Sarah chats with New York Times bestselling author Debbie Macomber about her writing career, and the many ways that career has grown in unique directions. They discuss the ways she’s adapted her writing to accommodate her dyslexia, the start of her writing career, and what her writing experience has taught her and other writers. They also talk about her Blessings Box, her recipes, her readership, how knitting and romance go together so well, and about her newest book, If Not for You, which she calls a “healing book.” As always, we find out what she’s reading — and what she’s currently knitting!
❤ Read the transcript ❤
↓ Press Play
This podcast player may not work on Chrome and a different browser is suggested. More ways to listen →
Here are the books we discuss in this podcast:
Additional links!
First: did you know we started a Ravelry group? Smart Knitters, Trashy Books! If you’re a member of Ravelry, come join the fun!
Three podcast episodes in our archives that might be of interest:
- 243. Discovering Romance and Navigating Approval: An Interview with Faith Salie
- 233. Nerdy Deep Dives and Adaptations for Reading with Learning Disabilities
You can learn more about Debbie Macomber at her website, and about her charity, Knit One Bless Two.
If you like the podcast, you can subscribe to our feed, or find us at Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows!
❤ Thanks to our sponsors:
❤ More ways to sponsor:
Sponsor us through Patreon! (What is Patreon?)
What did you think of today's episode? Got ideas? Suggestions? You can talk to us on the blog entries for the podcast or talk to us on Facebook if that's where you hang out online. You can email us at [email protected] or you can call and leave us a message at our Google voice number: 201-371-3272. Please don't forget to give us a name and where you're calling from so we can work your message into an upcoming podcast.
Thanks for listening!
This Episode's Music
This is from Caravan Palace, and the track is called “Gramophone.”
You can find their two album set with Caravan Palace and Panic on Amazon and iTunes.
And you can learn more about Caravan Palace on Facebook, and on their website.
Podcast Sponsor
This podcast is brought to you by Audible! I have three reasons for you to think about signing up for Audible if you have not already done so!
- Audiobooks: they have an unmatched selection of audiobooks. I tend to listen while walking the dogs, and my pedometer, my canines, and my imagination are all very happy about that.
- They have original programming on their channels, and I particularly recommend Authorized: Sex & Romance, hosted by Faith Salie. The episode featuring Sophie Kinsella was mind-blowingly interesting, so much so that I listened to it twice.
- Car trips! Books for the whole family to listen to have made many nine hour drives in my life much more bearable – and honestly, a lot of fun. We’ve listened to the Harry Potter series, the Rick Riordan series, and the Alvin Ho series, and all of us were very happy.
You can get a free audiobook if you sign up for a 30 day trial at our special URL: Audible.com/smartpodcast! If you use that there URL, thank you thank you!
And, as promised! Recommendations of audiobooks to try!
- Laura Kinsale’s novels, performed by Nicholas Boulton. Holy smokes, people.
- The Call of Crows series by Shelly Laurenston, performed by Johanna Parker.
- Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen, performed by Rosamond Pike (ear candy of the highest quality, y’all).
Lord of Scoundrels by Loretta Chase, performed by Kate Reading
And once more for the folks in the back: get a 30 day trial and a free audiobook if you sign up at our special URL, Audible.com/smartpodcast!
Transcript
❤ Click to view the transcript ❤
Smart Podcast, Trashy Books, May 5, 2017
[music]
Sarah Wendell: Hello, and welcome to episode number 245 – wow! Dude! – of Smart Podcast, Trashy Books. I’m Sarah Wendell with Smart Bitches, Trashy Books. With me today is Debbie Macomber! You might have heard of her! She is a New York Times bestselling author. She is incredibly prolific, has a very deep and wide backlist of many subtly different books, and she has a lot to say about her writing career. I learned a lot of things in this interview. I thought it was really interesting. We talk about how she’s adapted her writing to accommodate her dyslexia. We talk about the start of her writing career and what her writing experience has taught her and other writers. We talk about her Blessings Box, her recipes, her readership, and how knitting and romance go so well together. And of course we talk about not only what she’s reading but what she’s knitting and her newest book, If Not for You. I will, of course, have links to all of the books that we talk about in this episode and links to some of the things that we discuss as well.
Now, couple of things first: if you have not had a look at the podcast Patreon, I would invite you to do so! Patreon.com/SmartBitches: for as little as one dollar a month, you can help support the show and help me do cool things like buy nifty equipment so I can do a live show – ee! On the day that you are listening to this episode – this episode’s going to come out on May the 5th – I will be recording a live show at Romantic Times. I hope that it records and that the equipment does what it’s supposed to do. Actually, know what? The equipment’s perfect. I have to make sure that I do it right to record the show and release it as soon as I possibly can after it’s recorded. So if you’re listening to this, wish me luck – may the tech angels smile upon me – and if you are a Patreon member who has supported the show, thank you for making this possible. I am deeply, deeply grateful.
I have a sponsor for this episode as well! Today’s sponsor is Audible, and I have three reasons for you to think about signing up for Audible if you have not already done so. First is audiobooks. They have an unmatched selection of audiobooks, I have heard. You want recommendations? I will give you some in just a moment. Number two: they have original programming, there are channels, and one of them is Authorized, sex and romance. If you listened to my podcast with Faith Salie, you learned about that. The specific episode with Sophie Kinsella is brilliant, especially Kinsella’s analysis of the terminology used to describe her books, but you want to listen to the whole season, because Authorized is brilliant, and then the first season is equally good. I’ve really enjoyed them. Number three: car trips. If you’re going somewhere and you have people in the car with you who are young, books for the whole family to listen to have made many nine-hour drives in my life a lot more awesome. We’ve listened to Harry Potter, we’ve listed to Rick Riordan, we listened to the Alvin Ho series. Now, obviously I have younger children, but if you’ve got a series that’s going to work for everyone, it’s really fun to listen to a book together because you suddenly have a lot to talk about every time you stop to pee.
