That’s What Friends Are For with Wade Rouse

[1:16]Zibby Owens: Hi. This is Zibby Owens, and you're listening to Totally Booked with Zibby. Formerly, moms don't have time to read books. In my daily show, I interview today's latest best selling, buzziest, or underrated authors and story creators whose work I think is worth your time. As a bookstore owner, publisher, author, and obviously podcaster, I get a comprehensive look at everything that's coming out and spend my time curating the best books so you don't have to. Stay in the know, get insider insights, and connect with guests like I do every single day. For more information, go to zibbymedia.com, and follow me on Instagram at zibby owens. Today's episode with Wade Rouse was filmed at Zibby's Bookshop where I had the opportunity to interview Wade live in person in front of the fabulous Santa Monica community that regularly attends our events. Wade Rouse is the author of That's What Friends Are For. Any Golden Girls fans out there? Anyway, this book is amazing. Wade is an internationally bestselling author of 13 books. He writes under two names, his own name, Wade Rouse, and his grandmother's name, Viola Shipman, and has written many fabulous books. I have had him on my podcast before. Some of his other books under his name include America's Boy, a memoir, also Magic Season, A Son's Story, both of which were absolutely beautiful. Under Viola Shipman's name, he has written many other books, including The Page Turner, The Wishing Bridge, and A Wish for Winter, among many other titles. Really excited to have had him in the store and just think he's pretty awesome. Welcome, Wade. Thank you so much for coming on Totally Booked. I'm so excited to have you back. Thank you. No. I adore you. Oh, I adore you too. In fact, this is what friends are for. Right? That's exactly right.

[3:13]Wade Rouse: And we're done.

[3:16]Zibby Owens: So excited about your latest book, which is really beautiful. It's a love letter to friendship and overcoming hate and resilience. And there are just so many important themes that relate to so many people and are just incredibly uplifting, none more so than how friends lift each other up. Thanks, Mad Clive. So talk a little bit about my kids are making fun of me. I always ask authors, Tell everybody about your book. And they're like, I know now I'm embarrassing them even more. They're like, you're just asking because you didn't read it. And I'm like, no, I did. That is not why I asked that question. It's not for me. It's for everybody else. So anyway, what is your book about?

[3:55]Wade Rouse: Elevator Pitch, as we know. It follows four gay men over the age of 60 who all live communally, like in Jah Jah Gabor's very real, very pink, former mid century mansion in Palm Springs, California. Each of the men has one of the characteristics of one of the golden girls, which inspired the novel. And they kinda have this never ending happy hour going in their retirement years. And they perform episodes of the classic setcom. They bring it to life for new audiences in Palm Springs as a troop known as the golden gaze. And it's it's funny. They are they're bound together forever, but each is kind of harboring a secret that they don't want the other to know about because they don't wanna burden them in their older years until one of their estranged sisters shows up on their doorstep with their teenage granddaughter in tow, which we all know what that means. And kind of everything comes unraveled more quickly than one of Dorothy's caftans. As you said, this is a story about friendship, found family, fighting like hell to find the people that get you and love you. Aging, we talk about aging with grace, but this is about aging with grit. You don't get to a certain age in your life without fighting like hell to have gotten to that point. And as you also said beautifully, this is about battling the inhumanity of the world. You know, forty plus years ago, the Golden Girls came out and tackled some huge topics of the time. And I came out around the same time. And so little and so much has changed over the course of the last forty years. We're battling the same crap that we battled back then. And I wanted this to be a history lesson wrapped in a hell of a lot of humor just like the sitcom itself.

[5:50]Zibby Owens: Amazing. Well, like you, I used to watch the golden girls with my mom, with my grandmother. My gosh. Who here watched The Golden Girls? Like, everybody? And you raised this interesting question in the book, like, how could it connect so many people? You wouldn't think you would necessarily have so much in common with four retired women, but you were talking about the fact that they feel a bit discarded, overlooked, and who doesn't feel that way occasionally. Yeah. What group can't relate to that in some way? Yeah. That's exactly it. I mean, if you remember the sitcom,

