Mindy: Today's guest is Debbie Rigaud, author of the YA romcom Truly, Madly, Royally. Debbie joined me today to talk about the rejection journey being similar for scripts, magazine writing and novels, as well as the importance of community, especially that of women in publishing looking out for one another
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Mindy: Most of my audience is comprised of aspiring authors and they love to hear about how a published author attained their agent. So if you could talk about that, I'm sure that they would love to know your story.
Debbie: Odd to say, but I didn't have a querying journey. I had more of a pitching journey that lasted decades. Now my secret dream back in the day was to become a TV writer. This was back when most people wanted to be film screenwriters. So my journey was more of a pitching journey. For book publishing it was more of a circuitous one. I've had two literary agents. I started in magazine publishing in New York City, which felt remote, but sort of adjacent to the book publishing world. And so sometimes you can find some overlap. And my first agent, the wonderful Adrian Ingram, she's a full time editor now. She was a colleague of a friend. She was working on an anthology for African American and Latin X teens. That was back when a lot of teens were picking books up because they related to the characters on the cover. They were picking it up, but it wasn't age appropriate.
Debbie: A lot of times it was a lot of erotica and things like that. So Adrian was working on an anthology with more age appropriate fiction because these readers were grossly underserved. She approached me to work on that. So my agent now is Laura of Laura Dale literary agency. I have Sarah Mylnowski to thank for that. So I'm still pinching myself over this. But Laura Dale heard about me through Sarah and then asked to see my work. She's also Sarah's agent. I know. It's like, when does this ever happen? So I sent Laura A Perfect Shot, which was a romcom I did. It was a Simon Polse romantic comedy back in 2010. And that was when I was still with Adrian Ingram and I also sent her Voila. Open Mic is the name of the anthology that author Mitali Perkins is an editor of. It was about, you know, being an immigrant's kid. I actually was agent-less when there was an open submission for Open Mic. They selected my story, Voila. And so I send those to Laura and she connected with my writing style, my characters. Before that I'd sort of been languishing in limbo land for years. Sarah doing this and you know, just like out of the blue, I didn't even know Sarah was kind of talking to me up around town. It's been amazing ever since. So I've been with Laura since Truly, Madly, Royally.
Mindy: You had these connections through networking and through a relationship with another author. I'm actually familiar with Sarah's work because I worked in a library, a middle school and high school library for about 14 years and I still go back and I volunteer. So Sarah has just tons and tons of books and I'm familiar with her work. And then I'm also familiar with Open Mic because that's a book that we carry.
Debbie: Oh really? Oh my gosh, that's amazing!
Mindy: Yeah. It was a Junior Library Guild selection, correct?
Debbie: Oh my God, yes. The crazy thing about it, and I like actually cried. My story Voila was republished this past spring in Scope Scholastic, which is in middle school classes. They got an illustrator to create art for it and they brought up a lot of different topics of discussion for students and I was able to do the audio version of it that they asked me to read. So it was, it was just, I felt like it was like winning the lottery. Like they're like, Oh, we dug up your old story and we want to publish it. That came just from me sort of seeing that, you know, they were looking for an additional story to include and so I just took a chance and sent it in.
Mindy: That's awesome.
Debbie: Yes. Yeah, I was, you know, hustling. Just trying to keep myself out there and, and that's why it meant so much about Sarah because I really saw it as sort of like women helping women. It's like, when does that happen? Where a woman comes up to you and says, I'd love to sponsor you or I'd love to talk about you. I'd love to like help mentor you, if you have any questions.
Debbie: It's important that we do that for each other.
Mindy: Absolutely. Women to women, we have to help each other out. We have to. Even though you weren't necessarily having a query journey, you were certainly on a rejection journey in terms of pitching for 10 years. Talk a little bit if you can about the differences between as a screenwriter doing pitches and querying and yet the similarities in land of rejection.
