Today’s guest is novelist Marion McNabb and we’re chatting about her upcoming humorous women’s fiction, Some Doubt About It. (Releasing in May 2024.)
Bio:
Marion is a novelist and award-winning screenwriter who studied film at the Tisch School at NYU and graduated from Arizona State with a degree in Theater. She lived for many years in Los Angeles but recently moved to Cape Cod where she lives with her family looking for mermaids and working on her next novel.
Welcome, Marion. Please tell us about your current release.
In this fun, feisty romp, a celebrity life coach collides with her former mentor as both women struggle with the choices they’ve made, the lives they have now, and the legacy they’ll leave behind.
Caroline Beckett is living the dream. A self-help guru with a glamorous clientele and a marriage to a handsome photographer, she’s proof women really can have it all. But one night leaves Caroline reeling, forcing her to reconsider everything she thought she knew about her life―and what (if any) business she has teaching anyone how to live theirs.
Retired professor Devorah Van Buren is spending her time getting herself and her chihuahua, Mary Magdalene, kicked out of local restaurants for causing scenes with tourists. When she learns about Caroline’s rise to success and the personal scandal that’s followed, Devorah has a new purpose: sue her former student for stealing the ideas that made Caroline famous.
Back in her hometown to handle this new problem, Caroline is surprised to find reconnections with not only Devorah but her high school sweetheart too. After the way her life fell apart, Caroline is beginning to wonder if, with Devorah’s help, maybe she can build something better.
What inspired you to write this book?
I started writing this book during the long lonely days of covid. I had originally had the idea of a life coach, a so called ‘success at life’ whose life fall apart while taking a play writing class in Los Angeles a few months before but as the characters became known to me I realized the initial narrative was really coming out in novel form. I have a lot more experience writing scripts – and I’m currently working on the adaptation – but the inner dialogue and the setting, LA and Cape Cod, just filled my thoughts and the words just lined up and made sense. And, I had a lot of fun with it. I traveled to Cape Cod during the latter part of 2020, around Indian summertime, with my kids who were home schooling at the time and being there really fired up my senses. Cape Cod is almost its own character in the story and that is definitely due to our experience there at that time. When the first (horrific) draft was completed, I had the novel edited and copyedited and once I tamed the beast somewhat I started sending it out to agents. That process was its own horror story and It took me almost a hundred rejections until I finally got an agent, Tina Schwartz at the Purcell Agency, who is bright and cheery and absolutely fabulous. And then we sent the manuscript out and it didn’t take very long at all, a couple months, for it to get picked up by Lake Union Publishing. I’m still pinching myself!
What exciting project are you working on next?
Currently I’m working on marketing and publicity for Some Doubt About It. It’s wearing another entirely different hat and I’m enjoying it. Writing can be so solitary and it’s nice to reach out to people or get my face out in front of people and communicate that way. As I mentioned before, I’m also working on the script adaptation for Some Doubt About It as it is now very clear to me to see and tell the story in the visual space. It’s very freeing and I’m loving it. I’m also working on some shorter narratives, one is a children’s book about golf that I’m developing with my boyfriend and that’s a lot of fun as well.
When did you first consider yourself a writer?
Oh, well, I’ve been writing forever but I guess it wasn’t really until I was an adult in my twenties writing some pretty bad scripts and plays that I began to think of myself as a writer. I admired writers, writing, books and scripts so much that I don’t think I had the self-esteem to use that word to describe myself. But once I became a mother and my time was no longer just my own that I really felt compelled to write and I did. I was always a creative person and being home with my kids was wonderful at times but confining as well. I used to get up at five in the morning to write before they got up because I felt like I would go crazy if I had no outlet. If that isn’t a writer I don’t know what is. And then things slowly started falling into place. I was hired as a screenwriter on a preschool animation show. I got that job because my neighbor and friend was the head writer on the show and she read and liked an (as yet unpublished) novel and loved it and asked if I’d be interested in writing animation. And that just sort of got the ball rolling, again, a little slowly but there was movement.
Do you write full-time? If so, what’s your workday like? If not, what do you do other than write and how do you find time to write?
I recently moved to Cape Cod from Los Angeles and my intention is definitely to devote more time to writing. The atmosphere out here is conducive to slowing down and thinking and is working well for me. I don’t know if it will be this way forever but it’s been nice to have this time right now to devote to my work. I tend to write in spurts and when I’m working on something it becomes a bit all-consuming. I’m looking forward to having a little more regularity in my schedule. We will see how it goes!
What would you say is your interesting writing quirk?
I like to write in bed… I have a large office with really beautiful desk set my boyfriend set up for me in front of a large window. It’s up on the third level of our house, right at bird nest level and the property is dotted with mature trees that dance and sway in the wind. It’s truly lovely and absolutely inspired and knowing that it’s there for me is really important to me but the truth is I bounce around the house a lot and I’ll take writing in bed in my pajamas all day long. It’s sort of like, at times, my desk is a coat rack masquerading as a treadmill. But whatever works to get the story told!
As a child, what did you want to be when you grew up?
When I was young I remember wanting to live some sort of bohemian life. I grew up in a small New England town and I dreamed of an artist’s life in California with a funky home with expensive art on the walls, incense burning, scarves draped over lamps, dinner parties with eccentric artists. I got a version of that but I always held on to my New England roots and that’s where I find myself these days. Still a bit bohemian and very much my speed.
Anything additional you want to share with the readers?
I worked and worked and worked for years to earn any kind of success writing. It doesn’t have to be that way, but it ended up being that way for me. I am fifty years old and am just now publishing my debut novel. I think if you have an interest in writing, or anything, don’t give up. Never, ever give up. What’s meant to be yours will be.