Welcome to the Viola Shipman Heirloom Newsletter! Happy May & Mother's Day!
Book Tour Recap (filled with gratitude!), Upcoming Appearances, The Perfect Mother's Day Gifts, What's Coming Up in Life & Books + A Personal Note about THE PAGE TURNER!
PAGE TURNER TOUR RECAP! Filled with joy & gratitude!
Me, doing my best Burt Reynolds pose, after signing 1,000 books!
After a book tour that took me to 10 states in under three weeks, I returned home to Michigan weary but elated, humbled and eternally grateful. At its heart, The Page Turner — which has been featured in PEOPLE, Country Living Magazine and more! — is about how books and reading connect us, and the tour brought that connection to life.
In city after city, bookstore after bookstore, library after library, I was overwhelmed by the number of readers who showed up in force, especially to places I’d never been. I still have a bit of impostor syndrome (most authors do), no matter how many years I’ve been doing this, and my heart flits and flutters about my chest like a moth before every event wondering if anyone will actually attend. Often, I would get emotional pulling up to a store and seeing a line of people out the door or already seated through the window.
My events are different from many authors. They often last for hours (or should I say, four hours) as I try to spend as much time with each person who comes. As I always say at every event, and am saying to you now, your time and money are valuable. I know you could be anywhere else, doing anything else, reading anyone else, and for you to be here, supporting me, reading me, means the world, and I am eternally grateful for that and will never take it for granted. THANK YOU!
Funny tour story: The best piece of advice I received was from a woman “of a certain age” who not only looked stunning but was full of — as my grandma used to say — p*** and vinegar. I asked her secret, and she told me: “Honey, a little powder, a little paint, makes a lady what she ain’t.” Well, by the end of the tour I understood her wisdom: I was literally held up by a little powder and a little paint, but it was all of you who made me what I ain’t. You filled my soul and gas tank with love and energy!
I hope the following photos give a glimpse of what a page-turning, love-affirming, bookish blast this tour was! And I can’t wait to see more of you on tour this summer in Michigan.
Want to see my on tour? Check out my UPCOMING APPEARANCES HERE!
LOOKING FOR THE PERFECT MOTHER’S DAY GIFT?
Looking for the perfect Mother's Day gift? Look no further!
Is your mother a reader? If so, The Page Turner would be the ideal present! This is a book about books centered around a mother and daughter that will make your mom laugh, cry, and celebrate the importance of reading in our lives. It is ideal for moms, daughters, grandmothers, or any special woman in your life who loves a story that speaks to the soul.
Want to make your mom’s day even more special? Our Viola gift and clothing lines — which not only support two small, women-owned businesses in Michigan but also adults on the spectrum — are chock full of the most adorable bookish gifts for the mom who deserves everything. We offer organic teas, handmade candles, hand-designed garden flags, Page Turner-inspired writing journals as well as the CUTEST T-shirts, sweatshirts, hoodies, totes, tumblers, mugs and inspirational cell phone cases! Knock out your shopping with a book and a Viola gift! Happy Mother’s Day!
Shop our gift line here: SHOP NOW!
Shop our clothing, mug, tote & tumbler line here: SHOP NOW!
A PERSONAL NOTE TO READERS ABOUT THE PAGE TURNER
The question I am most asked on tour is, “Why did you write this book?”
Every book I write begins with a question, either one I am seeking to answer in my life as well as one in which I believe you are struggling to answer. The Page Turner started with a simple question that led me back to my Grandma Shipman: How can we rediscover the strength to find and use our voice to change the world for the better, even if we believe no one is listening?” So, let’s start here:
What do books mean to you?
Growing up, books and reading saved my life. And I mean that. As a kid growing up in rural America in the 1970s – with no one like me and no one to talk to about what I was going through – I wasn’t just lonely, I was alone in this world.
My grandma – my pen name, Viola Shipman – swept me under her apron strings, loved me unconditionally and made sure I cherished my “Wade-ness.” One of the ways she did this was by pushing books into my hands from the earliest of ages and making it clear that reading, writing and education would not only change my life but quite possibly save it. How right she was. She saved rolls of pennies for my college education. One of the first Christmas gifts I remember receiving from my grandma was an aquamarine Selectric typewriter, which we pay tribute to on the cover of the novel. My grandma never finished high school and yet she was a voracious reader who volunteered at the local library.
“You can be the hero of your own story,” my grandmother told me when I was a boy. “Use your voice to change the world even if you think no one is listening.”
As a working poor woman with little money, education or power, society didn’t listen to my grandma when she was alive, but I did. And the stories I write today honor her strength and legacy as well as women just like her.