Debbie: As a screenwriter I was never in LA, it was always New York based. I did a different route. Like I'm always looking for a different routes. Trying to think outside the box. I was going to sort of the smaller production companies who have sort of had straight to video type of um, stories and and pitching them, looking at, you know, sort of their catalog of material. Just the same as you would do for an agent you're interested in. Like who else does that person represent? How would my story fit in? If not, how can I tweak it? A lot of times they're like, great, this is great that you get a response from them and sometimes a positive response, but then there's a lot of wait and see and the screenwriting world. You might connect with someone but then you might not hear back. It kind of never went anywhere. The rejection, I always related to that, I caught a bus, I caught two city buses to go to school. I would always like be cold and be standing at a bus stop and you'd see a bus in the distance and you're like, yes. And then as it gets closer you realize it's not your bus number.
Debbie: But the way I saw it was while I was grateful for the time that I thought it was mine. It kept me feeling, you know what? This, you know, sub zero degree weather? I can do this. Yeah, sure you get disappointment when you realize it's not yours/ But, hey for the last few minutes you weren't thinking about it.
Mindy: That's right.
Debbie: And then here comes another bus. Those are the tricks that I use with myself. It's wild. When you hear, Oh, it's been X amount of years, you're like, has it been? It doesn't feel like that because you find other things that keep you going. You know, I was always working full time. I was always doing things that interest me on the side. Freelancing and making connections. All the while you're building relationships, those relationships, talking to other people, particularly like women, black people, you know, and just like, Oh Hey, how you holding up? How's it going? What's your next move? I love discussing career moves with people. I think it's so inspiring, I guess, you know, buckle up for the journey, not the destination.
Mindy: And those glimmers of hope. Those are the things that keep you going even when it's not your buss. I love the analogy.
Debbie: Heck yeah.
Mindy: Because I would get rejections. I was querying for like 10 years and I would get rejections, but they were complimentary rejections and they would say, you're a good writer. You're going to make it. This particular book isn't working for me or the genre has passed for the time and I would just be like, Oh, but that's awesome.
Debbie: Oh man, you wouldn't believe like how unprepared I was. Even when I did get there. Like I remember being invited to, this is crazy, but I got invited to Penguin, like to come in and sit down and and I was so unprepared. I was invited on the strength of something that I sent in that they're like, this is amazing, but we just contracted with someone on a book very similar to yours. Do come in, let's chat. I was actually in there, like sitting down talking to top editors and I had no clue how tough that was to have that access. I didn't, I didn't even realize. And also I'm from magazine publishing and there's a lot of rejection there. Like there's a lot of pitching that goes on there. Even if you're on staff, you know, I was on staff and I'd pitch something and we'd get rejected. It's just part of this writing life that I've chosen. That's how I chalked it up too.
Mindy: Absolutely. Rejection forms a callus and you have to have those calluses.
Debbie: You have to have that resilience.
Mindy: Yes, absolutely. You have to have the resilience and those little glimmers of hope. They keep you going. And, and other women and other writers. Um, it's, it's interesting you mentioned how much you love just sitting around and talking about the business or talking about your next move or their next move. And it's so funny that you say that because I find that so often, even the writers that are like my really good friends, when we are together physically, we're not talking about our kids or our families. Whatever's going on in our personal lives, like we'll touch on it. But most of the time we're talking about the industry, we're talking about what's going on in the industry. We're talking about what our next moves are, what the hot genre is, what's going on at this imprint.
Debbie: We don't have a water cooler, do we? We don't, we're not in office spaces. So when we get together, that's how we find each other. And just like, commiserate.
Mindy: Right. And that's part of the reason I started this podcast because I was thinking one day as I sat speaking with other authors and we were just talk, talk, talk, talk, talk, talk, talking. And it was all business talk. I was like, man, as an aspiring author, I could have sat in and just listened to this conversation. I would have learned so much. And so that's part of why I started this podcast, just to have those conversations for the purpose of other people learning from them
Mindy: Coming up. Why a YA romcom might be exactly what some readers need.
