Joy Is a Rebellion: Why Love Stories Matter with Katherine Center
What if joy itself was an act of rebellion?
In this heartfelt episode, host Danielle Davies sits down with Katherine Center—New York Times bestselling author of "The Rom-Commers" and "Happiness for Beginners"—to talk about why joy, optimism, and storytelling are anything but fluff.
Katherine shares how she writes stories that remind women to hope, feel, and believe in their own happy endings—even when the world tells them not to.
Together, they explore
💫 Why reclaiming joy can be a radical act for women
💞 The deeper meaning behind writing “happy endings”
📚 How storytelling helps us process pain, love, and possibility
💪 What it means to stay hopeful when cynicism feels easier
🎬 Why romantic comedies are emotional survival guides—not guilty pleasures
This isn’t just a conversation about books. It’s a love letter to joy, resilience, and the courage it takes to want more from life.
📖 Mentioned in this episode
The Rom-Commers by Katherine Center
Happiness for Beginners (Netflix adaptation)
Why “women’s fiction” deserves more respect
How characters—and readers—learn to feel deeply again
To learn more and/or get in touch with or follow Katherine
Instagram: @katherinecenter
Katherine’s Books
The Love Haters (Brand new, so good!)
The Rom-Commers (Read it twice! Back to back! Might be my fave!)
Hello Stranger (swoon)
The Bodyguard
What You Wish For
Things You Save in a Fire
The Girl in the Plane
How to Walk Away
Happiness for beginners (also a movie!)
The Lost Husband (also a movie!)
Get Lucky
Everyone is Beautiful
The Bright Side of Disaster
Also Mentioned
Mom 2.0 video:
Lucky Star Art Camp: www.luckystarartcamp.com
Duran Duran: www.duranduran.com
Vassar College: www.vassar.edu
University of Houston Creative Writing Program:
Nate Bargatze:
00:00 Introduction to Roar Podcast
00:23 Empowering Reproductive Healthcare
00:51 Welcoming Katherine Center
01:06 Katherine's Journey and Impact
01:26 The Power of Joy and Storytelling
01:59 Personal Anecdotes and Connections
03:28 The Joy of Reading and Writing
09:10 The Importance of Love Stories
25:14 Stories as Activism
32:10 Empowering Women Through Stories
33:37 The Dual Nature of Women's Fiction
34:55 Balancing Hardship with Humor
37:16 The Value of Comedy in Tragedy
43:20 Creating Relatable Characters
52:51 The Writing Process and Its Rewards
01:02:40 Conclusion and Final Thoughts
Listen to ROAR with Danielle Davies: Women, Culture & Impact on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. New conversations every Tuesday.
Full Transcript
This transcript was generated automatically and lightly cleaned up. It may contain small errors.
Hey, I'm Danielle Davies and you're listening to Roar, a show that amplifies the voices of women breaking barriers, leading change, and making real impact. Keep listening for bold ideas and stories that inspire you to find your voice and make some noise. Takeback Trust is a directto patient education and empowerment platform that helps people navigate and access reproductive health care in an increasingly restrictive landscape. Through clear, actionable resources, Takeback Trust equips individuals with the knowledge and tools they need to advocate for their rights and get the care they deserve, no matter the political climate. Hi everybody.
Welcome back to the Roar podcast where we amplify the voices of women who are making bold moves, shaking up industries, and redefining what it means to lead. I'm your host Danielle Davies, and today we're diving into a conversation that's as powerful as it is joyful. My guest today is the incredible Katherine Center, a New York Times bestselling author whose novels don't just tell stories, they transform the way we see resilience, joy, and love. Katherine's a fierce advocate for the cultural value of love stories. And in a world that often demands we take everything so seriously, she reminds us that joy itself can be a radical act.
In this episode, we'll talk about the role of escapism in women's wellness, the underestimated power of storytelling, and why reclaiming joy is a form of heroism. So, if you've ever questioned whether reading for joy is a worthy pursuit, or you felt the pressure to choose between ambition and happiness, this episode is for you. Welcome, Catherine. Hi. We're so happy you're here and thank you so much for taking the time out of your day, especially as you have a book due.
