Welcome Deborah Burns!
I’m Deborah Burns, a wife, mother of three, and native New Yorker who now lives on Long Island. I’ve spent my career in women’s magazine and digital media as a former chief innovation officer and brand leader for ELLEgirl, Metropolitan Home, ELLE Décor, and ELLE Global Marketing. Now as an industry consultant, I help brands and executives reinvent.
But beneath my business career, a writer’s heart was always beating. As the digital age changed the face of my industry, I found myself yearning for some changes of my own. I began a creative journey to write my unconventional mother’s story which yielded the memoir, Saturday’s Child, and I founded Skirting the Rules® to help women 50+ reinvent authentic futures full of meaning.
What childhood memories brought you joy?
I think the best answer to this question is through an excerpt from the book so you can feel what brought me joy—in fact, this opening scene ends with that very word:
My hand started waving as soon as I sensed my mother’s car about to round the last curve before the hotel. I never failed to anticipate her arrival every summer Saturday, not even once, not even by a second. When she stepped out, I threw my arms around her waist, careful to angle my body back a bit so my bathing suit would not dampen her. A half-embrace, but we were together again. Even if her hug wasn’t quite as tight as mine, I could tell that she had missed me too.
A quick-change into one of her Emilio Pucci-inspired sarongs, and then we would trek to the enormous pool with all the other guests. My towel was already on the hill’s coarse grass from the morning, and she would join me on it for a few moments so I could cover her back with oil. Then I’d watch as she first glossed her face, then her chest and arms and finally her legs, slightly raised to reach her arched feet. Even now, the scent of Bain De Soleil transports me to another time and place.
Back in the water, I kept one eye on my mother as I swam with all of the other children. Always holding a cigarette aloft, she’d laugh with the friends who orbited her, admirers who vied for proximity seeking some sort of rub-off effect—or so it seemed to me. She seduced the world, and I was no exception.
Once an hour she’d pin up her tumbling red mane, tie a sheer kerchief around it, and come in for a dip. Everyone knew to stop splashing. She slowly submerged up to her shoulders and began to do her sidestroke once around the circumference of the pool. That signature stroke was completely her, effortlessly gliding sideways through life without ever going too deep. After all, leaving the surface would wet her hair.
When I was very young, our pool ritual was both a public and private gift. Before or after the side-stroking—sometimes before and after on a really great day—my mother would press her body down on the rope that separated the children’s side of the pool and slide across. Scooping me up, she’d ease back over to the grown-up side (where it was almost as shallow but still felt as though you were entering a forbidden zone). She would bend her slippery knees so the water just reached her neck and I’d climb on to face her, weightless, my little hands, arms, and feet sliding on her shoulders and legs. A smiling pause to build the anticipation, and then she’d begin her bouncing game. “Bah-dum, bah-dum,” she would singsong, “bah-dum, bah-dum,” as we bobbed and turned round and round together. Her breath, her closeness, her blue eyes on me as the cool water beaded on our skin was like nothing else. If I close my eyes, I can still feel that joy.
Who did you consider a mentor in your growing years?
Like Cinderella or Sleeping Beauty, I had fairy godmother mentors. Two of them, actually, both in-residence and on-call twenty-four hours per day, seven days a week.
They were my aunts—my father’s older spinster sisters—who lived with my parents and only child me. I was delicately consigned to these plump and affectionate women for my daily care. They were the polar opposites of my larger-than-life, glamorous mother, and their ways balanced hers.
I was born into the prim 1950s, but my unconventional mother was not conforming at all. She turned the household—and me—over to my aunts while she worked full-time and then came and went from our little Queens, NY apartment like a VIP guest. So, as my mother colored outside the traditional parenting lines, these two women became core to my happiness and well-rounded development.
I loved them with my whole heart and they loved me fully in return, which helped to ease the ever-present longing I had for my elusive mother.
Inspiration for writing
Saturday’s Child
What attracted me to your book was the mother daughter relationship because I was raised by a single parent, my mother. What inspired you to write Saturday’s Child?
