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About this episode:

How many history books have kept you up late into the night, turning the page to find out what happens next? That’s exactly what the newest book from this episode’s guest did to Kate, but it was well worth the lost sleep.

Catherine Grace Katz joins the Drafting the Past podcast to talk about her newest book, Shadow Before the Flame: The Hindenburg Disaster and the Prelude to War. Catherine is a writer, historian, and lawyer, with degrees in history from Harvard and Cambridge along with a JD from Harvard. Her first book was Daughters of Yalta: The Churchills, Roosevelts, and Harrimans: A Story of Love and War.

She joined Kate to talk about what goes into writing such extraordinary true stories, from how she works without an outline to the writing tool she found in her mom’s basement, and the unlikely inspiration for the book in a classic holiday movie.

Mentioned in this episode:

• Catherine’s website
• Catherine Grace Katz, Daughters of Yalta: The Churchills, Roosevelts, and Harrimans: A Story of Love and War
• Catherine Grace Katz, Shadow Before the Flame: The Hindenburg Disaster and the Prelude to War
• William L. Shirer, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany
• William L. Shirer, Berlin Diary
• Norman MacLean, Young Men and Fire
• Gioia Diliberto, Firebrands: The Untold Story of Four Women Who Made and Unmade Prohibition
• Tana French
• Patrick Radden Keefe, London Falling: A Mysterious Death in a Gilded City and a Family’s Search for Truth and Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland
• Phillippe Sands, The Ratline: The Exalted Life and Mysterious Death of a Nazi Fugitive, and the podcast precursor, Intrigue: The Ratline
• Helena Merriman, Tunnel 29: The True Story of an Extraordinary Escape Beneath the Berline Wall and its podcast precursor, Intrigue: Tunnel 29
• The Creative Nonfiction Podcast with Brendan O’Meara
• Pitch Club

Welcome back to Drafting the Past. I'm your host

Kate Carpenter, and in each episode, I interview a historian

about how they research and write history. Obviously, I read

a lot of nonfiction, and I'm often skeptical when someone

says, "Oh, it's nonfiction, but it reads like a novel" when they

describe a book. Let me tell you, that phrase absolutely

applies to the newest book from today's guest. As you'll hear,

this one kept me up late reading, I was so wrapped up in

the subjects and the narrative tension. I'm thrilled to welcome

Catherine Grace Katz to the show to talk about how she did it.

Catherine Grace Katz: Thank you so much for having me. It's so

fun to have this conversation with you. I love the chance to

talk about the craft of writing and the history, of course, but

everything that goes into it.

Catherine is a writer, historian, and lawyer

with degrees in history from Harvard and Cambridge, along

with a JD from Harvard. She's the author of two books.

*The Daughters of Yalta: The Churchills, Roosevelts, and

A Story of Love and War* introduced readers to

Catherine's exceptional work six years ago. Her new book out now

is *Shadow Before the Flame: The Hindenburg Disaster and the

Prelude to War*. It's an extraordinary read, and I loved

asking Catherine all about the process of writing it, from how

she works without an outline, the writing tool she found in

her mom's basement to the unlikely inspiration for the

book in a classic holiday movie. Here's my conversation with

Catherine Grace Katz.

Catherine Grace Katz: I, I mean, I always loved history from the

time I was a little kid, and I was the little kid who was

constantly writing stories. I had little notebooks going. I

was really lucky that I grew up in this awesome town where our

schools had this little program called Young Authors, and you'd

write creative stories in grade school, and then the library

would like type them up and put them on nice paper, and then

you'd illustrate them with colored pencils, and then they'd

bind them into little books, and your parents would come for

Young Authors Day, and you'd get to read your story to you know

all the parents. So, like from the time I was a little kid, I

always wanted to be writer. I always loved history. Little

House on the Prairie was like my whole life when I was a little

kid. I loved World War II movies. Like, oh gosh, The Sound

of Music was my favorite. White Christmas, The Great Escape, and

I would just kind of chase my grandpa around at the notepad

when he'd come over and ask him to tell me about you know being

in the navy during the war and growing up during the depression

in Montana and things like that. So I was just kind of like

always a little self-appointed historian and studied history at

Harvard. Got to study with your your co-host and collaborator

Megan Kate Nelson there, and I then studied, I had the chance

to go to Cambridge to study for my MPhil, and I studied modern

European history there. And at that point, I knew that I loved

history and I loved to write, and just the feeling of writing

and feeling like your words matter. I remember having

written a little op-ed for my local newspaper when I was a

freshman in college about a big referendum in my town that was

going to do this overhaul construction in my high school,

and I was like, "This is the wrong time to do it, and this is

the wrong way." And I published it, and I just remember the

reception to it, where like I felt like I was putting people

in conversation. That was just a really exciting feeling, and it

was one I knew I wanted to have again and again. But you know,

coming out of my master's program in the UK, I kind of

knew that I didn't necessarily want to do a PhD in history

because I I kind of feel like the stuff that I work on is like

sometimes like considered like too fun for like academic

historians. At least you know 10 years ago when I was thinking

about this, that's changed somewhat since then. But the

kinds of things that I wanted to write about, I was like, I want

to share this with as many people as possible. You know,

not just the academy. There has to be a different way to do

this. As much as I really admire and respect academic historians

and want them to respect my work and hold myself to very high

standards that my professors would hopefully respect, but I

just, I don't know. I felt like there was a different path for

me. But in the immediate aftermath of school, I went to

work in finance in New York, like everyone else in my grade,

basically, and I was working at BlackRock in New York City. And

by sheer coincidence, in the lobby of my office was a

bookstore called Chartwell Booksellers, named after Winston

Churchill's country home. And through repeated trips to the

bookstore, I got to know the owner. And through the owner of

the bookstore, this group called the International Churchill

Society, which was having this dinner with Madeleine Albright

across the street from my office, and I really wanted to

go and hear her speak because I'd never heard her before, but

I couldn't afford to take her to the dinner because I was a

recent grad, it's super expensive, at the Waldorf, and

so I said, you know, is there any chance like they want a

volunteer at the dinner? Like I'll show people to their tables

or check coats or whatever. And the director of the

International Churchill Society, this lovely gentleman named Lee

Pollack, said, "You know what? We're just really excited to

have a young person who's excited about history.

So why don't you just come and join us at the dinner?" And so

at the dinner, I had a chance to meet a number of folks from the

International Churchill Society, including members of the

Churchill family. And it was right around the time that they

were opening the papers of Churchill's middle daughter,

Sarah, to outside researchers, and given that I had studied at

Cambridge, which is where her papers were, they asked if I'd

be interested in writing a little article about them for

their magazine, and I said yes, just thinking it'd be a fun way

to stay engaged with history. Meanwhile, I was kind of

considering whether I wanted to go to law school, and I remember

distinctly leaving this dinner and calling my mom a couple days

later, as I was walking home from the office after this idea

about writing an article about Sarah Churchill's collection at

Churchill College, Cambridge, and my mom said, "This is so

great. You never know. This could take your life in a

totally different direction that you never expected." And I said,

"I'm pretty sure I'm just going to write an article that just

you know a handful of people read. And she said, "You never

know. Unexpected things happen. We'll see what happens." And I

think the moral of the story is always listen to your mom

because that was the thing that got me started on the idea for

my first book, Daughters of Yalta, and completely changed my

life. And I think it just goes to show that no matter who you

are, where you are, you never know who you're going to meet

when you walk out the door each day, and to be open to new

opportunities, and you know, being excited about things and

enthusiastic in a genuine way-you never know where that's

going to lead because it'll probably lead you in the right

path when you least expect it.

That's amazing. Okay, so I have so many things I

want to ask you. First, I want to ask kind of the basics of of

just how you work. So, when and where do you like to do your

writing?

Catherine Grace Katz: It kind of depends. So, for, while I was

working in Daughters of Yalta, I was, part of the time I was in

law school while I was doing that. I finished that while I

was a 1L. So, one of the things that was great was I was back at

Harvard for for law school where I studied as an undergrad, and

beautiful libraries there. So, you know, the chance to go to

Widener Library and really you know tuck in for the day, or go

late to Lamont Library where all the undergrads are, and it

smells kind of funky, but it smells like the place where you

get work done. I always enjoy working there, like when I was

on campus. But I actually did a lot of the work at home at the

same desk where I did a lot of my high school papers, college

applications, all of that, we have this really cool giant,

like you know, old-fashioned partner desk in the little

office of our house, and I'd love to just kind of tuck in

there. It just felt very, I don't know, historic and

appropriate. So when I was home, I would write there, and then

yeah, now but working on this book, I live in D.C. now, so I

still spend a lot of time in Chicago and still spend a lot of

time at that desk as well, but for this book, I spent a lot of

weekends in the Georgetown University Library, which is not

quite as attractive. But if you set up like right in front of

this giant window on the fifth floor, you get incredible views

over Georgetown in the fall with the changing leaves, and so

those are my favorite places to work. I don't love to just kind

of like stay home and stay in one place all day. I need to get

out, get out and about, feel like I'm going to work. So I

like to have a little bit of variety. But I'm not like

married to like this is my only place. This is the only routine

I have. I'm not like slave to routine. I think, and some of

that has been out of necessity because I've also been working

full time as an attorney now. I've been working on this book,

so it kind of has to fit in where it does.

Yeah. So I mean, so when do you do your writing

then, as you juggle a different job?

Catherine Grace Katz: Yeah. Well, I'm I'm a writer and

historian first and foremost. The law fits around that, and

that's a crazy thing to say about somebody who's working

full time as an associate in big law. So I, you know, I also am a

normal person who maintains a normal social life, though, so

I'm not just a total workaholic. But you know, a lot of this book

was written on the weekends. You know, get to the library at you

know 930, 10 a.m. stay there for eight, 9, 10, hours, pack my

little PB and J, go outside and eat it, go back it in the

library. It's a lot of that. A lot of staying up too late at

night. Like oftentimes, you know, you get the the best idea

right before you're about to go to bed, and then it's like

another two hours. But whatever. I'm not like a huge like get up

at the crack of dawn person. I wish I was a morning person

because it is lovely in the morning before anyone's

bothering you. Just have this time of peace and quiet. I'm

just not wired that way. But I also have been fortunate. My

firm's been really supportive, and they gave me a couple of

months off when I was doing the first draft of this book. So for

a little bit of time, I had time just to write, and I like sprint

wrote draft one to get that done. But the rest of the time,

I was working full time while I was doing the research, doing

the editing, later drafts. So I don't know when it all happens,

but it kind of does. And I think there's more time in the day

than we think we have.

How do you like to organize your research and

notes?

Catherine Grace Katz: It's a little bit of controlled chaos,

I suppose. So controversially, I'm not a big outliner. You and

I had a little back and forth about that before we got on air.

Yeah. So when I am in the archive, my goal is always to

kind of just get as much material as I can. You're, you

know, usually on a tight schedule. You can't spend

forever and ever in an archive. There are many that you have to

hit. You're on a budget. You know, kind of, you're on a

timeline. You've got you know 10 archives you need to go to. So

as much it would be nice to spend six weeks in one archive

that's just not realistic. So my method is I take pictures of as

much as I possibly can that might be useful, and often it's

that last box at the end of the day that you find that gem that

you didn't know you were looking for in kind of a folder marked

miscellaneous, right? As the archivist is, you know, trying

to usher you out the door, but then I get home and kind of then

I process what I have gone through in the archive, and

that's you know combing through all the documents. I keep you

know very meticulous records of box numbers, you know, so I know

where everything came from, document titles, and all that.

I'm kind of combing for, you know, the information that I

think is going to be relevant and important, and I kind of

transpose that into another document. I have a document for

each archive, kind of split into sections for different boxes and

folders. But generally, I I don't love to have more than

kind of like a general outline, kind of largely in my head slash

whatever was in the book proposal. In a large way, I can

kind of see it floating in my head like a movie, where there

are kind of these key set pieces and the background, the

characters, and the history kind of are the the linking elements

between the set pieces. There's kind of a lot of pacing that I

can feel. I find that if I get too locked into outlining, I

kind of get stuck into like trying to jam all this cool

stuff I found in the archive into the manuscript, which does

not flow well. It feels overstuffed, and it feels like

I'm trying to show everyone how much cool stuff I have. So for

me, when I'm organizing, it's kind of almost like a chapter by

chapter approach, where I know kind of generally what the

chapter arc is going to be, you know, across the entire book,

and then I will jot down like on a piece of scrap paper key

pieces of evidence, quotations, you know, little nuggets from

the archive that I know belong in the chapter, and kind of by

the end of the chapter, I make sure that I hit all of them. But

it's not usually does not all end up in the chapter in the

order in which I kind of jotted down notes in the first place.

