Happy Fall, Y'All!
Salute to autumn, buzz builds for my new novel, THAT'S WHAT FRIENDS ARE FOR, a Broadway play based on one of my memoirs, MAGIC SEASON launches in paperback, our new Fall gift line & our trip to Italy!
Fall 2025
HAPPY FALL, Y’ALL!
I sure do love summer, but there’s nothing like autumn in Michigan.
It’s been an unusually warm and dry early fall, and the leaves are just now starting to turn. We live on seven acres, and our home is surrounded by sugar maples, so when their leaves finally explode, I feel as if I am living in a technicolor world of crimson, gold, siena, burgundy, and fiery red and orange. The woods literally glow. I love nothing more than sitting by the fire, writing, and drinking cider and eating chili plus pumpkin anything while watching football (Go, Rams! Go, Lions! Go, Mizzou! Go, Northwestern!) and marveling at nature’s annual show.
Halloween is huge in our resort town of Saugatuck-Douglas. In fact, our little towns of a few hundred fall folks welcomes over 10,000 visitors for the parade, which lasts for hours and is a sight to behold. Gary and I have been mainstays at the parade for years, even being asked to lead it one year. We’ve dressed as Elphaba and Galinda from Wicked, Las Vegas showgirls, Toddlers & Tiaras, and so many countless costumes that Gary spends MONTHS creating. No box costumes at this parade! My family loved fall growing up in the Ozarks, and I still have a pressed leaf I found with my grandma as a bookmark in a favorite Erma Bombeck memoir. I have a perfect acorn I found with my father on a hike through our woods. And we have Gary’s mom’s pumpkin crunch and pumpkin bars recipes that remind us of her. We decorate our house with skeletons and mums, we carve pumpkins, we buy candy, and we do fall/Halloween crafts for Wine & Words with Wade (every Thursday at 6:30 p.m. ET live on the Viola Shipman Facebook Page!). I truly hope you have a glorious fall surrounded by the things and people you love most.
BIG Buzz Is Building for THAT’S WHAT FRIENDS ARE FOR! PLUS: A Broadway Play Based on One of Memoirs?
I traveled to New York City this month for a whirlwind trip that was pretty much akin to a fever dream.
My amazing publicist, Kathleen Carter, threw an unforgettable media event at Bibliotheque (a stunning bookish wine bar) to build buzz for my first Wade Rouse novel, That's What Friends Are For. LOTS of media folk in attendance, including Us Weekly, Women’s World, WCBS-TV, NY Post, NY Times, Tamron Hall Show, Katie Couric Media, freelancer writers (including one who contributes to NYT’s Styles section), podcast hosts and influencers (plus lots of others who couldn’t attend but are psyched for the novel). I was in conversation with NY Times bestselling author and TODAY show books correspondent John Searles, the kindest, sweetest, most talented human on earth. I was able to tell John for the first time in person what his support meant to me. In 2009, John selected my memoir, At Least in the City Someone Would Hear Me Scream, as a TODAY show summer read. I still don’t know how that happened, but it changed my life personally and professionally. My mother was dying of cancer that summer, and she was able to see my book featured on the TODAY show two weeks before she died. She saw our dream come full circle. It’s trite to say, but I laughed, cried and bared my soul.
That's What Friends Are For is a poignant and hilarious story inspired by TV’s beloved The Golden Girls, and it celebrates love, aging, friendship, finding your people, and the art of impeccably timed one-liners. It is a story I was called to write, and this is the moment for a novel that tackles big issues facing our world with all of the laughter and heart of the sitcom. Family may be the tie that binds, but it’s our chosen family that truly keeps us together.
#1 New York Times bestselling author Jodi Picoult writes: “Hilarious, tender, and devastating … I loved this ode to the family we find, the family we reinvent, and the support systems we lean on to find our authentic selves.”
Grant Ginder, author of The People We Hate at the Wedding (which became a feature film) writes: “Wade Rouse has written the most unabashedly joyful novel you’ll read this year, a rip-roaringly funny ode to found family. Thank You For Being A Friend is also a poignant study of survival — of what it means to persevere in a world hell-bent on bringing you down, and a celebration of the friends who always have our backs.”
To preorder your copy today (preorders are SO important!), click HERE!
