Paper Roses Part 3 - Debbie Show - True Story - Thriller - Historical Fiction Book

Debbie Show joins the SideQuest crew to talk about all of it — what really happened, what she changed, and why she hired a developmental editor for two years instead of just writing the book she could have written the day her sister was arrested. 

We get into bibliotherapy, writing as trauma processing, the Kirkus review, and why developmental editors might be better than therapists. Slava also drops one of the most honest things anyone has said on this show. If this book moved you — leave Debbie a review. She earned it.

ABOUT THE BOOK
When Abigail Jones learns of her sister Nikki’s third arrest, she’s pulled into a spiral of questions: Was it fate, family, or something buried even deeper? As Abigail begins to piece together the past, she uncovers a trail of silence and survival that stretches across continents and generations.

From a 1940s Moroccan household where a young maid bears witness to the origins of a generational wound, to the sun-washed suburbs of 1970s California, and finally to 2023—told through podcast transcripts, court documents, and splintered memory—Paper Roses follows Abigail’s search for answers, her confrontation with the sister she thought she knew, and her reckoning with a legacy neither of them could escape.

A haunting story of loyalty, silence, and the cost of breaking free, Paper Roses is perfect for readers of The Vanishing Half, Little Fires Everywhere, and The Paper Palace.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Author Debby Show is a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist and School Psychologist based in California. With years of experience working with individuals and families, she brings a deep understanding of human behavior, relationships, and generational dynamics to her fiction.
Though Paper Roses is her debut novel, Debby has honed her craft through coaching, writing workshops, and a lifelong passion for storytelling. Inspired by real history and intimate truths, her work explores how the past shapes who we become.

She also happens to be the sister of a rather infamous public figure—a detail that has made family gatherings interesting, to say the least. While this is a work of fiction, it draws inspiration from real-life experiences. That said, the spotlight in this story belongs to the generations of women whose legacies are woven across time.

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Reading is the ultimate side quest. Side Quest is a casual book club podcast full of literary adventures. Join Slava and Jonathan as they discuss the books they are reading, life, history, belief systems, and more. Explore world-building, characters, and story development, and share some laughs along the way.

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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.

(0:00 - 0:13)
It's night, it's raining, there's this lonely trailer, and there's this woman hovering over a small child. And it's really scary, like the psychopathy of it. You got your hooks in me, and I wanted to believe that that moment was real.

(0:16 - 0:31)
Welcome back, folks, to the SideQuest Book Club. We have a really fun guest on the show today. We just finished reading Paper Roses, and we get to meet with Debbie Show herself to come and chat with us about the writing process, how it was.

(0:32 - 0:47)
For me, my big ghost questions are going to be like, what was real, what was not real? Because it all felt real, so let's get into it. She actually just got a really great Kirkus review as well. So why don't we start there, Debbie, if you want to just share with us this wonderful review you just got from Kirkus.

(0:48 - 0:59)
Yeah, so Kirkus Review is called an engrossing, detailed family drama with an affecting emotional center. And they gave me a get it. Not bad.

(1:00 - 1:11)
That's excellent. I can resonate with that because I believe everything that they just said as someone who read it. And I told this to Slava too, I was like, hey, I really like this.

(1:11 - 1:44)
And maybe it was just, I think in the last episode, I called it a palate cleanser, because we read so much horror and thriller, just knowing that some of this relates to a person that I've met, right? I had a different experience reading it. It felt like I was going through it with you, even though I know that you've changed things and used this to process what happened. I was constantly wondering, was that real? Was that part real? And so I would love to dive into that at some point during the episode.

(1:44 - 1:57)
Yeah. Thank you. One thing that I really enjoyed about the book is each POV, even though it's first person and the prose wasn't that detailed.

(1:58 - 2:14)
There wasn't a lot of things, you know, unpacked for us, but that's not a critique. It's just a style of writing and it's totally fine. But I was pulled in, gripped by each POV, whether it was Abby's or Yasmina's, it was there in their thoughts a lot.

(2:14 - 2:34)
They were describing little events here and there. And again, it wasn't a Tolstoy level description of a room, but I felt as if I was there with Yasmina on the train with the little girl, the 10 year old girl. I was there while she was being thrown in a car by her brother-in-law and with Abby.

(2:34 - 2:50)
And we talked about this in the interview. I've had a similar dysfunctional experience with my mom. And so I not only could empathize with the character, but I was able to be placed almost in the room with her, like a fly on the wall, if you will.

(2:51 - 3:02)
So out of the bat, I think you did a fabulous job. And I just mentioned this to you before we hit the record. I'll mention this to the audience.

(3:04 - 3:13)
First time author, and I know you're a writer, so you've written before. But for a first time author, I think you knocked it out of the park. So kudos.

(3:13 - 3:19)
Kirkus review, well deserved. Thank you. I agree with Slava.

(3:20 - 3:37)
And I know you've written before, but I love this part of the show where we get to have people who've written their books come and talk about it. Because Slava and I, I think we talked about this in the last chat that we had, are aspiring to be authors. And you spoke about, just as we were about to hit record, so I'd love for you to dive into this for us.

(3:37 - 4:01)
You had a specific type of editor who met with you for a couple years to help unpack this story and also give it that maturity that a lot of us first time writers don't have. Would you walk us through what that journey was kind of like? And what was it like working with that type of person? Remind us what that type of editor was as well. And just kind of like all the things attached to it.

(4:01 - 4:23)
Yeah, so I hired a developmental editor, but she was actually also a writing coach. And because I wanted to do this right, because I knew that, you know, if I had written this right when it was happening, right with my sister's arrest, I would have put out something opportunistic, you know, right of the moment. I might have sold some more books.

(4:24 - 4:33)
It wouldn't have been very good. But I'm not that kind of person. I'm actually really how I felt about it is I've always been an artistic type.

(4:34 - 4:51)
And, you know, we have jobs that pull us away from that. But I figure at this time of my life at this age, I had the resources to create a piece of art. So however it went, you know, whether it sold two copies or whether it sold zero copies, it was going to be some piece of art that I put out in the world.

(4:51 - 5:05)
So it meant a lot to me. So I just hired somebody and I paid the heck out of her because it was by the hour. And sometimes every two weeks we met, but it was once a month for sure.

(5:05 - 5:22)
And she would read a chapter. And then, like, sometimes I would have to just scrap the whole chapter, you know, and start all over again. Really? But she did say that she wouldn't have taken me on if she didn't think I could write it because she had seen my work.

(5:22 - 5:32)
And I said, well, you know, can anybody pay you? And she said, well, if you weren't good, I just would have told you to write a short story. So I did write it. I did write it.

(5:32 - 5:51)
But, you know, she told me, like, the train scene, for example, I think when you're writing autobiographical fiction, you tend to dump a lot of stuff in there. And so I shortened that way up. I mean, that had, like, parents and all kinds of crazy stuff.

(5:52 - 6:06)
And writing autobiographical fiction is challenging. Yeah, absolutely. Because I mentioned this in our interview with you is my short story, novella, whatever you want to call it, is autobiographical.

(6:07 - 6:56)
And as I've been inspired by you and the other authors that we've had on, or I guess encouraged, threw me back into writing, because as I've said, seven frickin' years of writing this stupid short story, I noticed that I was kind of doing the opposite. It's autobiographical, but I was making the character more muted and more helpless than I was in real life. And I'm like, well, why am I doing that? Why can't I go down a completely different path? Like, take some creative freedom and make him different than me, but not a complete watch cloth like I was making him in the previous version.

(6:56 - 7:24)
So I spent a lot of time just rewriting him, which is me, in a way that's more realistic, but still not just a, here's what happened to Slava in 1992. So I can resonate with how difficult it can be to write about yourself without dumping so much information or without, for me, it was, I didn't want it to be a diary of Slava's life. I wanted to change the character up a little bit.

(7:24 - 7:44)
But I did it so much where I'm like, well, this is not even me anymore. Yeah, I can relate to that passive part. I mean, I read somewhere that people that have been through a lot of trauma, sometimes their voice when they write, their characters are sometimes just like way too meek, like just roll over and let things happen.

(7:44 - 8:08)
And that's something that professors have to help authors through. And that was a challenge I had. So many times I had to go back and say, what would Nancy Drew do? Like my character, Abby, had to be the type of person who didn't put up with anything, who jumped out the window, who jumps out a window and gets away and doesn't just put up with it.

(8:08 - 8:16)
Because that's not what readers want to read. And it's not the way you want to retell your story. And I love what you said, by the way.

(8:16 - 8:23)
Last interview, you talked about moving the chess pieces around. And it feels really good to do that, by the way. Yes.

(8:23 - 8:30)
Yes, it does. And it did. It did so much for me, like mentally and even as this aspiring writer.

(8:30 - 8:47)
I'm like, wait a minute. If I just let go of these artificial guardrails that I gave myself, I wrote an amazing opening line. And instead of it starting with the inciting incident, like I had it because I wanted it to be impactful.

