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About Debi
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Otherwise, keep reading.
MOCK INTERVIEW
Debi, you look so familiar. I’m sure I’ve seen you before, but I can’t quite place where.
I get that a lot. People are constantly mistaking me for celebrities like Kate Winslet, Angelina Jolie and Hillary Clinton. Well, actually, just Hillary. Then they walk away shaking their heads, which I’ve decided means that they feel sorry for Hillary.
But you are famous, aren’t you?
Not really, no. But I do have a reputation within certain circles.
Care to elaborate?
Let’s just say that I’m banned from some discount stores for obsessively rearranging their clearance bins. To this day, I maintain that it’s thoughtless and illogical to dump hundreds of DVDs into a mesh container when there are actually only about eight different titles.
What other quirks do you have?
I like apricot jam on my toast, apricot syrup on my pancakes and dried apricots as a snack, but I don’t like fresh apricots. Cue my mother saying: “That’s because you’ve never had really good fresh apricots. If you could taste the ones I get at the farmer’s market, you’d change your mind.” Cue my response: “No, Mom, I won’t, but thanks for playing.”
So do you have a lot of problems with your mother?
Not at all, especially since we upped my medication and changed hers. I consider my mom to be one of my best friends. When she visits me, we hang out for hours – sometimes just the two of us but often with my other friends who all love her. You gotta know two things about my mom: 1) she loves to have a good time, and 2) she loves to be in charge of having a good time. Sure, she frustrates me sometimes, but it’s nothing a little chocolate can’t cure.
If things are so great with your mom, then what motivated you to write Smotherly Love™ – a book about mother-daughter conflict?
My main motivation was the deadline – especially because I had already cashed the advance from my publisher. Besides, mother-daughter issues are universal. We all have stories to tell about our moms driving us nuts, or our daughters aging us before our time. There’s a lot of comfort in knowing we’re not alone.
Do you use humor in everything you write?
Pretty much. But writing humor is hard work. My husband Neal has often observed me glaring at my laptop’s screen for hours. His standard comment is, “For a humor writer, you don’t smile much while you’re working.” That’s because I’m deep in thought about just the right phrasing to make something brilliantly, bitingly funny. Either that or I’m watching OK Go’s treadmill video on You Tube and wondering where’s the line between dressing like a thrift store reject and a member of a popular alternative band.
Tell us about the fam.
Neal is my college sweetheart. We have two fantastic kids: Elizabeth is 20 and Andrew is 12. We tend to communicate in this weird conglomeration of moviespeak – pulling lines of dialogue from various shows and movies. One of us might quote a character from Lord of the Rings and another will answer with a zinger from Groundhog Day then someone else will chime in with a bon mot from Napoleon Dynamite.
Anything else?
I can’t juggle, speak any foreign language or become invisible at will.
Er… Anything else relevant?
Oh. Just cruise around the Web site and send me a question if you have one: debi (at) debistack.com. Thanks for stopping by.
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