And then I have just kind of some odds and ends that are just

like these awesome little nuggets that I don't know where

they belong, and I don't want to forget them either, and kind of

lose them in my volume of notes and notes on notes. And so I'll

write each of these little nuggets down on a sticky note,

you know, with whatever source I found it from. And if you

remember those tri-fold posters that we all used when we were

doing class projects, we all did a million of them. I found one

in my parents' basement when I was working on my first book,

and I just kind of started sticking sticky notes of you

know little nuggets that I didn't know where they belonged,

but I knew they belonged somewhere.

I stuck them all over this poster board, which I could fold

up and put away, so my space wouldn't get completely

destroyed of you know messes of papers. But I kind of call it my

murder wall, like in a detective show where you have all little

you know scraps of evidence linked up with strings and

pictures and things like that, and so that's kind of my like

organized chaos in a way. Even though a lot of it just kind of

lives in my head.

I love that so much. Also, I saw you I saw you

post about your murder wall on Instagram, and it blew my mind

because it's such a simple solution to put it on one of

those display boards, and it never occurred to me. I live in

a small old house with very limited wall space, and I'm

pretty visual. But like, I never know where to put notes. So

anyway, you-

Catherine Grace Katz: Exactly. I'm also very--I'm glad. I'm

happy to share that little hack with anyone. Who knew that like

what we were doing in third grade would you know end up

being super useful to everyone? But I also am very visual. I

don't have like a color coding system or anything like that. I

just literally am like, here's a new pack of sticky notes. I

guess these are blue, and they'll start going up, and

they're like, oh, my next pack is yellow, and they'll start

going up. But I'll kind of remember where I put them on the

board long after I folded it up and put it away, and I'm like,

oh, this is the note. Or if I'm like, I know these 10 things'll

go in this chapter. I'll just take them off and like bundle

them up in a little paperclip and take them off to the library

with me and make sure I like get them all and check them off when

I'm done. So that's kind of my my process, I suppose. I'm not a

Robert Caro like outline the entire book and put it up on

pieces of paper all around my office. That's not me, but

everybody does what works for them. And there's probably like

a tidier way to do what I do, but it is kind of this old

school. Like I am, like you know, on the younger end of

historians, but I work in a kind of old school way. There's great

technology like Google Docs and spreadsheets and stuff to keep

yourself organized. That doesn't work for me. I need to write it

down, and once I've written it down, I'll remember it forever.

I love that. Where in the process of doing

research do you feel like you're ready to start writing? How do

you know when you've hit that point?

Catherine Grace Katz: I think each book it depends. I think a

key thing is there's so much of having to let the sources guide

you, or you have a general idea of where you're going when you

head into an archive. But really, kind of, it's only once

you've been immersed in those primary source documents that it

takes you in a direction that maybe you weren't anticipating,

so you really have to kind of let the the sources and the

voices from the past guide where you're going. And if it feels

like things are just not flowing, it's usually because

you're wrong, so you have to go back into the archive and do

more research. So I feel like I'm in kind of like a continuous

research process always. So there will always be elements.

Of any chapter that I'm working on, that I'm like, oh, I need to

learn more about that. Just this very small thing that's only a

paragraph, but I need to make sure I understand this in and

out. And you don't know you need that until you get into the

book. But I say there's kind of you know this enough research.

There's kind of the element of like doing enough research first

to write a really tight proposal, and I think the

exercise of writing a proposal is very helpful to kind of show

you what you know and what you still need to learn. And then

after writing the proposal, selling the book, I'd say for me

it's like a solid year of dedicated research of just kind

of building up a wealth of sources and information. And

then there just comes a point where I'm like, I have to start

writing. This has to come out of my brain. It's just banging

around in there, and I have this idea, and I have I know exactly

how to phrase it, and like I just have to sit down and write

it. I do say I would say that like the first chapter or two is

for both books has been the hardest for me. It gets like way

easier like by chapter three, but that kind of like the

balance of the setup is always tough. So I kind of like write

like a not great version of like chapter one too. Then I'm like

cooking by chapter three, and then I'll usually go back and

you know put a lot of attention into the front part of the book

because oftentimes it's like as you get deeper into it, you

realize you need to set things up differently. And so I've

definitely learned to be patient with myself and not too much put

too much pressure on knocking out of the park in the first

draft of the first couple of chapters because they will need

to evolve.

How do you approach the revision process

then?

Catherine Grace Katz: I'm kind of a continuous reviser. I start

each day, and I think kind of sitting down to write can be

really daunting. And so you kind of need to give yourself like a

little bit of almost like low hanging fruit to feel a sense of

accomplishment to get back into it, and so I actually kind of

revise what I wrote the day before at the beginning of each

writing day. So there is that. Usually, I'm really excited

about what I've been working on, and so by the time I finish a

chapter, a couple of shorter chapters, I'll read them aloud

to my mom. That's usually my first line of attack of editing,

and then once I've kind of workshopped it, we've talked it

out. I mean, she has always been the person that I've gone to to

kind of talk through ideas, often at 2 o'clock in the

morning. God bless her, she's the kindest, most patient person

in the world. And then when it's like time to really get in the

weeds, then I go to my sister, who is like the scariest, most

intimidating editor ever. Even though she's 11 years younger

than me, she basically edited Daughters of Yalta as a

17-year-old in high school. Sometimes I'll be reading it

aloud to myself, and she'll be in the other room, and she'll

just be like, "Stop! You used that, you know, really similar

phrasing a couple of pages ago. Go back and read it to yourself

again, and you'll see it's there." And she's 100% right.

She's really ruthless and like doesn't cushion it. Like "this

part is great, but this part needs some work." It's like

"this part is a problem, and you know that I'm right. So go fix

it, and then we'll talk about it again when it's fixed." I'm just

like, oh my god. Okay, so like by the time it actually goes to

my editor, it's like pretty tight. My mom and my sister have

already been through it, and no one in my family is shy about

sharing their opinions. It's like opinions all over the place

all the time. Usually constructive, but you can't have

thin skin.

That's fantastic. Well, your family

obviously plays a big role in your writing, and and you also

mentioned the acknowledgements that it was kind of an offhanded

remark from your brother that even launched you into this new

book. So, first of all, for people who haven't read it, if

you don't mind telling that story, that'd be great. But I

also want to know what what your reaction was to that comment.

