Ask the Author: Deborah Goodrich Royce
Answered Questions (11)
Deborah Goodrich Royce
I am so excited to share Reef Road will be out January 10! You can preorder now.
Deborah Goodrich Royce
Thank you for this and so sorry just seeing now. I would love to participate for either Ruby Falls or Reef Road. Can you contact Susie Stangland at susiestangland@yahoo.com?
Thank you!
Thank you!
Deborah Goodrich Royce
This answer contains spoilers…
(view spoiler)
Deborah Goodrich Royce
It was SO much fun to meet with your group!!!
Deborah Goodrich Royce
Thank you so very much! I had fun doing that show and learned a LOT! it is amazing to me that the genre of the daytime soap opera is nearly gone! Funnily enough, I ran into Susan Lucci about a year ago, pre-pandemic, when I hadn't seen her for 35 years. And yes! she looked the same!
Deborah Goodrich Royce
When I am experiencing a block with a book, I try to put it aside and focus on another aspect besides writing. I might take a walk or read something else. I have a meditation practice, but I do that the first thing every day, before I have turned my attention to the world or writing. And I am a serious fan of the bath—as tonic, as therapy, as refuge, as warmth, as inspiration, as just about everything good. I will take a bath at any time of day that I feel the need!
Deborah Goodrich Royce
The best thing about being a writer is that magical feeling when you sit at your computer and your characters do or say something that you just never thought of! Or the story takes a turn that surprises you! Yes, I outline and plan where I am going. But then, sometimes, the book takes me somewhere else. That is magical.
Deborah Goodrich Royce
My best advice to writers is to write. And, also, not to worry. I would be considered a "mature" debut author, by anyone's standards. I've been writing for a while, but it is only in the past five years that I have gotten serious about it. So, do your best, put the time in, but don't fear. You never know what the future holds—or when, exactly, that future will pan out.
Deborah Goodrich Royce
I have just finished a first draft of Ruby Falls, also a thriller but I would classify it as meta-gothic. In it, I play with much spookier themes. It begins with a little girl clutching her father's hand, deep in a pitch dark cave called Ruby Falls (near Chattanooga, Tennessee). The girl is completely terrified because they have clicked off the lights. She can't see a thing but she hears the water falling around her and cannot determine its location in the utter blackness. The tour guide is telling a rambling story of how divers have never been able to locate the bottom of the pool of water and the little girl tries desperately not to be afraid and not to move—so she doesn't fall into that water—when her father lets go of her hand. The lights come back on and he is gone. Simply gone. She is alone and frozen with fear and no one at the tourist attraction knows what to do with her. And the story takes off from there.
Deborah Goodrich Royce
I am very Pavlovian—I respond to the cues around me and have an almost automatic trigger that clicks into gear. I live in Connecticut on a river and, when I write, I sit at a big round table in a room that looks west at the water. Something about sitting down in my chair just puts me in the head space of writing, because that is what I do when I sit there.
Also—partly kidding, but not really—I have a doggie companion who sits with me—my oldest dog, Paige. She LOVES to write and plants herself next to me while I do it. My other dog, Georgina, is not as committed and she wanders around and distracts me. I love them both, but Paige's serenity helps to kickstart my own focus.
Also—partly kidding, but not really—I have a doggie companion who sits with me—my oldest dog, Paige. She LOVES to write and plants herself next to me while I do it. My other dog, Georgina, is not as committed and she wanders around and distracts me. I love them both, but Paige's serenity helps to kickstart my own focus.
Deborah Goodrich Royce
I got the idea for Finding Mrs. Ford from many aspects of life over many years of living it. I am from Detroit—and Detroit was in a serious state of decline in the 1970s when I was a teenager—so I set half of the book in that milieu. In contrast, the other half of the book is set in Watch Hill, a bucolic and rarified summer community on the coast of the Atlantic Ocean. The two worlds could not be more opposite, yet Susan Ford navigates both of them, albeit at different ages and stages of her life. I like playing with the concept of a person's identity and whether or not that changes (or seems to change) in different circumstances.
Additionally, I have always been fascinated by the Middle East. One of my characters is a Chaldean (a Catholic from Iraq). There are quite a few Chaldeans in Detroit, though many Americans are not familiar with this group. Tariq Aziz, Saddam Hussein's foreign minister was a Chaldean. I find that extremely interesting and I like looking at how different people from different parts of this planet can intersect in one place or another. Is it fate that throws people together or places us in one location or another? And then what do we do with it?
Additionally, I have always been fascinated by the Middle East. One of my characters is a Chaldean (a Catholic from Iraq). There are quite a few Chaldeans in Detroit, though many Americans are not familiar with this group. Tariq Aziz, Saddam Hussein's foreign minister was a Chaldean. I find that extremely interesting and I like looking at how different people from different parts of this planet can intersect in one place or another. Is it fate that throws people together or places us in one location or another? And then what do we do with it?
About Goodreads Q&A
Ask and answer questions about books!
You can pose questions to the Goodreads community with Reader Q&A, or ask your favorite author a question with Ask the Author.
See Featured Authors Answering Questions
Learn more