Meet Actress Turned Novelist Deborah Goodrich Royce

Thursday, December 29, 2022

Lit Chat Author Interview with Deborah Goodrich Royce

Calling our thriller and true crime lovers, our Florida fiction readers, and our soap opera fans! Former soap star turned author Deborah Goodrich Royce joins us at the Beaches Library this January to talk about her new book, Reef Road, a thriller based on a true crime and set in Palm Beach.

#JOIN

This Lit Chat Interview with Deborah Goodrich Royce is sponsored by the Friends of the Beaches Branch Library. It will take place in person at the Beaches Library Wednesday, January 11 at 6 p.m. You can also attend the livestream via Zoom. A Lit Chat interview is a 60-minute program consisting of a 40-minute conversation followed by 20 minutes of audience Q&A.

#Register now!

A book signing will follow, with books available for sale on-site from The Bookmark. Or, you can bring copies purchased from your favorite bookseller.


Deborah Goodrich Royce’s thrillers examine puzzles of identity. Ruby Falls won the Zibby Award for Best Plot Twist in 2021 and Finding Mrs. Ford was hailed by Forbes, Book Riot, and Good Morning America’s “best of” lists in 2019.

She began as an actress on All My Children and in multiple films, before transitioning to the role of story editor at Miramax Films, developing Emma and early versions of Chicago and A Wrinkle in Time.

With her husband, Chuck, Deborah restored the Avon Theatre, Ocean House Hotel, Deer Mountain Inn, United Theatre, Savoy Bookstore, and numerous Main Street revitalization projects in Rhode Island and the Catskills. She serves on the governing and advisory boards of the American Film Institute, Greenwich International Film Festival, New York Botanical Garden, Greenwich Historical Society, and the PRASAD Project. Deborah holds a bachelor’s degree in modern foreign languages and an honorary doctorate of humane letters from Lake Erie College.

Interviewer Jessica Hatch is a professional freelance editor and novelist with more than a decade of publishing experience. She worked her way through the slush pile at New York-based literary agencies like Writers House, New Leaf Literary & Media, and Fox Literary Management, and learned what attracts readers to a book at St. Martin’s Press. Jessica’s editorial clients have gone on to receive partial and full manuscript requests from agents, to earn Kirkus starred reviews and placement on Best Book of the Year lists, and to win national awards. As a writer, Jessica has won pitch wars; attended juried workshops in Aspen, London, and Rome; and has been published in The MillionsWriter’s DigestFast CompanyBurrow Press, and Babes Who Hustle, among others. Her debut novel, My Big Fake Wedding, debuted at #1 on Amazon's Humorous American Literature charts.

#READ

Check out all of Deborah’s books from the library, and Jessica’s, too!

#THE LIBRARY RECOMMENDS

For more great Florida reads, check out books like:

  1. Milk Blood Heat: Stories, by Dantiel W. Moniz
    "A gorgeous debut" (Lauren Groff) from Dantiel W. Moniz, one of the most exciting discoveries in today's literary landscape, Milk Blood Heat depicts the sultry lives of Floridians in intergenerational tales that contemplate human connection, race, womanhood, inheritance, and the elemental darkness in us all.
  2. Everglades, by Randy Wayne White
    In this thrilling novel from New York Times bestselling author Randy Wayne White, Doc Ford returns to his stilt house on Dinkin's Bay to find an old friend and one-time lover waiting for him.
  3. The Lola Quartet, by Emily St. John Mandel
    Gavin Sasaki is a promising young journalist in New York City until he's fired in disgrace following a series of unforgivable lapses in his work. It's early 2009, and the world has gone dark very quickly; the economic collapse has turned an era that magazine headlines once heralded as the second gilded age into something that more closely resembles the Great Depression. The last thing Gavin wants to do is return to his hometown of Sebastian, Florida, but he's drifting toward bankruptcy and is in no position to refuse when he's offered a job by his sister, Eilo, a real estate broker who deals in foreclosed homes.