In Which a Librarian asks a Talented Author a Small Number of Questions:
This month we are overjoyed to have Wade Rouse! Here is the bio from his website:
- WADE ROUSE is the internationally bestselling author of nine books, which have been translated into nearly 20 languages. Wade chose his grandmother’s name, Viola Shipman, as a pen name to honor the woman whose heirlooms and family stories inspire his fiction.
Wade Rouse will also be speaking with us via Zoom on December 12th to talk about his latest book, The Wishing Bridge, that will be released on November 7, 2023. Register for this online event HERE.
If you were a dewey number, what would you consider yourself to be?
Oh, we’re going old school. I used to help shelve books, so I know my way around Dewey. I’d probably categorize myself both a 100 and an 810. I’m an artist and writer, heart, soul,entire being, so I have to sit in the 810s. But I’m also fascinated by the human condition and mind, how we become the people we do, how I became the person I am, and my books are partly philosophical and psychological to in nature, forcing readers to ask themselves important questions, so I’d shelve myself in the 100s as well. I think most of us are comprised of many numbers.
I love the story behind your pen name, what a great way to honor your grandmother. What is the best memory you have of her? One that when you think of it, makes everything in the world melt away and become the best moment over and over again?
Thank you. It’s the smallest thanks I can give to the working poor Ozarks seamstress whose sacrifices changed my family’s life and whose love and lessons inspire my fiction. My grandma was an incredible baker. In fact, I still have her recipe box and handwritten recipes which inspired my novel THE RECIPE BOX.
Of the countless recipes in her recipe box, though, one was my favorite: My grandma Shipman’s cherry chip cake. I asked her to make it for me on every special occasion. The cake was stunning: Cherry buttercream frosting, pink as a spring tulip, slathered on a towering cake and ringed with fresh and maraschino cherries.
But it tasted even better: The white cake was moist, with hints of vanilla and almond, and dotted with chunks of cherries. The buttercream icing was rich and dense, and the mix of sweet and tart cherries added just the right texture and finish.
My grandma would pour herself a cup of coffee and me a glass of milk, she’d cut two slices of cake, and we would sit and talk in her tiny kitchen, mostly about what I was going to do when I grew up, how I was going to change the world, see places she never had the chance to see.
“What do you think Paris is like in the spring?” she would ask. “Send me a postcard someday when you go.”
The last time my grandma made the cherry chip cake for me was when I returned home for a visit after earning my master’s degree from Northwestern. The pink cake was waiting for me on her pink table, along with a glass of milk.
“Tell me about Chicago,” she said, eyes wide, elbows on her table.
On my own birthday and special occasions, I still make my grandma’s cherry chip cake.Then I pour a cup of coffee for her and a glass of milk for myself, I cut two slices of pretty pink cake, and I sit down and tell my grandma all about my life.
It is because of memories like this that I like to say that I didn’t choose a pen name for my fiction, the pen name chose me. My grandmothers – all of my grandparents – made me who I am, and I would not be standing here today – much less be writing the types of books I do – ones that are inspired by my grandmothers’ heirlooms, lives and lessons.
And the cherry chip cake recipe is included as a bonus in the back of my new novel, FAMOUS IN A SMALL TOWN, which is set in northern Michigan and includes much about Michigan’s cherry industry and history as well as the National Cherry Festival.
You have written some fantastic fiction and nonfiction books. Do you enjoy writing one over the other? Do you find one easier to write?
I started my writing career as a memoirist. I was heavily influenced by nonfiction writers –from Erma Bombeck and David Sedaris to Joan Didion and Augusten Burroughs. I had also written in my own voice – a mix of humor and heartbreak – since I was young. I wrote my first memoir, America’s Boy, as I was nearing forty, and it just came from my soul in that voice in my head that had made me laugh and cry since I was a boy. After four memoirs, the loss of my mother and my father’s dementia, I needed time to process and really didn’t want to write about my life. I discovered my grandmother’s heirlooms – charm bracelets, recipe boxes, quilts, hope chests – in the attic, and I realized my working poor grandma was actually the richest woman I’d ever known. I made the switch to fiction, and it did not come easy. It took me nearly three years to write my first novel, The Charm Bracelet. It was just a totally different process writing fiction: Voice, structure, characters, dialogue, everything. My agent made me perfect it, telling me only had one chance – especially writing women’s fiction – to get it right. Ironically, when I wrote Magic Season (my first memoir in a decade that was named a Michigan Notable Book), I had some trouble capturing my nonfiction voice and style because I approach memoir so differently (the way I approach it, piece it together). Today, I do think writing both has made me a much better writer in each genre: Writing fiction made my nonfiction work come alive in setting, detail and dialogue, and my nonfiction has helped make my fiction tighter and crisper with deeper characters and more meaningful issues.
What books do you have on your nightstand or around to be read?
I have Salt Fat Acid Heat by Samin Nosrat to read along with Nancy Thayer’s All the Days of Summer and Lessons In Chemistry (yes, I know I’m late to the game). Sadly, I don’t have much to read these days between writing two books a year and blurbing upcoming books for other authors.
If you could be an animal, what one would you be and why? OR...alternatively if you are not an animal person...What is your all time favorite breakfast you could eat at any time of the day?
Dog! I have had rescue dogs my entire life, and each has changed me profoundly and become a piece of my soul. Moreover, as a writer, they are my constant companions, sitting under my writing desk, nudging me to take a break, having lunch with me. I don’t know if I’d be alive, or would ever have finished a book, without my best friends. If I could give that much joy and love to someone, even for a much too short of a life, I would be eternally grateful. (P.S.: We currently have two rescues, Doris and Gerti, a street dog we just rescued after losing my Mabel, who was with me for all but one of my books.)
Thank you so much to Wade for the entertaining and thoughtful answers! Check out any his books from the library by searching the catalog for Viola Shipman!