An Interview with Debrah Williamson

 

This month we will be talking with Debrah Williamson about her career, her new book released in September 2006, and her future plans. Thanks Debrah for taking time out of your busy schedule to talk with us! 1.       Congratulations on your new release, Singing with the Top Down, due out this month. Having had the opportunity to read an advance copy of this book, thought it a heart warming story about growing up and making a new life. Can you tell us a little bit about the story?  Thanks for inviting me to share my story with your readers. Singing with the Top Down represents my first foray into mainstream fiction. It’s a buddy-road trip story set in 1955. The protagonist, thirteen-year-old Pauly Mahoney, and her younger brother are orphaned when their irresponsible young parents die in a freak carnival accident. Things don’t look too good for the kids at first. No one in their extended family wants to take them in. Then their mysterious Aunt Nora, a wannabe movie starlet, shows up in a fancy convertible to take them back to Hollywood. On a rollicking drive from Oklahoma to California, they share the adventures of the open road and forge a bond that might just last forever. 2.       I understand Pauly spoke to you many years ago but it really took until recently for you to find the right “voice” in which to tell her story. Can you tell us about the development of Pauly’s story and how it came to be? I actually started thinking about Pauly more than twenty years ago. At the risk of sounding eccentric, I must confess she just showed up in my imagination one day, speaking in a very distinctive voice. I jotted down a few notes and resumed working on other projects. I wasn’t sure how to tell Pauly’s story or even if there was enough story to merit telling. But I didn’t forget the character, and she didn’t go away. Pauly was all about attitude. She looked at the world in a slightly skewed manner. She was sarcastic and full of self-deprecatory humor, but deep down, she was the epitome of a cockeyed optimist. I knew I had to help her live on the page. The problem was how to structure the story. I love southern novels told in wise-child voices, but I knew such stories could be hard to sell in a genre-driven market. So I wrote a story I wanted to read, not one I expected to sell. Eventually I finished the first draft, but I wasn’t happy with my efforts. I’d written a big book but hadn’t done justice to the story. Pauly had been patient with me, she’d waited for years to tell her story, and I’d let her down. It wasn’t her fault. She spoke so clearly, all I had to do was take dictation. But I still missed the boat. I recognized the story’s problems, but wasn’t sure how to fix them. Maybe I lacked insight, or maybe I was just too close. Too invested in the characters. I put Pauly’s story away, but I was determined not to let it become the book-under-my-bed. I continued to write and sold several romances. When I queried an agent, she asked if I had anything else she could read. I mentioned SINGING and she requested it. I pulled out the manuscript again—this time with the objectivity that only years can give, and I knew what I had to do. I revised the manuscript, sent it to the agent and she sold it to NAL a couple of months later. Distance is a writer’s best friend. My advice to writers? Put your work in the cooler for as long as you can before tackling the final draft.  3.       Singing with the Top Down is full of eclectic characters that walked right out of the book and into my heart. Was it difficult having such a wide variety of characters mesh to make a happy little road trip crew? Not at all. If anything, I had trouble creating enough conflict for them to keep the tension high. Maybe it’s a weakness of my character, but I like people to get along. I don’t enjoy conflict or dissension. So making Aunt Nora, Pauly, Buddy and Tyb into a happy family was a piece of cake.  4.       With such a wide variety of characters gathering together, and having such different personalities, would you say you can relate to any particular character more than the others? If so, who would that be and why? Good question. I relate to all the characters, in different ways. I identify with little brother Buddy because I’m a polio survivor who dealt with the disease’s effects for years. Like Pauly, I escaped as a child through movies and books. I understand Aunt Nora. I was a small-town girl with big dreams too. Tybalt Bisbee is a very special character to me. As a clinical speech-language pathologist, I worked with geriatric patients who ended up in nursing homes following neurological events. I cared for my father after his debilitating stroke and know how hard it is for an older person to relinquish independence. When I was nine, I saw a mummified Indian baby in a museum and never forgot how it affected me. My family lived in the southwest for a short time and I witnessed firsthand the racism directed at Native Americans, so it wasn’t hard for me to get inside Wanatela either. I guess I put a lot of myself and my experiences in my fiction. But don’t all writers? 5.       