Sherry Thomas – The Librarians

Steve Thomas: Sherry, welcome to the podcast.

Sherry Thomas: Thank you. I am delighted to be here, Steve.

Steve Thomas: So your new book, obviously from the title The Librarians, is about libraries. And clearly, the book and you love libraries. I think just from reading the book, you can tell. What has been your relationship to libraries throughout your life?

Sherry Thomas: My relationship to libraries changed abruptly when I came to the United States when I was 13 years old, because before then, I don’t think I’d ever been in a proper library. When I was growing up in China, public libraries did not, I don’t know about now, but when I was growing up, it did not exist in the same way it does in the US. Like, your school might have a small collection of books, but they’re never displayed. The school might secretly have a cache of books, and I remember we had something called reading class during which like they actually hauled out a box of books we’d never seen before. Everybody got one. And mine happened to be some sort of science fiction / fantasy with a scene set in ancient Rome. And I was absolutely fascinated. We had to give the book back at the end of the class and next week when the same class rolled around, they brought out the same box of books and randomly started giving out to kids. And nobody except me was like, where’s the book I was reading last week?

And I remember we had a tiny shelf of books in the school officer’s room, one single shelf with maybe like eight or 10 titles, and I borrowed every one of them. But they were only like available for the student officers.

My grandfather was a professor at a medical college. Or what is it called here? A medical school. And he used to be able to borrow from his school library, but I never saw his school library because again, it’s not open to the public, it’s only open to the staff. My grandparents grew up in Shanghai before the Communist takeover, and they were both fluent in English and they also, because of that influence, they enjoyed literature from abroad. So my grandfather used to bring back such titles as, I’m pretty sure I read the Old Man and the Sea when I was less than 10 years old, just out of the lack of enough things to read, and I read Sherlock Holmes translated into Chinese. I read Twenty Years Later by Alexander Dumas before I even read Three Musketeers, because it was what my grandfather brought back, it was available. And he brought back, most importantly, lots of Jules Verne books. I loved those.

And so the concept of library was kind of this, like, this magical place to which I had no access, but when I came to the States and I think the first library I went to was actually not a public library, but my mother was a student at LSU. So I went to the school’s Central Library and was just astonished at all the books that were just there because in China at that time, even bookstores did not have open shelf display. All the books were behind the counter. You had to ask for them. And they look at you, the bookstore clerk would look at you while you flip through it and say, “Do you want it or not?” Even in the bookstore, there might be only maybe a hundred books, like whatever they had was placed face out. You can see like, okay, these are the books. So just going through a library like that with like hundreds and thousands of books from all possible categories you can think of was amazing.

And then when I went to Baton Rouge’s Public Library, I was equally amazed because there were all these popular books, if only I could read them, but they were all there. I just had to learn enough English to get my hands on them.

And so, yeah, I’ve always loved the library especially in those days when my mother was just a grad student. All the income she had was her assistantship, and we didn’t have enough money to buy books. So libraries were like my main access to the drug of my choice, for a voracious reader. The libraries here in this country have seriously earned my love.

Steve Thomas: And did having access to all those books, is that what helped you learn English too, just being able to immerse yourself in all these books?

Sherry Thomas: Yes, yes. I actually spoke very little my first few years in the US because I found American teenagers kind of incomprehensible. I used to observe them, like one would like alien species. So I rarely spoke English, but as soon as I could scrape together enough vocabulary, I read a lot and, I turned out to be a genre reader, so I loved romance and I loved science fiction.

And all those were in abundance. I mean, the romance wasn’t in that much abundance at the LSU academic main library, but they had plenty of science fiction and I borrowed my romances from the public library, which in the end became a major influence in my life because when I first started writing, I was a romance writer.

Steve Thomas: Yeah. And you’ve written mystery before as well, but this book is your first contemporary mystery. Is that right?

Sherry Thomas: Correct. I’ve published eight historical mysteries, the Lady Sherlock historical mystery series, yes.

Steve Thomas: Is that coming back from your love of, you said you read Sherlock Holmes stories in China. Is that what made you wanna write those books?