[6:21]Wade Rouse: there were four women, you know, over of a certain age, as we like to say, that really had been discarded by society. You know, they were divorcees, you know, job traumas. They needed to pool resources to live together. They had caregiving to do all of the things that so many in our society do. And it was remarkable because there aren't many shows at that time that really showed that many women and their friendship. And that's really what I wanted to do with this novel was show especially male friendship, gay male friendship over the age of over the age of 60. And, you know, you you talked about that. I grew up watching this with my mother and grandmother. I was a 19 year old, college fraternity boy when the Golden Girls first aired, and that was not a show for, like, a 19 year old fraternity kid who could chug beers and time Domino's pizza drivers. And I had lost my older brother, a couple of years earlier, and he you know, I I emerged from my mother's womb like this. I was dressed like this. You know, I wrote poetry and played the trombone, which is things growing up in the Ozarks in the nineteen seventies that boys did not do. So I had a big target on my back. But my mother and grandmother loved me unconditionally, and they really pushed me out of the nest to go to college. And I heard about this sitcom and as a way to connect with them because we were not together any longer. Before fraternity parties started, I would snake the cord of a rotary phone. Do people remember a rotary phone? Into my room, and I would watch this long distance with my mother and grandmother as a way to laugh and connect, but it also was a way we learned to understand each other. You know, it broached topics such as aging. I got to know my mom and grandmother on a deeper level. One of the main episodes was about coming out, which actually paved a way for me to have a conversation with them. So, you know, great art, TV shows, movies, theater, books, that's the connection is that we do not really understand the impact that they will have on our lives, but it's always profound in some way.

[8:35]Zibby Owens: But I'm so sorry about your brother, and I didn't realize that till I read your author's note at the end of the book.

[8:41]Wade Rouse: Can you share how he passed away? Is that Yeah. No. He, my brother was I mean, he was everything I was not. Fisherman, hunter, tinkerer of engines. You know, I still think gnomes are under a car hood. I don't know how things work. And he rode a motorcycle. And a in the Ozarks, there are a lot of one lane bridges. And a truck driver fell asleep and hit my brother. And you can imagine what that does to a family. I mean, it it devastated my family, but my mother and my grandmother refused to let him die. They talked about him openly and honestly. They asked me to write about him. And, you know, it was the worst moment of our lives, but in a way, also, made us who we were and who I am today. So I that's you know, every book I write is it's not gonna be historical fiction, but it's my personal history. That's that's what I love to mine. I think that's what we all we all have our own beautiful stories that we that are painful and beautiful and horrible. And that's what I love to write about are these universal things that connect all of us. Well,

[9:58]Zibby Owens: I'm glad you shared that and I'm so so sorry. Especially when you said, you know, I felt like they took the wrong brother like he was such a perfect brother for my family. I did.

[10:09]Wade Rouse: Know it's I grew up in a time when they're you know in a place. Have you all seen the TV show Ozark? They sugarcoated it. It was way worse than that. I mean, I don't know if people get what it was like in the seventies and early eighties. There was no there wasn't even a a vocabulary to discuss me. You know, my father didn't understand. Nobody understood. I didn't even know there were people like me that existed. You know, we thought Charles Nelson, Riley, and Liberace were showmen. We didn't really we didn't even understand. And so it was hard. And yet, I felt kind of forged in iron to become the person I am. You know, you people talk about publishing the studies and how difficult it is. And it is. It's a tough world we're in. It's a tough industry. But also with what I've been through, but also feels kind of like a gentle shower sometimes too. It's nothing compared. It actually has

[11:13]Zibby Owens: made me good with whatever happens in life. Wow. Well, all of your characters are, as you mentioned, going through something. And some of the secrets that come out are very dark and painful. They're hiding things, they're wrestling with things, learning information themselves. Can you talk a little bit about some of the struggles and how did you assign different things to different characters? Like there could have been endless things that four men could have been going through. Why these things? Yeah, that's a great question. You know, one,

[11:43]Wade Rouse: on the surface and even deeper, I didn't want these these four men to be caricatures of the golden girls. I just wanted them to have their internal traits but in totally different bodies and souls. Each of the menya is struggling with something very difficult in their lives. And it's all from my own personal history or the histories of our friends who, you know, we tend to forget, and it still happens every single day. Kicked out of their home, familial abuse, addiction to alcohol or sex because so many of us are simply wanting to be loved or needed. There's a plethora of very deep issues that, you know, we think have passed but are still that we're still struggling with every single day. You know, every week I get an email from somebody from I'm not gonna exaggerate, eight to 80 that is experiencing something that these men are going through. Again, we think so much has changed the last forty years, but it hasn't. So I wanted I I did. I wanted this to be really an important history lesson for readers. I wanted them to understand the struggles that are still occurring today. You know, one of the narrators is here and we're talking about Oh, no way. We're talking about one of the main characters, Barry, who's actually based on a real character from the Golden Girls. If you ever saw the premiere episode, there was a character named Coco, who was the women's openly gay housekeeper and chef, he was cut from the premiere because, you know, they said five people wouldn't fit in the kitchen. But I think we kind of understand now maybe audiences weren't ready for that. But he was just saying, you know, there were so being in Hollywood, being an actor, having experienced a lot of these things firsthand, those are the stories that I wanted people to see.

