Ep. 51 - The Resilience of a Creative Soul Conversation with Laura Van Wormer

We talk with best-selling author Laura Van Wormer about building a career in publishing and fiction, then losing her ability to write after a devastating crash. She shares how she rebuilt her creative life through serialized audio storytelling with The Class of 74 and why “pivot” is sometimes the only way back to joy. 
• working through podcast tech issues and learning a quick audio fix 
• Laura’s childhood origin story for becoming a storyteller 
• getting a start at Doubleday and meeting Jaclyn Onassis 
• learning the business through celebrity books and big publishing moments 
• quitting drinking at 27 and returning to writing at night 
• writing fast under pressure on Dynasty then Dallas and Knott’s Landing projects 
• launching Riverside Drive and navigating early breakout success 
• building recurring characters and bringing sexuality into mainstream fiction 
• surviving a wrong-way drunk driver crash and a long ICU recovery 
• how concussions and brain injury changed Laura’s writing capacity 
• using shorter “bite-sized” episodes to write again via a fiction podcast 
• The Class of 74 as escapism with heart and a reminder not to drink and drive 

Guest Links

Laura's Author Page

Class of 74 Podcast Facebook Page

Listen to the Class of 74 Podcast on Podbean

Laura Van Wormer Books on Amazon

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Credits

Music Credit:  True Living by Patrick Moore

Royalty free music license purchased at soundotcom.com

Transcript

Welcome And Subscribe Reminder

SPEAKER_07 0:00

Thanks for tuning in this week. Just a reminder, hit the follow or subscribe button wherever you're listening to this podcast so you don't miss any of the great episodes coming up. And now, here's this week's episode. Everyday people following their passions.

SPEAKER_03 0:29

That's probably like one of the highlights of my life so far. Just being able to be creative like that. Something I've always wanted.

SPEAKER_02 0:38

And then I decided to get another hive, and that turned into a lot of hives. As long as I can do that, I want to be a good citizen, help people out.

SPEAKER_07 0:49

Putting themselves out there, taking chances, and navigating challenges along the way.

SPEAKER_06 0:55

I absolutely identified with having stage right because, you know, anytime I went on stage, I just felt like I was having a hot attack.

SPEAKER_00 1:03

Very first lap, very first practice session, I crashed, turned the car upside down, made a spectacle of myself, and I got back on that horse and started riding again.

SPEAKER_07 1:12

As they pursue what makes them happy and brings them joy.

SPEAKER_01 1:17

As long as people are having a good time and I have the opportunity to put smiles on people's faces, I love what I do.

SPEAKER_02 1:24

I have done things that I never thought I could do. To have somebody tell me how real it looks and how, you know, from their actual memory. Because that's telling me I captured what I was trying to get.

Meet Author Laura Van Wormer

SPEAKER_07 1:40

Welcome to Assorted Conversations. I'm your host, Helen. Hello and welcome to another Assorted Conversation. Thanks for your patience as I've tried to work through some major technical issues, which have taken me a bit off schedule. I ended up having to get a new microphone and headphone set because after five years, my original ones died. I purchased the exact same equipment because I knew how to set it up and I knew it all worked together. But boy was I wrong. Forgetting that technology advances all the time, all of the equipment, even though it was the same brand, had been updated and required different connections to my PC. I thought I had finally solved the problem, did a test record, and was relieved to find out I had clear audio. The night I recorded this week's episode, as I got into the remote recording room with my guest, the audio issue reared its ugly head again. I get so flustered when technology doesn't work, especially when I have a guest on the line. Since everything had worked well outside of the remote recording room, I asked good old ChatGBT what the problem could be when I'm in the recording room. And it spit back to check a specific setting because it defaults to turning the audio setting off when new equipment is detected. Sure enough, that fixed it, and we were able to record with clear audio. A special thank you to Laura for all of her patience that night. Even after five years of podcasting, it's always a technical adventure for me. So after sorting through my technical issue, I had the most fascinating conversation with this week's guest. She's had an amazing and adventurous career. And wait till you hear some of the folks she's worked with and projects she's worked on. In spite of her literary success, she had to overcome so much after a life-altering event, and she's found her way back to joy. Take a listen to this week's conversation, all about inspiring resilience and a lesson in finding a new way to experience an old joy. And I'll see you on the other side. Today's guest is a best-selling author who began her career in the publishing world before writing more than 10 novels. Known for creating smart, compelling characters like Sally Harrington and Alexandra Waring and stories filled with intrigue and emotion, she's built a loyal following of readers over the years. After a life-changing accident that altered the course of her career and an experience at her 50th high school reunion, she discovered a new way to tell her stories. Today she's bringing her talent for dramedy and rich characters into the audio world, writing a serialized fiction podcast, The Class of 74, that continues her tradition of gripping storytelling, but in a whole new format. I am so excited to welcome Laura Van Wormer to Assorta Conversations. Hi Laura.

SPEAKER_04 5:19

Helen, thank you. What a great intro. I did I should play that at the beginning of my podcast. The class of 74. Little do you know how extraordinary the creator is. No. Well, thank you for having me. This is fun. It's fun to talk about.

Childhood Storytelling And Doubleday Break

SPEAKER_07 5:37

After doing some due diligence on your story, I am so excited to dive in. So talk to me a little bit about how you got interested in writing. Did you write stories as a kid? Oh, yes.