You have a deadline coming up. I do. I do. I do. I do.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But that was an incredible introduction. That was worth it just right there.
Well, I should have also said that you're my friend and I adore you and that I met you not knowing you were the person who had recorded. Do you remember this? 0 video. which now I'm gonna have to link to. But it was an awesome sequence of events and I'm so glad that you're here.
Not just because, you know, you're going to have all these great answers and these insights and you're this incredibly awesome and huge at this point author. By the way, when we met you had three books and now like I this is the first one that I had, The Lost Husband, which is still one of my very favorites. And for people who don't know, they can also watch the movie. But the book the book is amazing. Although the movie is also amazing.
the movies also. and here's another one, but I have a bunch. your screen just froze on my end for a second. So, you turned and then froze there for a little while and now but now you're back. My back.
I do. I have a lot of books now that when we met, I guess when did we meet? 20 what? 10. It was like 2014, I think it was.
Or maybe 20 No, 2013 I think. My whole life is a blur. I have no idea. I know. I don't either.
I try to It's all Yeah, I Yeah, I base it all on like trips like when did it but I think it was like 2013 or so. Maybe it was 2012. All I know is I was going to teach at this art camp in the Hill Country of Texas and I was excited to do it, but I didn't know anybody. And that was fine. but I got put in a cabin and you were in the same cabin and I was kind of I was kind of a little nervous.
I don't know. I hadn't like shared a like a room with four strangers in a long time. Yeah. I mean any of it, right? I mean and I went to the summer camp where this art camp was being held.
So I had literally slept in those cabins with other people as a child. As a child. Yeah. As a child. But now here I was coming back as a grown-up and the whole thing just was I felt a little like kind of nervous about it.
" And then you were in my cabin and you made me laugh so hard. I mean, it felt like the best. You were just cracking us up the whole time and it felt like what I always had wished as a kid that summer camp would feel like cuz we were just laughing all the time. I so loved hanging out with you all those years ago, whenever they were. We don't even remember when it was years ago, a de maybe a decade ago.
You made me laugh so much at that little art summer camp that we went to. Like the kind of laughing that you don't get every day, you know, like the kind of like bent over at the waist, you know, like your stomach starts to hurt after a while because the muscles are cramping up kind of laughing. So, thank you for that. I don't know that I've ever properly thanked you for all those. Oh, are you kidding?
Thank you. And it was so it was so much fun and it was and I can't believe I'm going to say this. I've told you before, but I can't believe I'm but now we this is such an absurd warning. I'm just going to keep going. But like it was the point where Katherine had recorded this video.
I was a mom of two young kids. It was about being a mom. and something on that she said which by the way I just want to say not to like blow you up and make you feel uncomfortable. Katherine Center is like the queen of dialogue. Like you cannot find better dialogue writing in the world.
Like sometimes she says things and I'm like she just said exactly what's in my head. It would never come out this way. It's so much better than anything you could you could think. It's so good. But anyway, in this in this little video, it wasn't dialogue obviously because she was just talking, but she said something that I thought was so profound about being a mom that I had it written on a chalkboard in my kitchen.
I didn't know who Katherine I didn't I don't even think it said who you were. I don't know. I knew nothing about this. So, it's on my chalkboard in my kitchen, and I had I have no tattoos, but I had briefly thought about actually getting this quote tattooed on my arm so that I would remember and always be like so grateful for having these children, you know, in the midst of like the young child stages where you're like frantic and exhausted and like you sometimes need to like be reminded that you're so grateful. So, how horrific would it have been?
I've shown up at Lucky Star Art Camp with this tattooed to my arm and you were my roommate. Even imagine Oh god, that would have been so horrible. Are you kidding me? I would have been so honored. " I would have also I would have died.
Actually, that would have been the end because I would have died of mortification on the spot and we wouldn't ever we wouldn't have gotten here. So, thank you. the powers that be for not like letting me go forward with that. Okay. I love stuff like that and it and it's awesome.
And actually a few years ago I went to a I was doing a signing in St. " Like when I was signing her book u because I want to get it on a tattoo and I felt so much pressure in that moment. " But like, what if she does? And what if I draw like an ugly flower and then she has to have an ugly flower on her body? Like, I was like, "Just don't mess this up.
