Author Confessions: Viola Shipman
On learning to cherish yourself, trusting your words and telling the stories you believe in.
There’s a moment in The Page Turner, Viola Shipman’s brand new novel, when the main character Emma’s grandmother tells her, “The greatest romance you will ever experience is a love of self, and the greatest love story takes place right here.” Then her grandmother touches her heart.
It is one of dozens of insightful moments in this saccharine, humorous and deeply felt novel out today from Viola Shipman. You’ll polish it off in a day or two! It’s funny too because I met Viola (pen name for Wade Rouse!) at a book event on eastern Long Island a few years ago and he has so much heart, insight and humor that it’s no wonder I adore his novels.
I loved the premise of The Page Turner from the start. Our heroine, Emma, is the daughter of two literary authors who own their own small press and churn out fiction geared toward the intellectual elite. Her dream: To be a romance novelist. What happens next is so much fun to watch. I invited Viola to drop by and chat about the new novel and all things publishing.
Welcome, Viola!
How is The Page Turner different or similar from your other books?
I call The Page Turner very Viola but also very different. I am writing about the foundational themes that have always interested me – love, family, friendship, getting knocked down by life and forging on with fight, hope, grit and gratitude – but I’m tackling bigger issues in this novel: Ego, misogyny, the corrosiveness of wealth and secrets, the necessity yet evils of social media, the difficulties of being an author today, the challenges facing the publishing industry, plus why we are so quick to judge others – as well as the books we read – by a quick glance at our collective covers. The Page family is not sweet and perfect.
I think that’s why I loved this book so much. I LOVE stories of rich people behaving badly, then add in the element of the main character’s parents’ intellectual snobbery and you had me hooked. Where did this idea come from?
I recently signed a new, three-book contract, and it made me stop—as I turn sixty—to think about what types of books I wanted to write. That led me back to my Ozarks grandma—my pen name, Viola Shipman—and to how a woman who never finished high school used her voice and her stories to inspire me, and who first led me to the things that would save me as a gay kid in rural America in the 1970s: Books, reading and writing.
Voice was the big idea I had for this novel: Voice is all we have as souls and writers, but we often don’t trust our voices out of fear (failure, we want to fit in, we want to be liked, we don’t think we’re good enough … whatever). We also don’t believe anyone wants to hear our voices, so we silence them, which is the worst thing we can do as people or writers because we are silenced before we even begin to change the world.
Do people ever accuse you of not writing "serious" enough? It’s not often you see a male writer with pastels on the cover, but of course, it’s one of my favorite covers I’ve seen this season.
Yes, I’ve been accused for not writing “serious” enough. It used to bother me in the past, but it no longer does. I sort of wear it as a badge of courage knowing that my writing may not appeal to certain critics who feel that keeping emotion at a distance is best in both life and literature, or that overt sentimentality is a weakness in life and literature (and to be clear, I started my career writing nonfiction, and I held nothing back, yet hope and seeing the good in the worst still came through, and even that bothered some critics). They couldn’t be more wrong, and I actually feel sorry for them.
I grew up reading everything with my grandmothers, who not only volunteered at the local library but also would pull romance novels off the rounders in the grocery store and take them to our log cabin. As I grew older, I read the books they did, from Erma Bombeck and Shogun to Tom Wolfe, Harold Robbins, Judith Krantz and Jackie Collins. Many of the so-called “romance novels” featured women who overcame great obstacles in their lives to find love and success, or who were redefining literature by being the ones in charge in a male-dominated world. I learned to love all kinds of writing, but realized I was drawn to stories—like the stories my grandmas shared with me about their lives and the books we read together—that were “universal” in nature, ones that center on love, family and friendship.
Much of The Page Turner centers on what I’ve experienced writing fiction: Why are books that focus on “women’s issues” often deemed less than by some critics and readers? I ask in the novel why books that center on female characters and the issues of their lives—all of our lives—labeled as chick lit, or fluff, when other novels are simply called literature? Why are stories that center on the most important parts of our lives considered less worthy of attention and wide readership if they do not include blood, murder, bad words, or seek to intentionally divide us? All of this has inspired my writing journey and Emma’s in the novel.
And yet … my 2026 novel, Thank You for Being A Friend, will certainly shatter some preconceived notions regarding my writing. It will be published in hard cover next spring under my own name, Wade Rouse. It’s a hilarious and deeply poignant exploration of family, faith and friendship featuring four men of a certain age (“The Golden Gays”)—each similar in personality to the characters on The Golden Girls— who not only perform a popular theatrical show celebrating the sitcom but also live communally in a beautiful mid-century home in Palm Springs until age, illness, estrangement and secrets test their friendship pact. I couldn’t be more excited to share it with the world.
Editor’s note: This will definitely be number one on my TBR list for next year. “The Golden Gays!” How clever. I love it.
Did you come up with the title The Page Turner? How did it evolve as you were writing it?
I did, although the original title for The Page Turner was The Mighty Pages. As you well know, most authors lose the title battle with their publishing team (lots of input is sought in publishing these days, often too much), but my publisher always allows me to come up with alternative titles that I end up loving just as much, and this title fits the storyline perfectly.
One of the very first things I wrote in The Page Turner—which is, at its heart, a tribute to how books and reading not only change us but often save our lives—was the following, and the story evolved from its heartbeat:
Books are a chance to right the wrong in the world, an opportunity to rewrite ourselves. We can reimagine and reinvent, see the world in an entirely new way simply by turning a page.
It’s only by listening to that voice within us – the one that speaks to us late at night, the one calling to you right now, the one we try so hard to ignore because we just want to fit in and we just want life to be less painful – that we can bring our stories to life.
