Q&A With Author Katherine Center

My introduction for this amazing lady wouldn’t do her justice, so I’m going to let her bio speak for itself!👇🏻

BookPage calls Katherine Center “the reigning queen of comfort reads.” She is the New York Times bestselling author of eight books, including How to Walk Away, Things You Save in a Fire, and her newest, What You Wish For. The movie adaptation of her novel The Lost Husband (starring Josh Duhamel) hit #1 on Netflix and her novel Happiness for Beginners is in production now as a Netflix original starring Ellie Kemper. Katherine writes laugh-and-cry books about how life knocks us down—and how we get back up. She’s been compared to both Jane Austen and Nora Ephron, and the Dallas Morning News calls her stories, “satisfying in the most soul-nourishing way.” Her books have made countless Best-Of lists, including RealSimple’s Best Books of 2020, Amazon’s Top 100 Books of 2019, Goodreads’ Best Books of the Year, and many more. Katherine lives in her hometown of Houston, Texas, with her husband, two kids, and their fluffy-but-fierce dog.

Hi Katherine! I can’t tell you how excited I am to talk with you on my blog! Your books are some of the most beautiful stories I’ve ever read, heart-wrenching but equally inspiring. How to Walk Away and Things You Save in a Fire have stayed with me on so many levels. What led you to this particular niche in your writing?

I really love stories about how people get back up after life has knocked them down. Those moments, those really hard life moments that just crack us open . . . they’re so hard—but they also give us these rare opportunities to grow and change and redefine our lives. I’m interested in how people get through those hard times—but also in what they learn from them and how they grow from them. So I think I found my way to these kinds of stories because that’s what I’m interested in, myself, personally, just as a human: How we do it. How we rise to life’s challenges and cope with humor and grace. But not only just how we cope, but how we also appreciate life’s beauty and joy. Because we kind of always have to do both at the same time—and that’s not easy. I’m just endlessly fascinated by it all.

What is the most fulfilling thing about being an author?

Getting to think about stories all the time. Getting to study them and figure out how they work. Getting to pay attention to what I myself love and long for in stories—and then trying to figure out how to do that for other people. There’s a great quote from Julia Child: “Find something you’re passionate about and keep tremendously interested in it.” That’s me. I never, ever get bored with stories. I’ll be studying them my whole life long.

What does your day look like when you are in the middle of writing a book?

When I’m writing the first draft of a book—sort of building the scaffolding of the story—it takes huge, vast amounts of concentration. I need long stretches of time—days!—when I can get lost in the story and think about nothing else. I’ll go out of town (to Galveston Island) for 4 or 5 days at a time and do a big chunk of writing (50-100 pages), and then come home and read them over and mess with them and let them settle. Then a few weeks later, I go again and do the next section. This rhythm works for me—pushing forward and then settling for a while. That’s always the hardest part: figuring out what the story IS. Once I know what it is, telling it is pretty easy.

Tell us about your book cover designs! They are always so bright and positive and keep with the same theme. I know immediately if it’s one of your books without looking at the title or author!

I got so lucky with them, didn’t I?! I hit the jackpot when Macmillan, my publisher, asked the brilliant designer Olga Grlic to design my covers. That red cover with the flowers for How to Walk Away is the cover that started it all, and I feel like it captured something about my soul. I know the covers won’t always be exactly the same—they’ll have to grow and evolve, but I hope we’ll always keep some version of flowers.

Do you have a favorite book that you’ve written that holds a special place in your heart?

I love them all in different ways. How to Walk Away was my first book to ever hit the New York Times bestseller list. The Lost Husband was my first book to ever get turned into a movie (Hi, Josh Duhamel!). Things You Save in a Fire was a book I wrote with a ton of input from my (volunteer firefighter) husband, and so that one will always be close to my heart.

Your books are becoming movies!!! First The Lost Husband, now Happiness for Beginners, and possibly Things You Save In a Fire?! How has this experience been for you and to what extent are you able to be involved in the process?