[13:36]Zibby Owens: Amazing. Well, you also said Sofia was such a fan favorite that they had to Such a fan favorite. Yeah. Dorothy's mom in the show. And she's great. Yes. I mean, we all love her. It's okay. We forget it. Can I just read, like, two paragraphs about Sure? The different characters and the role of friendship in the story because I thought it was so beautiful. You said, My eyes drift to my three best friends listening to me. How many fights have we been in? How many losses have we endured? I think of Teddy losing John and finding him floating in the pool face down next to three bottles of champagne and an empty bottle of pills, me fighting to breathe life and hope back into him again. I can still see Sid after his family disowned him for many years, his wife remarrying and how he would sit on the patio and stare at the mountains for weeks at a time as if they were speaking only to him in silence. And the men that Barry has kicked out and discarded onto our driveway like Frank did to Eva and Lana. A house can be filled with historical significance and unparalleled beauty, but it is simply walls and a roof without love, family, struggles, and stories to fill it. My golden gaze sense that I am staring at them. BFFs have that instinct, don't we? And when they look me in the eye and smile, I know that I am seen, even if just for a moment. Oh, how nice was that? Thank you. Oh my gosh. How have friends helped you through your life? And who are your BFFs? Well, we've got some here tonight.

[15:03]Wade Rouse: I've lost both of my parents. My husband Gary in the back who's growing his hair out and this has been a thing for the last two years has lost both of his parents and it's our friends that have come in and filled the void. You know, we're having a big Easter brunch on Sunday and it's our friends that are coming and our family now. And so they've been everything to us. I mean, they've kept us upright and going. And that's what this book celebrates is finding your people because we we all go through hell and back to find those people that love us unconditionally. Without any conditions, they simply love us. And that's a rare gift to find those people. So true. Today's episode is sponsored by Quince.

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[18:07]Zibby Owens: Anywhere. What about fancy places like the Canopy in Paris? Yeah. Hilton Honors, baby. Or relaxing sanctuaries like the Conrad in Tulum? Hilton honors, baby. Oh, what about the five star Waldorf Astoria in The Maldives? Are you gonna do this for all 9,000 properties? When you want points that can take you anywhere, anytime, it matters where you stay. Hilton for the stay. In the book, you talk about Passover, which as we're recording this, it is the second night of Passover, and you talk about the significance of the Afikomen and how children are the ones who always have to hide it, find it, and the reason why it's the children, and how inspiring that can be to think of how the next generation can usher in tolerance and acceptance of things that in this generation aren't so aren't going down so smoothly, so to speak. Talk a little bit about that. And,

[19:07]Wade Rouse: you know, two very dear friends of ours at a holiday dinner actually shared the story, their stories with me, which kind of inspired all of this. Yet, you know, that's why I had a teenage her in this book. Ava is the the teenage granddaughter, and she gives it as good as Teddy does. He's the Dorothy character. She gives it back at him as good as he gives it. And it's because Gary and I are godparents to my best friend from college's twins. His wife died when they were only two. And so we've stepped in in many ways for them over the years. And as they've aged and are now in college, who do they call what they need crap done. It's not dad or the grandparents, it's us. And the beautiful thing about them and so many children that we're meeting today, and I'm not going to say children because they're so wise beyond their years, is that as you said, I think they're going to save our butts.

[20:12]Zibby Owens: They see You said that nicer than I did, but okay, we'll go with it. Okay. They see me and Gary as only me and Gary.

[20:18]Wade Rouse: That's all they've seen their whole lives is people that simply love them and they love us. Nothing else. And and I mean, we're going through it right now. But that's that's what gives me hope. That's what I and that's why I wanted to include this. There's a theme of this, you know, we have the battle scars. All of these men have the battle scars, and yet there's so much hope still in their lives that we're gonna get it right one day.