Sherry Thomas: That is partly the case, but I also discovered early on that I actually love the pastiche, the great works of the pastiche, as much as I love original Sherlock Holmes, because right around the time I read original Sherlock Holmes, I also read, in Chinese, the 7% Solution, which I believe is one of the most successful works in the Holmes pastiche that was also translated in Chinese. I still remember lying in the tent reading it and and being aware that Conan Doyle did not write this, and yet it plugged holes in the original mythology that I thought was like, “Oh, okay, so when he disappeared over the Reichenbach Falls, he was actually in a drug rehab…” or so it was very interesting. So I always loved the pastiche and it was actually, Laurie King’s Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes books that inspire me to like say, “Oh, I wanna write books like that. So cool.”

Steve Thomas: And in the Lady Sherlock, when you were researching those, did you have to really research what it was like in Victorian England ’cause you grew up in China and then you’re in the US …

Sherry Thomas: In the sense that all my historical romances were also set, most of them were set in the UK, and they were set accidentally in the same time period as the original Sherlock Holmes books. So I was actually quite familiar with that period, so when I started working on Sherlock Holmes, for the first couple books, suddenly I was researching a lot of poisons. But other than that, the period itself was fairly familiar to me.

And here again libraries indirectly helped me out tremendously. Libraries and Google Books both, because with the advent of Google Books, they digitized a lot of books that are already in the public domain, and where do they get all those books? From all the major library holdings around the country, around the world. So once they had that up and running, I was able to research directly using primary sources written in the 1880s you know, 1870s to 1890s, books written for people at the time, like guidebooks or other books, poison detection manuals, all those things. So yes, it was, again, thanks to the existence and the vibrancy of libraries in this country and elsewhere, that I was able to research as easily and abundantly as I could.

Steve Thomas: So with The Librarians, can you tell listeners a little bit about what the book is about?

Sherry Thomas: The book is a bit of a love letter to libraries and librarians, but it is also a workplace mystery. It is about a series of mysterious deaths involving patrons of this little branch library in the suburbs of Austin, Texas and how the investigation into those forced a bunch of librarians who’ve only been friendly colleagues out of their shells and really became friends and really formed the community because their lives, their secrets are in danger and they need to rely on each other to get past this difficult period. And I think it’s a lot of fun so I hope the librarians who really will think so too. It is actually based, the location is exactly the branch library closest to my house, which I’ve been going to for the past, gosh, at least 25 years.

Steve Thomas: Yeah. And it is really fun. I wouldn’t say this is a cozy mystery but it’s like you don’t want to get too dark with it either, because that’s not the kind of mystery you’re writing either, where we’re getting into the head of serial killers or anything like that.

Sherry Thomas: Right. No, no. Right.

Steve Thomas: Keeping it light as well.

Sherry Thomas: Right, like you said, I wouldn’t put it squarely in cozies because there is a shootout at end. And as I was writing it, I was like, “How did we get here?”

Steve Thomas: So what was your initial spark for the idea?

Sherry Thomas: I will be honest with you. My publisher asked me to. I was just going along writing historicals, and they said, “The publisher would like to see a book in the veins of a Thursday Murder Club, but with librarians!” And I was like, at the time I hadn’t even read the Thursday Murder Club yet, so after they said this and they said, “Do you wanna do it?” I said, “Sure!” And then I went to read the Thursday Murder Club, and then I started thinking about, “Okay, what do I wanna do?” Because first of all, even though it’s set in a library, it’s also a mystery.

Then I went to this library branch where there’s a fabulous, or at least, I’m sorry to say, there was a fabulous librarian whom I’ve known for quite a number of years. He’s moved on to greener pastors in San Antonio now. He basically opened up the library to me. He said, “Come look at this. Come see that,” and basically everything he told me made their way in the book, like, “Have you ever seen a fight at the library?” I said, “No, thank goodness I haven’t!” But he said, “Oh yeah, we had one like last week and one a month ago.” And he talked about things like incident reports and he showed me the secret passage where you can go to the AC ducts and he showed us their break room and where they stored all the donated books. So eventually it was all these details that kind of sparked me as things started coming together.

And the librarians are, they kind of form how characters form. They form, for me at least, they form in the writing. I don’t know anything about them going in. And then gradually they just become people from just like stick figures. They gradually become people and I have no idea if there are real librarians like that, but I’m pretty sure there are real people like that. Librarians are people and in this book, they are always first and foremost people.

