Award-winning author Stacey Wiedower
Stacey Wiedower is one of those multi-hyphenates: journalist-interior designer-novelist. She writes about homes for The Commercial Appeal, worked for a design firm in town (which she has described as being like Designing Women), and recently released her second novel, Now a Major Motion Picture.
Did Wiedower always want to be a writer?
“Actually, no,” she says. “I was the only journalist walking around who didn’t want to write the great American novel, and I meant it.”
Ironically, it was when Wiedower was working for the design firm when the urge to write hit. She says that one day the idea for a book flashed in her head and she then spent the next three hours fleshing out the idea.
That idea was for Now a Major Motion Picture, which she wrote first. The second book she wrote, 30 First Dates, was released first in January 2015.
Wiedower says she finished both books before she sought out an agent and publisher. She landed with Gemma Halliday Publishing, which she says was a good fit amid all the vampire and dystopian novel publishers.
Both 30 First Dates — about a woman who writes a bucket list to be completed before her 30th birthday — and Now a Major Motion Picture — about a woman who becomes paparazzi-famous after she writes a novel series — can be considered chick lit or romantic comedy. Wiedower, who reads just about everything from classics to popular fiction, calls rom-com her favorite, “my comfort food.”
Wiedower’s protagonists have been on the verge of 30, at the cusp of “finding yourself in life, your career. They’re not remotely autobiographical, but there are parts of me. I try to write strong female characters.”
Wiedower is currently at work on her third novel about an interior designer in Memphis. “Still not autobiographical,” she swears.
Stacey Wiedower signs Now a Major Motion Picture at the South Main Book Juggler, Friday, July 31st, 6 p.m.