SPEAKER_04 5:53

I my real mother was from Texas. And when I was little, she'd have me sit on the floor in the kitchen, and she'd rip out a magazine, a picture out of Life magazine, and she'd say, Laura Elnor, tell me what's in this picture, what's going on. And then I would make up a story. Oh, wow. And so I started way early and I never stopped.

SPEAKER_07 6:22

Oh, that's great. I would so flash forward to the beginning of your career. It was almost like those that was already put in place for you.

SPEAKER_04 6:35

Well, yes, the storytelling, but the problem was I in college I figured I didn't have anything to say as a writer. So I thought, oh, well, I'll write for TV then. This is just what I thought, right? But I lucked into an interview. The editor-in-chief of Doubleday was looking for a secretary. And my mother had said, always know how to type, dear. So I went in for the interview, and Jackie O'Nassis came through the waiting room while I was waiting to go in.

SPEAKER_07 7:11

Wow.

SPEAKER_04 7:12

And I went, ooh, she works here. And they said, Oh, yes, this is Onassis is an editor. And I thought, I want to work here. This is cool. Now, mind you, 10 minutes before I was going to the Upper West Side to get a job as a typist on a soap opera. So that's just how my career has basically gone. You know, it's like, oh, I like this better. Let me go for it. Oh, that's a riot. So I got the job at Doubleday. And Jackie was wonderful. I often tell this story, but I didn't know her very well. And my mother came in to Doubleday, and I was giving her a tour, and Jackie was coming down the hall. Oh. And so I thought, just do it, Laura. And I just said, Mrs. Onassis, I'd like you to meet my mother. Marjorie Van Warmer. Marjorie, this is Jack, Mrs. Jaclyn Onassis. And Jackie put out her hand and said, Mrs. Van Warmer, you must be so proud of Laura working at D.

SPEAKER_07 8:21

Oh, wow.

SPEAKER_04 8:23

Such a mom, right? Yeah. And of course, she won my undying loyalty for the rest of my life and my mother's, because my father would yell at me and say, They don't pay you anything in this job. And my mother would say, Leave her alone. Jackie works there. One of my best friends ended up working for her as a as sort of a co-editor on projects. So I saw her a lot. Yeah. No, I did know her, but I mean, I knew her better personally than I did as a professionally.

unknown 8:58

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 8:58

You know, which was kind of nice. Because later, when I left Doubleday to pursue my own writing, I had a real hard time being home by myself all day. And Jackie was very helpful. She said, Oh, you have the lifetime opportunity. You get to do what everybody else who goes to an office can't do. Go to the first movie, you know, on a Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, whatever. A newly open movie, go at 11 o'clock. You know, and I thought, what a good idea. Go whatever restaurant you want to go to, go at two o'clock in the afternoon and see who's there. And then you'd go in and you'd see all these famous people there. And she also, as a writer, she would say she was a big believer that people needed to go into museums and let remember that everybody who had a piece of art in the museum lived the same life you do. They were home alone. Oh wow. That's pretty powerful. She was wonderful, but everybody at Doubleday, it was in those days, Doubleday had published 600 books a year. Now I think they publish 40. Wow. Because it's a little piece.

SPEAKER_07 10:24

Well, it's a little bit of random house. So when you were at Doubleday, you you initially started as a secretary.

Jackie Onassis And Publishing Legends

SPEAKER_04 10:33

Yes. Yes. So I got to talk to everybody, which was sort of interesting. You never knew who was going to call. Right. You know, yeah, Rosalind Carter called one day when I had just gotten there. And well, the thing was, I loved kind of showbiz, you know, I loved TV stuff. So I actually became sort of the the media editor. That was my claim to fame. The first book I signed up as like a kid was a biography of Barbara Streisand. Oh wow. But it was James Spada who had the anybody who's a fan of Barbara Streisand knew James Spada because this was his life, was the fan clubs, the, you know, all this stuff. But he was a journalist and he really could write. But the thing is, he had a gift with pictures and the visual. So I didn't want a little book. I wanted the book I wanted about Barbara Streisand. I wanted a big book with lots of pictures, you know, and so it's almost a pictorial, but it did have 80,000 words of text in it. And it was the first book, it was simultaneously hardcover and paperback. And it was the first paperback that Book of the Month Club bought. Oh, wow. As a selection. Right. And so they're like, who's this kid down there? So I got promoted, right? That kind of thing. And I signed up, you know, Janet Lee. Remember, she got killed in Psycho in the shower. Yes. Well, I signed up Janet and had a ball with her. And our relationship went on for years. And she wrote other books and things long after I had left. But it was just like everybody I met through Double Day ended up staying in my life. Betty White was Betty White was doing a book. And her editor was my boss at the time. And she was going to be my future editor. Anyway, so I knew Betty as Loretta's author, right? And I ended up knowing her for 40 years. Oh wow. I love her. She was wonderful and also a very good writer. And it just it's it was a different world. You know, there it's when they discovered people like Stephen King out of the slush pile. You know, he wrote in a query letter to Doubleday. That's how he got discovered. You know, Carrie. He didn't have an agent. Yeah. They had a loan in the bus fair to come down from Maine. Wow. To talk to them about buying his novel.

unknown 13:31

Oh.

