Desire, Consequences, and the Art of Listening: Babette Fraser Hale on Narcissi

What happens when a man’s greatest gift is making women feel truly seen—even when being seen isn't the same as being safe?

In this episode, host Terry Shepherd sits down with author Babette Fraser Hale to discuss her interconnected novel in stories, Narcissi. Set across the sprawling Texas landscape during the pivotal early 1980s, the book follows Cole Burnett—a dangerously magnetic writer whose lanky Western charm, restless movement, and rare ability to listen draw women into an orbit fraught with unintended harm, self-love, and midlife vulnerability.

Babette opens up about:

• The Architecture of Narcissi: Why telling Cole’s trajectory through interconnected short stories allowed her to explore the perspective of the women in his wake.
• Listening as Seduction: Whether Cole’s attentive ear is sincere, manipulative, or a novelist's natural compulsion.
• The 1980s Backdrop: How a transitional era of sexual freedom, evolving feminism, and midlife reckonings shaped the characters' choices and relationships.
• Crafting Texas Dialogue & Landscape: Eavesdropping as a writer’s tool, overcoming early creative blocks, and how the vast Texas backroads mirror the freedom and escapes of "Slow Travel."
• The Core Takeaway: Why the book ultimately asks readers for tolerance and empathy toward deeply flawed, self-involved human beings.

About the Guest:

Babette Fraser Hale is a fiction writer, former journalist, and author of Narcissi and This Familiar Heart. To learn more about her work and pick up your copy of Narcissi, visit Winedale Books.

We all inevitably become the brand. And that's why I wrote, "How to Become a Dynamic Podcast Guest and Sell Stuff." It's a sweet and short primer that teaches you about the gear, the appearance and the messaging that can grab and hold today's micro-attention spans and motivate your listeners to take action. It's Just a dollar ninety nine at Amazon. Grab your copy today and sell mo

What happens when an 18-year-old secret resurfaces under the unforgiving glare of the public eye?

In this episode, host Terry Shepherd sits down with New York Times and USA Today bestselling author Steena Holmes to dive into her gripping psychological suspense novel, When You Tell. With over 3 million books sold and more than 55 thrillers to her name, Steena takes us into the volatile intersection of fractured friendship, influencer culture, buried trauma, and the brutal reality of cancel culture.

Steena pulls back the curtain on the contrasting dynamics between her protagonists: Brie, a traumatized ghostwriter determined to stay completely invisible, and Miranda (known to millions online as Randy F. Alexander), a larger-than-life lifestyle influencer who needs Brie's help writing her next book. Together, Terry and Steena explore what lives behind our curated online personas, how quickly a reputation can unravel, and why dark secrets make the best thrillers.

In this episode, we discuss:

• The Inspiration Behind When You Tell: Contrasting an invisible ghostwriter with a vivacious, Instagram-famous personality.
• The Illusion of Influencer Culture: How Steena’s background in ministry shaped her fascination with curated public images versus private truth.
• Setting the Scene: Why the winding canals and historic brown cafés of Amsterdam provided the perfect backdrop for secrets.
• The Craft of Suspense: How Steena evolved from an instinct-driven "pantser" into a dedicated "plotter" over the course of 60+ novels.
• The Reality of Imposter Syndrome: Why even bestselling authors with millions of readers still worry that people will hate their work.
• Writing as Therapy: Channeling personal fears, motherly instincts, and difficult realities into emotionally charged fiction.

Connect with Steena Holmes:

• Website: steenaholmes.com
• Book: When You Tell (Available wherever books are sold)

We all inevitably become the brand. And that's why I wrote, "How to Become a Dynamic Podcast Guest and Sell Stuff." It's a sweet and short primer that teaches you about the gear, the appearance and the messaging that can grab and hold today's micro-attention spans and motivate your listeners to take action. It's Just a dollar ninety nine at Amazon. Grab your copy today and sell mo

In 1966, 24-year-old Jerome Loving arrived in Vietnam as a commissioned officer, spending nearly nine months between Saigon and Cam Ranh Bay. Returning home to an indifferent and often hostile America, he put the war behind him to build a distinguished academic career as a scholar of Walt Whitman and Mark Twain. Decades later, Loving revisits his service in his newly published book, After the Good War: A Vietnam Memoir.

Host Terry Shepherd sits down with Professor Emeritus Loving to discuss his deeply personal reckoning with the Vietnam War, the lasting trauma borne by returning veterans, and how his career studying American literature helped him process his own history. Loving explains why he considers his memoir a "lament" for the nearly 60,000 young men lost and the ongoing struggles of those who survived, including his own brother-in-law.

Episode Highlights:

• The Reality of a Combat Zone: Loving shares the constant tension of serving as a commissioned officer in Saigon, detailing how he slept with a .38 and a .25 caliber weapon under his pillow and stacked glasses by his hotel door as a makeshift alarm.
• The Distance Between Wars: Loving contrasts the Vietnam experience—and the poor reception veterans received back home—with the patriotic legacy of World War II, noting the high suicide rates and enduring struggles of surviving veterans.
• A "Civil War at Home": Loving draws striking parallels between the deep domestic divisions during the Vietnam War and his extensive scholarly research into the American Civil War era.
• A Scholar's Journey: Learn how a veteran who utilized the GI Bill transitioned into a highly respected academic, eventually taking his family to teach in Leningrad in 1978 and at the Sorbonne in Paris.
• Echoes of History: Loving reflects on the cyclical nature of geopolitical conflicts, comparing the escalating quagmire of Vietnam—where troop levels rapidly surged from 125,000 to over half a million—to subsequent wars and modern international tensions.

We all inevitably become the brand. And that's why I wrote, "How to Become a Dynamic Podcast Guest and Sell Stuff." It's a sweet and short primer that teaches you about the gear, the appearance and the messaging that can grab and hold today's micro-attention spans and motivate your listeners to take action. It's Just a dollar ninety nine at Amazon. Grab your copy today and sell mo