Paper Roses - Author Interview with Debby Show

This time, we sit down with author Debby Show. We talk generational trauma and her debut novel, Paper Novels. Author Debby Show is a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist and School Psychologist based in California. With years of experience with individuals and families, she brings a deep understanding of human behavior, relationships, and generational dynamics to her fiction.

00:00 Introduction to Debbie Show and 'Paper Roses.'
10:10 The Role of the Scapegoat in Families
17:47 Understanding Intergenerational Trauma
26:07 The Impact of Debbie's Sister's Actions
39:06 The Nature vs. Nurture Debate
41:45 Writing Advice for Aspiring Authors


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Creators and Guests

Host

Jonathan

Host

Slava

What is The Side Quest Book Club Podcast?

If you’re a reader looking for something deeper or an indie author working on your book, The Side Quest Book Club is for you. We skip the usual book reviews and ratings. Each episode turns fun side quests into real lessons, so you’ll leave not just entertained, but with a better understanding of why storytelling matters.

[Jonathan]
Does she know that you wrote a book about her?

[Debby]
Oh, I'm almost 100% positive she knows I wrote a book about her. We still have family. She has a talent convincing people, and they come back.

[Jonathan]
Did you figure out why people act the way they do?

[Debby]
I have figured out why people act the way they do, but it's just like a simple answer.

[Jonathan]
It's not hidden in the book. Got it.

[Debby]
And I wanted the book to begin and end in Morocco. The reader to understand, again, how people become who they are.

[Jonathan]
Do we just stay hurt forever, or are there some things we can do to try to heal?

[Debby]
I used to always think, oh my god, I have the worst role in the family being the scapegoat. But actually, it's the best role because you can see things more clearly. And then realizing that I wasn't the only one, that every generation needs one.

[Slava]
Coming to you from the Endless Library, where every book is read and every spoiler discussed. Join us as we dig into the lives of fictional people who cannot defend themselves. This is the PsyQuest Book Club.

[Jonathan]
Welcome back, PsyQuesters, to today's book club. We have a really special guest. She reached out to us on the internet, maybe you've heard of it, and said, hey, I've got this really crazy book that I wrote, and it's based on real events.

I don't want to spoil it. So Slava, please give us the intro of Debbie Cho's background.

[Slava]
Debbie Cho is a licensed marriage and family therapist and licensed educational psychologist based in California's East Bay. With more than 25 years of experience, she has worked with adults, adolescents, children, couples, and families in schools, clinics, and in private practice. But her clients don't know that she has a dark secret.

A secret which we will discuss today and is the subject of her book, Paper Roses. Debbie's clinical expertise and decades of observing real world family dynamics shaped her debut novel, which came out early November of 2025. Though fictionalized, the story is inspired by her life and the widely publicized crimes of her sister, Tracy Cho Hutzona, who was convicted in a high-profile embezzlement case covered by the New York Times, CNBC's American Greed, and Hulu's Age of Influence, and other national outlets.

Rather than retell the headlines, Debbie spent years and over a thousand writing and research hours crafting a novel rooted in psychological, cultural, and generational forces that shape a person capable of deception on such a scale. Told through multiple voices, including a Moroccan nanny in Nazi-occupied Morocco, their parents, and even Debbie herself, Paper Roses explores family, identity, and the hidden architecture of betrayal. It is her attempt to understand how life can unravel and how the people left behind make sense of it.

Welcome to the show, Debbie.

[Debby]
Thank you so much for having me. Appreciate it.

[Slava]
When we discuss books, we often are left wanting, especially Jonathan, well, what's the backstory of this character? Or why is this character acting the way she or he is in any numerous, any number of scenes? So actually getting to talk to an author who based her, though fictional like we said, but based on real events, and some of them pretty traumatizing and harrowing, I think is a first for us.

And it will serve all the needs of Jonathan's neuroticism from wanting more and more about...

[Jonathan]
I could be neurotic. It's true.

[Slava]
Yeah. Yes. So let's begin with a little bit about you, like your history, your family, how you grew up, what led you to California's East Bay.

Maybe you grew up there. Just give us a little bit of background of who Debbie's show is.

[Debby]
I think the word harrowing is correct that you used. My mother is a Jewish Moroccan from Rabat, Morocco. And all she really wanted in her life was to come to America and become famous, become an actress or a model.

And she met my dad. There was a military base out there. And he was kind of like your struggling GI, you know, joined the military because he didn't have any other options.

They got married and then they had... She was pregnant when she came over. So they had me right away.

And then they moved to California because there was a relative here. So that's how I grew up in California. They were very young.

Of course, you can't say that they were terrible parents because they were young. They both had very traumatic histories. And they were just not really good for each other at all.