SPEAKER_04 13:31

Anyway. Interesting. How could you not end up being a novelist after working at a place like that? Right.

SPEAKER_07 13:37

So so how, you know, you went from secretary to editing and signing people.

SPEAKER_04 13:43

I was a senior editor, and then what they did, they gave me an expense account. And I never came back from lunch after. Seriously. I was I was going to be the youngest has been in book publishing with this damn expense account. I remember, you know, an author saying to me, Can't we go to a restaurant that's above ground? I mean, I was drinking like a fish, and I had drunk for years like a fish. I didn't realize it until I stopped drinking at 27 that I hadn't written a word since college. Wow. And that's when I learned that alcohol, number one, I thought, well, what do people do at night if they don't drink? Well, what would I like to do more than drinking? Very few things. Write a story. So I started writing at night. And I it just all started to come back to me, wanting to be a writer. I I had just given up my dreams. I don't know.

SPEAKER_07 14:59

You probably fell into the trappings of what was going on every day. And and you know what? I think a lot of folks in their 20s uh do that because you don't really know what you want to do. You learn by process of elimination. No, no, no, I don't want to do this anymore.

SPEAKER_04 15:22

But when somebody was like famous or but, you know, there I'm going, I'm running off.

SPEAKER_07 15:27

Yeah. Oh my god. I I would have been right there with you.

SPEAKER_04 15:31

Yeah. Well, we went, we had the same kind of college experience, except you weren't a drunk like me. But what happened was I had started writing, and Doubleday had signed up a book with the creators of Dynasty, which at that time was the biggest TV show in America.

Quitting Drinking And Writing Again

SPEAKER_07 15:53

You know, with Linda Evans and John Forsyth and Joan Collins and dun dun dun dun and for for anybody under the age of 45, Google it. Or chat TV it.

Dynasty Book Sprint And Soap Research

SPEAKER_04 16:10

Oh, it's so cool. It was so cool. Well, they had a problem with it. The book that was supposed to be handed in, nobody had written it. What? No, and Doubleday had sold the foreign rights on this book to all these countries around the world because it was the biggest TV show in the world. And so Doubleday's like, uh-oh, what are we gonna do? We need a book. So Loretta, my old boss, said I know who we send because she doesn't drink anymore. Now we can send her and she'll come back. They sent me out there to the 20th century Fox Lot where Dynasty was filmed. And I worked with Esther and Richard Shapiro, were the creators. Yeah, a couple of literature, they were both uh Victorian um literature junkies. Like one was Tolstoy and the other one was Mark Twain. But Esther, her claim to fame was at ABC, she did a little miniseries called Roots. Oh wow, yeah, that little one. And she was very fond of Doubleday because wrote Roots Doubleday published Roots, the book, Alex Haley's book. I figure remember I was doing those books like about Barbara Streisand with all the pictures and things. Well, Dynasty is so visual, right? So I decided, well, why don't we do like a Streisand kind of book, but about the Caritons, the characters of the show, as if they're real people. So all I have to do is read six years of TV scripts to pull the fictional facts out.

SPEAKER_07 18:12

Yeah, because it's not like it was streaming back then that you could just go watch it.

SPEAKER_04 18:17

No, no, you couldn't. No, that's exactly right. And I'm sitting there in Marilyn Monroe's trailer for a month with all these scripts dictating fictional facts into a oh, I mean, it was just bizarre, but God was it fun. It was just so creative, you know, that I was using everything the Shapiro's had created. Yeah. And they just had never had them in the story Bible before. I did, and then I got to go into the ABC archives to go through all the photographs that have been taken on the set, publicity stills, because there were rights problems, you know, that you can't use the image of Joan Collins as Joan Collins unless she gives you permission, but you can if it's Alexis Carrington.

SPEAKER_05 19:15

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 19:16

Right? You don't have to pay they don't have to pay her anything because it's the show. The book is a creation of the show. Well, and so they love that. Laura Marr. And so I did that, and I flew back to New York with a manuscript and all these photographs, and went down to the art department, and I got the best designer we had, and we started mapping out the book. Wow. And we were on a crash, crash, crash schedule. And if you see the true story of the Carringtons dynasty, it was called, and it was the true story of the carriage. There's no author. Oh. It just says introduction. Well, no, because I was an editor. I couldn't, you know, it was kind of but I came back to the office and my friend Loretta calls me, my old boss, and she says, Laura, I just got a call from Laura Marr Studios. It seems that the creators of Dallas are jealous of the dynasty book. And they want to know, will you write them a book? Oh. And I'm like, and I had started my first novel by then. And I knew I wanted to write. I knew that drinking was not something I was going to pursue anymore. I wanted to be the writer I always wanted to be. And so I took that job as the way to support myself. Well, I learned how to write a novel, which took me like three years to do. But my mailman, I wish you could have seen them, you know, when they arrived, all these boxes of scripts of Dallas start arriving.

SPEAKER_07 21:10

My little apartment in Manhattan. How long did the dynasty book take you from start to finish?