When I was a baby romance writer, I actually did an article, at the time Romance Writers America was a huge organization. It’s kind of imploded in recent years, but at the time it was a huge organization and it had a monthly newsletter and sometimes in a newsletter they’ll have like articles about the industry, and I was always interested myself in how romances made their way into libraries, what they decided to acquire, which titles were selected and all that. So I actually spoke to the romance acquisition librarian at my local public library, and I also spoke to another one in Orange County online. I also had, who at that time was librarian later between bookseller, Mr. John Charles, who sent me a bunch of articles that he had on basically other aspects of how genre fiction, make their way into libraries.

So I did have a bit of grounding in that, and of course having so many friends who are writers or being in the business, you meet a lot of librarians through various things. And one of my good friends is actually a librarian at the LA Public Library System. And I remember one time we went to San Diego for something and what she wanted to do when she got there was tour the San Diego major downtown library. We looked at the library from her point of view and what she wanted to see. She wanted to go see like their new makers zone and all those things. And for somebody like me who hardly ever go to the major downtown public library, just because you have to go there and find parking and stuff, it was fascinating to see everything that was in the library besides just books, magazines, and such things you normally find, such tremendous resources.

Steve Thomas: Yes. And very diverse in what we offer these days, try to meet as many needs as we can in the community.

Sherry Thomas: It really is one of the beating hearts of any given community, yeah.

Steve Thomas: And the library is like often kind of a refuge for people too, and that feels like that with the characters coming in, and they make this found family together as a staff and help each other out.

Sherry Thomas: Absolutely. I love a found family, and I feel like, my library, I’m happy anytime I’m there. So I actually don’t know everybody at the library, but I like to imagine that they enjoy going to work as much as I enjoy being there.

Steve Thomas: And did you draw any inspiration from any real library staff or are you just all completely made up characters in your head?

Sherry Thomas: They’re completely made up. But in the sense that, I think I put this somewhere in maybe a letter to the reader or something. What I drew from them was like, just their kindness and dedication and the wonderful feeling I got from interacting with them. I didn’t bring any of their personal history that I knew about into this, because I was like, that’s why it’s fiction. So I want them to be recognizable as librarians, but then also very much characters belonging to this world, this particular world that I built.

Steve Thomas: You mentioned that you learn about the characters as you’re writing them. Is that how you write the entire process of the book?

Sherry Thomas: I used to be a complete pantser, but I have changed to what I call a structured pantser, let’s put it that way. In a sense that nowadays I understand story structure better. So sometimes as I am pantsing along, I’ll stop and say, okay I feel like something major needs to happen here, so I don’t just like, put whatever. No, I feel something needs to happen here. I feel like a secret needs to come unearthed here. Basically you kind of sense where the story could use a kick in the pants. So you don’t just write whatever, but you go, okay, I may not know what needs to happen, but I know the magnitude and the purpose of what needs to happen here.

I don’t normally have that much trouble with characters, but for this book, maybe it’s because it’s my first contemporary mystery. Maybe it’s also because it’s my first like ensemble mystery. The characters took a long time to gel. At one point I was thinking, for the first time in my life I’ll give back my advance and get out from underneath this and see if anybody else would like, the idea will suit them better. But I really enjoy how this book turned out. I really enjoy the comradery that these librarians build over the course of the book.

Steve Thomas: Do you think you’ll write more contemporary mysteries?

Sherry Thomas: First, we’ll have to see how this book does. If it does well, my publisher might probably be interested in seeing what else they might get from me, but I’m also actually now quite interested in the person at my publisher who suggested me this idea. I think I already passed it on through my editor and through my agent that, hey, if they have another good brainstorm like that, let me know! Like, they actually didn’t gimme any directions. It was just like, sometimes I had to go back and look at my contract, say, oh, okay, there’s the one line in the contract about a mystery involving three female librarians. I’m the one who added the gentleman because my favorite librarian is a gentleman, and I want there to be some masculine energy also.

Steve Thomas: Yeah. And you do a really good job with the representation of characters as well. You’ve got characters of various races and sexual orientations so it’s nice to see different types of people and you don’t like, dwell on it and make a big deal out of it, but it’s just like, this is the character. This is the woman, this is her wife. Just move on and that’s great.