" So, I very carefully drew a flower on her book. And she came back the next year to the same event in St. Louis, came through the signing line, and she had my flower on her shoulder, and I loved it. I think it's the cutest thing ever. I've seen her a bunch of times since then.
It's beautiful. actually I mean if she prefaced it that's one thing but if you just show up somewhere and you're like hey I have this and now I'm your bunkmate at a camp that's never existed before. This was the inaugural year of the camp. So you could be like this is I'm leaving. I would have loved it.
I would have loved it. There was a part of me by the way because you know I won that remember I won the first year and I remember thinking as I'm going and there was you know so there's no history there's no checking there's no seeing reviews like I knew nothing and I'm getting off the airport getting off the plane in San Antonio and I remember thinking this could all be like a very elaborate kidnapping scheme. Am I really going to an art camp or is this just like horrific human trafficking thing? Like I'm here and fortunately it was wonderful art camp. It was the best.
That was the best. That was an awesome. And that camp you kind of got to drive into the wilderness to get to that camp. I mean it's not just right there in town. Like you really had to go deep into the hill country for that one.
Deep. It was deep. but thank God I did. And you know and so this actually leads us to another part which is kind of leading us to our discussion today is at that camp. So here you are we just meet you know you're you're a novelist you're a pretty new novel I mean you've had a couple books but you're we don't know the trajectory of your that your career is going to go in and at one point we have a little you know there's break.
such a lovely it's such a lovely experience this art camp and you're reading and of course I have no idea you know who you are that you're we just you're a novelist we you know we're all just there we're all just moms here at this thing and not moms but just women and it's it's awesome but you know I'm like oh what are you reading cuz I love to read and you're like and you have a bodice ripper with you like I love bodice rippers and I was like really and you're like they're my favorite and I was like again you're like I found that I always know it's going to be happy. They're always going to get together at the end there. It's like it there's a sequence of events that you have anticipated. You know there's going to be something that goes ary but that it's going to be solved in the end and like the hero and the heroine they're going to be together and it's going to be happily ever after. And I remember thinking that was the most novel thing I had heard because, you know, you cross those off your list at some point in your life.
Like I remember reading a couple Danielle Steals, a couple things like that. But then you go to college and you're like, you must read serious books. Like, you know, everything's so serious. But I did get to a point where I remember thinking right around the time that I met you that my favorite book from college I could never possibly read again because it was so heavy and it involved children. At some point you just need to escape your worries and your panics.
Well, my trajectory was like the opposite of what you just described because all of my early training was very literary. So I discovered romance novels late. you know, I was 40 before I ever read a romance novel. So, you know, so I when I was young, like I knew I wanted to be a writer from the age of 12. And so what that meant was that I took books very seriously and I took reading very seriously and I every single thing that I read I was like taking notes on it and thinking about it and like grappling with like what are the plot elements of this and why is this happen you know and that was great but like my early reading was like Kafka and Kamu like I was not reading for fun in high school but like so as a child like in elementary school I loved to read and as a little kid my mom read to us all the time and we hung out at the library and all that good stuff.
So, I had that early love of reading and then I wrote you know in sixth grade I wrote my first ever novel which was in a spiral notebook with my friends and it was band fiction about the 1980s boy band Duran and that not even knowing what a romance novel even really was. That was basically a romance novel because the plot of that novel that I wrote about Duran was that I met them by chance and all five of them fell in love with me and then I had to decide which one to marry. That was the whole plot, right? Wait, but which one did you marry? Thank you for asking.
That's a really important question. I chose Simon Leon as But I will say I will say that John Taylor has aged like a fine wine. Like he's done great. So either one of those would have been good choices. Clearly, but so that was sixth grade and I got my first taste of like the joy of fiction, right?
The how stories can save you and entertain you and make you laugh and give you hope and lift you up and do all these great wonderful nourishing good things to you, right? And then I kind of lost that, right? I moved into middle school and high school and I was like my brain took over, right? And I wanted to be a writer and I wanted to be a good writer. I didn't want to be a hack writer.