First Novel Breakthrough And TV Tie-Ins

SPEAKER_04 21:17

Oh six weeks. Oh my gosh. That's why it was so good. That because we were able to fulfill the response, you know, the responsibilities, and the Shapiros loved it. Dallas ended up they wanted me to promote it. And then they wanted me to would I do Knott's Landing? Because the creator of Dallas, his baby was Knott's Landing. That was his first show. They produced Dallas first, but Knott's Landing was the first series that he sold to be made, and they just didn't make it yet. And that ended up being the remarkable shape. Right. I mean, that just went on forever. And I worked on that book, and then I started meeting people like Donna Mills, who played the Vixen Abby Ewing. You know, remember the. So years later, not years later, two years later, my novel is coming out, my first novel, Who Buys the TV Rights? Donna Mills. Are you kidding? Yes, because she wanted to play it. And I know part of the reason why she liked it was because reading all of Dynasty and Dallas and Knott's Landing, these were soap operas, right? The creators were all Victorian literature fans, the original soap operas, right? So that soapiness, that cliffhanger chapter, found its way into Riverside Drive. And so my books ended up being sort of contemporary soap operas. Right. I don't know what they were escaped fiction. They were not great literature. So your first novel was Riverside. Riverside Drive. And then I'll tell you an interesting story about that. Danielle Steele. You remember Danielle Steele. Well, it happened in 1988. Danielle Steele was a month late handing in her novel. And the Literary Guild of America didn't have a main selection for May. So they took my novel. Oh, wow. As the main select, my first novel, the main selection for the Literary Guild of America. So it just blew across the United States. Talk about beginner's luck. Yeah, talk about timing as everything. And you know who my editor was, of course, at Doubleday, my old boss to Retta.

SPEAKER_07 24:11

You're you're, I mean, starting with Riverside Drive and all of their I you you have two recurring characters. And what when we first got on, we were talking off mic, and I said, Oh, I I I was looking at all of your body of work and your two recurring characters, and I was reading about this. Alexandra Waring was the first anchor woman. And I I was reading about, you know, kind of the the settings that you write in, you know, the TV, the broadcast media, and like all of that.

SPEAKER_04 24:48

Well, see, I had all my friends from Syracuse who graduated from the New House School, too. They were all in jobs all over town. Right. Right. So I could go and I could be a temp at CBS News because I wanted to hear what do they say about Dan Raven? Right. You know, the people who work there. I want to hear, I don't care about them. I want to know what everybody's saying about them, the people they work with. So you And that's how I researched those things.

SPEAKER_07 25:20

Yeah, I was gonna say you had you had built-in research to do that. But you know, and looking at your body of work and your recurring characters and and you know, the settings that you write in, and it's so fabulous that you had the opportunity to research the way you did. I I said to you, I think you are my new Stuart Woods because uh summer's coming, and I cannot wait to dive into all of the books that you've written. Because they're right up my alley.

Writing Queer Characters In Mainstream Fiction

SPEAKER_04 25:51

Start with Riverside, Riverside Drive is your library, will have it. Every library has Riverside Drive. So go to V and look for it. It's a it's a everything about that book was a good feeling, and it still is. And I go ahead.

SPEAKER_07 26:12

Sorry. Uh your two main charac characters, Alexandra and Oh Sally Harrington, Sarah. Right. Sally Harrington.

SPEAKER_04 26:26

You might know you want to know how that happened.

SPEAKER_07 26:28

Yeah, I I'd love to know the inspiration for both of those women because they are so complex and so dynamic.

SPEAKER_04 26:35

Oh my god. Alexander Warry. Riverside Drive was the book I always wanted to read and couldn't find it. And what was that? I thought I might be gay. Right? But I was from a town where, you know, my mother, when I finally, you know, said to her, Oh, well, I'm sort of falling in love with a woman, you know, she said, Does this mean you can't belong to junior league? That's my background, okay? So I spent a lifetime looking for those little scenes with gay characters or gay relationships, you know. So I created Alexandra as a woman in the closet, an anchor woman in the closet. And it came from the idea started being in Central Park and seeing one of the TV stations in town was having a picnic. And I was looking at this one anchor woman that I knew from local news, and I thought, you know what? There's no way this woman is gay. That's what I thought. And I thought, I'm gonna write a story about a gay anchor woman who falls in love with her boss's wife. How about that? Right? And that was the start of Riverside Live. What they liked about that book was Alexandra has to go away at the end of it. And in those days, you couldn't be gay. I couldn't be gay.

SPEAKER_07 28:12

Yeah, I was gonna say, what year did that come out?

SPEAKER_04 28:16

88. 88.

SPEAKER_07 28:18

Were things starting to change at that point?

SPEAKER_04 28:22

Well, there people were dying, all these men. Right. But in terms of women, in terms of mainstream, and this is I think a lot of your your listeners will understand when I say there's mainstream literature, and then there was alternative. And I grew up at Doubleday, the Sears and Robuck of fiction, they used to call us, which I thought was a compliment. Well, I didn't want to be in the alternative press. You know, I didn't want to be in the small yeah, right. I didn't want to be marginalized, right? I wanted to be mainstream, and so I kind of just brought my sexuality into my novels over the years. So after about the the six, I people began to start figuring it out. But I go out on tour, and you know, my publicist taught me how to talk around it. But then, but I also had a very messy love life for years. And I was a late bloomer, and I fell in love when I was 39, and I left New York and I came out to Connecticut. I said I'd never come back to Connecticut, but I came back to Connecticut. That's when I invented Sally Harrington, a journalist out here in Connecticut. In fact, she's in the town I live in that I'm speaking from right now. But to keep my sanity, I have Sally going into New York to meet Alexandra and all the characters from my earlier books. And then as the series progressed, Sally starts working in New York, right? And it's Laura Van Warmer World, is what they used to call it.

