Work Besties Who Podcast
Building a bold community of work besties 💼👯♀️ to bond 🤝💞, banter 😂🎉, and bloom 🌸✨
🎙️ Listen to the Work Besties Who Podcast: where workplace friendships get real! From tea spills to relatable laughs, we’re unpacking everything about work life's ups, downs, and unforgettable moments.
✨ Join us for candid chats, relatable stories, and a sprinkle of chaos—because what’s work without a little drama and a lot of fun?
💼😄 Hit play, and let’s dive into the messy magic of workplace connections together!
Work Besties:-)
Work Besties Who Podcast
The Role Of Music in Friendship with Randee Dawn
Friendship, Fantasy & Finding Your Voice with Randee Dawn
In this episode of Work Besties, hosts Jess and Claude sit down with Randee Dawn, entertainment journalist and author, to dive into the powerful role of friendship, storytelling, and identity in both creative and professional spaces.
Randee shares her journey to authorship, the long road to publishing, and the importance of networking and community in building a lasting career. She reflects on the depth of male friendships, the underrepresentation of non-romantic relationships in storytelling, and how her own writing brings friendship, fantasy, and music together.
This episode explores how music connects friends, how names shape identity, and why friendships require ongoing effort and communication.
💡 Key Takeaways:
✅ Friendships matter—both in personal and professional life.
✅ Music is a universal connector that strengthens bonds.
✅ Male friendships often lack emotional depth in media and deserve more representation.
✅ Names hold sacred significance and shape our identity.
✅ Writing is a wellness tool—it can be therapeutic and transformative.
✅ Friendships require work—communication and effort make them thrive.
✅ Networking is about real relationships, not transactions.
✅ Friendships evolve over time, reflecting personal growth.
✅ Fantasy storytelling explores deep relationships, even supernatural ones.
Follow Randee on IG, TT, FB & Website
For Her Books Tune In Tomorrow; The Only Song Worth Singing (April 2025 Release)
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Work Besties! Theme Song Written by Ralph Lentini @therallyband
Hello everybody, welcome to Work Besties, who podcast Stories thrive on connections, and so do we. As Work Besties, we are very excited to have author Randi Dawn join us and talk about how strong friendships like Work Besties will fuel creativity and why they're central to her upcoming novels. Stay with us to hear how Randy balances wellness with the demands of writing her tips for building authentic relationships. Trust us, guys, you're going to want to stay around.
Claude:Hi. I'm Claude and I'm Jess. We are corporate employees by day, entrepreneurs by night and work besties for life.
Jess:Join us as we explore how Work Besties, lift each other up, laugh through the chaos and thrive together in every industry. Welcome, we're so excited to have you, randi. Thank you for being here.
Randee Dawn:You're welcome. Thank you for having me here. I'm very excited to chat with you guys.
Jess:Fantastic. Well, we would love it if you could just kick off and give a background on who you are.
Randee Dawn:I'm based in Brooklyn and I'm an entertainment journalist. I write for outlets like Variety and the LA Times, the Today Show website, those kinds of places. I've been doing that for a lot of years but in my not so secret life I am also an author. I have always wanted to be an author and a published author and I have a book out. I have a couple more books coming out, but I tend to write in the speculative fiction arena, which means science fiction, fantasy, a little bit of horror, you know that kind of stuff.
Randee Dawn:My first book, tune In Tomorrow, came out in 2022. It's about a reality TV show run by mythical creatures or mythical creatures but starring humans, and is deeply punny and silly. And because that worked out well, I completely pivoted and now I have a more serious book coming out called the Only Song Worth Singing. It's a dark fantasy about rock stars who are bedeviled by fairies Irish fairies as they go on their first United States tour in the 90s. I've been writing this book for so long that I actually started it in the 1990s, so it kind of has that authenticity already baked into it.
Jess:Cool. Well, I feel like we'll have a lot of things to relate to.
Claude:Yeah, these are one of my favorite times.
Jess:I'm 80s too. I'm 80s, so you're writing these novels. You kind of did in your newer novels. In these new ones, you're focusing a little bit more on strong friendships. Being that you're on our Work Bestie podcast, we'd love to hear from you how do you think friendships shapes personal and professional lives.
Randee Dawn:I think is amazing because you're at work all the time, right Like it's, it's part of your life. I personally have worked from home for a long time, so my work bestie is like my dog. But but when I was still working in offices, having somebody there who you could just rely on, who you could roll your eyes at, if somebody you know, if that obnoxious guy in advertising wouldn't stop, wouldn't stop talking, you know somebody you just have that you can connect with. I am still friends with people who I worked with, so just having that person there. I don't know if I ever liked the phrase work husband or work wife, but work bestie is a really good phrase to have and I've had a few of those over the years.
Randee Dawn:So in the only song worth singing we have three guys who've known each other since they were kids and you learn about that early and they grew up outside of Dublin. The whole thing starts out like 1979 and then we skip all the way. So you get a little bit of them as kids and how they met and how they have this sort of musical connection pretty much from the minute one. But they also come from very different parts of society. One of them was horrible background and the other two was modern age, middle of the road, middle class kind of guys and it mirrors a little bit of what was going on in Ireland at the time. I mean, we think of Ireland, of course, is of course, as very modern and upscale and it's become, like you know, the tech capital of Europe and all that kind of stuff. But the first time I went and visited when I was in the 1990s, there was still a lot of sort of the old world butting up against the new world.
Randee Dawn:So I wanted to create characters who reflected that and at the same time they all become very tight as friends because they have this music connection and when we fast forward to the 1990s they're still together. We find out they weren't always together. There were some breaks in there and we find out about those later on but they are together, they are touring as a band and you see them on the road being individuals but also being in the band, and how they sort of become a totally like another unit, a fourth unit, when they are all playing on stage, which is something that reflects when I was doing music journalism and I would watch bands perform and then I would interview people in the bands. They all, of course, had their own individual personalities and hopes and wants and dreams, but then when you would see them together, it was just a different energy, a different vibe, like another person had come in the room.
Randee Dawn:So I wanted to convey that as much as possible when I was creating this friendship between these people.
Claude:And that friendship really started with this love of music, right? Because, as you said, they really came from different backgrounds, different time, different age. So it's really for you I would say it's very important and I think for everybody to have you know these friendships to have something in common.
Randee Dawn:Right, absolutely. I mean, I don't know about you, but I know how passionate I was and I am still to some extent, but I certainly I was really passionate about music when I was much younger and through my teens. Music is the kind of thing that kind of really got me thinking about long form story writing. I would listen to songs and story would just kind of weave together in my head and a lot of the stories that I started writing would come out of this real passion for music. So I know that it can have that effect on people. I know my friends also reflected that.
Randee Dawn:So the idea that music would bind them feels completely realistic and true to my own personal experience, but also some of my closest friends. We have all these in-jokes because of lyrics and bands and things that we liked and we just have inside jokes that we still use on Facebook together. That wouldn't make any sense if I explained them here, but I love the fact that you have that through line. All friends, I think, have some sort of connection or the backstory that you have that only you two have you can refer to. You have that shorthand and having that shorthand just immediately reminds you how important that friendship is putting that kind of thing into the book, putting the band into the book. You know, as soon as they sit down and play, they can just, even if they're mad at each other, they'll. They can still come out with great music. Sometimes, because they're mad at each other, they'll come out with great music. Um, so yeah, that was important to me also to include that.
Jess:We've yet to have work besties in a band yet, but you're hitting on a topic that I think is relevant, not just in that industry but overall. For work besties is the unit operates much stronger together than separately, and or it operates differently, as you commented right. Commented right doesn't necessarily mean it's better. You could still operate fantastically as an independent artist, but together something magical happens because you're all kind of working in tune together yeah.
Jess:I find that fascinating and it definitely helps to kind of showcase how support um, the kind of the yin and the yang, the elements that you kind of use to help bounce off each other, can be really complimentary, especially in a band Sure and I.
Randee Dawn:You know, I just finished reading Keith Richards' autobiography called Life Keith Richards, the guitarist from the Rolling Stones. It's a huge book. It's, like you know, 800 pages. But what's fascinating to read is how early he met Mick Jagger and how early they became, you know, this really tight brotherly kind of friendship that carried into being in the band. And of course they're still playing like they met when they were in their teens and they're like in their 80s Now. That's had a lot of ups and downs and there's been times where they can't stand each other and Mick is this kind of person and Keith is that kind of person. But it just does my heart good to see people who find their way back to the connections that they had, you know, before they had any idea they were going to be like the biggest rock and roll band of all time, kind of thing.
Jess:I'm sorry they start in like a garage somewhere just doing it because they love it yeah and really enjoy each other's company, and then, all of a sudden, it takes a whole new direction.
Randee Dawn:One of the things that I really like writing about when possible. I think that there's a lot of societal focus and book focus on female friendship. I like the idea of finding ways to portray male friendship, because it is hard for men, especially grown men, to be friends Once you get to a certain adult level. It's like my dad was a guy who had no friends, like it was just his family and his work, and like at the time I didn't understand what that meant exactly. But as an adult myself, it's just so lonely, you know, to go through your adulthood without a real friend. And making a friend as a guy is tough. Sustaining a friendship as a guy is tough. Sustaining a friendship as a guy is tough, you know, unless it's going to be let's just watch the game, which is not quite the same as actually sharing hopes and dreams and fears and whatever it is.
Randee Dawn:Whenever possible if I can write a male friendship, a strong male friendship. I'm not so grandiose as to think people are going to read my book and see them modeling and oh, I could do that but I think every little bit counts, yeah, and it's worth showing that there is value in male friendships. I think if more men were had more friends, more male friends, we'd have a lot less problems in the world. But I think that men can be very isolated and don't have the ability to figure out how to have an emotional bond with a guy.
Jess:Being in a band would help you get past some of those things, because you have to have the hard conversations, because you do see a lot of males that are friends. There are definitely ones that have great friends too, and so having some ways to model that it's just good to continue to put things like that out there. There's opportunities.
Claude:Yeah, but is it something? Things like that out there that there's opportunities, yeah, but is it something? Because, again, we are all, we are so different, right, women and men are so different. Especially, a woman needs their friends, needs that communication, needs to talk, I think, men friendship, because they do have. I know, for example, for my husband, right, he has best friends from uh, I don't know, 20 years ago, like in even 40. Now at this point. It's just that it's a different kind of communication. They don't like yes, they are going to watch the game, they are going, I don't know if they need this.
Jess:But why can't they? Wouldn't it make more sense to have some of those emotional elements and conversations come out?
Claude:I don't know if they are wired like that.
Jess:If you go back to one of our previous podcasts where we talk about the origin of human beings, the hunters and the gatherers both groups separated by gender, but they both bonded together to help each other.
Randee Dawn:Yeah.
Jess:Right, like it wasn't like the hunters went solo. They all went together and worked together and communicated together and talked about their issues and feelings that they were having with their wives, while the wives were gathering yes, oh yeah. I mean. So what was the difference?
Claude:Actually, yes, they all go in to complain about us.
Jess:But not all of them do Some of them to Randy's point.
Randee Dawn:We complain about them, right. So you know that's totally fair.
Jess:I think that's fair, it's my first language and regardless of it being male versus female, anytime you can put solid examples of long-term friendships and partnerships that accomplish things together.
Randee Dawn:yeah, I think is always a good element to put out into the world, right, I've done articles for the la times because I pitched this sort of thing before about best friends in the movies. Because I think when we go to the movies or watch tv show, what ends up happening is the central relationship tends to be a romantic one. It doesn't matter if it's female female, male male or male female, but like it ends up being like the only significant relationship you apparently can have on TV and movies is romantic. And I'm so happy when I see a movie where characters are just best friends. It's not like there's a romantic angle. They're just there to support one another and give each, give each other whatever it is you need out of a friendship.
Randee Dawn:There's a movie that came out this past season and that's um, it's uh, it's up for oscar, called nickel boys and these two young men are sort of forced into like this reformatory 1960s in the south. Because they have each other, they are able survive. That's how they make it through, because separately probably wouldn't have happened. And it's like it's so heartening to see an emphasis of the story put on that, because we see so many romantic stories like that. We're never going to run out of those. Those are always going to be there. So I'm so happy when I see something that is focused on friendship. It's not about, oh, this guy, this guy dumped me. Let me talk to you Now. There's um. What is it? You've heard of? The Bechdel test, right? Have you heard of?
Claude:that.
Randee Dawn:So there's something called the Bechdel test. No, I don't know. There's a cartoonist named Alison Bechdel who did move, who did books like fun home she used to have a called a panel cartoon called dykes to watch out for, and in there one of them brought up this idea of can a movie pass the Bechdel test, which is a woman talking to a woman for more than like a line or two about a subject that is not about a man? It's harder than you think and I think that when you have a movie where two characters can talk to one another and it's not about a romantic relationship, I'm there for that.
Jess:Yeah, that's so cool. I think that's what Gina Davis's whole organization is. She uses that to judge kids'. Movies like Disney and Pixar and all those movies just to like help showcase how it's ingrained, even that young Like how can they? And Pixar and all those movies just to like help showcase how it's ingrained, even that young like how can they, how can they emulate positive, solid friendships and relationships when they're not even seeing it at the age of like three? That's an interesting dynamic. Okay, so let's get back to your book. For sure, I love everyone for that. I think that's fascinating, I think it's awesome, but so in your book. So it is about the friendships itself.
Jess:So, what is the kind of the goal or the elements that you're trying to get across from having it be focused on this long-term friendship?
Randee Dawn:So the book itself, like, we start off with this friendship, but the actual turning points in the book is the fantastical elements. Right, so it's a contemporary fantasy, it's an urban fantasy, which means that while they are on tour, these Irish fairies you know sort of show up and descend upon them and at least one of them, like, puts his life in danger. He doesn't know it at the time. She is a character who is the there's an Irish word for it, but the English translation would be fairy mistress. She's the muse, she inspires great songs, great music, but she sort of steals your life at the same time. And the question is, once you've attracted her attention, how do you get rid of her before she?
Jess:kills you.
Claude:Because, that is what's going to happen.
Randee Dawn:The other two, meanwhile, are dealing with other problems that those have brought along with them.
Randee Dawn:So they're a little distracted from their friend and their friend kind of gets very enmeshed in what's going on over here and by the time they realize, hey, we might lose him, then they have to figure out how to fix it. And the big turning point is whether or not their friendship can be enough to get rid of this paranormal, this supernatural sort of vampire kind of character, or not, like is, is it going to be enough to save um? So the friendship is, is very much a foundational element of the book, but it's not necessarily like they're not fighting among themselves exactly, although they do. They do have arguments, but it's not like that's not. It's not beaches, right, like it's. It's not not the equivalent of beaches here, okay.
Randee Dawn:But again, what I really felt was important was to lean heavily on their backstory and how they came together and why they are sort of this unbreakable triad, the stool that only really stands up because it has three legs. Right, you don't have to have four legs, you only need three legs to keep a stool alone. Yeah, so the idea that this triad, this trinity that can weather even supernatural.
Jess:I kind of actually chose the three because most boy friendship focuses are usually on two.
Randee Dawn:Yeah.
Jess:So I think that's interesting to throw a third into the mix as well.
Randee Dawn:Yeah, and I think they all have to throw a third into the reason why he's with them and all that throughout the book. Then you see how the two event, the two middle class kids sort of really interact with one another. It's a bit like a lennon mccartney sort of competition oh I could do this all by myself if I had to. It's like, well, you can do that, but I'm just going to be over here my piano. So hopefully I've drawn different, not just individual characters, but also individual separate bonds between each pairing.
Claude:We also always like these three core friends. It's really like you get something a bit different from each of them, according to their personality. I think having three friends also a lot of time we do say, oh three, there's always one that is left. But actually as you get, get maybe when you're young, but when you're older actually you really that doesn't work anymore. It's we are all together.
Randee Dawn:Yeah, I mean I'm very close with several friends who I've known since like high or high school, and there's at least there's. There's, there's like three of them, one of whom sort of participates with us and sometimes the other one who doesn't, but, like, for the most part, there's at least three of us at any given time, and two of them still live in my former home state. Well, three of them still live in my former home state of Maryland, but at least two of them get together and do their own independent things. And I have to remind myself that it's like, no, the FOMO you're feeling right now, the fear of missing out, is not legitimate. Just be happy that they have made friends among like they would not have been friends if I hadn't been there. They have become friends because they're very close to one another and I see them responding to each other on group chats and everything, and I'm partially happy, but partially I'm just like, but I want to be there too it's so funny because actually with my friends we are three.
Claude:I'm the one that was added, that's a third one.
Jess:So I have my friends from grade school there are three of us as well Usually that are similar to what you're talking about. They live in the same hometown, so they hang out all the time and I, apparently, when we were young, there was a time where they didn't invite me to something and so I like made a big stink about it and was like, oh, you mean the time you didn't invite me to. This day I'm not going to say how many years later it is now to this day. Anytime we chat with them and they're like oh, was that the one we didn't invite you to?
Randee Dawn:never gonna live this down, it's gonna be like oh, I'm like great, but you know the nice thing is like, on the one hand, if you, if you're close enough to them, you probably understand that that is both sort of a slight jab, but also a kind of like we love you enough, we want you to feel not not excluded right like it's two things at once that's true, right, especially a long-term friend get away with so much because you know, you know it actually is love that's behind it, of course, but it's also a little.
Jess:But they didn't invite you, but right. So I think it's fascinating that you've now shifted to writing some books about relationships, and you mentioned that you have other ones coming out. Why, what is the element that's causing you to write so much about friendships?
Randee Dawn:Well, I think the thing is it's important to partition two of the books that I have coming out this year with the one that just came out.
Randee Dawn:Like it's a weird book ending thing. So the two books that are first coming out this year the only song worth singing and then in August, which is another again has another friendship at its core is a book called Leave no Trace. Both of those are serious books, they're both very involved with Gaelic and Celtic Irish Scottish fairies and mythical characters and they're standalone books but there is a small connective tissue and if I write a third book like, it'll all make sense how it all comes together. But those are different books than the Tune in Tomorrow book and then the book that will come out in the fall, which is also connected to the Tune in Tomorrow book, which is another silly, funny pop culture book. So, like those two books are separate from the ones in the middle. And the ones in the middle Leave no Trace and the Only Song we're singing are books that I wrote long, a long time ago, before tune in tomorrow, before the other book that's coming out. So I always think of those as my, my first early books. There's a version of leave no trace that I started writing in middle school. Like I mean, there's a kernel of the, of a character in there who's still in this one who's fascinated with this idea of a girl who grew up in the woods and like she had to like survive, what that would be like, and that's the. That's a character that's still in leave no trace and I wrote a version of that book in middle school and I would hand chapters out to my friends and they would read chapters and give them back to me and then we'd go home and I'd like read a chapter of them on the phone and everything so like that. That was very much tied up with my own friends.
Randee Dawn:And in that book, leave no Trace, there is a male female friendship in there, but one is a. One is a foster foster of a family, so like they're not related but they've become best friends over the years. And he's a singer, he's like a Justin Bieber-esque kind of singer and she's his songwriter. So they don't have a romantic relationship but they have this tight sort of sisterly, brotherly friendship bond and that's the friendship I wanted to put into there.
Randee Dawn:And then they meet this girl who's in the woods, who's friends with a mythical character called the Gilly Doo, who's like the man of the forest, and so there's this interesting connection like can we be friends with her or is she dangerous to us? So there's a lot of that going on. And then, for the only song worth singing, I started writing a version of that when I was in college, so it's possible that I started writing these really tight friendships because that was something I was much more familiar with. That's what I responded to. That was something that I was not seeing enough of, and that was why I wanted to put emphasis on.
Jess:And it seems like, even though these two books that are about to come out, that are more of your original, books even though they're more on the friendship, it seems all of them have some type of element of mythical, mythical, yeah Connective tissues to them.
Randee Dawn:Definitely yeah.
Claude:And especially Gaelic right. Is it Gaelic, gaelic, not Gaelic?
Randee Dawn:but yes, gaelic as in like yeah.
Jess:Gaelic would be a little different. It sounds like garlic the one time you're. A French accent does not work for you Well.
Randee Dawn:I mean think in France like parts of Brittany. You know the Bretons are connected to the Gaels.
Claude:Yes, so that's what I mean. And so you're like, all those books are really like the fairies. Are you from there? I mean, are you original?
Randee Dawn:your family, yeah, I have some family who are originally from Ireland, but I kind of stumbled into it because I've been an Anglophile basically since I was a child, an Anglophile, someone who was just you know, really interested in the British culture.
Randee Dawn:But then once I got older and I started paying attention to more to historical facts and figures, I think that the Irish and the Scottish really just kind of more captured my imagination, the love of music, the sort of inherent humor. I'm still kind of fascinated with anything in the British Isles and Ireland. But I stumbled across this book when I was in college which I actually have a copy of right here. It's called Irish Fairy and Folk Tales and it's assembled by none other than WB Yates, as in the poet, and he spent time in the 1800s, early 1900s, and went around Ireland and collected these fairy and folk tales. And when I picked it up I had never really read Irish folk tales. They are different than, say, the grim fairy tales that we grew up with.
Randee Dawn:Um, and he's the one who talks about this fairy mistress character in here. Don't see a lot of a lot of other writing about it else. So I kind of got inspired by reading this book to take that character. And then I was just so still into music and writing about music and interviewing bands and you put all together, it all together, exactly that's very yeah, that's how that happened, very different.
Randee Dawn:Yeah, well, there was. There was in the 1990s a brief, a brief period where there was a sort of Celtic rock boom and at the same time what's called urban fantasy or contemporary fantasy, where you take these mythical characters but you put them into a modern context. That was kind of a trend for a while in books and then it sort of got overdone and it went away and I didn't manage to publish then. So I'm now coming back on the rebound.
Jess:I'm the leader of the wave now.
Randee Dawn:Bring back the fairies, is what I say, so maybe we'll get to start the new trend here. So, yeah, you follow what you're interested in, and I took a course in college about the art of the storyteller and we read folk tales from all around the world, and that's another reason I started reading Irish folk tales. It kind of just all the wires crossed at once and it became something I really wanted to write a story.
Claude:What I love about it is that from very young you have this love of writing. Like for someone in middle school or high school to start writing a book that is. I mean, it's fantastic and to keep it doing it, yeah, and yeah your job and your as being your job and even your passion now with the publishing those books yeah it's to know that from an early age that you know what you want to do, you enjoy it and you're good at it. That is like fantastic.
Randee Dawn:Thank you. Thank you, no, it was, I'm lucky. I think there are a lot of people who you grow up and you're like I don't know, what I want to do with my life. I'll figure it out when I grow up.
Jess:So you, rainey, you bring up an interesting part about how no-transcript.
Randee Dawn:But you know it was a very slow process. I think the thing is that I wasn't necessarily ready with that book, but the only song worth singing is actually the book that got me the agent. So that's kind of the book that I felt was ready first. And what happened with that was are these enormous ones? But there are lots and lots of small science fiction fantasy conventions all over the country all year long. It's a couple hundred people, it's maybe a couple thousand people, but they are small conventions and they have panels and they have readings and they have all sorts of stuff like that it out.
Randee Dawn:I'm like I don't want to wear Spock ears and they're like they don't do that. People dress up but it's not all just like a whole room of people wearing Spock ears, like it's actually discussions about literary matters or your fandoms. And there's a lot of authors and I met a group called Broad Universe which is sort of a pun on the idea of broad. It's for female and female identifying and non-binary authors and it's just a networking group. But they will have a table at a con or they have a reading at a con. If you're a member of the group, you can sell your books at the table, you can read in front of a group and you get a short reading.
Randee Dawn:So it's kind of like easing myself into the water because I can read for five minutes in front of somebody and I would be in a room where all these other people had come. For the other broads who were in the room, it was a way to sort of get myself familiarized with what the whole process was to hear other people give me feedback that I could absorb. I had interviewed a couple of authors one day for a newspaper I was writing for in Boston. These two authors lived in Boston at the time. They're Ellen Kushner and Delia Sherman, who are award-winning fantasy authors and they're just terrific. They're a couple. They're married now and everything. But when I met them they weren't married. And when I met them years later we were on the same train going to a con. We just sat down and talked and they're like yeah, we'll read your book, sure, we'll give you feedback.
Claude:They thought it was great.
Randee Dawn:They were like this is really good. We'll blurb your book if you want to. I mean, delia Sherman's name is now on the cover of the Only Song Worth Singing as one of my blurbers and they were so supportive and their prose Again. It was just like little baby steps here and there and I finally got the Only Song Worth Singing into shape. It got me an agent After a long time.
Randee Dawn:This was not a short process. It wasn't like oh, I'm gonna send it out tomorrow, you get it. This is like a year-long process. At least I got the agent. She said I'm gonna try and get this to publishers. No, publishers wanted it at the time. We're talking like 2016. So we just put it away for a while and I eventually wrote tune in tomorrow and I talked to another publisher myself and he said I'll take a look at that book. So like I kind of gave him the book and he said I'll take a look at that book. So like I kind of gave him the book and he said, yeah, I'll take that and I'll take Leave no Trace.
Randee Dawn:So both of those are coming out from this publisher that I connected with, it's just taken a long time to learn the business, and you do it one baby step at a time. Nothing will drive me crazier than watching a movie or a TV show where, like, somebody wakes up one day and they're like I want to write a book day, and they're like I want to write a book and then, like, two weeks later they're done, they have an agent and it's out before the end of the year. You know, it's like this is not how this works. And not only that, they all of a sudden have money from it.
Jess:It's like no, that's also not how this works. They got the pre-signing of it. Yeah, you made a comment in there that I loved that we have kind of like a similar story, for as our work, besties, is reaching out to people that are in your network.
Randee Dawn:Huh.
Jess:You just never know who's going to say yes. I love that tip to give to people, no matter what kind of industry you're in or what you want to aspire to do. There was small steps right industry you're in or what you want to aspire to do. Those small steps right, like just going to the con or going to someplace to meet people, joining a networking organization, and then chatting with the people and asking questions like would you read my book?
