The art of the heart with Margaret Owen

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Adam Sockel:

You are listening to Passions & Prologues, a literary podcast. For each week, I interview an author about a thing they love and how it inspires their work.

I'm your host Adam Sockel, and today's guest is Margaret Owen. She is the best-selling author of the brand-new, Young Adult book, Little Thieves.

You may also know Margaret from her Merciful Crow duology that came out a few years back. She writes the just most wonderful fantasy stories. Merciful Crows had this incredible magic system and this very complex world building that I just adored. And Little Thieves is very much the same way.

Again, I mentioned it debuted as a bestselling title, and it is so well deserved.

I've had the chance to interview Margaret a few times in the past. It was so great to catch up with her for this conversation. She is one of these people who just is so engaging and captivating, and listening to her talk about how she breaks down her story is so interesting.

The topic that we discuss is art in general at first, but then more specifically the types of art that she got into, first as a child, then as a young adult. And now as a full blown adult who is writing books and also doing the illustrations for her own stories. It is crazy how talented she is.

It's also just fun to hear someone talk about their past in a way where she's diving into these little random moments that she remembered as we were having a conversation about things she likely hadn't thought about in a long, long time.

So, I think you're really going to enjoy this conversation. And again, if you're a fan of fantasy novels at all, I highly, highly recommend checking out Little Thieves. And if you haven't yet read The Merciful Crow duology yet, check out both those books as well.

As we are in summer, I am thinking about travel and restaurants and all that good stuff. And so, I want to give you a book recommendation that I am just about finished with. It's called A Waiter in Paris. It's by Edward Chisholm, and it is a non-fiction memoir about his experience as a literally waiter in Paris.

He is from England originally. He goes to Paris. He is learning French, and he kind of climbs the ranks through what it's like to work in a Parisian restaurant versus a runner. And then how to learn all about the wine and then into the specific stories about what it was like being a waiter in a very, very popular restaurant in France.

I think you're really, really going to like A Waiter in Paris if you're a fan of memoirs, food travel, or any of the like.

If you would ever like any more book recommendations from me, you can always send me an email at [email protected]. I'm happy to answer any questions you have there.

Also, I give a random bookshop.org gift card once a month to a listener who sends me the things that they are passionate about. Love to hear all the things that you guys enjoy in your daily lives too.

And you can also find me on Instagram and TikTok at Passions & Prologues where I am sharing book recommendations and all sorts of things all the time.

Okay. That is all of the housekeeping. I am so excited for you guys to hear this conversation with Margaret Owen, author of Little Thieves, on Passions & Prologues.

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Okay Margaret, what is something that you are super passionate about that we're going to be discussing today?

Margaret Owen:

So, this is going to be very broad, but art I think, is the way to go.

Adam Sockel:

Art is pretty broad, but we can make it work. So, let's start at the beginning. What was your kind of first experience with art when you were younger? Kind of what made you travel down that path as a kid.

Margaret Owen:

So, my dad is a graphic designer, and one thing that he did that was super nerdy and very Portlandian was he and his friend had basically me and his friend's daughter write and illustrate a Mother's Day book. When I was like, five. So, these are top notch quality, these illustrations should be in the louvre. There's a lot of creative use of ovals, let's just-

Adam Sockel:

Uh-huh.

Margaret Owen:

But yeah, his friend's daughter did the writing, and I did the art. And I think at some point that's when my parents were like, “Oh, she's an artist.” Which is a leap I never would've made looking back at my previous work.

However yeah, no, I think I was just always the kid who was like, here's a picture of a princess. Fill in the colors. If you gave me a piece of paper and some crayons, I would be down for the count for hours. So, it was good. And then I just never stopped.

Adam Sockel:

So, weirdly you are mentioning a book, I have this memory because I think my mom found it relatively recently, we were looking at it. And when I was in, I want to say fifth grade, so a little bit older obviously, but we had to … there was this competition in our community where you wrote a story and then same thing you kind of illustrated it.