SPEAKER_07 30:21

Oh, that's funny. I cannot wait. But it just never stopped. I cannot wait to dive into them.

SPEAKER_04 30:28

Well, they were fun. And I'll have to on my website, the Laura Van Warmer website, that it has the order that they're all in. Okay. I think on Amazon there's a that tells you what novels Alexandra's in. Okay. Because in the middle of all of that, I got sequestered on a murder trial. Oh wow. In New York. So I wrote a book called Jury Duty about Oh, that's a standalone. That's one of your standalones. Yes, exactly. So that was a fun book to write because it just was just the trial. Interesting. But that was fun. And that got me a lot of TV. That was interesting. You know, like Judge Wappner. Remember those books? Those shows on TV? They'd have me on as a as an expert in the middle of a Judge Wappner episode to talk about juries and trials and crime, as if I know anything. And there I'd be, and then I come home, and my father would say, Your skirt's too short. Right. Because he'd be watching At and Darien. Too funny. Yeah, but my parents were so proud of me, too. That was the other thing. Yeah. I mean, I was I they my crazy life, you know, where was I gonna end up? Right. And I was just so glad that they were alive to see it. That's that's awesome. I was a writer.

SPEAKER_07 32:06

I want to go back to making being in the heyday of having all of those books and having those characters. Oh and being a full-time novelist, it was a dream come true. Yeah. So how did that change and when did that change?

SPEAKER_04 32:25

When I settled down. That changed because when I lived alone, which I did for my first of all those books, until Sally Harrington, that's when Chris and I lived together. And I had never lived with anybody before. I mean, maybe for you know, here and there. But writing was always the center of my life. I wanted to live the life of the mind, not so much the real world, right? I mean, once a year I'd have to go out on the road and go on tour. So I would do that. But the joke was I had a different lover for every novel. Because then I went back to write the next book and I disappeared for a year. Nobody saw me. And so after that, yeah, no, there was. We moved out here, bought a house. So all of a sudden, when you own a home and you have nieces and nephews and things happening around you, it's it's just different from being focused on it in New York. Right. I don't know how to say it. We used to laugh as editors. We hated it when somebody fell in love and was happy because we knew they'd never write again. Right, right. All those great novels came from the loneliest people in the world.

SPEAKER_07 34:01

Truth you know what? I think all art comes from a dark place, even though it can be beautiful and bright. It can a longing, yeah, a longing, a comedy and trying to anything create create that thing you need to snap you out of that black space that you're in.

SPEAKER_04 34:24

Absolutely.

Wrong-Way Crash And Survival

SPEAKER_07 34:25

So it makes great stories. You had all the success with your books, and then something happened that changed things drastically for you. Can can you share about that?

SPEAKER_04 34:40

Sure. It actually, I've brought up her name several times now. My old boss, Loretta, who became my literary agent, she was diagnosed with an inoperable brain tune.

SPEAKER_07 34:52

Oh wow.

SPEAKER_04 34:56

And that was in 2013. And she died in to the end of 2014. And it was just a it was like the Ted Kennedy, remember his geoglastoma? That's what she had. And it was torturous to watch this vibrant giant of a person. And Betty was her client, and Betty was supposed to be starting a new book. And so I said I'd love to go out and see Betty and see if I can get her started on the book. And so that's what I was gonna do. It was kind of a favor to the agency. And because Loretta was indisposed. And so actually Loretta had just died. And so I was on my way to LaGuardia to fly out to LA. And I was on the Merritt Parkway. Anybody who knows the Merritt Parkway out there, I was going through the Heroes Tunnel, which goes under Sleeping Giant in Hamden. And this SOB was drunk and he was flying the wrong way through the tunnel. Oh my gosh. So talk about shooting fish in a barrel. Where was I gonna go? Boom. I mean, I slammed on my brakes and I pretty much had stopped, but he didn't. And it was bad. Bad meaning I just I had several concussions and my chest was crushed. I had 12 broken, excuse me. My knee was broken, and my foot that was on the brake was almost cut off. Huh. You know, and they thought they were gonna amputate it, and my diaphragm was ripped, and my lungs are all messed up, everything. I mean, I was just like Humpty Dumpty. And they took me over to Yale, New Haven. God bless Yale New Haven Hospital, that trauma team, all those doctors, they literally stitched me back together again.

SPEAKER_07 37:11

Wow.

SPEAKER_04 37:12

And there was no hope that I was gonna survive, really. And I think I told you my other half practiced medical malpractice defense. So one of the funny stories about that, because I was out for basically a month. I had no idea what was going on. I was on a ventilator. This is my ventilator voice that I was left with. Chris had to sit there in ICU and my family. It was torturous for them. Torturous. But one funny thing was one of the doctors at Yale said, Isn't that attorney Robbins? Didn't she get us out of that where they sued everybody in the hospital about something and they the doctors had nothing to do with the case? And that was sort of Chris's specialty was extricating innocent people drawn into these lawsuits. Well, I got the kind of care you can't even imagine.

SPEAKER_07 38:12

Like that.