Sherry Thomas: Part of it was because I just got past my 50th birthday. So I came of the era when people in the beginning, that was a big deal. But then I remember having known this friend, like probably already 10 years and one time we were four of us girlfriends sitting at the table and I go, I just recently learned another friend of mine is actually queer. I don’t want to presume anything about any of us, but are we, any of us? And I said, “No, I’m just plain hetero,” and two others said, “Yeah, just plain old hetero.” The fourth one said, “Well, I had two girlfriends in college,” and I was like, okay, one, you might have been experimenting. Two, that’s who you are.

And this is person, like a BFF, I’ve known for 10 years and I didn’t know this about her, and right now she’s with a woman. But I sometimes I think to myself, what is it that we don’t know about people? It never came up and why? It’s all those things. So, now I stop assuming. And I feel like every setting is actually much more diverse than you think, especially in a place like Austin, in a relatively safer place like the library. And I feel it is incumbent to present the world as it is.

Steve Thomas: Yeah, and I do think that like you said, the library is a very inclusive place, and so that’s somewhere where people can feel comfortable being themselves no matter how they are. Because even people like Astrid, who is not queer, but she doesn’t feel comfortable being herself either, so she has this kind of accent and story that she presents to people. And it’s sort of this little thing, but I mean, she’s hiding who she really is and a lot of the characters are for various reasons, but it’s not for the reasons of who you love and things like that.

So most of your writing, romance and the Lady Sherlocks have been historical. Is there anything that was surprising to you as you were writing a contemporary or something that was really different to you as you were writing a contemporary book that was more difficult or easier, I guess, than writing the other books?

Sherry Thomas: I wrote probably eight historical romance set in the UK before I ever stepped onto British soil simply because nobody alive now has seen the 1880s, and they have to like Google pretty hard to find mistakes in my research because I Google equally hard. The mistakes I make in my historicals would tend to be like, it’s not what you don’t know, it’s what you know for sure, like things you assume to be true, but you forgot to look it up.

Whereas in contemporary world, you have to be, for example, I actually traveled to Singapore before the text of this book finalized just so that I could take a look at Singapore and have my feet on the ground there just to make sure I’m not completely off in everything I say about it because there are tons of people living in Singapore right now who can point out errors in this. It’s not like, I can’t even say Singapore of a hundred years ago, you don’t know it.

Steve Thomas: And you can do things like you do in this one where you can sprinkle in pop culture things where you can’t do quite as well back then, because you’re talking about you’d like throw off a Game of Thrones reference and a contemporary audience will understand that. But even if you knew the pop culture of the 1880s, like you can’t just throw in a, “Did you see that stage play?”

Sherry Thomas: Right, exactly. Because you could say it, but people still won’t know what it is, especially if it’s like very specific to that era.

Steve Thomas: I was talking to another librarian during a webinar recently of the strange thing of things like that go into the public domain, like Sherlock Holmes. The Sherlock Holmes stories themselves by Doyle are contemporary because he wrote them in the time but now when you’re writing things like Lady Sherlock or people are writing Sherlock Holmes stories now, now it’s historical fiction, but it’s still the same thing. Now you can kind of comment on the original stories in a different way.

Sherry Thomas: Correct, correct, yeah. And see what he addressed, what he never addressed. Like for example, all my friends, not all my friends, but a couple, like my critique partner, kept saying “You need to write about Jack the Ripper!” And I actually very much dislike real crime. Like, I like writing mysteries for the puzzle aspect of it, not because I enjoy true crime. So I just pointed out Sherlock Holmes never said a thing about… he was writing during that era. He never said anything about Jack Ripper. So I don’t need to either.

Steve Thomas: You mentioned that you read sci-fi a lot. Have you ever thought about writing a science fiction story?

Sherry Thomas: I do love sci-fi and right now there is such a thing called self-publishing. I have actually published a sci-fi romance that’s, like, the faraway galaxy, that sort of setting. And by the time this podcast comes out, it’ll all be public. But I mean, Hazel would organize a dystopian romance collection. And mine is pretty much a speculative, like 800 years in the future. But yeah, sci-fi is the only arena that I love to read, that I haven’t really done much about. Maybe in the future. I would love to.

Steve Thomas: You’ve talked about Sherlock Holmes stories, but are there any other stories, early in your life that you read that made you really want to be a reader or a writer?

