00:02:11

Yay. Oh, I'm so glad. Well, we always start with the same question. Tell me the most interesting thing about where you're from. So we heard in your intro, you are Italian American New Yorker. So you can say New York or you're sunny Californian. It could be about California. Tell us.

Lisa Montanaro [: 00:02:32

Okay. Good. So I am originally from New York or pronounced by locals as New York. And I like to tease that you can take the girl out of New York, but you can't take the New York out of the girl. And I think the most interesting thing about New York to me, specifically where I'm from, which is just north of Manhattan in Westchester County, is that there are micro accents in the New York City metropolitan area. You could live minutes apart from someone and have an entirely different accent. And there are many other cities like that. Boston has multiple accents.

Lisa Montanaro [: 00:03:07

London has multiple accents. But, you know, being from New York, I know them well. So we can tell if someone is from Staten Island, Brooklyn, Queens, Manhattan, Bronx, Jersey, Long Island. You know, they have very interesting different micro accents. So I always find that fascinating, especially now that I don't live there. And if I do speak to some of my cousins from New York or family, I think the accent comes out a little bit more.

Kristi Leonard [: 00:03:33

Yes. I can imagine. Absolutely. Well, we tend to do this in 3 parts. The first part is about you. So let's talk about you a little bit. Who would you say has been the most surprising influence on your life?

Lisa Montanaro [: 00:03:51

What I like is the surprising influence on my life as opposed to just the one that you expect. Because I think most of us yeah. The obvious one would be, obviously, a parent. My mother was an amazing influence, but probably the most surprising influence will probably be my husband. We met when we were quite young. We were 9 19, and we were lifeguards of the town pool. And I was an extreme extrovert.

Kristi Leonard [: 00:04:18

Surprising. Surprising.

Lisa Montanaro [: 00:04:20

And he was an extreme introvert. And I think what's been really kinda neat is that we've met in the middle. So I've become a more introverted, introspective, quieter, better listener, and he's come out of his shell more over the years. So I think he's been a surprising influence on me as I have been on him. So, yeah, great question.

Kristi Leonard [: 00:04:41

Oh, that's awesome. What is a piece of advice you find that you give to others most often?

Lisa Montanaro [: 00:04:49

Whether it's personal or professional or writing, I teach growth mindset for the University of California at Davis, and I do truly believe in it. And so, usually, what I will try to ask someone is to reframe something with a growth mindset. So probably the advice is to have a 5 minute pity party and let it out and let it out. And then after that, to reframe it. So what can I do to grow from this? How can I look at this differently? What has this taught me? How can I take action on this? So I'd say that's probably my biggest piece of advice to people, because it tends to work in almost every single situation. Right? Yeah. Because we we're humans, and we need to throw a pity party first, but then it's it's sort of what are we going to do about it afterwards, and how can we reframe this so that it's more of a learning experience or more redemptive. Yeah.

Kristi Leonard [: 00:05:36

Oh, I love that. I think that definitely would be helpful for pretty much any situation, especially as a writer myself. Certainly, all of the obstacles that you come up against, that is very good advice. So now we get to the part that I really love. So the second part is that we get to talk about your book. And I have read your book, so I can definitely see that there's a little bit of Italian American heritage in this book. Probably say a lot of Italian American heritage. Let's get to the part that most of our guests don't love.

Kristi Leonard [: 00:06:13

How would you summarize your book in one sentence?

Lisa Montanaro [: 00:06:17

I will. First of all, thank you for reading. I really appreciate it.

Kristi Leonard [: 00:06:20

Yes. Absolutely.

Lisa Montanaro [: 00:06:21

So Everything We Thought Was True is book club fiction told in dual timeline that deconstructs a secret that forever shapes an Italian American family through the perspective of 3 distinct characters, a wife afraid of being alone, a husband afraid to be himself, and their daughter who carries the weight of the secret into adulthood.

Kristi Leonard [: 00:06:43

I love reading the book and then listening to the one sentence that my guests come up with because I am a good judge of whether or not that encapsulates the story, and I would say that absolutely does.

Lisa Montanaro [: 00:06:57

Good. I'm happy to hear that. Right? You never know. You know, you come up with all these pitches, and you wanna make sure that it really does capture the story. So I'm happy to hear that.

