This transcript was generated from an audio file by AI, and may contain inaccuracies.
Transcript
Hello and welcome to episode Wait. Actually, before I do that, I should actually see what episode now are we at? 228?
I think so.
228. Yep. I need to actually make sure I'm not just making stuff up here. There we go. Hello and welcome to episode 228 of the erasable podcast. We are deep in summer. Tim is at the beach. Tim also has a, A dead car. So he will not be joining us today. But we do have a really great special guest. Like you welcome Alison King, who is the author of the Phoenix Pencil Company, which we've talked about. Lovely, lovely book cover right here. Alison, thank you so much for joining us.
Yeah, thanks so much for having me and for reading the book.
Yeah, it was exciting. I was really surprised when I think once your publisher kind of figured out a public, like a publication schedule, they, they reached out to us, which was something that doesn't usually happen. Usually it's, it's either me or Johnny, like trying to hound somebody down on Twitter to be like, hey, or Instagram, we promise. Come join our podcast. But this was, this made a lot of sense. It was. Yeah. I mean, pencil's right there in the name.
Yeah, yeah.
So, yeah, all, all three of us, you know, John, if Tim's not here, have been just enjoying this. I finished this yesterday afternoon and it was, it was so much fun. There's, you know, we'll, we'll, we'll get into it, but there's, there's themes of just like there's, there's a story that's happening in Modern Day, in 2018. There's a story that's happening in kind of like post war pre communist China and Shanghai and Taiwan just kind of all over the place. And we'll talk a little bit about the, the mechanic. The, the kind of magical realism mechanic, but it centers around pencils. That was really fun and it really, it really made me. Yeah. Wonder if somebody were to sort of like reproduce what I write with pencils, what would it be? Probably mostly just grocery lists and work notes, but be very boring.
I took my journal off my desk after reading this book.
Oh, no.
So maybe we can get started. Alison, I would love to know a little bit, a little bit more about you and then sort of where the, the genesis of this book came from. I know that it was originally a short story and I know that you developed it out, but would love if you could just maybe talk a little bit, a little bit about that and then also your background as a writer and as a. As A human.
Yeah, yeah, sure. So, yeah, the book start or the. When I first started thinking about the book, it came from reading a nonfiction book called the Last Boat out of Shanghai by Helen Zia. And it's a nonfiction book that. And she interviews. I think it's for people who leave Shanghai during. Between like the 1940s to the 60s. So either from like World War II or the Chinese Civil War or the Cultural Revolution, those all happened in a very short amount of time. And, and, and it was very eye opening for me because I just really did not know that history, like really at all, even though it was what my grandparents had gone through. And so I just started wanting to know more about that period of history. And then the flip part of that is that my grandparents did have a pencil company at one point and it went from. They expanded it from China to Taiwan and it was actually that expansion to Taiwan that got them out of mainland China before a lot of the really awful things happened. And so I. While they didn't really talk about the war all that much, they did talk about the pencil company at times. Not, not a ton either because it was also kind of a traumatic thing for them. It went bankrupt at one point. But. But it was something that I had heard about before. And so I just started imagining a family of pencil makers living in Shanghai, like preoccupation, but they would go through occupation as well and then eventually have to leave Shanghai. So kind of follow what millions of people had to go through. And yeah, that was really the genesis of the book. I was always writing more fantasy and more on the speculative side. And so it was automatically, I was just wondering, okay, what's the magic that is going to be in these pencils? And that was kind of an exciting moment for me to think of something that the pencils could do and use that as a metaphor for whatever themes I did want to tell, which I didn't know at the time or in that very first period. But I figured it out.
I'm hesitant to share just because I think it's a really just fun thing to discover because the sort of like magical part of it doesn't come in right away in the book. It takes a few chapters to really like warm up to it, but I think it's probably going to be central to discussion. So would you kind of share what that mechanism is? And I guess we'll put a spoiler warning here for anybody who doesn't want to hear. Skip ahead a minute.
Yeah. So it's. The idea is that the members of this family are able to revive what a pencil once wrote before. So if you had written, like, your grocery list before, they are able to kind of. Oh, no, I can't quite see what.
That's just.
Sorry, I'm using a light pencil.
But yeah, they can revive what the pencil wrote before. And it's. It's a process that involves them kind of stabbing themselves with the pencil and then bleeding out the. The words again. So it's. It's not a painless process, but it is a. A, like.
Feels a little bit like the writing process, doesn't it? Just like.
Yeah, yeah, Just like forcing this out
of you in order to.
That's probably where it came from, but. Yeah. And that's the bulk of it. It's not that complicated, I guess, but it has all sorts of implications, good and bad. So they can revive. In one instance, they're trying to bring back the poems that somebody who has recently been killed once wrote so that his son can read them. So that's a good thing. Probably. But then there's all sorts of bad things. They get recruited to this war effort of passing encrypted messages, which also might be. Okay. It's not a strictly bad thing. But then eventually it leads to a lot of surveillance and spying, and that's not so good. So that's kind of the arc I wanted to follow with the magic.
Yeah, I'm sure there was maybe not reforged pencils, but there was certainly a lot of surveillance, especially of. I'm sure your research uncovered this. I've definitely read about this too. Just like. Like Chinese nationals during that time period, like in the US Just kind of like figuring out who's. Who is abandoned and betrayed. You know, the state just getting in there.
