Episode
The Grief Memoir That Became a TV Pitch, a Sex Podcast and the Book Everyone Gives When Someone Dies
- Podcast
- Behind the Book Cover
- Published
- Apr 14, 2026
- Duration seconds
- 2261
- Processing state
not_requested- Canonical source
- https://share.transistor.fm/s/9e88d82c
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Summary
If you're thinking about writing an authority building book, and I really hope you are, and you don't want to be counting pennies or checking your book sales all the time, you actually want a book that's going to change your life, I can tell you how. Just go to sevenfigurebooks.com. I'm not trying to capture your email or anything. You can just download this PDF that's going to tell you exactly how to turn an authority building book into revenue, speaking, authority, and no exaggeration, a whole new life. Kelsey Chittick wrote a book about her husband dying at a trampoline park while she was on a spiritual retreat in Jamaica, and somehow it's one of the funniest books I've ever read. But what I really wanted to talk to her about is what happened after. Because the book , Second Half , became the thing people hand to someone when the worst has happened. It led to Zibby Owens inviting Kelsey to co-host a podcast about sex that lasted five years. It led to a grief group in her basement that ran every two weeks for three and a half years and is now being pitched as a scripted TV show. It turned her into a speaker, a life coach and someone whose phone rings every time somebody in the South Bay loses the person they love most. Kelsey didn't write this book to build a career. She wrote it so her kids would know the truth about their dad. They still haven't read it (too embarrassing, apparently). But the book did what books do when they're real: it opened every door she didn't know existed. In this episode: How a death-and-mourning memoir became the go-to gift when someone dies (and led to a five-year sex podcast) Why the grief group in her basement is being pitched as a scripted TV show The moment Kelsey knew she was done being "the dead-husband woman" — and what comes next T…