It’s so amazing, I can hardly even describe it. I love movies, so it’s just like some kind of crazy magic to watch my stories come to life in this whole new way. I recently got to visit the Happiness for Beginners movie set and attend the wedding of one of my own main characters! The movies are of course often quite different from what I saw in my head when I was writing—but in some ways, they’re better. That kiss O’Connor gives Libby at the famers market in The Lost Husband movie? Better. I can’t take credit for that overalls-pull! That was director Vicky Wight, who is clearly a kissing genius. I was there on the day they filmed that kiss, and it just blew my mind to think that a kiss I wrote for two imaginary people in my head was now, like, happening in the real world with real people. It’s thrilling beyond description.

What are you currently reading/watching?

I just finished reading an advance copy of Christina Lauren’s new book, Something Wilder, and I also just finished Emily Henry’s next-summer book, Book Lovers. Both were absolutely delicious and so much fun to read. Those writers are both new discoveries for me in the last year or so, and I’m in love.

What’s your favorite way to unwind?

I’m a big fan of unwinding! I dance around in the kitchen a lot when I’m making dinner. I sing at the top of my lungs in the car. I walk the dog after dinner with my husband. I take a lot of bubble baths and read yummy novels cover to cover. I curl up with fuzzy blankets and Korean rom-com TV shows online with subtitles. Korean dramas were my best discovery during the pandemic. So swoony and fun to watch!

Where is your favorite place to travel?

So many! I love road trips. I love little New England towns. I love Europe and the UK. I’d love to go the Fjords. My mom’s family is from Germany, and I’ve never been there, so that’s a definite goal. I’ve been to Japan, but I’d love to see more of Asia. Korea’s on my list big time! And my best friend from college lives in New Zealand, so I’ll be heading that way at some point.

Do you have any family traditions you look forward to every year?

We spend Thanksgiving out at my grandparents’ ranch in Texas every year. It’s usually at least 20 people—my sisters and their husbands and any other extended family and friends we can gather. November is usually cool and lovely in Texas, so we build fires and walk the gravel roads and feast and fall asleep on the sofa. It’s just so fun for us all to be together.

What do you do to celebrate when you finish writing a book?

It always feels very celebratory to print out the final pages of one of those big, beautiful beasts. It’s like, it’s finally real. I print them out and then put them in a big old binder and carry them around for a while. That said, “done” is a slippery concept! Almost as soon as I’m printing it out, I’m circling back to make more changes and make it better.

And Finally! Will you please tell us more about your newest book, The Bodyguard?! It’s one of my (and many others) most anticipated reads this summer!

Oh, I’m so in love with it. It’s a classic rom-com. Usually, I think of my books as kind of half tragedy and half comedy—like, there’s almost always some big, hard life event that the main character has to struggle with and figure out, and there’s also always a fun love story. So it’s a balance between darkness and light. But with this story—which I was writing in 2020 and 2021—I decided I just wanted as much light as possible. There’s some struggle here, and some darkness, and some things to for the main characters to figure out, because you have to have some ballast in a story, but I knew from the beginning that I wanted this story to be as joyful and fun and bantery and swoony and playful as possible. And it IS. It was how I made my own sunshine during the pandemic. I just put these two main characters out on a ranch together . . . and then I just let them tease each other and joke around and banter and fight and fall in love. Man, it was fun. It was exactly what I needed!

You guys! How great is she???!!! Singing the praises of her cover designer and fellow authors-such a phenomenal writer, down to earth, and just all around so sweet to chat with. I want to give a shout out to Josh Duhamel too (Hey Josh!) because I just know he’s reading my blog 😂. Thank you SO MUCH Katherine for taking the time to do this chat with me. Readers!!! GO pre-order The Bodyguard now! It will be released on 7/19/22 and you won’t want to miss it! To learn more about Katherine, her books, and her movies you can check out her blog or Instagram.

Stay tuned for more fun Q&A’s!

XOXO,

Kristyn