Now, recommendations: you can get a free audiobook if you sign up for a thirty-day trial at audible.com/smartpodcast – that would be this podcast right here – audible.com/smartpodcast. Now, I’ll tell you a little thing: if you’re at all interested in Audible and you use that URL, you’re not only saying that, like, hey, Audible sounds really rad! Let’s totally do this free book thing! But you’re also showing them that advertising on podcasts like mine works, so if you use that URL, double-triple chocolate-dipped thank yous, because that would be awesome. So, audible.com/smartpodcast is the URL to get yourself a free audiobook with a thirty-day trial and of course recommendations I promised that I would give them. Ear candy: Laura Kinsale’s books performed by Nicholas Boulton are unreal, such ear candy. And if you like classical ear candy, Rosamund Pike, who played Jane in the Keira Knightley version of Pride & Prejudice and also played the girl in Gone Girl, she reads Pride and Prejudice, and it is delicious! The Crows series, Call of Crows by Shelly Laurenston, is read by Johanna Parker, and my dogs were super exhausted ‘cause I didn’t stop walking ‘cause I wanted to keep listening. And finally, Lord of Scoundrels by Loretta Chase performed by Kate Reading is brilliant. So there’s a historical, a historical, a classic, and a contemporary paranormal. I cannot recommend those books more enthusiastically because they’re great. So, audible.com/smartpodcast, and thank you to Audible for sponsoring the show!
I will have information about all the books and all the music and everything you’re listening to at the end of the show, but now it’s time to do our interview. On with the podcast.
[music]
Debbie Macomber: Hi, everyone, I’m Debbie Macomber!
Sarah: Yay! It’s so lovely to talk to you!
Debbie: [Laughs] Thanks.
Sarah: So my first question is, unfortunately, a bit mathematical. Do you know how many books you’ve written?
Debbie: Actually, no! I don’t! And –
Sarah: [Laughs]
Debbie: – the, the simple reason is that so many of the books that I wrote back in the ‘80s and the ‘90s and the early 2000s are now being put out with what they call volume jumbo packs with two books or even three and given different covers and different titles, and so, you know, it’s, I have a, I think there’re, like, three hundred different titles on my shelf right now, but a lot of them are just reissues.
Sarah: So I, on a whim, I asked Google, because my phone downloaded a new update, and now I have Google Assistant, and Google Assistant wants to tell me everything, so I asked it, Google, how many books has Debbie Macomber written? And it responded, at least seven.
[Laughter]
Sarah: I really think that number is too low, because when I was doing –
Debbie: Yes.
Sarah: – my research, I had to scroll through some very long biography pages with very long book lists, so I think Google needs to update. [Laughs]
Debbie: Yes, I think that was 1989.
Sarah: Yeah, exact –
[Laughter]
Sarah: So one thing I learned when I was doing my homework: I did not realize that you have dyslexia.
Debbie: Yes. I did not learn to read until I was in the fifth grade, and I was always at the bottom of my class. I, I feel fortunate to have graduated from high school.
Sarah: Wow! I, I did an interview with a reader who has both dyslexia and dysgraphia on the podcast recently, and she said something really, that, that really touched me. She talked about how she’s learned to read and write and be kind to her dyslexia, and how she sees her coping mechanisms as being kind to it, which I thought was just a lovely way to think about that? How do you write with your dyslexia? How are you kind to the, the dyslexia that you have?
Debbie: Well, I’ve come to think of it as a gift, that I have the gift of dyslexia. Because of that, because of my brain doesn’t function the way a normal person’s does when it comes to reading and writing and spelling – I’m a creative speller –
Sarah: [Laughs]
Debbie: – is, is that I have been given the gift of creativity. I am a storyteller, and I would not be a storyteller if it wasn’t for the fact that I am dyslexic. And I, and I look back at my dad and my grandfather, and they both were too, and both of my boys, too. It’s almost, it’s, it’s more common for boys to get it than girls, but I’m the one that got it in our family. And you know, I love what the reader said about being kind. You have to be kind and patient with yourself, and I find that especially when I’m writing because I, like I said, I’m just a terrible speller. Foreign languages are, they’re very difficult for me. Even unusual words or names are difficult for me, and I transpose, there are certain words in my mind that I know how to spell them, but, like, the word such, S-U-C-H, will, will come out J-U-S-T. Why, I don’t know, and often when I’m writing, I will eliminate words. They’re there in my mind, but they don’t make it to the page, and I had an assistant, she’s retired now, she was with me twenty-two years. Renate swore that dyslexia was catchy, ‘cause she would read my –
[Laughter]
Debbie: – and she too would just insert the words in her mind, ‘cause she knew I meant them to be there!
Sarah: Oh, my goodness! [Laughs] So do you write on a computer or do you a dictate your books out loud?
Debbie: No, I actually write on a computer. And started off, if you can believe this, with a typewriter on my kitchen table that I moved at mealtimes.
Sarah: [Laughs]
Debbie: That’s how, you know, so I’ve been at this a long time.
Sarah: The, the thing that inspired me to, to contact you and ask if we could do an interview was your Blessings Box, which I received at the beginning of this year, and I was – first of all, I was so touched to receive one; thank you – but what, what inspired you to create it? It’s, it’s really interesting!
