I’m so thrilled that the talented author, Cathy Lamb, is joining us this month! Cathy and I go way back, having had our first books published at about the same time and by the same publisher back in the early 2000s.
Cathy is known for crafting insightful, empowering works of women’s fiction featuring complex, relatable characters with strong voices who overcome big problems, but without ever losing their sense of humor or appreciation for life’s absurdities. Her most recent book, TEN KIDS, TWO LOVEBIRDS, AND SINGING MERMAID, is a feel-good story set in California in the 1970’s, told through the eyes of Jesse, a lovable eleven-year-old protagonist.
Welcome, Cathy! I understand that your new book, TEN KIDS, TWO LOVEBIRDS, AND SINGING MERMAID, was inspired by events and settings in your childhood. Can you tell us more about that? As well as how the plot developed from there?
TEN KIDS, TWO LOVEBIRDS, AND SINGING MERMAID was inspired by my childhood on Deauville Drive in Huntington Beach, California. I lived there until I was 10. The families in the book are not my family.
The first scene in the book, where Annie, the mother, finds out her husband is cheating on her with his secretary, who looks like Barbie from “the waist up,” was inspired by my “second mother” on Deauville Drive and what happened to her.
Jeanne was an artist, free-spirited, and creative. She had piles of brown curls and tattoos, which were not common on women then. She always treated me, a gawky girl, like I was special. She chatted with me as she made her art, and sometimes she swore when her art didn’t look right. I was so intrigued by her. My own mother NEVER swore!
Her husband, Joe, left her and their children and took off in their white Alfa Romeo, leaving her with a cranky old station wagon and no money.
Joe, in my book, also takes off in his white Alfa Romeo, too, but only after his soon-to-be ex-wife Annie waters his sports car with a hose on full blast and smashes a homemade, delicious cherry pie in his face. At the time Annie is wearing white cold cream on her face (to get rid of wrinkles), thick like Crisco, an indestructible flowered housedress with a zipper from neckline to hemline, and her hair is up in a baggie as she’s dying the grey out of it.
In “real life” Jeanne was not in cold cream when Joe left, but I bet later she wishes she could have slammed a cherry pie into Joe’s face.
You can read a little more about Jeanne on my Substack newsletter: https://cathylamb.substack.com/p/the-alfa-romeo-that-sparked-ten-kids
This book is just what I needed right now! Though the characters are sailing through some really rough seas, the story as a whole is uplifting, and the ending is so very satisfying, renewing readers faith that justice will ultimately be done. So, how do you do that? In your opinion, what are the essential elements that set readers up for a genuinely satisfying denouement?
I wanted to write a story that was filled with love and hope and a ton of laughter. We ALL need more love, hope, and laughter right now. I think, I hope, those elements will have the readers closing the book and feeling good about what they read.
2023 was a really hard year for me. As I was writing Ten Kids, it was essential to me that I had a heart-lifting, so to speak, storyline. I wanted to lift my own spirits and heal some things that had gone really wrong for me in 2023. Someone lied about me, which hurt, and infuriated me. Our second floor washing machine flooded and did tons of damage. Note: When you come home and your kitchen lights are raining, you have a big problem.
Two very close friends to my husband and me died. We had been friends for decades. Other stuff happened, too.
I needed a break from my own life. I needed to disappear into another world. I needed to laugh. I wanted to go back in time, to my childhood, but I didn’t want to write a memoir. I love my sisters and brother and didn’t want to offend them or break their privacy.
I dove deep back into my childhood, taking inspiration from friendships and hula hoops, palm trees and sunny days, Bewitched and the Brady Bunch, and wrote Ten Kids in a few months.
You can read about my lousy year on Substack: https://cathylamb.substack.com/p/not-an-easy-year
Traditionally, your books have been written from the viewpoint of an adult character. In this book, your narrator is eleven-year-old Jesse, who is such a winning character. What was it like to write from the viewpoint of a child? How were you able to make her sound so authentic?
I put myself in 11-year-old Jesse’s shoes. I had her telling the story as I would have at her age. I went back to my own childhood, wearing sandals and shorts, whipping myself and other kids around on a rusty merry-go-round that would never be allowed on playgrounds today.
Even the honeysuckle, the jacaranda, and the beach scents came back to me as I wrote. I could hear the birds, hear my parents’ voices and my friends’ laughter as we played outside. I could see my sisters and brother as they were when we were kids. I even saw our dogs, and our bird, Porky, who I put in the book.
My sisters and brother and I played outside all day after school and all day during summer. We drank out of hoses. We played kick the can. Hide and Seek. Wall ball. We ran through sprinklers. We played in a fort and concocted a ton of imaginary games where we played the parts of pirates or princesses. My mother had a vegetable garden that we ate out of – all things the kids in Ten Kids did. We ran wild and were definitely a bit feral by the end of summer. The kids in the book – the Miyashiros, Wongs, Howes, etc. were the last names of the kids we played with on Deauville Drive.
Our parents were kind and loving and hardworking and I tried to show that loving upbringing in both families – the Rossis and the O’Briens.
It was funny how so many memories came back as if they’d happened yesterday and not decades ago.
Your books have often included quirky, off-beat characters who march to their own drummer. This time, it’s Liliana, the singing mermaid you mention in the title. Tell us more about her, and how you came up with such an intriguing character? What is it you think off-beat characters such as Liliana bring your books and the messages you’re trying to share with readers?