Yeah, yeah. And it was across all the. All the countries that are covered in the book, like China, Taiwan and. And America happening everywhere, I think.
I didn't realize. Yeah, you mentioned it, but I didn't realize how close the Japanese occupation, World War II, the Chinese Civil war, the. The kind of communist revolution. I didn't realize how close together that all was.
Yeah, well, I didn't know either until I. Yeah. Read the book. Yeah.
Yeah.
So we have to ask everyone this because this is a podcast about pencils. But, you know, in your personal life and be really interesting to hear in your professional life, how do pencils still fit into your life today, if at all? And.
Yeah, yeah.
How.
What was your relationship like, you know, in the past with pencils?
Yeah. So I think. Well, okay, so. Because My grandparents had the pencil company. I feel like that skewed me towards. Towards liking pencils in general. And then, I mean, it's not like they. It actually went bankrupt, but my mother was still like, very young, so it's not like it was something that even my. Like my mother wouldn't really know that much about it either, but it was something that. And I grew up with my grandparents, so they did talk about it here and there. But I would say that what really got me into writing utensils in general was spending summers in Taiwan. And I'm sure you've seen like the. Or been to like, the Asian stationery stores before, but they're. They're like, so amazing. And especially as a kid going to one of those. And they have like the writing pads out so you can try all of them. And there's like so many colors and they're just arrayed on like rows and rows of. Of shelves. And it's like. I don't know. It still makes me. Gives me a sense of wonder. But as a kid I was. And also in. Because I would go to Taiwan often with my grandparents, but it was like. Or Taipei is a relatively safe city and I was allowed to just run around on my own a bit, which I wasn't really allowed to do in America, but in Taiwan I could. And then I would just spend like, afternoons in the stationary stores and. And then they're also pretty affordable, so I could. I could afford them as a kid and buy them, bring them back to America and show them to my friends. And it was always. I don't know, I think it kind of solidified my relationship with this land that my grandparents had come from or that they had lived like a good chunk of their lives and that my parents grew up in. But I was born in America, but being able to go back and that was always kind of special to me. And. Yeah. And then other than that, I think like, I. I studied engineering in college, so I had to use a lot of erasable things to do my math problem sets and all of that. So I was. And then that was kind of the same thing. Like, we would. If I couldn't get back to Taiwan, then we would like, order our favorite kinds of pencils and lead refills on. On like the Japanese websites and have them. We would like bulk order them as. As a group of college kids. But now I. I still use a pencil like every so often. But I wouldn't say it's like my go to writing utensil. It's kind of a special treat sometimes if I come back to one and I'm like, oh, that's kind of nice. I do use it for like sometimes I draw, but not, not super often. Just like little sketches and that's always fun. But yeah, I would say I'm probably more of a, more of a pen person now, but.
How dare you. Well, Johnny also has many comments.
It's embarrassing.
Yeah, I've only just started getting into fountain pens, like, as a little egos.
It's a rabbit hole.
Yeah. Some recommendations for you.
Yeah,
Yeah. I, I also just was like, I, I didn't find like, like Asian stationery until I was an adult and I moved from Indiana out here to San Francisco and just like discovered the Mido, like the Kinokunia kind of like stationary store. And it was definitely had that like childlike sense of wonder. And it's like, oh my gosh, this is amazing. Allison. I wasn't. So when I was reading this, it was just, just I was expecting sort of like this, this like historical kind of like, like story about like people, you know, in their early 20th century and like kind of cutting their way to, to modern day. But when I was reading this, I didn't expect to be reading about data notes and get commits and dogfooding and technical terms. I also work in tech, so like terms that I hear a lot kind of every day. So we talked about your background with pencils, but can you maybe talk about your background with technology? So what was your biggest challenge? Balancing the technical details of pencil making with coding? Putting that together in your story?
Yeah, yeah. So I'm a software engineer and I've been doing that for quite a few years now. And I mean, I'm also a millennial, so I kind of grew up with technology. And yeah, I think those were also terms that I was using or hearing every day in my various software engineering roles. And I think very early on I knew that. Well, okay, so the story did start as a short story and it was purely only the historical part. And it wasn't even like that similar of a story. But the magic was, was the same, but the. And I felt that it was missing something of what I wanted to say. I wasn't quite sure what I wanted to say, but that it wasn't like quite getting where I wanted it to be. And it wasn't until I thought that I wanted to add this modern storyline with technology that it became the story I wanted to tell of data privacy. Really. And yeah, at the time I wasn't working in data privacy, but I was working at a nonprofit that the goal was to collect community stories, to surface them to local journalists and politicians so that people could better know what exactly people in the community were worried about. And that was what I was thinking about. And I thought I could use the pencils as a metaphor for data privacy, because data privacy isn't something people want to pick up a book about
speaking.
I would read that.