But we used clip art.

Margaret Owen:

Yes.

Adam Sockel:

And it was like-

Margaret Owen:

Oh, my God.

Adam Sockel:

Yeah. And it was like you wrote the story and the winners got to miss a day of school because you went to the local community college where in the auditorium, they had these awards for it.

And my mom found — there's something about a cowboy. My mom listens to this, so she's definitely going to remember and let me know what it is.

But it was like, looking back on that, I can see like, okay, I definitely always loved writing, but it is quite obvious that I was not an artiste. So, that was like the extent where it was like maybe we give Adam books. Maybe he doesn't want to color anything.

But from that moment on, you said, crayons and paper and stuff could entertain you for hours. But so, what path did that take you down? How did art follow you as you became a younger adult or an older child?

Margaret Owen:

You're right. It's funny, I had a another recalled memory as you were talking about, so in — oh, I think that they started in first grade, second grade, what they would do is have an adult volunteer come to the classroom and sit down with kids and type up a story that a kid would tell them and they'd break it into different pages and then ring bind it into a blank book that you then illustrated.

And I have like a whole raft. There's a first edition Margaret Owen that is like almost exclusively various rip-offs of horse books that I was reading at the moment.

I think there's one to where like Black Beauty makes a very unlicensed cameo. There's a whole story where … and I think this thread resurfaces in my work a lot of a girl saving her best friend, but there's a entire page that's very much like, but I don't like him like that. Okay. We're just friends. Because at the age of seven, that was very important to stress.

Adam Sockel:

I don't want to cut you off, but I love that at the age of seven, you were already inserting the slightly tropey will they, won't they, which everyone loves in a fantasy.

Margaret Owen:

Right. And I was like, solidly will not, will not. It was great. But yeah, the art is a little bit challenging in those. But I think, this idea that or at a young age having this thing where I was like, “I made a book. I made a book.” And of course, it's a floppy flimpy little thing. But it's still something that I was able to make and hold onto. And that was really important.

And the other thing that was kind of tricky about that is that I didn't get diagnosed with … so, I'm extremely nearsighted and they didn't find that out until I was eight, maybe. I didn't get glasses until I was like, I want to say a second grade.

And I learned to read before I could actually see the letters, from a distance at least. And you would think that my parents would've figured it out when I was like holding my book an inch from my face.

Adam Sockel:

Yeah.

Margaret Owen:

And yet, as my little bit of shade there. But yeah, I think that informed how I approached art because a lot of stuff that I think about is the bigger shapes, bright colors, big shapes. That's how the world looked to me as a kid.

And in retrospect, it makes sense to me that I gravitated more towards art first than writing simply because I wasn't able to read that much, but I was able to see what I was drawing, even if it was two inches from my face.

Adam Sockel:

Yeah. That does make a lot of sense. And it's interesting how there's so many examples where people talk about the way you see the world or the way you take in music when you're a certain age is like the music you always think is the best.

And the most basic version I always think of is everyone always talks about the Saturday Night Live cast that was when you were like 12-years-old was always everyone's favorite.

But it's true for I love how you're saying it about art. I remember when I was really, really young watching The Mummy with my parent, like the Brendan Fraser Mummy. And it just-

Margaret Owen:

Naturally.

Adam Sockel:

Naturally, of course. Yeah. I actually have a — similar that says the 1990 whatever, a cinematic classic, The Mummy is perfect.

But because of that, that particular movie has colored if I see a book that is somewhat based in Egypt, or I'm drawn to those types of stories. So, it makes perfect sense. And you say like for the first several years of your life when your brain was formulating the types of stories or things you like to interact with, you were drawn to, like you said, these big shapes, these things that you could see, because you really couldn't see the rest of the world.

Margaret Owen:

Right. And one of the things that I think looking back on that also sort of came through was that once I actually had glasses, I was just like, “This is what the world looks like?” And I was like, “Mom, I can read the signs. Are those needles on the trees?” Like pine needles because I was growing up in Portland and this just Christmas tree capital of the world.