And then they had three girls. So the second girl is not in the book. And I want to say that I had a unique childhood.

But, you know, there's a million ways to have a dysfunctional family. So mine is just one of them. I think in the story, you know, you've got...

My father was an addict and he ended up selling to support his habit. And we were all swept up in that. And I think both of my parents had some degree of sociopathic traits, just trying to scramble and get ahead.

And we're self-absorbed.

[Jonathan]
That's a pretty wild background and upbringing.

[Slava]
So did those experiences kind of propel you towards your chosen career field?

[Debby]
Yes. I guess I'm a little like you. I want to understand.

So my whole life, the big question is, why do people behave the way they do? You know, that was the big question. Some people go into psychology because they want to know why they behave the way they do.

I went in because I wanted to know why people did what they did and how it happened. And also to help other people, because I think you can go one of two ways. Either you don't have any empathy growing up like this or you have maybe too much.

So I really had this pie in the sky. I knew that I was going to change the world.

[Jonathan]
Did you figure out why people act the way they do? Have you solved that for us?

[Debby]
I think so. I have figured out why people act the way they do. But it's just like a simple answer.

You don't really have to search to just do.

[Slava]
It's not hidden in the book. Got it.

[Debby]
Yeah.

[Slava]
So have you always been writing in some capacity? I mean, creative writing, or is this your first endeavor into creative writing?

[Debby]
Yes, I've always been writing. I wrote a lot as a kid. And then for a long time, I was shut down.

In terms of my personality and who I was, I was just shut down. I started writing again in my 30s. And then I write for a job.

So as a school psychologist, you write reports. And I got really good about writing about families. So I mean, every single day, writing about families, learning how to be really careful about how I write really empathic, interviewing these families.

And so I think that's where a lot of it came from. And then I have training as a technical writer as well.

[Slava]
Oh, nice.

[Debby]
Nice.

[Slava]
Yeah. So I do a lot of technical writing, technical adjacent writing. In my job, it's mostly scripts for videos, but it's taking technical things and trying to make them digestible for your average lay.

So yeah, that helps a lot.

[Debby]
Yeah.

[Slava]
It hasn't helped me write my short story, which I complain about all the time, which has taken seven years to get a chapter out.

[Debby]
But yeah.

[Slava]
Yeah. Question just popped up as you were talking. Have any of your clients or their stories somehow made it into this book?

Or is it solely about what you've experienced and your sister and your family drama, if you will?

[Debby]
Yeah. None of my clients made it into this book. And it's not that they don't have good stories.

It's just that not really. My story is pretty, I don't know how to say it. It's not, I mean, it's pretty crazy.

Like I haven't had any clients with big crimes or anything like that. So none of it made it in there.

[Jonathan]
But there's still time for that. We could send some mafia folks your way and you can help them out with their family issues. Although you might want to determine how involved you want to be.

[Slava]
So that brings up our next question. How did you decide on the story arc? There's multiple POVs, which is novel for, pun intended, I guess for a lot of books.

Yeah. So most novels that we've at least read have one or two and maybe some flashbacks here and there. How did you decide on what I counted as like five POVs?

[Debby]
Okay. So there's just really two. I mean, I think the third one is just a couple of chapters.

So it's really just two POVs. And then the third one is just like, I had a developmental editor, Gila Green, help me all the way through. So this is like every month we would meet.

So basically it's just the maid, Yasmina, and then the girl, she becomes a woman, Abby. Those two POVs. And then the father character has a couple of very powerful chapters.

Gila said, if I wanted to have a third POV, it better be short, it better be powerful. So they were very powerful chapters. The story arc, I wanted there to be a redemption arc, but not for the character modeled after my sister because she's not the most interesting person in the book.

It was basically after the character modeled after me, Abby. I wanted her to get a little dirty. So she gets herself into a little bit of trouble and then she finds some redemption.

[Slava]
Okay.

[Jonathan]
Interesting.

[Debby]
Yeah.

[Jonathan]
So Slava doesn't know how to count is what I heard there. I counted five, author. There's only three.

Oh, okay.

[Slava]
So like we said earlier, math is not a strong thing.

[Jonathan]
It took Slava 24 years to finish 12 years of school. So do with that what you will. But Debbie, so you start the book from a Moroccan woman's point of view.

Why did you pick that as like, this is where I, as the author, want to start the story?

[Debby]
Yeah. So I wanted, I have an introductory chapter that's just kind of like a teaser and then it goes right into Morocco. And I wanted the book to begin and end in Morocco.

And then I also wanted the reader to understand, again, how people become who they are. So instead of how, why do people do what they do, which was my original question, it became, how did they become who they are? And how many generations do I have to go back to figure that out?

[Jonathan]
Can you say those two questions again for me? The differences there, how do they become who they are? And why do they do what they do?

