Speaker 1: Have you been there yet? Ero dot Net a r
r oe dot Net not just one podcast, It's twenty
different podcasts creating an amazing network. One of the podcasts
is The Daily Mess. We all have questions. Do we
go searching for answers or do we sit back and
just assume the Daily Mess? We work it out only
on Aero dot net a r r oe dot net.
Enjoy your exploration. Hi Errow, Hey, how are you doing today?
Speaker 2: I'm great? How are you?
Speaker 1: Absolutely fantastic. We've got to start with the book cover
because I am a book snob and it's not because
of my eyes or my ambition to always go into
brand new books, but my fingertips tell a story, and
because what you have designed on this cover. First of all,
yes it is kind of glossy, but it is so soft,
I mean and when I'm reading and I need that
sense of comfort which I have to have reading this book.
The thing is is that you give that to me
as a reader, to where I can just there and
use my fingers to calm my imagination down.
Speaker 2: That is the single best description of a book cover
I have ever heard. I'm going to try to memorize that.
Thank you. I think it's a gorgeous cover. Ye. I
think it evokes, you know, it peases at what's in
the book. I think, you know, there's the mailbox down
in one corner, and there's the illuminated window in the
other corner, and I think it makes you wonder what's
going on in that house.
Speaker 1: Well, you're absolutely right about that, because I don't know
how many times I've stared at this house. And then
when I drive through my own forest here and I
see houses like this, I'm going, oh, my god, never
was in this neighborhood. I know she was. That's the house.
Speaker 2: That's hilarious. You know, someone actually asked me, two people
ask me, is that the house in the movie Home Alone?
I was like, I have no idea, but that would
be funny.
Speaker 1: I like the way that you build your characters because
it sounds like somebody that we know, or you're saying, hey, look,
I want you guys to meet this. I think you're
going to like them. You may not, but you're but
this is the person, this is their personality. Have fun
with them if you can.
Speaker 2: That is again very well said. We meet the heroine
when she's a teenager and her name is Ingrid, and
a terrible thing happens to her one night at a
Halloween party. She's a victim of an assault which she
cannot remember and that will come back to haunt her
the rest of her life. And then we see her
again as a grown up woman. She's changed her name
to Vivica. She's recreated her whole life. She's been an actress.
Now she's a mom living in a suburb in Greenwich, Connecticut,
with a beautiful little boy and a handsome husband, and
her life seems absolutely perfect. But she's holding on a
little too tightly to that perfection, and of course it's
going to come undone.
Speaker 1: Now, Darrel, you're an actor. I'm in radio, so therefore
I'm an actor as well. You know, this book hits
us very closely as creative people, because we tend to
do that, we hide behind fake names like Aero versus
who I really am, and then to go into areas
where you don't think people know you, and then all
of a sudden, uh oh, something has cracked in my foundation.
Speaker 2: Right. I think it's something that a lot of people
do to varying degrees, But I do think that those
of us who have thought out the performing arts. There
is a presentational side that we can put forward.
Speaker 1: You know, did you have a doctor with you at
all times? Because this is more than a psychological thriller,
because this is something that you had to experience before
we did. And there's no way that I can believe
that you didn't feel it before we did. And that's
why I love it when authors can open up their
creative souls that way.
Speaker 2: Well, it is raw, and you're absolutely right, there's an
opening of that happens when you sit down at the
page and you just have to go into this other space.
And I will tell you that's a lot of the
reason I did not write novels when I was raising
my young children. That switch from being a mom and
being with my kids and appropriately focusing on their lives.
I was unable to carve out the large slabs of
time that I require to go somewhere else in my
head every day.
Speaker 1: It's so funny you say that, because I just did
a big thing on iHeartRadio today saying that is there
such a thing as creativity being an addiction? Because people
don't understand what it is that we do as writers,
because when we disappear, it's not that we don't love you.
We just have to go into this other world for
a moment. But trust me, we're coming.
Speaker 2: Back right right. And someone was asking me last night
at a book event, is it's hard to come back
at night from writing such dark stuff? And it is
not hard for me now. When I was very young
and I played a very disturbed character on the soap
opera All My Children, it was much harder for me then.