Catherine Grace Katz: So my new book is about the Hindenburg

disaster. It's called Shadow Before the Flame: The Hindenburg

Disaster and the Prelude to War, and it is situating the

Hindenburg disaster in a way that I really have not seen it

situated before. Where it's kind of this event that everybody

knows, kind of as like the equivalent of the Titanic of the

sky, but yet no one can place it, and they really don't know

anything about it. They don't know when it happened. People

are like wildly off of when they think it occurred. It's 1937.

People have no idea where it happened because it's you know a

German airship. They assume it happened in Germany. It actually

happened in Lakehurst, New Jersey. There's the famous Herb

"Oh, the humanity!" that a lot of people

know, which you know, understandably, in the moment he

thought everyone had perished, and when you listen to that, you

also assume, when you see it with photos and maybe it's the

Led Zeppelin album cover or you know other famous pictures of

it, it looks this Titanic inferno looks like everybody

died. Of course, actually, most people survived. Two thirds of

the 100 or so people between passengers and crew survived. So

it's just this kind of thing that it exists, but people have

no idea about any of the details. The most basic of which

are the most mind blowing of all, but it's also kind of

completely hovering separate and apart from the history to which

it belongs, and it's at this really interesting intersection

of the rise of the Nazis and the road to World War II, and the

Nazis having used it as kind of the ultimate tool of soft power

and propaganda and kind of reputation building abroad

because it was this incredibly impressive technology that was

you know appropriately you know appreciated in kind of all of

its amazement. It long predated the Nazis, so it wasn't, you

know, they'd been around, airships had been around since

1900, early 1900s, they were not a Nazi invention. They became

co-opted by the Nazis, but it's also kind of on the collision

course with like all of the amazing innovations in

technology and global connectivity, and you know the

you know very quick acceleration of development of aviation, and

so kind of a similar technology moment that we're living through

today that's transforming the way that people connect all

around the world, and the flow of information, and so it's kind

of like this, the geopolitical and the technological forces

coming head to head, which found I found really intriguing, and I

don't think people have really tangled with too much when it

comes to the Hindenburg. And then alongside that, it was a

pivotal transformative moment in the history of the news and

modern breaking news media would not exist today without the

Hindenburg disaster. It completely changed kind of the

way that people heard the news and remarkable events kind of

within their own homes as they were occurring around the world

in a way that was very different from how they've been shared

with the public before, which kind of set the stage for World

War II. But before that, radio really was not a news medium,

which is interesting. So it's kind of all these forces, but

you know the story is shared through the lens of the

passengers and the crew and the personal stories of the people

on board as they lived and experienced it in a very

narrative, nonfiction forward sort of way. So it is a

definitive history of the Hindenburg disaster, but very

much you feel like you're reading a narrative. So I kind

of love these slices of time where you see the world changing

very quickly in just a few days, or you know even a few moments,

and you've got a really diverse, interesting set of characters

who wouldn't all be in the room together, but they've kind of

been brought together by these unique circumstances. So the way

that this story came about is probably one of the weirdest

origin stories of any book of history. So, a couple years ago

at Christmas, my family was watching A Christmas Story for

the millionth time, and you know, folks out there will

remember Ralphie Parker who wants his Red Rider BB gun. He's

pining away for it on Christmas morning.

You might remember him coming downstairs and opening Aunt

Clara's pink bunny outfit, which he does not want to wear before

he finally gets the Red Rider BB gun, thanks to his dad at the

very end of Christmas morning. But when Ralphie comes

downstairs, you know he's there with his brother Randy and his

little brother, you know, mister "I can't put my arms down" in

the snow suit. He dives into the pile of presents and he finds a

toy with his name on it, and it's a zeppelin. And he goes,

"Wow, it's a zeppelin!" Kind of like zooms it around the

wrapping paper, falls asleep holding it that night. And this

just kind of led to a little, you know, conversation with my

family after we watched the movie. Just you know, we'd seen

it 100 times, but hadn't really stopped to think about it. And

my younger brother, Oliver, who's always been, you know,

loves, he's always loved aviation. He just kind of

started talking about like, can you imagine what it was like to

see these things flying overhead? You looked at how big

it was. It was like the size of the U.S. Capitol building flying

over you. You know, airplanes were not a common sight at the

time. They were certainly not that big. A 747 is not even a

third as big as the Zeppelins were. Certainly didn't exist

then. And so he was just saying, you know, can you imagine what

that would be like to look up and see that flying overhead, or

to feel a shadow pass over you, or you know, to fly on it? And

then a moment later, he goes, Catherine, you should write a

book about the Hindenburg disaster, just like that. And of

course, being the you know know-it-all older sister, I'm

like, ah, I don't know, it's like really famous. I'm sure

tons of people have written about that already. And he just

says, you know, I've never seen a good book about it before, so

why don't you look into it? So we kind of just like, you know,

pulled out our computers and just like look it up like books

about the Hindenburg disaster. And there kind of isn't really a

definitive book about it. There are a couple of very conspiracy

theory type accounts written in the 70s, and there are even

chapters of books on aviation history about the Hindenburg and

the Zeppelins. But kind of the story that I wanted to read

didn't exist, and so I sort of thought about it. And then

before I knew it, just little pieces in my life just kept

flagging things about the Hindenburg, and they kind of

just kept popping up in front of me. Like I was leafing through

Bill Shires' Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, and then in my

law school copyright law class, the Hindenburg came up in a case

that we were reading, and it just like kind of just kept

appearing everywhere, and that was when I was like, this is the

feeling that I had almost you know when I was doing Daughters

of Yalta. It's like all these little signs from the universe

that are pointing me in this direction, showing me that this

is the right way to proceed. Okay, like I have to do this.

I'm writing this story, and so that's how it all came about.

Thanks to my brother and A Christmas Story, and so it just

goes to show you never know when inspiration is going to strike

and who's going to you know make an offhand comment that's going

to take your life in a direction you never anticipated.

Yeah, that's incredible. I mean that it's so

funny because that was a little bit my response as a reader at

first when I heard about the book was like, oh surely there's

like a good book already about the Hindenburg. No, no, there's

not. And then it was also the like, well, I know about the

Hindenburg, but then upon reflection, was like, hmm, I

don't know that much about the Hindenburg other than it

existed. So yeah, exactly as you describe it.