Are those the questions?

[Debby]
Yeah. So my original question was, why do people do what they do? And that's why I went into psychology.

And then I think this book tries to answer the question, how do they become who they are? So I went back two generations.

[Jonathan]
And they really like, one is the foundation. Yeah. And then it kind of builds on it where it's like, how did they become who they are?

Because you went back to generations. And then why do they do what they do? It's like attached to that.

Is that a fair way to say it?

[Debby]
Yeah, it is. And I think right now, because we're having such a, I mean, there's so much in the news now about intergenerational trauma, which when I was being trained, we didn't talk about that at all. But now it's a deal.

You know, it's like what your grandparents and great-grandparents went through. It affects sometimes how we're raised and our childhoods. And it doesn't place a lot of blame.

[Jonathan]
It doesn't, you said.

[Debby]
It doesn't, yeah. Because I don't want to be blaming my parents. You know, it goes back, you know, then I would be going back to my grandparents and my great-grandparents.

So it helps promote, I think, a lot of understanding.

[Jonathan]
Right. And then King Henry III, for whatever he did, you know, 16 generations ago. Right.

I can't go back that far. So this provokes an interesting question. And who's to say that we have the ancestry paperwork too when they came to Morocco versus et cetera, et cetera.

So that's an interesting, I want to like, I've got a list of questions here, but I want to rabbit trail for a second because I see the generational stuff in the news that you're talking about. But I also hear how the younger generation talks about, like, well, how I was raised and blah, blah, blah. And how there's this lack of empathy from them and kind of pinpointing stuff.

Now I'm using that kind of as a broad stroke I'm not saying that if you were raised in a like super traumatic upbringing where you had some of the stuff that you described, like that's different. But people are pinpointing and like pointing fingers at their parents or grandparents. And like, why do you think that they do that?

Is that their coping mechanism or their, I don't know, their maturity and understanding is like, well, I have to just blame someone. Like, what do you think? What's your take on that?

[Debby]
Yeah, I mean, you're talking about this whole trend of estrangement, family estrangement and people saying, you know, I'm not gonna talk to you anymore.

[Jonathan]
That is probably the term that I'm looking for.

[Debby]
Yeah, that's really become super big. I think that, you know, if I had to do it over again, because my parents are deceased. And so we weren't talking about estrangement 20 years ago.

I think maybe the answer is, you know, empathy, of course, and then learning how to put some boundaries down. You know, when you're around certain people who are toxic, or I mean, if you can put boundaries down and still have the same relationship. People also have the capacity for change.

And I'm not saying, you know, to be hopeful, if someone's never gonna ever change, you know, that's one thing, but people do have a capacity for incremental change, you know, and my feeling with my parents, if they had known better, they would have done better. You know, I saw change in my mother at the end of her life. My father was a tragic figure, very loving.

You know, I think just having an empathic view is important. And I also, sometimes young people are so hurt by what happens, you know, they're dealing with the anger part, and not with the pain part. You know, the anger is that part of the iceberg that's kind of above and then the pain is underneath.

[Slava]
Yeah, yeah. And I think maybe this is an American thing. Maybe this is a generational thing.

I've seen it in my generation and younger, where there is this sense of superiority. And it's maybe even it's like subconscious, where if I was in Nazi Germany, if I was around during slave times, if I was my parents, I would definitely do something different. Where for the first three, for the first two, now you probably have been a part of the masses.

If you're an average white dude, and you're an average white dude in the slavery times, you probably would have either owned slaves or been okay with it because of what those people collectively understood as the right thing. And that can also be applied to, you know, I think our parents, because my mom was very abusive when I was a kid. Like psychologically, just a tyrant.

But she was also the victim of, you know, sexual abuse. She was the victim of Stalin's Holodomor in Ukraine. She was a victim of other abuses throughout her life.

And my dad, who was like a stabilizing figure for her, died when I was nine. And that sent her into just a whirlwind of insanity. So me understanding that can help me empathize and say what you just said.

If she had known better, or if she had a different upbringing, she had the capacity for love. She had the capacity for empathy. But because of all those things, plus others that won't, you know, won't mention here, she could not do that.

And so I'm kind of answering Jonathan's question. Also, with this little, you know, whatever this is, story arc of mine, is people, those young people you mentioned, Jonathan, I think what Debbie said, they're angry and they're looking for justice. They're looking for an answer.

They want to say, why is this going on? Who did this to me? Because I know things should be better.

And it's always easy to blame the parent. Now, I would say in the majority of cases, there is reason to be angry and there is reason to point fingers. But how we, after the finger pointing is done, what do we do with it?

Do we heal or do we continue doing it?

