45. MELISSA WIESNER: Magical realism in romance and an accidental modern twist on It's A Wonderful Life

Melissa Wiesner is mixing love and a touch of magic in "Wish I Were Here". It's a story of wishing you didn't have to be the one to take care of everything for everyone, then discover your govenment identity suddenly vanishes. Of course, our type A heroine has to deal with a free spirit (who is also hot) on her journey to fix the problem. Melissa and I talk all about this novel in this interview.

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Transcript

00;00;03;16 - 00;00;29;11
Speaker 1
Hi. Welcome to the Literary Hype podcast. I am Stephanie Cutter, Literary Hype Woman. And today we're getting into a little bit of magical realism with our author conversation because we're talking about Wish I Were Here by Melissa Wiseman. This book has it's a wonderful life vibes, but you need to listen to this conversation to find out that that's not actually the inspiration at all, which was very surprising.

00;00;29;11 - 00;00;34;22
Speaker 1
To me. But so along goes vibes. So that before you do, here's my conversation with Melissa Lightner.

00;00;38;25 - 00;00;54;08
Speaker 1
Well, welcome to Literary Hype. Very exciting to have you on to talk about your brand new book, Wish I Were Here. So for anyone who hasn't seen this book on social media or in their bookstores by the time this airs, what is this book about?

00;00;54;13 - 00;01;23;15
Speaker 2
Yeah, so this is a book about Catherine, who is sort of a very type, a organized, orderly mathematician who goes to her brand new job as a professor at her local university and unfortunately discovers that her identity has mysteriously disappeared. So she goes in for her training and they say, we have no record of you. We tried to run your background checks.

00;01;23;15 - 00;01;57;20
Speaker 2
The Social Security office has no record of you there are none of that. None of your paperwork went through. And Catherine, who's, of course, quite orderly and or an organized, is like, of course, I submitted everything so it is. So she has to kind of go figure out what happened, like what her identity has disappeared. She basically doesn't exist and in order to figure out what happened, she has to enlist the help of her doorman, who is kind of a very opposites attract person.

00;01;57;20 - 00;02;24;02
Speaker 2
He is very he's a free spirit. He is not quite so organized. He kind of does his makes his own rules. And so, of course, the two of them tracking down Catherine's identity. There are you know, he drinks into and he also includes he also sort of enlists the help of his very big, very quirky, very Italian family.

00;02;24;17 - 00;02;27;22
Speaker 2
Sort of along their journey to figure out what happened to Catherine.

00;02;27;26 - 00;02;37;29
Speaker 1
And you do dedicate this book to your Italian family. How much of your real family members was translated into characters for this story?

00;02;38;02 - 00;03;07;14
Speaker 2
Yeah, I'm going to say I'm Italian-American and my grandpa parents on my mother's side were fully Italian and very sort of very sort of culturally Italian. I dedicated the book to my grandmother, who lived to be 100 and who grew up in a very Italian community in New York City. She was fabulous for all of her 100 years.

00;03;07;14 - 00;03;28;18
Speaker 2
And actually, Luca's mother is very inspired by my grandmother in this book. My grandmother, we actually say this in my house a lot. Like we'll go around being like, you'd be so handsome if you just get your hair out of your face. I because that would like a line that my grandmother would always say. She'd always be like, get your hair out of your face.

00;03;28;29 - 00;04;04;01
Speaker 2
So in the book, of course, Luca's mother has to say that to him. And then that character of Sal is quite inspired by my grandfather, who was very sort of soft spoken counterpoint to my grandmother, who was definitely like the Italian woman in charge in their relationship. Yeah. So so that part is quite inspired by my family. There are no questionable Mafia men in my family, as there are in the book that I know of.

00;04;05;14 - 00;04;14;29
Speaker 2
But so that part was sort of a fun addition. But but there are a lot of little pieces of characters from my life that made it into the book.

00;04;15;03 - 00;04;20;17
Speaker 1
What was the initial spark that got you started with creating this this story?