(8:48 - 9:00)
So I started right when my mom is like in the middle of the night grabbing me out of bed, waking me up. I set up the weather. I talked about the weather outside the trailer.

(9:00 - 9:06)
And because I let go of those guardrails, I was like, oh, wow. So it's night. It's raining.

(9:06 - 9:20)
There's this lonely trailer. And there's this woman hovering over a small child. That is such a better opening than a kid woke up to, and I didn't write it this way, like a kid waking up to his mom dragging him out of bed.

(9:20 - 9:25)
So, yeah, it's very freeing. Absolutely. Yeah.

(9:25 - 9:36)
And I've actually gotten over, I mean, this is not the purpose of writing, but I'm completely over what happened right now from writing it. So it was very therapeutic. I don't even hardly think about it anymore.

(9:38 - 10:04)
I was going to ask that as a question is what was the, you know, was there a turning point where you felt the burden was no longer there? Or was the process of writing just so seamless with the letting go that you forgot that you used to carry the burden? Does that question make sense? Yeah, it was. It was not seamless. I mean, there were months that I would write chapters where my character was just way too angry with everybody, and nobody was going to like her at all.

(10:04 - 10:10)
Yeah. You know, and I had to completely scrap that. I'm like, what did I just write? Because that's not even my personality.

(10:11 - 10:27)
But I think it took a couple years, honestly, to let it go. And to write with empathy, because it's really, really hard to write with empathy. It's easy to write with empathy when you don't know the people you're writing about.

(10:28 - 10:49)
But when the people you're writing about really didn't like you from the get-go, it's really hard to write about them and tell their story, you know, the multi-generational trauma, and about why they might be, you know, the way they are. That was hard. Yeah, let's go down that path a moment, if you don't mind.

(10:52 - 11:15)
How did you break through that? Was it just you write chapters, and then you scrap them, and then you try it again? Or was your editor able to help draw out a process for you? She actually didn't help me that much. I mean, I basically outlined the chapters I was going to write. But then when I was finished with the whole thing, she read it.

(11:15 - 11:29)
The whole thing charged me a couple thousand for that. And then she said, basically what happened is, when you're writing autofiction, you forget that the reader doesn't know certain things. You think that they know it.

(11:29 - 11:50)
So she told me where I had holes, especially when writing about my sister, where it sounded like a bitter sister who's jealous of her other sister, because I didn't tell the whole story. Like, I missed the part where she did this or she did that. So I had to go back in and write some extra chapters to fill it in.

(11:52 - 12:09)
And then I had to have a beta reader, kind of even from there, I had a beta reader read it and tell me. The thing about fiction is, you've got to have a satisfying ending. Because in real life, often it's just a continuing cycle that just never ends.

(12:10 - 12:27)
And you never put a manhole cover on the emotions because you never really get the justice you need. I don't really need that anymore. But in fiction, you have to kind of put a stopper on it and give the reader the satisfying ending that they want, not necessarily the ending that you got.

(12:29 - 12:40)
That's something that I am struggling through with this story, my story, because it's a horror genre. So it's not going to have a happy ending. Yeah.

(12:40 - 13:03)
But how do I make the ending at least satisfying, you know, or bittersweet or melancholy in a way that like, oh, wow, that was a good ending. It wasn't necessarily that, you know, everything is now peaches and roses, but it's satisfying. Because you can have a sad ending, you can have a horrible ending, right? Horrible in the sense of bad things happen and there's no resolution.

(13:04 - 13:17)
But it has to be done in a way where it satisfies the reader. When they walk away, I'm like, you know, and you take them there from page one. And when they're reading the final page, they're like, oh, I understand why there is no resolution for the character.

(13:17 - 13:31)
But you have to wrap it up somehow. You know, that's, I don't want to say believable, but believable too, right? Well, I am right, Mike. That's really funny you say that because the novel I'm working on right now is a horror.

(13:32 - 13:39)
Ooh, excellent. I decided to do a departure and have the main character not be me. So that'll be interesting.

(13:40 - 13:42)
Yeah. There you go. Learn more about that later.

(13:42 - 13:54)
Yeah. Honestly, I resonate with what you're saying. Because like in real life, you know, people get away with things and then they just get away with things and then they just continue to get away with things.

(13:54 - 14:06)
So that was the original ending, you know? And then I thought, well, I had a, it was the beta reader who told me I cannot end like that. Fiction readers are not going to be happy. You cannot have that ending.

(14:06 - 14:10)
So that was very helpful. Yeah. So the ending is kind of camp.

(14:10 - 14:16)
I'm not going to give it away, but it was a little campy. It did put a bow on things for sure. Yeah.

(14:16 - 14:24)
Did you just have one beta reader or did you have multiple? Well, you know, it's really funny. I couldn't get people to read it. Oh.

(14:24 - 14:30)
I had to pay. Well, actually, my daughter-in-law was a really good beta reader. She was great.

(14:30 - 14:39)
I didn't have to pay her. She's a reader. But I couldn't get anyone that I didn't know the story to read it.

(14:39 - 14:52)
So I ended up having to get a paid beta reader to read it. And it was worth it to me because she did a really great job. Because, you know, your friends sometimes are just going to say how wonderful it is.

(14:53 - 14:56)
Yeah. They're not going to tell you the truth about. It's not helpful.

(14:56 - 15:00)
No. Like, oh, it's so great. It's not helpful.

(15:01 - 15:11)
And even, like, in the beginning, that's one piece of advice. Don't share your unfinished work because when you're writing it, you think it's really great. And then you share it with people.

(15:12 - 15:16)
Because when you're – the first draft is always really bad. Oh, it's the worst. Horrible.

(15:17 - 15:28)
But in your mind, you think it's really good. I don't know what kind of, like, delusion people work under. But until you step away from it for a while, you think you just wrote, you know, Tolstoy.

(15:28 - 15:36)
And then you step away from it and you look at it again. You were like, oh, no, that wasn't very good. So I have nine drafts of this thing.

(15:37 - 15:39)
Nine? Nine. Okay. Nice.

(15:40 - 15:43)
It sounds like you can relate, Slava. I can. Oh, yeah.

(15:44 - 16:02)
Because, yeah, for chapter one, it's finally done. And I think it's been a few months of me just writing the first chapter and rewriting and rewriting, cutting things, making him, the Ed main character, less like a washcloth. I'm writing a new intro.

(16:03 - 16:23)
And only a week ago or so – yeah, about a week ago, a couple days before last week's recording, I sat, I looked at it, and I'm like, okay, this is good. Now, I know it's not good in the sense that it can be published tomorrow. But, like, wow, it took nine, ten, whatever rewrites I did over the last few months.

(16:23 - 16:42)
I'm like, this is finally something that I'll be proud to give to a beta reader or even a professional editor and add on to chapter two. So your process was, I wrote the chapters and then I went back and went through. Everybody has a different process.

(16:43 - 16:48)
Yeah. I have ten chapters. I'll probably write two more for the ending.

(16:49 - 17:03)
But I have ten chapters right now. And some of the chapters are just two sentences because I know where I want to go. Like, I had an inspiration in the shower this morning as I was reading, listening to an audio book.

(17:03 - 17:20)
And I was like, ooh, that is a good line. And so I quickly wrote it down. I'm like, that line is going to be – I'm not going to steal the line, obviously, but that line from a different book is going to be a genesis for Ed talking to a girl from school in a library.

(17:20 - 17:45)
There's a scene in a library where Ed goes. And so it's a process, and it's rewriting, and then you hear something, you see something that inspires a sentence. And then that sentence, for me at least, marinates for a couple of days, sometimes weeks before that scene comes to anything close to what would be an action scene or an inner monologue.

(17:46 - 17:53)
So it's sometimes painful. Very painful. Sometimes it's torture, honestly.

(17:54 - 18:03)
But you know what? You remind me. You're saying that – have you read Stephen King's book on writing? One of my favorite books. Okay.

(18:03 - 18:18)
So I guess I think the same way you do because sometimes I'll get stuck, and then I'll just go for a walk. It'll take me like three days to come up with a solution. I would kind of write my character into a corner, and I'm like, well, wait a minute.

(18:18 - 18:37)
What's going to happen next? I'll give you an example. That scene with Yasmina in the desert and the jeep or the truck, right? That started because I realized that it was way too many miles to go from one city to the next, and it would have taken them like a month to get there. Yeah.

(18:38 - 18:52)
So I had to sit around, and it took me like two or three days to figure out, okay, this is what I'm going to have to do. Yeah, Stephen King's on writing was inspirational and foundational for me as a writer. Like, kill your little darlings.

(18:53 - 18:57)
Stop using adverbs. Stop talking about she noticed. Tell us what she noticed.