[Jonathan]
Right. How do we respond accordingly? Do you want to just be, you know, hurt for the rest of your life?

And Debbie, you probably have a lot of stuff to say on this because this is your profession, right? Do we just stay hurt forever? Or like, are there some things we can do to try to heal?

And it doesn't, and healing doesn't have to include what they did was justified. Yeah. It's like, it still happened.

It sucks. But you don't have to let it ruin literally the rest of your life, right? Yeah.

[Debby]
And it's easy to have that happen. I think it takes a lot to break that cycle. And I, you know, that's one of the reasons why I decided to not write a memoir and have this be fiction because a memoir, I think people's memories too.

Like if my mom did five horrific things, you know, because she could be cruel, casually cruel as how somebody mentioned it. And I put that in a memoir. Nobody would want to get beyond the first chapter because they would think she was the most evil person in the history of the world.

That same thing with my dad, you know, some of the things he did, he had no fear at all. But that would be like a burn it all down memoir because, you know, my memory, I don't remember some of the good things that happened. It's like you get fixated on the awful things.

[Jonathan]
Yeah.

[Debby]
And then you end up writing this memoir that's just Mommy Dearest. You guys know about Mommy Dearest? Like the coat hanger thing?

[Jonathan]
No. Can you expand on that briefly? I'm not familiar.

[Debby]
No, basically Christina Crawford wrote a book about her mom, Joan Crawford called Mommy Dearest. They made a movie out of it. And one of the big lines was Joan Crawford couldn't handle wire coat hangers.

And so there was this scene in the movie and the book where the mom is just going bananas over wire coat hangers. And it's like the whole book is like all these different incidents that piece together just to make this monster of a person. I'm afraid that's how my book would have come out if I had written a memoir.

[Slava]
Sure.

[Debby]
Yeah.

[Slava]
Yeah, and I think fiction lets you explore more of the backstory and those questions that we began with. Why do people act the way they are? What makes a person who they are?

For fiction, it's so much easier to explore those, I think. Because a memoir, it's pretty dry or can be and clinical. Whereas fiction, you can maybe embellish a little bit.

And explore those things in a more, it's not the right term, but fanciful way, meaning expanded, I guess. You can be the god of the world, right? You can look at it from a satellite view, looking down.

And as you move those test pieces, literally, meaning in your story, that's where you get a chance to explore stuff. And I say that because my short story that will never get published at the rate I'm going, is autobiographical. It's one event from my life, which was a pretty harrowing event too.

And I was able to deal with it probably better than most, by God's grace. But it was still a big thing that shaped me in a lot of ways. And when I'm writing that, when I sit and attempt to write that story, I am looking at how I was feeling when I'm walking from the library.

The story starts with me walking from the library, or the boy in the story, walking from a library. And I'm getting into his headspace and how he's dreading going home to see his mom because of the reasons I mentioned. And so that autobiographical aspect of the story helps me empathize with my younger self.

It helps me understand, well, what was I feeling? So I can also process that. So all that to say, I think fiction helps us process those things and explore those events better.

[Debby]
Yeah, I was gonna say 100% because sometimes it's actually exhilarating, because you have these aha moments. And then my character of Abby is just so much smarter than I am. She doesn't keep stubbing her toe on the same chair 50 million times like we tend to do.

She's brave, she handles things. She's like, peace out people, where I didn't have the courage to be that way. And then the other thing, I don't know if you've done this in your short story, is that I got to make a different ending.

Like the sister character goes to juvenile hall. I put her in juvenile hall. She never went to juvenile hall.

So that was nice to put a manhole cover on some of the emotions too. So it just doesn't keep going and going.

[Jonathan]
Yeah, that's interesting. That actually leads to my question quite well, as I wanna like shift us back to your book here a little more about the writing and things after this question is, how have you changed the next generation by like being that stopgap where it's like, hey, all this stuff happened to me, my sister, whatever. And you've just decided, I wanna have healing in my life and the rest of my family line.

Now, I think we can all say that we're not perfect and that's okay. But like, how could we be the change for the remaining human bloodline that we have, the family line that we have to say, hey, I don't want my family to have to continue running in these cycles, right?

[Debby]
Yeah, that's a really good question. I've thought about this a lot. Cause I've actually learned more about psychology in the four years that I wrote this book in terms of how to answer this question.

Because I thought when I first started writing the book, I was almost like Stewart saves the family. Did you remember that guy on Saturday Night Live? There was this one psychologist, Stewart, he was gonna save his whole family.

And I thought, oh, by writing this book, people will understand. And there's people who are so entrenched in their roles and the family story that they're not gonna ever, they're just not gonna understand. So it's not like, it's not like I've, you know, written this powerful thing that's gonna really help my family.