Debbie: Well, years ago, I did a few of the classes online, and – or actually, they were audiotapes – with a number of speakers that spoke of the importance of creating a mission statement, and you know, I had a whole list of things I wanted to do. You know, I wanted to make the New York Times list. I wanted to go on tour! I wanted to have audiobooks! All these different things. I wanted my books to be made into movies. These were important things to me, but that sounded so selfish! And so I, I struggled with this, and it was about six months later that I was reading in the Bible, and, and there’s a, a part in Genesis, I think it’s chapter twelve, where God makes his covenant with Abraham, and he says, I will make you a blessing. And those words just, like, bolded on the page with me, ‘cause that’s what I want. That’s, that’s what I really want for my books to be to my readers. I’m not going to change the world; I’m not going to write the, the greatest novel in the world. I’m not going to start a civil war or change foreign policy or anything that other books have done, but I’m going to make the widow, help her get through the night. I’m going to, the woman that’s going through chemotherapy, she’s going to be able to absorb her-, or, you know, get lost in a story and forget that she has cancer, and that’s what it means to me to be a blessing, and we just thought of creating a Blessing Box and sharing part of myself with my readers and the things that I love.
Sarah: It, it is really a beautiful box, too. I, I, I think it’s fascinating how romance readers often have so many interests in common. So many romance readers knit. So many of us – I, we did a post on, on Smart Bitches this week about tea and tea for beginners, and, like, people came out of the woodwork from around the world to tell us all about how much they love tea. I had no idea tea was such a passion. But the idea of inspiration and knowing what books do for readers is another thing I think that a lot of people maybe outside the romance genre don’t know how powerful the books that we read and the books that we write are. They do so much.
Debbie: Oh, I totally agree. They do, and I’ve, I’ve discovered that romance readers in particular, they want to connect with the author. They want to feel like they are, they know me and know my books, and, you know, they want me to share part of my life with them, and I don’t think that’s necessarily true in other genres.
Sarah: I honestly don’t know, but I do know that has increased with social media. It’s not just writing a letter. You can connect with people constantly, all day, anytime you want now, and that expectation does come with being an author at this point.
Debbie: Yes. My daughter says that I was social media before there was social media.
Sarah: [Laughs]
Debbie: Even in the ‘80s, I was doing a newsletter, and at Christmas time, I would send out recipes to share with the readers on my reader list, and I think I was probably one of the very first to have a readers list. I know I was the very first author for Harlequin and Silhouette to put their mailing address in a book.
Sarah: Wow! I didn’t realize that! So you’ve been receiving postal mail from readers for a very long time!
Debbie: I still do, and I read every single piece of mail that comes into the office, and Sarah, the, the readers have changed the course of my career about four different times, just from the things that they have written me, and –
Sarah: Really!
Debbie: – I take it to heart! I really do! I’ll give you an example –
Sarah: Please!
Debbie: The Christmas, my very first Christmas book was a hundred pages, and it was the size of a paperback, but it was hardcover, and the readers’ response was, love you, love the story, want more, because it was only a hundred pages, and I took that to heart. Now, I was contracted for three Christmas books at that length. I went back to my publisher, and I said, the readers want a bigger story, and from that point forward, I doubled the word length, and they didn’t give me a penny more, and –
Sarah: [Laughs]
Debbie: – those books continued to sell until they were my bestsellers!
Sarah: Wow! And what series was that? Was that Shirley, Goodness and Mercy? The angels?
Debbie: It was before that. It was the, it was before them. It was before that. The first one was Can This Be Christmas?, which was just a hundred pages.
Sarah: Wow!
Debbie: That point forward, I, I just upped the word length, and they, I think – oh, I just made a, I think the next one was Shirley, Goodness and Mercy, and it was just a very short story, a hundred pages.
Sarah: Wow! I have to say, that was one of my, my questions for you, that my favorite of your characters are angels named Shirley, Goodness, and Mercy.
Debbie: [Laughs] Thanks.
Sarah: Like, every time I see that, I start to laugh.
Debbie: You know, it was, I think I get my best ideas from scripture, because that was, came out of the twenty-third psalm, where it says, you know, surely goodness and mercy will follow you? And –
Sarah: For the days of your life, yes.
Debbie: Yes, and, and Mrs. Miracle came from Hebrews 13:2, that we entertain angels unaware, so I thought, ooh! [Laughs]
Sarah: You know, some people get their inspiration from reading the news or from reading celebrity magazines, and I have this image of you in church with a pen like, okay, hang, hang on with that sermon! Just time out! Just, plot bunny! Reverend, I’m going to let you go in a minute, but listen, just give me one second! I’ve got to write this down!
[Laughter]
Debbie: Not quite, but it, you’re close!
Sarah: [Laughs] So one of the things I loved about your Blessing Box was that you included pictures of your house, which is both a really beautiful and intimate thing to do, but you have a staircase of authors, pictures of authors, in your home!
Debbie: Well, actually, that’s my office that’s separate from my house, so it isn’t really –
Sarah: Oh, even better! [Laughs]
Debbie: Yeah, so that – yes, I, those are my mentors! Every time I walk up that stairwell – and I write in this, so romantic, a turret. Isn’t that, isn’t that romantic?
Sarah: No!
Debbie: And every time I walk up those stairs, I’m reminded of my responsibility as an author to create stories that are going to touch hearts.
Sarah: Mm-hmm.
Debbie: That are going to, create stories that are going to be a blessing to my readers! And these people are the books that I read as a kid, and, you know, their stories have lasted through the years. They, you know, they still touch hearts, and that’s what I, that’s my goal as, as an author, to, to touch hearts and to have stories that’ll stay in the reader’s mind.
Sarah: You also talk about choosing words for yourself. Like, the, clearly the word for this is blessing, and you talk about joy, and you talk about not only receiving blessings but, but giving blessings. Have you chosen a word for yourself every year or for the past few years?
Debbie: Oh, I think it’s about twenty, thirty years now that I’ve done that, and that started, it was kind of a fun thing that a group of us did. I married as a teenager and was a stay-at-home mom when I became a writer, and I, when I started selling books I – unlike most writers who want to sell enough books and make enough income to quit their jobs and go home and write, I was just the opposite. I wanted to make enough money to get out of there and have an office! So –
Sarah: [Laughs] With a turret!