Sherry Thomas: Yes, but this book will not be familiar to most Western audiences. The book in question is, let’s see, I think the English translation will be the Condor Heroes. It is a epic wuxia work. Wuxia means, like, the martial arts epics. So like Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon will be considered  wuxia in Chinese. And so this work is, you can think of it as Lord of the Rings of the Sinosphere. Probably even greater penetration than Lord of the Rings because at one point there’s like no one among my generation who didn’t know about it or who hasn’t read about it or seen the TV adaptation and like everybody tried to adapt it for TV every 10 years. So it is that sort of like evergreen cultural touchstone and it is not the book that made me love reading or maybe start writing, but it is one of those books you read when you’re young, that kind of imprint on you, like what is love, what is loyalty, and what is like really fun in books, a sort of swashbuckling adventure you go on.

Steve Thomas: Yeah. Well that’s great. Have they ever tried to adapt it, like in English, in America or anywhere?

Sherry Thomas: Because story of it is so quintessential Chinese and it’s also tied very much to Chinese history. It’s part of the historical background is the Song Dynasty, end of the Song Dynasty against the Mongol invasion from Genghis Khan, whose descendants would later go on to rule China in the Ming Dynasty. No, in the Yuan Dynasty. So that is very much a Chinese story. But they did have a movie adaptation recently and I think the movie was available in US, in theaters like maybe this past February or something like that? So they’re still doing it. They’re still adapting it like 70 years after it’s been published.

Steve Thomas: Lord of the Rings probably is a good comparison there ’cause they keep cranking out Lord of the Ring series and movies and everything.

Sherry Thomas: It’s that kind of cultural touchstone, yeah.

Steve Thomas: And that one is also tied very much to British history.

Sherry Thomas: And interestingly enough just this morning, for some reason I was thinking that Tolkein is actually descendant of immigrants because I think his grandfather or something moved to Britain from Germany and he became Uber British. He, a descendant of an immigrant, wrote the quintessential book of English mythology, basically.

Steve Thomas: The power of immigrants is great. So Sherry, thank you so much for coming on the podcast. I really loved reading the book. I know any librarians, if you’re listening to this, I promise you’ll love this book. If you like mysteries, you will love this book as well.

Sherry Thomas: Oh, thank you so much.

Steve Thomas: I really appreciate you coming on and good luck with the book when it comes out in the fall.

Sherry Thomas: Oh, thank you very much and it’s been a pleasure to be here. Thank you for being such a great interviewer and listener.

***

Rebecca Vnuk: Hello and welcome to the Circ Desk. I’m Rebecca Vnuk, the Executive Director of Library Reads!

April Mazza: And I’m April Mazza. I work at NoveList. I do product trainings and continuing education through our Learn with Novelist platform, and I’m super happy to chat about books today.

Rebecca Vnuk: Hanging out at the Circ Desk! Yay! So today we have read alikes for you all for The Librarians by Sherry Thomas. And I wanted to make a plug that this book comes out in September, so you will have time to vote for it if you are so inclined for the Library Reads list. The votes on that will be due by August 1st, 2025.

So when I was looking at The Librarians and you just heard the interview with Sherry, we’ve got the librarians, amateur sleuths, and I was like, oh my gosh, I can find like a hundred books on the Library Reads list because I feel like anytime there is a book that has librarian characters or bookseller characters or big readers, it always ends up hitting the list. And I’m not surprised by that at all, so the trouble here was trying to figure out which ones would I like to pick to read alike?

So the first one I picked was the Village Library Demon Hunting Society by C.M. Waggoner, and that came out in September of 2024. So it’s on our September 2024 Library Reads list, and the annotation is, “Small town librarian Sherry Pinkwhistle doesn’t find it strange that she’s always on hand to solve local murders, but when a loved one is targeted, she realizes that a demon may be possessing the town. This cozy paranormal mystery is full of likable, quirky characters.” And that comes from Kristin Skinner at the Flat River Community Library in Michigan. And I chose this one as a read alike, because obviously “librarian sleuths”, could that be anymore perfect? But I also thought, although this one, it’s got the paranormal elements to it, demons, all of that, which we don’t have in The Librarians, but I thought that would not be a bad mix for someone who is interested in that kind of cozy mystery. We’re gonna give you a little dash of spice with some paranormal there. The quirky characters also I thought would be a good fit. So that’s the first read alike from the Library Reads list.