But I would be like, I could actually see the leaves on the trees. I can see all these things that were only available to me if I had like my face right up, really close to them before.

And I have a memory of being I want to say six, maybe five, and walking in the backyard and almost walking directly into this massive spider web because I didn't even see it. I didn't even see the spider in the … but it was like The Legend of Zelda spider, I swear to God.

And I didn't even see it until I was six inches away. And then I was like, “I'm done with spiders for the rest of my life.”

But having access all of a sudden to this massive level of detail in the world I think it gave me almost an appreciation for the difference between when something is very distant and blurred out versus really hyper detailed.

And I feel like I tend to swing between those two things in my writing too, in a weird way.

Adam Sockel:

No, you kind of beat me to it. I was just going to ask, is that how you approach stories? Looking at it first from a wide lens or an extremely, extremely narrow lens.

You kind of beat me to it, but I guess, how would you say — you don't have to go into detail about the specifics of a book, but how would you say that has shown up in your writing?

Margaret Owen:

I definitely do have visual elements, a lot of which like sort of stay in the … not the lost media, but the backstage of the book as it were. All the stuff that went into the story that you'll never see.

So, right now I'm working on the third book for Little Thieves and I have like some three maps, a lot of spreadsheets, and I'm just constantly consulting. And I think about things like what colors are affiliated with what, what images are affiliated with what and why? I visualize everything.

You know that thing that was floating around Twitter for a little while, when someone says apple, what do you see in your mind? And it's got nothing and then a red blur and then a spectrum all the way to the perfect detailed apple. And for me it's always the detailed apple.

Adam Sockel:

Yeah.

Margaret Owen:

Which is great. But I think in terms of writing, I think a lot about the visuals of a scene, which is tricky because then I have to also remember to incorporate the other senses yet up. I think about things like lighting, and I will storyboard out really complicated action sequences to make sure I'm not having someone simultaneously inhabiting one spot in another 30 feet away.

I will think about things like textures. And I think developing art forces you to think a lot about not just what you can see, but how you can communicate more. So, it's one thing to just visualize an apple, it's another to paint one in a way with the light hitting it and a slice on a plate and it almost glows and you can smell the apple.

And that's a skill set that you develop with art. And it's good to translate it into writing too. So yeah, I think there's that.

And then, it also affects how I have approached outlining. I definitely take a approach that was derived from the approach I take for big illustrations, which is you have a thumbnail which is very loose, small sketch that you see to block out the major shapes and make sure that it reads.

And then you develop that into a larger, more detailed sketch. Then you ink that and then you color that and render it out. And that is very similar to my outlining process, just in different stages.

Adam Sockel:

But that's so interesting. I'm wondering if you've ever had any — I mean, obviously, you are an incredible writer and you have stories that people adore.

Margaret Owen:

Yes.

Adam Sockel:

You're welcome.

But I'm curious, had you ever considered going into … the way that you're describing everything, I almost think of like not even writing for TV. But more so like stage-

Margaret Owen:

Production?

Adam Sockel:

Like stage production. Yeah, exactly. Did you ever think of going down that route?

Margaret Owen:

So, I was a theater kid, but I was in the backstage for the most of the … I think I had a very brief stint hilariously as Scrooge in high school in a very stripped-down production. It was very classic like high school theater department.

But long story short, that was one of the things that I did in high school that also helped me think about landscape approach. Is I helped paint sets and I helped build sets. I didn't do a lot of the costume work just because they were like, “Oh, we have someone who can actually do painting stuff. We need that with the scenery.”

But that definitely helped me think about not just how to set up a scene in terms of like writing, because I think there's a whole thing you could talk about in terms of how you apply the principles of stage production to writing, especially for things like YA.

