Hey, welcome to Latina to Latina.

On this podcast, I talk to Latinos about their success, their struggles, and what it takes to be truly great.

Some friendships, like romance, have the feeling of fate. That is the crux of Francis de Pontes' Peebles' new book, The Air You Breathe,

a story of intense female friendship, ambition, and envy.

Literally all of my favorite topics.

Frances's book tour brought her to Miami,

which gave us a chance to talk in person

about what it takes to birth a work of fiction.

Music about what it takes to birth a work of fiction. Thanks for being here.

Thank you for having me.

I appreciate it.

What is your first memory of knowing that you wanted to be a writer?

You know, I've always been a big reader, so I have a lot of

early memories of books and how special they were to me and still are to me. And the first,

I mean, I remember the first book that I checked out of the library. What was it? And it was this

strange children's book about Nellie Bly, who's this muck-raking reporter in the 1880s.

She was one of the first female journalists, and she pretended to be insane, checked herself into a madhouse, and then stayed there for 10 days to document like the abuses to

people with mental health issues at the time. And it was a huge like discovery for people that,

you know, patients were being mistreated. And obviously this is not, I don't think a child's book

would be written about this today. The illustrations were pretty crazy. But I think that's why

I remember it. And I loved it so much. Like, I wanted to steal it from the library, and I didn't.

But I just remember feeling like, oh, my God, like this woman existed and she did this, and

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