Hi, I'm Zivie Owens, and you're listening to the award-winning podcast.

Moms don't have time to read books. Thanks so much for listening to my podcast. If you like what you hear,

please follow me on Instagram at Zibby Owens and also at Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books. Thanks so much for listening. Enjoy it.

I am so excited to be partnering with Rockets of Awesome, which is one of my favorite places to get

kids closed. They had a pop up in New York last year and we would go and jump in the ball pit and buy

clothes and it was great. And now they're offering listeners 20% off of

their Rockets of Awesome box, which comes four times a year with like a magical box of clothes.

It'll come in surprise and delight your kids because what's more fun than opening up a box

of clothes? Well, I mean, I guess maybe a box of toys. But anyway, Rockets of Awesome is amazing. Go to Rockets of Awesome.com slash books. And the discount code is Books, and it will be live August 1st. And I hope you enjoy it. And I'll be doing the box right along with you. I had such a nice time talking to Caroline Levitt. She is a New York Times best-selling author of 12 novels, many of which have been

on the best of the year lists. She's also the co-founder of a Mighty Blaze, which is the

initiative that helps authors and bookstores, and just was formed during the pandemic, and it's

been written up in the Boston Globe, The Washington Post, Box, NPR, and more. Her 12th book, With or Without You,

is just coming out and received a starred review from Kirkus and raves from many other

publications. As a screenwriter, Caroline was a Nickelodeon screenwriting fellow finalist,

a first-round finalist in the Sundance Screenwriting Lab competition for her script of Is This Tomorrow,

and has many, many other prizes from the National Magazine Award and an honorable mention

for the Goldenberg Prize for Fiction from the Bellevue Literary of View. I mean, she's just

amazing. She's appeared in the Today Show and many other TV shows and all the rest. She lives in Hoboken, New Jersey, which she calls New York City's unofficial Sixthboro with her husband and has an acting student son named Max. I should also say she founded A Mighty Blaze with author Jenna Bloom. Welcome, Caroline. Thank you so much for coming on moms. Don't have time to read books.

Thank you for having me. I'm really excited. I love your podcasts. Oh, I feel like I've been just like so in awe of what you've been doing since the pandemic started with a mighty blaze and all this stuff, how you're helping out all these authors. And I just like love watching. You know, I've been trying to help as well get, I like, I'm so inspired by what you guys are doing. Thank you so much. I just, you know, I,

I grew up being the Pollyanna of my family where if something was wrong, I was always determined

like, no, no, I'm going to fix it. And when the pandemic happened, I had a big event. My first

event was at this library association in Texas. And they canceled it. And I remember walking around the house saying, no, nothing is canceled. Nothing is canceled. So I put the word out to authors that, you know, don't worry, nothing is canceled. I'm going to put all of you on my blog. Just make me a short video. Shout out another writer. Shout out an indie bookstore. And all of a sudden I was inundated. And I got more and more inundated. And then the Washington Post called me. And I said, I don't know what I'm doing. I'm just sort of doing it. And then lucky for me, Jenne Blum, me up and said, do you want to partner with me on this?

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