Episode 122: Debra Thomas, Award-winning author of Luz, and Josie and Vic
Debra Thomas' first novel, Luz, won several awards including the Sarton Award for contemporary fiction. Her second novel, Josie and Vic just released.
A brother and sister story of love, loss, and forgiveness, it's been described as "an unforgettable, heart-filled, heart-filling novel”(Gayle Brandeis).
Debra shares her inspiration, the story of that outstanding cover design, her best writing advice, and several book recommendations.
Check out the book club questions and Debra’s recipe for Quick and Easy Manicotti on Book Club Bites.
Books & Links Mentioned:
Josie and Vic by Debra Thomas (Bookshop.org / Amazon.com )
Luz by Debra Thomas (Bookshop.org / Amazon.com )
Debra’s essay about the origins of the Josie and Vic cover
Cover Stories, Anne Patchett’s essay is featured in her collection, These Precious Days (Bookshop.org / Amazon.com )
The Book of Dead Birds by Gayle Brandeis (Bookshop.org / Amazon.com )
Drawing Breath by Gayle Brandeis (Bookshop.org / Amazon.com )
Dust Child by Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai (Bookshop.org / Amazon.com )
Hello Beautiful (Oprah's Book Club) by Ann Napolitano (Bookshop.org / Amazon.com )
The Dog of the North by Elizabeth McKenzie (Bookshop.org / Amazon.com )
Full Disclosure: We are part of the Amazon and bookshop.org affiliate programs, which means Lainey or Ashley get a tiny commission if you buy something after clicking through from link on this website.
Connect with the author:
Transcript:
** Transcript created using AI (so please forgive the typos!) **
Lainey Cameron
Debra, thank you so much for joining me. It is such an honor to be here on such a popular podcast, I would so honored to be here.
Debra Thomas
Thank you.
Lainey Cameron
Oh, you're welcome. And it's hard. You know, the hardest part of each season is choosing which books to focus on, because we really do want to choose among the best. And that's why I picked you to come on the podcast because I saw all of these awards, including the Sarton Award for contemporary fiction that your first novel Luz won, and it was one of those moments where I was like, ah, How did I missed that one? I need to her on for the next book. So I'm so glad you're here. And hopefully we'll talk a little about both books. Let's start with where are you joining me from today?
Debra Thomas
I'm in Simi Valley, California, which is in the northwest corner just outside of Los Angeles. But it's right near this beautiful rural area with farms and horses. So I have the best of both worlds. Interesting because horses made it's made their way into this book. I had a chance to read this one. It's lovely. It's heartbreaking. And it's got so much emotion in this book. Well Oh, don't we always even we don't write autobiographical fiction. We put parts of ourselves or parts of our life in our books, and I am a horse lover. I came to horses late in life, but I have horses. So yes, they are in the book.
Lainey Cameron
Oh, that's funny. You know, horses were my first love. I think from like five years old. I was deeply deeply in love with horses. In fact, it took me a very long time to like any humans more than I liked horses.
Debra Thomas
I can understand that.
Lainey Cameron
So let's talk about the book for those who haven't heard of it yet. And it's just released. They probably don't know much yet. So why don't you tell us a little bit about Josie and Vic.
Debra Thomas
Josie and Vic are a sister and brother with a very special bond because when Josie was only five and Vic was 11, their father left them. And Vic was like a second parent to her. In fact, the first line of the novel is Vic had always been her hero. Now the novel opens decades later, they're in their 40s. And Vic has just experienced a terrible tragedy. He's lost his family in an accident. And he lives in Los Angeles and Josie who lives on the East Coast leaves everything and comes out to be with him to help him through this terrible tragedy and to help them get back on his feet. If possible. This estranged father will come back into the picture. Josie is 19 year old singer songwriter daughter, Ellie who's a bit rebellious.
Debra Thomas
There's tension between the mother and daughter. She comes that summer. And so the family come together with a lot of tension and friction, but they are given an opportunity to reconnect, which is really the heart of this novel. And it also touches on immigration border issues, which means a lot to me.
Lainey Cameron
Yeah, let's when we get to the inspiration part I want to hear about that because that was common in both of your novels. And as someone living as an immigrant in Mexico, that spoke a lot to me as part of your themes. So let me just read one quick review or blurb from Gail Brandeis, who is the author of Bead Birds and the winner of Barbara Kingsolver's Bellwether prize.