(18:57 - 19:46)
I mean, that phrase itself can be used numerous times in a book, but you have to look at it and say, am I just explaining to an author that somebody inside a world that – I mean, to a reader inside a world they're trying to get immersed, I'm just going da-da-da-da-da, and then this, and then this, and then she took a sip of water. Instead of saying, she noticed the coffee was hot, you know, say like she scalded her lips or something like that, you know? So it takes me a while to – well, let me preface this. Sometimes I barf stuff out on page, whether it's inspired by an audio book or inspired by a walk in the park, and then I have to go back and slowly, you know, sharpen the – smooth out the edges, I should say, not sharpen.

(19:46 - 20:09)
Let me sharpen the prose, but make it more like something I would want to read. And Stephen King, like as a writer, when I listened to his lectures, read his book on writing, he often talks about how sometimes he doesn't know where he's going. And sometimes the best thing to do is just to, like he says, kill the darling.

(20:10 - 20:41)
He had in the stand, he had these people that he kills off, and the only reason he killed them off was because I've taken them as far as I can go as characters. And he's like, so they're all going to die, and that's why, you know, if you read the stand, there's a portion where a bunch of characters die all at once, and you follow these characters for about 700 pages, and they're all just dead. The flip side of that, the flip side of that, that's maybe like a quote-unquote negative side of the coin.

(20:42 - 21:29)
The flip side of that is you will be writing, and then you will know exactly where this character should be in four chapters, right? So when I was writing, when I was writing a scene between a pastor and Ed's mom and Ed, and Ed's mom is triangulating, she's trying to get Ed in trouble, and the pastor is just ambivalent about everything, and he's, it's easier for him just to shit on Ed than to deal with this, you know, this mother-daughter, mother-son dynamic. And as I'm writing that scene, completely separated from the ending, I figured out the ending. I'm not going to spoil it here, not because I don't trust you.

(21:29 - 21:50)
If this was a conversation around a cup of coffee and not the audience involved, I would tell you the ending. But in that moment, I'm like, I have the ending. And so now I have to fill in the gaps, because I have chapter one complete, I have the ending, but I have, you know, like four or five major scenes that I have to fill out.

(21:50 - 22:01)
And that's, you know, that is positive. I'm not complaining about that. But sometimes you just figure out, oh, Ed's going to be in this situation, but then in the book.

(22:01 - 22:15)
And you see it, like, in your mind's eye as clear as you'd be watching a movie, and now it's your job to get Ed to that point. Yeah, I agree with you. I'm a lot like you as a writer.

(22:16 - 22:22)
I guess you call it a pantser. I think Stephen Kinger is kind of that way, too. He has this idea, and he just starts writing.

(22:23 - 22:29)
And other people just outline every single chapter, everything that's going to happen. I'm a lot like you. Like, I have to take a walk.

(22:30 - 22:39)
And then during my walk, or I'll be walking somewhere at work, and it'll come to me. And it's like, oh, I got it. It's torture, honestly.

(22:40 - 22:49)
You're right about it being torture. I don't know why I'm putting myself through it again, but it is torture. But I did write the chapters out of order.

(22:49 - 23:02)
Like, I wrote the redemption arc. Almost, I wrote that redemption arc for Abby first, you know, where she gets into trouble. At that part, I wrote kind of toward the beginning.

(23:03 - 23:13)
And then I kind of, like, filled in, you know, because you don't have to start with chapter one. You can just write whatever chapter, and then you can shuffle them around a little bit, too. That's how I learned.

(23:14 - 23:33)
I was going to ask what were – it sounds like, you know, you mentioned you're a pantser. So, like, you didn't outline beforehand. You just started writing.

Is that fair? I had a little bit of an outline. Kind of like a little bit, like, you know, all these things happen. Well, the outline was the truth, right, the true story.

(23:33 - 23:45)
Right. Yeah, that's fair. I didn't have to do too much because I knew what was going to happen, right? I knew that Abby was going to go to Thanksgiving, right? I knew that there was going to be a driver's license scene.

(23:46 - 24:06)
Like, some of those scenes, I knew there was going to be a death scene, not to give it away, or two. So that made it a lot easier with autofiction than when, you know, just writing from scratch a story that you're making up. So I had that part, but I didn't have, like, every single chapter filled in.

(24:06 - 24:15)
It's like Slava said, I had, like, a line or two. That's all I had. And then once I started writing, then I think the creative process really helped.

(24:15 - 24:27)
Like, I just kind of, like – from there, I just kind of, like, pantsed it a little bit. And that is – like, reading Stephen King's book, that is how – that is his method as well. Yeah.

(24:27 - 24:43)
When you are writing these – did you write just Abigail's full, like, just focused on her, and you wrote her chapters, and then you moved to, like, hey, I need to fill in a little bit, so I make a couple for Hugh? Or did you, like, oh, I need Abby to do this. Oh, let me switch over to someone else. Yes, Mina, over here.

(24:44 - 24:48)
No, I did not do it in a linear fashion at all. Okay. Yeah.

(24:49 - 25:03)
Yeah, wondering about the character arcs. Yeah. When I was working on my book that has been on a shelf for nearly a decade at this point, I was writing a high fantasy piece and started off with pantsing myself.

(25:03 - 25:20)
Yeah. Whereas, like, hey, it's just going to be this masquerade, and then this girl is going to get captured, and, like, I'll just write the rest of it. Wrote that, and then started – like, I switched – swip-swapped from pantsing over to outlining so that I could, like, figure out, okay, I need to know where I'm going.

(25:20 - 25:58)
What kind of emotional journey are my characters going to go on? And then am I doing them the service as god of the world, right, to make sure that they are going through whatever scenes they need to go through to get to whatever that end state is? When you were writing yours, was it difficult to give that redemption arc or give that emotional journey for each of the characters because you're so – you lived it, because you lived it. Yeah, that was a real – that's a really good question. I had an extremely hard time making the character of Abby do something awful.

(26:00 - 26:12)
Because that part was fiction because she was a little too squeaky clean victim-y, so I did give her a little crime to commit. Not a real crime. We were going to ask you about that.

(26:13 - 26:25)
Because then I read that, I'm like, I don't think Debbie did this. All right, I'm telling you, people believe it. I don't know why they would believe I would do this, but that's, like, my number one question.

(26:26 - 26:39)
Did she really do – did Abby really do that? But the reason is that Abby was just coming across as a little too goody-two-shoes. I had to dirty the character up. My elemental editor said I had to dirty her up.

(26:39 - 26:55)
And I wanted to have, like, this kind of, like, this idea that no one comes out unscathed, right? That we've got, you know, we've got the character of Nikki, who's based on my sister. She's damaged. But Abby's got to be damaged, too.

(26:55 - 27:06)
You know, and she comes from this family. Some of it has to rub off on her. But writing that, I just had every excuse in the book for Abby doing it.

(27:07 - 27:22)
Like, and it was – she couldn't take accountability at all. I mean, I must have – that must have taken me six months to just have her do something. And I finally stumbled upon, took me ages, where her back was up against the wall, and that's why she did it.

(27:23 - 27:32)
You know? I couldn't – it was like every – you know, she was – all these different – it was very hard. That was extremely difficult. Very good question.

(27:33 - 27:43)
Yeah. I've found that when writing characters, you want them to be the superhero. But then the problem is if they don't ever do anything bad, they're just Jesus in another form, like in your book.

(27:43 - 27:49)
They never – they've never done anything wrong. And you're like, well, people don't want to read that. They want to feel relatable to the character.

(27:49 - 28:01)
Like, oh, yeah, sometimes when your back's against the wall, you do the thing, right, for those who haven't read it yet. And it's like, oh, okay. And it's weird, but it humanizes it for us because we've all at some point in our lives done something wrong.

(28:02 - 28:11)
And so then it's like, all right, well, I can relate with this character a little more. But as the author, I also struggle with like, but I don't want them to do whatever. Oh, I know.

(28:11 - 28:25)
It's like I want them to be how I've made them. I don't want to scuff them up a little bit. It's like your development editor is so correct, but it's tough because there are darlings, right? Yeah, it's like I'm this great person.

(28:25 - 28:28)
Everybody thinks they're a great person. I'm a great person. I would never do that.

(28:29 - 28:37)
But actually I have done things in real life that I regret, usually stuff you do in your teens and 20s. But I didn't want to put those in. They were kind of pathetic.

(28:37 - 28:49)
So I just made this arc up, this character that everybody believes, by the way. It's unbelievable. It was well-written.

(28:49 - 29:01)
I asked Slava, I was like, do you think this is real? Did you look up my license to make sure? I did. I actually did. He's like, oh, my God.

(29:02 - 29:05)
I did. I so did. Because I'm a researcher.

(29:05 - 29:17)
My academic tenure, if you want to call it that, experience has been mainly in research. So that part of me couldn't help myself. I was like, Debbie show.

(29:17 - 29:22)
You know, something. It's so funny. But nothing came back.

(29:22 - 29:46)
I haven't had a single person not believe it. So I guess kudos to me because I was one of these days a psychologist is going to read it and go, no freaking way did that happen. That's because I don't think I think in our country you let people get away with it so much that you never would have gotten in trouble.

