Judy Mollen Walters meets with me today. She’s the author of eight women’s fiction novels. She has also written dozens of essays for such sites such as WaPo, HuffPo, theweek, SheKnows, and many others. In her latest novel, The Lies You Want to Hear, she writes about a young mother with an eating disorder that may kill her before she gets the help she needs. Will she allow her sister and husband to help her? She’s also running her elementary school’s PTO, and someone’s stolen $5000 from it. Everyone thinks it was her, but was it? You’ll cheer for her as she works her way through all the obstacles facing her.
Judy lives in New Jersey with her husband and her two adult daughters, when they come to visit from far away places. All of Judy’s novels are available on Amazon, and she is available for book club meetings
SS: Have you always been driven to write? Or did you begin writing in response to a particular stimulus?
JMW: I was born in NJ in 1968, and grew up as one of four siblings—I’m number 2—in a house in New Jersey that my parents still live in. Growing up, I always wanted to be a writer. The spark hit early—when I was in third or fourth grade, my parents signed me up for a Creative Writing class on Saturday mornings. I guess I had already showed them that I liked to write. One Saturday, in class we had to write a personification of something that was inactive. I don’t know why, but I decided on George Washington’s wig. I loved pretending to be that wig and making up things it would say if it could talk. When my father came in to pick me up, the teacher took him aside—but I could hear—and she said I was not like the other children, that I was gifted and had talent.
My parents discouraged me from being a writer. They wanted me to choose a profession where there was less risk of not earning money, so I became an English major in college and later went into publishing. I didn’t like the kind of publishing I was doing and eventually left it to raise my children.
SS: If you have children, does being a parent influence your writing? To what extent?
JMW: For the last twenty-five years, my kids have been my world. They still are, even though they don’t live in my world anymore! I stopped working to become a stay-at-home mother twenty-three years ago. I absolutely loved it. I loved being involved in our school’s PTO (there’s a PTO in this book 🙂 and focused almost solely on raising our kids. Meanwhile, writing did sort of churn in the background. When my younger daughter went to preschool three days a week, I had an idea (that I didn’t realize was a novel) and started writing on the days when she was in pre-school. When it was done, I showed it to one person. She very kindly said, “I think at some point you’ll publish something.” But she was right. The novel was terrible. I stopped writing for a while, but the bug wouldn’t leave me alone. I wrote three more “eventually you’ll be published” novels until I finally wrote my “first” novel—first to be published, in 2011. I’ve produced a book a year since then. I truly enjoy it.
My children definitely inform my writing. I’ve learned so much from being a mom. I write personal essays that get published on various web sites, and many times, the essay has been about my family. Luckily, I also have a huge desire to write novels.
SS: Do you have a day job? If so, is it a distraction, or does it add another element to your writing?
JMW: I also am a private college advisor, helping families make decisions about college, how to apply, where to go, etc. But the best part, of course, is helping them with their essays. They all have to write at least one essay to go with their college applications, but depending on the situation, they could have up to six or seven. I guide their essay writing. I started off doing this as a lark when my younger daughter was applying to college and a couple of her friends knew I wrote novels and they asked for help on their essays. Today is four years later, and I have a lot of clients from word of mouth. I love being with those teenagers! (Weird, since I didn’t really enjoy the teen years when I was a mother.)
SS: Do you generally write in one genre? If so, what is it? And what can readers expect from one of your books?
I only write novels in one genre—women’s fiction, or some call it domestic fiction. I love exploring stories about families struggling with a health issue, so I’ve written about MS, SMA (a deadly illness in children) infertility, adoption, and with my newest book The Lies You Want to Hear, about eating disorders. The topic fascinates me, and I also think there needs to be more awareness brought to it. I think all women have some relationship with food, and a lot of times, it’s a bad relationship, even if they are not classified as having an eating disorder.
In the end, I write for my audience. If my books don’t sell, I know I haven’t done as good a job as I could have and strive to make the next novel better. I think about my next novel a lot, even when I’m trying to finish up the last one! I allow my mind to wander, to see if the idea I have is a good “fit.”
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The Lies You Want to Hear is available through Amazon.
Busy wife and mom Dani Goldberg lives in a secret world that’s threatening to collapse around her.
In The Lies You Want to Hear, it’s the world of eating disorders, and as much as she doesn’t want to be there, she can’t force herself to run away from it.
She’s also a volunteer coping with her role as PTO President while she tries to become pregnant with her second child. With every stressful day, she falls more deeply into her disordered eating world.
Her sister Jess wants to save her, but she doesn’t quite know how.
She’s busy, too – as a lawyer and single mother. And those things need to be priorities. But so does Dani. As she watches her sister die a little more each day, she wonders how she’s going to save Dani from herself.
But in the end, it will all be up to Dani. Can she do it? Or will she fall off the cliff altogether, leaving everything she loves – her husband, daughter, sister and nephew – behind?
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An excerpt from The Lies You Want to Hear:
Chapter 1
Dani looked at the clock as the meeting wore on. School would be out in a few minutes, and Madison would be furious if Dani wasn’t there on time. She tried to listen to Mrs. Jennings.
“So you’ll be able to come set up Reading Night beforehand?” Mrs. Jennings asked. “I know that breaks into time with your family. I’m so sorry.” She looked genuinely concerned. The principal was like that. She cared about everyone, and she wanted them to be happy. Dani looked around the small office. There were a couple of plants and flowers on her desk and on the floor – gifts from parents trying to get in her good graces. Her desk was a mess of papers, her computer, and God knows what else. Dani was lucky that Mrs. Jennings let her be in here at all.
“Okay,” Dani said. “I’ll do it.” She smiled at Mrs. Jennings and took the last bite of her cupcake. It had started out delicious, but her stomach sort of roiled when she thought about the calories in it. She couldn’t not eat it, though. Mrs. Jennings had given it to her especially.
“I have to go,” she said, jumping up, feeling her hips jiggle. “The bell is going to ring.”
“Of course,” Mrs. Jennings said. “Give Madi a hug for me, and here let me give you one, too.” She came around from her side of the desk and hugged Dani, and that made everything better. She thought Mrs. Jennings might love her. That would be nice, she thought as she floated out of the office. You couldn’t have too much love.
She could feel herself huffing and puffing after she walked up the steep ramp to reach Madi’s room. She needed to take off some weight, and she would get to that. It was the same thing she usually said to herself, and then filed in the back of her mind, not wanting to go there. She tried not to think about weight at all, and her husband, Brett, was always telling her how beautiful she was. But jeans chafing her thighs didn’t lie.
Naturally, Madison was all ready to go. “You’re late,” she said in her accusatory, pipsqueak voice. Dani laughed. “Almost your whole class is still here,” she said, looking around. “Only two kids left already.” She knew the class by heart and she knew that it was Tristan and Elizabeth who were already gone.
Madison grumbled and Dani tried not to laugh again. Madison was already clearly a Type A, wanting everything to go according to schedule, ready to move onto the next thing. “We have to pick up Eli,” Madison said. “Did you forget?”
Dani had forgotten. It was just that she had so busy most of the day and then that meeting – she didn’t even want to think about all the work that meeting had produced for her.
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Judy can be found on social media here:
