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Emotional Bliss: Talking with Katherine Center

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Katherine Center

In this episode of the First Fifty Pages, Katherine Center joins Kelsey and Jenn to talk about how stories are uniquely able to change our lives, the aggressively misunderstood happy ending, and why love stories matter. Let the banter begin!

Jenn Delperdang  

On this episode of the first 50 pages, Kelsey and I get to have another chat with one of our all time favorite authors and podcast guests, the incomparable queen of comfort, reads Katherine center.

Kelsey Patterson  

So having written her first novel in the sixth grade, fan fiction about Duran Duran, Katherine was hooked. From then on, she was doomed to want to be a writer. So since then, Katherine Center has become the New York Times bestselling author of 10 novels, including some of our library's favorites, How to Walk Away, Things You Save in a Fire, and Hello Stranger. Her latest book is The Rom-Commers, a connected story to her blockbuster hit, The Bodyguard. Welcome back to the first for two pages. Katherine,

Katherine Center  

hi, it's so fun to be here. Thank you for having me back, of course,

Jenn Delperdang  

and I can't believe it's been more than two years since we last talked and discussed your essay, "Read for Joy." We really love that conversation, and that conversation sparked other conversations across our library, with our colleagues and patrons, and even with our own families and complete strangers. So if listeners haven't got to that episode yet, go back and give it a listen. Visit Katherine's website to read the full essay and check out her awesome read for joy merchandise. It's so beautiful, the essay and the merchandise. They're all beautiful.

Kelsey Patterson  

It's fantastic.

Jenn Delperdang  

But since that time that we got to chat with you, you have written and released the books The Bodyguard and Hello Stranger. We love them. And Happiness for Beginners, which was one of my very favorite of your books, was released as a movie on Netflix starring Ali Kemper and Luke Grimes. So we just want to take a quick second to acknowledge and celebrate all of those awesome things we love. We're like, oh, should a new book come out.

Katherine Center  

I want to celebrate those awesome things. Thank you. Yes, celebrating is good, yeah.

Kelsey Patterson  

And I think I constantly am referencing your "Read for Joy" essay when I'm, you know, talking about books with patrons and how that, you know, reading for joy doesn't mean only reading happy stories, like you can get joy and fulfillment out of a murder mystery, like it's totally up to you. You know? It's whatever you know is your compass to find the best books for you. So your latest book is called The Rom-Commers and has benn getting such great pre-publication reviews, the Fictional Sisters from Instagram have summed up my thoughts on it perfectly. The review states, "You guys, she did it. Katherine center wrote the most perfect rom com ever." It, honestly and genuinely, might be my favorite book of yours, yet, I think I keep saying that every time, but you keep doing it every time. So could you share with our listeners a little bit on what it's about?

Katherine Center

Yeah, I think this is the book that I was put on this earth to write. You know, I think that this is the book that I'm here for. Um, it kind of wrote itself. So it's a, it's a, it's a romantic comedy about screenwriters who are writing a romantic comedy. The main character, Emma is kind of an, I want to say, a failed screenwriter, but she's a screenwriter who never really got off the ground, because even though she had big dreams, her dad got sick, and she wound up having to be his caretaker. And her dad is awesome, so she was happy to do that, but also it meant setting a lot of the things that she wanted to do with her life aside, and as the story starts, she gets her big break, which is to go work as a ghost writer for a very, very famous Hollywood screenwriter named Charlie Yates. And she adores Charlie Yates? He's like her writing god. She loves everything he's ever written, even, you know, movies about sharks and the mafia and stuff she's not even really interested in because she is a rom com person. But she thinks he's such a fantastic writer that she loves him despite her entire personality. You know, she just loves his writing. So she gets to go right with him, uncredited, and rework a screenplay that he's written that is a rom com, but it's terrible. And that's actually the like whenever I have to give like a three sentence sort of synopsis of the story, that's that's what I say. I say he's written a romantic comedy screenplay, and it's terrible. She just got hired to fix it. Let the banter begin, is kind of my my summary. But yeah, so she goes out there to work with him, and it's disaster, but it's a good disaster. He doesn't really want her there. There's a lot of tension early on, but what they find is that they really, you know, their love language is writing, like they just both really, really love to write, and they wind up writing together and having a great time and falling in love. And that is not a spoiler, you know, that has something to look forward to. It's because, like, as Emma says in the screenplay when she's, I mean, in the book, when she's talking about how screenplays work, um, with, you know, with romantic comedies, it's never, will they or won't they? They will.