Debbie: – so I was, I was having to make decisions, important decisions, that were uncomfortable to me because I had so little business experience, so I created a group, I invited the most successful women in our small town here, the county assessor, the bank president, a judge, you know, and, and asked them all these questions that I had, and we had so much fun together that we decided to meet every week. And we met every week for twenty years at 7:30 on Thursday morning, and we had breakfast together, and it was the group that decided to choose a word for the year. Each one of us would take a word for the year, and all of them have retired now, I’m the only one still working, so, but I have continued to do that, to take a word for the year, and the word this year is dreamer, because I’ve always been a dreamer. I’ve always had stories going through my head. When, when I was a child in school, that was what the teachers accused me of. They said I daydreamed a lot. Well, I did, because I was so completely lost in the classroom, I couldn’t follow anything, that I would just sit there and create stories in my mind and dream. And, but those dreams have carried me a long ways. Just recently, we sold our house in Florida and I was cleaning out a drawer, and I found a, I guess it’s a recipe card, a colorful recipe card that I had made in 2003, and I had put down five things that at the time that I wrote this seemed totally out of my reach and impossible. I mean, you know how we do that. We dream big dreams, and I saw that, I just kind of gasped, because every single item on that list, except for one, has, has come true. I have not got an Oscar yet.
[Laughter]
Debbie: But, like I said, you can never accuse me of dreaming small!
Sarah: No!
Debbie: So –
Sarah: And besides, you’ve got time! You’ve got a turret; you can totally make that happen.
Debbie: [Laughs] Yes! So the word for this year is dreamer. And last year’s word was joy.
Sarah: That’s really lovely. I, I am part of a Facebook group of people who are setting goals. It’s a little similar to breakfast, except I don’t have to put on shoes and, you know, go out into the world.
Debbie: [Laughs]
Sarah: But –
Debbie: That’s good!
Sarah: – this year, many of the women in that group have not only chosen a word but then found someone who will make a three-dimensional word sculpture out of it, out of a colored acrylic, so you can have your word sitting on your desk with you.
Debbie: Oh, wow, what a great idea!
Sarah: Isn’t that brilliant! I was like, oh, that’s very cool, but my problem is I can’t narrow it down to one word. [Laughs] I need, like, nine!
Debbie: Yes.
Sarah: It’s hard to narrow it down to one!
Debbie: Some people do a phrase.
Sarah: Mine is probably, my phrase is probably be here now.
Debbie: Ah, that’s good, definitely.
Sarah: Like, don’t worry about what’s going to happen, don’t worry about what you already did; you can’t change it anyway. Be here now, because now is where the fun part is.
Debbie: Yes.
Sarah: That’s probably mine. So, when your, with your books, who introduced you to romance?
Debbie: You mean, the – I had been reading Harlequin romances, the traditional romances, as a young married, and it was a friend who introduced them to me, and then I started reading Barbara Cartland and Janet Dailey, and they were, you know, the ones that really inspired me, and the, I, you know, I was a voracious reader all along. It was harder ‘cause we had four babies in five years, so I was, you know, really wrapped up in being a mom and a, and when the kids started school was basically when I started to write.
Sarah: That’s a lot of babies.
Debbie: Yes, it is! [Laughs]
Sarah: It’s a little, that’s a lot of small people. Like, that’s a zone defense pattern right there. That’s, that’s, wow. And when they all start toddling, whoo, ah, whoa.
Debbie: Oh, my goodness, you know, I, I think I, I started reading romance novels because I was potty training ‘em all, and I needed something with a happy ending.
[Laughter]
Sarah: Yeah, those are some dark days. My, my, my children are nine and eleven, and my eleven-year-old is finally losing his molars. He, he, I swear, the Tooth Fairy is making, like, regular deposits at our house, and I keep telling him, I’m like, do you understand the agony I went through when you grew those teeth the first time?
Debbie: Yeah! [Laughs]
Sarah: Do you understand what that cost me? And, like, there’s, there’s nothing, I get, like, there’s nothing. Like, you don’t get a reward when they come out; he gets a reward for losing his teeth –
Debbie: Yeah.
Sarah: – but I was up all night! You don’t understand how bad teething is. He’s like, I don’t understand what you’re talking about, Mom. It was, it didn’t even hurt. I’m like, it did then! [Laughs]
Debbie: Yes. There’s a, there’s a line I use when I give a speech and I tell about, you know, the darkest hour before I published, and an editor told me that the best thing I could do with my manuscript was throw it out –
Sarah: Oh, my gosh!
Debbie: – and I, you know, and I said, you know, at the time it was a, it was, you know, I’d never been that depressed in my life, but that was before I had teenagers.
[Laughter]
Debbie: So you just wait, Sarah. If you think it’s bad now – [laughs]
Sarah: Oh, gosh, I know. I’m, I’m, I’m readying a very small bunker where I can go hide when it gets real bad. [Laughs]
Debbie: Yeah.
Sarah: The closets in our home here are surprisingly large, and I can hide in them. So, despite being told, which is just a ghastly story, that, you know, your, your manuscript was horrible, you were pretty sure, ‘cause I’ve heard you give speeches, you were very sure that this was a thing that you could and would do.
Debbie: It, the ironic part of it is the book that she told me to throw away is the one that sold.
Sarah: [Laughs]
Debbie: My very first sale. Yes.
Sarah: That must still feel good.
Debbie: It does still feel good.
Sarah: [Laughs]
Debbie: And it, and it gives, I think, other writers hope, because it’s just somebody’s opinion.
Sarah: Yep.