Okay, well, great. Now I know. But, yeah. And I think in terms of balancing, like, the characters with the, I don't know, the random technical bits, I think it's often helpful for me to know how the character sees the world. So in this case, Monica is one of the narrators of this book. And she's like 18 or 19. She's pretty young. She's a budding software engineer, and she's grown up with technology even more than I have. And she's always thought of it as this kind of magical thing that was able to. To let her connect with her father who was across the world. And I think being able to have that lens, like, knowing that Monica is going to naturally see things through computerish analogies is kind of a fun way to write a character as well. And same thing with the grandmother character, who's the other narrator. She is going to see things in terms of pencils and. Because that's what she's growing up with. I remember you mentioned the data nodes. So there's the scene where Monica's kind of sad, so she finds out something quite sad. So she is sad, and she imagines herself and her grandparents as data packets that are not making it to the place they're trying to make it to. I don't know if you all know the author, Ruth Ozeki. She wrote A Tale for the Time Being and also the Book of Form and Emptiness, which is a book told from the point of view of a book, which is kind of cool. But anyway, I had heard her talk before about how she had a character who was just going through something sad. And in her first draft, it was like, oh, this is so sad, and blah, blah, blah. But then she realized that if she could have the character think of her sadness as a metaphor for something or as something that she connects with naturally. So she actually had the character compare it to feeling like a fish in her stomach. And that became like a metaphor through the entire book. So that's kind of what I wanted to do with Monica. Of like, oh, she's. Yes, she's sad, but let's make it like fit into the way that she would view the world.
Yeah. And I love the conversations that she had with Louise about just like comparing. I think, like get commits to sort of like narrative reframing into storytelling. And that was. I just, I kind of work at the like intersection of like, like tech and I work in ux. Like I'm a UX writer. So thinking a lot about like writing and the humanities and things like that. Like, but through the lens of like software and making that work. And that was just. Yeah, just so, so great to read. I really, I really enjoyed that.
Oh, thank you. Yeah. That was actually the tricky thing of like, I thought the git commit scene was cool, but I wasn't sure if non technical people would do it weird
or like showing why this is relevant, not just to code, so.
Oh, yeah, yeah.
So you spoke to this a little bit. I'm sorry, I'm talking about your grandparents pencil factory. But we like to joke on here that pencil is forever because it's carbon that's held by static electricity and it doesn't fade like ink does. So you know, when I first read it and I was thinking of the imagery of something going into your veins and then bleeding back out, I kept thinking of ink. And a lot of the imagery you mentioned sort of talks about.
I think you called it ink at one point too. Like you, you referenced it almost as ink, which was interesting. Yeah.
And pencils aren't water soluble, so like, you know, we all have a little graphite.
We cut you.
But so I wondered, like, why did you choose pencils besides the pencil factory? Because, you know, they're sort of paradoxical in that you would expect them to be temporary, but they're not. They're. You could erase them, but if you leave them alone, they'll last forever. The marks they make will last forever.
So.
Yeah.
Was there something about that weird dual nature of pencils that made you pick that instead of like fountain pens?
Yeah, well, I wasn't into fountain pens at the time, so. No, I like the way you put it. And I think part of it is I don't know if this happened to YouTube. I think it's not an uncommon childhood occurrence of like stabbing a pencil.
Oh, yeah.
In your skin, which I think. And then like that mark stays with you like for a really long time.
I have one from 1991 stuck in my ass.
Oh, there you go.
Yeah, I have one in my leg from somewhere around there.
Yeah. So I think. I wasn't like. I'm sure that was mulling around in my subconscious. And then also, I think because people often think of pencil as temporary because you can erase it. And I was interested in an object
that
is largely viewed as harmless. It's just a pencil, but. And people think you can just erase it. And that's kind of also how I feel about the Internet. Maybe you can post stuff and you think, like, oh, no one will see this. Or you'll think, that will never come back and bite me.
Hello, Internet archive.
But at the same time, lots of data is lost on the Internet if you don't pay for your storage or whatever. And so, yeah, I guess that's kind of the theme I was trying to explore there. And also, I just thought it would be cool to have, like, a family that was really devoted to the craft of making a pencil.
Yeah. I love how they all sharpen them with knives. Like, no, we're even better at this.
Yeah. Yeah.
Just the main character sitting there. She's like, in her 90s, and she just pulls out a pocket knife and starts sharpening. I think that the similarity. Similarities between you and Monica, the main character, are pretty clear. But I also wonder if there are parts of you and Louise kind of pour that in there. I think that sort of her just. Maybe desperation or just like, sense of needing to get stories out of. Well, out of Meng. Who's the main character's what? Great grandmother or great aunt. Great, great aunt. And then also her own grandmother who were partners back then. So I guess before I ask this question, like, just some background. So my. My partner is Chinese Canadian. And her parents fled or her. Her grandparents fled from China to Hong Kong and then to Vancouver, which was like, I think a pig. Kind of a big. A big route after the Cultural Revolution. I know that whenever she would press her grandparents for more information, just like, what. What was your childhood like? They just really did not want to talk about it. So I know that that was a fairly common thing. Have you. Have you gone to lengths to get stories from your grandparents? Just kind of about the old days, or is this something that you just like?
No. So I think I definitely did put a lot of myself in both Monica and Louise, but I think so Monica definitely has my relationship with my grandparents, maybe, except Monica is. So my grandparents passed away when I was in high school, so it was really before I was thinking about, really, I don't know, just like, you know, high schooler.
Yeah.