Jenn Delperdang  

They will.

Katherine Center  

That's not the story question. The story question is not where are they going, it's how will they get there? And so the way that these two characters get there, for me is like the sweetest, swooniest, most uplifting, most oxytocin boosting story that I can imagine. And even to this day, like I am clearly my own target audience, because even to this day, I've got the copy edited, like, PDF on my laptop. And, you know, like, if somebody's mean to me in the grocery store or something, or if I'm just having an off day and I'm feeling weird, I will, like, sneak over to my computer and like, open up this PDF and just read a couple chapters, just for a little oxytocin boost, just the way that these two people banter with each other and tease each other and flirt with each other and push and pull on each other, it just totally lifts me up and just makes me feel so happy. So I really, really love the story. This is, this is, this is like my heart and soul on the page, this book.

And I think you are not the only one that this book, that this writing, is going to have that effect on, because I felt the same way. I love the dialog in the book. We were just talking about it. It's sharp, it's fresh. It. It's, you know, it just doesn't feel forced, and it does lift. Like, I totally get it. It like, reading this up you want to go back to it lifts your spirits. If you're having a bad day, I'm like, I just want to go to that book right now, because this was a bad day and I need something to lift me up. I totally relate to what you were saying. I loved it too. We both did. We just we thought it was it was so good.

I mean, life is a whole series of difficulties and struggles and sufferings and disappointments and all the normal things. I mean, none of that changes, but when you've been able to put a life together for yourself where you're living it fully and you are connected with other people who can support you and look after you and you know and cheer for you, then, you know, you have found yourself a happy ending.

Kelsey Patterson  

We kindof had to fight over who got to read the pre pub copy first. We were like, "Ohhhh."

Jenn Delperdang  

So one of the things that Kelsey and I have figured out that we love to talk about is just the power of story and, you know, the way that it affects readers, and this, to me, really was a love letter to stories.

Katherine Center 

That's my favorite thing to think about, read about, study, you know, deep dive into, and it's like they really are life changing. They really can be so powerful. They can teach us these deep things that we need to learn in our lives that we don't even necessarily know that we need to learn. They take us sort of to this much deeper place than like the prefrontal cortex, you know, they take us way deep down. And that's my whole thing about trying to find your own compass as a reader, about giving yourself permission to read the stories that you feel drawn to, no matter what your high school English teacher might think about those stories, right? Just giving yourself permission to kind of follow your own compass about the stories that are calling to you. Because I think frequently, when you're drawn toward a certain genre or a certain type of story, those stories are speaking to you on a level that's much deeper than consciousness, and they are helping you work through a lot of the sort of tangled questions that we're all constantly working through. And there's something really healing and nourishing about doing that. And it's not even necessarily something that you can put into words, but you just feel it. You feel how it shifts your perspective, or it gives you context or helps your framework, or, you know, suddenly you come through having read a story that just seemed like entertainment or fluff, but you've learned something, and it's something that kind of shifts your own life a little bit. And I think that is really powerful stuff. I think stories are uniquely able to change our lives.

Kelsey Patterson

So, I'm a huge romcom fan, and I have, you know, some patrons that I definitely like talk about rom coms with every time that they come into the library. So we're trading stuff back and forth. And, obviously, your name comes up a lot as well as you know some of the other like, big name authors out there. And I love how you centered this story on the folks who craft these love stories for us and illustrate the impact that a great one can, you know, have on us. So when brainstorming and while you were writing this book, were there any specific rom coms, movie or book that you drew inspiration from?

Katherine Center  

Oh, that's a great question. Well, yeah. I mean, I agree with you that this book is a love letter to stories and the power of stories, but it's definitely also a love letter to romantic comedies, specifically. You know? It's a much maligned genre. It's, you know, the most eye-rolled at I think of all of them. It's this thing that I keep trying to do, which is stand up for love stories. You know, I think we're so, we're so judgmental about them, we're so dismissive of them, we just keep insisting that they're just ridiculous fluff, just as a culture, that they have no cultural value, that they're just total bubble gum. And I just don't think that's right, you know? I mean, I just keep sitting there watching it happen, you know, watching the eye rolls happen, and thinking this is not correct, you know, why do we roll our eyes so much harder at love stories than, say, zombie apocalypse stories? You know, serial killer stories? Why are those more culturally valuable to us? You know? Why do we insist that human love and human connection and romantic love are more ridiculous than zombies? This is sort of my eternal question, like, what's going on with us culturally that we keep doing that? We tell a lot of stories in this culture about people doing terrible things, like we definitely have that covered. I think we do not do as good of a job of telling stories about people authentically, earnestly trying to do good things, and so that's always what I'm trying to do. I'm a little bit of like a salmon swimming upstream trying to get that done.