Debbie: Yes, I had a long way to go to learn to be a good writer, but I had the storytelling ability, and the editor who bought my first book, whose name was Mary Clare Susan, and she worked for Silhouette Books at Simon & Schuster at the time, she saw that potential. She saw the storytelling ability in me, and she knew the writing would come along. Now, I rewrote that book for her, and the next one too, but I had written four books all the way through, and each one of those books sold because they were good stories. And every now and then I’ll pick up a book where the writing just irritates me, but the story’s good, and I don’t care, I will read the book, because the story is what’s compelling.
Sarah: The same is true for me, and, and it’s funny that you say, it’s just one person’s opinion. I give a lot of workshops about reviews, and – mostly to author groups – and I always say, no one, no one person can make or break a book. It, I am a, a single opinion, and I promise you that for every person who reads a review that, of a book that I did not enjoy, there is a person going, this is everything I like, and I want it right now. I need it right this minute; get out of my way. So –
Debbie: [Laughs]
Sarah: – you, you have to both value your, you have to value what, what you learn about yourself from other people, but you also, you also have to believe in your own determination, too.
Debbie: Yes. And I guess it’s, you know, people, you know, say they admire me for sticking with it. The fact is, I’m a stubborn person; I don’t give up easily.
[Laughter]
Sarah: What, what are some of the things that readers share with you and tell you about your books? One of the things that I love, love, love about the romance genre is I see it as our literary inheritance, because so often we inherit it or learn about it or sneak the books from another woman that we know in our families or a babysitter. Either you’re given the book or you take the book and you’re not supposed to have it, but that’s how most of us discover the romance genre. [Laughs] What are some of the things that readers share with you about, about your books and the, the, the way in which they interact with your books?
Debbie: Well, I do a whole series of, of letters that I have received over the years that they, they mean to compliment me, like, you’re my favorite writer, you put me to sleep every night.
Sarah: Oh, gosh!
[Laughter]
Debbie: Or I will buy anything that has your name on it, so thank you, Betty, for writing such great books!
[More laughter]
Debbie: So, and you can, you know, you can tell certain people’s personality just from their letters. Just recently I got a letter from a woman who said, I have read twelve of your books, and I’ve liked every one of them…so far.
Sarah: Oh, no! Well, I mean, Google says you’ve written at least seven, so she’s, she’s got a little ways to go.
[Laughter]
Debbie: So, you know, there are, there, the readers are vocal, and, and I love reading the mail, and I encourage the readers to write me, because what they say is important to me. They’re my bread and butter, and I love hearing from them, and I’ve made it very easy to get in touch with me in a number of different social medias and by snail mail, so that, that’s a big part of my career, and it’s, it’s, the first thing I do every morning is read every single guest book entry and every single letter that comes into the office.
Sarah: Wow, a guest book! I haven’t seen one of those online in a very long time!
Debbie: Yeah, it’s surprising how many people will, will send me messages through the guest book, and Facebook, too.
Sarah: There’re a lot more ways to get in touch with, with you at this point. Do you still get more snail mail, more postal mail, or do you get more online comments and, and letters?
Debbie: Oh, by far online. By far.
Sarah: Yes.
Debbie: But I still get probably, I don’t know, maybe between twenty to fifty letters a week.
Sarah: Wow! So your mailman is a frequent visitor.
Debbie: Yes.
[Laughter]
Debbie: Oh, we had to fix up a box so they, that’s where they go.
Sarah: [Laughs] Do you have a, do you ever notice any recurring themes in what the, what the letters say? I know you’ve said that your write-, your, your, the letters that your readers write you have inspired you to write different things and to add on to books, but do you notice that there are common themes in what they say when they write to you?
Debbie: Yes, definitely, and, and that was why I started the series, the Cedar Cove series. I had done a number of short series, six books here, six books there, Alaska, Texas –
Sarah: Mm-hmm.
Debbie: – North Dakota, and the readers were saying to me, oh, can you go back, can you tell us about so-and-so, and – but when you’re done with a series, you know, you’re done. It’s like dating an old boyfriend; you’re kind of done with that, and –
Sarah: [Laughs]
Debbie: – and it’s hard for an author to go back, so I decided to do the Cedar Cove series, and when I had done the other books, I had plotted all six books all the way through before I wrote word one, but with the Cedar Cove series, I just decided to tell the stories until there weren’t any more to tell, so it was actually the readers that influenced that. Many of the things that I have done in my career have been, like, the first time an author has done this. Like, I think I was the first one ever to write an angel book; I was the first one ever to put my address in a book. I was the first one to do a lengthy, lengthy series, well, other than mystery and science fiction. And that all came from the readers, and the cookbooks are a result of the readers, too. Every time I mentioned a recipe in Cedar Cove, like Teri Polgar’s macaroni and cheese or Peggy Beldon’s blueberry muffins, the office would just get inundated with mail: well, could you, do you have a recipe for that?
Sarah: [Laughs]
Debbie: So we, you know, that’s how the, that’s how the cookbooks came about, and I’ve just been contracted for another one. I mean, the cookbooks are very popular. Not only am I a writer, I am a frequent eater! And love to cook! And I love to eat, so, and many, many of my readers do too, and that’s one of the things that I found that if you share a recipe, your readers are right there.
Sarah: Oh, absolutely.
Debbie: I mean, they love that!
Sarah: I think you probably belong on the list of authors not to read while hungry.
Debbie: [Laughs]
Sarah: Like, we have a, a tag that we use for reviews on the site: do not read this book while you’re hungry. We are warning you right now, it’s a bad idea.
Debbie: Yeah.
[Laughter]
Sarah: So can I ask you about your, your newest book, If Not for You?
Debbie: Oh, definitely!
Sarah: So the cover is making me so happy, ‘cause it is so pretty, and there’s so many flowering trees.