So I was reading all this really hard stuff and I turned it all into work and I sucked the fun right out of it, right? And then I went to Vasser College where, you know, everybody takes writing very seriously. And then I went on to grad school at the University of Houston's creative writing program which is ranked second in the nation among writing programs. And it's very literary, right? So I spent many years, you know, just thinking of writing and stories as work, as something that was serious and, you know, and not daring to have any fun or goof around at all.
And so I and then I think what slowly started to happen is a a lovely and uplifting process of dnobification where I let go of a lot of the attitudes that I had sort of absorbed about which stories have cultural value and which ones don't which stories matter and which ones don't. And slowly I had to kind of come back to what I really love. And I think for me, the process of getting better as a writer, because I think I'm way better now than I was 20 years ago, that process has been about paying attention to what I love in stories, paying attention to what I think matters, and not just taking all my instructions from the culture around me. And what I think really matters in life, like the things that I think matter the most in fact are love and connection and hugs and nurturing and the ways that we look after each other, right? And play, right?
And and banter and goofing around. All these good, uplifting, nourishing things that we often just kind of deny to ourselves because we want to, you know, take life seriously and we don't want to be frivolous. I did not watch a lot of soap operas in America growing up, but I did recently just watch a Turkish soap opera that was so much fun and it totally hijacked my entire brain and I it was the only thing I wanted to do or think about. It was like 163 episodes and I loved it so much and it was I mean it was high plot stakes. I mean we were not kidding around.
People were getting poisoned. people came back from the dead, you know, people were like marrying their stepdaughters. " And, you know, I just feel like when you're when you're reading a book or watching a show and that show grabs a hold of you, right? And even when you're not watching or even when you're not reading, you're thinking about it, right? And you're waiting until you can get back and find out what's going to happen.
And like when it really seizes a hold of you in that way, there's something important happening there, right? And I think part of learning to be a good writer is to pay attention to what you love, right? Not to try to write stories that you think your high school English teacher would love, right? Or not to write stories that you think your snoodiest friend would love. You have to write what you love, right?
You have to pay attention to what kind of lights you up, what lights your fire. And so for me, that's love stories. And it took me a long time to figure that out. I mean, it took me decades, but now that I'm doing it. Yeah.
And you And it's I And I love I love your love stories. They're so good. They're so good. In fact, I'm I'm a big, you know, I have my good readads list. I have like I will read 60 books this year.
I don't reread a book because that will take away from my count. I There's limited time left. I have actually I have actually done this thing. I saw somebody do this before. It's horrible.
I've had to block it from my mind, but I'm going to rehash it with you that I've actually put in, okay, if I read 60 books a year and I live until I'm, you know, 85, I have only this many books left to read. And because of that, I'm like, oo, if it's not four stars and above, it can't be on my list. like I don't have time to be reading a not great book that doesn't appeal to me because I literally only have this many books left and I have actually read some of your books twice which I mean that is the that is really the biggest compliment I can give you in fact the most recent one the romcoms I read back to back twice and I was like I can't even believe that I'm doing this I know exactly what's going to happen and yet I'm doing this but I just there just parts of it I just loved so much. Sorry, I digress. But I want to say also that it's not just for you like how do you feel about why do you think why do you think this is so important for people but women in general you know to all to feel at home to be able to read something that is just for joy you know we're women are bogged down people are bogged down I mean it's not just women but I as a mom I'm like oh escape is nice you know you can go into somebody else's life but it's also Well, I don't know.
How what do you think? What do you how do you think it benefits people, women in general? I have many thoughts on this. I mean, I feel like how many how many hours do we have? I mean, I could write you a whole PhD dissertation on this whole topic.
so like as you're asking me this question, I'm like, how do I condense this down into something digestible? But, you know, there's so many aspects to it. But yeah, this reading for joy idea is you know, it's about doing it's about giving yourself permission to be happy, right? It's about giving yourself permission to do things in your life that are nourishing, that are playful, that are uplifting. And of course the sort of broader societal context of that is that if you are dragged down and cranky and overwhelmed and be draggled all the time by all of the horrible burdens that life places on all of us, especially in adult life as we sort of struggle through everything that we all have to struggle through.
if you're cranky with the people around you, if you're bitter about all the stuff that's not working in your life, that kind of butterfly effects out right into the world. And I think that there is something very personally healing but also in a broader context society healing when people bring pleasure and joy and laughter and sweetness into their lives, right? And the person that comes to mind for me about this actually in real life is my husband who's like the nicest guy you've ever met. like his goal every day is just to like lift everybody up, right? Make people laugh, say something nice that they'll carry with them out of whatever their interaction they're having, right?