I love that someone on the other side of the world was attracted to the book! Really warms my heart and it validates for me that somehow, I’ve touched on something universal.
I worshiped my mother—I was obsessed by her, really—and even though she died more than twenty years before I started writing, she had remained ever-present for me.
Then, while on a trip to London with my daughter, the notion to write hit me as I stared at portraits of unconventional women from the eighteenth century. In an abstract sort of way, they reminded me of my mother, and I became consumed with learning more about them and writing about her life and legacy.
How long did it take you to write your book and how hard did you work to get here?
OMG, as we say in the U.S.! So incredibly hard. I am so happy that I did it now that it is published, but writing the book was truly torturous. It was the hardest work I’ve ever done in a career filled with hard work. The book took about a year and a half of complete focus, writing seven days per week to finish.
Writing is lonely and tedious and seemingly endless. You’re often desolate and unsure—did I mention that every writer, no matter how skilled, is filled with self-doubt more than half the time? And yet, when you finesse that line, when you perfect the expression of what it is you are trying to convey, when you look at what has been holding you back square in the eye, there is nothing quite like it.
All the reflection and editing ultimately liberates authors from whatever it is that they’re wrestling with, and that’s what happened to me.
What is the message (theme or takeaway) can readers embrace in your story?
Ultimately, Saturday’s Child is an optimistic story of becoming, of redemption and hope. We all have childhood wounds and scars in varying degrees but, as hard as it is to see in the moment, they usually make us stronger. They can bear fruit of their own and turn into assets that ultimately make us better people.
What amazing experience did you learn while writing Saturday’s Child?
Well, from the moment I saw those historical women and stepped into the unknown, serendipity and coincidence followed. My family is probably tired of hearing me say things like: “Can you believe that happened,” or “What are the odds?” But all of the connecting dots and lines made me feel as if I were on a destiny path that validated the writing for me.
In the mix were actually a few “out there” experiences … I don’t want to go all “woo-woo” as we say here, but three people came into my life during the process with a message or perspective they couldn’t have known unless they did have a special gift.
Who would you choose to cast as you or your mother in your story?
My mother was room-silencing gorgeous and looked most like the American actress Rita Hayworth in her most famous role, Gilda. In the book my mother is several ages, and my thoughts run from Susan Sarandon to Ashley Judd, and more recently to Katherine Heigl, who requested a copy of the book. Maybe there’s an Australian actress you or your followers could suggest?!
What’s Next for Deborah Burns? Is there a new book in the making? Could you share a little blurb or give us a hint on the story or theme etc.
Right now, to just breathe and see how this debut unfolds. I’m stunned at how much work is involved once you finish writing the book!
Probably, what will be next is an historical novel that tells the same mother daughter story in a different way. When I first started writing, this is the form it took until I realized that I was disguising the real story by fictionalizing it (and to get even further away from it, by putting it in a whole other century!).
When I was almost finished with that version, someone suggested memoir and it all fell into place. I suddenly knew that the real story of the two of us was what I was born to write. So now, I’ll go back to the novel and finish that.
What advice would you give to anyone wanting to become a writer?
As the publishing world and its business model changes in a shifting digital world, be open to new approaches. I went down the traditional path with a literary agent, but soon realized that the book world was in as much chaos as the magazine world I lived in. It’s designed to manage their risk, not necessarily to publish the best book. Plus, it’s an incredibly arduous process on their terms and timeline, and only when they deem an author has a large enough platform.
Because Saturday’s Child is a literary memoir, I felt self-publishing was not for me. But I discovered the new hybrid publishers—they curate what they publish and have traditional distribution just like the major houses. It’s a different business model because the author assumes some of the risk, but then makes much more on the back-end. I identified my top choice—She Writes Press—who only publishes 40 books a season from hundreds if not thousands of submissions—and was fortunate to have been selected. The rest is history!
Connect with Deborah Burns
Website | Instagram | Facebook | Email: db@deborahburnsauthor.com