00;04;20;20 - 00;04;50;07
Speaker 2
Yeah. So this book was actually like very loosely inspired by a true story. There was an I read an article several years ago about a woman in France who a slightly different situation, but through a series of paperwork mishaps. And I don't exactly know what happened, but she was declared to be dead. And so her, like, whatever the French version of your Social Security number was shot down.

00;04;50;07 - 00;05;15;26
Speaker 2
She had no access to her bank accounts, like the by all government purposes, she was had was deceased. And it was actually kind of a very sad story, like she spent many years trying to, like, get her life back and prove she was alive, even though she's like in court being like, here I am, you know? And so when I read that, you know, I thought, well, this is a really sad story, but what if it weren't a sad story?

00;05;15;26 - 00;05;37;08
Speaker 2
Like, how could I, you know, romance and romcoms are all about like the happy, happily ever after. What if what if this was a happy story where somebody, you know, sort of lost everything and had the opportunity to you know, start again, figure out who they are, who they want to be, you know, find family and friendship and community and love.

00;05;37;18 - 00;05;53;03
Speaker 2
So that's kind of what inspired the book was that I don't actually know what happened to that woman in France. It's been a while since I sort of checked in on her, so I probably should and see hopefully she got her identity back. At this point.

00;05;53;05 - 00;06;13;01
Speaker 1
This book feels very it's a wonderful life, but like a more practical reason that you would not exist in our society. So it's like a little, little bit of magic feeling. So what was it like for you to kind of twist this classic in a totally different way?

00;06;13;06 - 00;06;43;00
Speaker 2
That's interesting. I had not thought about it being it was on that at all. I'm actually not even really that familiar with that story. I haven't I haven't seen that movie. So, yeah, but I mean, I in terms of just sort of like the magic twist, it's it's a lot of fun to like add a little magical element my my last book, the Second Chance Year, was also also sort of had a magical twist.

00;06;44;18 - 00;07;11;10
Speaker 2
And I love the idea of magic because I think we spend a lot of time or not. I don't know if we all do. Maybe I spend a lot of time, you know, kind of with I was thinking about like what if like what if you could go back and redo your past or what if you could, you know, just sort of make a wish and something could change and so it's fun to explore that from like from the beginning to the end through a whole story.

00;07;11;13 - 00;07;28;20
Speaker 1
And it's a wonderful life. He's like, I don't want to exist anymore. And then he's just like walking around and no one knows who he is. And he's like running into his wife and she has no idea who she is. So it felt very similar at the beginning. And so I was expecting it to go more that direction.

00;07;28;20 - 00;07;43;19
Speaker 1
But it was so based in a practical problem that someone could find themselves in, in a weird situation. But it's very fun to see a different twist. And knowing that you didn't know makes it even more interesting to me.

00;07;44;12 - 00;07;53;15
Speaker 2
Yeah, well, I know what my next, like, holiday movie is going to be, and it's ridiculous that I haven't seen that because it is such a classic. But I just I honestly.

00;07;54;09 - 00;08;14;21
Speaker 1
I mean, it's fine it's not my favorite. I get into watching it all the time and I'm like, I really don't like this movie. So one of the things that I really loved about Catherine is how so she knows herself and she knows how to take care of herself because she's had to take care of her dad for so long.

00;08;15;29 - 00;08;30;06
Speaker 1
And that kind of goes with the topic that people are talking about online. A lot of the parent ification of the oldest daughter for her, she is the only daughter so talk a little bit about how taking on that responsibilities really shaped this character.

00;08;30;09 - 00;08;56;20
Speaker 2
She was a fun, interesting character for me to create because I think a lot of times if you have kind of a chaotic childhood or you have like a free spirited parent or something, you could go one of two ways, which is like you become like them and sort of have that free spirit yourself. Or you could kind of go the other way and really want things to be quite ordered and controlled and organized.

00;08;57;00 - 00;09;31;04
Speaker 2
And I relate to that more. Like I'm very much sort of an organized type, a kind of person like, you know, for the sort of anxiety girlies who, you know, you know, a lot of that people like that can really relate to Catherine and I definitely can for that reason. And so that's how I imagined that I would react to having sort of like, you know, never knowing where you're going to be living or having your dad, in Katherine's case, like pick her up from school and be like, we're going on an adventure.

00;09;31;12 - 00;09;56;09
Speaker 2
And it sounds really fun. If that happens once. But if that's your whole life, I can imagine how you would want to create your life to be quite ordered and up opposite of that. So, yeah, it was interesting to create that relationship between her father, who is the free spirit, and Catherine, who kind of went the other way.

00;09;56;15 - 00;10;05;23
Speaker 1
Did you do a lot of research into parent child relationships for this book? Because it does heavily deal with relationships on both sides of the parents?

00;10;05;26 - 00;10;34;07
Speaker 2
Yeah, not specifically for this book. I actually have a degree in counseling and therapy, so and I worked for a lot of my career before I became a full time writer in social work. And so sort of naturally that those are situations that I think about when I'm writing anything. I'm heavily influenced by my experience in therapy and social work and those kind of things.

00;10;34;07 - 00;10;39;07
Speaker 2
So yeah, I mean, that's kind of where a lot of that comes from.

00;10;39;13 - 00;10;51;07
Speaker 1
Catherine is a mathematician and you talk a little bit about like her research and stuff. How much research did you do to be able to talk about the math side of things? Because math is methods no fun.

00;10;52;12 - 00;10;54;01
Speaker 2
No, I, I agree.

00;10;56;13 - 00;11;26;22
Speaker 2
And coming from social work and I actually worked in academia for a long time. I worked in the social work department at my university. So that side of things was influenced by my personal experience. But the math, I did have to do a lot of research. I read like I tried to read research papers on specific topics. What I kind of did actually was I looked at what local math departments are teaching like.

00;11;26;22 - 00;11;51;17
Speaker 2
So I kind of looked I started there looking at like if I were a math student, what kind of classes would I be taking? What subjects would I be taking? And from there, then I sort of delve deeper into those subjects. So like looking at like research papers and things that people had written on those subjects, trying to do it as much justice as as I could in terms of making it realistic.

00;11;53;00 - 00;11;57;04
Speaker 2
And so, yeah, hopefully hopefully it came across that way.

00;11;57;05 - 00;12;02;17
Speaker 1
I mean, I wouldn't know left or right what it was just like math words, skipping.

00;12;03;24 - 00;12;04;13
Speaker 2
Days.

00;12;04;25 - 00;12;22;03
Speaker 1
So your social work background then plays a little bit into another thing I wanted to talk about, which was the themes in this book about like how dangerous loneliness can be to a person. So talk a little bit about why you wanted to focus on this message of We need more people.

00;12;22;06 - 00;12;47;17
Speaker 2
So I actually worked in social work. I had a couple of like areas where I focused on one with substance abuse and addiction, which comes out in a lot of other books. Not this one in particular, but it was another one was actually gerontology. So I part of what I did was train social workers who wanted to work with older adults and so I did.

00;12;48;02 - 00;13;07;18
Speaker 2
That was a huge focus for me. So I love I that's another thing I really love is to put older adults into my books. And that was really something that we spent a lot of time working on with our social work students was this idea of isolation and loneliness. And those facts are in the book that I mentioned.

00;13;07;18 - 00;13;40;00
Speaker 2
Those facts are true that it can be being lonely, can be as bad for your health as something like smoking as, you know, heart disease. And so having a community and having people around you who support you, not just sort of physically like checking in on you in case you fell, but actually like being there for you, having somebody to talk to you, having somebody to get you out of your apartment and take a walk or play bingo or whatever it is that you would do is is one of the best things that you can do for your health at any age, really.