But it also helped me think of — oh, where was I going with this? It helped me think in terms of what level of detail you need to communicate something and how much audience participation you are requiring of your audience to buy into this illusion.

And that I think is a very important thing for authors to consider, you know?

Adam Sockel:

Yeah. So, this is going to be a strange way of doing this, but this reminds me of, there is a Stephen Sondheim musical Sundays in the Park with George. And it's all about George Seurat and people who don’t know who George Seurat is, he's a French, post-impressionist artist.

And he painted this super detailed, very famous painting called a Sunday in the Afternoon. And there's a whole bunch more of the name. But-

Margaret Owen:

It's the one in the park, right?

Adam Sockel:

Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

Margaret Owen:

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Adam Sockel:

So, it's literally like a Sunday … I'm going to look — it's A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte. But the creation of it.

Margaret Owen:

The creation. Yeah.

Adam Sockel:

Yeah. And like the creation of it is Stephen Sondheim wrote this song called Finishing the Hat, which is like my favorite Broadway song in any musical. And basically, it's told from the artist George Seurat’s point of view, where he's talking about this painting, if people … I will put a link in the show notes for people listening, this painting.

You need to see, the size of it is enormous, and that's what makes this song so incredible. Because he's talking about how like the whole lyrics are like finishing the hat, how you have to finish this hat, how you study the world of the hat.

And he's basically, he tells this whole story about this singular hat that he painted in this massive painting. And then at the very end of it he says like, look, I made a hat where there never was a hat. And it's like this line that really is an inspiration for me for writing.

But it's sort of like the olay around, like you were saying, where this painting tells a story and it's all the things that you are seeing, then you can create a story in your mind.

Whereas for you, when you're writing, you are thinking about all the things you would want to show someone visually how to write it down into a story. I think that's so fascinating about … because when I'm writing, I'm very much character and conversation driven.

I'm very bad at thinking where are they in the world? They're just some linear space. But I think that's really interesting. So, how do you know when to kind of draw the line between like, okay, I've set this beautiful stage, but now I need to inject some plot. How do you determine when it's time to step away?

Margaret Owen:

This is actually going to come back to George Seurat. And the thing that I wanted to flag about this is if it's the painting I'm thinking of and I could be very wrong, which would be very embarrassing. But we're going to pretend that it is, it's the one that has this gorgeous long landscape of all these people gathered and having like almost a picnic by the beach and or not the beach, but in the park.

Adam Sockel:

Yeah.

Margaret Owen:

And one of the figures that comes to mind is like a woman in the front with a large bustle. And like, I think she's got a parasol.

Adam Sockel:

Yeah. You're nailing this. I'm looking at it right now.

Margaret Owen:

Yes. My absolute deficit of art history classes is not catching me in ass the quite yet. So, here's the thing that's fascinating about that picture. If you zoom in real close, if you get really close, what you realize is that it's made of thousands upon thousands of tiny dots. It's a technique called stippling.

And it's almost like the oldie version of pixelation almost. And what you have to think about or for me, I actually take a lot of cues or a lot of the sort of similar concepts of impressionism when I'm approaching writing especially stuff that I need to get through information, and I need it to be interesting, but I also need it to be fast.

So, impressionism as a movement was initially regarded as like low class. It was required or it was viewed as an inferior art, which I also have a lot of thoughts about, particularly in the way that we talk about YA.

But it was viewed that way because it's the act of communicating something in as few brushstrokes or as in an unconventional way as possible. It's not minimalism, but it's basically saying, I want to capture the thing that you look at for just a blink and then look away.

And that means it's not necessarily going to be realistic. It's not going to be hyper-realistic. It's not going to be necessarily detailed. It's going to be smacks of paint on a canvas.

And when you look at it up close, it's going to mean nonsense. And when you step back, you see a pond of lilies. You make from these thousands of dots a huge landscape in the park.

And each scene is a hat in that way. It's made up of thousands of tiny words, thousands of tiny dots, but they all have to make the shape of a hat. They all have to make the shape of the lady with the parasol. They all have to communicate the green of the lawn.