Catherine Grace Katz: And it's just such an amazing aesthetic

too, of like that time in the late 1930s where it's really Art

Deco, kind of very chrome looking. I mean, it's like the

the aviation equivalent of the Empire State Building or the

Chrysler Building, it's totally kind of like Jules Verne science

fiction meets Agatha Christie, Murder on the Orient Express,

where you've got all these strangers who are thrown

together for this you know elegant journey over a few days,

where you know it's like you have the kind of the

sophistication of you know a French trained chef preparing

three course meals and an aluminum piano in the lounge and

people drinking cocktails at the bar and in the smoking room,

which is also crazy that there was a smoking room on a hydrogen

filled zeppelin. But it's like you also know like there's a

sense of foreboding that like not everybody's going to make it

out of this journey alive, and so kind of those two elements.

And Agatha Christie was an incredibly popular writer at the

time, and I think, just kind of like having read so many novels

of that era, it's an era that is just so palpable in kind of its

unique aesthetics and feeling. And I think also it's like we

think of the 1930s as this era that's just shrouded in gloom,

with the depression at the beginning and World War II at

the end. But I think if you ask someone in 1937, you know how

they were feeling about the direction of the world, they

would actually be really optimistic because there were so

many amazing innovations happening at the time, showcased

at the World's Fair in Chicago. You know, things like people,

you know, having more already access to cars. Radios were in

the vast majority of households, both in the U.S. and Germany.

Refrigerators, dishwater washers, air conditioning-like

these things were all becoming invented, being invented, and

like ending up in people's homes, and it was just this

really thrilling time to be alive before this cataclysmic

world event occurs, and so it's just also interesting to kind of

put yourself in the footsteps of someone kind of I think in this

like critically understudied moment in history between the

Depression and the you know acceleration towards war.

Absolutely. I mean, I think I'm going to get

back to sort of that acceleration. But but one thing

that really struck me reading this book was how much you're

able to sort of show in telling this one story kind of attitudes

toward Germany and and Hitler's rise. And and I'm especially

struck by like Bill Shirer, this journalist who is is in Europe,

in Berlin at the start of it, sort of trying to communicate to

people what's going on and feeling so frustrated that like

no one is really listening. Yeah, it's just such a

fascinating thing that I hadn't really spent a lot of time

immersed in before.

Catherine Grace Katz: Yeah, and the fact that he is kind of one

of the primary voices who's telling the story of the

Hindenburg, kind of in real time. He he's in Germany. He

does the first kind of you know broadcast on the-- he's he's a

print journalist, as all journalists were at the time.

There really weren't radio journalists at then. He would

later become one of the pioneers in that, working with Edward R.

Murrow during World War II. But the first radio broadcast he

ever did was about the Hindenburg and reporting on

people's reactions to it within Germany, and it's also just you

know really interesting and kind of thinking about the craft of

history. Shirer was kind of the first cut historian for many of

these events of World War II through his columns initially,

and then in kind of the immediate personal reactions

through the publication of Berlin Diary, which is not a

diary in the strictest sense, but more of a contemporaneous

reflection on events unfolding in Germany, which he smuggles

out of Germany and then publishes soon after. And then,

you know, after the war, he writes The Rise and Fall of the

Third Reich, which was the first of its kind, full-scale history

of the lead up to, descent into and development of the war using

German documents that had been discovered after the Nazis had

been defeated, and so he has these kind of repeated instances

of being the historian of first instance in multiple different

ways of the same events, and so it's interesting to think about

him as a historical character, kind of giving us the history as

So I do want to talk more about one of the most

we know it now, and how did he, his unique positioning kind of

lead us to see the war in those events as we understand them

today? Thanks to him in all these different iterations. And

I think it's no surprise that Rise and Fall the Third Reich

remains one of the best-selling history books of all time.

impressive things about this book, and just just to be clear

to readers, this book is excellent. But one of one of its

most impressive components is just how propulsive it is. That

there's this real sense of narrative tension, and and some

of that, you know, there's the gift, so to speak, that like we

know things end badly, and so you're, you have that from the

beginning, but nonetheless, you really like do an excellent job

of kind of putting us in the moment, and so even though we

know on a larger scale what's going to happen, there's still

just like a page turning question of what comes next.

What are your strategies for sustaining tension like that?

Catherine Grace Katz: Yeah, I think so much of kind of the way

that I approach writing, it's very narrative. It's very

character driven, and I almost want you to forget that you're

reading nonfiction. I want you to feel like you're reading a

novel, and the way that the characters develop and the story

develops, kind of through almost like a, it's almost like a group

biography in a way, but kind of like a very particular part of a

biography of someone's life, and so I want you to feel really

invested in these people when they reach that critical moment

that's going to fundamentally reshape their lives. And each of

these individuals of the story, they kind of represent really

different segments of society and forces happening around the

world. You've got you know this incredibly wealthy American

businessman who's on his way home from Europe. You've got an

American expat heiress who's been living in Italy and seeing

that world change around her. You've got a German American

immigrant who is Jewish who's kind of been successful in the

United States and using his success to kind of help you know

pay to bring his family members over. You have a cabin boy

making his first journey to the United States. You have a German

Zeppelin captain who's kind of like many many Germans who feel

you know like well they're not signed up Nazi party members,

but the Nazis' investment in his business of airships has you

know allowed them to surpass what they would have been able

to achieve without that kind of investment, and you know this

industry that you've staked your career on would not be viable

without the financial support of the Nazi regime. And so you see,

kind of just all these different forces at the time represented

through each of these people. And I, you know, one of the ways

that I kind of think about writing history, especially

tragedy. I remember reading Norman MacLean's *Young Men and

Fire* when I was in high school, and I was just so struck by the

way that he wrote about writing about the events of the Man

Gulch Fire of 1949, and talking about how some characters from

history are kind of content to lie in the past, and they don't

really kind of announce themselves to you as the

historian later, but some very much are. It seems like you know

they left so much behind as if they're intent on telling their

story, and they really emerge from the historical record and

they became they become very present figures in your mind.