(29:46 - 30:00)
You know. Well, it also feels like like what you did to Abigail when you gave her this thing that she screwed up, like she she made some decisions right to provide for the family. And she it felt like a turning point.

(30:00 - 30:09)
It really did. Where she she almost felt more real after that. You know, I know that you didn't really live these things out, but doing that and maybe it was the level of detail.

(30:10 - 30:21)
Maybe it was the fact that she had to then start meeting with the other therapist to like work on her license where it's like, oh, she's in the shit now because she did something wrong. Right. Yeah.

(30:21 - 30:42)
But I think it really played into this overarching theme that you talked about of like wanting to process like this generational trauma. You know, like everyone gets no one gets out scot-free. Right.

So I think that even though you didn't live it and it was a shock and Slava and I talked about it for a while, we're like, do you think that you really. And then he looked it up. We're like, oh, it's fine.

(30:42 - 30:53)
It's fine because I was like, I can't wait to get Debbie back on the show. I'm going to ask her all about this. So this seems like a good transition, though, of like, tell me a little bit more about the things that did not happen that are in the book.

(30:54 - 31:23)
Because I, I just like kind of wanted to believe that it all happened. I was like, oh, all of it happened. And I know that's not the case.

Right. But maybe it was just I was excited to read it and like live your experience. Right.

Yeah. So, I mean, I just love I've been copying Slava's term about moving the chess pieces around ever since we said it, because, you know, like a lot of it did happen. But like, like, for example, the opening scene, it didn't happen exactly like that.

(31:23 - 31:40)
You know, like something really happened exactly like I wrote it, like, you know, the whole license thing. I went down by myself, you know, it was kind of like I gave myself a couple of friends. So there's a lot of like true things that happened that I just kind of rewrote it the way I wanted to.

(31:41 - 31:58)
Made it a little more. I mean, in some ways I made it less dramatic. In some ways I made it more dramatic, you know, because the true story is just like so awful that everybody would absolutely hate my parents.

(31:59 - 32:22)
They would they would find them the most despicable, unlikable people on the face of the earth. They would find Abby to be the biggest victim on the ever born, you know, so that's kind of what like memoirs are only good if you're a celebrity. So I, I made actually the parent characters a lot better than they were.

(32:23 - 32:44)
And less dramatic, but what were we talking about to make it clear? Yeah, so the parts that are not true. OK, yeah, Yasmina, she was a maid of ours in Morocco. She never came to the US.

(32:46 - 32:55)
OK, so there you go. That's a lot of the book, right? Yeah, yeah. One question that I do have, similar to the license thing, Dr. Laura.

(32:55 - 33:00)
Oh, yeah. Did that really happen? No. OK.

(33:01 - 33:13)
No. Either way, I knew who you were talking about because my my brother used to listen to her religiously. And he kind of got his parenting skills from her.

(33:14 - 33:33)
And I when I was reading that, I'm like, this sounds so absolutely real. And yeah, it and I enjoy the hell out of it. I enjoy the hell out of it because it was so at the same time, it's so fantastical and almost, you know, unbelievable.

(33:34 - 33:47)
At the same time, I know Dr. Laura. I've listened to the show. I have her book on my shelf somewhere around here because my brother gave it to me as, you know, mentoring effort or something.

(33:47 - 34:04)
And so I was like, this would be such a shock to the system. You sitting there in the car and then listening to your mom talk to this person who is caustic in her advice. You know, it is so enjoy the hell out of that.

(34:04 - 34:23)
And even though it's fake, it doesn't break it for me because I thought that was a wonderful thing. My mom loved Dr. Laura. So when she was lost, when she got older and a little wiser because, you know, a lot of her big mistakes happened when she was in her early 20s because she had me.

(34:24 - 34:31)
So she got wiser as she got older. She wasn't perfect. But she would say, oh, I was listening to Dr. Laura.

(34:31 - 34:41)
And Dr. Laura says that I should do blah, blah, blah. Or Dr. Laura says, and she was just like hanging on every word of Dr. Laura. So it's really easy.

(34:41 - 34:50)
So because I also had a relative who was in love with Dr. Laura, because Dr. Laura just tells you what to do and you just do it. It's just really clear, right? Exactly. Yep.

(34:50 - 34:54)
And she tells me you're an idiot and you just take it. Yeah. I'm an idiot.

(34:54 - 35:08)
Okay. What's the next thing I need to do? It's like a prescription. So so that's why I wrote that because my mother was such a huge fan and I could actually see her calling Dr. Laura and getting a job at Dr. Laura.

(35:08 - 35:15)
Although Dr. Laura is much better now. Sometimes I watch her. She's a lot better.

(35:16 - 35:26)
And she's a little more empathic. I don't think she's as religious as she was before. But anyway, at that time, I think she was out of L.A. At that time when I was writing.

(35:26 - 35:33)
And she's pretty tough on people. That felt like a very cinematic moment. I asked Slava about that, too.

(35:33 - 35:42)
I was like, do you think this happened? And then I whatever you did, you got your hooks in me. And I wanted to believe that that moment was real. Right.

(35:42 - 35:50)
Because it just feels we it doesn't matter if you listen to Dr. Laura or not. Like, you know, talk radio. You call in.

(35:50 - 35:54)
You have a conversation with someone. You know, if you watched Frasier back in the day, same thing. Right.

(35:54 - 36:04)
Like you call and you tell them your problems and they tell you what to do. And it was like, oh, that feels real. You know, and so it wasn't.

(36:05 - 36:18)
But the writing made me feel like it was real, which was excellent work. Yeah. And as Jonathan was talking, the scene that came to my mind, which is, I guess, incidental in the long scheme of things.

(36:18 - 36:28)
And the bigger scope of the story is Yasmina going to the fish market. Right. And buying the salmon and then meeting with that girl she met.

(36:28 - 36:38)
And the girl actually helped her pay for the salmon. Like even moments like that. And again, for the audience and for you, this is not just blow and smoke up your posterior.

(36:39 - 37:00)
Moments like that also felt real in the sense that I was there with Yasmina in the market. Like I was inside her head and I was hooked, to use Jonathan's analogy with getting your hooks in us. It was just the mundane moments and the cinematic moments were all, were all just done well, Debbie.

(37:00 - 37:04)
Thank you. Round of applause. Thank you.

(37:04 - 37:12)
I tried to make the, probably the not real parts are the cinematic parts. The things that didn't happen. I mean that checks out.

(37:12 - 37:15)
It's probably easier that way. That works. I tried to make it like a movie.

(37:15 - 37:23)
Not that anybody's going to make a movie out of it, but I tried to make it like a movie so people would keep reading. Mission accomplished for us. Yeah.

(37:24 - 37:30)
We read a series on this podcast. It's called The Cradle Series. It's pretty much anime in book form.

(37:31 - 37:48)
And Will White, the author of these, of this series, the way he writes it's action, action, action, little break, action, action, action. Just like an anime movie or show would do, do it. And that keeps us engaged.

(37:48 - 38:02)
It's 200 pages of book or something. And each book is a whirlwind. And so when you can, when it's appropriate for the story you're telling or the genre, you have to write it like that, like a movie.

(38:02 - 38:18)
So people are engrossed. Because something I've been learning as I've been doing some deep dives with authors and by doing deep dives, I mean watching them talk about the craft. It's the way writing has evolved.

(38:18 - 38:43)
I can't write like Dostoevsky and expect anybody to read it. You know, Dostoevsky served his purpose and he still read for a reason, but a new upcoming author to take on whatever he wants to take on, to, to structure his prose like Dostoevsky probably wouldn't work. Even like Stephen King, like he has evolved over time.

(38:43 - 39:08)
Like it does not read like, you like it darker, which is the collection of short stories. So today's society, love it, hate it. You just have to write in a different way than you would 20 years ago to keep an audience engaged.

(39:08 - 39:19)
And that's fine. Like you can sit there and bitch about it all day long, but you know, we're in a different world. And so we have to write in a way that impacts our audience, that keeps our audience engaged.

(39:19 - 39:32)
Not the audience that, that we think they are, or even us. My, my short story, I can't write it for myself because I know I'll read really weird crap and speculative stuff. Yeah.

(39:33 - 39:48)
And not everybody reads it because it's just not their cup of tea. And we can argue about artistic integrity and what's cool and what's mainstream and all that other horse manure. But at the end of the day, you know, it's a science and an art.

(39:48 - 40:03)
There's the art part of it where you are creating a world where you're pouring yourself out and you're creating this thing. And then the science part of it is more mechanical and it involves the money part. You, you want people to read it, right? You want people to at least buy one book.

(40:03 - 40:17)
So you have to at least cater to one guy in the audience, but why not cater it to, you know, 10,000 guys and 20,000 women. Then you have 30,000 people reading your book instead of one guy like me, my basement, because I like speculative fiction. Yeah.

(40:17 - 40:26)
Yeah. And so that is asking me about what happened and what didn't happen. That, you know, a lot of the book happened to Abby, right? Yeah.