Because when we do, our words are no longer our words, our stories are no longer our stories, they belong to you, the reader. You make them your own, and, when you do, for a moment, the pain eases, the words are no longer jumbled, your heart is Super Glued back into place once more, it is whole, we are one, and the world actually makes sense again.
If even for a single, mighty page.
That is absolutely beautiful. I remember reading it and thinking: This man can write DEEP. I love that you write under a pen name. For those of you who don't know, the author publishes under Viola Shipman, the name of his maternal grandmother. After all of these years, why is it so important to you that you continue to use her name?
I would not be the person, or writer, I am today without my grandmother. She sacrificed everything for me and my family to have a better life than her. She was a working poor seamstress who never finished high school or learned to drive, and my grandfather was an ore miner who—when that work dried up—raked rocks off farmers’ fields so they could till their crops. Their lives were not easy, and yet they approached each day with gratitude and hope. They remembered what mattered most in this world, something we all forget every day.
My grandma always said, “Life is as short as one blink of God’s eye, but in that blink we forget what matters most: Each other.” No one said my grandmother’s name during her lifetime; she was overlooked by society because she had no education, power or money, and yet by loving unconditionally and teaching me to cherish my “Wade-ness” she was a powerful agent of change.
And if a reader walks into a library or bookstore a hundred years from now – long after I’m gone – and picks up one of my novels, says my grandmother’s name, understands the person she was and the sacrifices she made and, perhaps, reconnects with their own family history to understand how they came to be, then my work will be done and my “blink” will have mattered.
Can you describe a moment in publishing where you threw up your hands and nearly gave up?
Yes, many times actually, but the biggest came in 2012, following the death of my mother. I had published four memoirs—one book at a time, literally on spec, no book contract each time—and my imprint and team was dissolved. I had written a quirky, funny, deeply poignant book about my hair (yes, you heard me right). I called it a hair-moir, but it was about my fascination with my hair over my life and the different hairstyles I’d sported, all woven together with my mother’s battle with cancer and her total lack of ego (she would not wear a wig). It was a really a book about self-esteem: My lack of it, and my mother’s incredible light. There was a lot of interest, but my agent (who is amazing and is still my agent today) could not find a buyer. I felt my career was over. My father went downhill quickly, and I was dealing with his worsening dementia. I became severely depressed. I felt as if I were drowning.
One day, after dealing with my father, I pulled off on the highway and wept. I called my agent and asked if my writing career was over, and she said, “Not as long as you keep writing and keep being you.”
The next trip to visit my father was to help him move out of our family home, and I found my grandmother’s heirlooms (recipe boxes, charm bracelet, hope chest) boxed up in the attic, and an idea hit me out of the blue, and I began to write what would become my first novel, The Charm Bracelet, on top of a cardboard box. I sent early pages to my agent, and she told me, “This is going to be great, but you only get one chance at a debut novel so it has to be perfect,” so I knew it would take me a while to get this just right. So I did whatever I could to “extend my runway” to make that happen: I taught writing workshops. I became a writer for PEOPLE magazine online, waking at five a.m. to cover breaking celebrity news.
Most days, my life was the same as it was when I was writing my first memoir: Working full time and writing at night, my days often going from five a.m. to midnight. My husband believed in me so much he took on two jobs…and then, after three years of writing, my novel sold at auction and concurrently in deals around the world, eventually becoming a #1 international bestseller. That was twelve novels and one memoir ago. I’ve learned to never give up and to continue to write what calls to you. You must stay in the game. I believe most overnight successes in publishing take about twenty years.
Second to that was making a difficult decision to leave a publisher I believed was not doing enough for me and my work, taking a pay cut and moving to a new team. Turned out that was the best decision I ever made.
Being an author is not for the weak.
Darn straight. I’m realizing this more and more. It’s one reason I love asking that question. It inspires me, too. Have any of your novels ever made you cry?
Oh, yeah. Every time. I judge if my books are ready to turn over to my editor after a tenth read and whether I’m ugly crying or laughing hysterically at the same places every time. Specifically, there is a scene in my novel, The Clover Girls—about four girls who become best friends during summer camp in the 1980s—that tears me apart: It’s based on saying goodbye to my mother, and the pain we experience as children and caregivers. My next novel has some gut-wrenching scenes. And my memoirs always bring me to tears, including moments with my Ozarks father in my recent memoir, Magic Season, (about how baseball and the St. Louis Cardinals were the only things to bridge our divide).
Lastly, what was your biggest high in publishing?
Selling The Charm Bracelet—in the U.S. and to about thirty countries—after years of working on it because I thought my career was over. Getting the first movie option for one of my novels (The Secret of Snow) because it was a bucket list item. And having my mom see my memoir, At Least in the City Someone Would Hear Me Scream, featured as a summer book pick on the Today show two weeks before she died. She was the one who pushed me to write: As a hospice nurse, she told me not to live with any regret in life as so many of her patients at the end of their lives did. I felt I had finally made it, even at the hardest time of my life.
Fill in the blank: I'm happiest writing in.....!
My blue robe! LOL! It’s true! I can only write in my lucky robe! And I don’t wash it until I’ve completed a book and sent it to my editor. I’m very ritualistic. And love to be comfortable when I’m writing. I laugh when I see movies or TV shows depict authors writing in couture, gowns, or tuxes.
Wade,I have absolutely fallen off my chair with happiness at the thought of reading your 2026 book the Golden Gays! This is bound to be a best seller. Brooke, thank you for this interview!
What a great interview!