KOJO NNAMDIWelcome back. In the opening pages of "Evvie Drake Starts Over," the titled character is poised to leave her husband. She's packed a suitcase, stowed away cash in the glove compartment. Then she gets a call from the hospital. Her husband -- who she'd been with half her life -- has died in a car accident. So begins Linda Holmes' debut novel. Linda Holmes is a pop culture correspondent and host of the Pop Culture Happy Hour at NPR. She joins us from Bryant Park Studios in New York. Linda Holmes, welcome. Thank you for joining us.

LINDA HOLMESThank you for having me.

NNAMDIBefore I forget, I should mention that Linda will be at the Politics and Prose Bookstore on Connecticut Avenue tomorrow, June 26th, from 7:00 to 8:00 p.m. to talk about her new book. It's available starting today. First, congratulations.

HOLMESThank you so much. I'm so excited.

NNAMDIFor listeners who have not yet had the chance to read your novel, can you describe what "Evvie Drake Starts Over" is all about?

HOLMESWell, as you said, Evvie is a young woman who's preparing to leave her husband, when he dies.

NNAMDIOh, I love that beginning. (laugh)

HOLMESYeah. And so it puts her in a strange position, where can't really perform -- she's sort of asked to perform grief in a certain way that isn't exactly how she feels. And she feels very guilty about that. She also has been kind of interrupted in her effort to take control of her own life. So, she has a very difficult time relating to anyone. She winds up kind of staying inside a lot.

HOLMESAnd after about a year of this, her best friend, who's a single dad, encourages her to let a friend of his move into the apartment in the back of her house. And his friend is named Dean, and Dean is a former star pitcher for the New York Yankees, who has become afflicted with the yips, which is the condition where athletes just suddenly lose their ability completely to do what it is they are trained to do. So, both of them are in a position where they're very much having to figure out what to do when the plans all fall apart that you had for your life. And it kind of is about their relationship, as well as her friendship with her best friend, and with her family and with the town in Maine where she lives.

NNAMDIAnd I can tell you that Linda Holmes now knows more about the yips than she ever thought she would know.

HOLMESIt's very true.

NNAMDILinda, I'm wondering if you can read an excerpt from your book, beginning with “go now.”

HOLMESOh, of course. So, this is the very beginning of the book: Go now, or you'll never go, Evvie warned herself. She didn't want to be there when he got home from work. It was cowardly, yes, but she didn't relish the whole thing it would turn into, the whole mess. He'd say, not unreasonably, that leaving with no warning at all was a little dramatic. After all this time, he would wonder, why now. He wouldn't know that today, exactly, Evvie had been with him for half her life. She'd figured it out on the back of a grocery receipt a few months earlier, and then she had circled this date on their wall calendar, in red. He'd walk by it over and over, and never once asked her about it.

HOLMESIf she let the day pass, she thought she might start to disappear, cell by cell, bone by bone, replaced by someone who looked like her, but wasn't. She popped the trunk of her Honda, and stuffed a fat envelope of cash into the glove compartment. This part might be silly. She didn't think Tim would cancel the credit cards or close the accounts, but her life had a lot of just-in-case in it, and she needed money just in case she didn't know him as well as she thought. It wouldn't be the first time she'd stumbled while trying to predict him.

NNAMDIThat was Linda Holmes, reading from her debut novel, "Evvie Drake Starts Over." That novel is out today. When did you decide you wanted to write a novel? Was it always something you wanted to do?

HOLMESIt was absolutely always something I wanted to do. I honestly didn't realize that everyone didn't grow up wanting to write a novel until I started talking about this project. But, yeah, I think when I was a kid, from the time that I started reading, I thought it would be a wonderful thing to write a novel. But it's really something that I put aside for many, many years as I pursued other things. And I would play with it a little bit now and then, but I honestly had given up most hope that I would ever actually do it. And then I managed to kind of pull myself together and put together this one project.

NNAMDIThis book really feels like the definition of a beach read. It's easy to dive into. It's a romance, set in Maine. What inspired you to write this story, in particular?

HOLMESI really love -- this is a kind of book that I really love, and that I find so much comfort in and so much pleasure in. I love a love story, but I love a love story that has other things going on in it. There's a friendship story in this book. There's a family story in this book. There's a lot of sort of back and forth kind of fun banter in this book. Because it's something that -- these are the things that I love. And I think, for me, especially with the first novel, the easiest thing to do is write a book that you yourself would absolutely love to read. And I think that that's what I'm most happy about. I think this is a book that, if it weren't my book, I would really enjoy.

NNAMDIAre you saying that because it's yours, you don't enjoy it? (laugh)

HOLMES(laugh) Well, you know, I think after a certain point, when you've edited and edited your book, it becomes a little bit unreal to you. I still am really proud of it. It's funny, I was telling people with going on book tour and promoting it and doing a really different thing, I was nervous about everything except the book. The book has got this. The book is good.

NNAMDILinda, as you said, Evvie Drake is no stereotypical widow. She's young and she had a complicated relationship with her late husband, so it isn't a typical story about grief. How did this character come to you?