(40:26 - 40:48)
But every time somebody asked me, did this happen? I say, no, it's crazy. No, much of it happened, but then people just catch me on these things, you know, like the Dr. Laura, for example, you know, cause I, and that is where I just wanted to make the book interesting. Cause the real story was like, so pathetic.

(40:49 - 40:55)
Like she finds out her license is stolen. She has to go down by herself. The family doesn't support.

(40:55 - 41:01)
Like who wants to read that? You know? Yeah. Yeah. For me, same way.

(41:01 - 41:16)
Like, like my story, there was a lot of abuse, but if I wrote 90% of it, it'd be like, yeah, this is a shitty, shitty situation. This sucks, but it's not engrossing. It's not captivating.

(41:16 - 41:29)
It's just a sad story. But the one event that is cinematic, it's on the level of Dr. Laura, meaning like, Holy crappy. The audience will be like, this really happened.

(41:30 - 41:40)
I know this is autobiographical, but this happened because it's so beyond the scope of your, you, your usual abuse story. Yeah. And I can spoil this much.

(41:40 - 41:51)
It was, I was sleeping in bed. And my mom lost her watch. And at two o'clock in the morning, literally dragged me out of bed and forced me to find it.

(41:52 - 42:04)
And after I found it, she was like, oh, okay, well, good night. And I was like, just happened. What just happened? And she, you know, she was screaming and yelling, pulling drawers open.

(42:05 - 42:28)
And all the time it was in the bathroom. And so that opening scene. In more graphic detail and a little bit of creative license is in the beginning of the, my, my, my short story, but the other stuff is, you know, her not letting me go camping her purposefully, her lying to my dad about me calling her an asshole.

(42:28 - 42:45)
So my dad would spank me, which is not in the book or another story, but those are like, oh, okay, well, you know, a mom who triangulates with an older brother, in this case, the pastor in my story, or a mom who lies about her son. So she can, you know, get some sort of power trip over him. Okay.

(42:45 - 42:55)
But, but to write those, I would have to add Dr. Laura level. Cinematic, you know, yeah. Edge to it for it to be.

(42:55 - 42:57)
At all. Interesting. Yeah.

(42:57 - 43:13)
It kind of, you know, my development editor really helped me there because she does mostly she, she's out of Israel. And she helps people write their memoirs mostly. And she said that when people write their memoirs, you can get really whiny and it's acceptable.

(43:14 - 43:23)
And she didn't, I don't mean to say whiny because really awful things happen to people. And they're traumatized, but she even calls them trauma memoirs. That's her word for them.

(43:24 - 43:38)
And. You know, if I was, you know, if I wanted to write mommy dearest, I better be a celebrity. Because nobody really wants to hear about the coat hangers, right.

(43:38 - 43:52)
You know, I don't even want, I honestly, I didn't couldn't even watch the movie because I found it. So even though it was a celebrity memoir, I just didn't find it, you know, entertaining. Yeah.

(43:52 - 44:17)
There, there's some stories by celebrities. And if you parse it down, like, yeah, these are horrible things that happened or this is abuse. And maybe on some level, it would be interesting if I was sitting hearing this story across the table or a beer, but a whole cinematic production of whether it's coat hangers or some celebrities, dad not believing in them until they ran away from home and had to live in the streets and then became an actor.

(44:17 - 44:32)
Sure. That's come could be compelling storytelling, but you know, I feel the same way as sometimes I'm like, okay, you know, I also didn't have parents who didn't believe in me. And I don't know, maybe I'm being the asshole, but like some, it's just not interesting actor.

(44:33 - 44:40)
So we don't care. Yeah. But you know, it's really interesting because I read I'm glad my mom died and I left my head.

(44:40 - 44:45)
I thought that was fantastic. I left my head off. It was really funny.

(44:45 - 44:50)
So it can be done. Yeah. That's actually on my TBR list.

(44:50 - 44:58)
I have it saved in my audible to be read list. Really, really good. I mean, again, she's really funny.

(44:58 - 45:13)
So she makes, you know, how you can have that gallows humor. The entire book was like, well, as humor, you know, because it's kind of a one person writing it. And I just thought it was really good, but otherwise I'm not really that much into trauma memoir.

(45:14 - 45:51)
And I don't think anybody would really want to read about somebody with a criminal sister, right about how awful her life was, you know, Speaking of writing, were there any times in the process that you had doubts of like, well, maybe I just shouldn't write this. And then like, if yes, how did you push through that? Well, you know, I had some about the real life story. A lot of my sisters that after the New York times article came out, which was kind of against my will, because they had found some transcripts when I had talked to the police after she had ripped me off.

(45:52 - 46:05)
And they kind of held it over my head. They said, Hey, I said, I don't know if I really want to talk to you. And they said, no, you're going to have to talk to us because if you don't, we're just going to use what you told the police in 2007 or whatever.

(46:05 - 46:13)
So I'm like, okay, I'll talk to you. And then I just started talking. So I felt really guilty about that because that New York times article.

(46:13 - 46:23)
Use me as the continuous thread for every single one of the victims. Like it always came back to what her sister said. So I'm like, Oh my God, I'm in deep.

(46:23 - 46:49)
So I felt like some shame a little bit about, you know, coming from this kind of family about it all being out there. And I felt like that was a little bit hard, you know, like the sins of the father, the sins of the sister. That makes sense.

(46:50 - 47:04)
Journalism isn't what it used to be. I mean, it's like, oh, you're going to talk to us. You'll just say, you know, we'll just, you know, reference what you said.

(47:04 - 47:18)
And I was pissed when I talked to the police way back when she had just ripped me off. For a sum of money, not, not the same amount in the book, but for some of money, I'm a single mom. I took it out of my kids college fund.

(47:19 - 47:24)
To help her out. I found out it wasn't true. what she said, I was so mad.

(47:24 - 47:41)
I called the police to, to find out like what really did happen. And then they're telling me stuff and I'm mad. And, you know, I, my personality, I think back then, especially was just a little more like on the fly, just whatever, say whatever.

(47:42 - 47:49)
And so there was a lot of awful things. I told the police about my sister. I did not want it in a New York times article.

(47:50 - 47:58)
That's fair. Yep. It's probably not the, the source material you want to give a journalist.

(47:59 - 48:02)
I gave him a new source material. That's good. Yeah.

(48:03 - 48:18)
That's good. So what I was saying is, um, her victim, a number of her victims contacted me through that article, like Jumana Kidd, Laurie Anne Hart, and then I was connected with a few more. We were like on a zoom call, which was crazy.

(48:18 - 48:52)
They were like a number of her victims and I did not put that in the um, a number of her victims and I were on a zoom call and what we were able to piece together is my sister is different people, everybody she meets, she's a different person, but nobody, including her own family really knows the real person, you know, she's a soccer mom to Laurie Anne. She's a, you know, she's, she had friends who were criminals. She, she's a criminal with her criminal friends.

(48:52 - 48:56)
Well, she rips everybody off. So she ripped the criminal off. I, that person was on the zoom call.

(48:57 - 49:32)
There was a person who was like a, uh, once you get out of prison, they help rehabilitate you and they help you get off on your feet. She was on the zoom call with my sister ripped her off and it was kind of like, oh my gosh, and we, they started telling the story about how they saw Tracy and they were like four or five different people completely. So once that happens, the totality of the, I hate to use the word evil, but you realize there's no bottom to the behavior.

(49:32 - 49:41)
There's like no bottom. And it's really scary that like the psychopathy of it. And I did not write her like that in the book at all, by the way.

(49:42 - 49:44)
Correct. Yeah. Yeah.

(49:44 - 50:05)
I wrote her a lot more human than the real person. Um, if somebody wants to write a book, um, I don't know if they would ever get the real person. Um, but the real person, like there is really, she meets every single one of the criteria for psychopathy.

(50:06 - 50:21)
There's like a criteria called Hare's criteria for psychopathy that it was really scary and it helped me separate from her completely. Like, I don't have any more guilt at all about what I wrote or what I said. I actually gave her extremely good at it.

(50:22 - 50:29)
I would agree based on hearing the story from you of like what actually happened versus what we read in the book. Yeah. Yeah.

(50:29 - 50:47)
Yeah. You, you did a really great job at giving what I would perceive as a more unbiased, uh, perception of each of the characters, right? Like your dad, I've just have assumptions about what he did in real life versus like his moments in the book, right. And then your sister.

(50:48 - 51:13)
So I think that was, uh, both good for the audience as a reader, right? Let me experience it because we, we read like even memoirs, we read to get out of our own lives. We, you know, I, look, I can turn on the news and I can see all the horrible stuff, right? Like, I don't want to pick up a book, uh, and, and read that necessarily, or I'll pick up, you know, a history book about World War II or something. Right.

(51:13 - 51:33)
Like I'll pick up, I'll pick up something really graphic. Um, when I go into a book, I want to experience, you know, some sort of, I don't know another word, but like cinematography, right? Like some sort of like storytelling moments where you take me on the journey. But I think it adds that extra layer when it's, um, when there's the author edit.