Debbie: It’s a beautiful cover. I’m, yeah, it’s one of my, my favorite covers. And I’ve been doing the books, there’s a New Beginnings series, and it’s, the first book was called Last One Home, and it’s a story about reconciliation, sisters reconciling, and then A Girl’s Guide to Moving On was about forgiveness, and If Not for You is a healing book, and it’s about a woman who’s in a terrible, terrible car accident, and the, the hero was there at the accident site, and he’s holding her hand until the, the ambulance comes and, you know, talking to her, and she really, she just gloms onto him, and as she’s healing physically, he’s healing emotionally, so the theme of the book is healing, and it’s about two people who come from very different parts of life. He’s a mechanic, she’s a musician, and she’s cultured, and he’s kind of gruff, and so the opposites attract, and there’s that whole aspect of, of healing, the theme of healing.
Sarah: Was there a particular story or character that inspired this? Do you start with a plot, or do you start with the characters?
Debbie: I generally start with the characters, or, or, sorry, the plot premise, and when it comes to plotting books, because I’m a storyteller, I had to come up early in my career with a way of deciding what stories to develop, so I chose words. If I could make the story provocative, I want my readers to think, if it’s relevant to their lives, if I can tell the story in the most creative way, if it’s realistic, and if it’s entertaining, and if I can get the, the plot premise around those words, then I know I’m going to have a really good idea, and so I start with the plot premise, then I create the characters to go with it. Like, when I started with the Blossom Street series, it was somebody who was starting a yarn store, opening up a yarn store. Who would do that? Why would they do it? What is their motivation? And it came up with somebody that was a cancer survivor who had decided she was going to live her life without cancer. She wasn’t going to think about cancer. She was going to follow her dreams no matter what.
Sarah: So you start with a premise or a theme and then build –
Debbie: Right.
Sarah: – around the theme.
Debbie: Correct.
Sarah: That’s very interesting! You know, you, until recently, you also had a yarn store, is that right?
Debbie: Yes, I did. Well, I’m an, an avid, avid knitter. When I was –
Sarah: This I knew, yes.
[Laughter]
Debbie: When the, when I was growing up and struggling so hard in school and failing no matter how hard I tried, it was knitting that saved me. My grandmother was a crocheter, and I don’t have any memories of her, but my older cousins tell me about, you know, how, how she loved to crochet, and I have some of her things that she crocheted, and, and I apparently inherited that gene, and I wanted to learn how to knit. And my mother took me to the yarn store, and because of that, knitting, I, you know, I had to study the patterns, so I learned comprehension skills. I had to carefully read the words so that I knew what to do. I had to do math, and it gave me such a keen sense of accomplishment, which I so badly needed, and self-esteem that was so lacking in those early years of school.
Sarah: And also, knitting patterns are a type of code, and I, and I think that –
Debbie: [Laughs]
Sarah: – there’s a wonderful, there’s a, a wonderful but kind of scary and a little too violent for me television series from the BBC called The Bletchley Circle, and it was about a bunch of women who were codebreakers, and when the war is over –
Debbie: Yeah.
Sarah: – and they’re home, and they’re bored, ‘cause they’re not breaking code, ‘cause there’s no war, one of them starts knitting because it is the closest she can come to code-breaking.
Debbie: Oh! [Laughs]
Sarah: But it, it is –
Debbie: I hadn’t thought of it like that, but yeah!
Sarah: And it’s, it’s like another language, because if you read a, if you read a knitting pattern it’s like, k2, p6, yo, and I’m like, what? What just happened? Who did the, what – and then I need, like, nine YouTube videos to figure it out. Do you, do you miss your yarn store now that it’s closed?
Debbie: Well, I have enough yarn in my yarn room for, to open my own yarn store right there.
Sarah: [Laughs]
Debbie: So it’s, it’s one thing about, about knitters. We are avid hoarders of, of yarn. I, I stand in the middle of that room, I have a, a whole room that’s dedicated to yarn and my knitting projects, and I stand in the middle of the room, and, and I, I should feel guilty, but then I’m just reminded, there’s knitting in heaven! I can bring it – I mean, I won’t bring that yarn, but there’ll be yarn there, so I don’t need to worry!
Sarah: [Laughs] I think there’s a, isn’t there a knitting acronym? SABLE? Stash Acquired Beyond Life Expectancy?
Debbie: Yes, I think so! [Laughs] Yeah, it’s –
Sarah: One of my, one of my writers for the site is an, a very avid knitter, and she does knitting patterns based on what she’s reading or watching, and she was watching Outlander, and she was like, I really just needed to pause and look at the knitting, like, ten different times, because the knitting just stops Elyse in her tracks. She’s got to check it out. Do you, do you find that knitting and writing romance go together in different ways?
Debbie: Yeah, oh, and definitely, because what I’ll do is at the end of the day, I, I just kind of pick up my knitting needles and my current project and, and decompress, and I’ll often think of, of, you know, where I’m going in the story as I’m knitting. So, yeah, definitely, I think there’s a real connection with me, with the yarn and, you know, the, the yarn itself and the yarn, the story.
Sarah: Oh, that’s brilliant. That, yes, that makes a lot of sense. I often, ‘cause I mostly write nonfiction on the site, I’m writing reviews or commentary or longer nonfiction prose, but I cross-stitch, and I notice that I have a lot more ideas and things make sense linearly once I’m cross-stitching a bunch of Xs right in a row for, you know, a good ten, fifteen minutes. I think it sort of resets your brain in a way.
Debbie: I, I think that, you know, there’s a routine to it or a, you know, if you, if you continually do the same action, your, your mind is free?
Sarah: Yes.
Debbie: Then, you know, you just kind of by rote will, you know, you know, toss the yarn and, and do the stitch, and I think that it kind of frees your mind because it’s kind of divided. You’re kind of paying attention, but at the same time your mind is saying, oh! Well, what if they did this in the story? Ooh, that’s a good idea! You know.
Sarah: Yep! It frees up what I call the easily distracted part of my brain?
Debbie: Aha!
