Windowsill Chats

Margo is joined by Melissa Moore and Michele Matrisciani, co-authors of Killer in the Family: The Hidden Costs of Loving Someone the World Hates.
Melissa grew up in Spokane, Washington, and was sixteen when she learned that her father, Keith Jesperson, had been arrested for murder. He was later convicted as the Happy Face Killer. Melissa went on to become a New York Times bestselling author with her memoir Shattered Silence, a domestic abuse prevention advocate, and an Emmy-nominated investigative correspondent for Crime Watch Daily. She hosts the true crime podcast Life After Happy Face and is the real-life inspiration behind the Paramount+ drama series Happy Face, starring Annaleigh Ashford.
Michele is a New York Times bestselling coauthor, a Pushcart Prize nominee, and an editor with more than twenty years in publishing, with an MFA from Stony Brook University. She spent fifteen years as an acquisitions and developmental editor at houses including Macmillan, Hyperion, and McGraw-Hill Trade before founding Bookchic LLC, and her collaborations span Hachette, Penguin, Hay House, and HarperCollins, most recently including Gypsy-Rose Blanchard's memoir My Time to Stand. She has collaborated with Melissa across four books.
For Killer in the Family, Melissa and Michele spent six years with nine families who share something nobody chooses: someone they loved was responsible for something horrific. The book moves the focus away from the crimes themselves and onto the parents, children, siblings, and spouses left to carry the aftermath.
Margo, Melissa, and Michele discuss:
What it was like for Melissa's story to become public, and the years of shame that came before that
Why so many people reached out to Melissa afterward with the same message: I'm just like you
How they chose which families and relationships belonged in the book
How Michele earned enough trust with nine families to get material this personal
What Michele could see as an outsider that Melissa, so close to her own story, couldn't always see herself
How they handled it when two people's memories of the same moment didn't line up
The responsibility of sending a finished chapter back to the person who lived it
How families hold love and horror about the same person at the same time
The role media coverage plays in a family's grief and isolation
Knowing when it's time to stop telling your story
Killer in the Family is available now in print, ebook, and audiobook wherever books are sold.
Connect with Melissa and Michele:
https://michelem.net/
melissa.g.moore on TikTok
Melissa G. Moore (@melissag.moore)

Margo is joined by Dan Scott, co-founder and CEO of Spotlight Advisory Group, musician, lawyer, and longtime advisor to creatives. After decades spent both making art and advising some of the world's wealthiest individuals, Dan came to a powerful realization: having enormous wealth and experiencing financial freedom are not the same thing.
Today, Dan helps artists, musicians, actors, entrepreneurs, and other creatives use money as a tool to support their purpose rather than a scoreboard for measuring success. His forthcoming book, The Experience of Financial Freedom, explores what it looks like to build a life around creativity, fulfillment, and a deeply personal definition of "enough."
Margo and Dan discuss:
Why purpose (not money) is the starting point for designing a fulfilling creative life
What working with the ultra-wealthy taught Dan about the difference between wealth and true financial freedom
Defining what "enough" looks like instead of constantly moving the goalposts
Why budgeting can actually be a tool for greater creative freedom
The tension between making meaningful art and navigating industries built to monetize it
Letting go of society's default definitions of success, status, and achievement
Becoming the architect of your own experience through intentional choices
Thinking about legacy as something you create through the way you live—not just what you leave behind
Connect with Dan:
https://www.theexperienceoffinancialfreedom.com/
https://www.spotlightadvisorygroup.com/
https://www.spotlightadvisorygroup.com/blog

Margo is joined by Louie, better known as Louie's Loops, a self-taught crochet artist, designer, game creator, and founder of Club Crochet. For nearly 20 years, Louie has been turning his love of crochet into an ever-expanding creative world of amigurumi, tutorials, games, characters, and stories—all rooted in curiosity, play, and community.
Margo and Louie discuss:
Following curiosity and asking "what if?" as a creative practice.

Turning a self-taught crochet hobby into a career and creative business.

Challenging the idea of crochet as simply a "craft" rather than an art form.

Using play and experimentation to stay inspired and avoid burnout.

Building community through tutorials, storytelling, and shared creativity.

Expanding ideas beyond one medium into games, characters, animation, and more.

Creativity and handmade art in an increasingly digital and AI-driven world.

Bringing 20 years of ideas together through Crochet Goomis and Battle Goomis.

 
Connect with Louie:
www.TheGoomis.com
www.ClubCrochet.com
www.instagram.com/LouiesLoops

I'm bringing you a preview of the new series of Death of An Artist. In February 2024, celebrated children's book author and illustrator Petra Mathers and her husband, photographer Michael Mathers, mailed letters to dozens of friends and family members to let them know they had died by suicide. Petra and Michael were by all accounts healthy, happy, and in love. Why did they choose to die together? And what did that decision do to the people left to mourn them? Journalists Leon Neyfakh and Alice Gregory set out to interview everyone who got one of Petra and Michael's letters—as one married couple trying to understand another. Through intimate conversations with Petra and Michael's friends and family about their own relationships to aging, grief, death, and the friends they thought they knew, Death of an Artist weaves together a portrait of a community grappling with the Mathers' deaths and the final words they left behind. Done entirely in recordings, Death of an Artist is as much a love story as one about death. Listen to Death of An Artist wherever you get podcasts. And if you want to hear the full story right now, ad-free, you can binge the entire season with a Pushkin+ subscription—sign up on the Death of an Artist show page on Apple Podcasts or at pushkin.fm/plus.

Margo sits down with Daniel Boettcher, founder of The Intrepid Wendell, to explore the intersection of storytelling, craftsmanship, and legacy—and how the most meaningful creative paths are rarely the most straightforward ones. Daniel's journey has taken him through music, law, aspirations of diplomacy, and ultimately, bespoke jewelry design. After a life-changing experience shifted the trajectory of his career, he found his way toward work that allowed him to combine creativity with something he has always been drawn to: people and their stories.
Margo and Daniel discuss:
Daniel's unexpected journey from music and law to diplomacy aspirations and, ultimately, bespoke jewelry design.
How a life-changing experience redirected his career.
Why deep listening and personal connection are at the heart of Daniel's design process.
The stories behind a few deeply personal pieces.
The idea of an "instant heirloom" and how jewelry can carry family history, memory, love, and meaning across generations.
Daniel's move from Washington, D.C. to Puerto Rico and how the community and culture of Old San Juan have influenced his creativity.
What happens when a client feels truly seen and understood by the person creating for them.
The charming story behind The Intrepid Wendell
Connect with Daniel:
www.theintrepidwendell.com
www.instagram.com/theintrepidwendell