But there is, there does seem to be one person in every generation. When you could go back multiple generations, there's gonna be one person they send out into the desert. You know, one scapegoat.

You know, we're talking about a narcissistic family system, right? And so my hope is for that person that they send out in the desert, right? I think that's the person, I used to always think, oh my God, I have the worst role in the family being the scapegoat.

But actually, if you can work yourself through it, it's the best role because you can see things more clearly because you're the outsider in the first place. And then realizing that I wasn't the only one that every generation needs one. And so that is the generation that I'm trying to speak to.

I mean, not the generation, the person I guess that I'm going to, I'm trying to speak to everybody, but I think that's the person who has the most potential for breaking out of it.

[Jonathan]
Are you enjoying today's SideQuest? Make sure that you're subscribed so you never miss an episode. We're available on YouTube and all major platforms so that you can listen to us anywhere.

[Slava]
Now, back to the show. Things you're saying are just reminding me of my own journey. And I'm quasi estranged from my family because my mom is actually the second wife of my father.

And so the first family kind of sees me as a little bit of the product of that. So they're constantly reminded of my dad leaving his first wife and marrying my mom. And I've always been the guy who just went to everything.

That was my coping mechanism as a kid. My wife would shut down and try to hide herself because she has a pretty terrible childhood too, had a pretty terrible childhood. So her response was to kind of cave in on herself and hopefully nobody will notice me.

I was swinging the middle finger left and right. And I'm not proud of that, but that was my response. But that response allowed me to separate myself and look in and go, you guys are all just effed in the head.

And as improperly as I did that, still those things helped me be that scapegoat and eventually have a normal relationship, as normal as you can have, but keep people at bay, not wanting to be part of the old family dynamics. So what you're saying really resonates with me. How much of this book is about your sister, Debbie?

[Debby]
I would say probably the last quarter of the book gets in the sister to sister, sister-sister relationship. So you have to go, you go, I mean, the thing about my sister is she is not the most interesting person in the world. So it's kind of rinse, wash and repeat.

I think people are very interested because it's, again, it's why do people do what they do? How do people have the nerve to do that? Because some of the things that she did, like most normal people would be afraid.

Like, I mean, she has no fear whatsoever. And so the question is, what would we do if we had no fear whatsoever and no empathy? Like, how would we behave?

And, but it is kind of rinse, wash and repeat. Like the whole thing with the breakfast bitch and bacon bitch story. You know, she kind of stole that idea.

She kind of steals other people's lives and identities. She's a lot like George Santos, the congressman. So she makes up, I'm an actress.

I'm a doctor. I went to this school. And it's to the point where none of it is really true.

Um, yeah, I don't know if you guys know that, but it's just, there's this podcast called Dirty Money Moves that did six episodes on her. And there was some things I didn't know, but basically her entire life has been made up. Entire life.

[Slava]
But you know, I have, I have the bio or the intro from Dirty Money Moves here on the side, because before we got you on, I looked up all your links and I wanted to use them to write the bio that I, we did for you. And there's a bit here that says she alleges to have romantic ties to Keanu Reeves, which made me laugh. That's, that's one hell of a story to tell.

[Debby]
Yeah.

[Slava]
Should we bring him home for Christmas once?

[Debby]
Yeah. Yeah. Modeling all over the world and degrees and- Wrong holiday.

Really sad. But I think that what, nobody really knew the whole story. It's kind of like, I talked to a lot of victims.

They actually reached out to me. And, um, the whole story of why the New York Times found me is kind of, it's another story in itself. It's in the book.

But, um, they reached out to me and we ended up doing like this group Zoom call with a bunch of women. Who had been conned by her. And everybody had a different side of my sister.

Like nobody had the same sister. You know, she was soccer mom to one person. She was, I'm not going to go into it, but she was, um, uh, well, she had a friend she met in prison who was a pro, who was a madam.

So she was a friend to that person. You know, worked with her. She, you know, she was this reformed convict to this other woman who would, who was helping people get out of prison.

So, you know, she just had a million different faces. So that was really interesting. I was like, oh my gosh, I don't even think her family knows her.

[Jonathan]
Does she know that you wrote a book about her?

[Debby]
Oh, I'm almost 100% positive. She knows I wrote a book about her. Um, because we still, you know, we still have family.

Uh, the family, you know, it's really interesting. The family has, some of the family has closed ranks around her. They think that she's reformed and that this restaurant's going to be her deal.

Um, not a lot of the family, but some of the family, that's how it is sometimes.

[Slava]
Have any of your family or her responded or, you know, to the book? Have given you grief about the book at all?

[Debby]
Um, I think it's coming. I was surprised. I was expecting like a negative review.