00;13;41;00 - 00;14;02;10
Speaker 2
You know, I mean, we see that with after COVID, like so many people became isolated and it was really bad for people's health. But especially as people get older and they start losing their community, like their spouse might have died or, you know, their friends aren't around. They don't they're not as mobile. They can't drive. And so it's really important to kind of keep that in mind.

00;14;02;23 - 00;14;11;27
Speaker 2
For people like your grandparents or your, you know, your family, but also be thinking about that for yourself. Like how are you going to keep that community around you?

00;14;12;02 - 00;14;21;10
Speaker 1
Was that plays into the found family trope, which is extremely popular and beloved. What is it about that trope that speaks to so many people?

00;14;21;19 - 00;14;47;11
Speaker 2
I love the found family trope. It's another trope that shows up in so many of my books. Personally, for me, I'm so lucky that I have had so many experiences of found family in my life that have been really sort of formative. My mom and her partner have had a group of women that they have met for dinner every Friday night for probably like 30 something years.

00;14;47;11 - 00;15;08;17
Speaker 2
Like, I don't remember a time when my mother wasn't going to Friday night dinner I I'm like literally every week for decades. And so I grew up with this sort of like group of godmothers who literally show up like my son was in the nick and they showed up with like to drive me because I had had a C-section and couldn't drive.

00;15;08;17 - 00;15;39;22
Speaker 2
And they, you know, showed up with like gift cards for food and so for me, like found family, those are just my mom's like friends who became her family, who then embraced me as their family. And so I see the sort of the beauty of that and the way that people support each other. And I think that what appeals to most people about that is this beautiful idea that, you know, we have this sort of family that we're born into or adopted into sort of legally family.

00;15;40;08 - 00;16;06;04
Speaker 2
But that it doesn't have to end there. Like there's a whole world of people who will embrace us and love us and that we can choose to love simply because, you know, we connect and we care about each other. It doesn't have to be just that legal family, but it is just as legitimately family. And I think that really appeals to a lot of people, and especially in this sort of era of isolation and loneliness.

00;16;07;04 - 00;16;14;20
Speaker 2
You know, maybe your family doesn't show up for you, but maybe there are people who do and maybe they're really your family, too.

00;16;14;25 - 00;16;37;13
Speaker 1
It just makes me think of Supernatural and that line of family don't end with blood. Yeah. So Key that line was to that show. It's kind of got that same vibe throughout this book. And on the flip side of that is Luca. So we get to talk about our main man in this story. What was it like crafting Luca as a character to be so opposite of our heroine?

00;16;37;21 - 00;17;03;21
Speaker 2
He was so much fun for me because he just got to be anything he wanted to be. I just really, you know, like I said, I really relate to Catherine in a lot of ways in terms of being like organized in Type A, but he was exploring his side of things where he just got to be open to possibilities, open to experiences, open to people in his life like he was.

00;17;03;21 - 00;17;27;29
Speaker 2
So just sort of generous. Like if somebody came in his life and needed help, he was going to just do that because that's that was his personality. He was just going to be there or help them. And and so, yeah, it was it was a lot of fun to sort of just have this character that I just allowed to kind of go just to be like whoever he wanted to be.

00;17;29;18 - 00;17;33;17
Speaker 2
And just embrace any situation he found himself in.

00;17;33;24 - 00;17;46;02
Speaker 1
And in your bio, it says the you grew up doing a lot of art. And Luca is an artist. Talk a little bit about the inspiration and like anything you pulled from your own life in the art space for him.

00;17;46;06 - 00;18;09;26
Speaker 2
I did grow up quite artistic. I wasn't a writer at all growing up, but I grew up doing lots of like I took painting classes. I was like a very artsy craftsy kid. So like for Christmas, my family was always getting me like whatever craft things I made jewelry, like whatever I could get my hands on sort of physically artistically.

00;18;10;13 - 00;18;32;20
Speaker 2
I was always doing that on the even, even on the side when I was, you know, an adult working in social work, I was always like finding a, I don't know, like a dresser on the street and I'd like drag it home and paint it. So but we had something like that. So I really I do like to incorporate like I, I loved adding a character who was an artist.