Just doing my high school things and wasn't really thinking about, like, what their story might be or. Or like, why they wouldn't really bring it up voluntarily. Whereas Monica is a bit older and she gets to think about it, and her grandparents are still, like, relatively healthy and. And have, like, those memories, so she actually has that ability. Whereas I often felt more like Louise of, like, I am coming into the world now and I want to know, like, the kind of person I think I should be, but I also don't feel like I really know because I don't know my own family history. That's kind of where I was going with. With her character. And so she kind of latches onto Monica because Monica does have that, like, even though Monica is a pretty generally reclusive and shy character, she's like. She has a pretty firm sense of, like, her. Where her family is from and what kind of person she thinks she is, whereas Louise is more of a. More of a drifter. And I think that probably is more common with, you know, descendants of people who left China during that time. And I think it's a lot of also why. It's like, there's an instinct for me, at least as like, an Asian American person, to, like, stay quiet and not speak up on a lot of things. And I think that comes from, like, that generation of, oh, that could be dangerous. And, like, you know, just keep your head low so we can, like, keep living in the countries.
But also I feel like every sort of like, just like, Asian American main character, female main character, like, had a moment where they're just like. Like, I got to express myself. Burn this shit down.
Right?
Like, whether or not that was no spoilers, but, yeah, there was some, like, either literal or metaphorical burning down. I feel like everybody had that moment, which was interesting.
Yeah. Yeah, I think so. And that's something I wanted to be able to give them. And I think it is, I don't know, cathartic in a way.
I will say I. I don't know when I was. I. Something I've been thinking a lot about, like, my. My parents who are. Who are aging and. And just, like, they have some stories from. From their childhood that I'm trying to figure out kind of how to get out of them. Nothing quite as. Quite as traumatic or dramatic as this, but, like, the point at which. So Monica brings this pencil that her grandmother has written, like, a huge, huge backstory of her life, which takes up about half of the chapters in the book. She brings that to Shanghai to give to her great aunt and just like, hey, this is the story that my grandmother spent a lot of time as she's been declining into no spoilers into dementia before, before this happened. And her aunt is just like, you know what, you should, you should reforge this, not me. And I was just like, so like all of a sudden like, yeah, Monica, Monica learns like all this like basically the other half the book that we, that we as the reader knew, but like she didn't know is kind of the main character and just she reforges. That's the, the name of the process of, of like taking this in and kind of like recirculating the story. And yeah, that was for me that was just such a, just good and dramatic moment. And she's like, she got to learn about her grandmother kind of finally, so.
Oh, thank you. Yeah. I always knew that was like how the story would end, but it actually wasn't that clear to me that she had to be the one to reforge it. At first I thought her great aunt would reforge it and then she would give her like the, like the paper product.
I did say just a little, little aside. I thought that was going to happen after she went into like a convenience store and bought a notebook. She bought the notebook, I think to bring back to her. Her. To bring back to Louise or something. And I was just like, oh, what's going to happen with that notebook? Because that's what happens. For those who are listening who haven't read it, there's like you sort of like ingest the, the writing of the pencil into your bloodstream and then you can cut yourself and it basically like bleeds onto a notebook and it sounds like very almost grotesque or dramatic but also like really just like just, just the black blood comes out of your, your wrist into the notebook. So. Yeah, yeah, so.
So your book is all about stories and who should have access to them. So I'm wondering how did your work in Big Quotes computers inspire you to write about stories as stories? And do you see a distinction between stories and data? And if so like, where's the distinction?
Oh, interesting. Yeah. So I mentioned earlier, much of this book was written when I was at that nonprofit that was collecting community conversations for the. The mission was to like surface underheart voices to, to people who could make a difference about it. And actually building the tech for that, like it was pretty cool tech in terms of like natural language processing and like textual analysis. But the hard part is like the community outreach and it was a non profit that was through MIT and a lot of communities don't trust MIT because it's like a big elite institution.
But have you Seen those robot dogs.
But yeah, so I wasn't, I mean I was obviously the engineer, not the community builder, but the community builders. So we had to do so much work today, get communities to trust them, trust the technology and trust that we would safeguard their stories. And I mean this was a while ago, so it was before really chatgpt was a thought of like we could send your stories to OpenAI, which I
was going to bring that up.
The nonprofit is still around and I'm sure they're not doing that. I'm sure there's even less trust in technology now than there was when I was working there. And yeah, and I mean it's kind of weird to think about, but the, the book is set in 2018 and I think even in 2018 there was a lot more trust in technology. I mean, I think it started eroding after the 2016 US election, but in 2018 I think it was a little. It was still like, I don't know, temporary back then.
You're like, no, things will go back to like safety.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So that's definitely something I was thinking about. And then my next job after or I left that nonprofit to work at a data privacy startup, which was kind of a whole new experience for me because I had only been in non profits before and this was like a very startupy vibe. And that's where I learned about. Or that's where a lot of these terms of like dogfooding and like I obviously I'd done like git commits before but I hadn't done that much like git rebasing before so. And like more about open source software, which is another great topic. But yeah, your other question was about data versus stories, which is. I don't know.
I think same thing, Johnny. Same thing maybe.
Well, I don't know.
I'm trying to wrap my brain around that.
I think stories are such. Is such good data but there's like so much data in the world and like if you look at right now I'm reading Empire of AI by.
Oh yeah, I thought of my.
Have you read that?
I think I'd read next.