Uh, but I didn't get it, but I, um, I think it's coming, you know, what I'm using it as a marketing tool. So, you know, I'm not totally clean here. You know, there's a little bit of, and the person who's there, and the person who's doing, I've made really, really good friends with one of Tracy's victims.

I didn't mean to, it wasn't like, I was like, I'm going to take over your life and all your friends are going to be my friends. Um, but it's just this woman, she makes the best friends, like the most loving, kind people, you know, that's who she goes for. And so she's actually an actress and she's narrating my audio book.

So that's a little bit of a dig. I mean, it's, yeah, I didn't do it on purpose. It's just, I never would have been able to find this quality of a voice in an actress.

If I had just gone on my own for a self-published book. So she's fabulous and she has all the emotions from A to Z. Um, so yeah.

So I, I know that I'm doing a little bit of what, what Slava does is I'm doing a little bit of the middle. I don't mean to, I hope I'm past that completely in my life, but there is still a side of me that's like, you know what, I'm not burning it all down, but I'm on my way out. I'm kicking a couple of, you know, garbage cans.

[Jonathan]
There it is. With gasoline that you've put on them and throwing a match, but not the whole thing. Yeah.

[Slava]
That's funny.

[Jonathan]
Well, we're big proponents of audio books here on this podcast because Slava and I are both pretty busy people. So like, and so like big fans of audio books, shout out to your actress friend, who's reading the book. We'll, Slava and I are probably going to just buy additional copies so that we can hear it in the voice of someone who was affected by it, because that's even going to give a different layer or level to the story that she's telling.

Even though it's not, you know, all true, she will have the ability to bring that emotion up from like, well, I kind of dealt with this person.

[Debby]
Yeah.

[Jonathan]
Yeah. Did you know your sister was a scam artist when she was doing all this?

[Debby]
Did I know my sister was a scam artist? I, I've known, so she started this stuff in her twi, like she started in her teens. She stole my driver's license, went on a joy ride, got tickets in my name.

In her 20s, it escalated. That, that's in the book. You know, my parents didn't do anything.

I was, I had moved out of the house. I thought I lost my driver's license. You know, it was like, oh my God, what an airhead I am.

You know, and I had to go to the DMV and get another one. And then they wouldn't, you know, they wouldn't replace it. So then I found out, you know, my whole family knew about it and was covering for her because they didn't want her to get in trouble.

But then she, like, I think she, this whole idea is when she was about 15, she was, she was shoplifting a lot. I didn't know that, but she had been shoplifting maybe from age 10. But when she was 15, she didn't have all the plastic surgery she did, but she's very tall.

And she had a girlfriend that went to Las Ganas High that was in, she was honestly being trafficked to Japan because they had, back in the eighties, they would recruit like, I don't know, I heard it was like 200,000 models a year and they would go over to Japan and then it was up to them to get modeling jobs. And they ended up working in these hostess clubs in Japan. And, you know, and then auditioning for model jobs that they wouldn't get.

And then they would owe all this money to the manager of the hostess club was usually the person paying their rent, right? And so they would get in real deep, real fast. And so I actually went back to my sister's high school boyfriend and high school friend and found out more about it, real eyeopening about, you know, that she's 15 years old.

And so she came back from Japan and I found out later, she started, you know, a lot of times the only way you can get out of that cycle is to come back and recruit. So that's what she did around 18. She started a company called Raw Talent where she was like recruiting from strip clubs or whatever for people to go to Japan.

I didn't know any of this. So I guess the question is when I found out, when I found out, I'm not answering that question. I apologize.

We had an idea that she wasn't modeling because no pictures were coming out. She was talking about entertaining at these hostess clubs.

[Jonathan]
That seems like a fair thought. No photos coming out, but you're a model.

[Debby]
Exactly. So we knew something was going on and she came back and she never had a job job, but she always had money. She started big time shoplifting, not paying her rent.

So, you know, here I am, you know, Silicon Valley, it's hard to live here. You know, one or even two income sometimes. Here I am making more money than supposedly she, she's living in these beachfront houses.

Like every house was nicer than the one before. And turns out she never paid any rent. And I am talking about really nice.

[Jonathan]
There was this one way to live, I guess.

[Debby]
Oh yeah. One house that she was living in that was in like Pacific Palisades. That's how she ended up meeting this friend of mine who did the audio book.

Um, Pacific Palisades on the water, always doing these, always on the phone, always doing these business deals. So my other sister and I, we knew the other, she was going to drop because she did do like a year and a half in jail. She comes out of jail before she even barely has the ankle bracelet off.

She's making over a hundred thousand a year and then living it up. Like she's making a million a year. So she has a talent for getting people to, yeah, she has a talent for convincing people and they come back to the same poison trough.

So there's a lot of that in the book. Like why do people come back for more? And I am telling you, she has a cult leader, a charisma, a cult leader, like charisma.

