An Interview with Libby Malin, Internationally-renowned Humorous Women's Fiction Author

Q. Your book, My Own Personal Soap Opera, has been out for several weeks now. How has it been going?

A. Very well. I’ve been having lots of fun on my eco-friendly virtual book tour, and I’ve been receiving many positive comments from readers. Both of them. No, seriously, it’s been great, and I truly have been enjoying myself.

Q. Well, since you’re visiting this blog today, why don’t you tell us a little about yourself?

A. Thank you for asking. Not many people know my true personal story, so I'm happy to share it here today. It has great relevance to my journey as a writer.

I was born in a small village in the Hungarian Alps, orphaned at the age of five months and raised by vampiric werewolves. This is one of the reasons, by the way, that I cannot bring myself to write stories involving vampires or werewolves, no matter how much money is to be made in that field. I know, I know—authors are raking in dozens of dollars writing those tales. But for me, it would be a great sign of disrespect to my parents—Alpo and Nutella—to use their backgrounds as the basis for my profit-making. I salute the authors who write those stories, however, and mean no disrespect to them either. It is just not for me, given my upbringing.

I turned to writing comedy as soon as I could pick up a pen, which was difficult to learn considering my parents didn’t have opposable thumbs. Recognizing how their lineage could hold me back and realizing they couldn’t keep feeding me carry-out pizza purloined from the Magyar Pizzeria and Sub Stop at Buda-on-Pest, my parents sent me to a convent school at the age of seven where I learned . . . that the hills are alive. With the sound of music, no less. Who knew?

After graduation, I was heartbroken to discover that my complete assimilation into the non-vampiric-werewolf world meant I could no longer recognize my parents in a pack of wolves roaming the village. Crushed in soul and spirit, I hopped on a steamer in the Black Sea bound for America. It was a long trip.

Barely surviving a shipwreck on the Jersey shore and a subsequent mugging attempt on Jersey streets, I made my way east eventually settling in Pennsylvania where I lead a quiet writerly life, grateful for the solitude and the earthy smell of fertilized fields, which takes me back to the days of my childhood when Alpo and Nutella would carry me in a vampiric-werewolf baby tote (FDA-approved, of course) through the waving fields of Hungarian paprika plants.

Q. How did you come to write comedy and, in particular, a book featuring a soap opera head writer?

A. As you can tell, my life was hard. But there is an old French-Hungarian saying that explains much about life and how we vampiric-werewolf-raised Hungarians approach it. It has given me great comfort over the years. The saying is: Je vais cherchez du bon vin a la cave. Loosely translated, this means: Life is hard. One must laugh or one must cry. Laughing is easier. Drinking wine is good, very good. Very good indeed.

That saying has guided my life. As to soap operas, I became familiar with them at the convent school. We had a ham radio/TV setup in our dormitory. Many of the girls would gather round the flickering broadcasts coming from America telling tales of spectacular wealth and characters named Victor, Nikki, Rachel, Mac, Stefano, Hope, Bo, Kayla, Brooke and, of course, Luke and Laura. Oh, how we longed for that life and those names! It was only when I came to America that I learned these stories were not newscasts but fictional tales. I shrugged my shoulders, thought of that French-Hungarian saying, and began penning humorous women’s fiction, setting my latest novel in the world of soap operas. The rest, as they say, is history.

Q. What is My Own Personal Soap Opera about--is it your life, thinly-veiled?

A. If this blog could speak, you would hear me spitting with laughter right now. No, MOPSO is not my life--although at one time, I wished I could have been a soap opera head writer, like the book's protagonist. How proud Alpo and Nutella would have been then, eh?

At any rate, MOPSO tells the story of soap head writer Frankie McNally, who uses her show as her own personal message board to the world while dealing with multiple crises at work and home -- a leading man who broke his leg on Dancing with the Stars, staff members who all wish they were doing something else, a jewel thief imitating a story on the show, and two dashing men after her heart. By story's end, she has to decide what is most important to her in life and love.

Well, perhaps that last part is similar to my own life's journey. And, of course, there is my striking physical resemblance to the woman on the cover of the book.

Q. Is there anything else you’d like to share with us?

A. Hmm. . . well, I guess I’d like to say I’m very happy to be here. As a guest on this blog, that is. Very grateful. And I’d really, really, really like it if people would buy my books. Many people don’t know that actually buying the books helps authors live and write. It’s a crazy system, I know. But buying the books means authors get to keep itsy-bitsy, teensy-weensy amounts of money, and the publishers might want to give the authors some more teensy-weensy bits of money to keep writing books. I’d really appreciate the support. More importantly, Alpo and Nutella would appreciate it. They are now in a Home for Old Vampiric Werewolves in Outer-Mongolia, and I am their sole means of support. I only get to visit them twice a decade. The trip is so expensive, and so grueling. I can’t think about it too much. It upsets me . . . Je vais cherchez du bon vin a la cave. . .

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Of Libby Malin’s My Own Personal Soap Opera, Publishers Weekly says: "Malin coaxes plenty of laughs. . ." while Booklist calls it, "a world of wit and chaos . . .smart and insightfully written."

You can win a free copy of MOPSO by commenting on this post. Libby will chose one winner from those who post something by midnight EST April 15, 2010. If your email address isn't part of your blogger profile, please put it in the comment to win.

For more information please visit www.LibbysBooks.com or her blog, www.LibbysBooks.blogspot.com. You can drop her a note at Libby_Malin@hotmail.com if you’d like to be put on her email list. Also, you can friend her on Facebook at Libby Malin Sternberg.