SPEAKER_04 38:15

That's attorney Robinson. Oh, but poor Chris. Oh my God, and my family, my sister, my brother, they wanted to cut my foot off, and they wouldn't let them. You know, they said, Laura's got to come back. She's got to make that decision. You know, you can't do it. Now, meanwhile, you know from experiences that you've had in your life that the lungs are very fragile. There it things happen. And most people, when you're in a collision, you they die on the third day because their lungs swell so much, there's no way they can absorb oxygen. You know, respentilator doesn't do anything. And in my case, where you might do CPR and press my chest, if they did that, they would have killed me instantly because all my ribs were broken. So I have all these jagged pieces of bone. So one night, the third night, when Chris fully expected that I was going to pass away. And my class from Darien High School, 1974, they're all writing me letters of farewell. Because of Facebook, everybody heard about it. And so, Helen, I go in, I'm in La La Land, right? I don't know where I am. And let's imagine that you're standing on the side of a stage, looking out at the stage, and I see Chris sitting in a chair with a spotlight coming down on her. And I'm trying, excuse me, I'm trying to reach her. Suddenly I hear Loretta's voice, remember dead Loretta, who says, Boobola, I'm not dead, I'm just behind the curtain. And anybody who knows Loretta will is laughing because that voice was so distinctive. Well, Helen, I turn around and I see there's Loretta, and behind her is like the biggest cocktail party you ever saw. Hundreds of people, this beautiful setting. You know, I don't know if it was Weeburn Country Club or we were in a meadow or we were in England. I don't know where we were, but it was beautiful. And all the people are out there, are gorgeous. And then I realized I know every single one of them.

SPEAKER_07 40:47

Oh.

SPEAKER_04 40:49

My mom and my mom and my dad were right there. My Aunt Liv and Uncle Sam, my cousin Ricky, my best friend Pampohemas, who had died of leukemia. There they all were. And Loretta said, You can visit us anytime. Wow. And outside they have done a blue, what do they call it? A blue, it's when it's a respiratory emergency. Code blue? And it goes out code blue through the ICU, a code blue. They're all standing around just looking at me because there's nothing they can do. And you're hallucinating. And Chris is outside and she thinks I'm gonna die, right? One of the nurses just started saying, Breathe, Laura, breathe. They all start yelling, breathe, Laura, breathe. And I started breathing. And that was the night. So that's what happened. And then the tragedy was I couldn't write for years. And it broke my heart. I mean, I literally thought about killing myself because my whole life had been writing stories.

SPEAKER_07 42:16

What prevented you from writing? Was it more than writer's block? Was it mental musculature?

Brain Injury And Losing The Novel Mind

SPEAKER_04 42:26

It was all those concussions I had. It was the brain damage that my one of the things novelists have, as you work on a book, you work on it longer and longer and longer every day. Like in the beginning of a novel, you might write two hours in the day. By the end, you're writing 16 to 18 hours a day, because you know this is the window where you can hold the whole book in your head at the same time. You've got everybody's name straight. You know, you just you can see it, you get that omniscient view like God has, looking down on the story. And that's what you need to finish the book. And I lost it. I lost it. I couldn't carry, I just couldn't remember anything.

SPEAKER_07 43:23

Yep.

SPEAKER_04 43:24

And so then I was gonna do some nonfiction because I always tell people if fiction is a blank sheet of paper, nonfiction is a coloring book. There are lines to follow. Right. Right. So for me, I worked on a nonfiction project for years just to have something to do, but it it was different. And it wasn't until the idea of writing episodes, an ongoing soap opera as a podcast that I could start. Writing again because it wasn't too big. Yeah. I could do it in mouthfuls.

SPEAKER_07 44:07

Okay.

SPEAKER_04 44:08

Right.

Reunion Sparks The Class Of 74

SPEAKER_07 44:08

All right. And your high school reunion was pivotal, and you coming up with the idea for the class of 74. Talk to me a little bit about that.

SPEAKER_04 44:23

Well, my voice, you hear my ventilator voice. I was shy about going to the reunion because A, how I looked, B, how I moved, because everything had been broken. And I just, you know, I still wanted to be the most popular girl in the class. What can I tell you? And I didn't want to go. I didn't go to the whole weekend, but I went to the dinner and it was wonderful. And seeing everybody was wonderful. And I just thought, God, how much I love all these people. And when I was in high school, I was a big mouth. You know, and we I get drunk at a party, and then I'd make everybody stop and say, I've got a story I want to read you. So everybody go, oh God, all right, get your beer. Let's sit and listen to Laura's story. And I would read a story. So when I was sitting there, all I could think about was how I wished I could get up and tell everybody, wait, stop, everybody. I want to read you a story. And everybody would groan. But nobody could hear me at this reunion dinner because I lost a vocal cord and all this. So I don't have the projection I used to have. And I came home and I was so sad. And Chris said to me, write your class a story and read it to them as a podcast. That's awesome. Then they can hear me. That is awesome. Because I loved podcasts, right? And I thought, she's right. And I'm like shaking from head to toe. And I go, and I'm going to write about high school. Not a real story. I'm going to write a soap opera about high school, our high school, Finlay guys. But I mean, based on it, but I didn't want to hurt anybody's feelings. Right. And everybody has painful memories about high school, you know, about somebody who broke up with them or their parents were getting divorced or something, right? But not in the class of 74, all the bullies are going to get the kicked out of them. Nobody breaks up with our friends, and if they do, they're going to pay big time. And I create these characters who are loosely based on lots of what was right with a lot of people. They recognize themselves. You know, what's wrong with people, that's easy. Just look in a newspaper, right? For the personality defects, they're everywhere. But what's right with people, even as kids, what was right with them? And let's write a story about good versus evil.