And when I'm writing a scene, I always start with an outline of basically I have like a big broad outline of the entire book. But it's like very loose. And then I detail, I do a more in-depth outline, but not too in-depth of each act.

And then break that up for the act that I'm in, in specific events that happen. And then I break those into chapters, and I then flesh out chapter by like one chapter at a time. I will flesh out the outline and then write the chapter and then start over again.

And what that does is tell me what kind of hat we're looking at. Is this a Stetson, is this a bowler hat? Is the messenger a hat, or are we moving on to the dog? And are we communicating the graphs?

And it gives me an idea of what is supposed to be communicated within this scene that's made up of thousands of words and moments that are interactions that are also building towards that.

Adam Sockel:

That is the best … I love that answer so much. And it's like, not to keep our like pun, but it's like the force for the tree situation where it's like-

Margaret Owen:

It is.

Adam Sockel:

Because obviously, and you know this better than I would. There are writers who they’re planners, there're pansters. For you, it sounds like if you were just pantsing your way through, you could very easily find yourself in a singular scene and write 14,000 words about the sand and the light hitting the jewels and things.

But to have everything boxed out in a way where it's sort of improv or we don't know how we're going to get there, but we know where we need to get to type of a situation.

Margaret Owen:

Yes, exactly. Yeah. I actually have a whole post on it up on my Instagram that just sort of breaks it out. Because I call it iterative outlining because it is basically a process of refining stage by stage by stage.

But the reason that I opted to do it that way is I found if I outlined extensively and exhaustively and I knew everything that was going to happen, I would get bored. I would just be like, there's no discovery here. And I'd box myself into an ending or to a third act that I was just sort of trudging into.

Because I was like, alright, well this is a to-do list now. It's not an outline. But at the same time, I get I think executive dysfunction paralysis is the way I'd put it. If I don't have any outline, I won't write 14,000 words. I won't write a single damn one.

I'll stare at the Microsoft Word document with a little blinking cursor, and they'll be like one little tadpole swimming around an empty tub. And that's it, that's what's going on in my brain.

So, you need to balance those two.

Adam Sockel:

Yeah, okay. So, for Painted Devils, your new book, which is coming out, which is the second book in a trilogy, it's a follow up to Little Thieves.

Margaret Owen:

Uh-huh.

Adam Sockel:

Before we get into the book specifically, I'm curious, because you have done like duologies, and you've written connected stories before. So, for this one being the second of three stories that are all interconnected, obviously, how do you, as a person who has meticulous plans like this, but you're also thinking about it, like you said, as kind of like an artist. How do you know what encapsulates book two versus what should have gone in book one versus what should go in book three?

Margaret Owen:

So, how am I going to make this a concise answer? So, the short answer is that I'm a child of the 90s and I wrote book one as a standalone. And what I mean by that is I think nowadays there's an approach to trilogies that is basically one story broken out over three parts.

And I would say, back in my day the way that trilogies were approached in a lot of media is that it's three different stories following a similar cast of characters. And in that regard, that helped me with carrying Little Thieves into a second and third book because as I was in the middle of writing Little Thieves, I was like, I could write about these characters forever. They have so much potential and is so fun to write. And I want to write more.

But also, I know that this is going to be a standalone. And then I asked my editor, and she was like, alright, it was slightly more complicated than that.

But with that I knew I was going to approach it from the perspective of each book is going to have its own central conflicting plots. It's going to still follow the same cast of characters and it's going to still follow the same POB, but what it does is transform Little Thieves.

The character arc goes from being a complete character arc to the first part of a character arc. And like the for the first act of a three-act character arc which has some fun results, some fun consequences in Painted Devils. It's definitely the empire strikes back of the trilogy.

But the intent was give this story its own complete arc within it and then have the character arc itself be what sustains the trilogy.

