Welcome to Literary Friction. I'm Carrie Plitt here as always with my co-host Octavia Bright. Hi, Octavia. How are you?

Hi, Carrie. I'm okay. I am gearing up for a busy couple of months and, you know, it's that kind of back to school time of year.

And I'm trying to remember all the things I love about autumn because I have started to feel that familiar anxiety that I always get when the seasons change.

And I have to face the fact that summer is over.

And there are a lot of things I love about autumn, like clear blue skies

and a crisp chill in the air can be fabulous. I love a big scarf, all these things. But in my hearts

of hearts, I will forever be a summer baby. And I've given up trying to pretend otherwise. So yeah,

this time of year is always a little bit mournful for me for that very reason. So I'm just,

I'm trying to get over myself a little bit, basically. for me for that very reason. So I'm just, I'm trying to get over myself

a little bit, basically. How about you? Well, I'm really there with you. I, I share some of your autumn anxiety. And it's funny because, you know, I grew up in New England, which is like autumn country. And I used to love going back to school. And I, and I think I loved it because of that fresh start that you get at the

beginning of every year. But the thing about being an adult in a job is that like your work never

really goes away. And and maybe it like subsides a little bit in the summer. But when you come back

in autumn, it's just like all there and more stressful. And I find that very confronting every year.

So maybe we need to go on some kind of like autumnal walk with pumpkin spice lattes and

sweaters and just really embrace things. I'm down for that. We'll make it happen.

Great. On to the show. Today we are delighted to welcome the writer Gabriel Zemin to literary friction.

Gabriel's latest novel, Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow, is an engrossing and moving story of a multi-decade creative partnership between two video game designers, Sadie and Sam.

It's a really wonderful engrossing novel, and a lot of it is about games. So we thought

it was only appropriate to make our theme today playing games. We're going to explore how games

function in books like The Queen's Gambit or Mansfield Park, but we also wanted to talk about

things like choose your own adventure novels, the unique art of a game,

and all the different ways that you can play games, especially in relationships.

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