And so that's why the family, some of the family has closed ranks around her. And that's why it's kind of dangerous for me to be in a relationship.

[Jonathan]
That seems like a really descriptive way to say it.

[Debby]
Yeah.

[Jonathan]
Cult leader charisma.

[Debby]
She does. Cult leader charisma.

[Jonathan]
Fascinating.

[Debby]
Maybe, you know, a little less as you get older because she's 50, she's going to be 50, but she's 57 now. She's going to be 58. So there's only so much, you know, because some of that was, she had a lot of plastic surgery and she looked a certain way.

So, but she still has that. She still has people, you know, and she convinces people of her victimhood. And she's really good.

I think she convinced people that I was evil for a long time. It's called Darbo. Have you guys heard of Darbo?

[Slava]
No.

[Debby]
No. Oh, you haven't heard of that? So cult leaders, cult leaders use it.

Really master manipulators use it. It's called deny, accuse, reverse victim offender. So if you ever get a really toxic person in your life.

Yep. Deny, accuse, reverse victim offender. So, and I think the police are just starting to get, like, I have family court systems.

There's a lot of that in family court with divorces and child custody. And also I think the police are starting, they're onto it, right? So they're just starting to recognize it when somebody's doing it.

But it is really, really common. And it's common with her. She's an expert.

[Jonathan]
Wow. Do you think that that comes from the trauma or is it just a survival technique?

[Debby]
It's hard to say. I think, you know, in the book, I really asked the nature nurture question. Both of my parents had a color outside the line.

So they both had, my dad was charismatic. He had very little fear, but he also had a lot of, I would say a lot of empathy. My mom was more shy and she lacked empathy.

So I think she just, when, you know, in terms of the DNA, she, as a baby, cause I'm, you know, nine years older than she is, as a baby, she didn't have a whole range of emotions. Like she went from A to B, you know? So there was a little bit of that, but she wasn't an evil kid.

It's just, I think she probably needed a special kind of parenting. And then the parents she got, you know, probably made it worse for her because she didn't, they didn't understand anything was wrong and they didn't give her the nurturing. So, yeah, I think it's, it could have easily been me.

If I had been born with her DNA and that birth order, I could have been the one in the orange jumpsuit.

[Slava]
Is there a meaning behind the title, Debbie? Tape of Roses.

[Debby]
Yeah, so a couple, I tried to make it a double meaning. My father was, okay, my father loved his girls. And, you know, he might've been, he might've had some real problems with addiction, but he loved his girls.

And I was a singer when I was younger. And, you know, my dad would often brag about me and try to trot me out with all of his stoner friends and have me sing Paper Roses. And so there's a scene in the book where he wants me to sing Paper Roses and he would brag, you know, like, oh, that's my daughter, the psychiatrist, not a psychiatrist.

Or he'd brag about Tracy, you know, oh, my daughter's a model, you know. So Paper Roses is kind of sentimental. And then also I think it's a metaphor for being fake, you know, for nothing being really real.

Why have Paper Roses when you can have the real ones?

[Slava]
Yeah.

[Jonathan]
Thank you for telling us though, because Slava and I were talking about it. It's gotta mean something. We just like, what does it mean, right?

[Debby]
Yeah, thanks.

[Jonathan]
So, and we, to be fair, we haven't finished the book yet. We're, cause we have it on our schedule to record it. So, but as we wind down here, when you started your writing journey, like there's a lot of experience that comes in completing your first book and getting it published and then starting to shop it around.

So what would you tell other young writers or less experienced writers who, or even just people who want to write books? So Slava and I are proclaimed, he talked about his little story for a little bit here. And the audience also knows that we have tried to write our own things here and there.

I guess we're just late bloomers in terms of authorship. So what would you tell people like Slava and I who haven't written a book yet, but we're like, we know we want to, what kind of writing advice would you give to folks like us?

[Debby]
Okay. So lots of writing advice. I actually signed on to a developmental editor early on who held me accountable.

So I would meet with her sometimes twice a month and go over what I, and I'd send her what I wrote and then we'd meet online via Zoom. So it wasn't like I could get away with not writing. The other advice would be to, and that's expensive.

So, you know, sorry about that. A lot of people don't have the money for that. I was just really motivated.

Or maybe you can find a writing partner that you can be accountable to. The other thing is that the first draft is always going to be really bad. And so don't give up just because the first draft is bad.

Sometimes the second and third draft is still bad. You know, I had to do, I went through nine different drafts. And so, and then I wouldn't share with, I made the mistake of sharing with people because you always think your first draft is fantastic until you, you know, read it again and then realize it isn't.

But I wouldn't share with a lot of people. So anyway, that's my advice. Just keep going, plugging away.