But at the same time, I also keep running lists of like, I want to call on this, I want to tag back to this, I want to call back to this. I'm going to bring this in. I introduced this concept and now we're going to completely empty out the purse of what those implications are. And it's been very fun.

But also, this book is going to be enormous. The third book is going to be so …

Adam Sockel:

You can get away with it once you have people hooked.

Margaret Owen:

Right. Exactly.

Adam Sockel:

It’s like if you think of really any series of books, I was going to say Lord of the Rings, but I feel like all three of those are pretty dense. But like Chronicles of Narnia, His Dark Materials, they do like kind of get — obviously Harry Potter.

But yeah, I do know what you mean. In our day (because I think we're of similar age), they were separate stories. For example, The Mummy trilogy we're bringing it back, everybody.

Margaret Owen:

We're bringing it back.

Adam Sockel:

Mummy Returns and the terrible one with the Dragon thing, which was not bringing.

So, for people who are unfamiliar, can you kind of give them an introduction to Painted Devils or just like the Little Thieves sort of a verse if you will.

Margaret Owen:

Right. The thieververse. No, I don't like that at all.

Adam Sockel:

It's okay.

Margaret Owen:

I'll have to come up with a better one. So, for those who haven't read Little Thieves really quickly, it is a sort of upside-down fairytale retelling of the Goose Girl, which is basically an old German fairytale about a princess whose ID and future betrothal, everything good in her life gets stolen by her wicked maid.

And there's just a lot of drama involving geese and horse heads. And eventually the trace comes out and the maid dies horribly. And this is the maid story.

And the premises that the main character has scammed her way into the identity of the princess that she used to serve, but she's also using that as a cover to steal jewelry from the nobility that she's now mingling with to eventually fund an escape from the life that she's sort of trapped in right now.

And then she crosses the wrong royal, well not royal family, but nobility family, winds up cursed by their patron deity and is basically condemned to turn into jewels by the next full moon unless she can make up for everything she's taken, including the Princess's identity.

So, that's a lot of fun. I had a lot of fun inventing tropes on that. And it's also sort of a look at how isolation and independence could be a trauma response. And ask the question of why would a maid feel the need to steal her way out of her life, out of this life.

And in the second book Painted Devils it's less of a direct retelling. If you squint, you can kind of see the outlines of like the 7 ravens, 12 swans, 7 swans. The number birds’ format of the fairytale where a young woman has to go on a quest to save or to help or something, quest involving birds.

There are not actually any birds in Painted Devils. But our beloved scam artist main character's back and she has accidentally started a cult and the boyfriend that she just ghosted a few months ago has shown up because he's an investigator and he's been assigned to investigate this cult.

And she is basically like, well, this is awkward for everybody, especially because I made up this god that we're all worshiping and then the god actually manifests and claims him as a virgin sacrifice or claims her boyfriend, the ex-boyfriend that she ghosted as a virgin sacrifice.

And they're sort of confronted with this thing of like, we could disqualify you, but this is not a step where we're ready to take in our relationship yet, but how are we going to approach this?

And searching for an alternative sacrifice and uncovering a lot about just (without spoiling too much), various things.

But yeah, it's also sort of supposed to be an unraveling of the — I've described as an extended roast of the societal construct of virginity and looking at how that can be actually weaponized against people. And yeah, it was a lot of fun to write, and I am sorry not sorry for the way it ends. Because there's a third book on the way.

Adam Sockel:

I was going to say, listen, it's the second book. I feel like for a second book of a trilogy, second books of a trilogy have to … the first book has to make you want to stay in that world.

Margaret Owen:

Right.

Adam Sockel:

The third book has to make you feel — you’re like the last book has to make you feel like you've completed it. The second book needs to infuriate you when you get done because you need to get the third book.

I feel like that's the best way. I joked with a friend of mine, Mallory O’Meara who was a guest on the show. We joked when she and I are both His Dark Materials like super fans. And so, when The Book of Dust, the second book came out, something Commonwealth, I don't remember what the first word was, it ends in such a second booky way.