And so it's not like you know as a historian you're not like a

casting director like oh I'm gonna have this person carry

this part of the story, and this person carry that part, but it

very much evolves organically, and people are just kind of

insisting on telling their story to you, and kind of I think it's

about it's you know on us as historians to listen to them and

be guided by who is carrying the story, and so it's you know I

think that there's all these grand events of history, it's

easy to kind of put, you know, someone like Churchill or

Roosevelt on a pedestal, and you see them as people like you

can't really relate to because they're larger than life. But so

much of history and the decisions at the geopolitical

level, or technology and regulation, the ultimate results

fall on regular people, and even world leaders are regular people

with families, loved ones, people that they turn to in

times of doubt and crisis, and this is these are feelings that

all of us experience. And so, kind of really by bringing the

human, you know, the quote is "Oh, the humanity." The word I

kept at the heart of the story the whole time is humanity, and

you will care so much more about the Hindenburg by not just oh

here was a crazy Nazi airship that exploded in New Jersey, but

it means something to people, and it matters to them. It

matters to their descendants, many of whom I had a chance to

interview for this book. And by bringing the personal side to

these grand events of history that we know, I think makes you

feel invested in it, and that's what I want to relay to readers

as an author.

I mean, one way that you do that is that you

really you bring the characters to life so vividly. As as I

mentioned to you before this conversation, I stayed up late

one night because I had to know what happened to one of the

characters. I was so invested in him, and you know--

Catherine Grace Katz: I'm really glad you feel that way. And I

think I know which one you're talking about. And no spoilers,

but I'm really, really sorry about that one.

You know, fiction writers have the

advantage of being able to, you know, pull in whatever

characteristics they need to make us feel and see characters.

But nonfiction writers are at a disadvantage that way, right?

Because we only have what's available to us archivally. So

I'm wondering how you think about developing those

characters and making sure that they seem like full people, and

how you kind of overcome when there's information you wish you

could include, but that you don't have.

Catherine Grace Katz: Yeah, and I think one of the hardest

things-it's like this is the irony of being a nonfiction

writer and historian-you come to know these people so well, so

intimately, everything about them, and yet you'll never meet

them, and you care about these people tremendously. But at the

end of the day, you can't give everyone the ending that they

deserve, and that's one of the hardest things. It's kind of

heartbreaking to get to the end of the story where you know some

people live and some people don't, and even those who live,

you know, it's it's some people ride off into the sunset and

have wonderful lives, but it doesn't happen for everyone, and

so it's just, that's, you know, it's you get like the full

spectrum of human emotions in writing a book like this, but I

think I, as a historian, I think I go after details that are

different than some other people to kind of, because my my focus

is not just the event, but I want you to understand the event

and what's the forces of the time period and what's important

to take away from the history through the people who are

living through it. And to be, to feel real to the extent that you

care about them, you need to know things like you know talk

to their family members about like when you think of you know

your father, you think of your mother. What is it that reminds

you of them? You know what what perfume did your mother wear?

What cigars did your father smoke? You know what were some

fraternity hijinks your grandfather got up to in college

that he would tell stories about later. You know these kinds of

things. That it's this is how we experience the world when we

think about our loved ones. It's like what stands out to you

about them. Like if you were to tell a historian about your mom,

the things that you would bring up wouldn't necessarily be like

my mom was involved in this big business transaction in you know

1985, and it was a really proud moment for her. Like no, like

this is your mom. Like what brings her to life in your mind?

And those are the same kinds of details that I want to put into

the book, so it feels like this is a real person, and it's like

someone that you know. And they're just kind of little

sprinklings of details like that, and they're really unusual

places to find them, and it depends on the person. Sometimes

it's by interviewing their family members. Sometimes it's

by looking through a scrapbook and kind of like letters from

you know old friends that you find where there's these little

shreds of details that like are not necessarily historically

important, but they're personally important. Where the

record is sparse, it's really frustrating because sometimes

it's like, damn! I would love to know what these. It's like

someone says, "and then they discuss the cares of the world,

like over cigars in the smoking room." It's like, well, I would

like to know what they were discussing about the cares of

the world, like especially in Germany, given that you had this

very you know sophisticated group of Americans and Germans

traveling together. I'm sure they had a really compelling

conversation. I don't know what it was. I can't conjecture what

it was, but I think that kind of in those absences of exactly

kind of the verbatim line that you would love from someone,

that's the opportunity for you to step in and you to speak as

the historian about what is happening in the world at the

time. You provide the background, provide provide the

salient details of the era and the kind of the broader forces

that you want your reader to care about, and so it's kind of

in the absence of their voice, it becomes you showing the

reader what historically is incredibly important for them to

know at this time, and so it's kind of a conversation back and

forth between the characters speaking for themselves. I say

characters mean they're real people, and you as a historian,

kind of filling in those gaps of what we today may not know now

that we should know.

So when I was reading, I actually went back

and reread after I had finished how you brought each person,

each character on on stage, so to speak, in the book, because

you do it so brilliantly. You establish them with a sense of

character, but you also weave it into historical context, and so

you use each opportunity of for introduction to also bring in

another part of of the history. How do you think about this? I

think this was the part that most blew my mind to learn that

you don't outline because this seemed to me like such an

intricate thing to accomplish. So, how do you think about

introducing characters like that?

Catherine Grace Katz: I wish I could tell you that I have like

a really conscious thought process of how I do it. I mean,

aside from kind of like you can't introduce every character

the same way because that just gets really repetitive, and I

think the most the other piece of writing advice that like I

firmly believe in, and I don't know where I heard this, but I

think it's just like you have to read it aloud to yourself. You

have to sit there and read your whole book aloud to yourself,

and that can be really annoying. But you will hear the pacing of

your story entirely differently that way. I read every chapter

aloud to myself as I'm writing it, and so you'll pick up on it,

like where you're kind of using the same construction too many

times, and you'll get annoyed hearing it, and then you'll be

like, "Okay, if I'm a reader, I'm going to get annoyed by this

too. But I don't know. I just think that it so much that comes

from just like the kind of characters that I grew up, kind

of the world that I was immersed in. You know, reading things

like Anne of Green Gables and Little Women, and The Secret

Garden, and my mom read all the Harry Potter books aloud to us,

and the Chronicles of Narnia, and Little House on a Prairie,

and I don't know. There's just kind of like a passive

absorption of storytelling, kind of through like what I read as a

kid, and I just almost see there's just kind of a, like,

inherent feeling, and it's like I kind of know exactly how they

want to announce themselves. It's like they tell me how they

want to announce themselves, and I'm sorry if it's a really

unsatisfying answer, but I think some characters in this book

they they illustrate different things through their lived

experience, and so the characters will inherently

represent different elements of the world of 1937 through the

way that they live, through the way that they arrive on the

scene, and I don't know. It's just the the best way I can

describe it is just kind of like there's just like I can just

feel when they should arrive, and probably because I've

watched too many movies, but I don't know. It's kind of like

there's just a pacing to when carachters are introduced

throughout a well-constructed story, and I think you can only

really feel that by reading a ton and watching really good

movies too. And I I use movie scores as my background when I

write, and movie scores are also inherently about telling a story

in a way that's different from other pieces of classical music.

