Meet Debbie
Debbie is the celebrated author of ten contemporary romance and women’s fiction novels that touch the heart. Her books have received many accolades including a starred review from Publishers Weekly, an Amazon editor’s pick for best romance, and a HOLT Medallion award.
Debbie lives in Saint Louis with her family, a thoroughly spoiled rescue dog, and two quirky cats who ought to be named Pete and Repeat. When she isn’t writing (or reading), you can find her hiking in the Missouri woods, working in her garden, or savoring time with family and friends.
You can follow her on BookBub or connect with her on Instagram or Facebook.
Debbie lives in Saint Louis with her family, a thoroughly spoiled rescue dog, and two quirky cats who ought to be named Pete and Repeat. When she isn’t writing (or reading), you can find her hiking in the Missouri woods, working in her garden, or savoring time with family and friends.
You can follow her on BookBub or connect with her on Instagram or Facebook.
A bit more...in Debbie's words
Given my ten novels, one might assume I penned my first stories in childhood and pursued a literary degree in college. While my active imagination stayed with me after childhood, I was knee-deep in a very different career when I first considered novel writing. My love of animals and nature led me into a career in conservation biology after graduating with a biology degree and minors in chemistry and conservation. The more memorable moments from those years include flying in a Cessna along the Mississippi River to help conduct a bald eagle census, living in a trailer in the wetlands for six weeks while tracking endangered Peregrine falcon juveniles as they were introduced into the wild, encountering a bear in the remote swamps of North Carolina while in the company of USFWS workers, and experiencing rare “hands on” moments with endangered wolves during their annual vet checks through a job at a wolf conservation organization. Some of the less than romantic moments include getting chased by a snake across an open field in the wilds of South America, occasionally getting bitten by birds of prey while working in education shows—I still carry the scars as a reminder—and spending a semester at a zoo in a conservation internship that largely amounted to dividing and weighing frozen zebra feces.
In the quieter moments of these years, my thoughts turned to daydreaming different endings for the books I read. I took my first stab at writing in my mid-twenties while still working full time. That first manuscript took more than three years, but I ended up with a stiff-but-well-plotted Cinderella retelling of an Irish immigrant in the 1870s. It was, most certainly, not publishable. But that didn’t matter. I’d fallen headfirst in love with novel writing and was eager to dive into my next idea.
Eventually, I stepped away from my career in conservation and became both a stay-at-home mom and an aspiring novelist. A bit ironically, making real headway in the world of traditional publishing took nearly as long as did raising my kids. I’ve heard it said that it takes a million words for an author to find their authentic voice, and I can attest to it taking nearly that long for me. I completed six manuscripts before I grew serious enough to join the publishing community. For me, this included joining a writing group, attending conferences, and entering contests. By the time I signed with my first agent for a young adult novel I'd written, I’d been writing for well over ten years.
With the signing of that contract, I figured the hard part was over. Not so. The manuscript went on submission but didn’t sell, and that agent soon left the business. Being at ground zero once again was disheartening, but I rolled up my sleeves and used everything I’d learned about novel writing to revise one of my completed manuscripts, a romance set in a fictional animal shelter. The novel went on to become the first book in the bestselling Rescue Me series. It debuted in 2017, while my first stab at that Cinderella retelling began a good two decades earlier. In the story of the tortoise and the hare, I’m quite certainly the tortoise.
At the time of writing it, I had no thought of expanding the shelter-centered romance into a series—much less one that spanned seven books—but that’s what happened. Readers loved the small-town setting and canine sidekicks, and I knew enough about animals to do them justice. More recently, I’ve enjoyed diving into standalone, mainstream fiction. My upcoming release, Bigger Than Us, highlights the journey of one character, Maddie Trudeau, in the months after the husband she was on the brink of divorcing dies in a mountain biking accident. It includes viewpoints of other major players and is both bigger scale and more universal than my romances, but if you come for the love story and canine sidekicks you’ve found in my other stories, I trust you won’t be disappointed.
In the quieter moments of these years, my thoughts turned to daydreaming different endings for the books I read. I took my first stab at writing in my mid-twenties while still working full time. That first manuscript took more than three years, but I ended up with a stiff-but-well-plotted Cinderella retelling of an Irish immigrant in the 1870s. It was, most certainly, not publishable. But that didn’t matter. I’d fallen headfirst in love with novel writing and was eager to dive into my next idea.
Eventually, I stepped away from my career in conservation and became both a stay-at-home mom and an aspiring novelist. A bit ironically, making real headway in the world of traditional publishing took nearly as long as did raising my kids. I’ve heard it said that it takes a million words for an author to find their authentic voice, and I can attest to it taking nearly that long for me. I completed six manuscripts before I grew serious enough to join the publishing community. For me, this included joining a writing group, attending conferences, and entering contests. By the time I signed with my first agent for a young adult novel I'd written, I’d been writing for well over ten years.
With the signing of that contract, I figured the hard part was over. Not so. The manuscript went on submission but didn’t sell, and that agent soon left the business. Being at ground zero once again was disheartening, but I rolled up my sleeves and used everything I’d learned about novel writing to revise one of my completed manuscripts, a romance set in a fictional animal shelter. The novel went on to become the first book in the bestselling Rescue Me series. It debuted in 2017, while my first stab at that Cinderella retelling began a good two decades earlier. In the story of the tortoise and the hare, I’m quite certainly the tortoise.
At the time of writing it, I had no thought of expanding the shelter-centered romance into a series—much less one that spanned seven books—but that’s what happened. Readers loved the small-town setting and canine sidekicks, and I knew enough about animals to do them justice. More recently, I’ve enjoyed diving into standalone, mainstream fiction. My upcoming release, Bigger Than Us, highlights the journey of one character, Maddie Trudeau, in the months after the husband she was on the brink of divorcing dies in a mountain biking accident. It includes viewpoints of other major players and is both bigger scale and more universal than my romances, but if you come for the love story and canine sidekicks you’ve found in my other stories, I trust you won’t be disappointed.