Sarah: Like, I, I think of part of my brain as a Jack Russell Terrier. What’s that? What’s that? What’s this? What’s going on? What, what, what, what?
Debbie: [Laughs]
Sarah: So the Jack Russell Terrier part of my brain calms down, and the more, you know, the more sleepy old Bloodhound part of my brain can go, oh, I have an idea! Let’s do this! Course, now that why I’m at, why there’re dogs in my brain I don’t know, and I realize someone’s listening to this at, at some point is going to be like, wow, ooh, dogs in your brain. You’re weird! [Laughs]
One thing that I always ask the people I interview is what they’re reading, but I also want to ask you what you’re knitting right now, and if you would talk a little bit about Knit 1, Bless 2.
Debbie: Oh, okay. Well, actually, I am knitting an afghan right now for my grandson in, in a variety of blue colors –
Sarah: Ooh!
Debbie: – and Knit 1, Bless 2 is a part of World Vision’s idea to, to give children a, a sweater or a blanket or something that will – personally knit for them by somebody who is praying and thinking about them. It’s, it’s a lot more than just giving them a purchased blanket. When we hand out these blankets, and I have been to Kenya to do this personally, you would not believe the smiles that come on their faces when they put on that sweater, and, you know, I tell them, you know, somebody thought about you when they were knitting this. And so it’s, it’s just one way to extend love to somebody who may feel alone, and it is another way, it warms their heart and it warms their bodies at the same time.
And what am I reading? I just discovered, I’ve been doing a lot of reading online eBooks, just eBook-only authors, and I, I just discovered a, a writer, her initials are J something, and it’s Dar, D-A-R-hower, Darhower. She’s very good. I’m, I’m almost thinking that she’s, this is a pseudonym – I haven’t looked her up – but, because she is such an excellent writer and a very good storyteller. Her stories are a little dark, and, but the heroes are very appealing to me. They’re very alpha males. So she’s one, and there’s another author whose last name is Archer, and again it’s initials, and I don’t remember the initials, and I, I just finished a five-book series by her. It was an assassin series set in the 1500s.
Sarah: Hmm.
Debbie: Excellent, excellent author. Yeah! So I –
Sarah: So you, you like alpha males.
Debbie: I do! And I, I love finding authors that, that I, you know, I think are, are young – well, I say this, young in book years – that show such incredible promise, and I, I generally will send them a note and just say, you know, you are an excellent writer; keep it up! You know, you have a career, and, and you should have. Just don’t get discouraged that it takes long to build, ‘cause it is twenty years. It took me twenty years to make the New York Times list! So, you know, it just takes time. You have to be patient with yourself.
Sarah: Especially when you’re writing in a genre that is so often put down, and the women who read it and write it are so often put down. That can make it more difficult to persevere.
Debbie: Yes, definitely. Your, you know, you write romance novels.
Sarah: Oh, you write those books.
Debbie: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, and I’m proud of it, let me tell you, because –
Sarah: [Laughs]
Debbie: – I’ll tell you what, those romance books have – if you could read the letters I get from people who say that, how important these books are to them, you know, that this is what gets them through life, is, you know, this is, these are not throwaway books. They’re, they just aren’t. You know, these stories that stay and touch hearts and give hope and inspiration and encouragement, and women need that!
Sarah: Oh, yes, absolutely. Especially when you feel like you have to carry so much responsibility, and you have so much that you have to do, and a lot of it isn’t pleasant. Whenever I’ve met people and I, you know, you, you end up in a situation where you talk to somebody and you end up asking, well, what do you do, whenever I meet someone who is a, a nurse or work in hos-, works in a hospice or works in a, in a field that’s very emotionally draining, I almost always find out that they also read romance.
Debbie: Yes.
Sarah: And then we have, like, six hours worth of conversation to have!
Debbie: [Laughs]
Sarah: But romance is found, romance novels specifically, I think, are found in tremendously dark and difficult places for people.
Debbie: Yes. And, and I think that’s what they turn to because, like, like me as a, as a young housewife and mom, I needed a happy ending. We needed to know there’s hope in this world. [Laughs]
Sarah: Yes. [Laughs] That we’re all doing this for a really good reason.
Debbie: Yes.
Sarah: And it’s three in the morning and it’s dark and it’s cold.
Debbie: Yes.
Sarah: So what are you working on next? What book are you working on now?
Debbie: I just finished a synopsis for a book that I’ve titled A Cottage by the Sea, and it’s very different than things that I have written before, and, in, in the fact that the hero rarely speaks. He can speak, he isn’t deaf or mute, but, he can speak, but he rarely does. And the heroine has suffered a tremendous loss and has gone to the one happy place she had as a child, and that’s by the sea, and she’s a physician’s assistant, and so she meets the people in the community at their lowest point when they’re hurt, and the hero is somebody who senses pain in others, and he, he brings her a blind dog because she needs somebody, and the dog needs her.
Sarah: Dogs in books are, like, my new favorite thing. And dogs on covers, my gosh.
Debbie: I know, they, they sell! They sell! It’s not a cat, it’s a dog that sells on the cover of a book.
Sarah: Right? It’s incredible! It’s just, it’s, I, I know that for, I think it was Kristan Higgins books, someone forwarded me a casting call to do the, the cover model for a dog for the cover, and I was like, that’s just brilliant! I would like to volunteer my dog, who does not fit the description –
Debbie: [Laughs]
Sarah: – but that’s just – seriously, dogs on covers? Absolutely.
Debbie: Yeah. We have our Bogey. We’ve always dogs, so I’m a dog girl.
Sarah: I have two dogs and two cats and two boys, so my house is generally hairy, loud, and a little sticky, depending on what we’re snacking on.