Yeah, yeah, it's very, it's very. It's quite depressing.
Well, and Karen, Karen Howe meant like started writing it thinking she was going to be talking about like she started reporting on. Of thinking she's going to be talking about like kind of like Heroes of Technology.
She's like, oh yeah. But in it she talks about like because OpenAI starts by trying to ingest like good Data, which is really stories and like the long form text, which is actually kind of rare to find on the Internet, which is why you get like all the fan fiction in there. But so I think stories are like really good data and. But then because OpenAI just needed so much data, they just took the whole Internet really. And that's where things get rough and not so good. So.
Yeah. Do you know if it's, if it's. Read your book? Chatgpt?
I don't know. I haven't, I haven't asked. Chatgpt.
I, I didn't either. So I wrote a book that was in no way related to, to fiction but like it was a, just a book about like UX and writing being part of the design process. And like I remember when I discovered like, I mean all of, all of the LLMs had read that book. I'm just like, wow. Yeah, it's weird. Like I don't know what to think about this. So like if I saw a human who's read a book and just sort of like operated in the world, I'd be like, oh, that's, I'm honored. Thanks for reading it. And even if they got it from the library, didn't pay for it, it's fine. But like, yeah, but you know, they
bought it because they were interested.
Yeah. Commercialized robot rated like yeah. So I'd love to get a little specific about some of the mechanics of the world you built. And maybe this is just my like, like growing up in the like Star Trek fandom, I was just, just, just people were just like, just like there's an inconsistency in episode three, season five. But like I, there's one thing I, I was, I was trying to figure out like you know, in, in the book, in kind of like pre cultural Revolution China, there's like this, there's this pencil factory and like everybody kind of works the front and they have this like, you know, there's, there's pencil cases and then I love that you refer to like the cores of the pencil as the pencil hearts and they seem, they seem separate. When I was reading and I was like, just I feel like the, the pencil cores or something. You sort of like fit into the pencil instead of the pencil sort of being sandwiched around it. And I'm wondering in your head as you're writing this like how, and I guess especially as like people are reforging the pencil, it's just the course, right? It's not the wood that's going along with it or is it sort of like the entire thing is just going in there.
No, just, just the cores.
Okay. So I'm just like thinking about like, are they. Is the pencil core and the wood just sort of like separate from each other? Can you pull out the core from the wood?
Oh, I see. In my imagining of it, it's that they. Okay, well, okay, so this comes from one of the stories that my grandmother used to tell me, which I don't think is that common in. Well, you. You probably know more than I do about pencil manufacturing or current how they are currently manufactured.
None of my family manufactured pencils, so
you probably know this is also a very blurry memory of when I was like in element. But she, like, for some reason this really stuck with me where like she told me about this process of you would take like the six pieces of wood and press them onto the. Onto the core and that's how the pencil would be finished, I guess. And in this case, I always imagine that they had the cores like on the walls and those were kind of what's. I feel like this. There's an. And there's something else that does this, but I can't remember what it is where you just like put it in a temporary holder and that's when they try it out and sample. Whereas the real pencils would be like all melded together. And that's just a way to try like the. I don't know, the. How the. How the graphite feels to you.
And I love that idea of like a tasting room. That's really.
Yeah. Oh yeah, I would.
Yeah. Yeah. Well, that's definitely inspired by my, my time in stationery stores. And then, yeah, the. And then the other part, I just imagine that like this family has some sort of ability where once the like graphite breaks into their skin and just kind of like soups it up.
I also just was fascinated by the idea that like just pencils made at that pencil company, at the Phoenix Pencil Company are the ones who work best when they're kind of ingesting their own. And third party pencils just kind of like make. Make them sick while they're doing it. And that was really interesting to me. And it sort of like got me thinking about like, you know, this focuses on just like one family and like one place. But like, are there. Are there others out there. Out there who can do this, who like have close relationship with pencil companies and if so, like, do their own brands? Like, do they have the best. Oh, interesting kind of relationship with them. But I'm just Thinking there's like, you know, Mr. Dixon Ticonderoga is out there somewhere.
Like to talk to Mr. Hewland or.
Yeah. Johnny Hulen's family. Just like only Misgrave pencils are work work with.
He just seemed to like, know something that other people don't know.
Yeah. And maybe this is, this is a good. Like, I'm not, not going to kind of give this away. The spoiler. But at one point they were trying to explore creating pencils that could not be reforged, could not be sort of ingested. And I, I don't think you mentioned like what they put it, what they put in as an additive in that graphite. But I'm just like, what could it be? Is it like plastic?
Is it like Kryptonite?
Yeah, like I'm thinking it's like Johnny, but oh, crap, my brain is not working. The. The pencils, the German pencils you like that are made of plastic.
Oh, the Wopex.
Yeah, Wopex. Just like a Wolfex pencil is just gonna instant. It's a pencil that's made instead of wood. It uses sort of like this like almost sawdust plastic. Like it's a reformulated thing.
Those metal pencils. Have you seen those before? I. Yeah, I didn't really enjoy using it, but so I don't know.
Yeah, my head of OPEX just instantly kills you when you.
It touches your skin and it melts.
