Smiles and Joys and Hope
The Body, Brain, and Books: Eleven Questions with writer Evelyn Skye
Welcome to another edition of The Body, Brain, & Books. If you enjoy reading these quick, insightful interviews brimming with wisdom and hope, please subscribe to Beyond!
Evelyn’s work has been published worldwide and translated into more than fifteen languages. Prior to becoming an author, she was an attorney at renowned international law firms Latham & Watkins and Weil, Gotshal & Manges, where she specialized in mergers and acquisitions and intellectual property licensing. Evelyn is a graduate of Stanford University and Harvard Law School. She lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with her husband and daughter.
What are you reading now?
I run a book club at
here on Substack, so I’m always reading whatever our current book pick is. This book club is one of my favorite things, because it’s a bunch of smart and very kind people who love books and want to understand what makes the stories tick and why they feel the way they do about these books. We meet online every month and discuss our book pick through a writer’s lens—did a subplot work, and if not, why? How come some readers hate Character A and others love him, but everyone universally adores Character B? It’s just such a great group, and new writers and readers are always joining us, so yeah, that’s what I’m reading.I also read about one novel a week in addition to the CREATIVE.INSPIRED.HAPPY book pick. Right now, the book on my nightstand is In the Hour of Crows by Dana Elmendorf. It just came out on June 4th and it’s one of my favorites of the year. ThinkWhere the Crawdads Sing meets Practical Magic.
What are your most beloved books from your youth? Did you ever hide any from your parents?
I hid Shōgun from my parents. There are some pretty graphic, uh, intimate scenes in it. (Why am I being so squeamish? I’m 45 and I’m still worried my parents are going to read this interview and discover that I read the book, haha). Anyway, I had totally forgotten about this until recently, when I saw that Shōgun is now a TV show on Hulu.
I also loved The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar by Roald Dahl. That was also made into a film recently, starring Benedict Cumberbatch. I haven’t watched it yet. I get so nervous about books being put on the screen, which is funny since I did a literary/film collaboration with Netflix!
What’s your favorite book to reread? Any that helped you through a dark time?
I love Karen Maezen Miller’s books. She is a Zen Buddhist priestess who writes about ordinary life, because she doesn’t live in a monastery; she lives in a normal house, just like the rest of us, and she has to do laundry and tend to the garden and be a mother and wife. Her insights always bring me such peace.
When I was mother to a toddler, I read Momma Zen—Walking the Crooked Path of Motherhood. It was so calming to hear from someone who was going through the exact same things but who wasn’t telling me all the 10 billion things I ought to be doing. Instead, Miller’s wisdom is more along the lines of, Don’t worry. Your child is already who she is, and she will become who she is going to become. You cannot do anything about it, so stop trying so hard to control everything. Maybe that’s not the kind of thing every mother likes to hear, but it gave me permission to relax, which is what I needed.
I don’t remember exactly which of her books it was in—maybe Hand Wash Cold?—but she also said something about how all the items on your to do list will stop when you’re dead. Until then, they keep coming, and that is a wonderful reminder that you are still alive, and that you get to enjoy this life you’ve been given. I love how she can take a very ordinary fact of life and turn it on its head to show you that actually, the parts of life you loathe are the parts that you can appreciate, if looked at in a different light.
What’s an article of clothing that makes you feel most like you?
Lunya silk pajamas. They’re so soft and beautiful, and they were such a splurge that I feel special every time I wear them. I have the silk cami pant set in dark blue and they’re my favorite of all the clothing I own.
Best of all, they’re machine washable, because I’m the type of person who really just wants to chuck everything into the laundry machine, even the clothes that say Dry Clean Only.
What’s the best piece of wisdom you've encountered recently?
Eat at least 30 types of plants each week. I’ve had issues with my digestion all my life. But then I took a gut microbiome masterclass and learned so much! And the part that really changed my life was making the goal to eat 30 kinds of plants—fruits, veggies, nuts, or seeds—each week.
My husband, Tom, and I keep little post-its on the kitchen island now, and it’s like a game to tally and try to rack up more “plant points” than the other person. We almost always hit 30; some weeks, we even get to 40. We’re not vegan or vegetarian, but we just try to load up on plant points now.