SPEAKER_07 47:24

Yeah. I I absolutely love it. I am halfway through season one.

SPEAKER_04 47:31

Are you all oh my God, so you're listening?

SPEAKER_07 47:33

How do you like Cynthia? I like I like Cynthia. I like Cynthia a lot. And it's so funny because if we hadn't had this conversation, I and I haven't read your books. I I plan to. Right.

SPEAKER_04 47:46

They're very much like it. That's why Sally Harrington, those are the books I need to get back into print.

SPEAKER_05 47:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 47:56

Because people who like Cynthia will love Sally.

SPEAKER_07 47:59

It's the same connectivity. And and but it was it was so funny. If we hadn't had this conversation, if we hadn't talked about the accident and how it affected your ability to write novels, I never would have known anything had happened. And I would have just thought you decided to change mediums because uh the story, the class of 74 is so strong. And it's like it's like, let's listen to one more episode. You know, I at my house has never been cleaner.

SPEAKER_04 48:33

Do you have any idea how that makes me cry? Because you're making me cry. Because it's been so long since I've had a reader, yeah, a fame.

SPEAKER_07 48:45

Yeah, I no, I and that was my life for years. Yeah, I love it, and I can't wait to go back and read the books.

SPEAKER_04 48:53

So well, a lot of people have pointed out to me that Laura, and you put all the episodes together, this is a book.

SPEAKER_07 49:01

Yeah, but but you're you're doing it in bite-sized pieces as you're able to. Every week. And I like uh just hearing what your story was initially when I was like, oh, will this be a fit? Will she be a fit for the podcast? I was like, Yeah, your message is pivot. And and uh you've done it beautifully.

SPEAKER_04 49:23

And well, but it makes use of everything I've ever done in my life. Exactly. It goes right back to what I I want to tell a story, yeah, right? Soap operas, I love you know, the cliffhanger endings, and I love showbiz, and I love you know, in this mirror, and I get to be a ham and people can hear me.

Weekly Audio Writing And 1970s Nostalgia

SPEAKER_07 49:44

Yeah. Because I have a microphone. How is is your process for writing the podcast? How is that different than what you used to do when you wrote your novels?

SPEAKER_04 49:57

Oh, it's so much it's harder and easier because the pressure is enormous to get it done on time. And in season two, I have vowed that it's gonna be on time every week. It but I know that when I put the episode away, that sense of gratification about like finishing a book comes in a mini version. I've been able to see it from its conception to the finished product, delivering it to my reader, the story. So it's like every week I'm publishing a book, that's what it feels like. That's the enormity of the satisfaction that I get in from this.

SPEAKER_07 50:47

Oh, that's great. That's great. One of the things I love about it, uh, class at 74 was before my time, but I was alive in in 71.

SPEAKER_05 50:58

Barely. Right.

SPEAKER_07 51:00

Right but I there are you just brought back so many memories.

SPEAKER_04 51:05

Like well, it's life before cell phones.

SPEAKER_07 51:08

The dress code. I can remember when I went to school, my my dresses had to be like one inch above my knee, and that was it. You know, you brought up a lot of uh a lot of things through throughout the episodes I've listened to that I just go, I I remember this stuff.

SPEAKER_04 51:31

And I don't know how much people drank in your day, but in our day, everybody drank and drove. Oh yeah, oh yeah, horrifying today. But that's why I say we go to the class of 74. Well, as you know, I close every show by saying, remember, we don't drink and drive anymore. Ever, but we do have fun, and that's the whole thing. This is fun. This is to take people who are, I don't care why you're feeling kind of depressed or blue or bored or whatever. I'm gonna take you away and you're gonna forget everything for a little while and you're gonna laugh a little bit, but you're definitely going somewhere you haven't been in a long time. Yeah. And it's gonna make you feel a lot better about where you are now because who the heck wants to be a teenager again? Exactly. Oh, how excruciating. Those right, so it's fun to go visit. Yeah, and then you get to safely come back to your world, which now looks a hell of a lot better than it did an hour ago.

SPEAKER_07 52:50

Well, and you know, the moms, the moms of the girls. It just reminded me of the moms in the Judy Bloom book, Are You There, God, It's Me, Margaret? Whoa, like it just had that feel to it of you know, the the wives were home every day properly in the home, themselves, the children. And I can't remember my mom was a stay-at-home mom for years until you know she wasn't. But it it did she get a job?

SPEAKER_04 53:24

Yeah, wow. Well, that's coming. I mean, this is the cusp. This is when it starts to change, and you'll see that all of a sudden people, women are going to real estate classes, you know, which was what and the whole world changed, and the women's movement had started. Right. Everything is about to change big time. Yeah, it's we're gonna go from 97% of the commuters in 1971 being male to 10 years later than being 53 percent.

SPEAKER_06 54:01

Wow.

SPEAKER_04 54:02

Commuting into New York.

SPEAKER_07 54:04

That's amazing, but that was definitely the time.