HOLMESI think that it occurred to me at some point that most of our cultural portrayals of grief are a little bit one-note in the sense that, very often, people are grieving. And they're assumed to be kind of -- it's that you're very, very sad, it's that you feel the loss very deeply. And maybe it's allowed to be tinged with a little bit of being angry at the person for leaving you. And then you have to kind of learn to let go of that anger.

HOLMESBut I think, a lot of times, you don't get a story about grief that allows for the fact that, sometimes, you know, people don't become perfect simply because they're died. And so the people who they leave behind are left to process the loss, but at the same time, you no longer have the ability to resolve that relationship. It kind of ends there, and that's something that felt very compelling and complicated to me.

NNAMDII'm wondering if you can read another excerpt. In this scene, Evvie is wandering her home, late at night, just wandering around a year after her husband's death.

HOLMESMm-hmm. Blowing ripples in her tea, Evvie went into the living room, where there was somewhere to sit, and curled up on the deep green loveseat. There was a Sports Illustrated addressed to Tim sticking out of the pile of mail on the coffee table. And she paged through it by the wedge of light from the kitchen. The winding down of baseball season, the gearing up of football season, an update on a college gymnast who was quitting to be a doctor, and a profile of a Yankee's pitcher who woke up one day and couldn't pitch anymore.

HOLMESThat last one was under a fat, all-caps headline: “How to Become a Head Case.” Way ahead of you, she muttered, and stuck the magazine at the bottom of the pile. By the clock on the cable box, it was 4:23 a.m. She closed her eyes. It had been almost a year since Tim died, and she still couldn't do anything at all sometimes, because she was so consumed by not missing him. She could fill up whole rooms with how it felt to be the only person who knew that she barely loved him when she'd listen to Tim snoring lightly on the last night he was alive. Monster, monster, she thought. Monster, monster.

NNAMDILinda Holmes, reading from her new novel, "Evvie Drake Starts Over." Linda Holmes is a pop culture correspondent for NPR and the host of the Pop Culture Happy Hour. If you have questions or comments for Linda Holmes, give us a call: 800-433-8850. Evvie Drake has so many of these italicized asides throughout the novel. She's she calling a monster, here?

HOLMESHerself. This is a kind of a -- this is a kind of a chant that she starts to say to herself. And I think it's an expression for me of the way that, for a lot of us, we begin to be very hard on ourselves when we feel bad about how we feel. And she feels like, to be sitting around having negative feelings about her husband, who everyone else really loved -- who was a young doctor -- that to be sitting around not missing him, kind of aggressively almost not missing him in her mind, she feels like it makes her a monster. And she does spend a lot of time kind of saying to herself what an awful person she feels like.

NNAMDIBut you drop hints about emotional abuse throughout the novel. Why was this a subject you wanted to tackle?

HOLMESI think that emotional abuse is something that can be really hard for people to talk about, because it happens -- it's not that all abuse can't kind of slide into your life gradually, but I think especially with emotional abuse, she doesn't really recognize it when she's young. And there are a couple of scenes in which she recalls her earliest experiences with what will kind of become emotional abusive behavior from him, because they met in high school.

HOLMESAnd I think over time people sometimes -- it's just really hard to identify, oh, this is bad. This shouldn't be happening. And then, all of a sudden, you've realized you're in a relationship with someone who's controlling or very negative toward you, or doesn't respect you. And it just make everything very complicated. And I think it fits her story of finding that relationship difficult to talk about and quantify to other people.

NNAMDIIn addition to the emotional abuse, there are also hints of other emotional and mental health struggles for Evvie and for other characters in the book. But you never seem to confront them head-on. Was that a conscious choice?

HOLMESWell, I think what I wanted to spend a lot of -- what I kind of wanted to deal with in the book was you have to think about getting help when you are in distress. And it's not so much about saying, here's what her diagnosis is going to be, or here's what another character's diagnosis might be. What I wanted to focus on was the idea that the level of distress that she's feeling at the beginning of the book and these terrible things that she's kind of saying to herself are not solved by meeting a man or making up with any other person in her life. They're not things that are resolved circumstantially, in that way. She needs probably the assistance of a therapist.

HOLMESAnd it was very important to me to be honest in the book about the fact that, look, you can write a fun book, you can write a romantic book without implying that meeting a new man and having a new relationship replaces the need for addressing your mental health.

NNAMDII'd like to talk about Dean Kent, the Major League pitcher with a case of the yips, as we mentioned earlier. He's, in some ways, the second lead in this story. What was the inspiration for his character, and what exactly is the yips?

HOLMES(laugh) I became fascinated by the yips, I think, when I heard the story of Mackey Sasser, who was a catcher for the New York Mets who, one day, just lost the ability to throw back to the pitcher. Because, of course, the pitcher does the pitch. That's supposed to be the hard part, and then the catcher tosses back to the pitcher. Mackey Sasser began to -- it was almost like a physical version of a stammer. He kind of would tap the ball in his mitt over and over again, and he kind of couldn't get it out (laugh) of his mitt to throw to the pitcher.

