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Welcome to the bookcase. If it's the bookcase, it must be Thursday, because we know you listen on the day we drop. I am Kate.

Drop is a word they use in podcast land. It's strange to me. We publish. We, I don't know, we have a new episode every Thursday, but in podcast land, they say we drop on Thursday.

I think that extends to other mediums as well.

Like when pop artists have a new album, they say it's going to drop on this date.

Like, I think it's just kind of a cool way of saying something's coming.

I just feel like it's gravity taking its hold and pulling us down.

But anyway...

That's probably our age.

Yeah. Anyway, we have with us again this week, Jay Ryan Straddle.

If you have been listening over past weeks, you know that Jay Ryan took a big leap of faith

and decided that he would cooperate with us and be our writer in

residence. And we have been talking to him, I guess, for more than a year now, Kate, every once in a while,

as he produces his fourth novel. We started when he was just starting. And now, well, now I guess,

Kate, he's getting pretty close to completion. Yeah, I'm really

excited about it. I first met Jay Ryan when I was in college and we've been very, very, very good

friends ever since. And I don't know. I like to think I was one of the first readers of his first

book, Kitchens of the Great Midwest. And I remember texting him after I finished. I read it

...