00;18;33;13 - 00;18;46;10
Speaker 2
I have a couple of books actually with characters who are artists. And I just think it's something that I really relate to and understand and yeah, you know, it's, it's something that sort of is personal for me.

00;18;46;13 - 00;18;50;04
Speaker 1
What made you make the switch from social work into writing?

00;18;50;11 - 00;19;09;24
Speaker 2
Yeah, that's a good question. I never saw it. Like I said, I never saw myself as a writer. I was quite creative in other ways, but I had never even written a short story before I wrote my first novel it. What if you had asked me if you'd asked me like ten or 12 years ago, I would have been like, there's no way.

00;19;10;03 - 00;19;52;08
Speaker 2
I don't even know how to do that. But I was I was working in social work and I was working in a methadone clinic. So part of my background is in substance use disorders and addiction. And so I was doing a research project at a methadone clinic and meeting a lot of people who were basically there for treatment and just talking to them and hearing about their lives and was just really interested in sort of like their backstories and how they got there and how this very small spark of an idea for a novel or for like a story and that kind of ended up turning into my first novel that I wrote.

00;19;53;17 - 00;20;15;13
Speaker 2
And it was partly because I was working in social work. I was a newish mom and I wasn't doing a lot of creative things that I had done sort of previously my whole life. And writing was something I could do after my family went to bed at night, my husband goes to bed kind of early, and at the time my kids were little, so they'd be in bed by like seven or eight.

00;20;15;29 - 00;20;40;27
Speaker 2
And I would have this whole I'm a night owl, so I would have this whole evening and just sort of started writing this little seed of an idea. And the thing that always sort of shocks me is that I kept doing it like that. I didn't just write a page or two and then like abandon it, but I ended up, you know, a year and a half later I had a book and yeah, so that's kind of how it how it happened.

00;20;40;27 - 00;20;43;24
Speaker 2
And I'm as surprised as anybody else who knew me.

00;20;45;04 - 00;20;48;25
Speaker 1
What do you know about writing now that you wish you would have known when you first started?

00;20;48;26 - 00;21;21;16
Speaker 2
Honestly, I don't think there's anything. And I say that because I think because I didn't know anything. I didn't self edit. I didn't worry about is this terrible? I was very open to critiques. So I spent, you know, the first couple of years of crafting this book. I met a lot of authors, like just an author communities online or other writers, and we would exchange, you know, our books and critique them.

00;21;21;24 - 00;21;46;22
Speaker 2
And because I didn't know anything, I was super open to like feedback and I think if I had had training in writing or if I had known more than I knew, I might have held back more. But I was like, I don't know, OK? Like, I'm just going to go with this and see where it goes. And I think it was really open because I didn't have any pressure, you know, for this to be even good.

00;21;46;22 - 00;21;55;28
Speaker 2
Like, it was just something purely that I was doing for it to have a creative outlet. And I'm just really lucky that it it went further than that. And here I am.

00;21;56;16 - 00;21;59;05
Speaker 1
What do you hope people take away from your books?

00;21;59;20 - 00;22;35;02
Speaker 2
That's a good question. I was just talking about this recently with I just did like a little talk at a library actually last week. It is because I come from social work. There's this whole sort of like tenant in social work practice around like a strength space perspective. And so the idea is that you're not like looking at people from like this side of like dysfunction, but you're looking at what their strengths are and like what their abilities are and when you're like working with them, you're like asking like, what what strengths do they have?

00;22;35;02 - 00;22;58;19
Speaker 2
Do they have community? Do they have family? Do they have, like, internal fortitude? To help them through this situation? And I really approach my books from that perspective. Like these are not even I write a lot. I write lighthearted, like sort of magical fiction. But I also write more emotional, like sort of angsty romance. But none of my books are sad stories.

00;22;58;19 - 00;23;16;29
Speaker 2
They're all stories of, like, strength and overcoming hardship and finding, you know, becoming the best person that you can be. And that's sort of what I hope that people take for them from them is sort of that uplifting, sort of strength based perspective on them.