[20:51]Zibby Owens: Well, also, not to bring down the mood further, but there is a hate crime really that that happens and that sort of resurfaces through throughout the book in different different times and with different approaches to dealing with it. I have to talk about this delicately so we don't give things away that are towards the end, but this person who is just so mean to one of your characters and in a totally unacceptable way and then even a violent way, How you, after a performance, why don't tell a little bit more about that if it's not giving it away and what an act like this does because the effect of it

[21:31]Wade Rouse: was so damaging. It is. Yeah, and it's actually based on things that have happened to friends of ours. There are, if you know, there's people do drag queen reading hours for children. And in the book, Sid, as he's the Sofia character, actually reads to children The Very Hungry Caterpillar, which is such a horrifying book, isn't it? Dressed as Sofia and is attacked when he leaves by a woman. And I included it because it's happening. I mean, it's my books are, you know, I have banned books right now in Florida. I have banned books in other states. It's happening in real time as we're living right now. And it's mortifying and horrifying. And people need to understand that when hate is given oxygen, it just takes fire and that's what's happening. And that's what I wanted to show in the book. Do you feel

[22:35]Zibby Owens: you're going through it? You said going through it earlier more today than in past years? You feel like it's at an apex? I do. I do. I mean, you look at just rights in the gay community.

[22:48]Wade Rouse: We it's just horrible to admit. I mean, we wake up almost terrified to look at our cell phones. You know, what transpired before we woke up? You know, was there a federal court or decision that hurts us in some way? And yes, there has been in the course of the last week. So, you know, I feel like we're all me, you, women, we're walking on quicksand right now. We better be ready to battle. So

[23:23]Zibby Owens: another thing that you and The Golden Girls, your book and The Golden Girls have in common is this great sense of humor. Comedic timing, your characters are funny, the dialogue is hilarious, just like with them and not just when they're performing, I mean like when they're just having their regular conversations even just two people walking around the track or just, you know, all the dating things. It's just funny. Talk about how you use humor in in your books. And by the way, this is what? Your twelfth novel, but the first under your own name. Yeah. Yeah. Which is a big decision. So I wanna talk about that too. It's a biggie. Yeah. And but but thank you. This this is a really freaking funny book. So it's It is. It's a really funny book. It it you know, humor

[24:06]Wade Rouse: is and it was an interesting conversation with my editor and agent too on this because the humor sometimes can be biting, which is how friends that really know each other are. When you know somebody better than anybody else, you know which button to push and you'll push it. But like this, I wanted there's so many heavy topics in the book. I've always been a person in my life that kind of elevates myself out of it with humor. It's how I talk to my friends. It's, you know, when my head was getting bashed in in a locker and in school, I could I could rally the girls around me with a joke and kind of hold the bullies at bay. Or if somebody was coming at me, was quicker, funnier than they were, I could cut them off at the knees. So humor has always been kind of the way I've drawn people in but also can keep them back. Humor is very important to these four men. When you've been knocked around a lot in life, the only thing you have is to be able to laugh at it and yourself and life. And I want it was hard. You know, getting this the humor right was hard because my first draft of this book, my editor was like, there's a few too many one liners and they're not hitting. You know, she goes, this really has to be like a great stand up act or a great sitcom. It's gotta move. Mhmm. It's gotta it's gotta have pacing that is moving people along. If it's that joke's not working or is it not coming from a real place in the story, then it's gotta be cut. And I had the best conversation with a gentleman that has another podcast and he's he's the casting director for shrinking. And he said I that show. I love that show. And he goes, this book is like the best script that I've ever gotten in my life. He goes that it balances the funny with the tragedy perfectly and just keeps moving along. So I worked really hard at it. I just I love funny. You know, I think it's easier to make people cry than it is to make people laugh. You know, can tell a story about my dog getting sick and you'll probably all cry, but I tell a joke and half of you will think I'm great and half of you will think I'm a jackass. So it's hard it's hard to get right, But it comes from a wellspring of honesty.

[26:37]Zibby Owens: Anyone raise your hand for the jackass section? No, I'm kidding. I'm kidding. I'm kidding. That's amazing. So can you talk a little also about your pen name situation? So you have many books you've written under the name Viola Shipman who's named after your grandmother. You have several memoirs written under your actual name. Yeah. And this time you were like, I'm doing it. I'm writing a novel under my name. Why?

