Welcome to another unforgettable episode of Late Boomers! We’re Cathy Worthington and Merry Elkins , and today we bring you a powerful and deeply moving conversation with novelist Laurie Kirk, author of Baby Marvin. If you’ve ever wondered how past losses, family secrets, and even ghosts can shape and heal our lives, this episode is for you.

In this episode, we dive into Laurie Kirk’s late-blooming writing journey, which began in 2021 after a transformative experience with a life coach. Laurie Kirk opens up about discovering she is a "womb twin survivor," and how this revelation unraveled a thread of profound loneliness that shaped her entire life. We explore how Laurie channeled her experiences into her writing blending tragedy, comedy, and horror, and why she believes it’s never too late to start a new creative chapter.

Laurie Kirk also shares the inspiration behind Baby Marvin, a psychological horror thriller about fractured identity, duality, and what happens when loss and loneliness collide with rage and revenge. Listen as she takes us through her creative process, transitioning from screenplays to novels, and finds healing and even humor in the company of her dearly departed yes, some ghosts are welcome!

Key Takeaways

• It’s Never Too Late: Laurie Kirk’s story is a reminder that meaningful creative work can begin at any age. Whether you’re 30, 60, or beyond, your best days and stories may still lie ahead.
• Healing Through Forgiveness: Laurie shares how forgiveness, both for herself and her late parents, paved the way for healing, even decades after loss.
• Turning Pain Into Art: We discuss how grief, loneliness, and personal trauma can become raw material for creative, and often humorous, storytelling.
• The Power of Humor in Darkness: Laurie’s journey proves that laughter and levity are essential tools for tackling the deepest wounds and for making even haunted stories shine with humanity.
• Ghosts That Comfort, Not Haunt: Laurie Kirk talks about sensing the presence of lost loved ones, and how they continue to inspire and support her writing.
• Practical Steps for Late Bloomers: From working with a life coach to exploring meditation, Laurie’s willingness to confront her past is a roadmap for anyone seeking meaning and renewal later in life.

If Laurie Kirk’s story inspires you, we encourage you: Don’t wait to start your next chapter! Whether it’s writing a novel, rekindling a passion, or simply starting a healing conversation, it’s truly never too late. Let this episode be your spark.

Subscribe to Late Boomers on YouTube and your favorite podcast app, and like this episode to help other late bloomers find us. Share your own story or what you want to begin next we’d love to hear from you!

And remember, as we always say: It’s never too late to rethink what’s possible.

Mentioned in this episode:

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What if the people who broke your heart never really left?

And what if instead of being afraid of ghosts in your past, you invited them in for a conversation?

Our guest today has done just that. She writes about loss, identity, family, ghosts, and somehow manages to make some of it funny.

And she also has written a horror thriller about a fractured self.

And her story is much more than writing. It's about what happens when we finally confront the past, the parts of our past that have been following us.

And as we late boomers know, sometimes the most important chapters of our lives begin long after we thought our story was Well, over.

Welcome to the Late Boomers Podcast, where we bring you inspiring stories of people creating new chapters in life with style, power, and impact. I'm Cathy Worthington.

And I'm Merry Elkins.

Our guest today is novelist LaurieKirk, author of Baby Marvin, a psychological horror thriller exploring identity, duality, And the Fractured Self.

Laurie, welcome to Late Boomers. We're really looking forward to hearing your story.

Thank you for having me. I'm so excited to be here. So excited to talk to you all.

Thank you for being here, Laurie. You described 2021 as the beginning of your writing journey, but obviously there was a lifetime of experience behind that moment. So what happened in 2021 that made you say, I need to write these stories?

Well, 2021, I was working with a life coach and, um, we were working on, uh, I was having some physical symptoms that I couldn't quite get over. And she does a lot of mind-body stuff. In other words, if you're having any kind of physical problems, she tries to get to the source of the fact that there might be something psychological behind it. Huh. Which is a whole different conversation. We can do another time.

Yeah.