Debbie: [Laughs]
[music]
Sarah: And that is all for this week’s interview with Debbie Macomber. I want to thank her for hanging out with me. I’ve had such a good time doing that interview. I will have links in the podcast entry at smartbitchestrashybooks.com/podcast to her website and her most recent books, the titles that we discussed, and some of the links to things we talked about as well.
And if you are listening right now, you’re awesome. Thank you for listening. There are two things that you can do to help support the show and help other people find it. One is if you use a podcast distribution or I believe they’re called aggregator like iTunes or Google Play or Stitcher, wherever you acquire your fine podcasts, if you leave a review for this podcast, it means that this podcast will flirt shamelessly with their algorithm. I don’t actually know how the podcast will behave, but I presume it will behave with decorum or some form of unprofessional decorum, ‘cause that’s kind of how I operate. Either way, the podcast will flirt meaningfully with the algorithm at whatever site or aggregator you use, and that helps it move up into more visible spaces where people can discover our fine, fine discussions of romance fiction and the things that are adjacent to it, which is, like, you know, pretty much everything that’s interesting!
And if you would like to support this show in particular, you can go to patreon.com/SmartBitches. The people who have supported the show have helped me do amazing things, including setting up the acquisition of transcripts for older episodes AND really nifty equipment so I can record a live show. And if that goes well, I can do another live show, and I can just wander around with these really cool microphones that I won’t let my kids play with. So if you go to patreon.com/SmartBitches and support the show for as little as one dollar a month, you make an enormous, enormous difference in helping keep this show a weekly collection of semi-professional cat mayhem.
Now, I don’t have any compliments this week – well, actually, no, I do. I do have a compliment. Are you ready?
garlicknitter: You’re transcribing this episode! Thank you for doing that! I have heard from many people how much they appreciate the transcripts, so thank you for doing what you do. You help make the Internet a better place!
[gk: Blushes bright, fiery red all over.]
The music you are listening to is from Caravan Palace. This is their double album, Caravan Palace and Panic, which you can find online. This track is called “Dramophone.”
And one last thing: this episode is dedicated to the memory of Kodak, who is Sassy Outwater’s retired guide dog. He had to be put to sleep last week, which is awful and so hard if you’ve ever loved an animal, especially an animal who was your eyes for, like, you know, the whole world. So to, from all of us, Sassy, we are so sorry, and to Kodak, good job, buddy. Well done.
Thank you again for listening. We hope you have a wonderful weekend with the best of reading, and we’ll see you next week.
[good music]
This podcast transcript was handcrafted with meticulous skill by Garlic Knitter. Many thanks.
This is very appropriate for me today, I’m mending the last jumper my MIL knitted for Mr Jazz. She died on Monday (at 98, with no memory of family and often inconsolably unhappy this was far more of a relief than a sad death) but had been unable to knit for years due to arthritis. However knitting was one of our shared loves and keeping this jumper going seems an appropriate way to celebate her. So thank you even more than usual!
@Jazzlet: I’m amazed by the coincidence, and I’m glad this episode was comfort at the right time. My condolences on your family’s loss.
really enjoyed this.
Jesus, Sarah, your closing… you just made me cry in the middle of Trader Joe’s! Damn you…
So I just wanted you to know that your podcast is available in the directory for a podcast app for blind listeners called QCast. I’m not sure to thank you guys or those who make the directory, but that app is yet another way for those who enjoy the podcast to listen to it.
Also, if you think you could go back and label all the webpages where the podcasts and show notes are located, and label the links to things which were discussed in each episode that would be very helpful. While I’ve noticed that most of these pages are labeled, some of the earlier podcast pages are not, and this might be something to fix while you go back and add missing transcripts to podcast episodes.
This is not meant to be a putdown of how you run the website and podcast in general, and I hope you don’t see it that way. In fact, the only reason I know, is that my best friend who is also blind,was interested in going back to the first podcast episodes, and cataloging each book which is mentioned so she could see if she could find it in blind book reading services such as Bookshare and the Library of Congress. I kind of think it is madness to do all that, but at the same time she decided to do this, we were discussing starting our own blog, and she reads books more quickly than I so maybe those two are part of the reason. I apologize for this being such a longwinded comment and if you would lie me to express my thoughts in a more private way such as email I can do that as well.
My sympathies to Sassy.
And a big thank you to Garlic Knitter from one who reads each transcript.
I just wanted to say to Ms Macomber that for all the years I tried to get my hubby to try some of my romance books like Linda Howard and Suzanne Brockmann, the one romance series he finally glommed onto was her Cedar Cove TV series on Hallmark Channel. By that time his stroke and subsequent tumor had made reading virtually impossible for him, but he LOVED that show, and when I showed him the books it was based on he was astounded. If I remember correctly he downloaded a couple of the audiobooks and really enjoyed them. So I just want to say thank you for making his last couple of years much brighter and giving him a lot of enjoyment.
And also my thanks to garlicknitter for the transcripts, which I find much easier to manage than the podcasts. Thanks for all you do.
And my sympathies to Sassy, I know how hard the loss of such a longtime friend and companion is.
After reading my comment, I realize I should have written links instead of pages. Excuse my typo. And related specifically to this podcast, I’m interested in checking out the Cedar Cove books and TV series.
Oh my goodness. I listen to the podcast while walking one of our dogs. We host her for Leader Dogs for the Blind (http://leaderdog.org/) and she is a leader dog mom. Her puppies will go into training to become leader dogs. Hearing the end of the show had me in tears. Thanks for providing the entertainment while I keep the mom for future leader dogs in shape! Here’s her official portrait: https://www.instagram.com/p/BSAE-3NBbdW/?taken-by=ldmdixie
CJ Archer – one of my favourite authors.
This was just a lovely interview. I almost skipped over this one because Ms Macomber’s books are not at all my cuppa, but she was so delightful and I 100% enjoyed the episode! Thank you for facilitating a really great conversation, Sarah!