00;23;17;02 - 00;23;19;03
Speaker 1
What are you working on next?

00;23;19;08 - 00;23;48;25
Speaker 2
Yeah, so I am working on like I said, I work I write sort of two genres with two different publishers. I write the lighthearted romantic comedy side of things, and then I also write sort of more angsty emotional romance. And I'm actually working on one of those right now. So I have a contract with both publishers, and I have one more book do with the angsty emotional romance publisher so that's what I'm working on next.

00;23;48;26 - 00;24;05;21
Speaker 2
I kind of go back and forth and write one of each, which is really nice. It's kind of a nice break from the really emotional stuff to then go and write something lighthearted. So I'll probably finish this book and then plot out my next sort of lighthearted romance.

00;24;05;25 - 00;24;22;16
Speaker 1
It's like Ashley Winstead does thrillers and romance, so she's like six months of the year, I'm in the sun, and then the other six, it's very dark. So that makes a whole lot of sense. The last question we always ask, because this is literary hype. What books are you hyped about right now?

00;24;22;17 - 00;24;50;29
Speaker 2
I have been definitely because I'm writing magical books in my kind of magical book reading era as well. I've been really lucky that I've been asked to blurb some books by other authors but I'm also just sort of picking up some on my own. So I have three recommendations. One of them is happy Medium by Sarah Adler, which is just a really fun, fresh romance.

00;24;51;11 - 00;25;16;15
Speaker 2
It's about a sort of a fake mediums who is asked to go help one of her clients grandsons, and she goes and ends up talking to a real ghost, which she wasn't expecting because she's been faking it, that she can talk to ghosts and suddenly a real ghosts find ghost finds her. So as soon as I read the back of it, I was like, This is such a fresh new idea.

00;25;16;15 - 00;25;51;11
Speaker 2
I love this. And it really it it definitely lived up to the hype. I also recently read the Backtrack by Aaron LaRosa, which is a really fun, nostalgic book about a woman who goes back to her childhood home to help her grandmother move and finds this CD of like a mix CD that her sort of the one that got away best friend who she left behind made for her and discovers that when she listens to it, she can go back in the past and sort of relive what it would have been like if she had stayed in the town and stayed with him.

00;25;52;03 - 00;26;25;05
Speaker 2
So if you're into sort of early, 2000s like emo music, like it's perfect. It's so fun. And then I another one that I have to recommend, it's not quite magical, but it's it has to do with fate is read string theory by Lauren congestion. And it's just so it's such a beautiful book it's about an artist who's always been guided by fate who meets her match, but he's someone who doesn't believe at all in fate and destiny and it takes place at Nasser.

00;26;25;22 - 00;26;41;20
Speaker 2
So it really is like even though it really has that magical feel, it feels like stars aligning and, you know, planets aligning and stars shining down because they're like literally at NASA. So that's the one that I really love. If you're looking for something that feels really magical.

00;26;42;06 - 00;26;50;02
Speaker 1
You are the second person to recommend Backtrack a little bit. Congested is great. So I love to listen to your recommendations.

00;26;50;21 - 00;26;51;25
Speaker 2
Yes, definitely.

00;26;51;25 - 00;26;57;25
Speaker 1
Totally cool. Thank you so much for taking time to talk the literary hype about your new book, which I reviewed.

00;26;58;05 - 00;26;59;23
Speaker 2
Thank you so much for having me.

00;27;01;23 - 00;27;16;24
Speaker 1
Thanks so much to Melissa for getting up early to talk to me about her book, which I were here. If you'd like to get a hold of Wish I were here or any of Melissa's previous books, the links to do so are in the show. Notes for you. If you enjoyed this conversation, don't forget to subscribe to the literary podcast.

00;27;16;24 - 00;27;21;17
Speaker 1
Give us some stars and share it with a friend. Thanks so much for listening to the Literary Hype podcast.