But anyway, uh, we were confronting this, uh, this issue I was having and we did a meditation. And in the meditation, um, I saw my younger self, probably 7, 8 years old, and she was running away from me and she didn't wanna talk to me. She was afraid. She hid. And so I was just very careful and I went up to her and I said, you know, what's going on? And she said, there's something you don't know. Nobody knows. And so I kind of abruptly came out of the meditation. I was kind of scared.

I didn't know what that meant. Um, later I sort of, I sat with it, you know, did some thinking. I did my own meditation and I realized, oh my God, I was a twin.

Oh.

And my twin died before anybody even knew There was a twin. My mother never even knew she was pregnant with twins. And it, and I knew it was a boy. I knew it was a brother. And I had had this lifetime of just really profound loneliness, just terrible. It always, it got worse as I got older. Even though I had a great husband, I had 5 kids, I was always surrounded with people who loved me, but this loneliness persisted. And the minute I realized that I had a brother, it went away.

Boom. Just like that.

Wow.

It was like a switch flipped. And then I discovered that I'm what's called a womb twin survivor. And that just opened up a lot of doors for me, um, as far as learning why I had always felt the way I did, why I did the things I did. Um, and there's a lot of people out there like me who don't know the source of their loneliness or the source of Often it's addiction as well, trying to fill a hole in your life.

Mm-hmm.

Um, and I think— And you think they never told you? They didn't. I don't think anyone knew. That was the whole thing. That's why it was, because what can happen is a woman's pregnant with twins and very early on one will die and you just don't, you may not even have known you're pregnant at all. Or, you know, you're pregnant and then maybe there's a slight symptom of something, but you go to the doctor and they say, oh no, everything's fine. Baby's fine. Heartbeat's fine. But you've lost a twin and you don't even know it.

So, um, I'm pretty sure that's what, what happened with my brother. Um, I, there's never been any indication that my mother knew she was, she was pregnant with twins.

Hmm.

But, um, it's, I mean, it's very spiritual. A lot of, I call it woo-woo. So, you know, there's a belief level that people have to have to, to hear my story. Yeah. But I'll tell it to anybody who wants to hear it because if you look up womb twin survivors, if anyone is curious about themselves, there's a checklist of things and it's like check, check, check, check, check. Oh, you know, we, I can communicate with him. He's been—

We heard about, about that, and we'd love to talk to you about it. We have some questions about it, but I also understand that you're a medium. And, um, did that happen around the same time too? I mean, you, you said you had some physical symptoms, so how did that— what were you experiencing and, and how did that influence any of your writing?

I was having some persistent dizziness. That was not, um, reacting to anything that I did to, to cure it. So that's why I went into the meditation med— with my life coach in, in the first place. Um, so I just, I didn't, I had always believed in life after death. Uh, a Christian upbringing. So yes, we have a soul that death leaves our body. And I've always believed that sometimes they hang around, sometimes maybe they move on. I'd even had an experience in Tombstone, Arizona, like in 2011, where I got, I was in a, um, Birdcage Theater, um, one of the famous sites, and suddenly got nauseous and dizzy, like, whoa.

And it was like, okay, something has, has gone through me. But I didn't really think I was a medium. I just thought, okay. You know, people have these experiences. But then when I found out about my brother, I realized I could communicate with him and my parents. Uh, my mother died like 20 years ago and my dad died when I was 12. So that's when I was, it was, oh, okay, so this is real. And once I opened up to it, I could communicate with them.

So it got a lot of healing and forgiveness.

Mm-hmm.

And all that whole journey began and I decided to write about it. So that's when the writing journey began.

Yeah. Yeah.

That's great.

Did it really, I mean, how did it influence your writing?

Well, I initially just started to write about them. I thought, let me write this. It's a crazy story. Here I was in my 50s and suddenly I've got the ghosts around me. My dead relatives are hanging out and I thought, let's write it down. And I started to write the story and every scene I wrote was funny. And I said, okay, I guess it's a comedy. And let's make it a TV half-hour sitcom.