Also while in NYC, I met with producers and Broadway stars at the Lunt-Fontanne Theatre as we work to bring my memoir, AMERICA'S BOY (which was recently republished) to the stage as a one-man play. This has been in the works for a few years now, but it’s getting closer and closer to becoming reality. If you aren’t aware, Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne were husband-and-wife Broadway stars who, by the mid 1920s, were the two most respected, popular, critically acclaimed, and highest-paid stage actors in the country. When they retired, they lived in their beloved summer home in Wisconsin named Ten Chimneys. Today, their legacy continues as regional theatre actors with more than 20 years of experience are invited to summer at Ten Chimneys and study with Broadway legends, from Tyne Daly to David Hyde Pierce, Colman Domingo and Alfred Molina, whom we were able to see in New York at a documentary celebrating the actors and Ten Chimneys. One of the board members for Ten Chimneys is writing the stage play and pulling together producers to make a dream come true. Fingers crossed!
I’m still floating, buzzing on energy, excitement, friendship, books, and the belief that when you are most afraid - as a writer and soul - and can corral that fear and turn it into the wonder you see and believe, great things will happen.
P.S. My next Christmas novel will be coming in October 2026 (it’s a beauty!), and my tour for THAT’S WHAT FRIENDS ARE FOR will be announced this winter.
OUR FABULOUS FALL GIFT LINE IS SO BOO-TIFUL!
Our newest Viola Shipman autumn & Halloween gift line is spooktacularly cute — perfect for all you hauntingly stylish book lovers who love fall, Halloween and reading!
Our fall products include new designs AND products:
Pillow Covers - Coasters - Mugs - Tumblers - Car Coasters - Mouse Pads - T-Shirts (long & short sleeve) - Sweatshirts - Phone Cases - Note Pads
YOU customize size & color! Float over to the shop & grab yours before they disappear!
MAGIC SEASON LAUNCHES IN PAPERBACK!
The paperback edition of my memoir, MAGIC SEASON, launched out of the park this week! Just in time for the baseball ⚾️ playoffs and World Series! If you have yet to read my most personal and, I believe, most beautiful memoir I’ve ever written, now is the perfect time and season.
To order your copy now, CLICK HERE or HERE!
MAGIC SEASON was named a Michigan Notable Book of the Year, and a USA TODAY & Barnes & Noble Pick. The memoir charts the difficult relationship I had with my Ozarks father and how our love of baseball was the only thing to bond us over the years. Mostly, this is s story about the transformational power of unconditional love ❤️
Library Journal wrote, “This memoir is equal parts heart-rending and humorous, and at all points filled with love. It is a story about the power of family.”
And, if you love audiobooks, I narrate MAGIC SEASON. I am proud it was named one of the most powerful audiobooks of the year by Library Journal.
To listen to a sample, CLICK HERE!
To order an audiobook, CLICK HERE!
I hope you love MAGIC SEASON!
WHEN THE MOON HITS YOUR EYE LIKE A BIG PIZZA PIE! OUR TRIP TO ITALY TO CELEBRATE MY 60TH!
I turned sixty in March (how did that happen?), and my dream trip was to travel to parts of Italy I’d never been. We had to hit pause so I could finish a book tour and a new novel, but it was worth the wait. Gary and I traveled to Milan, Lake Como, Florence, Tuscany, Cinque Terre and Pisa (yes, we did a lot in sixteen days; yes, we always do too much when we travel).
Highlights were: Lake Como was even more stunningly beautiful than I had imagined. Our wooden boat ride was even more magical than I imagined (yes, we saw George Clooney’s home). The Grand Hotel Tremezzo was straight out of White Lotus. Florence was majestic, the climbs to the top of the Dome and the Bell Tower stunning and claustrophobic, the streets filled with history. Dinner at a mom-and-pop restaurant recommended by friends turned into a five-hour party … the owners kept bringing pasta, olive oil, bread and desserts we didn’t even order simply to experience. Whenever my wine glass went empty, the couple next to us grabbed it and refilled it from their spectacular bottle of red (and ended up inviting us to stay with them in Florida). Tuscany was everything I’d pictured. The gelato and affogato (gelato with espresso) was life-changing. I could go on and on …
But — beyond the places we experienced — it is the people we met that will stay with me forever. No matter where we went, we opened our hearts to locals and tourists, and they opened their hearts to us. On trains or planes, waiting in lines for gelato or museums, at restaurants, having an Aperol Spritz by the pool or a glass of chianti in a bar, we met a diverse group of people from all over the world — the U.S., Italy, Switzerland, Germany, France, Canada, the UK — and it simply proves that I what I write about and celebrate in my books is true: We have more in common than what divides us. We just need to focus on those human connections. And travel — getting out of your comfort zone — reminds us of that.
Next year we head to Alaska to celebrate Gary’s 60th birthday. May you always seek to wander in and wonder at the beauty of the world.
Whew! You're doing sixty in style!
So much wonderful news!