Girlfriends, episode number 113. Living a writer's life with author Amy Schistler.

Hello and welcome to Girlfriends. I'm Danielle Bean. I'm a wife and a mom and I'm on a mission to help you know your worth as a woman so you can find peace, balance, and joy in family living.

This week we're talking with fiction author Amy Schistler about the joys and challenges of living a writer's life

and how she writes romance novels without all the ick. Can't wait to share our conversation.

Let's get going.

Hey, girlfriends. How are you? Greetings from L.A. I told you I was coming out for the Los Angeles Religious Ed Congress, and it just finished up yesterday. It's early, early here, local time anyway, early in the morning on Monday.

And I'm going to be making my way home today.

I'm so glad this has felt like a really long trip.

But it's been a great trip.

You can probably hear in my voice that I have talked to a lot of people this weekend.

It was wonderful, though. This was the first time ever, even though Lisa Hendy has been a representative at L.A. Congress for many years and a speaker at L.A. Congress for many years, including this year, she never before has had her own booth space for Catholic mom at L.A. Congress.

And this year, thanks to it belonging to part of the family at Holy Cross Family Ministries,

we did have a booth set up just for Catholic Mom with our own Catholic Mom swag.

We had some tea we were giving out and information about the website and the upcoming podcast.

And it was just a thrill to meet so many people.

I think fully half the people that came up to talk to me about Catholic mom were familiar with the site and told me they used it all the time. And then the other half were people who had never heard of it. So I think this was a really great opportunity to introduce new people to all the great stuff going on at Catholic mom.com and all the things

we're looking forward to in the future. So overall, a great success. I'm feeling a little tired,

a little rough around the edges from being on not really adjusting ever to West Coast time while

I was here, which usually is my strategy when I've come out here before, is just don't

bother adjusting. And I get a lot of work done in the mornings when I'm up before anybody else.

But it's felt hard, I think, because I was here extra days this time.

Funny thing, though, I've, you know, Dan at home, he's been, you know, connecting with me

...