The voice, strength and legacy of GiGi, Emma Page’s grandmother, echoes throughout the pages of The Page Turner. The books Emma read with her GiGi every summer at her grandmother’s beach cottage – so called “fluff” much like the books I read with my own grandma – inspired her to become a writer in college. Emma grew up the black sheep in a bookish household, raised to believe that fine literature was the only worthy type of fiction by her parents, Phillip and Piper, self-proclaimed “serious” authors who run their own indie press, The Mighty Pages. They mingle in highbrow social circles that look down on anything too popular or mainstream. Her gorgeous sister, Jess, is a powerful social media influencer whose stylish reviews can make or break a novel. Emma has a secret, one that should be celebrated but one in which she is ashamed: She wrote a book in college, not just any book but a romance (gasp!) which she is hiding from her disapproving parents. Emma finds inspiration at the family cottage among the “fluff” they despise: the juicy summer romances that belonged to her late grandmother. But a chance discovery unearthed from her Gigi’s belongings reveals a secret that has the power to ruin her parents’ business and destroy their reputation in the industry—a secret that has already fallen into the hands of an unscrupulous publishing insider – a very despicable author based on a real one (sssshhh) with a grudge to settle. Now Emma must decide—as much as she’s dreamed of the day when her parents are forced to confront their own egos, can she really just sit back and watch The Mighty Pages be exposed and their legacy destroyed? If you love books about books, well, this is the book for you.
The Page Turner is a celebration of how books and reading not only change us but save our lives. It’s about family – the good, the bad, the ugly, the unsaid, the screamed – and how they can drive us insane one minute and then wrap us in their arms and save us the next. It’s a love letter to my grandmother. It’s a history lesson on why women writers have been forced to choose pen names over the years. It’s a peek at why I did. The novel is about the harsh, withering judgment we place on one another in today’s society, and often the books we read, simply by a casual glance at the collective cover without knowing a thing about what’s really inside. The Page Turner is about ‘genre shaming’: I ask in the novel why are books that center on the issues of women’s lives – all of our lives – labeled as chick lit, beach reads, or fluff, when other novels are simply called literature? Why are themes of love, family, friendship – the most important parts of our lives – considered less worthy of attention and wide readership if they also don't include blood, murder, sex, bad words, really big words (I know both – bad and big words – by the way) or seek to intentionally divide us? The novel is a deep dive into the challenges of being an author today and the issues the publishing industry faces.
Mostly, The Page Turner is about – as my grandma taught me so long ago – finding the strength to utilize the unique voice God gave each of us to change the world but the voice we too often bury out of fear and compromise, or the worry no one is listening. Every voice deserves to be heard. Every story needs to be told. This is the heart of The Page Turner.
If you have a daughter, or granddaughter, son or grandson — that person who feels deeply and loves to read — The Page Turner should be shared reading amongst the generations, from eight to eighty.
As I write in the novel:
“Books are a chance to right the wrong in the world, an opportunity to rewrite ourselves. We can reimagine and reinvent, see the world in an entirely new way simply by turning a page.
Authors write about the same topics – love, death, war, loss – and we use the same words, the same linguistic tool belt, but it’s how we bring those stories to life that sets us apart. We must listen to that unique voice that calls to us. We must listen to our hearts. We must overcome the fear that stops us from doing what we dream, of making sense of our pain through words.
It’s only by listening to that voice within us – the one that speaks to us late at night, the one calling to you right now, the one we try so hard to ignore because we just want to fit in and we just want life to be less painful – that we can bring our stories to life.
Because when we do, our words are no longer our words, our stories are no longer our stories, they belong to you, the reader. You make them your own, and, when you do, for a moment, the pain eases, the words are no longer jumbled, your heart is Super Glued back into place once more, it is whole, we are one, and the world actually makes sense again.
If even for a single, mighty page.”
To order your copy of The Page Turner, please visit a link below (and please follow & visit my Viola Shipman Facebook Page to see links on where to order autographed copies of my books from the many wonderful bookstores I visited on tour):
What’s Next This Summer?
LOTS of appearances in Michigan and LOTS of virtual appearances
THE PAGE TURNER was selected as a May Book Club Pick by Jen Hatmaker as well as Friends and Fiction and Brenda Novak's Book Group!
I am diving into edits on my 2026 novel … stay tuned as I will have LOTS of big news to share about this one!
I will begin writing a new Viola Shipman holiday novel this summer, which is slated to publish in 2027! Christmas in July!
And please remember to join me every Thursday at 6:30 p.m. ET for Wine and Words with Wade live on the Viola Shipman Facebook Page. This summer, we will be giving tours tours of our gardens and cottage, sharing gardening tips, having craft days, baking in the kitchen, talking with bestselling authors on the screened porch, and sharing hope, love and inspiration to make your life just a little bit happier and more hopeful. JOIN US!
Happy Spring & Reading! And make sure to follow me on social media to be part of our community of kindness!