Randee Dawn:if you put yourself out in the world things will happen and by by joining broad universe, and then like sitting at a table, because you have to look after the table as well. But I would sit at a table for an hour here or an hour there with other people who had published before, and I could sit there and be like how did you do it? What tips do you have? It's putting yourself out in the world and people flinch from the idea of networking. Networking sounds so clinical, as though you have this goal in mind, like, oh, there's an agent I want she'll over at this party. I'm just going to beeline over her, talk to her about my book. That's maybe can work for some people, but for the most part you want to be a friend, you want to be a colleague, you want to be in the milieu so that you can pitch the thing that is important to you or they can ask you about it too, We've been saying instead of networking, it's like building your community, right?
Randee Dawn:about it too.
Jess:We've been saying, instead of networking, it's like building your community, right? Your point is more positive to say, I might be making friends with these people or making connections with these people for just for the sake of having someone else to chat with and learn one or two things from. Like sometimes they lead to bigger and better and more.
Claude:Um, like bigger, bigger things and sometimes they don't, but regardless it's in your community and the fact that also people really help you know, everybody wants to help you know there's that phrase.
Randee Dawn:The rising tide lifts all boats and when you have friends who are doing the same thing you're doing and you cheerlead for them and they cheerlead for you, it's like the more the better they do, the better you're going to do. If nothing else, you can watch how they're doing it, right.
Jess:Yes, and try and do something this season for work besties. I've really focused on wellness and one of the things that somebody had brought up before was how writing or journaling could be kind of a tactic or way to help with your wellness routine. What do you think about that?
Randee Dawn:Cause it's your profession, so I feel like I write all the time. I mean I enjoy it. But one thing I have started doing is less of a writing journal than more of a kind of a drawing journal, and what I do is I tend to take it with me when I go on trips as opposed to doing it every day at home. But I will take. I have one of those blank notebooks and I take a page per day. And I will take. I have one of those blank notebooks and I take a page per day and I will write. You know, I'll sort of remember the day through little images that I draw and then a few words here and there, and it's it sort of helps me imprint the day. It helps me remember things I would probably otherwise have forgot, but little tickets and things like.
Randee Dawn:There in the middle there's a woman I know who posts pictures of hers on Facebook, but she does three things. I'm thankful. She's a very good, she's a very, she's a very good artist and she draws a lot about her cat or what she's eating. She'll do sort of three main drawings and then talk about one, and I think that's just as valuable, as somebody maybe struggles to put down words. You don't have to be a great artist because I'm certainly not, but I've got some colored pens and I've got my pen that I can write words with and I just do a page of drawing. It's very satisfying to then go back and see what I've accomplished.
Jess:It's like a memory book.
Claude:Yeah, so even if you don't feel like journaling, for sake you know when I was younger I tried to do those journaling and so when I was angry I was like, oh yeah. Then I was like erasing everything because I'm like, oh my god, you're so mean. I couldn't do it because each time I was going back and the thing about journals.
Randee Dawn:I don't think they're really meant to ever be reviewed.
Jess:Like I would not go back to any of my journals now no, if you, yeah, if you go back and read them, like. I found one when my parents moved and I was like what was I writing?
Randee Dawn:there used to be a, an evening event in new york and I think this kind of was in several cities, but it was called cringe, and people would pull out their old journals or their letters and they would read them in front of the room or something. It was so cringy but everybody would laugh along with you because you'd be laughing at how silly it sounded and they would laugh along with you.
Claude:Well, sometimes we give each other, we send each other our Facebook status from like 10 years to 15.
Jess:I will say so. We talked about this earlier about passing notes in the hall. I still have a bunch of notes from when I was in middle school and high school. They're hysterical. I can't like like the friends wrote to me and gave to me oh really, oh yeah, I would totally go and read them.
Randee Dawn:They're hysterical, I have mine too there was like a whole friend's drama in my 10th and 11th grade with this, and then all the little inside jokes are in them and everything. And I kept those because I thought to myself one day I might write a book using this as drama yes, I don't know if I ever will, but I have them somewhere I do have them all in order yeah that would be so cool I have to give them back to me Like they knew I might write about it.
Randee Dawn:So they're like here. You can have the notes back. I have like both sides of the notes.
Jess:You do. Oh my God, that's fascinating. I don't have my side, so in some of them except there are a couple of them, remember you'd like pass notes back and forth top of it.
Randee Dawn:You'd keep going oh, it was like the text, yeah it was like yes texting yeah, from the, from the neanderthal era you had to use graphite on a paper thank you everybody.
Jess:I feel really good about myself right now. One of the things I was hoping we could get incorporated to this is your books are so fascinating and fun. You do focus on the friendship and the fantasy and there's like elements of wellness in there too. Work besties out there, so definitely read them For your readers. What do you hope that they take away from these novels? Is it something different from each one? Is it something collectively across all of them?