Then the second one is not quite as on the nose and it’s a little different spin. Instead of having the librarians be the sleuth here, we have one librarian is sort of sleuthing, but the other librarian is actually a bad guy, which I just couldn’t resist that. And this pick is, How Can I Help You? by Laura Sims, and that came out in July of 2023. So that’s our July 2023 list, and the annotation for that is, “Margo moved to Carlyle two years ago to get a fresh start as a librarian. Her day is filled with helping patrons, but then a new employee is hired, and Margo feels unsettled by the curious Patricia. When a patron is discovered dead in the library bathroom, Margo’s carefully crafted, mundane life starts to unravel and may pull Patricia into a tangle of terrifying secrets.” And that one is from Priscilla Garvin from the Cecil County Public Library in Maryland. And I will say on that one, it’s not quite the kind of read alike you might’ve expected because it’s not cozy, and it’s not a group of amateur sleuths. But I did feel like, okay, we have a weird mystery set in a library. I thought that would be good enough. Also, I wanted to choose it because I have read it personally and really enjoyed it. It’s got a crazy ending, which I absolutely adore, weird twists that you know are coming because there’s a sense of dread, but you don’t know what’s really gonna happen. So I give that a personal recommendation.

So April, how about you? What did you come up with for read alikes?

April Mazza: Well, like you immediately, I just thought of all the mysteries and thrillers that take place in libraries or have the, like you said, the amateur sleuth theme to them, and there are so many.

But one that I read not too long ago that I really liked is called The Woman in the Library by Sulari Gentil. Part of what appealed for me is that it takes place in the Boston Public Library, and I live near Boston. So it was really fun to read and like really picture the environment. And what happens is there is a murder that happens in the library. There are four strangers sitting in the reading room together. They don’t know each other. They’re just sitting at a table together. But this scream that comes from within the library gets them talking and gets them interested in what’s going on. And it really just kind of escalates from there. Like the books you mentioned, there’s twists and there’s secrets, just like in The Librarians. These four people also band together so I think that’s another thing that’s similar to The Librarians is that people come together to solve the mystery, although all along the way, you don’t really know, like, who can you trust? Who’s in on it?

Rebecca Vnuk: Trust no one!

April Mazza:Yeah, exactly.

And then the other one is a little bit different but I think the theme here is sort of like a workplace mystery. So I chose The Other Black Girl by Zakiya Dalila Harris, and this came out a few years ago, but it’s become a series on Hulu. Some people might be familiar with that too. So this takes place in a publishing company in New York City where the main character, Nella, is the only black employee, and she feels very isolated at work. She has trouble getting ahead. So first she’s really excited when another woman of color starts working there. Her name’s Hazel. It looks like they might even become friends, but then Hazel, she becomes the office darling. She’s getting all this praise. She has all these achievements that Nella never got to, no matter how hard she worked. She just could never seem to get ahead, and so it’s really causing conflict. Then Nella starts receiving some secret messages, and this also happens to one of the characters in The Librarians, like these sort of threatening notes, “I’m gonna expose your secret.” And then strange things start to happen both at the office and at home.

I would say all these books also have like that suspenseful element. They’re fast-paced. This one also had some dark humor, which I think The Librarians has. It’s sort of like in the self-reflection of the characters. So while the mystery drives the story, for me, these kinds of books, it’s always the characters that I get attached to. So I would say for these picks as well, you really kind of get invested in them.

Rebecca Vnuk: That is a great point. I think one of the reader’s advisory type things that’s interesting on this one is I love how you were able to extrapolate like, okay, let’s go with that workplace mystery, and I always find it funny because my experience as an adult in the working world is all libraries. And I often stop and think, do other careers, have some of the quirks that we have? Like, does an architecture firm deal with the same kind of stuff that libraries do and so I do find it really fun that like, there is this plethora of books out there related to book people, like librarians. It’s not hard. Toss a rock and you’ll hit a library mystery, right? Like it’s just kind of fun to have that abundance. So I love that you not only were able to find a very similar workplace mystery, but also that it was book adjacent, which I love, in the publishing world so that’s great.

April Mazza: Yeah. Well now I wanna look up and see if there are architecture mystery stories!

Rebecca Vnuk: We need an architecture firm mystery! Like, pharmaceutical rep mystery!

April Mazza: Oh, I bet. Those are true stories.

Rebecca Vnuk: I’ve got a story idea there, right?

All right. Well, thank you so much April for spending time at Circ Desk, and we will check you all out later!