(51:33 - 52:14)
If I can call it that, where I'm going through and you're like, well, this did happen, I've tweaked some things to be better for the story for my reader, which would be me, uh, you know, that I think is what we really want to read, which is why I think it's a good decision to not, you know, just put in, Hey, here's the, the memoir version of like all the terrible things that happened, right? Like giving me the opportunity to step into the story and not feel like I'm now carrying the burden that you lived through as a child. Yeah. And the fact that people, you know, people come out of these things, you know, they emerge sometimes whole from these things.

(52:15 - 52:41)
And, um, I think that was the message I wanted to convey at the end, like maybe not a hundred percent whole, you know, maybe still damaged them. Um, you know, um, except Yasmina came out pretty whole. Perhaps instead of whole, uh, we come out more mature and part of that is, is, is whole for us, wiser, more settled.

(52:42 - 53:06)
I mean, I was telling somebody, um, it's kind of like when you hear about these people that were falsely convicted and they spent like 40 years in prison and then they found out through the DNA that they never did it and they're getting out of prison and they're like, Oh, I have no hard feelings. You know, I'm just ready to live the rest of my life. And you're like, wow, you know, it's kind of like, you're a saint, I guess.

(53:06 - 53:14)
It's insane. But it, it is kind of how you feel sometimes after you come out of the other side of something. You don't want to go back and relive all the awful things that happened.

(53:14 - 53:18)
You want to move forward. No, that's a good word. Yeah.

(53:19 - 53:26)
Like I can say that for myself. Like, I know what happened to me. I know it was evil and wrong.

(53:26 - 53:49)
Uh, but like on this side of my life, on this line, whatever, where this side of the line, I, I don't walk around seething with anger against my mom or my brother or anybody. It's just, this is what happened. I have the scar tissue to show for it, but I am not inside my head constantly.

(53:49 - 54:20)
Woe is me or even forget woe is me just seething with anger. You know, just, but you know, similar to what you're saying, uh, Debbie or just said, it also allowed me to put distance between people that, you know, our family technically, but not only do we have nothing in common, but I don't want to be the scapegoat, I don't want to be, you know, I just don't want to play their games anymore. And some of them are not like horrible people.

(54:20 - 54:31)
They're just stuck in their own little world. They have those horse blinders on and all they see is this. And like, I also mature enough to be like, I don't have to hate you, but I don't have to have, you know, tea with you either.

(54:31 - 54:40)
I don't have to hang out with you at all. Yeah. So, um, there's a lot of, there's some people that have read the book that felt that for them it was therapeutic.

(54:41 - 55:10)
Um, because they have had that experience of being scapegoated in a family. And the things I have learned, I mean, while writing the book, because I'm telling you, there's a lot of really good therapists on TikTok that are talking about the narcissistic family system. So not just the narcissistic person, but how the family system operates and how they have to have, you know, a golden child, they have to have a scapegoat.

(55:10 - 55:27)
They have to really, sometimes the more dysfunctional of the family, they have to send somebody out in the desert. Like Yasmina got sent out into the desert and they will eat their own young. Right? If it is to keep the family system intact, because that's more important than anything else.

(55:27 - 55:44)
So one of the purposes of writing this book was to, I thought, or even going on the TV shows I went on is so people would see, right? Okay. Now you can finally see the truth, right? I found out that people don't want to see the truth. No.

(55:45 - 56:15)
You know what? You can have the truth right in front of them and they don't want to see it. So at that point, it's like, okay, there's one in every generation that appears to be able to break free. In this case, I think my nephew, my sister, Tracy's son is broken free, but it's usually the person who's the outside, who's on the outcast or on the outside who can see the truth and they can break free, but everybody else is really in a horrible position.

(56:15 - 56:32)
They're really stuck. It's almost to me like Dorian Gray, right? Like if they admit that there's truth in front of them, they have to look at the picture and be like, I did all those things and they have to admit it. That's, that's how I, in my narrative kind of put it together.

(56:32 - 56:43)
I absolutely love, you notice I have a reference to that in my book. When I was a kid, I saw that movie, the picture of Dorian Gray. Absolutely love that.

(56:43 - 57:02)
Just the whole idea of, you know, the picture in the basement getting older, you know, and you're just walking around doing whatever you want to do, but eventually it catches up to you, you know, and in my case, it's multiple generations of it. I think that's usually how it goes. Yeah.

(57:02 - 57:12)
Especially when you're moving to a different country and then you have to assimilate and then like find normal here in the new country. Yeah, absolutely. It's a lot of change.

(57:14 - 57:23)
But I want to shift the topic. You mentioned you're writing a new book. Can you tell us a little bit about what inspired it and how long you've been working on it? Okay.

(57:23 - 57:47)
So I, I had a very hard time figuring out what to write next because this was like my big story and I was going to write a continuation where, about Japan, because I'm really intrigued by the real life story about what happened in Japan. So much that I didn't write about. There's so much that happened to my sister that no one's going to ever know because she's not going to tell anybody.

(57:47 - 57:59)
But I, I talked to, I was a detective just like Slava. I actually contacted ex-boyfriend. I contacted the girl that got my sister into quote unquote modeling in Japan.

(58:01 - 58:27)
Um, I know kind of what happened. So I wanted to originally write a story about Japan and, you know, get into the anime part and just kind of like the whole Japanese culture part and about what's going on over there. Because, um, what was happening in the eighties and nineties was basically, uh, sex trade, honestly, having people go over as modeling and then giving them no way to support themselves as a model.

(58:27 - 58:43)
And then they're, they're kind of stuck, um, kind of trying to work their way back home. And, um, it happened to Ashley Judd, who is the one of the, um, who's an actress. So at first I was going to write about that.

(58:43 - 58:51)
And then I was like, well, wait a minute. I don't want to write another sister story. I don't want to write another story about somebody in their family.

(58:51 - 59:06)
Somebody saves your sister or whatever. So I started to write a horror about somebody who really doesn't even know the victim, right? Just kind of went to high school with her. And I'm using, okay.

(59:06 - 59:17)
I'm using the scenery. I'm kind of creating a world based on the weather and the scenery rather than on the emotions going on inside. So I'm trying to see if that works.

(59:17 - 59:24)
I'm meeting with my developmental editor next week. I've got like one, one and a half chapters written. Very nice.

(59:25 - 59:30)
I like that. That could be really cool. Having the weather system be the state of emotion going on.

(59:31 - 59:38)
Yeah. The weather and the environment. Cause I, I want this character to have like, no, I'm using the fog.

(59:38 - 59:46)
Cause I w I want this character to have like no insight at all. Cause you know how you are when you're like 20 years old and you think, you know, everything is zero. Yeah.

(59:46 - 59:55)
I want this character to relate. That was a smart 20 year old. No self-awareness.

(59:55 - 1:00:03)
I want the, the audience. I want the reader to have all the awareness and the narrator to have zero awareness. And I want to see how that works.

(1:00:04 - 1:00:19)
And that's perfect for a horror novel. Cause you as the viewer know that there's a monster behind the door and you're like, where the hell are you going? Don't go in that door or whatever the setup may be. And what makes good horror is the atmosphere.

(1:00:19 - 1:00:26)
It's not just a girl scared in the closet by a noise. It's a dark house. Nobody's home.

(1:00:26 - 1:00:41)
Parents are away. It might be raining and you know, the scrape of the ax against the hardwood floor, make a, you can make up any scenario that atmosphere is what makes horror good or what makes good horror good. Yeah.

(1:00:42 - 1:00:48)
I do not know if it's going to be good yet. Cause I, you know, I probably have to do nine drafts again. Sure.

(1:00:48 - 1:01:02)
You know, but I do, it is a genre that I like. I, I'm not, I'm not a person who likes like grizzly kind of stuff, but I do like the genre. Um, especially when it's well done.

(1:01:02 - 1:01:21)
Yeah. Like it's a, it's no like movie nomenclature, but like torture porn, like it's just, you know, people like saw the saw series or it's people getting their heads cut off or people getting tortured or limped and it's all for shock value. Yeah.

(1:01:21 - 1:01:35)
I don't like that kind of horror. I like the atmospheric horror, even if it's supernatural, like the exorcist, the book and the original movie, that's good horror. Um, insidious with the parts I've seen, I haven't seen all the way through.

(1:01:35 - 1:01:46)
It has some of those tropy jump scares, but the atmosphere is amazing. Like the book, the Amityville horror. It's the story itself is kind of bland.

(1:01:47 - 1:01:57)
People move into a house. There are ghosts, people go insane. But the way that the original book was written, it's so dry.

(1:01:57 - 1:02:13)
It's so mechanical. And at the same time, you're getting into the head of this guy, the father, who constantly is going deeper and deeper into, I guess you'd call it madness or depression. And then there's a description of what's going on in the house.

(1:02:13 - 1:02:25)
It just like jolts you out of this guy's head. So you're almost like, boom, like furniture flying across the room. To me, all that is the setup of the atmosphere.