Pauly is a smart, sassy, loving (and loveable) young girl. How much, if any of Debrah is in her persona? I guess I already answered this question in part. I often felt like an outsider as a child. Not because I was the perpetual new kid like Pauly, but because my interests were so different from my peers’, many of whom I attended the same school with from first grade to graduation. Pauly is always dealing with the new and unexpected, but I understood my small world well. Like Pauly, I had a questing mind. I lived mostly in my head. Loved to read and make up stories. Enjoyed school. Hated sports. I was happy to play alone and found it hard to make friends. I only needed one friend at a time. No big social circles for me. I was a loner too, but unlike Pauly, I wasn’t resilient or resourceful or witty. I never thought of the right comeback until after the fact. When I wrote in my journal. Pauly is a survivor, but I didn’t have to be one. I had loving parents who sheltered me. Pauly’s family is always moving, but I lived in the same house from age 6 to 17, when I graduated high school. Pauly worries about paying the rent, but my dad didn’t believe in debt, so there were no bill-collectors at our door. The circumstances of Pauly Mahoney’s life are nothing like mine, but I’m sure she represents my most deeply felt emotions. 6.       What was it that made you one day decide you were going to be a writer? Did you always know or was it a surprise to choose this career path? I don’t remember ever deciding to be a writer. I just always wrote. I loved writing assignments in school. Other students would groan at the mention of an essay, and I would secretly do a happy Snoopy dance. I told you I was different. I loved words. Still do. I love rewriting more than writing because the revision process is when you really get to fine tune your work and make it sparkle. I was always a writer. The first story I wrote was in second or third grade. It was about a mother cat who found an abandoned baby on her doorstep. She raised the boy with her kittens until he went away to college and realized he wasn’t a cat. My teacher put two stars on the paper. I guess that’s when I knew what I would do. Of course, it took years and years before I believed I could write professionally. But I never thought I wasn’t a writer. If you want to write, just do it. Don’t wait for someone else to give you permission or recognition. That has to come from inside. I once read that writing isn’t something you decide to do, like medicine or law or engineering. It’s something you finally have to admit about yourself. Like sexual orientation. 7.       Having read several of your books previously published under a different pen name for Silhouette Romance, I’ve come to expect certain things in the stories. Primarily, I know there will be a strong sense of character growth and development, and emotional storylines that I remember for a long time after I finish the book. If you had to identify certain aspects of your stories as your signature, so to speak, what would it be and why? My signature, I think, is humor and heart. My stories deal with serious subjects, but they must have, and give, hope. It’s not only fictional characters who grow and transform. Fiction can transform readers too. Literary fiction has earned an undeserved reputation for being depressing. Not true of all stories. I believe readers want to be uplifted. They want to be entertained. When they finish a story, they want a nice lingering “ah” feeling that will help sustain them in their day to day lives.  I don’t need to read about how pointless life is. I want to read about how meaningful it can be. I don’t write about big events in history or people who change the world. I am drawn to larger than life characters who live quiet lives of dignity and honor. A good piece of fiction should wring all kinds of emotions out of readers. Laughter as well as tears. But tears should come with hope. It’s funny, but I’m not a Pollyanna type in real life. In fact, I have problems with cynicism. But I try not to let that attitude creep into my fiction. Readers don’t read novels to feel bad. They read novels to feel good. At least that’s what I think. 8.       If you had to think back and pinpoint who it was that inspired you to be a writer, who would you say? Would you say these same people have been most influential on your writing style? If not, then who? I guess I will credit all the wonderful writers whose books I enjoyed growing up. As I mentioned, I attended a small rural school. By the time I was in fifth grade, I’d read all the books in the elementary school library and received special permission to walk over to the high school and check out books there. These were older books, no glossy dust jackets, just dark blue or brown cloth binding with the titles stamped on the spines. By junior high, I had read Louisa May Alcott, James Fennimore Cooper, Marjorie Rawlings, Herman Melville, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Stephen Crane, Shirley Jackson, A. B. Guthrie, Harper Lee, Margaret Mitchell, Victoria Holt and Phyllis Whitney. I read romances, suspense, westerns, and adventure yarns. I was so indiscriminate in my reading, I didn’t even know it when I read a classic. I just read anything I could get my hands on. My classmates would spend their babysitting money on makeup and records, and I bought books. I guess when you read that much, you have to eventually try your hand at writing. It’s a natural progression, don’t you think? 9.       This is one of my favorite “signature” questions to ask in an interview. If you had to write a short paragraph about your writing to convince readers to give your books a shot, what would you tell them? If you like small stories with big hearts, try mine. If you want stories that make you laugh and cry and think about life in a different way, try mine. If you want to feel like you really know a character, heart and soul, meet some of mine. I hope you’ll like what you read and come back for more. 10.     