No Republican love interests, with Kate Stayman-London

Wow.

Okay, that's perfect, because I really wanted to ask you about the world building that you did and the way that you used your professional experience while also creating something entirely new.

Like something that I saw in my experience doing volunteer comms was like the way that these narrative strategies and attacks that Anya and Gabe are wrangling constantly, like, they're very real.

And one that's very of the moment of the last few years is the electability question that only seems aimed at women and minority candidates.

There's also the timeless power struggle between the well-paid consultants and then the organizers actually doing the work on the ground who know voters in a different way.

And so this book is such a beautiful mix of grounded and real while also being purely fictional.

And I appreciate that there's no obvious stand-in of Kamala Harris or Joe Biden.

You created your own candidates while still, in my opinion, you had this mirror that reflected what we're going through, but creating something completely different.

And I'm really curious, how did you approach that? Were there certain political...

narratives or issues you knew you wanted to take from our world and then play with? Like, what was your approach when it came to creating your own political landscape?

Yeah, I mean, part of it is just, you know, there are a ton of Easter eggs in the book paying tribute to people I've worked with over the years and places I've worked all over the years.

All of the places in the book are really personally important to me.

So like, I talked about working in New Hampshire in the 2006 campaign.

That was my first like big girl campaign job.

I was in Columbus, Ohio.

You know, I had a dear friend work for Harry Reid and spent a lot of time with her in Las Vegas.

Like, I wanted to write and sort of capture the places that I really knew and understood in the book.

And that was so much fun for me that it's kind of like it's not literally a road trip, but it is this sort of survey of Americana of all these different kinds of places and the different ways it feels to work on campaigns there.

And then for the candidates themselves, you're absolutely right.

I did not want anyone to be an obvious allegory for any kind of candidate.

There was actually a time in the drafting process when my editor wanted me to put years in the different chapters to help us track the passage of time, like 2006, 2008, whatever.

And I was like, I am so opposed to that.

Because I don't want people thinking, oh, this is the Barack Obama Hillary Clinton election.

Oh, this is, you know, Clinton Bernie.

Because that's not I didn't write anything that sort of cleanly maps