(1:02:25 - 1:02:37)
So like fog, uh, you know, is perfect. Uh, now I'll end my rambling with this. Like Silent Hill is a horror video game and you really never know what's going on.

(1:02:37 - 1:03:07)
You're in this town and you're a detective or somebody, uh, depending on the version of the game you're playing, but there's a constant fog around the town and you meet different people and then you're shot into an action scene where you're fighting a monster. So I think if you have the atmosphere down, you'll hit another one out of the park, Debbie, because that's what, for me as a horror aficionado, I'll say this with confidence, if you get the atmosphere right, horror will be well executed. Your horror book will be well executed.

(1:03:07 - 1:03:17)
Thank you. I'm trying to, I'm trying to, um, I guess all this stuff going on right now with the Epstein files and stuff. I don't know if I can write like a real life horror.

(1:03:17 - 1:03:25)
I'm just going to see, take a shot at it. Right. There's all these, some of these conspiracy theories, like it's turning out to be a little bit real.

(1:03:25 - 1:03:34)
So, you know, that's kind of like, wow. You know, that's something you can write about. Yeah.

(1:03:35 - 1:03:43)
It's a real life horror. There are evils in the world and they try to stay hidden, but eventually they come to light every time. Yeah.

(1:03:43 - 1:03:48)
It might take decades, but it comes to light. Yeah. Oh man.

(1:03:48 - 1:04:06)
So, uh, what's your, what's your timeline on this, uh, this new book? I mean, you're, you're chapter and a half in, you said, so what's your, what are your desired goal? I'm actually retiring from my day job in June, June 11th. Congratulations. I'm going to have, I'm going to be able to like work.

(1:04:06 - 1:04:13)
I'm going to do like the Stephen King thing. Like I'm going to walk in the morning. I'm going to read every day and I'm going to write every day.

(1:04:13 - 1:04:18)
I think it's going to be done like one o'clock in the afternoon, every day, something like that. Yeah. That sounds great.

(1:04:18 - 1:04:25)
I am going to follow his. And so we'll see how long it takes right now. I am just like inundated with work, with my job.

(1:04:25 - 1:04:40)
I'm even going in today a little bit. So it's going to be hard for like the next month. But after that, I'm just gonna, I plug away every day, you know, be very disciplined, even though some days it feels like you don't have it in you.

(1:04:40 - 1:04:51)
Just, I think that, you know, that's where the art comes. You just have to kind of like just plug away. And even if it doesn't sound good or it's not working, just show up.

(1:04:51 - 1:05:11)
So much of my life has been about showing up. And, um, so many of the teenagers that I work with have a hard time showing up or even some of the adults, you know, cause I'm a school psychologist. And I've just learned that, that that's like one of the most important things you can do, and even with writing, just showing up every day.

(1:05:13 - 1:05:38)
Absolutely. Yeah. Cause spoiler alert, uh, the seven year short story over the last few months, because I have dedicated myself to writing at least a sentence a day or after dinner while my wife is watching TV, I will pick up the computer and just knock out a couple of ideas or even write an actual paragraph or two or 10.

(1:05:39 - 1:05:55)
Hey, you know, when you go back to the rewrite, you're like, oh, well, I'm just sipping on my whiskey and, you know, mindlessly droning out the TV. And which is really easy to do, by the way, when you're stuck. Yeah.

(1:05:56 - 1:05:59)
Oh yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Yeah.

(1:05:59 - 1:06:14)
You gotta, you gotta show up in life every time, regardless of if you're trying to, you know, get fit at the gym or write your book or find a way to travel to Japan on, you know, a shoestring budget, you gotta show up. If you want to do something, you gotta show up. Yeah.

(1:06:15 - 1:06:26)
And, um, oh, and I'm also, uh, this year I signed up, um, as an author with the Jewish book council. So I am going to be going on tour. Nice.

(1:06:26 - 1:06:46)
I sent them 110 books and so they're going to distribute those 110 books. And then, you know, the book doesn't even really have to be Jewish. They're, they're trying to help Jewish authors because right now they're being dropped by agents and it's really difficult right now what's going on.

(1:06:47 - 1:07:10)
Um, yeah, so I, I signed up with them, had to send out 110 books and then they're going to be distributing all around the country and the way it works is they pay all your expenses to bring you out, all expenses, airfare, hotel. You just have to give a speech for free and then they have to promise to sell your book. Okay.

(1:07:10 - 1:07:56)
That is worth 110 copies. And so maybe something you could do Slava once you publish, because, um, it's, it's, uh, just a chance to get my book out there and I'm kind of looking forward to traveling and I'm kind of looking, you have to agree to three events, but there's like, there's as many as 110, I'm sure there's not going to be 110, but you have to kind of agree and it's kind of going to be fun in my retirement, but it's hard to do the marketing and the writing at the same time, by the way, very difficult. That's part of the reason we built this podcast is we wanted to do what we could to help usher in independent authors, having space so that, you know, you don't have to market all the time.

(1:07:56 - 1:08:23)
Now we're not big enough to say, Hey, we're going to help you sell 57 copies, but if we can help you sell one copy, we're, we're happy about that because there's people who would enjoy your book that don't know who you are. And so that's why we invite people who are independent authors on the show. Uh, I've coined the phrase and indie author uprising because we need new voices and new stories and new worlds to have fun in, right? Like we want to enjoy ourselves.

(1:08:24 - 1:08:31)
Stephen King, he's had his time, you know, Will White's having his time. It's like now it's time for Debbie show. Debbie's time is now.

(1:08:33 - 1:09:00)
I appreciate that. Oh, can I, can I put it? I want to say something to other authors, Barnes and Noble has an indie author program where if you get a couple of really good review, like a good circus review, cause you have to be good. And so I got a good circus review and I got a good Ms. Midwestern book review, right? Those are two that are like, you send your book in, they do not have to give you a good review.

(1:09:00 - 1:09:09)
Most of the time they give you a bad review, right? That's kind of like social proof. I don't know if that's the right word, but that's kind of like proof that your book is good. Right.

(1:09:09 - 1:09:20)
So once you do that, you have to pay for that. Once you do that, you can submit your book to Barnes and Noble to have it in the bookstores. Oh, cool.

(1:09:20 - 1:09:36)
Okay. That's what I did. So I redid the cover because I do take direction well, and I was told that my cover wasn't quite commercial enough for, you know, it's a good cover, but it's a good cover, but not commercial enough.

(1:09:36 - 1:09:40)
I can, I see what you're talking about. It wasn't to genre. Yep.

(1:09:41 - 1:09:56)
So the cover has to be a genre. I guess there was an art to this. Like when you, this is another thing indie authors should know that these publishing companies spend thousands of dollars and there's a lot of research and there's an art for the cover to be right for the genre.

(1:09:56 - 1:10:09)
So I invested in a cover that's spot on for the genre. And so that's going to be coming out in the next week or so. And so yeah, I'm shooting my shot with Barnes and Noble.

(1:10:09 - 1:10:24)
So I just want to let other authors know they can do that. That's great. I let's, let's follow this thread through what other information should indie authors know? Debbie, now that you're published, you've had your developmental editor right on the, on the same path.

(1:10:24 - 1:10:39)
Are you using the same one as last time? Or did you find it? Okay. So developmental author was really helpful. What other advice do you have for indie authors that they should know in their journey to get published? Okay.

(1:10:39 - 1:11:06)
So the big thing is to avoid scams because you get really excited about your work and you think that I, I hired some people that were like family or friends of family or whatever, who maybe didn't really know what they were doing. 100%. Um, little scammy, hire the best people you can afford to do your book cover, to do your audio book.

(1:11:06 - 1:11:16)
I mean, I had a little hiccups with my audio book. It's going to be fine, but just don't hire the friend of the friend, the best people you can be ruthless about it. Absolutely ruthless.

(1:11:16 - 1:11:28)
It's your book, not time to like, just help everybody you like. It's time to hire people who are really good at what they do and vet them. Cause I've made every mistake in the world.

(1:11:28 - 1:11:42)
And so I don't want other people to make that mistake. How did you vet them? Let's talk about that for a second. Um, well, I had to make the mistake and then I had to go and seek out people to fix my mistake.

(1:11:44 - 1:12:20)
So I've had two of everything and you know, I think it's, um, I'm a good hearted person and I'm a little gullible coming from the family that I come from. Um, I was told that it's because when you come from a family that you can't trust and you really, really need these people as a kid, you turn off your gut feeling about people sometimes just so you can survive, you still have a gut feeling, but you kind of turn it off and you just want to either you become distrusting of everybody or you just trust too much. And I think I trust too much that everything's going to come out.

(1:12:20 - 1:12:27)
Okay. So that's a big lesson I learned. And I think maybe, I don't know if other authors have the same issue, but don't do it.

(1:12:28 - 1:12:37)
Yeah. What, uh, let's talk marketing for a second. What marketing have you found that has worked well for you? And what marketing did you try that you go, man, no one should do this.