Jenn Delperdang  

So I have to say, so, Kelsey loves the rom com she does, and I I don't gravitate towards them, but I love a good one, right? Like, I have really loved your books, but I had to have a friend really convince me a long time ago... "No, read it, read it" And I was like, "I don't know. I just don't you know." I'm like, "No, read it." And I've been converted ever since, honestly. But the thing I think that is unique about this book is you can take a cynic who, you know, much like Charlie's character, who doesn't necessarily believe in the rom com, or, like you said, validated, or just doesn't get it. So you could take a reader who doesn't, you know, I think isn't like, "No, I'm not a romance reader," and give them this book, and I really think it might do something to their brain. It might because, like you said, you do take the construction of the story seriously, and it's deliberate, and it is crafted, but it still feels effortless, and it, I don't know, we just can't stop talking about how much we love this book.

Katherine Center  

That's the thing, right? Is that, like the books that I write, feel very conversational. They feel very chatty, like the main characters just talking to you, and when you read them, they should feel effortless. It wasn't actually effortless to make them.

Kelsey Patterson  

No, I'm sure not.

Katherine Center  

But it should feel that way, like, I really, really work, draft after draft after draft to make it feel like your best friend is talking to you late at night, you know, over a cup of coffee or glass of wine, and just telling the truth about her life and just telling you like the best, most entertaining story ever. So that is a part of it. I want it to feel easy, you know. I want it to feel like something you just sink into. I mean, my sort of great dream is always to kind of get people to forget that they're reading it all, and just to have this story kind of just happening, you know, kind of on the movie screen of your mind, and you're just lost in it. The other thing is, I, it is like the books that I'm writing now at this point in my career are, they are rom coms, but they're like half rom com, half women's fiction, right? Is what I would say. Because they do always have an incredibly strong love story. And the love story is always my favorite part, because it's the most joyful part. But there's this other side of things in all of the stories that I write where the characters are having to go through something that's hard. You know, they have pasts, they have struggles, they have incorrect assumptions about life and who they are and who they need to be to kind of get through life. And every story that I write kind of gives these characters an opportunity to kind of reassess some of that and change and be courageous and sort of step up in their lives. And so you get these sort of change arcs that are really much more sort of women's fictiony. And of course that involves struggle and hardship, right? Because that's, in life, where wisdom comes from. So I always make sure to put that stuff in there, because I like to see the change. I like to feel the change in the characters. I want to see them change and grow. But then I also want somebody to take their shirt off! Like I want both. I feel like I should be able to have it all. I want the personal growth. And then I also really, really want the sort of particular emotional bliss that you can only get in a rom com or in a romance. One of the very special things about romance novels and rom coms is that you are guaranteed a happy ending at the end of the story. And you know, I mean, just in case you don't already know, like, if you ever read a Katherine Center book, we will end well, you know, everybody may struggle on the like I feel like my Katherine Center guarantee is that I am never going to run the main character over with a bus in the final chapter of the book. Like I might do it in the first chapter, but I'm never going to end that way, because I always want to bring us to a place where the characters have gone through something hard, but have grown and changed and learned things, and they're sort of better on the other side

Jenn Delperdang  

In the book, as they're, you know, kind of creating and getting into the story, you kind of share bits of that, you know all genres have a promise, you know, it's kind of one. And you kind of just talked about that. And, you know, for people who, you know, we think about those things, then, like you said, a mystery has a promise, and a romance has the promise of the happy ending. But in this book, I had a laugh out loud moment, right? It was such a fun moment when you talk about the aggressively misunderstood happy ending. So, and I don't think we give anything away in talking about that, but I guess, what does that mean to you and, and why did you think it was important to include that in the story?