Lainey Cameron
So here is what she had to say and it's beautiful. Debra Thomas is a magician. Her artistry, empathy, and gentle humor allow Josie and Vic, a novel grounded in the deepest of grief, to shine with hope, with compassion, with the reminder that connection and service offer us paths toward healing. An unforgettable, heart-filled, heart-filling novel. Wow. What a great description of the tone of this novel.
Debra Thomas
I was just so touched to see that we put part of that on the front cover. I was so moved and grateful.
Lainey Cameron
Having read it, I think she caught really well like the tone of there's grief, but there's hope and there's light, and there's family and family pulling you through it because they care the most. You really caught that brother sister relationship amazingly well, I thought.
Debra Thomas
Thank you. Thank you
Lainey Cameron
inspiration. Where did the idea for Josie and Vic come from?
Debra Thomas
Actually, I began writing this back in 2002, an early draft. Now keep in mind that was right after 911. And it was also when I was in the midst of being an immigrant rights activist. I had taught English as a second language to adults, and I live in Los Angeles. And I was hearing about the deaths in the desert of migrants. And I got quite involved. And I met a wonderful volunteer group called water stations project. And they would go out in the desert and leave water marked with blue flags in the hopes of preventing the deaths from dehydration. So I wanted to write a novel that talked about people coming together after a great tragedy or great loss and how we need that love and support to move forward but also about the resilience of the human spirit. How even when we do experience, struggle and suffer and think of Ukraine even that how people just keep going, as the poet Rocha says life keeps calling to us. And that's what I wanted to capture. So I brought my beautiful characters Josie and Vic who had actually been in a short story that I wrote decades ago. And I brought them up to contemporary times and put them in the situation that I just described.
Lainey Cameron
It's beautiful. There's a theme throughout the book of and I might not say this right because it's a word I've only ever seen written. never spoken Pangea. Can you talk a little bit about that theme?
Debra Thomas
Yes. See, that's kind of what I wanted to capture, that we are all connected. Pangea is the super continent. That was all one landmass. And then due to the tectonic plate tectonics, it pulled apart into our separate continents. But we were all one we were all connected. And so the short story I spoke about that Josie and Vic came from what's called Pangea because she when she was a young girl, I think she was like 13. And her brother's getting ready to go to Vietnam. She loves geology, and she has studied about Pangea, and she feels like her life was pulling apart because her father had left and now her brother is leaving. So in this novel, Josie reflects on this, but over a course of experiences in the book, she begins to see it in a different light. For me, it's the metaphor that we're all connected. That's what I hope to convey. Also, in the book, I ended up using different forms to make that point that all the different pieces can form a whole, I have alternating points of view, different time, timelines, in the chapters, there are le song lyrics or chapters, there are emails for chapters and letters. And I wanted all those pieces to form a whole, which is the metaphor of the novel overall.
Lainey Cameron
I thought it worked really well. Like sometimes when you have different formats, it takes the reader out of it, and you're like, oh, wait, no, I'm switching to an email or no switching to song lyrics. But to me, it was very continuous the way you did it, and flowed all the way through like, I never felt taken out of it by the changes in format. So as a reader, I was just engrossed in the story as we went.
Debra Thomas
Oh, that's so good to hear. I tried to at the end of one chapter, lead into what would be the next. So if there was a flashback chapter, there was a statement at the end of the previous chapter that got you ready for that flashback chapter. So I hoped it all came together.
Lainey Cameron
And I want to ask you about the cover. This cover has a beautiful image. It's like a sunset over water, I think. And I can see in the video that is actually an image that is the same on the wall behind you. Can you tell me a little bit more about that?
Debra Thomas
Oh, yes. Well, you know how difficult it is to come up with an idea for your cover. This was really a tough one with a brother and sister. And you know, we thought about a family tree. But then I said, I want colors. And I want light coming out of darkness. And we really struggled finding something. And one day on Facebook, a friend of mine named Barbara Craig, who was a quilt artist posted a bunch of quilts that she had made. And I loved this one that you see, she gave it to me. And one day, I was listening to an Ann Pratchett. An essay called My Cover Stories. And it's a beautiful essay, you gotta check it out. But long story short, is she mentioned that when she was trying to come up with an idea for her latest book, and I think Oh, I thought that's it. It's Barb's beautiful quilt. And so long story short, we had to get permission from Hoffman, California fabrics, who gave us permission to use the fabric.