So I I don't know, like I wish I could tell you exactly how I

plot it out. This is probably why I can't outline because I'm

like I can just feel it. Like how do you how do you put a

feeling into an outline? So I'd probably teach a terrible class

because I'd be like I don't know, just feel it out. Go watch

the movies. I'm gonna teach you how to write a tragedy. Now

we're gonna go watch Alfred Hitchcock.

You mentioned just now, kind of interviewing

family members and other people, and you you did a lot of

interviewing for this book. I think sometimes people think

that histories that say are set in the 1930s, like there's no

interviewing to be done, but you tracked down a lot of people to

talk about what what was it like to work with descendants and

other people who were sort of connected to these events.

Catherine Grace Katz: That's my favorite part of this job, and

that was something that was really special about working on

my first book. You know, this came about through kind of

getting to know the Churchill family in the the first

instance, and through them, I got to know the Roosevelt family

and the Harriman family, and all those folks have become lifelong

friends to me. And it's just kind of a remarkable thing. It

just, I'm so incredibly lucky that these people were willing

to trust the story of their mother, their aunt, their

grandmother, kind of with a perfect stranger who, at that

time, I'd never published anything, and you know the fact

that they were willing to take a chance on me and to allow me to

tell that story, which is incredibly personal, was just

the greatest gift, and I will forever be so grateful for that.

And just the chance to get to know these people, it makes you

realize it's like yes, like Winston Churchill was part of

someone's family, and he was somebody's grandfather, and

that's it. Just makes you stop and step back from the history

as you know it, and just kind of reframes the way that you see

things. And so for this one, it was a little bit more of kind of

like a disparate treasure hunt in a way. Some folks I was able

to track down kind of on like the more of like the history of

reporting and kind of the news side with some people who'd

worked with, like people like William Shirer, who I was able

to connect with through you know a couple journalists I know of,

kind of some you know veteran news people who'd worked with

him, kind of when he was at the end of his career and they were

the beginning of their career, which was really cool. Sometimes

it was just like random cold emails to a descendant who you

know is a professor at a university, and it's like, oh,

like here's their email. I'm just going to send them a

message. The craziest one, though, was, actually two crazy

ones. One, one of the the figures, the one that you stayed

up all night reading about, his family actually was friends with

a family friend of mine through the kind of like Irish Catholic

Chicago kind of giant family world, which my family is part

of, which my friend's family is part of, and then this family.

And so my mom was like, "If you just ask them, I would bet you

100 bucks that they know someone in that family." And sure

enough, they did. And I got to go to Lakehurst with the

granddaughter of one of the Hindenburg passengers and

experience that with her, and just see like the personal

emotional element of being there with someone for whom this is

their family history. But the craziest one was I was trying to

find the descendants of this character or this person named

Benny Spah, who was a German American immigrant. He was a

vaudeville performer. He did some acting and he was an

acrobat and kind of would go on these world tours to Germany,

you know, across the United States. As vaudeville was the

most popular form of public entertainment at the time, and I

was like, there are a number of siblings who I think might be

around today. I'm not 100% sure, but like I haven't seen any

obituaries that they passed away. Like, there's got to be a

way to connect with them because three of his kids were actually

there at Lakehurst waiting for him when he arrived back home on

the Hindenburg.

So I was like trying to figure out like how do I, was, you

know, sent like a cold Facebook message to one of them, like,

they never opened it, probably haven't checked their account in

10 years but a friend of mine from law school was like hey one

of my co clerks that I'm working with this year in my clerkship

he had a, his relative like was on the Hindenburg and, you know,

took a bunch of pictures on the Hindenburg and like I'd love to

connect you with him, and I was like wow okay great like and I

thought it was somebody else that he was related to. No it

was actually the family I'd been looking for--

That's incredible.

Catherine Grace Katz: --which was unbelievable and so I got to

go and interview Benny Spah's daughter who's in her 90s now

she's absolutely amazing but remembers every minute of being

there has you know personal kind of artifacts that were with him

on the Hindenburg that still smell like smoke almost 90 years

later, and so it's just unbelievable and just the chance

to get to know these families is like truly the greatest part of

the entire experience and I'm so grateful to all of them for

being willing to share their family stories with me.

Yeah, that's amazing. What a gift to all of

us too that you captured that history before that sort of

second generation is entirely gone.

Catherine Grace Katz: Yeah, it's just I like you feel like you're

kind of in a race against the clock where it's it's not going

to be there forever, and especially World War II. Like I

don't know if every book I'll write will be World War II

centric, but I almost feel like this pressure of time, like

right now is the time to capture these stories, and if I don't

act quickly, it's going to be too late. I also think it's just

like a great reminder that we all have fascinating people in

our own families, and so like this year at Thanksgiving, or

you know the next time you see your grandparents, aunts, and

uncle, like sit down with them, pull out your phone, you know,

take a voice memo, and just like ask them to tell some stories

and capture your own family history, because someday those

people won't be there, and you know whether you ultimately want

to write a book about your grandparents or you just want to

have something to pass down. There's nothing like hearing

from these people in their own words, and often the things that

they think aren't important or aren't special historically,

those are some of the most fascinating things of all. And

so just, you know, if we're all on our phones so much, pull it

out, start taking a voice memo, and just ask your family

questions.

That's fantastic. I want to ask a

little bit about your influences here at the end. So first, I'm

going to ask you, what's the most influential writing advice

you've ever gotten?

Catherine Grace Katz: Most influential writing advice,

hands down, was from my friend Gioia Diliberto, who she writes

both nonfiction and fiction, and she also teaches writing. She

taught at Northwestern for a long time. And she and I had

coffee when I was working on my first book. And she asked me to

tell her what my book was about. And so I go on this long spiel

about what it's about, blah blah blah. And she goes, "Okay, stop.

I'm going to take you through an exercise I do with my writing

students." And she says, "Okay, tell me what your book is about

in a sentence," and so I did, and a little trickier to have to

put it in one sentence. And then she said, "Okay, now put your

book into a phrase, like a logline from a movie." Much

harder to get it down just a few words. And then she says, "Okay,

now tell me what your book is about at its heart in one word."

