Julee Balko

speaker

173 appearances 1 recordings 1 series first heard Jul 2026 last heard 21 Jul

Julee Balko’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Jul 2026 with 1.

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Uncorking a Story · Square Hearts and Second Chances, with Julee Balko · 21 Jul 2026 podcast

And um the coolest part was hearing from readers who have um autistic children and just that, you know, that I got it right, that it felt like their kids and that they were just so happy to see somebody that maybe has some anxiety and, you know, has just a different outlook represented.

Yeah, you know, um I had a friend who turned out to be a narcissist, and um what fascinated me so much about her was that

not her behavior, but how my behavior changed in dealing with her.

Um so when I had a little space from the relationship, friendship,

I just dug into learning about narcissism because I was like, This is so like interesting to me how differently the brain works.

And again, I already knew I was gonna have a neurodivergent character and not that those are the same, but they're they are different ways to look at things.

And I feel like narcissism

Your brain just looks at things differently, what you say is different and um

So that's how I developed MAVE.

I put very specific language that when I was researching about narcissism, I made sure she said um to make her character authentic.

And I love that there's this idea of found family being a positive thing.

So I sort of wanted to make maybe the found family be what if it's a negative thing?

What if you lose yourself a little bit by meeting these people who sweep you up and make you feel good and then turn out, you know?

To be a narcissist and not that great.

Yeah, and I knew in Square Hearts I I wanted to go for some complicated relationships.

That's the fun part, right?

As a writer, so

It is.

I'm I'm about halfway done.

And um, you know, with Square Hearts, I read a lot of romance books because even though it's it's filled as women's fiction with just a touch of romance, um

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