Lainey Cameron
Wow, it's beautiful. And I would never have guessed that it came from a quilt. Wow.
Lainey Cameron
That's, that's amazing. You look up close on the cover, you can actually see some of the lines of the quilt. And I like the idea that a quilt is like it's homespun comfort. You know, a quilt has that meaning and of course, family and what Josie gives to her brother during this difficult time. That's beautiful. And for those who have not yet visited the website at bestofwomensfiction.com. We always put an episode page up and it has the cover. It has links to each of Debra's books and the book she's about to talk about later in this episode, I'll see if I can find that article, that essay you were talking about and include the link to that there too.
Debra Thomas
Oh, great. And then I have an essay on my website, which tells this whole story and how it evolved. There's a little bit more to it.
Lainey Cameron
So let's talk a little bit of editing because I'm interested in was this as your second book, a different experience than Luz, your first book, when it came to editing your work? What does your process look like?
Debra Thomas
With this one, it wasn't so much editing, because keep in mind, I started out with a manuscript that I had set aside I think it was about 130 pages. So it wasn't editing it was adding. And that's when I added the Pangea metaphor. That's when I added the horses and the equine veterinarian that are in there. He takes care of Josie sources. When she goes to Los Angeles, a relationship between them starts to evolve a friendship because what I realized that what this novel was about was about this family about, you know, developing what was going to happen to them through the journey. Initially, when I first started writing it, I wanted to be more about the immigration issue. And like I was calling it blue flags, but I realized it was really about the sister and brother. And so for editing, it was more like adding more and developing it more. Although I belong to a writing critique group called the RB GS, we meet once a month and I would submit quite a bit of this to them and got a lot of feedback from them as well as I used a few BETA readers as well, which is you know what we commonly do that was my editing process. I guess that's my response to that.
Debra Thomas
Did it look different for Luz, your your first book, which was a multi award winner. Was it a similar process? Or was it very different?
Debra Thomas
You know, with Luz it poured out of me now keep in mind Luz is about a young Mexican girl searching for her missing father who was a migrant farm worker, all my characters are from Mexico or Central America. And of course I hesitated you know whether I was appropriate to write the story, but I had had so many experiences. And in Gayle Brandeis, this class at UCLA, in response to an assignment, I just started writing in this young girl's voice almost voice and it just poured out of me, it was an incredible writing experience. So it just flowed. I might have worked on the opening a few times. And, uh, yes, in fact, I later with the help of another mentor, Elizabeth McKenzie, she told me try to bring it up to date a little bit. And so I ended up book ending it with a different opening, a contemporary opening, and a different closing that brought her story in the past, up to date to now. So that was one editing I did with Lux with Josie and Vic, it was more adding and expanding to an original manuscript.
Lainey Cameron
That's great. And I love that you mentioned to people who helped you along the way, one of my favorite things in the writing community is we all learn so much from each other over time. And so I'm interested to know, this is your second novel, you're a multi award winner, what advice do you give now to other writers,?
Debra Thomas
The one thing that I would tell whether you're a beginning writer or an experienced writer, for me, it's trust the organic process, and what I mean by that is, Trust yourself, trust your instincts, your unconscious, whatever you call it, because for me, the most exciting writing happens when I sit down, and sometimes I'm not sure where I'm going, and I just start writing and it comes out. And I would say, if if you have any hesitation, if you feel like you have writer's block, you don't sit down and write and see what comes out. Just keep writing and writing, you can always go back and you know, look it over again, see if it worked, get other people's input, but just right, don't wait for the muse sort of the inspiration.
Lainey Cameron
It actually helps in some ways, because you can just sit there and go, Okay, I'm afraid Why am I afraid? Maybe I can write about being afraid. But like, if you just see it as what it is, which is just fear, fear of something fear of judgment, fear of getting it wrong fear of having to rewrite it, whatever that fear is, it helps me just to kind of label it and say, Okay, this is just fear. Fear is something I can live with. I can I can write through it.
Debra Thomas
And nothing's perfect. No matter what we write, it's not going to be perfect. Don't be afraid. Don't try to be perfect. Just write you can always go back and make it better and get other people's input. Just right.