And it's you can just see these little butterfly ripple effects of like his warmth and his kindness. You can see people kind of, you know, the shells that we all have on all the time, this armor that we all wear just to get through the world. " you know, oh, my mom gave me these earrings or like whatever it is, you know, whatever it is. And you just I think we are living in a time in history when we are all very disconnected from each other in all kinds of creepy and sad ways. The pandemic did not help, right?
The internet is not helping. And I think the like the better we can reconnect to each other and the better we can be kind to each other and the more we can and this is the crux of it engage in what psychologists call pro-social behaviors which are behaviors that benefit another person, group or society as a whole. The more we can do those things, the stronger we will be as a society and the happier we will be both as a group and as individual people. And the thing about love stories in particular is that love stories are built on pro-social behaviors. Like that's that's what they run on.
That's the fuel that gets you through a love story. So, you know, our lovers might not be good at love when the story starts, but if they want to get to that happily ever after, they damn well better figure it out. So, they have to learn how to get good at forgiveness, kindness, nurturing, you know, listening, changing their minds, right? Reassessing their initial critical view of somebody, right? putting a band-aid on somebody when they get hurt, right?
Sacrifice. all of these things that are kind of the best parts of humanity. All these things that are sort of the best parts of society. That's what romance novels run on. That's what love stories like that's what gets you from page one to the happily ever after.
The same cannot be said of serial killer stories, right? Love stories are very unique, very pro-social kind of story. And when we go in there and we live those stories sort of alongside those characters with those characters as those characters when we climb into their skin and become those people and go through things like first of all it's fun. Totally. That's something.
It's fun to be those people. It's fun to fall in love. Like a love story like the whole point of a love story is to give you the feeling of falling in love. And but it does do that. Like a good one will do that.
And then what it does is your brain makes all the chemicals that your brain would make if you were really falling in love. So you're just like at the grocery store, right? Like grabbing stuff for dinner, but you are just blissed out. You're just walking around like life is so good, you know? And it's because your brain made all these chemicals for you because you've been reading this story about these two adorable people and you're so happy for them.
And you're not just happy for them, you're also happy for yourself because you've merged with them in the process of going into that story. So it's happening to you, too. We're all getting to fall in love. So, right. So, it lifts you up and then you go through the grocery store and when you see the cashier, you're like, "Oh my god, you look adorable.
" And then that person gets a little boost. And then it kind of just ripples out, right? And so, I just think I really do think that love stories can save the world. And I think we dismiss them at our peril. And I think we're so as a culture so terrified of being foolish or being wrong or being naive that we kind of relentlessly focus on the dark underbelly of society.
But that's not the only thing that exists. I mean, stories about humanity at its worst are really easy to tell and they're really common, but they're not the only story about humanity. And you know what Emma in the romcoms says to Charlie is that if stories about humanity at its worst are the only stories we tell then those are the only stories we have right which is which is horrifying. When I ran for office, I ran I'm not trying to be political, but when I ran for office, there's a discussion about do you just talk about policy or do you talk who you are because who are stories, right? And some people in that world will say nobody cares about your stories.
It doesn't matter who you are. In fact, I have actually heard that now about, you know, the current administration. Doesn't matter who he is or what he believes or his stories. Matters about his policies. That's what matters.
But I say no, it very much is a combination of both. You cannot really have one without the other because who you are influences what you do. so when people say when critics say focusing on love stories or personal journeys distracts from more serious issues, what do you say to that? What do I say to that? Nobody says that to me.
good. Please don't anyone say that to me. so you know I So here's the thing. Here's what I come back to. we all live our lives in stories.
That's how we conceptualize ourselves, right? That's how we know who we are. You are writing your own life story as you go through your life and the things about your life that you notice and remember and pay attention to and bank in your memory. Those little those things become plot points for you in the story of your life and that's how you know who you are. And that's true for all of us, right?