Kristi Leonard [: 00:07:06

Yes. Absolutely. Alright. So let's talk about the book a little bit. How did you ensure authenticity in the world or characters you created? And you have some authenticity that you need to talk about for sure.

Lisa Montanaro [: 00:07:20

That's a great question for any writer, but especially a writer that is doing historical fiction. So there needs to be accuracy in terms of the decades or the time period that you cover. And some of it, I lived through, and some of it, I did not. Oh. So there are a few ways that I think that we can ensure authenticity in the writing and in the text. Mhmm. And one is research.

Lisa Montanaro [: 00:07:43

So I'm a research geek. My background is a lawyer. And so I tend to love research to the point where sometimes I have to put a stop to it because I can go down these awesome rabbit holes of what were they wearing in the sixties and what was the music and because it's fun. And then also I have characters with marginalized identities throughout history, specifically LGBTQ characters. And so in addition to belonging to an LGBTQ organization myself, where I've been volunteering for several years, and I have LGBTQ family members, and so I interviewed them.

Kristi Leonard [: 00:08:15

Oh, excellent.

Lisa Montanaro [: 00:08:16

Yeah. And then I also had some beta readers within and outside the marginalized communities. From the Italian American standpoint, it's fascinating because it's one that I grew up with. And sometimes people would say, this feels like it might be a stereotype. I'd say, that's the truth. And then they and then they'd see something else and say, this is real. Right? I'm like, no. That I made up.

Lisa Montanaro [: 00:08:37

So it is fascinating that I think sometimes when you're in or outside of a community, you have a very different perspective. Yeah.

Kristi Leonard [: 00:08:44

Absolutely. Well, truth is definitely stranger than fiction Exactly. For sure. There's a reason why that quote exists, 100%. Well, how does your personal philosophy or worldview show up in your book?

Lisa Montanaro [: 00:08:59

In a few different ways. One is where I sit in history, like where I sit in time. So I can only write everything we thought was true from the perspective of a person living in 2024 who's lived throughout the last x amount of decades, if I maybe wrote this book, let's say, before the 19 sixties, if I lived back then, I would have had a very different worldview. So I'd say, first of all, my worldview is influenced by my external reality. And then also my worldview is influenced by my personal experience and my personal identity of being the child of an LGBTQ parent. So I probably will have a very different worldview than someone that wrote this book that maybe doesn't have that lived experience.

Kristi Leonard [: 00:09:40

Yeah. Definitely.

Lisa Montanaro [: 00:09:41

Yeah. I'd say based on both where we are in history, also, I happen to have personal experience with being an employment discrimination lawyer. So I have a few identities that are similar to some of the people in my book, And I'm sure that worldview comes through in terms of not having to do as much research as someone that hasn't spent time in that in that world.

Kristi Leonard [: 00:10:03

So how do you take that inside knowledge and make sure that someone who doesn't have that experience reads your book and gets a new perspective?

Lisa Montanaro [: 00:10:16

I think a few different ways. 1 is through story. So storytelling, good storytelling, and I think good character development. So when you have a narrative with really great characters and when you have character driven fiction, regardless of the container of the story, people wanna follow that character's journey. And so I think I've hopefully written a book where the characters stand for themselves in the sense that you wanna spend time with the Antonori family, and you wanna get to know them. And I think that none of them are perfect and all of them are flawed, and yet you can't help not rooting for them all in some ways.

Kristi Leonard [: 00:10:51

Right.

Lisa Montanaro [: 00:10:52

So there are no real villains, and there are no real heroes. And I hope that the character drives that and the story itself, because I do think the story is very interesting. And I think it's universal. There's a universality to it, even though they have their own thinking the same thing.

Kristi Leonard [: 00:11:06

Yeah.

Lisa Montanaro [: 00:11:07

Oh, good. They have their own secret, but every family I mean, show me a family doesn't have secret, and I'll say, yeah, you just haven't found it yet. Right? So that experience of hiding something from the world of what we reveal and what we don't reveal and how others perceive us, all of those are very universal. And many of us carry a lot of internalized shame around what we don't reveal. And I hope that my book helps people understand that they cannot do that. And that truth spoken, it's like deflating a balloon that has a lot of power in a good way. Yeah. I like to say that a shame needs to change sides.