Lainey Cameron
That's, that's great advice. Wonderful. Well, have you read anything good recently, I always love to get recommendations from phenomenal writers.
Debra Thomas
I am a voracious reader. I just finished Hello Beautiful. You know that everyone's talking about Anna Napolitano's new Oprah recommendation. It's beautiful talk about family and love and connection. And then I read Dust Child by Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai . I had to look up here to make sure I pronounced it correctly. Her beautiful novel about of Vietnam, and Vietnamese admirations, who were born from Vietnam, Vietnam vets, as well as Vietnamese women, and they search for their parents. And as the vets search for their their children, beautiful novel written from many different points of view. And then last, I just finished Dog of the North by Elizabeth McKenzie, which is quirky and charming, and delightful. And it's a road trip novel, but it's again about family and search for family. So those are my three recommendations.
Lainey Cameron
Oh, great. And I love Dust Child so much. I actually gave away two copies in my newsletter last month. I just was in love with that book. Like it's so well written. And I love the first book as well The Mountains Sing, but I actually actually told the author that I liked the second one even better, I thought Dust Child was a masterpiece. It was just fabulous.
Debra Thomas
I didn't want it to end. I felt the same way.
Lainey Cameron
So that now I have to go read your other two recommendations based on the fact that I adored one of the three now I have to go read the other two.
Debra Thomas
Oh, you will you will love them.
Lainey Cameron
So anything I haven't asked you that you'd like to talk about. I mentioned you love doing book clubs, because both of these would be great book club book club books.
Debra Thomas
Well, I would love to do book clubs, whether it's virtual or locally in this area, but I think the only other thing I might add has to do with why I included animals. There's a dog, a Siberian Husky, and there's three horses and Josie and Vic and again, all things are connected. We're all connected. We're all interdependent and I wanted to capture how animals open our hearts to tenderness or how that special bond of comfort and healing but they also bring us together think about walking dogs, the people you meet. I think about even family members when you're sitting around watching a kitten flipping around the house how it makes us laugh together. There's a joy and beauty in animals, and it's a big part of my life. And I wanted to include that in the book.
Lainey Cameron
Oh, I love that I miss animals like I, like I said, I'm a big horse person. I'm also a big dog person, especially big, big dogs, but it doesn't go with lifestyle. Well, we're in trouble, right, we're nomadic, we move around. And so I could never do that to a poor dog. But it's probably the piece I miss the most about being nomadic is not being able to have a dog. To be honest.
Lainey Cameron
You could always visit shelters or sanctuaries when in your travels and love on them. You know, that's something.
Lainey Cameron
That's a good idea, actually. Um, Lyn Liao Butler, who was a past guest on the podcast, Lyn fosters dogs in particular daschunds. But also whenever she goes to Hawaii, she goes and walks the dogs dogs at the shelter, you can adopt them for a day and take them out and show them around the island. And apparently it's good because they were a little bit so that if someone sees the dog while you're walking it, you can talk about the fact that it's available for adoption. So it's like a walking billboard for a beautiful dog. I had never heard of that before she introduced me to it.
Debra Thomas
That's a beautiful thing for anyone, especially if you feel you can't handle being a full time dog owner, you could do that, you know, volunteer in your community. And even as I've just said, with horse rescues, just going to a horse rescue or sanctuary. They love you to just love on the horses, they can hang their heads over the fence of a corral and you can just pet on them. You don't have to get up too close to them. So love animals.
Lainey Cameron
Okay, new goal, new life goal you've given me here, I'm gonna have to look into this more. Well, we will put the links to your social media on the web site bestofwomensfiction.com. But where do you hang out the most like if folks want to interact with you? Where's the best place?
Debra Thomas
Well probably be Facebook. I'm on Instagram and Facebook, but everything is DebraThomas author. There is a famous ice skater named Debra Thomas. So I have to add author to everything. My website DebraThomas author.com. And Facebook, DebraThomasauthor, Instagram, DebraThomasauthor.
Lainey Cameron
Perfect. Well, I will say that this is a beautiful, just a touching novel. It's one of those novels that really gets to you and like gets deep inside and you remember it after you read it. So congratulations. And thank you so much for joining me today.
Lainey Cameron
Oh, thank you for having me. I really enjoyed talking to you.