A woman, suddenly her 38-year-old dad comes back as a ghost, but, but as a, you know, as a more, it's like a person. You can see him and feel him and touch him and everything like that. So I thought that'd be crazy because here's a guy who died in 1979 and then he comes back to the modern day. He's 38. She's in her 50s, and he tries to fit in and be a dad after. And everything I wrote down about it just ended up being humorous. And so I just wrote a comedy series about it. And that was the beginning of the writing for me.

And I've always had a kind of a comedic personality. I think partly it was dealing with trauma. I would just have kind of a snappy wit, uh, sarcastic wit, which I think is a coping mechanism. Probably there's a whole psychological deep dive too.

Yeah, sure it is.

But hey, it's worked out.

Yeah. Let's talk about a little bit more about the womb twin survivor thing. Um, how did learning that change the way you understood yourself in your life story? Does that figure into this book too?

Um, it does. Now, Baby Marvin, Marvin is not a womb twin survivor. Um, but he is someone who's 18, always been profoundly alone. And he, his life falls apart with a series of lies come, come to his attention and he suffers great loss and his mirror image. comes into his world and they seek revenge and justice. So in a way, I didn't realize at the time, but I was writing my own story because Marvin and I were both very, very alone. We had always been lied to about— I was lied to about the reasons for my parents' divorce. My father was gay.

This was in 1969. He had left, left us. And, you know, back then you didn't tell your child, Dad's gay. My mom and dad, neither one would've had any resources to, you know, to cope with their situation, to help them psychologically. And so I was never told. I was, I just knew they were divorced. And then I was, you know, 20, 21 years old before I found out he was gay, which, I mean, okay, just don't lie to me, you know?

Yeah.

And, um, he had already long died. He had died when I was 12. So I never even got to have a conversation with him to say, tell me what was going on with you. Tell me your experience, why you got married. Did you feel like it was just the thing you do that, you know, what would have been called normal? get married, have a kid. So I never got to have that conversation. So I kind of worked that stuff out with him on— in scripts now.

Yeah, that's a good way to do it.

Yeah. So what do you remember about that period, and how it affected you and of course, your family?

I— my earliest memory, and I'm, I'm pretty sure it's a real memory. Sometimes, you know, you can't tell if something was a dream. I have this memory of being very, very small and him walking out with a suitcase. And it's just so vivid. I remember I was crying and I must have been 2 or 3 years old and he stopped and kissed me. I remember he kissed me on top of the head and it, it's kind of, it's not funny, but, um, There have been times over the years when, I mean, I've been married almost 30 years, so we argue, you know, like everybody. There was, if I, I was really upset one time at my husband and he kissed me on top of the head. And when I tell you the blinding rage that came up, disproportionate to the situation.

Yeah.

But, uh, so I'm pretty sure that that's an actual memory that I have of him kissing you on top of your head was probably in a little bit of an attempt to calm everything down. Yeah, it was a, it was a loving gesture. It wasn't anything but that. But at the same time, boy, I remember that. I remember, I even feel it now, this, that absolute white-hot rage that I felt. And, uh, it just—

I—

one of my least favorite phrases that people use is kids are resilient. I mean, it's true, but the damage— there's damage. Even though, yes, now they're still— they go off and they play with the dolls or the Legos, but we need to consider what's in the subconscious of kids and not just take it lightly. The things that we allow to happen because, um, you know.

Yeah, I think a lot of times parents just assume, well, they'll be fine. Give them a year.

Or they seem fine.

Well, they, well, they— Because they do seem fine because they have to, to survive.

Yeah, they're not acting up or they're not, you know, doing anything. They're fine, right? But not always.

Well, you took what could have been an incredibly painful story about losing your brother and your parents, and you turned it into a comedy pilot. Did you ever try to sell that pilot, by the way?

And why?

I have it. Yeah, I've tried. Yeah?

