Williamson, Debrah

PERSONAL: Born in Claremore, OK; married; children: three.

ADDRESSES: Home— OK. Agent— Pamela Harty, The Knight Agency, 570 East Ave., Madison, GA 30650. E-mail— debrah@debrahwilliamson.com.

CAREER: Novelist.

WRITINGS

Singing with the Top Down, New American Library (New York, NY), 2006.

Paper Hearts, NAL Trade, 2007.

Also author of more than twenty romance novels under a variety of pseudonyms.

SIDELIGHTS: Debrah Williamson, who has more than twenty romance novels to her credit, is the author of the coming-of-age tale Singing with the Top Down. Set in 1955, the work follows thirteen-year-old Pauly Mahoney and her eight-year-old brother, Buddy, a frail polio survivor. When their young, irresponsible parents are killed in a roller-coaster accident at a traveling carnival in Oklahoma, the pair are taken in by their eccentric Aunt Nora, who claims to be an aspiring Hollywood actress. During their road trip to California, which Nora dubs “The Daring Adventure of Us,” the trio pick up a nursing-home runaway and his dog, rescue a mummified Indian baby from a museum, and join forces with an ex-fighter pilot. Along the way, the spirited Pauly, “often made to shoulder adult responsibilities, finds that her aunt is a good listener with a generous heart,” noted Joanne Wilkinson in Booklist.“Pauly is a true parental child, the calm head in chaos,” Williamson told Kelley Hart-sell in an interview on the CK2S Kwips and Kritiques Web site. “She coped with the lack of security her parents provided by making herself indispensable, at least in her mind. When she had to start over with Aunt Nora, she realized she didn’t have to be the grown-up. That she could be a child and let someone else shoulder responsibility. Her life with Nora in California represents the life she always wanted, but didn’t think she could have.” “Graceful and witty, Pauly’s courageous voice is this bighearted novel’s greatest strength,” wrote a critic in Publishers Weekly.

Williamson told CA:“I’ve been writing stories ever since I learned to put words on paper, probably as an extension of my love of reading. I think my writing today is most influenced by the wonderful novels I read as a child and young adult. I grew up in a rural small town and reading about interesting characters doing exciting things in intriguing settings made me feel part of the bigger world. In a way, I think I write in order to recreate the sense of discovery that reading great books gave me then.

“It would be impossible to describe my writing process because it is not static. Creating stories is an organic process that changes with each novel I write. I almost always start with characters and go from there. For me, characters are everything. Plot and setting and all the rest grow out of the characters once I make them come alive on the page.

“I suppose the most surprising thing I’ve learned is that I can actually write professionally. As a youngster devouring the words of others, it never occurred to me that someday people would read the stories I made up. I just knew I had stories to tell and would write them regardless of whether or not they were published.

“Asking a novelist to name her favorite book is a bit like asking a mother which child she loves best. I like them all, for different reasons. If I didn’t love a story—at least for as long as it takes to write it—I don’t believe I would ever make it to The End.

“That said, there will always be a special place in my heart for Singing with the Top Down because it was the story that made me stretch and grow as a writer. It taught me perseverance and the ultimate truth in the advice ‘write what you love and the rest will follow.’

“The effect of my books on readers informs my writing from conception of an idea to conclusion of the novel. When readers finish my book, I want them to be a little sad that the story is over because now they must say good-bye to the characters. I want my stories to remind them of the goodness in ordinary people and renew their belief that each of us has the strength to overcome whatever obstacles life places in our paths.”