Randee Dawn:I think there's a lot of things that anybody can take away from any given book, whether it's mine or anything else. Yeah, one of the things that I try to do at some point in most of my books is sort of Trojan horse, some big ideas. You may not be to it yet in Tune In Tomorrow, but there is a discussion at one point. It's a silly funny book, but in the book you're an actor on the reality show and you win an award. Every time you win an award for being on the show, you get like a little piece of magic that is your own, and it's usually junk magic like oh, I can look at this can and tell what the nutritional ingredients are, like that Very minor stuff. But the first one you get is that your age freezes.
Jess:I bring this one up because I was like fascinated, I'm like, oh, I'm in.
Randee Dawn:Because it wasn't originally reality TV tv. It was originally like soap operas. I used to write for a soap opera magazine, so this is kind of soap opera e, and you know that there are actors who have been on soap operas for decades, right? So I thought you know this. If the fae are immortal, they would want to have their actors around as long as possible and a decade or two is nothing aging.
Randee Dawn:They wouldn't want them to look old, yeah you want them to look the same, so your age would freeze. And the thing is that then has a rebound effect on how the humans can interact with the world I mean they. When you leave the show, your age starts all over again. You don't get the accumulated years. You start aging if you, but while you're on the show, you're the same age as whenever you won that award.
Randee Dawn:And there's a conversation that at least two of the characters have towards the end of the book about the pitfalls of immortality. You know about the world going on without you. While you're on this side of the veil doing the TV show, your friends get older. You know, your relations die, the world changes. Imagine 1990s to now, right. World changes. Imagine 1990s to now, right. Like if you started working on tune in tomorrow in the 90s and won that award and you left the show in 2025, can you imagine what a whiplash you'd have cell phones. I mean, the cell phone is just the tip of the iceberg, but there's. The world has moved so much faster now.
Jess:We communicate so much differently people would be with you because you you're. You would look much younger than you are and you have no idea what's going on those people.
Randee Dawn:Yeah, they have a conversation about what it's like to. What is, what is the real nature of something like immortality? I don't think anybody really wants immortality. They want to have a choice in how long they live and quality of life. At the same time, if you're going to be living a semi-immortal life, one character says to the other, that means that, like everything is open to you, you don't have to be in the same relationship the whole time, right, like you have a buffet to choose from, you can be in multiple relationships. You know who wants to be married to the same person for 250 years, right? So I'm trying to trojan horse these, these kind of discussions after dark. Yeah, exactly, yes, we're in. How do we?
Claude:that's right, just got a little real long time, um yeah and the only song worth singing.
Randee Dawn:I'm trying to think of what the the trojan horse conversation is in there, but I think that what we were talking about early on the importance of friendship and the importance of having a shared common values background that you are willing to hold on to even when things get super hard, because I think that friendships that don't you haven't had that long. People don't necessarily invest in them. The whole concept of ghosting someone is appalling. The ways we kind of just ball up friendships and throw them away at the toss of a hat Like, oh that's, you know, this person did this. I can never talk to them again. How much of a friendship is that? There are friendships that I really want to fight.
Jess:So, Randy, thank you so much for your time. This has been so fascinating. We learned so much from you. Thank you for having me.
Randee Dawn:I really appreciate it. This was a lot of fun.
Jess:Yeah, it was fun. Your stories totally remind us of friendships and unique ways friendships can evolve and ways you can connect with people and obviously the creativity that you have from all of the kind of fantasy elements of it kind of brings a whole unique layer to it, which is super cool.
Jess:So, whether it's in the pages of your novel or in everyday lives, connections truly do make us stronger. So don't forget to grab Brandy's upcoming book the Only Song Worth Singing, as well as the one that she already has out, tune In Tomorrow it's fantastic and follow her for updates on what's coming next because, as she mentioned, she's got a lot more coming out. I know so. I know this. And because, as she mentioned, she's got a lot more coming out Another one or so in August. And don't forget to share this episode with your work besties and subscribe for more heartwarming, inspiring conversation. Thank you, rhonda. Thank you, remember. Whether you're swapping snacks in the break room, rescuing each other from endless meetings or just sending that perfectly timed meme, having a work bestie is like having your own personal hype squad.
Claude:So keep lifting each other, laughing through the chaos and, of course, thriving. Until next time, stay positive, stay productive and don't forget to keep supporting each other. Work besties.