Yeah. Why'd you feel like comedy was the right way for you to tell the story?

Well, initially I just started writing down and I imagined scenes with me and my dad or my dad meeting my husband. And each scene just came out funny. I just, I don't really plan a lot when I write. I just let it happen, let it flow. And I thought, okay, this is going to be a comedy, but it has to have a lot of heart with it. It can't just be a bunch of yucks or taking—

Yeah.

Because there's a lot of deep issues here.

Mm-hmm.

So it's a comedy, but then you will have the scenes with real conversations, real questions like, why did you leave me? Or my husband in the show, Mike, wanting nothing to do with this man because he'd hurt his wife. He'd hurt Laurie, his wife. So there's just— it's a show about relationships. And people, just some of them happen to be dead.

Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Why not?

Yeah.

I mean, there's still people, they're just dead.

Well, do you feel like your story healed your relationship with your father? Um, even if it's 40 years after he died and how did, did that come about? I mean, how did it come about?

Well, I had learned forgiveness. It took me a long time. I was probably in my 30s before I really learned how to manage my attitude towards everything because I was always very negative, very pessimistic headspace. Then when I met my husband, I was like 32, something like that. I already had 2 girls, but 2 daughters, but I learned to manage my attitude and to look at things more positively. And I realized that I'm an optimist. I'm like filled with hope and faith and, and all that stuff. And because of that, I can forgive.

It took me a long time, but I realized that forgiveness is as much for me as it is for him. And also, you know, unforgiveness, it's like they always say, it's like drinking poison, but expecting the other guy to die.

It's like sucking Pain— I'm sucking pain— sucking a snakebite, you know, you get the poison out, you feel better.

Yeah, it's, it's—

And then you're dead because you put the poison in your mouth, right?

You can't swallow.

I always think that is crazy. And Lori, you've said— I, I think this is an accurate quote— so it's never too late. And that phrase is practically our late boomers' motto. So what do you think people misunderstand about healing? Do we sometimes believe that if we haven't resolved something by a certain age, we've missed our chance?

Oh, sure. And especially if the person's died, then you think, well, that's definitely done. But I mean, forgiveness is available to anyone at any time. And even if you don't believe in the afterlife, pursue the forgiveness just for yourself. And, you know, it'll, it'll do amazing things for you. I just, it's not, like I said, it is never too late. I don't care if you're 95 on your, you know, sitting in a rocking chair. I always, I'll think the best days are ahead of me because that's just how I am.

And my faith has had a lot to help me through this because I think, you know, God has forgiven me for who knows what. Who am I to be unforgiving to somebody? So that's, that's been a big help to me too. Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, and forgiving our parents because it's, there's always something that we blame them for and forgiving them is such a huge weight off our own shoulders. So let's talk a little bit about Baby Marvin. Um, it's a very creative turn for you with Baby Marvin. So tell us more about the story and, and what drew you into that horror thriller genre.

Well, I had written the comedy pilot, and then I thought, well, I should write a feature so I have more than one script. And I said, well, let's do horror. So I remembered a character that my daughter and I had created years ago when she went off to college, we— she went to college in New York City. And so we were in New York and we were sitting around and we just started talking and, you know, like we had the New York accents, you know, we gave each other different names, you know, and I was Gladys and she was Blanche. And so we just started naming, giving the family different names. My husband was Harold and my youngest son Christopher was Baby Marvin. So we called him Baby Marvin. And he was an entertainer, we would say Baby Marvin the Entertainer, because my son, he had done some stage plays when he was a little kid.

And then that just always stuck, Baby Marvin the Entertainer. And then when it came time to write the book, I said, well, what if we did a story about a former child star? And you know how you will, you know, whatever happened to Baby Jane?

Yeah.