But yeah, no, I never imagined other families that could do. I imagine that this family, I don't know how they figured out. Maybe when they were a kid they like stabbed themselves with a pencil and then they were like, whoa. But I imagine that they like fine tuned it so that they could ingest it safely. And at the same time it was. It also happened to be the way that you can make a really good pencil. But yeah, I think I mostly wanted to be able to write about somebody who took such care with her craft and to be able to write about crafting a pencil as an art as opposed to this mass manufacturing process and related. But probably not what I was thinking about at the time. But what you said kind of made me think of it is they can ingest their own pencils and it's. It's good. They. They have more control of that. It doesn't hurt them. But then when they ingest the other pencils, it. It does hurt them. And I was. And that's kind of like the. The good data and the bad data.
Yeah, I just in my head, like some generations of pencil makers before Like, I figured out how this works and they're like, okay, we're going to make like best formulation of graphite. That's sort of the most comfortable to take in, right?
Yeah, exactly.
Smoothness really matters.
Yeah.
So I really liked the magical realism in your book because, you know, everything was totally realistic except for that, except for reforging. So sometimes when I read pieces of magical realism, they'll start throwing stuff in like, oh, yeah, the trees talk. That doesn't even work. Why would you do that much? So how did you, you know, not give in to this, to the temptation? If there's a temptation to put more magic into your store?
She's going to do the rest of that for the Phoenix Pencil Company too. The second book in the trilogy.
Yeah, the Phoenix Pencil Factory. Yeah. No, that's a great question. Because originally the book did have more magic than it did than it does now. And a lot of it got cut even before I sent it out to agents or editors. But originally, and this does make it into this story in a different way. But originally they could kind of stab the pencil in themselves and then have like. And then the carbon would come back out and form like a super armor around their, their hands, which in the story, it's still there in that the girls imagine they can do that in the stories that they make. But originally they could actually do that. And it was actually a much more like action packed book.
Just a Mecca Mecha Monica.
Just like, yeah, because I needed. Yeah. Like, and I was gonna. This was never a scene, but I was like, oh, and then she can like play volleyball. It'll be really cool. But I never wrote that scene. And. Yeah. But more for the historical side. I thought they could, you know, have like a way to actually defend themselves. But then it got to. It wasn't like the right genre really. It was. Or one of my like writing group people told me that it felt too big magic. Whereas the book was more like about small magic. And because the, the reforging was of the stories was still there and that was like the actual important part. And. Yes. And then that got downgraded to just what people. What they imagine they can do.
And it was interesting because there was never. I mean, there were a few moments when somebody was like explaining how this works to someone where they're just like, oh, huh. Like nobody ever just seemed just like, this is incredible. This is crazy. Like, how is this working? There's just like, oh, yeah, okay, yeah,
talk to someone else.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think it helps that all the characters see the output at some point, and then they're like, whoa, how that happened? But, yeah, so that was. Yeah. So I think the small magic thing. And then also once I did start working with my editor, she. I think the magic used to be spelled out a bit more, and she suggested, like, hand waving a bit more of that to fit more with, like, I don't know, the idea of, like, it's not really a story about the magic. It's, like, how the mechanics work. And at the time, I had also been hand waving some of the history. So she was like, stop. Handwriting the history. Handwave the magic a bit more.
Also the magic. I feel like another thing that I was expecting there to be more sort of, like, tension or friction with is I. So. So there's some, like, some romantic tension between Monica and Louise, and it's like, oh, like, there's LGBT themes in here. And, like, you know, this. Her grandma's old school. Both of her grandparents are pretty old school, and they just sort of love her unconditionally. But is this going to be, like, a thing? Right? Like, is this going to be, like, a sense of conflict? And. And there wasn't. And I actually. I think I appreciated that because this wasn't going to be a, you know, a story of, like, coming out to your grandparents. Right. This was really. Yeah. So that's something that I felt was kind of a similar. Just like, it's almost like, yeah, some magical realism around sort of like expecting, like, the grandparents old school expectations of, like, their granddaughter and, like, her sexuality.
Yeah. Kind of the same thing of. That's not really what the story was really about. And we. We had to move on to bigger things,
but still, I appreciated it. So, yeah, one of the big themes that we had talked about here before was just juxtaposing analog and digital. I think that in these two time periods that's happening often the characters are kind of working in parallel. They're recording their own stories. There's themes of surveillance and data mining, which I think are kind of playing in the same thing, and as I mentioned earlier, just sort of just setting fire to the establishment to just sort of reclaim their own narratives. So this is kind of maybe a big. A big question, but how would you advise people in the world who kind of feel that dissonance between our digital selves and the selves that are in our bodies offline? Right. Like, how do you. Like, we have stories to tell. Maybe we don't quite know how to tell it or how best to express It. How did. How did you do that for this book? And then also, like, how. How would you advise others to think about that?
Yeah, I don't know. It's a tough question. And I don't. I wouldn't say that I have it figured out either. But I think, I do think journaling helps. And I think being able to tell your story in a way that feels true to you is something that helps you align yourself with or just align all of yourselves, really. And so I, Yeah, I actually wasn't really keeping a journal until I started writing this book. I was like, oh, that seems like it could be a good idea. So, yeah, doing that. And yeah, I think, as you mentioned earlier, like, the book is all about stories and the stories we tell ourselves and the stories we tell of ourselves, which is also why the book is written in like an epistolary format where they are literally writing letters or journal entries and kind of forming the narrative of themselves as they're living. So I think that. And that's something that people can't really take away from you or like, comments on Instagram aren't gonna derail you too much from it, hopefully, or so. Yeah, I don't know. That's how I'm thinking about it. But yeah, it's not an easy thing.