HOLMESAnd it looks like the person just has some kind of strange mental block or -- and it can happen to pitchers, you know, as it does with Dean, in this book. It can happen to pitchers, where they start throwing into the stands. It happened to Chuck Knoblauch, when he was a second baseman for the Yankees. And he started -- when he would throw to first to make very easy plays, he would throw into the stands. He threw into the stands one time and hit Keith Olbermann's mother, which is...

NNAMDIBad luck. (laugh)

HOLMES...a pretty astonishing story. That is some bad luck. And I think the yips fascinate me, because they are still largely unexplained. There are a lot of theories about why this happens and a lot of theories about how to treat it. It often doesn't ever really resolve for players. And I think as a writer or any kind of creative person, it's easy to sympathize with the idea that, oh, geez, you know, what if I woke up one day and I just couldn't write? And it's a terrifying thought and it really, in this case, requires Dean to really reset his life at a time when he didn't expect to.

NNAMDIState of Maine is the setting here, very idyllic for summertime. Had you spent a lot of time in Maine, prior to writing this story?

HOLMESYeah, I did. When I was a kid, we used to vacation in basically the part of Maine where this book takes place, which is kind of mid-coast, Camden and Rockland. And it's a wonderful part of the country. It's so pleasant and, like, the water there is -- it's not like a beachy -- it's not like a touristy beach, in that way. It's water and boats and docks and lobster buoys. And I always just loved it there. And I went back a couple times as an adult. It's a wonderful part of the country.

NNAMDIWell, could you read one last excerpt that talks about the location?

HOLMESAbsolutely. And this is a description of a completely fictional town that I made up called Calcasset, Maine. Calcasset was in the part of Maine well-suited to the name mid-coast, because it resolutely doesn't mean anything. And a description that resolutely doesn't mean anything is a powerful indicator of communally-owned modesty. Even the weather changed politely. Every year, as fall began to take over from summer, there would be crisp mornings that would warn that one day soon, it would be truly cold.

NNAMDIThat was Linda Holmes, reading from “Evvie Drake Starts Over,” which is in stores starting today. You began your career as an attorney, then became a pop culture critic and now a novelist. I'm wondering what led you from one path to the next.

HOLMESYou know, I think the common thread in a lot of this is writing. When I was in college, in law school, I was really learning to write arguments. And I still use that skill when I write about television or film, when you're making an argument within cultural criticism. And I think anything that is based around writing is something that I can get into. And there's part of me that thinks, you know, I probably shouldn't make predictions about what I can and can't get into, (laugh) because there have been so many unpleasant swerves -- sorry, so many unlikely swerves that, maybe at some point, I'm going to become a circus clown or something. But I think the common thread has been writing.

HOLMESWhat was it like to begin this journey, making the leap from critic to creator, in your 40s?

HOLMESI mean, it is a really -- it's really satisfying to realize -- I mean, in a way, as a critic, you are a creator of your own work. But it is very gratifying to realize that you can still do completely new things and completely unexpected things, and things that you had begun to give up the idea that you could do when you are in your 40s, or frankly, your 50s or 60s, or whenever. It's very gratifying to be having a completely new experience at this stage of my life.

NNAMDIWe got a Tweet from Sarah, who says: listening to Linda Holmes on the Kojo Show, I'm looking forward to reading her new book. So, I guess that's somebody you'll probably see at Politics and Prose tomorrow afternoon.

HOLMESWonderful. Wonderful.

NNAMDIWhat advice would you give to the aspiring novelist, the person who has a book in them, but just hasn't put it on paper yet?

HOLMESThere comes a point, I think, where you have to just decide, I'm going to commit to the fact that I want to do this. Give yourself maybe a deadline, and see if you can make some progress. Tell yourself, now I’m going to write 20 pages, I'm going to write 50 pages. And admit to yourself that you want to do it. Because I think one of the things that can be really difficult is making the leap from, this is something that I play around with all the time and I think about, but of course I'll probably never do it, to no, I'm going to really try to make this happen. And that's what I -- I actually announced that I was (laugh) trying to do it on an episode of our podcast. So, once you've done that, you've kind of committed in your own mind.

NNAMDIWe're running out of time, but I've got to ask you this, what's making you happy this week? It's got to be about DC.

HOLMESOh, making me happy in DC. I recently moved to Tacoma Park, and being able to go back and forth between the charming community of Tacoma Park and in DC where NPR is, I love having a foot in kind of both of those places. I still love being down in NoMa, and I'm so thrilled to be kind of resettled, but yet still have a foot in the city.

NNAMDII'll tell you what's making me happy in DC this week, and that is the Smithsonian Folklife Festival will be putting go-go music in the spotlight. And if you happened to watch the BET Awards the other night, go-go music was the opening event at those awards. You go, DC. (laugh) Linda Holmes is a pop culture correspondent for NPR and the host of the Pop Culture Happy Hour. Her debut novel, "Evvie Drake Starts Over," is on sale today. Linda Holmes, thank you so much for joining us.

HOLMESThank you so much for having me.

NNAMDIAnd don't forget to join us tomorrow, where we'll be talking about the Smithsonian Folk Life Festival this year, with the focus on DC and its music. That all starts tomorrow, at noon. Until then, thank you for listening. I'm Kojo Nnamdi.