Well, the original title, the title of the script is This Is What Happened to Baby Marvin. Because sometimes you ask yourself, what happened to that kid that was on that TV show or that kid that was on the ad when I was, you know, when, you know, and so I thought, let's, let's look at someone who was a child star for a brief time. Then they grow up, they get to be 18, and their life takes a turn. Something bad happens to them. They get pushed too far. And this great, amazing, salt-of-the-earth, loved-by-the-community kid gets turned into a murderer. What does it take? And then I remembered when my son was in The Wizard of Oz, he was a munchkin, and I had taken red lipstick and I'd done dots on his cheeks and his nose. And I said, well, what if we use those? What if when baby Marvin was a little celebrity, he had those dots on, but now that he's he's grown, when he starts to go on a rampage, what if he takes his mother's lipstick and puts those dots back on his face?

Ew.

How terrifying would that be? This sort of callback to innocence and childhood turned on its head and turned into something, you know, really gruesome and horrifying. But the thing I do tell people is I promise them that This guy, they're going to fall in love with him and you're going to be rooting for him.

Even though he kills, even though he's a murderer?

Yeah, I think it's going to— what I want people to think is, wow, I understand, I get it, and think, what would push me too far? Would I do that? Maybe, maybe that, maybe I would do that. Some people say, oh yeah, I'd do it. 100%. Some people might not, but it makes you think about what does it take? What would push you too far? And anyway, we explore that. And then his mirror image, of course, comes through and is an encouragement. So it's like this duality, these two— well, one person and one being who—

Right.

The twist of the book is I tell you who That mirror image is.

Yeah, no spoilers.

Yeah, no spoilers.

No spoilers.

We got to get the listeners— No, I drop hints during the book as to what it might be, and then I'll tell you.

I do tell you what it is. Well, you do describe it as a story about duality and identity and the fractured self, which I don't really understand that term. So explain why those themes are so compelling to you and kind of Where do you get those themes from, or how did you name those themes?

Well, it's really, it's my story in so many ways. Marvin has, I didn't realize it at the time. I didn't realize it till afterwards. Marvin has an absent father. He has a mother who's told him some lies, and he's had some tragedy. So the idea of fractured self for me is just this idea of, what am I? Who am I? Am I who I thought I was? And just pulling these pieces of yourself together. For him, it's baby Marvin, the 4-year-old face of President Eisenhower's Safe Driving Day. He was that little spokesperson for a year and traveled with the president.

Oh.

Or is he now 18-year-old Marvin the carpenter who is just waiting for his 18th birthday so he can get away from his cloying mother and he wants to start his own business. So it's just these, it's like these little compartments that we have of ourselves. 'Cause I have the mom compartment, the wife compartment, now the writer compartment, the dog mom and all these. And sometimes different things take over. And sometimes one of those compartments breaks, you know, something bad happens, one of them breaks. And then what happens to the other ones? have to come forward. It's like we're different selves. It's like we all are made up of different people.

Like, what's that?

That's what the fractured self part means.

Yeah, it's like we contain multitudes. So if, you know, you have to kick, kick into high gear.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Um, so you had mentioned earlier it began as a screenplay before becoming a novel. So what did writing it as a novel allow you to explore that You wouldn't have explored in the screenplay or couldn't?

Well, the transition from screenplay to novel was easier than I thought because I at least knew the story. I knew where it starts and I knew where it ended. And it was just about fleshing some stuff out. I added a couple of characters and kind of pumped them up a little bit. I gave— it's creepier now. I went back and changed the screenplay. since I wrote the book. And it's way creepier than it was because I just kept thinking about— and I still, when I write, I think about somebody watching it on a screen.

What are they looking at? What's this look like? What do they see? How can this be creepier? How can this hit harder with a viewer? I'm always writing in terms of that, even with the book, even though it's way too long to film every scene in the book, I kept thinking, if it's on screen, what does it look like? What does it look like? I think I got a director's— the part of my fractured self is I'm a director too. And so I just would mostly, I thought, okay, this is going to be hard because I'm going to have to just go from 20,000-word script to 75,000-word book. But once I got started, it's like, well, just what's this What's the scenery look like? Diving into that, little backstories, little folklore, little, you know, colorful characters, history of the little town, talking about some things that happened years ago, just little asides that aren't vitally important. But as a reader, it's like, oh, that's cool. Or that's interesting. So it was—

We have so many successful streaming and feature films that are horror genre. Do you, do you watch those? Do you go see them?