And so I sat and thought about it. This is really, really hard.

And then I realized my book is about relationships. It's about

relationships between nations, relationships between leaders,

and most importantly, for the story about the relationships of

fathers and daughters. And kind of having that word then in the

center of my mind for the rest of the time while I was writing

the book, it kept me from straying off into kind of

directions and sidelines that are pieces of information in

history that are really interesting, but not necessarily

core to this story. Maybe it belongs in another story. Maybe

it belongs in an endnote. I do have a ton of extra stuff in

endnotes, so that's why my endnotes are like 100 pages

long. So don't don't skip those. They're there for a reason. But

that exercise was instrumental for me in staying focused. I did

that same thing when I was working on this book, and that

word for me this time was humanity. Herb Morrison, "Oh,

the humanity." It's in the famous quote, but it is about

the humanity of this moment and kind of how the humanity has

been abstracted and lost. You know, initially in kind of the

way that this was remembered publicly in Nazi Germany, where

the victims of the Hindenburg, like their their individual

humanity, was stripped from them, kind of, in the initial

memorials to and funerals for the victims, where it became

very much kind of propaganda for the state. But then over time,

as conspiracy theories around the story have swirled, kind of

all these wild conjectures about what brought down the

Hindenburg, which are crazy and reveal much more about kind of

other forces of the society than they do about the Hindenburg,

namely anti-Semitism. It's just kind of what is, you know, who

are these humans impacted by the story, and how do their stories

touch each and every one of us, and so humanity is that word for

me. That's at the heart of this book.

Are there other people who you read as

inspiration for your writing?

Catherine Grace Katz: So, I mean, like I, I would say I read

definitely more fiction than nonfiction, actually, and I

think that that is kind of probably not surprising though.

If you read, you know, the pacing and development and

narrative tension of a novel, I feel like is the most

instructive kind of guide for creating that propulsive energy.

I love reading like murder mysteries, spy thrillers, things

like that. I've been on a huge Tana French kick lately. I have

one left, and I'm just like, I've got to wait for a moment

where I can really enjoy this. Patrick Radden Keefe is one of

my favorite writers today on the nonfiction front. He comes from

the world of journalism, but his stories are just-they're

magnetic, they're propulsive, and he writes in a way that's so

riveting, where there's you know no word wasted, but not in a way

of trying to kind of show off what a brilliant writer he is!

It just comes through so implicitly. I just read London

Falling. I absolutely love it. Say Nothing is incredible. But

there are a couple of books that I did go back and read just to

kind of you know get immersed in the time period, and then kind

of also you know the kind of thinking about writing tragedy.

And if I were ever to teach a class, I would love to teach a

class about writing tragedy, and it's funny because I'm a really

happy, like optimistic, smiley person. But I love reading

really tragic stories. I love melodramas. I love watching old

movies on TCM, Hitchcock movies. Probably like the movies and the

novels almost like drive the way that I think about crafting a

story more than other nonfiction. Just you know, for

kind of a crafting element, but I did go back and reread Young

Men and Fire before I started working on this book, and it

just the things that I underlined a million times then

I like re underlined a million times now, and I think that book

taught me more about writing a tragedy, especially kind of like

one told through multiple perspectives than anything else

that I've read. So if anyone out there has not read Norman

MacLean, yes, A River Runs Through It is amazing, but you

must read Young Men and Fire.

Before I let you go, I do want to ask you. This

is always a deeply unfair question to ask someone who just

has a new book coming out, but I'm always curious to know if

people are already working on new things. If you if you're

eager to start the next project as you're promoting this one, do

you have something?

Catherine Grace Katz: I'm very eager to start the next project.

I have a strong idea of what I want to do next. I have not

talked to my editor about it yet, so just say I I loved

writing about the Russians in my first book. The Germans are

interesting too. They're a little more on the nose. I love.

I mean that's a gross overgeneralization stereotype

for the Germans. I'm very very sorry for all the German

listeners out there. I love you all. For the Russians, though,

there's just this like really interesting cultural, just kind

of convergence of beauty and elegance in their ballet and

music and literature just contrasted with the cold

brutality of so much of Russian history, whether it was the

Russian Empire, Soviet Russia, Russian Federation today, and I

just find the Russians just endlessly intriguing. And so I

would be very drawn to writing another story that's very kind

of like Russia-Soviet focused. I have ideas for other things that

are completely unrelated as well. You know, new ideas are

always popping up to me. Some that I think, this is a book.

Others, I'm like, maybe this is like a you know a a limited

series podcast. You know, I love things like um Philippe Sands'

The Ratline and Helena Merriman's Tunnel, Tunnel

followed by a number Tunnel 42, not 42, but Tunnel and a number

[29]. Anyway, it was awesome, and so I could see myself maybe

doing some of that. Yeah, I think there are different ways

to tell stories, and I think some things kind of lend

themselves to different kinds of storytelling better. And I would

love to be able to explore all of those.

Fantastic. Well, Catherine Grace Katz, thanks so

much for joining me on the podcast. This was such a

pleasure of a book to read. I can't wait to see what comes

next. I will not be at all surprised when it becomes a

limited TV series that takes us into the Hindenburg.

Catherine Grace Katz: Fingers crossed.

Thank you for joining me to talk about your

writing process.

Catherine Grace Katz: Thank you, thank you, and thank you for

giving authors a platform to talk about the craft of writing

and the research process, and just you know, all of that goes

into writing a book. It's not just the the story itself. So

thank you very much for a venue to be able to talk about that

and to learn from other authors about how they approach their

craft. So I'm really appreciative that you take the

time to do this.

Thanks for joining me and Catherine Grace

Katz for this interview, you can get a copy of her book *Shadow

Before the Flame: The Hindenburg Disaster and the Prelude to War*

through the link in the show notes. You'll also find links to

the other books mentioned in our conversation, and special thanks

to this episode's guest producer, Brendan O'Meara, for

connecting me with Catherine. Brendan is the host of the

fantastic podcast Creative Nonfiction, where he interviews

nonfiction writers of all stripes. I have been a fan for

years. He now also publishes the newsletter Pitch Club, in which

freelance writers break down their pitches. It's an

indispensable resource for any working writer. I'll add links

to both of those in the show notes too, so you can check them

out. And if you haven't already, head to draftingthepast.com to

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time, remember that friends don't let friends write boring

history.