Today we’re chatting with Nancy Yeager, a bestselling author of historical and contemporary romance who is adding women’s fiction to her repertoire. Her first women’s fiction novel, WHEN WE WERE FRIENDS, released on October 25, 2022.

Nancy spent her early years longing to be an English countryside vet thanks to James Herriot’s All Creatures Great and Small series, and dreaming of being an adventurist-archaeologist thanks to George Lucas’s Indiana Jones character. After studying veterinary pre-med and earning an anthropology degree, she realized her true passion is story in all its forms.

When she’s not reading, writing, or binge-watching stories, Nancy is often pursuing fitness goals like completing 90-day fitness challenges and aspiring to achieve the perfect crow pose. She also spends her time drinking too much coffee, not enough red wine, and just the right amount of bourbon. She lives in Maryland with her fabulous family, which includes some very spoiled rescue cats.

You can learn more about Nancy’s work and sign up to receive stories and sample chapters of her work at her website, https://nancyyeagerbooks.com.

You can also follow her at https://www.bookbub.com/profile/nancy-yeager to keep up with all of her book news.

A little about today's host-

Author and musical composer Kathleen Basi is mother to three boys and one chromosomally-gifted daughter. Her debut novel, A SONG FOR THE ROAD, follows a musician on an unconventional road trip. Bestselling author Kerry Anne King writes, “In a novel filled with music, heartbreak, and surprising laughter, Basi takes us on a journey that encompasses both unimaginable loss and the powerful resilience of the human heart.”

Meaty, earnest, occasionally humorous, and ultimately uplifting, Kathleen’s fiction highlights the best within ourselves and each other. She writes monthly reflections on life, writing and beauty on her newsletter. Subscribe at https://kathleenbasi.substack.com/. 

Be sure to follow or subscribe to Author Express wherever you listen to podcasts and to follow us on Instagram @AuthorExpressPodcast

Learn more about our hosts, the guests we've had, and their books -

https://linktr.ee/AuthorExpressPodcast

We feel it is important to make our podcast transcripts available for accessibility. We use quality artificial intelligence tools to make it possible for us to provide this resource to our audience. We do have human eyes reviewing this, but they will rarely be 100% accurate. We appreciate your patience with the occasional errors you will find in our transcriptions. If you find an error in our transcription, or if you would like to use a quote, or verify what was said, please feel free to reach out to us at connect@37by27.com.

[00:00:21] Kathleen: Let me tell you a little bit about today's guest. [00:00:26] Kathleen: Nancy Yeager writes in multiple genres and under two pen names. She's the best-selling author of Historical and Contemporary Romance, and her first women's fiction novel When We Were Friends came out in October, 2022. Nancy's women's fiction stories explore women's friendships and family bonds, and include of course a little romance.

[00:01:01] Nancy: Hello. Thanks for having me.

[00:01:08] Nancy: Right. It's always nice to have a, a reason for an escape. I think a good book's like the best Reason.

[00:01:22] Nancy: so I'm from a place called York, Pennsylvania. I think different shows have had characters from central Pennsylvania. It's known as Pennsyltucky now, which is kind of gives you a a sense of what it's like. Actually, I grew up in a place that made York peppermint patties, so anyone who's had York Peppermint Patty, they used to be made in my hometown.

[00:01:44] Kathleen: required to like them if you live in the town?

[00:02:01] Nancy: You know, they, they wouldn't . Right? I missed out on that whole thing. I found out about this as an adult, so apparently it was an open secret that I missed. Also they, um, they made york barbells. There was some sort of, uh, champion weightlifter from York and he came back home and started this company and it, it's a well known product apparently, if you're in the weightlifting world, which I'm not,

[00:02:22] Nancy: but

[00:02:24] Nancy: so there you go.

[00:02:27] Kathleen: So you grew up in York or that's where you live now?

[00:02:33] Kathleen: that's where you grew up. Who was your best friend there?

[00:02:59] Nancy: Began with Z and that was Stacy. And Stacy and I were just homeroom buddies and besties and, and she was an only child. I was the youngest and all my siblings were long since gone. So kind of had that sister thing happening. And then, um, as I transitioned into kind of college age and young adulthood and, uh, one of my time childhood friends, we just realized we were suddenly always on the same page and it wasn't a conscious choice, those other friendships didn't go away. It just, you know, it just suddenly realized, oh, we're best friends and that was great too. So,

[00:03:47] Nancy: Yeah. Yeah. And great to have these different, you know, different phases of your life. You're gonna feel closer to some people than other people just because of what you're going through. The, you know, this best friend, we both happened to have kids really young. We were in our twenties when we had our kids.

[00:04:14] Kathleen: that is really interesting. I, and I do think there's something to that, that when you have young children, even the age of the, of the adults doesn't matter as much as the fact that you have that common experience because other people sort of forget. That what goes along with young childhood and so you can accommodate each other better.

[00:04:56] Kathleen: Oh yeah. Well, I mean, but that I think is really valuable. I started having children late and the, uh, later, probably not late compared to what people think now, but I felt like it was late. And I think about my parents and how young they were when we all went to college, and how much energy you had and how much energy you, you have for grandchildren when, when the time comes and when we put it off a long time, then it's a different dynamic.

