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Here we go. It was a good clap. Proud of my clap over here.

We're going to spend some time talking about Kelly Links, The Book of Love, The Laudid Short Story Writer,

acclaimed short story writer, the much hyped, quasi-door stop of a fantasy novel that has been, come, was hyped and packaged as the first big sort of crossover title

possibility of the

of the year. It's packaged as what I would say,

it's pretty straight literary fiction, commercial

literary fiction from a giant house.

It's from the giantest of houses in the form of Random House.

And I think we had talked about this as being as a chance, an opportunity, a possibility

of link breaking out to the novelist's domain which is bigger than the short story

writer's domain. I think I've read two Kelly Link short story collections the last two.

What was your relationship to Kelly Link before we get into the book?

Yeah, I've read two, maybe three of the short story collections and she comes up in

like anthologies and other kinds of things and it's like I will read Kelly Link when you put Kelly Link in front of me. I really like her vibe. I think she's great as a short story writer and has an ability to like take something that's pretty weird and give you a fully formed experience of it in a short story.

She doesn't, like it historically has not needed like the space of a 300 page novel or a 628 page one to be like here is a weird thing. What would it be like to live inside with that weird concept or whatever and does

marry literary writing with fantasy elements which makes the marketing of this

book really interesting like are you trying to reach fantasy? Are you trying to sell it just as like more literary readers than you get for a short story collection? Yeah, that's my relationship to her. I have liked her short story collections. I was a little

worried about 628 pages but I'm going to give Kelly Link a shot. I had high hopes.

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