[27:03]Wade Rouse: This was yeah. For those who don't know, I've written 12 novels under Viola Shipman, a pen name, to honor my working for Ozarks grandmother. And it's women's fiction, but stories that honor women like them. And I had signed a new three book Viola Shipman contract, and I had these wonderful proposals I was sending for my first book in the contract. And this one has always been sitting there. For the since COVID, it's just been kind of sitting there. I had it flushed out. I always wanted to write it, but it didn't really fit with what I was doing. And I couldn't hit there was so much going on in this world. I I sat for days before I hit send. And at the very last moment, I tacked this proposal on to the very end. And I'm a pitcher. Like, I pitch four or five projects to my editor and agent instead of just one idea. And within twenty four hours, my editor called me back. And she said, you've written so many beautiful stories that honor your family and your grandmother. She goes, this one actually will honor you. And we need to this has to happen, and it has to happen under your own name. And that's, you know, publishing doesn't happen all the time. If something's going well in one lane, then they want you to stay in that Lane. So it was it's been great. I've been thrilled. Wow. And talk about your tour. Sounds like it's been amazing. We did 11 states in two weeks, and I've been thrilled with the reception. This was named the Today Show Must Read for March. Kwame Alexander said it was a book that made him call every one of his best friends and tell them how much he loved them, which was the highest compliment. And so it's it was been amazing. We got got a little tired, but your hair his hair held up, and we did fine. Well, from the book, it sounds like you have a nice respite in, Palm Springs in order afterwards. We're heading back tonight. Yes. So we'll get I'm working on my next by the Christmas novel out called the bluff in October. It's set on Mackinac Island. It's like the fan if you've seen The Family Stone, it's The Family Stone meets Succession kind of in a very a lot of family dynamics going on in that book, then I'm working on my next book after that.

[29:25]Zibby Owens: And can you just go back to the first book that you wrote and how you got the confidence to write it and became an author?

[29:32]Wade Rouse: Very first book I wrote came out twenty years ago this month, and it was called America's Boy, and it was originally published by Dutton Penguin. And it was about me growing up gay in the Missouri Ozarks with a family that loved me and had no idea what to do with me. And it was funny and sad, and I had no idea. I had no idea. I just knew I had to write. I always wanted to write. I was a PR director at a very exclusive prep school, and I was miserable. I actually ended up writing a memoir about that called Confessions of a Prep School Mommy Handler about all of the, how I was treated by a lot of the wealthy mothers. And I felt like I loved we talked about Annabel Grewich Mhmm. David Sedaris, Nora Ephron, Augustine Burroughs. These were my peeps that I loved reading. And I thought but I you know, you start and you think, who's gonna like this? Who would ever read this story? What's it? And I spent about three or four years writing it. And I remember going home to visit my mother in the Ozarks. My mother was a hospice nurse at the end of her career. My mother loved to work. If you wanted to see my mom, you had to ride around with her all over as she visited patients. And she came out one day at the end of a long day. I would sit in the car, she'd go in and she said, you know what? All of the people I've cared for today have in common. She goes, they are filled with some sort of regret and I beg of you not to end your life with regret. And I truly went home and started writing after that and started querying agents and doing all the things you do not thinking anything would happen. And I ended up getting three formal offers from agents and chose the agent I still have to this day. And she published the book in a week. And it went out of print and was actually just republished last year by a new publisher called Open Road Media Mhmm. That finds out of out of print books they think are of quality and brings them back to life. So and I got a few memoirs for you too. Oh, great. I've got a few memoirs. This one's I'm gonna get to her too.

[31:44]Zibby Owens: Do you have any regrets?

[31:47]Wade Rouse: I do. I regret not loving myself more. You know, I was 30 when I came out. I missed my entire youth. I missed everything people take for granted. I missed holding hands, first dates, you know, first kiss, prom. I do. I regret that. And I was bold and powerful in my own right, but I did not know how to navigate that at the time. And yet I do not believe I would be who I am today without any of that. You know, I look back, people always ask, would you have done something differently in a book you'd written? And I say no now. There's I've I've changed as a person as much as I've changed as a writer, but that is a time capsule of who I was at that moment. And that's a beautiful thing.

[32:43]Zibby Owens: Amazing. We'd thank you so much. This is absolutely beautiful. Thank you. Thank Thank you you. For listening to Totally Booked with Zibby, formerly moms don't have time to read books. If you loved the show, tell a friend, leave a review, follow me on Instagram at Zibby Owens, and spread the word. Thanks so much. Oh, and buy the books.