I love just like, you know, the mechanic is like, there's quite literally stories inside of you. Right. Like that you. That you can either like hold in or spit back out, like, kind of like resynthesize it. So, yeah, sometimes I feel that way just like, oh, yeah, this is the thing that, like, I'm just gonna keep for myself or this is something I'm sharing with everybody.
Yeah. Yeah.
So we can't let you go without talking about some of your favorite pencils. But you also mentioned that you recently got into fountain pens. So can you talk about some that are your favorites or your go tos, including pens and inks or even notebooks if you want.
Oh, exciting. Okay, well, let's see. I guess the pencil I have here is just like a black wing. And that's kind of the go to, maybe, but the go to of all through college was the kuru toga.
Oh, nice.
Yeah.
Which love a kuratoga.
Yeah. Because it's just, it rotates for you. It's an amazing innovation. Like, I didn't know if it would work, but it really works. It got me through, like, all my problem sets.
See, I didn't, I didn't come to a kuratoga until, like, not that long ago. Like, probably like, six, seven years ago, just because, like, they don't. They don't have those in Indiana. But I have a friend who just frequently would go to Japan and just bring me back, like, weird little goodies and definitely found that one. Yeah, yeah.
And they have a lot of, like, collaborations now, so if you're into any, like, cartoons or anime, they probably have a Kuro token. I think they.
Aren't they doing a. Because everybody's doing, like, Snoopy collabs right now. Like, Blackwing just released a Snoopy one,
but I think I bought it for my mom. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then as far as pens, I've been. Okay. So originally it was this. I was like, since my middle school days of going to Taiwan, I had started on, like, the Uniball jet stream as my favorite. But they have this new one with the light touch ink that's, like, amazing. And the actual inside can be used in the old jet streams as well, so. Oh, cool. You can just buy the refills if you want.
What is the. I don't think I heard about the Light touch ink. What is it just. Just lays down without too much pressure. Is that it?
It's just super smooth. It was. I think it came out last year, so it's. It's still pretty new. But yeah, I've seen it in, like, very specialty shops in America. But yeah, but yeah, definitely in. In Asia, they. They have them pretty prevalently.
Two years ago, I went to the. The Itoya store in Tokyo. That's just like eight floors. And just.
Yeah, Yeah, I was just there.
So fun.
Yeah. And then fountain pens. I'm going to expose myself because I don't actually know anything about my fountain pens, but they're actually all my partners, but I've been using them. So let's see. What is this? I think these are sailor. And this one. Oh, this one's kind of cool. So I don't actually know what it is, but it's. It's. I know it's sailor, but come on, Johnny, recognize it.
Okay.
I don't have a lot of Japanese fountain pens.
Okay. The nib actually feels like a pencil in that. Like, it's kind of scratchy, which is kind of cool. So that's kind of fun. And then the one I'm really into right now, which I actually don't have with me, is the pilot decimal, which is a click one. You click it and then it. Oh, yeah,
I forgot to tell you, Johnny, as an aside. And then Allison, too. I. I just got my Hands. So I went to. A couple weeks ago, I went to France, and I was like, they make Bic fountain pens. And I had no idea. And I was like, I really want a Bic fountain pen. I could not find any there. So I spent way too much money on ebay. And I got one of the. The bicycle. Yeah, one of the Bic. It's not metal, it's just silver plastic. But it's cool, though. Yeah, it looks like a Bic crystal.
And does it do that, like, shotgun load?
No, not this one, actually. Well, I do also have. I've got this one, too. This one has, like a. Yeah, you put. You load the ink like this.
That's the one I have.
Lock and load.
Wow.
What are. What are your favorites, Johnny?
Maybe. Yeah, I have, like, 100 or so of those. I really, really like Narwhal. They're. If they're. They're based in Taiwan or Japan or China. But yeah, they. They do a lot of, like, collaborations. And they did Pride pens for the last three years, including this year when it was kind of at, like, a little extra brave. And they did two. Like, one only they sold and one only the retailers could sell. It was cool.
So you have both. Yes,
and there's a collab they do with an artist who just goes by RT N I JP On Instagram. And hers are really pretty. I bought both of hers, or I was gifted both of hers. Frankie, buy me this. But, yeah, they do a lot of really cool stuff and limited editions, and they been doing cool stuff with titanium lately, which is really awesome.
That's right.
Their pride pen was, like, anodized solid titanium, so it's like, heavy rainbow.
Yes.
Yeah.
I don't know if they still lives at Bob Slate, but Bob Slate has some cool stuff last month.
Yeah, there's a. There's a store I've only just discovered, though they've been around for a while in Newton called Paper Mouse, and that's where we've been going lately. It's very.
So, Allison, do you. So we have a little shared. Shared thing here with, like, with notes that we were taking questions to ask. And so Johnny. Johnny, put this in here, but I guess it's my turn to read a question. Do you have a Phoenix tattoo?
I don't know. I am tattooless. But the. I don't know if you received them, but the publisher had made some temporary tattoos.