There's a whole theory about storytelling that humans evolved on storytelling, right? That the people who could say, "Hey, be careful, you know, don't walk on that jagged ledge over there because, you know, my cousin Fred like got caught in an avalanche and he died. " Like the people who could listen to that story and think about it and like, you know, like get it and act on it. Yeah, like not go walk on the ledge. Those people were more likely to survive in theory.
This is the theory. And pass down their genes. So the there's a whole theory that we are storytellers who evolved from storytellers, right? Just the better you could tell a story and the better you could listen to somebody else's story and learn important lessons about things to do and not do and how to live your life, right? the better you would literally survive to kind of go forward and prosper.
So, you know, we're storytellers. We live our lives in stories. And there's a special power and there's a special magic about stories because stories have this ability to sort of bypass what you think you think and go sort of straight past the head and right down into the heart. Right? Stories are the things in life that make us laugh and make us cry and that make things matter.
I mean, I don't know who those people are telling you that nothing matters but policy, but the only way to really make something relevant to somebody else is to tell them a story about it. That's when we connect. That's when we care. That's when we get engaged. And so, I have always been very interested in that power that story stories have because I want to use it for good, you know, I want to use it for good for myself and anybody else who wants to come along.
I want to help us all feel better and I want to help us all feel inspired and hopeful and I want us all to feel like you know we've got a shot at figuring things out, you know, and that there are ways to make things better in life. And so I think that stories can be incredibly healing and nourishing and inspiring and can certainly give us the energy and the motivation to kind of keep going in the face of all sorts of things. But yeah, I just I'm having a hard time relating to anybody who says that stories don't matter because as far as I'm concerned, stories are everything. Stories are just all there is. And I feel like, you know, they're their own type of activism, right?
There's all different ways people can get involved in the world and there are there are fights to be had. There are places to stomp your feet. There are places to, you know, call for action for whatever better child care, better glasses, whatever it is. But there are also activists. It's almost like your mission here is to uplift.
You know, everybody has a different place and that's kind of where you fly in the face of the world at large. Yeah, that's my that's that is my activism is to insist that love matters. Oh, you know, put that line in your next book. Well, it's actually my new battle cry. You know, my old battlecry was read for joy.
I had that one for a while, but I was like, I'm in the mood for a new battlecry. So, my new battle cry this year is love is good for you, right? And that kind of should go without saying, you know, ironic that we need to actually remind people of this, but it's I mean, think about this is a so off topic, but they actually have studies and I think we all know this that infants when they're not hugged don't thrive. I mean, if that does not right there tell you about the importance of love and connection, I don't know what ever possibly could. You have to have a full disconnect to not think this is important.
on some very basic level. Of course, we all know this, right? But we also do live in a culture that poo poos all that stuff and eye rolls, right? And mocks it. And that's the thing that I'm that's the thing that I'm working to get fixed, right?
Like and so I have really become like in the past probably five or six years that has become one of my main topics of things that I talk about with people because I just want to give people permission to bring as much love into their lives as possible. And you can certainly get that in in love stories because again those stories are built on pro-social behaviors. And I believe that we learn by watching and we learn by doing. And while stories themselves are not real life, they're kind of the next best thing, right? They're kind of like a virtual reality for human life.
So when you step into a story and climb into the skin of some main character and go through all of the trials and tribulations that main character goes through to get to the end of the story, you get to learn all the lessons with that character, but also as that character that the character gets to learn. So you get to it's like this cheat for human life. You get to pull wisdom out of the story. You didn't have to go through the hard stuff, but you still get the wisdom on the other side. And so I feel like engaging with stories that are uplifting, that are hopeful, that are playful, that are about people finding ways to be the best versions of themselves, I don't think you're doing something frivolous.
I think you're doing something that's really nourishing. And I think you're when you embrace that kind of thing, you're kind of doing a favor for everybody else, too. like for every person who's out there loud and proud, you know, enjoying love, the better off we all are. I mean, I just feel like it's a, you know, the rising tide lifts all the boats, right? Like we're Yeah, we're all better off in the world.