I do. I like horror. I like it a lot. My daughter's obsessed with it. She is completely— she's like, she, she starts planning Halloween on November 1st. She's that obsessed with it. Yeah. Every year.

She's like, oh, it's a year till Halloween. It's like, okay. Okay. She's my biggest fan too, though. But yeah, I love horror. I like scares. I don't like splatter gore. But something where you're just jumping out of your seat, I love that stuff.

Oh, God, I'm afraid of it.

Oh, well, Baby Marvin, when it's made into a movie, maybe it may not be for you. It's definitely got its share of scary Thrilling stuff in it.

Where did it— where did all that come from, all the scary things that you created?

I just— I wish I could say for sure, you know, give you a straight answer for that. It just starts coming out. And again, I'm— because I'm so visual, I'm just seeing how I want the movie to look. And then I think about, um, just different ways of of showing terror for certain scenes. There's a scene with Marvin's mother, and I just— what would be terrifying in this moment that's relevant to the story and not just some added-on gore of some kind? Because I think it's the terror. You don't have to show everything.

It does sound fun to make up, right? It was.

It was a lot of fun.

To think of those crazy things. But you only began this writing journey 5 years ago. years ago. So what is something— starting something so creative at this stage of life, what has it taught you about yourself?

Well, I say never say never, and it's never too late. I mean, those are both— I mean, I know if you're 25, 30 years old, it can seem like, oh man, you're doing this and you're 60. That's so long. I don't want to wait that long. And I mean, I highly— I'm highly grateful that I had the opportunity to raise my kids and to spend that time with them. I wouldn't trade that for anything. I wouldn't trade that for having written this novel when I was 25. I couldn't have written this novel when I was 25.

I didn't have—

No, you hadn't made those discoveries yet and you hadn't— you didn't have the experience. Right.

It's— yeah, it's not like I don't know. It's hard to describe just the grasp you have on the world and the view of the world that you have just changes and you've just seen so much. And plus dealing with the things I've dealt with in my life, the abandonment and turning into something tangible is just, it's the greatest thing in the world.

Yeah. Yeah, that's true. Um, you mentioned earlier that your parents are still with you, and I— and you must be very happy about having them around, to a point, unless they start telling you what to do, I guess. But do you think that the people we've lost can continue to shape our creative lives and perhaps, like you, um, become characters in stories we tell?

Oh, I, I think so. Absolutely. I mean, they're around. I don't, um, I've never seen them. I've never seen my father. I've never seen my mother. I've seen my brother before I even knew I had a brother. I saw this man walking around my house and I realized later it was him.

He was really wanted my attention. It's like, okay, I got it. Okay. But, um, having them around, it's, it's just, It's even hard to put into words. It's just so soothing and comforting. And just the idea that they decided to stay with me when they didn't have to, you know, they could have gone on to somewhere else. They can go wherever they want. They're not, you know, there's no, they're not physically tied to me.

They want, and they're proud of me and they, they loved their grandkids and they loved seeing them. My, my dad, he never got to see any of that. My mom got, she lived long enough to see my, uh, 2 older daughters. And then I have twins of my own, twin sons, but she didn't get to see my youngest. Hmm. So it's just, it's just a great comfort. And they're, and my daughters have had experiences with them as well. So.

Really?

Yeah.

So they see them or, or hear them too?

They sense them and they, I've had audible, I've heard things audibly before, but I don't know for sure who it was. Um, but mostly it's a feeling and sometimes they'll, they'll kind of poke you a little bit. Like if they're very emotional about something, like you'll see something on TV and it really hits them or resonates with them and they're like, You know, but it's more like a jolt, like a little zap.

So is that ever scary? Is that scary to you?