[00:05:19] Nancy: Yeah.

[00:05:23] Nancy: Yeah. Yeah. And the nice thing is our daughter she left, she was still 17. She went across the country for a year, then came back east to finish college and bounced around a little bit. Um, Lived in, which her now husband, she went to, um, Ithaca, New York with him. Cause he was getting his PhD at Cornell.

[00:05:46] Kathleen: that's very nice.

[00:05:54] Kathleen: Yes. So let's circle back to this question of friendship because your book is called When We Were Friends, and that gives us a really good kind of connection there. So tell me which character in your book do you identify with the most closely?

[00:06:27] Nancy: Lexi is a little more, um, she's more of a people person. She needs those connections. Franny thinks she's a loner, so they has the, have those kind of divergent things happening. I mean, I think those are all pieces of me. I'm one of those introverts who loves to connect . So, and then I'm, then I'm tired and I have to go home and take a nap

[00:06:47] Nancy: But so

[00:06:50] Nancy: It's very, that's a very common writer thing, right? . So, yeah. So I identify with each of them in a ways, again, these are young characters and I think one of the re they're in their twenties, mid twenties. I think one of the reasons I wrote them that age Well there, there were a few reasons I knew the inciting incident that happens before the book starts, um, which is then covered in the book.

[00:07:44] Nancy: And so it's a, in a sense these are, these are a little bit younger than we were in our mid twenties, but there is that sense of who are we and how do we fit together? And um, I, I've said this in other interviews, that my best friend died when we were in our late thirties, but at the time when we were in our mid twenties, you know, it really was this figuring out-

[00:08:23] Kathleen: are you

[00:08:27] Kathleen: Did you find yourself rooting for one of them over the other? Because there's obviously going to be conflict in a book like this.

[00:08:53] Nancy: This is a different small town. She's going there because this is now where Lexi lives. So it's that, um, fish out of water, stranger coming to town. I'm always rooting for the, you know, so already kind of an underdog. I'm always rooting for the underdog a little bit. but then interestingly, as I wrote, I mean, I'm a big planner, so I know a lot about the story before I ever write a word.

[00:09:35] Nancy: So, Kind of gave me a little, not that I was unsympathetic to her, but she really was kind of the unintentional nemesis for Franny. So as I wrote the book,

[00:10:05] Nancy: Yeah. Well, and the other, I will say another character that that happened with is Franny's mother, because in early iterations, I don't know that I ever got through a full first draft before changing this, but certainly earlier on she was much more just the, she was a single mom. She was way too young when she had Franny to, she wasn't mature enough to do a great job, and Franny felt, you know, neglected all, all these things go into it.

[00:10:49] Nancy: And I'm thinking, but so much still happens, you

[00:10:59] Nancy: Yeah,

[00:11:07] Nancy: I think when I realized that writing was a job that someone had that you know that there was a person behind this, Dr. Seuss. That wrote these books. I mean, that's how young I was. My, my mom would read to me all the time. We'd go to the library. I loved books and at some point, I mean, I was really young.

[00:11:52] Nancy: Artistic endeavors are tough. And so I took all these other paths and, and, but interestingly, every time I chose a path, like, oh, I'll go into, um, veterinary medicine, which I, I love animals and, and I, however, what I really loved was James Harriet stories. There was a James Harriet series called, it was All Creatures, great and Small.

[00:12:30] Nancy: I mean, I was really into anthropology and, and. , all that stuff, you know, from, from like National Geographic and all these other things that I read. So I wanted to do so many things. All of it was influenced by reading, by books,

[00:12:47] Nancy: Exactly. And eventually . And interestingly, I kept, you know, when I went up to college, I kept testing out of my writing classes.

[00:13:11] Nancy: Even though I loved writing, so I was really close to 30 when I returned to this idea that I could, I, and I was writing articles, I was doing other things. You know, writing related, but not really focused on fiction. So I was close to 30 when I said, you know, I'm gonna look around, say maybe there's a writing group somewhere.

[00:13:40] Kathleen: That's very cool. So tell us what's the best place for folks to find you online?

[00:14:08] Nancy: Whatever you're interested in, you know, you can sign up for whatever newsletter is appropriate to whatever you like to read. And I will say I'm on social media, but not as much. People would like me to be like editors and publishers, but I'm there occasionally. not the, not the best place to find me, but I'm there.

[00:14:30] Kathleen: So, so you're a website and newsletter person that

[00:14:33] Nancy: Yeah. Yeah.

[00:14:39] Nancy: A book that inspired me recently was, it's not a new book. It's called Lilly and the Octopus. Um, Stephen Rowley, I think is his last name. His more recent book is The Guncle.. It was just this, it reminded me of like a, an emotional nerve.

[00:15:14] Kathleen: Oh yeah, for sure is. And that is how it should be. So thank you so much for being such a great guest today, Nancy, and we look forward to reading your books.

Kathleen: Thanks for joining us. We hope you'll take a second to give us some stars or a review on your favorite podcasting platform. We'll be back next Wednesday, and in the meantime, follow us on Instagram at Author Express Podcast to see who's coming up next. Don't forget, keep it express, but keep it interesting.