Resilience Lessons And Where To Listen

SPEAKER_04 54:08

Yeah, and that's what this backlash is about culture right now, because at the time, a class of 74, we had the right to choose. It was a national law.

SPEAKER_07 54:20

Looking back over your journey from novelist to now podcast writer, podcast storyteller, what has writing taught you about resilience and reinvention?

SPEAKER_04 54:36

It flows through different veins. You know, it's like my head injuries. They told me that the wiring in your brain automatically starts to heal. It starts to try to find other ways to get your electrical impulses through. And it's true. I mean, God, my speech therapist, God bless you all. Because speech is not just speech, it's the way you think, the way you move. But to be able to organize your thoughts is a tremendously hard thing if you've had a new sort of an injury. But people who are ADD have always had that problem. You know, so that was a big problem for me that I had to recognize that I was never going to be able to function without something to help me with the ADD. Because if I have a talent to tell a story and I have learned that the human body will do its best to repair all those passages in my brain, by golly, my storytelling ability needs to find new ways to find my reader, listener, whoever it is. Right. Because I've got to reach you and bring you into my world. And so the writing, it's just a different form. It's just a different form. But it's the same process of bringing you into my head in a believable way that will suspend belief for a period of time.

SPEAKER_07 56:13

What do you what do you hope people get from your work, whether it's your written work or it's listening to your podcast?

SPEAKER_04 56:21

Oh my God. I've always written escapism. You know, it's funny because people would say, The New York Times once said that I had the liter literary nutrition of a diet coke.

SPEAKER_07 56:34

If I want to escape, I don't want anything more nutritious than that.

SPEAKER_04 56:39

But I want to bring you back feeling better about yourself and with an idea about how you cope and how you don't. And what kind of people do you want around you and who do you want to get rid of? And all of my books have people that something's really wrong with them, but people who have something really right with them too. And paying attention to that and gravitating towards that. And that would be what I would hope people would get from what I've written. Uh, is to change the way your perceptions and to look twice at the people around you and what you think you want and what actually makes you feel good. Yeah. Because I want people to feel better.

SPEAKER_07 57:32

This world is miserable.

SPEAKER_04 57:34

Yeah.

SPEAKER_07 57:34

Yep. Well, thank you for doing what you do and providing an audible as well as a readable way to escape.

SPEAKER_04 57:45

Because I love to curl up at bed at night and listen with an earphone, just very intimate one-on-one, because like listening to your interviews. I was telling you I was listening to one of your interviews, the guy who has a theater for podcast people to come. And there's something about the way you talk to people that's very soothing. And I mean, I feel like I've been socializing.

SPEAKER_07 58:09

Oh, well, come on.

SPEAKER_04 58:11

I'm glad. And I like that.

SPEAKER_07 58:16

Laura, where can folks find you online? And I'll make sure to include these in the show notes.

SPEAKER_04 58:22

Come, if you're on Facebook, come and be a friend. I've got a group there that called the Class of 74, but just look for me because everybody's all over the place. But that's the place where all the people who love the podcast end up coming to reach out because they're all still on PCs. And they listen to the podcast online. It's so hysterical. Oh, that's funny. But no, then there's a website, the class of 74 podcast.com. And then Laura Van Warmer.net is my writer's thing. And also just go to your library and ask them for Laura Van Warmer number. Look me up in your card catalog because they're all still in there.

SPEAKER_07 59:10

Yeah, perfect. Perfect. Laura, I cannot thank you enough for all of your time and your patience as we as we actually solved a technical issue before we hit record. So thank you again. I have loved this conversation. I think I'm gonna need to have another one with you all about Jackie and Betty White and you know, all of those experiences you've had.

SPEAKER_04 59:37

Wait till I get my backlist back in, I get Sally in a new edition. Oh, okay. Because you make me want to write those introductions that I couldn't face before. Oh, good. When I couldn't write, but now I do feel like writing, and I can go back and revisit them and do the introduction that I said I would write. Oh, fantastic.

Pivot Takeaway And Closing Links

SPEAKER_07 59:59

Oh, I'm so looking forward to that. Well, Laura, thank you so, so much. You're very welcome. What an amazing woman she is to have overcome everything that's happened to her and find a new way to create joy for herself while bringing escapism and entertainment to all of us. I think the biggest message for me from our conversation can be summed up in one word. Pivot. Now, I've never liked the word because I associate it with the pandemic. Everybody had to pivot this, pivot that through the entire time, and I just really got tired of hearing the word. But after talking with Laura, it's the only word that kept popping into my head as we discussed her shift from writing novels to writing her podcast. She's a great reminder of the James Watkins metaphor, a river cuts through rock, not because of its power, but because of its persistence, highlighting that consistent, small, and relentless efforts overcome massive, rigid obstacles better than brute force. It emphasizes patience, resilience, and steady progress are more transformative than raw strength. Now we all face obstacles and challenges with our passions, let alone in other parts of our lives. And her story is a beautiful reminder of how important the pivot can be to carving a new path to joy. Jump down to the show notes for links to her author page and ways to connect with her podcast, The Class of 74. I'm better than halfway through season one of it, and I absolutely love it. And don't forget to connect with me in Assorta Conversations. Links to all of my socials are in the show notes as well. As always, thanks for listening, and I'll see you in two weeks.