Even though Pauly’s life was far from perfect with her parents, the strong sense of family was there. Then when she and Buddy leave with Aunt Nora, they make their own unique family out of a bunch of seeming misfits. What was it like showing two such completely different types of “families.” Was the transition between them complicated to make? Or did the change flow smoothly? Well, this goes back to that hope I was talking about. Pauly’s family wasn’t perfect. Her parents failed her in many ways. But she never stopped hoping things would be better. When she lost her mother and father, in such an unexpected and violent way, she lost part of herself too. Pauly is a true parental child, the calm head in chaos. She coped with the lack of security her parents provided by making herself indispensable, at least in her mind. When she had to start over with Aunt Nora, she realized she didn’t have to be the grown-up. That she could be a child and let someone else shoulder responsibility. Her life with Nora in California represents the life she always wanted, but didn’t think she could have. 11.     How much advance plotting goes into your writing process? Do you plan everything out ahead of the time or do you just start writing and see where your characters lead you? In a best case scenario, I would totally just jump in and start writing. Part of the excitement of the process for me is NOT knowing the details of what will happen. Not knowing gives me the motivation to keep writing, so that I can find out where the story will go. Of course, now that I am writing on contract, I’ve had to compromise in order to convince my publisher that, yes, I actually do have another book in me. I do the least amount of pre-planning necessary to create an outline that conveys the essence of the novel. Finding my way into a new story is tricky. I usually make several false starts before I find the true path. This is not related to my resistance to outlining, it is simply the way my creative process works. It’s like trying on several outfits before you find one that is the right color, the right style, the right size and the right price. I don’t mail order clothing. There are too many variables. As a writer, I don’t have any one way to write a novel. Each one is different. Organic. That said, I admit I am definitely not a plotter. Usually the plot comes after I get to know the characters.  12.     Do you have any special rituals you go through when starting a new book? What about when you finish one? How do you celebrate? Before I start a new book I clean my office. It’s not just a dust bunny problem. I have to clear away the previous book’s energy too. Put away all my resource volumes and notes. File away my character pictures and sketches. Wipe the slate, I guess you could say. As for what I do to celebrate the completion of a book? SLEEP!!! I like to take a couple of weeks and read some of the good books I missed while on deadline. Once I’ve lost myself in another writer’s words and my mind is clear of my story, I go back and start the revision process, which in many ways, I enjoy more than creating the story in the first place. 13.     What kind of plans do you have for future books? Do you plan to stick to Women’s Fiction for a while or do you see yourself venturing out in to different territories? Thank goodness women’s fiction is a broad term. I tend to latch onto whatever stories capture my imagination, and sometimes they don’t fit exactly into the same mold. I have a completed historical, for example, but haven’t marketed it because it’s too different from what I’m doing now. I also have a humorous southern novel with a forty-year-old first person narrator that’s in the final stages. I’ll probably finish it after I turn in my next book. 14.     Can you tell us anything about your plans for your next book after Singing with the Top Down? Can you give us any teasers? I’m currently working on my second novel for NAL. It’s called Paper Hearts. Don’t know yet if that title will change. It’s due out August 2007. It’s very different from Singing, but it also has some of the same elements. A young narrator, for one thing. Unlike Singing, Paper Hearts is written in third person point of view, with two narrators who both have story arcs. 15.     I know Singing with the Top Down was a long time coming, to get it just right, probably a longer process than is usual for you. What would you say is the normal amount of time it takes to get from writing that first line, to typing “The End?” Depends on how much time I have to write. I work outside the home now, so my writing time is limited and it’s taking longer than normal. In the past, I’ve written a 55K word category romance in 6 weeks. Deadlines inspire me. With this book, I’ve been through a lot of life-changes that have taken some adjusting to. Problem is, I am naturally most creative and work best between the hours of 10 p.m. and 3 a.m. When I was working part-time in the afternoons, I could be very productive with my writing. Now I work full-time from 8 a.m. to 5 or even later, so I’m forced to spend my most creative hours sleeping. Not an ideal situation, but we do what we have to do. And I don’t miss deadlines. 16.     Oftentimes, authors talk about a “soundtrack” for a particular book. Usually they mean what songs may have helped inspire the story, or what songs fit the mood of the book. If you had to list songs that would be on a Singing with the Top Down soundtrack, what would some of them be? Oh, an easy question. Hits from the 1950s. Patti Page. Elvis. Doris Day. Bill Haley and the Comets. I just rocked out while I was writing. I even sang along. Thank you so much for taking the time out of your busy schedule to chat with me about Singing with the Top Down, Debrah! Do you have anything you’d like to say in closing? Thank you for inviting me. I hope readers have as much fun with Pauly and the gang as I had writing about their adventures! Please check out Debrah’s new website! Interviewed by Kelley September 2006 Read our review!