Katherine Center  

Yeah, I mean, I think we seem, sort of, fixated in this culture on interpreting the concept of a happy ending in a book as... interpreting it in the most ungenerous way possible. Like we're basically always saying that if a person enjoys a happy ending, then they require some kind of full fantasy, Disnified version of life with, like, little birds fluttering around and tweeting. And I don't think that's what a happy ending has to be. And I don't even think that's really what most readers want from a happy ending. You know, I think a happy ending just basically says, and Emma says this in the story, right? That she never reads "happily ever after," as, you know, nothing bad ever happened to anyone ever again. And I don't know if I can quote from the book off the top of my head, but she's basically saying, when she reads "happily ever after," when she thinks about that concept, she's thinking, "Okay, and they and they spent their lives together, and they faced every hard thing that came along, you know, the best that they could, and they made the most of their lives." And that's what I think of as a happy ending. And so for me, it's just really, it's not that, you know, finding people to love in your life, building your family, whatever that means, it's not that any of that makes life suddenly perfect and flaw free. I mean, life is a whole series of difficulties and struggles and sufferings and disappointments and all the normal things. I mean, none of that changes, but when you've been able to put a life together for yourself where you're living it fully and you are connected with other people who can support you and look after you and you know and cheer for you, then, you know, you have found yourself a happy ending. To me, that's what that means.

Jenn Delperdang  

I think to quote you from the book, like, like life keeps you know or pushing us forward, right, like we just we continue moving forward like even, even with all of the things that happen. Yeah.

Katherine Center  

Yeah. Yeah.

Jenn Delperdang  

So of course, avid readers of yours, like us, will delight in the connection you've created between The Rom-Commers and your earlier book, The Bodyguard. What motivated your decision to craft a link between these two stories?

Katherine Center

Oh, I think it just was there from the beginning. You know, it never really felt like a decision. It was just as soon as I knew I wanted to write about screenwriters, I was like, oh, of course, you know this guy, Charlie Yates, is the guy who wrote the movie that made Jack Stapleton famous, and so it's a connected story. You know, they're not, it's not a sequel, and the stories are completely separate, and you can read them in any order, but, yeah, this story is connected to The Bodyguard, and you do have a couple of Jack Stapleton cameos. I mean, depending on how you count, there's at least two, maybe two and a half, or even three. So he shows up a few times because he is actually friends with Charlie. They were sort of broke and just starting out together in LA back, you know, back before either of them got famous and they they're buddies. So yeah, they, there's a great little cameo with Jack Stapleton early on in the story that I had so much fun writing that I, like, stopped everything and called my mom and read it to her. I was like, "Oh, my God, I've just written this thing!" And she's a great audience for that. So yeah, it's so there's a lot of Jack Stapleton in there, just for fun. It's so fun to connect stories and to have universes sort of collide in that way.

Jenn Delperdang  

It is. And it's not something new for you. You've done that before in previous books, and it is kind of just that little delightful moment for readers. You know, people who are reading your books and making those connections.

Katherine Center  

It's fun.

Kelsey Patterson 

In your last few books, I've noticed you've tackled some pretty serious and what, maybe I'd say, are maybe lesser known health conditions, like Sadie's face blindness and Hello Stranger, and Emma's dad's complications following the tragic climbing accident years earlier in The Rom-Commers. What prompted you to tackle these medical conditions in your stories?

Katherine Center

Well, with, with, Hello Stranger, yeah, the whole story is sort of based on this thing that happens to the main character, Sadie, where she's she's in an accident, and she winds up with this condition called face blindness, which is a real condition. I was amazed at the number of people who reviewed it, and they were like, you know, "I was reading along, and I thought, did this author make this up?"

Jenn Delperdang

I thought that.

Katherine Center  

It's real.

Jenn Delperdang  

I was like, yeah, it has to be real. She's not gonna just make this up. But, oh my gosh. I had no idea that there was such a thing.

Katherine Center  

Yeah, it's real. And actually, that, that idea came to me years ago when I was making dinner and I was actually listening to NPR. I was listening to This American Life, and they had done a show, a Valentine's Day show, with a bunch of love stories. And one of the love stories on the show was about a woman who fell in love with a man who had face blindness. That was the first time I ever heard about that condition. And that love story did not end well on that particular show, but it really stuck in my head. And you know, as this frequently happens to me, I'll hear like sort of an unhappy love story, and I'll think to myself, I could fix that story. So I found myself thinking about that story and and and wanting to write a better version of that story, like a story where things end better, and so that's, that's kind of how that one came about, and then that wound up really being the whole premise for that story, in a way that guided the plot in all kinds of different directions that were very new for me. Like I definitely was trying a lot of stuff that I haven't done before, which I think was, you know, is always a good thing. And then, yeah, and then, you know, I mean, one of the big struggles that we have, I think, in modern life, is, is various sort of physical illnesses and ailments that we all struggle with in different ways, you know, and so for Emma's dad, he has this condition in the wake of a traumatic brain injury, Emma's dad and The Rom-Commers has this condition called Meniere's disease, which is like an inner ear problem, and nobody really knows what causes it, but that that's one that I actually have firsthand experience with, because, when I was right out of college, I lived with a family in their spare room, and the dad of the family got Meniere's, I mean, had Meniere's disease, and it had been very sort of mild. And then right around the time that I was living with them, it got way worse, for some reason that no one could explain, and he was actually up on a roof, doing some work on the roof when he had a, what's called a drop attack, and it felt like the whole world just flipped over and he fell off the roof. And so from then on, for the year that I was living there, there was a lot of medical visits and discussions about how to try and curtail all the effects of this, of this condition that he had. So, yeah, so that's one I actually knew about from my own life, and had always kind of wanted to write about, and then this, it seemed to fit for Emma's dad.