(1:12:38 - 1:12:54)
I'm still marketing. Let's hope hopefully the JVC is going to work. Um, what hasn't worked is, um, just putting out like Amazon ads without any proof that the book is any good.

(1:12:54 - 1:13:14)
I think my covers not work for me, honestly, because people definitely, sometimes they buy a book and they don't even read it, they just like the cover of it, just the idea that they're going to read it and it's like, you know, even the spine of the book, I'm having the guy work on the spine. Cause he was just going to give me the spine. And I'm like, nope.

(1:13:14 - 1:13:25)
I, so I just, at this point I know so much to help authors like, nope. I took a picture of a bookshelf with a bunch of really good spines. And I said, I want the spine to look like this.

(1:13:25 - 1:13:36)
Cause I want it to look this way on the bookshelf. Yeah. So, um, yeah, I'm doing it right now, but again, I don't want other people to go through this.

(1:13:36 - 1:13:53)
It's very costly mistakes. It is. How do you pick who prints your book? Was that something you like depends on your publisher or is it someone like you can say, Hey, I want to, I want to get published with this group because they do gold filigree or something like that.

(1:13:53 - 1:14:07)
What I did for the, you mean for the cover? Cover. Yeah, the, yeah, the cover. So what happened is I had to go to Reddit, you know, these, these Reddit indie threads are fantastic.

(1:14:08 - 1:14:19)
Cause they tell you every mistake in the world. So I kind of almost made the mistake again. It was there's something called 99, 99 covers or something.

(1:14:19 - 1:14:27)
And what you do is you, you auction, you basically hold a contest. Yep. 99 designs, 99 designs.

(1:14:27 - 1:14:37)
Thank you. So I held a contest and I actually held a contest for the higher tier authors. So I had to pay a lot and I found out you can make a mistake with that too.

(1:14:37 - 1:14:51)
So I want to let people know about that mistake. But what you do is, you know, then I got something like 250 designs to choose from. And a lot of them were not good and derivative.

(1:14:52 - 1:15:07)
And I'm not sure I a hundred percent recommend that. And then I've also heard that they're exploited because people from Indonesia or whatever country, you know, that need money, we'll put up a slap up a design. It's kind of exploiting the artist.

(1:15:07 - 1:15:14)
But I was able to get a fantastic artist. I mean, you saw the book cover. It's really good.

(1:15:16 - 1:15:29)
Yeah. What's cool. But there were a lot, I would say out of that 250, I would say about 225 were not anything that I would, you know, it's getting a little nervous there, but that did help me in the future.

(1:15:29 - 1:15:34)
I'm going to use this person. That's going to be the only person I'm going to use. Cause he was really, really good.

(1:15:35 - 1:15:50)
Nice. How did you initially find your developmental editor? I was in a writing class and she was the teacher. And so this is kind of like ego stuff, right? I, because I think narcissism runs in the family.

(1:15:51 - 1:16:00)
I thought I could write a book in the summer. I'm going to just like write this book. It's going to be so good.

(1:16:01 - 1:16:20)
And then, um, by the end of the summer, I'm like, oh, I better take a class. It's been a while since I've taken a writing workshop and then I met her and it probably took me six months with, no, probably took me three months with her before I got a chapter that was actually in the book, everything else I threw away. So yeah, some, some of it's just ego.

(1:16:21 - 1:16:31)
I hate to say that's what my mistakes are about too, is ego. Hey, that's great advice for, uh, the people who are coming up and trying to get their stuff published. Yeah.

(1:16:31 - 1:16:52)
So that's, uh, we appreciate you, uh, going before everyone and making the mistakes and telling us like, Hey, here's what to watch out for. Right. So we learned that whoever you're going to hire, don't hire friends of the family unless they're actually best in the business, but then they're probably going to charge an arm and a leg, but it's worth it.

(1:16:52 - 1:17:00)
Yeah. Uh, make sure that you have, um, a voice in the process of, Hey, here's what I want it to look like on the bookshelf. Right.

(1:17:00 - 1:17:11)
Like having a voice in the process on, on how you want your book to be presented to people is also vital. So some really great things. And, uh, don't try and write a book over the summer.

(1:17:14 - 1:17:23)
Well, there are people who do it, but they, I think it's formula-matic, right? And a lot of AI. Probably. Don't write your book with AI.

(1:17:23 - 1:17:24)
Really write your book, folks. Yeah. Yeah.

(1:17:25 - 1:17:28)
Yep. Put the, put the blood, sweat and tears into it. Yeah.

(1:17:28 - 1:17:51)
Well, as we wind down here, Debbie, do you have any, uh, any, I know you covered a lot of indie author advice, but any final advice for indie authors or people who have families with trauma? Just Debbie's wisdom for the final, final show here. I mean, I think that people have families with trauma. I mean, just about everybody comes from a family that has trauma.

(1:17:52 - 1:18:16)
I mean, there's, there's, there's some pretty great families that don't, but most people do. And I think the best advice I can give anybody is that most of the problems in the world are caused by unprocessed pain. So being able to kind of look at what happened, even if it's scary, even if it's like, you know, something you don't want to do, it's like taking a wound and taking care of it.

(1:18:17 - 1:18:37)
Like if you just let it fester, it just gets worse. And so that's kind of like therapy advice, but it also, I think bibliotherapy bibliotherapy, like reading is really good therapy for people. Not just necessarily my book, but a lot of other books, even horror, whatever genre you like, but also writing is very therapeutic too.

(1:18:38 - 1:19:03)
I mean, I wouldn't be, yeah, without, without libraries and reading, I wouldn't be who I am today. Reading is amazing, better than therapy and developmental editors are better than therapists because they will sit there and they will tell you the truth and they won't sit there and give you what you want to hear. So I appreciate that.

(1:19:04 - 1:19:40)
Yeah. We must be kindred spirits, Deb, because if it wasn't for libraries or Stephen King, that guy right there, I might've swallowed a 38 slug, uh, when I was a kid and that's not just, you know, for shock value, it was getting immersed in books, getting immersed in stories, being able to escape as silly as this sounds, even reading non-horror, like reading like Tom Clancy or reading Sidney Sheldon or, uh, name of course escapes me now more slice of life books. Right.

(1:19:41 - 1:20:05)
Um, not so much Tom Clancy, but the others, I was able to like, even see how other adults are normal and that what I'm experiencing, maybe not so normal, like it gave me perspective. Not only was an escape, not only was it, you know, kind of a lecture for my soul sometimes just to get it lost in the world, but it was also like, wait a minute. I know this is fake.

(1:20:05 - 1:20:36)
I, even as a kid, I was smart enough to understand I'm reading fiction and there's really no such thing as flying dinosaurs or whatever the crap I'm reading, but like being able to see other parents and adults and kids, even in maybe dramatic situations going, huh, this is not like the home life I, I see every day and that kind of gave, stealed me to, you know, try to escape where, what I was at. So absolutely a hundred percent agree with you about libraries and reading. Yeah.

(1:20:36 - 1:21:02)
That's something that I've talked about on the show too, is like the catharsis of going through another character's journey and then taking that, and you probably have the correct therapy words for it, but like taking that and going like, oh, hey, you know, if they can do something that's worse than what I'm going through, I also can stay strong or similar, right? Like, or, hey, they went through something similar. It's glad to know that I'm not alone. Things like that.

(1:21:02 - 1:21:18)
Like I've talked about it on probably a quarter of our episodes where like we'll be reading something and I'll be like, man, this reminds me of whatever in my life. And like, I'll break the fourth wall, talk to the audience for a second and be like, look, if you're going through this stuff, like it's real, it sucks. But this is kind of why we read.

(1:21:18 - 1:21:22)
So I'm glad to know that there's some, some real research behind it. Yeah. Yeah.

(1:21:23 - 1:21:27)
So that's great. Wonderful. Well, thank you for coming on the show, Debbie.

(1:21:27 - 1:21:42)
Thank you for sending us your book and letting us have the, the pleasure of being some of the first readers for it and sharing your life with us and your wisdom, both in the publishing journey and also the traumatic processing of family life as you grew up. Yeah. It's been a real pleasure.

(1:21:42 - 1:21:55)
Appreciate it. And honestly, thank you for having me on the show and I'll let you go about your day, the rest of your day. We look forward to when you finish your copy of your next one, please reach out to us.

(1:21:55 - 1:22:04)
We'd love to make sure it's really good because we've got some connoisseurs here, so that's right. Yeah. Okay.

(1:22:04 - 1:22:06)
Take care. All right, Debbie. Okay.

(1:22:06 - 1:22:07)
Take care, Debbie. Okay. Bye bye.

(1:22:09 - 1:22:20)
I have a favor to ask you. If you like what we're doing, the simplest way to support the show is to hit subscribe. In return, we'll keep leveling up and we'll listen to your feedback and read authors that you suggest.

(1:22:21 - 1:22:26)
And of course we'll take side quests along the way. Thank you for joining us and we'll see you next time.