Um, does it make you jump? No.

Are you just going, oh, there they are again?

It's just a jolt and it's like, okay, somebody liked that a lot. Somebody's really enjoyed that. Okay. It's, you know, just like if you're watching something with your friend and you're like, oh my gosh, you know, you know, you're doing this deal with them. It's just, they're just, you know, doing that.

Wow. Well, I want to ask you about the way you've titled yourself, the Batman of the Poconos, because of your obsession with duality and dead parents. So that may be one of the best author descriptions we've ever heard. So what does, what does the Batman of the Poconos actually do when she isn't writing?

She's taking care of her dogs mostly. They take up a lot of my time. I've got 3.

How many? 3.

And my husband, and I love to cook. So I'm always cooking or baking. And we have a big piece of property and we've got a garden. So I like to garden. And what do you like to cook? Oh, I like to cook anything. I'm into comfort food. I'm not into little fancy little dishes. It's like I will make a big old Pot of spaghetti meatballs, um, you know, nice meatloaf, the comfort food, mac and cheese.

I like that stuff that sticks to your ribs because I'm a Taurus. We like comfort and we like stuff like that.

That sounds good. That's— so that's your signature dish, the Batman of the Poconos.

Batman of the Poconos.

Merry's a Taurus too.

Merry's a Taurus.

Oh yeah?

Yeah.

Cool.

Yeah. You want to bring your family story to the screen, as you said, and with the screenplay with Baby Marvin. What's next for you, Laurie? What story are you most eager to tell now?

After Baby Marvin, I have this script called The Meat Department, and it's based on my twin sons. They're 25 now, and they're fraternal twins, so they're completely opposite. And one of them works in the meat department at the local grocery store. He's the meat manager. And the other one is actually going to law school. But in the screenplay, the one twin works in the meat department, and then the other one works in Washington, D.C. And they combine forces to bring down the federal government.

Oh dear.

It's a comedy. And even though it's about the government, I don't deal with being heavy-handed and stuff or inserting my beliefs into stuff too much. So it's kind of like whatever you see is whatever you want to see.

Yeah.

Instead of, oh, is that so-and-so? It's like, if you want it to be, sure, that's so-and-so. But I didn't write it as so-and-so. You know, I just, I like to write just funny stuff, just comedies. You know, I, I, I just like to have a good time.

How, how, now when you are writing comedy, you have to look at both sides, obviously the, the positive side and negative side or, or the light and dark. So how do you come up with, if you have one reality, how do you come up with the comedy?

Like from version, like from the, uh, perspective of light and dark?

I guess. Yeah.

Well, I mean, everything has something in it that's funny. I think you can find humor. I mean, Baby Marvin, there's a fair bit of humor in there. There's a fair bit. There's, um, a lot of the mirror image that comes through. He's actually, he's pretty funny. He jokes, he tells a lot of jokes, he makes references. The books, since it's set in 1968, there's tons of references from that time period that I hope people enjoy.

And if they don't know what they are, I hope they look them up. So I think you have to have some elements of humor in something like this. You can't just be straight horror. I, because I think then it, I think it's weary for the— Yeah, for the viewers, if it is, unfortunately.

Well, it's great. I love that your story combines some very serious themes like loss, identity, family, grief, healing with humor and an incredible amount of imagination. I can't wait to read this book. I think it's gonna be so much fun.

Yeah, I feel the same way. And it's, um, you know, perhaps a big takeaway from our discussion and your story is that The story isn't over just because we think a chapter has ended.

Laurie, thank you so much for joining us on Late Boomers today.

I have had such a good time. You guys are awesome.

Thank you, as are you. And thanks everybody listening. If Laurie's story has reminded you of something you've been putting off, like writing a book or maybe a new career or a conversation with someone or some creative project, or simply just healing an old wound, maybe it's time.

And please subscribe to Late Boomers on YouTube, like this episode, and find us wherever you get your podcasts. And remember what we late boomers say: It's never too late to rethink what's possible.