If you were ever to come visit and stay with us, you’d probably hear us bragging (half-jokingly, half-seriously) to each other, “Oh my god, today was awesome, I ate sooo many plants!”
Tell me about any special relationship you’ve had with an animal, domestic or wild?
I haven’t had pets for much of my life, so I’m going to cheat and tell you about Tom’s cat when he was a kid. What you need to know first is that Tom is allergic to cats. But he loved Pepper so much, he slept with Pepper in his bed every night. He loved the feeling of Pepper sitting on his chest, purring, that humming vibration echoing through both of them at the same time. Sometimes, he would wake up in the morning and Pepper would be sleeping on his face. So many allergies… but that’s love, you know? It was worth it.
What's one thing you are happy worked out differently than you expected?
The pace of my career. When I started writing, I wished so badly to be an overnight mega-star. I know a lot of artists are like that. I think it’s because we spend so much time toiling unknown and unpaid by ourselves, we fantasize about the day when our work is finally seen, and the world gasps at our talent and wonders, How could we have been ignoring this genius for so long?
But of course, that’s not what happened. My debut novel came out to quite a lot of success, but the next series didn’t do as well. There were some other books that followed that didn’t meet sales expectations. But then I wrote a novel for Netflix and that really blew up.
So what I’m grateful for is that I had those ups-and-downs, because then I could really appreciate success when it arrived with the Netflix book. And I’m also prepared for future books not being as high-profile, because I understand now that an artist’s career is always going to have peaks and valleys and plenty of flat terrain. If I had been a superstar right out the gate, I don’t think I would have had the same perspective.
Singing in the shower or dancing in the kitchen? Or another favorite way your body expresses itself?
Dancing in the kitchen! I once applied to be on a reality TV show (The Mole 2), and my video interview included a clip of me being a goofball and singing into a wooden spoon while dancing in the kitchen. (This happened when I was in law school. I can’t even tell you how badly I wanted to not be an attorney. I spent all of law school trying to figure out how not to become one, including applying to reality TV shows.)
What are your hopes for yourself?
I hope that I make the world a better place, in whatever small ways I can. As a writer, my mission is to write stories that uplift, that bring more smiles and joys and hope into the lives of my readers.
Here on Substack, I just announced two Scholarships for Aspiring Writers: $1,000 for Mid-Career Adults and $2,500 for a High School senior. I've also got a video podcast where I interview incredibly successful writers on how they rose from obscurity to build fulfilling careers. It's a really inspirational series, as well as another way for me to give back to the community of readers and writers who have shown me so much support.
It’s a blessing to get to be an artist for a living, so I aim to offer something positive back in return. I hope it’s working.
What’s a kindness that changed your life?
When I was little, I was very finicky. I was the kind of kid who would throw a tantrum if my mom didn’t fold my blanket perfectly corner to corner, with not a millimeter misaligned. Which meant I didn’t smile much, you know?
But there was a lady who worked the register at our Stater Bros. grocery store, and she was always smiling. My mom pointed her out each time we went to the store, about how she made everyone’s day with her smile.
Because my mom admired her, and I admired my mom, I started to give smiling a try. And now I’m the kind of person who smiles all the time, and I think I’m happier for it.
I don’t know the Stater Bros. cashier’s name and my mom doesn’t remember either because it was forty-odd years ago, but I’m thankful for her. Her smiles were a simple kindness that changed my life, and she probably didn’t even know it.
What’s a guiding force in your life?
Love hard and live fully, right now. After Tom nearly died and was saved by a double lung transplant, we learned to value every single day of life much more than we had before. Every moment you have is precious, so tell your loved ones how much you care, make time for your friends, do the things you’ve always wanted to do but were maybe too scared to try. Lead with kindness and have no regrets, and your life will be so rich and full of love.
If you enjoyed Evelyn’s questionnaire, you may also like Rene Denfeld’s:
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I love hearing about people’s weird food habits and this 30 plants thing was totally new to me!
What a lovely way to start the day. Thanks Jane! You inspire me every time.