Kelsey Patterson 

And I kind of take it like, as I was reading that. It kind of feels like it's another type of grief for readers to learn about, kind of like, wishing for what could have been, or what was after these medical traumas that it's in, you know, another thing, but in a safe way in fiction that we're able to, you know, learn how people are coping with grief and loss and trauma.

Katherine Center

Yeah, I mean, I actually, really, I think about that a lot. In fact, I think Emma says something about that, like to the reader in the book, where she's like, I mean, there's this moment, maybe I don't know, three or four chapters in where she's like, "Okay, now I have to tell you something really sad. But don't worry. You know, it's everybody's okay now, mostly with obvious exceptions." And then she says something like, "But it, you know, it always makes us better people to, you know, to listen to other people's heartache." And, you know, I really think that it's true that, like, I don't think it's a bad thing for stories to have genuine hardship in them and genuine sadness and genuine grief. I think the struggles in the story make it a more meaningful story. They make it more engaging. They make it matter more. I mean, part of the reason that love matters, love of all different kinds, matters in human life, is because life is hard. You know, we all have to do a lot of suffering and a lot of struggling and having people in your life who can comfort you and make you laugh and make it better is like so essential, right? So these, these books are always kind of an argument for why love matters in human life, and the struggle is part of making that argument. You know, it's where the wisdom comes from, but it's also partly what makes the story matter.

Jenn Delperdang

I didn't write it down, dang it. But as we're talking about this and thinking about it, you said these stories, you know, having this variety of stories is important, because if we don't have... we don't know if we don't have them, like, you know, we we have, you know, it's important to have this range of stories. It's important to have love stories, because we can't imagine them if we don't get to experience them. I'm not butchering what you think, but that's the point of my takeaway from this, that they are necessary.

Katherine Center

I totally know the part that you're talking about, and it's when Emma and Charlie are arguing. And, you know, Charlie really loves, like, an unhappy story where, like, you know, all the mobsters are shot at the end, or like, everybody's eaten by sharks. Like, he writes a lot of movies that are pretty dark, and Emma's trying to write these uplifting, happy rom-commy stories, and at one point she says to Charlie, "Don't you see, if those are the only stories we ever tell, then those are the only stories we have."

Jenn Delperdang  

Yeah, yes.

Katherine Center  

I think about that all the time. It's my first thought every morning and my last thought before I go to bed.

Jenn Delperdang  

Well, you know, we haven't said it 100 times yet, but we loved The Rom-Commers. We loved it. We think, you know, put it on the top of your "to be read list" for the summer. Save it for, like, a really rough week, maybe when you need the oxytocin boost, because it is sure to deliver. No, you're not gonna. You're going to devour it.

Kelsey Patterson  

Maybe try to, like, pace yourself like, "Okay, you can only read two chapters."

Jenn Delperdang  

You'll just go back and read it again and again and it'll be fine

Katherine Center  

Oh, you guys are best! I'm so glad you loved it. Thank you.

Jenn Delperdang  

We did, and we will keep looking forward to all of the new things you do, because you do not disappoint us. You know you don't. We know what we're getting, and we are up for it all the time.

Katherine Center  

Thank you guys for for letting me come and hang out with you. I wish we could do this every week. It was such a joy.

Jenn Delperdang  

It was.

Kelsey Patterson  

We could build it into our schedule. Be like, "Ummm, we can't be at the library today. We have to talk with Katherine, sorry."

Jenn Delperdang  

I know Kelsey and I thought while we're just, like, listening. We're like, "Oh yeah. We have to ask good questions."

Kelsey Patterson  

"Oh yeah. We do have questions to ask."

Jenn Delperdang  

"We got to keep this going. We can't just listen."