Lisa Montanaro [: 00:11:47

So we shouldn't carry shame about things that other people feel uncomfortable about. They should be carrying shame about feeling uncomfortable about those.

Kristi Leonard [: 00:11:56

Right. Oh, that is so brilliant. Absolutely brilliant. Well, now we get to talk about your process a little bit. So a lot of the people that listen to our podcast love to learn about they like to get a peek behind the scenes. So how do you develop your characters and make them feel real to readers? So we've heard that some of this is your lived experience, but what tricks of the trade do you have?

Lisa Montanaro [: 00:12:23

I love process. I'll try to make this short. Yeah. So I am a plotter, and I use a lot of different plotting techniques and have tried a lot of different ones over the years. But then I also bring in the pantsing where I will be, you know, bike riding or hiking and a scene or a character will come to me and I need to get it down. So I'd say my acting background comes in a lot more than I thought it would. So method acting is where you sort of embody and become the character. And I was able to do that where whether it's a primary character, and there were 3 in my book, or a secondary character, I can sort of try to step into their shoes and experience what they're experiencing and then try to get that on the page.

Lisa Montanaro [: 00:13:02

I think that also helps when you are writing a book inspired by a true story. It does help you distance yourself from the truth and get more onto the fiction side if you're embodying a character. And then after I would write and revise like crazy, right? Revise, rinse, read. Then towards the end of my process, I do read my book out loud and perform it. And I know you're an audiobook narrator and voice over nonfiction voice over artist. So doing that helps me really try to embody the character and see what it would feel like to be them either in a movie or on stage. And I pick up a lot of things that way that help, strengthen the manuscript. Yeah.

Kristi Leonard [: 00:13:44

Yeah. Oh, I love that a lot. I think that is probably the best piece of advice that I have heard. I'm not completely finished with my book, but I definitely plan to do that for sure. So we definitely want people to be able to find you. So do you have a website, a newsletter? What's the best place for folks to find you?

Lisa Montanaro [: 00:14:07

Thanks for asking. So if they go to www.lisamontanarowrites.com, that is sort of my mothership online. And they can subscribe to the Prosecco and Prose newsletter, which is a community of people that have subscribed to hear from me in their inbox, which I love. And I will have a book club kit on there and behind the scenes with recipes and music from the book. And I love connecting with people online. As you know, I love writers, readers. So if you go to lisamontinarowrites.com, you'll be able to see all my social media channels there too.

Kristi Leonard [: 00:14:42

Oh, that is awesome. So we always end with the same question. What book or story inspires you the most?

Lisa Montanaro [: 00:14:51

That's a great one. And I think the one that inspired me the most growing up was The Diary of Anne Frank. So when I read it, I was a young girl and I was both completely impacted by her story as a human being about what she endured, but also just as a teenager, again, talk about universality. Right? She has this very individualized experience, but everyone remembers, and I was experiencing at the time, what it's like to be that teenager. And so you're getting this peek inside her world, and it prompted me on my lifelong journey of keeping a journal, which I've been doing since I'm 8.

Kristi Leonard [: 00:15:24

Oh, that's awesome.

Lisa Montanaro [: 00:15:25

By hand. By hand. But today, the thing that inspired the person, the writer that inspires me most is Anne Patchett. I would read a shopping list if she wrote it. So if she if she writes it, whether it's memoir, novel, or personal essay, I read it. And I always feel like Anne is writing to me only, which just shows the power of such a great writer.

Kristi Leonard [: 00:15:45

Yeah. That's a great one. Well, believe it or not, we are actually over our time, but that's okay. I think everybody's gonna love to hear from you. And I am so excited for your book coming out in January.

Lisa Montanaro [: 00:15:57

Thank you so much. It's been such a pleasure to be here. I appreciate it.

Kristi Leonard [: 00:16:00

Absolutely.

Kristi Leonard [: 00:16:05

Thanks for joining us. We hope you take a second to give us stars or a review on your favorite podcasting platform, and we'll be here again next Wednesday. Follow us on Instagram at author express podcast to see who's coming up next. Don't forget, keep it express, but keep it interesting.