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Mindy: So you mentioned your YA romcom Truly, Madly, Royally that came out this summer. Tell us a little bit about that book, but then also it's a YA romcom and the world that we're in right now just feels so bleak. So talk little bit about that book, what it's about and then tell us what you think the rule is of lighter stories in the world that we're living in today.
Debbie: Well Truly, Madly, Royally, yes, came out in July. It's a romcom inspired by Meghan Markle and Prince Harry. So it happens when a girl meets a Prince, the girl's African American girl and the Prince is the Prince of Lander, a fictional European country. Zora meets Owen at prestigious university. So it's a summer program for high school students and she is taking classes on philanthropy, on grant writing because she has big plans for her organization to help these kids in her community that are very small and they often walk to school alone. And so she has a program called the Walk Me Home program. She just has to navigate her desires the reasons why she's there, versus sort of falling for someone who sort of comes with a circus. It's a bit of a risk there. There's a wedding at the end because his big brother's getting married to a lovely lady and she gets to go to that royal wedding.
Debbie: That's a romcom. And I hear you in a world where everything does seem bleak, but I can only offer my life as an example. Being hit with never ending depressing news cycles and see it weaving the most negative and scary narrative of the country. This isn't new news for me, like hearing intense debates, divided families and passionate discussions about politics. Isn't new for me. My parents immigrated to Brooklyn from Haiti in the 1960s so I grew up in the eighties and nineties at a time when baby doc exit, AIDS being blamed on Haitians, always boatloads of desperately fleeing Haitians flashed on the news. And of course in school I get asked questions a lot of times they're ignorant. Many times unkind, like deliberately unkind. And through this I begin to see sort of the importance of not only telling stories that are tough to hear, but like enjoyable to hear.
Debbie: It's important to acknowledge the entirety of a person's experience in terms of using lighthearted stories in tough times. I use my mom as an example. She was a hopeful person who used humor to tell a lot of tough stories the way that she did this, you know, it revealed so much of her layers to me, her emotional intelligence. It kept me hopeful. Truly. Madly, Royally is a light entertaining, but it also touches on tough topics. Self love, racism. I get that from her because that was our coping mechanism. When you're writing for young people, I sort of approach it how a nurse once told me when I went through a tough medical journey, she was like, guard your heart. I was close to letting that harden my heart. When you write for young people, you don't want to harden their hearts. Obviously you want to keep those glimmers of hope that we talked about. And so most stories in YA, middle grade literature, which is why I love it. It's like even if they are heavy reads, we offer those glimmers of hope. We take up that mantle of guarding the hearts of young people.
Mindy: I love that idea of guarding the hearts and I agree with you completely that we do need lighter stories. We always need them. Like right now, the national cycle of course is just completely bat shit crazy and terrible and it has been for years. But like you're saying, it's always been bad somewhere for someone at all times. There's always someone out there struggling. There's always something terrible happening to someone. Having all of those escapes open for anyone at any time is so important. And those light reads--
Debbie: It's important. Yeah. Yeah. And I think it's important not to judge someone for opting for those reads because you don't know their spirit. Some people like to judge you from the face of things. I'm a smiley girl, you know, I can break out in song, but they don't know what I've been through. It's not that it's irresponsible sometimes when someone just steps away from it. For example, I was talking to my brother-in-law the other day who's like always on top of every new story and he was just like, Oh, I took a break. I was like, wow. But he's allowed that.
Mindy: You're talking about not shaming people for what they're reading. You're absolutely right about that. Um, I remember when e-readers first came out, how relieved and happy romance readers were because they could read their books in public and no one was looking at the cover and no one was judging that.
Debbie: Isn't that kind of sad? Doesn't that hurt?
Mindy: Like, yes. Yes, it is sad. No one should ever be judged by what they're reading. That's ridiculous.
Debbie: I feel really sad when you just said that. I was like, my gosh.
