Alex met Sam at nursery. They were first loves. They built forts together, shared sandwiches in high school and were each other's first kiss.

They were the dream couple until Sam got into EDM music.

While Alex enjoyed folk, first loves are kind of like your current account. If they aren't working for you anymore,

maybe it's time to switch with the current account switch service.

I have other writers that say, what are you doing? I'd say I'm not writing right now. They do not get it.

If you're a writer, you have to write all the time. You have to be driven. It has to be your cross to bear.

That has never been my approach to writing. And it's still isn't.

Welcome back to working. I'm Isaac Butler and I'm June Thomas.

June, it is as nice as always to see you in a postage stamp sized box on Zoom on my laptop.

Whose voice did we hear at the top of the show?

That voice belonged to Ellen Hart, who is a mystery writer. She has written a couple of long running series,

but her most famous and most long running are the Jane Lawless mysteries.

She wrote 27 books in that series.

27, my god. That's a sous-graft in alphabet and a random Spanish language thrown in there or something.

For people who don't know the Jane Lawless series, what can you tell us about it?

So they're cozy mysteries and Jane Lawless is a restaurateur who lives to solve mysteries.

So an amateur sleuth, she has a larger than life best friend, Cordelia Thorn, who is amazing, provides comic relief.

Cordelia is involved in the world of theatre, so the books often have food and theatrical elements.

And Jane and Cordelia are lesbians, though they live very integrated lives with lots of straight friends and family members in their lives.

And over the years, Jane got more serious about the sleuth thing, she became a private investigator,

and as is apparently the law, eventually she worked on a true crime podcast.

But she always kept her restaurant open all the time.

...