We were both like son of a bitch. She was texting me all caps, like this is-

Margaret Owen:

You monster. Uh-huh.

Adam Sockel:

But I can hear in your voice how much fun you had writing this book. It sounds like you had a blast, like getting to kind of play in this space.

Margaret Owen:

I did. And it's like to touch on the art aspect, Little Thieves and Painted Devils and the third book will — they are all illustrated by me. Each one has seven different interstitials that are like flashbacks in the first one. And I think, yeah, in the second one kind of, that are meant to illustrate parts of why the main character is the way she is.

And they're all illustrated. In Little Thieves it was digital illustrations that were meant to mimic ink engravings and etchings, that were the kind of like old fashioned fairytale illustrations you find in a 1900s book of fairy tales.

In Painted Devils, since this is a little more midsummer is woodcut. It's meant to look like woodcut, it's linocut, which is linoleum, which is a lot easier to carve, but it was my first attempt at doing linocut which was also a lot of fun. But also, I did stab myself at least once. It's not an OSHA approved art form.

But yeah, there's these woodcut style illustrations in there that … this was a slightly a time saving thing, but also a stylistic thing. As the narrator gets younger and younger in each story, the illustrations themselves become more simplistic and almost rustic kind of looking. And it looks a little goofy in one of them, I think, but for the most part it works.

Adam Sockel:

What an incredible workaround. That's just well done by you.

Margaret Owen:

Listen, no one procrastinates as good as a Virgo. We’ll at least make it into an art form.

Adam Sockel:

Yeah, I was going to say, it's not procrastination, it's in the book. It's part of the story.

So, I always end every conversation by having the author come on and give a recommendation of any kind. It can be a book, it can be a movie, it can be, I've had someone recommend just go for a walk. Speaking of Mallory, she recommended a protein powder. Any recommendation you would like to give that you think more people should know about.

Margaret Owen:

Yeah. Okay, so here's one. This is for all the folks who you're preparing your drinks at home and by drinks, I mean caffeinated beverages or just whatever you drink to work with. It is so easy to make your own simple syrup, it is comedically easy to make your own simple syrup.

And then you can put — I make a pretty darn good brown sugar maple syrup or not maple, but brown sugar, simple syrup with a splash of vanilla and salt. So, it almost has like the salted caramel aspect. And it is so much better than putting grainy sugar in your coffee because you don't have this weird sludge at the bottom of it.

And it's so much easier. You literally just do one to one ratio, sugar to water in a pot and just before it boils, you take it off like once the sugar's dissolved. That's it. You've made simple syrup and you've made your life so much simpler. So much easier.

Adam Sockel:

Listen, first off, I do also do this. I'm a cocktail maker, so I-

Margaret Owen:

Great.

Adam Sockel:

People, you don't understand how good of a tip Margaret just gave you. Because you're right. Once people realize how easy it is to make simple syrup, you just change it. I have a ginger one, I have a jalapeno one. I'm not even like a spicy drink person. I was just like; I have jalapenos so I may … yeah.

One to one, if you want to make a rich simple syrup, it's two to one sugar to water, but you don't have to. What a good recommendation.

Margaret Owen:

Well, thank you.

Adam Sockel:

Margaret, the books are so, so wonderful. The last time we talked it was-

Margaret Owen:

Thank you.

Adam Sockel:

All about the duology, The Merciful Crows and had so much fun. I told you before we started recording, I was so excited to have you back. Thank you for joining me today.

Margaret Owen:

Of course. Thank you for having me. This has been delightful.

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Adam Sockel:

Passions & Prologues is proud to be an Evergreen Podcast and was created by Adam Sockel. It was produced by Adam Sockel and Sean Rule-Hoffman.

And if you are interested in this podcast and any other Evergreen Podcast, you can go to evergreenpodcasts.com to discover all the different stories we have to tell.