Mindy: Yeah, yeah, right. I'll read anything I really enjoy just about anything. I'm honestly not much of a romance reader, but I will read a lighter, like a beach read or, and even the term beach read though is dismissive in itself, right?
Debbie: It's just like, you know, I'll listen to anything. You would like laugh and stuff that I listen to sometimes I'm in the mood to be, you know, like yo, I mean I listen to anything, you know, depends on what I'm in that mood for at the time and it just feeds me at that time. Everybody is going through a journey and you need that nourishment, however you can get it to get you through. You need to see that bus coming even if it's not your bus. And so if a light read gets you there right now, go for it. You know? Yes.
Mindy: Every winter I try to read a really heavy book, like a thick book, like a classic. I try to tackle a classic because I just feel that responsibility and most of the time I really do enjoy them. Over the past couple of years, I've read War and Peace. I read Les Mis. I read Moby Dick. That's what I read last year. I read Moby Dick.
Debbie: And you know, that's a challenge for me. I love a lot of Nigerian literature. That's a good thing to challenge myself with, you know? So I think that's cool that you did it.
Mindy: I do. I like to have a big heavy book to read in the winter. You know, when the wind is blowing around outside and it's like I'm going to sit down with this big heavy book and my comfy bed and I'm going to read this. My nightstand is always kind of like, I don't know, schizophrenic. There's so many different things sitting there and it's, cause I might just, you know, sometimes you really don't want to pick up War and Peace, you're just not there.
Debbie: I relate to that so hard and I think that that's just part of the complexity of being human right. My iTunes. You look through it, you got some word War and Peace equivalents in there. Yeah. You've got some Twilight equivalents in there, you know, so as it should be. It's just how it goes.
Mindy: Lastly, writing tough topics and co-authoring with activist Alyssa Milano.
Mindy: Well you talked about some of your work that has more of a, a weightier tone because you don't shy away from tough topics. You contributed to the YA anthology Dear Bully and your essay that is about not being a passive bystander. So what led you to that essay and why do you think that message is important?
Debbie: There was a lot of things spotlighted in the news cycle about young people being victims to being bullied. And so we said, you know, as writers of young people, we want to contribute. I'm still close to my high school bestie. She mentioned something that happened to her that I played a role in like uh, in defending her. And I did not remember. When she told me about it is when I started recalling it, I didn't even remember and I played a part in it and she said that it meant a lot for her that the time, and that's how we became friends is that I spoke up for her. And now with her this, this story deals with issues of colorism. She's a chocolate gorgeous, dark skinned woman at the time in high school, you know, she was called out for being dark skinned and also, um, it also dealt with bias against immigrants.
Debbie: She's Jamaican and she said that her friends would call and then maybe her mom would pick up back in the day when we had landlines right. And they would say, how come she has an accent and kind of drag her for that. This is stuff that is damaging to spirit. Took her awhile she said she's come to position of self appreciation, self love, she wants more kids to know about this. The challenges that we face, particularly in within the African American community with colorism. As for me, you know, I was like this skinny kid. I just was cool with everyone because I felt like at the time as a kid I was like, okay, you gotta be able to defend yourself. This is East orange, New Jersey. You gotta be able to fight. I'm this skinny girl. I feel like being cool with people. It was my defense mechanism, which is a shame because it's hard to break out of the people pleasing, but it wasn't more so like people pleasing was more so like, like I was just being cool, you know, that was my way of doing things right.
Debbie: I was not the type of person to like mouth off or anything, but apparently at the time she said that I spoke up for her. It kind of just highlighted how uncool it was to talk about her in school. And hearing that I was like, I did that skinny little me? You know? Um, and so I wrote it to say sort of like you just never know what, what you can do to help another person, particularly when it comes to using your voice against this. If skinny old me, used my defense mechanism by being friendly. If somebody like me who doesn't like to get into a physical skirmishes can speak up on it and use your voice in a way that gets a message across, then maybe more can.