I think that in books it’s important to know a wide variety of people – just like in life. We need to see the value of everyone – not just the person who is working full time and has a sports car and appears to have it together. We need to appreciate the gifts that people bring, the special talents, the life lessons, the wisdom. We need to always be open to truly seeing people – who they are inside, with all the complexity that brings.
Liliana’s mental illness was triggered by LSD, which was widely used then. She was at a party and was slipped LSD. Her rapid decline went from there – she had been headed toward an amazing singing career. But her essential nature – her kindness and caring, her thoughtfulness, and her insight on people and what they needed, remained. She was the character in the book who everyone always loved and cared for. She was their bright sun, their bright light – because that’s what she brought to everyone – this golden light of love.
This was such an enjoyable read! Will we be seeing more of these characters in the future? What can we expect from you next?
I have a new book out in a couple of months. It’s titled RUTHIE DESCHUTES O’HARA HAS ULTERIOR MOTIVES. And, at this moment, right smack in the middle of summer, I’m working on a Christmas story. My son told me I should set up our Christmas tree to “set the mood.”
I have another story brewing in my head, but will write, I HOPE, a book number two for the Deauville Drive series soon.
Thanks so much for having me!
The Deauville Street Families #1
From the bestselling author of Julia’s Chocolates and Henry’s Sisters, comes a humorous, hopeful novel about two broken families. Set in Huntington Beach, California in 1979, the O’Briens and Rossis become next door neighbors and life is never the same again.
July 2019
Jesse O’Brien receives the phone call she never wanted and never expected. Her frightened sister, Joyce, tells her, “She’s missing.”
June 1979
On the day Jesse’s mother’s marriage fell apart, her face was slathered in snow-white cold cream, everything but her mouth and small circles around her eyes covered. She wore a plastic cap to dye a few gray hairs snaking through her thick brown waves and a pink polyester housedress.
Annie O’Brien, usually calm and cheerful, is livid as her husband tells her he’s leaving her and their five children for a woman who looks like Barbie.
Stunned, Jesse follows her furious parents outside as her father loads his suitcases into his Alfa Romeo and her mother loads a pie into her hand and heaves it at her father then waters his face with a hose.
When the dust settles, the Alfa Romeo roaring down the street, the cold cream now mixed with cherry pie filling, the shattered O’Brien family meets the Rossi family who have just moved in next door: Tommy, a Vietnam vet who looks like a motorcycle gang leader; his sister, Liliana, who believes she’s a mermaid; and Tommy’s five kids. They are mildly surprised at the family drama, but eager to get to know their exciting new neighbors.
Five kids plus five kids equals ten, and the adventures begin with an ending no one saw coming.
Inspired by Cathy Lamb’s childhood, Ten Kids, Two Lovebirds, and a Singing Mermaid is a funny, sweet story about life changing pies and Slip ‘N Slides, swearing parrots and sunny days, and mending aching hearts…together.
Women's Fiction | Romance Contemporary [Independently Published, On Sale: April 30, 2024, Paperback / e-Book, ISBN: 9798321349564 / ]
In this warm, funny, thoroughly candid novel, acclaimed author Cathy Lamb introduces an unforgettable heroine who's half the woman she used to be, and about to find herself for the first time- Two years and 175 pounds ago, Stevie Barrett was wheeled into an operating room for surgery that most likely saved her life. Since that day, a new Stevie has emerged, one who walks without wheezing, plants a garden for self-therapy, and builds and paints fantastical wooden chairs. At thirty-five, Stevie is the one thing she never thought she'd be: thin. But for everything that's changed, some things remain the same. Stevie's shyness refuses to melt away. She still leaps over fences and recycling bins to avoid chatting with her gorgeous neighbor. The Portland law office where she works has assigned her to The Case That Will Rip Your Heart Out, and her dysfunctional family-the aunt, uncle, and cousins who took her in when she was a child after a tragedy, offer up tears, laughter, smashed bridal bouquets, plastic blow up dolls, and a dramatic confession on live TV. To top it off, her once supportive best friend clearly resents her weight loss. By far the biggest challenge in Stevie's new life lies in figuring out how to define her new self. Collaborating with her cousins to plan her aunt and uncle's problematic fortieth anniversary party, Stevie starts to find some surprising answers-about who she is, who she wants to be, and how the old Stevie evolved in the first place. And with each revelation, she realizes the most important part of her transformation may not be what she's lost, but the courage and confidence she's gathering, day by day. As achingly honest as it is witty, Such A Pretty Face is a richly insightful novel of one woman's search for love, family, and acceptance, of the pain we all carry-and the wonders that can happen when we let it go at last.
When not curled up with a good book, Marie Bostwick can usually be found in her office, trying to write one.
A New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of eighteen uplifting works of historical and contemporary fiction, Marie’s books are beloved by readers across the globe.
Drawing on her lifelong love of quilting and her unshakable belief in the power of sisterhood, Marie’s popular Cobbled Court Quilt series has been embraced by quilters and non-sewers alike. Her standalone books have also found a passionate following among lovers of women’s fiction. Marie’s novel, The Second Sister” was adapted into the 2018 Hallmark Hall of Fame feature film “Christmas Everlasting”, starring Patti LaBelle. Marie’s most recent novel, Hope on the Inside, was published in March 2019 and was chosen as a Reader’s Digest “Select Editions” book.
Marie’s latest endeavor is Fiercely Marie, a lifestyle blog that encourages women to live every minute and love every moment. She is currently working on her next novel, “The Restoration of Celia Fairchild”, which will be published by William Morrow in the spring of 2021.
Marie lives in Washington state with her husband and a beautiful but moderately spoiled Cavalier King Charles Spaniel.
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