[Slava]
Yeah. For me, it's the discipline. So good advice.

[Jonathan]
I'm not going to pick that guy to hold me accountable for writing. I'll have to find somebody else.

[Debby]
I guess when you're paying somebody, then, you know, it makes a difference because it's like, okay.

[Jonathan]
They want to show up.

[Debby]
Yeah. Yeah. Plus I had a story to tell that was timely.

So the Morocco piece. So it doesn't, it's just not a crime, it's not truly a crime story or dysfunctional family story. There's a little bit of historical fiction there with them, you know, just kind of tracing back the generations, you know, we're in World War II Morocco and they're, you know, Nazi occupied, well, Vichy regime, right?

And so that was really interesting researching that. And so some lovers of historical fiction might like the book as well. Nice.

Yeah.

[Jonathan]
We got the French in there, right? I think you mentioned before we started that the French are not a French. Nobody likes them.

[Debby]
No. And that's the thing is that, you know, basically the Berbers, we call them Berbers, they're Amazigh now, but the Berbers who are Muslim and the Jewish people in Morocco got along okay for thousands of years. I mean, it wasn't perfect, right?

But they got along okay. And then I think the French come along with their particular version of antisemitism, which is much, I think in a way, more toxic. They come along and all of a sudden, you know, you don't have a country anymore.

You know, the colonialism piece and how, what they did is they, I don't know if you're gonna put this in, but what they did is they created a three tier system with the French at the top, the Jews in the middle, and then the Muslim, you know, Berbers were making like pennies a day cleaning our houses, right? And so that's not gonna, you know, that's gonna cause some problems. No wonder there was a rebellion.

So I did a lot, and I have my own opinion. People might not agree.

[Slava]
Yeah, that's all right. I remember from history class, studying, you know, French antisemitism and what led to the Dreyfus affair, for those who know anything about history, it had its own brand of Jew hatred. Like it's a completely unique thing.

And in Europe, each country had its own brand of it too, if you will. Yeah. Yeah, the French had a panache for it.

[Jonathan]
Oh, for sure. That's a kind way of putting it. Yeah, that's a kind way of putting it.

[Debby]
I have cousins that live in France because my uncle and his wife went to France. So, you know, there you go.

[Slava]
Okay. Yeah, we have one listener in France. I think we have a constant download from France.

So out of all our listeners, it's like, you know, it's broken up by country and it's 0.3% of French people or of our listeners. 0.3% of our listeners are in French. So now we lost those audience.

Okay. The white flag.

[Jonathan]
There it is. Sorry, French listener. Sorry.

But Debbie, it's been a pleasure having you on today. Thank you for sharing with us the background of the story, what inspired it, giving us life advice as a therapist and like how people can consider their family history. And it's not just necessarily their parents, but also like further back than that.

Can you tell us where people can find your book, any other information about you so they can learn more about you when they want to do their research?

[Debby]
Yeah, so you can find my book on Amazon and Barnes and Noble. You'll learn more. Go on to my website, debbieshow.com.

And Debbie is spelled D-E-B-B-Y because I had to be different when I was a kid.

[Jonathan]
Great. So people will drop, we'll put that on the screen here, your URL. But thanks for joining us today, SideQuesters.

And be sure to pick up Paper Roses in stores or on audio book, hopefully by the time this airs and take a listen. And then drop in the comments, what did you think about the story? What did you think about Tracy's character?

And we look forward to having you back again sometime soon.

[Debby]
Thank you. I appreciate it. I'll send you the audio book soon as I get it, probably in about a week.

[Jonathan]
Oh, great.

[Debby]
Yeah.

[Jonathan]
Are there any reviews that have come out for your book that really stood out?

[Debby]
Yeah. So I got this really great review and I know it's from a legitimate, you know, they had 40, they had many followers on Instagram and it was like, you know, this book is a masterpiece and comparable to all these authors. And it just, it was so good that it just went to my head for about three or four hours.

I couldn't do it, couldn't work or anything. I was just like, oh my God, so flattered. And then by the next day I realized, well, I'm not sure they read the book.

I mean, like they got some of the characters wrong. They thought that the maid was the mom. And so, you know, I put it on my Facebook.

It was like, oh geez, Louise, I'm embarrassed now. So I think I have to take the reviews with a grain of salt, you know? So there you go.

[Jonathan]
There you go. And reviews don't sell the books, right?

[Debby]
Exactly. They don't sell the books. Okay.

Thank you.

[Slava]
Hey, I have a favor to ask. If you like what we're doing, the simplest way to support the show is to hit that subscribe button. In return, we'll keep leveling up.

We'll listen to your feedback and read the authors that you suggest. And of course, we'll take side quests along the way. Thank you for joining us and we'll see you in the next one.