Oh, I don't think I got those.
Oh, darn. Okay, we'll have to see if you can get some. But, yeah, I Haven't put them on, but they look pretty cool.
I will say, like this, first of all, this is a really good cover. But I will say that almost always I feel like the UK covers are just better than American covers on things just universally. And the UK cover of this book is so good.
It is. Yeah. I think I got very lucky. They're both very good and they're both very pencil. Yeah.
I love. The O's are pencil shaving rings. Yeah. The flowers are really cool. That was really fun.
Yeah. I think the US one is much more subtle. The UK one is pretty clearly like. This is about.
Tell me about. I just saw on Instagram, maybe, maybe over the weekend there's a special edition of the book that's like. I feel like it has like gilded pages or.
Yeah, that's through Goldsboro, which is a bookstore in the UK. But yeah, they have 500 copies, I think. I don't quite remember. But yeah, so those are available for pre order. I actually haven't seen one yet, but it looks cool from the image online. Yeah, it's got like the stem, the sprayed edges, and it's shiny. Even the US hardcover. Oh, I shouldn't have it with me.
That is pretty.
Which is dumb.
But Johnny's like, yeah, see if you can. See if you can find one, Johnny. What?
They're not out until 31st.
I see. Yeah.
Yes. The UK, it actually hasn't published in the UK yet. And the US one, if you open the hardcover, which I really should have had it with meter, but if you open the hardcover, there's a little like shiny phoenix inside too.
That's cool. Yeah. Anything before we wrap it up? Alice? You okay, Johnny? Yes. I just heard a gasp.
I'd never taken the dust cover off before.
Okay. Oh, that's true. I got the. I got the advanced reader copy. So mine is just a. Mine is.
Yours doesn't have the jacket, but the jacket's quite nice. And then under the jacket you'll see it's. It's black on the inside and there's like a little gold phoenix that's just
like, oh, man, I have to get a hold of this. I do. Like, it's just in the very top corner that it's kind of hard to see if you're all seeing. Yeah, I love that. I love that. And I don't know about you, Johnny. When I was reading this, I was like, man, I want some of these pencils. Yeah, I know.
I do too.
Like traveling with boxes of pencils.
I wanted to meet some of the characters. Like, who do you know who goes, I like your drawings. What kind of pencils do you use?
Yeah, marry me. You guys did something where you sent out the press packets with some. With some custom stamp pencils, and they look. They look like baby Musgrave pencils. I don't know if you had any kind of, like, control over or thought about, like, where those pencils came from, but.
No, I didn't. But the. I know who made them. They're a. They're on Instagram. Their handle is longhand pencils and.
Oh, yeah.
Yes. I don't actually know the exact kind of pencil that you use, but, yeah, they look great.
Yeah, the font was really nice. Yeah.
Yeah.
So, Elson, before we wrap up, is there anything else you'd like to mention or discuss or anything like that?
No, this was. This is a lot of fun. Thanks so much for the thoughtful question.
Thank you.
Yeah, I guess I should ask. People would ask me this question. I'm just like, shut up. But like, are you. Are you working on something else now?
Yeah, I'm trying to. It's not under contract yet or anything, but I'm trying to work on it slowly. But I think it will be about semiconductors. Oh, cool. Kind of different, but also similar. Yeah. And kind of probably still about. Mostly about the characters, but they'll be hanging out with the semiconductors.
That's so cool. I mean, you have to come out to come out to San Francisco and do some field research down in Silicon Valley.
That's true. That's where it all started. Yeah.
Cool. Well, Alison, thank you so much for joining us. This has been really fun. I was so excited. I was like, it's a book. It's not just about a pencil company, but pencils play a definite part in just the plot of this. And the characters are all so good. So thanks for talking about it with us.
Yeah, thank you so much.
Where can people find you on the Internet?
Yeah, my website is alisonjking.com and I am on Instagram as Alison King writes. And that's. That's pretty much all I'm on.
People can see pictures of your super, super cute cat.
Yeah, my cat and my dog.
Oh, you have a dog? I don't think I saw that.
I do. My dog's actually been sitting right here the whole time. He's a sleepy, sleepy girl.
Well, this has been the Erasable podcast. You can find a recording of this episode and just show notes at erasable us/228. If you are a patreon member. You can find video of this. Like, if you subscribe at any level, go to patreon.com erasable and I will probably. I forgot to bring over the Patreon names to read before this started. So I will, I will insert those, insert those after this, but before the end of the show. Hey, it's Andy from the future, about nine hours in the future with our Patreon members. So a big thank you to Chris Berry, John Schroeder, Ellen, Dana Morris, Liz Rotundo, Melissa Miller, Angie Aaron Bollinger, Ida Umphers, David Johnson, Phil Munson, Valerie Drew, Tom Keakley, Andre Torres, Paul Moorhead, William Modlin, John Capiloute, Stephen Fansale, Aaron Willard, Millie Blackwell, Michael Diallosa, Tana Feliz, JAFX in the Midwest, Anne Sipe, Chris Metzkus, Mary Collis, Kathleen Rogers, Dr. Hans Noodleman, and John Wood. Thank you so much for your support. So thank you all so much for listening and we'll see you next time. Do you like our podcast? Most people like our podcast, but if you like our podcast, David, we'll turn it off.