Mindy: And I love what you're saying too, that for her, this was a life changing moment for her. This opened up a door where she was like, Oh, people shouldn't talk about me this way. Yeah. For you it was just like, Hey, you were just like, Hey, that's not cool man. Right. Like you didn't even remember it. But yeah, I mean it's not like you beat somebody up in her defense or anything. You just spoke up. That's it.
Debbie: Right. I didn't even have my spinach that day. If someone like me can do it, maybe consider, you know, like speaking up, it just took a voice and someone pointing it out and saying that is not. okay.
Mindy: So I want to talk about another project of yours. You co-wrote Hope: Project Middle-School with activist Alyssa Milano. So tell me about that co-authoring experience. How did you land that job and what was it like to work with such a high profile coauthor?
Debbie: It's been a thrilling experience, very fast pace. So Truly, Madly, Royally is a Point Paperbacks book and my editor who's the amazing, um, Amy Friedman is there. So Point is Scholastic. It's a Scholastic imprint and so is Hope. Hope is the Scholastic book they reached out at after Truly, Madly, Royally, approached me from that. So this was thanks to Truly, Madly, Royally being talked about within Scholastic that these editors thought I'd be a great fit for this project. That's how they got me on board. When I came on, the project was already underway and Alyssa Milano, she's just like a skilled storyteller, you know, she's written a kazillion scripts. She's also written books before. She's written about her love of baseball. She's like super intuitive about characters. If I could just say like, Hope has a lot in common with Alyssa. I think she's, she just has this big heart and she leads with it.
Debbie: We all know about her activism. It was interesting to find out like, you know, her activism started when she herself was a tween. A teen Ryan White, a kid who contracted AIDS, um, through a blood transfusion. Elton John called her and said, Ryan is a fan of yours, so can you just let him give you a kiss on your cheek? And she said, sure. And you know she's been an activist since then. Hope: Project Middle School is, so Hope is a series. It's basically like a mini activist. She's an 11 year old middle schooler. She's passionate about science and she's also navigating entering middle-school, having her friend go a different direction with some of her classes. And so having to sort of stand up on her own. And so the first book in the series is about her finding her voice. And then the next book in the series is just about her helping out a dog shelter that is closing down. It sort of walks readers through the steps of like how to be an activist in a way that a young reader would understand. And then there's Eric Keyes who is the amazing artist, he's the illustrator. And then we're backed by such a cool team at Scholastic, really one of those projects that brings a lot of the joy into writing. We're actually working on the third book. It's going to be a series of four books coming out every six months and the first one comes out mid October and then the next one in April.
Mindy: Lastly, what are you working on now and where can listeners find you online?
Debbie: Aside from working on Hope. I'm working on revisions for a YA romcom. This one is closer to home is called An Arranged Prom, working title. It's sort of like my big fat Greek wedding, for prom. It's about, you know, Haitian American girl. Prom season's here. She goes to an all girl school and her parents set out to arrange her prom. This is actually taken from a page in my life where my eldest sister had her prom arranged. It's a lot of fun and I'm hoping that the revision goes well.
Mindy: And where can listeners find you online?
Debbie: I am a little bit more active on Instagram. My Instagram is fro and a bow, so that's how I used to have my daughter's hair. I'm also at Debbie Rigaud on Twitter.
Debbie: And I try to blog once in a while, but...
Mindy: Yeah, it's tough, man. It's tough. Believe me, I know.
Debbie: You're talking, your blog is looking good.
Mindy: Oh, thank you. But it's not easy. I'm like, I spend... Basically, my whole Sunday is for the blog and the podcast, like the whole day is just set aside to do that.
Debbie: Well, I appreciate your time because it's a great blog, so thank you.
Mindy: I appreciate that you appreciate it, but sometimes it just feels like you're just throwing stuff out in the void. But if I know people are reading and people are listening, then I'll keep doing it.