I don't know if it was a factor of my youth,
my inexperience, maybe more of an emotional neediness that I
had as a young person. It was much harder to separate.
Maybe it's because I'm a I'm a woman of a
certain age, a grown up lady with a real life.
I can go in and out of the writing space.
Speaker 1: Now hold that thought, There is more to that coming
right up with Deborah good Rich Rooye, the name of
the book best Boy. We are back with author Deborah
good Rich Rooye.
Speaker 2: It was much harder to separate. Maybe it's because I'm
a I'm a woman of a certain age, a grown
up lady with the real life. I can go in
and out of the writing space.
Speaker 1: Now Now, is that because you're you journal about it,
or you do what I do, which is called defragging.
When I go into a dark spot and I need
to come back, I'll ask the questions and then question
the answers.
Speaker 2: Oh, I love that. What do you call that?
Speaker 1: I call it defragging.
Speaker 2: I love that, ask the questions and question the answers.
Speaker 1: Yeah, because we're we're always asking people what should I do?
What should I do? How should I do this? And so?
What I do on dfrag is I'll sit there and
I'll say, they're not wearing your shoes. Why are you
asking them? Ask yourself.
Speaker 2: I think I do that in my own way, and
I think it took a very long time. I think
there are so many people, young people who feel like
they have to do everything all at once. You know,
life is so short, and I have to have the
career and the children and the this and the that,
and life can be short. But if you're lucky, and
I feel very lucky, life can also be long. And
we can have chapters. And I like this chapter now
very much because I do think I'm better able to
ask those questions and question those answers and look at
what matters.
Speaker 1: How did the idea of that door come into being.
In other words, I mean, I mean what I mean
by that is is that on your personal life is
where we're going to go. Because you've got an open
door here with your writer's retreat. How did that door
appear in your heart so that you could open it
up for other people to understand You're not weird, You're
very normal, but let's do something with your normal weirdness.
Speaker 2: So I was on book tour for my third book.
My mother was very sick and approaching in a way
I probably didn't fully understand the end of your life.
I was feeling very tapped out, and I was feeling
I needed this quiet space to write. And there are
a lot of writing retreats where writers go and they
have to give talks and workshops and mentoring, and those
are fabulous. I didn't want that kind of a writer's retreat.
I wanted a writing retreat, just writing. So I got
together with two other authors, Lounne Rice and Amy Shide,
and we started brainstorming for a little while about what
would that mean, and we came up with a format
of this five day retreat with four solid days of writing.
Breakfast is delivered, lunch is delivered, you're in your room
writing for twelve hours a day, and it is a
chunk of time in which things can change, but it's
a chunk of time that you can give. We wanted
a chunk of time that people would say, yes, I
deserve that I can give myself that amount of time,
and we didn't feel we could do that with a
month or even two weeks. And I think we were
right about it, and we did it up in the
Catskills and we're doing it still at the Deer Mountain Inn,
which I have an inn because I'm in at the
inn because my husband and I own it.
Speaker 1: Oh Man, that was our.
Speaker 2: Inn, and so we were able to really formulate what
this thing should be. So it's a group of like
minded people at similar stages in their careers, getting together
every night for a glass of wine at a beautiful dinner,
but having time all alone every day. Yeah.
Speaker 1: God, I love where your heart is. Where can people
go to find out more about that? As well as
the book and everything else that you've done, Deborah, because
you've opened up your life to be that person that
we run to when we want to escape.
Speaker 2: I'm very active on Instagram. That's my primary social and
It's Deborah Goodrich Rooice Official, and I have a gorgeous website,
Deborah Goodrich Voice dot com. What I have on my
website beautiful book club kits. So if anybody in a
book club wants to read one of my books, the
book club kits are stunning and they have playlists and
cocktails and all sorts of things.
Speaker 1: Wow, ten minutes with you is not enough. You've got
to come back to this show anytime in the future.
Speaker 2: Deborah, thank you so much. I'd love that.
Speaker 1: Will you'd be brilliant today. Okay, I'm going to try