I am totally a believer, Katherine. I think you are on to something. And I now I'm like, "Oh, you need to go. " But I'll slow down and I'm going to back up for a second and say, you know, not only are you uplifting people with your stories and you know, bringing joy into the world, but specifically, you have stories that make women feel seen, hopeful, and empowered. All of your main characters have are going through just like me people are in real life.
Like that's the thing. There's nobody around that's like everything is fantastic. I mean maybe for the day but nobody's not going through something and you really tap into that. You tap into the idea of overcoming that but not in a way that's too polyiana. You know it's not some way that's like just utterly ridiculous.
Not that there's anything wrong with that. It's just you've got a really great you've got a way of making it realistic but the most hopeful version of reality. yeah. So, you know what I'll say is it is most it is mostly women who read my books. I mean, there's the occasional guy and he's more than welcome, but I think one of the things that I'm that I'm I'm really not I'm really not trying to write for a general audience like men are again welcome to show up, but I'm really writing to try and talk honestly about and value women's lives.
And while you can argue that, you know, my stories are my stories are kind of like half romantic comedy, half what's called women's fiction. That's a category. And women's fiction is like it's basically just fiction with women in it. I mean, it's fiction. It's fiction where the main story is focused on a woman, right?
Where the main character is a woman and it's really about her journey. So that's women's fiction as opposed to just fiction, which apparently does not. Right. Fiction is men. That's a whole other conversation.
That's a whole other conversation. But so you know so I think of my books as like half and half. So there's the fun side which is the love story, right? And that's the uplifting, delicious, flirty, yummy goodness, right? That's where you get your sort of guaranteed happily ever after.
That's where you know things are going to be okay. And that's that's always the most fun part to write. But then there's this other half really in my mind and the percentages vary a little bit from book to book but broadly the other half of the story is women's fiction and it's and that is the part where that same character she's falling in love over here but she also is having to face a lot of hard things and depending on the book some of the things are really hard like my first book to ever hit the New York Times bestseller list was called How to Walk Away and it's about a woman who is in a plane crash on the day she gets engaged Ed and she winds up with thirdderee burns and a spinal cord injury and she spends most of the book in the hospital trying to figure all this out. " And it is funny, right? And part of the reason that it's funny is because she has this nutty family who shows up and and they cope through like joking about things in this kind of crazy way.
And she herself has a kind of ry sense of humor. So, she's going through a genuinely really hard, heart-rending hard thing, but she's coping with it by cracking a lot of jokes, right? And then also you So, there's that play element, but then you've also got this little love story, which is so delicious and yummy. And so I'm trying to on this side over here on the left, I'm trying to write honestly about the things that we all struggle with, you know, whatever those things are, things that people have to struggle. And I'm really and th those halves of the story are always just infused with a huge amount of admiration for the human spirit and resilience and the way that we get through hard things, right?
and the way that we manage and the ways that like when our lives fall apart and we have to put them back together, we have to find strength that we never even knew we had. I love all that stuff, you know? I love the growth and the change and the wisdom that comes out of going through hard things. I mean, that's where wisdom comes from. And I want wisdom, you know?
I want it all. I want the wisdom. I want the poetry. I want the women's fiction. But I also want somebody to take their shirt off, you know?
I just do. I just do. I want it all. I want both. Right?
So, I want the struggle, but I want the fun. And for me, that love story and all the joy that's kind of infused into the love story makes the hard parts easier to bear, right? Makes it easier to go through the hard stuff because you know that maybe in the next chapter, you know, someone handsome will come in and do something delicious. And I love that combination of things, right? So, I think that we have this tendency I can keep going all day, so like stop me.
No, please, please keep going. I think we have this bias in our culture or this weird sort of dichotomy around stories where it's like there is serious fiction and that's where hard things happen and people die and there's wars and everything's depressing and then there's like fun comedy fiction and romance and none of that has any value at all or matters right none of that matters and you know even just looking at like the Oscars right what are the movies that win the Oscars it's not the comedies winning the Oscars right so we have this idea that these two things are totally separate and that drama and misery are valuable and that comedy and joy are not valuable. And I just disagree, you know, I just disagree. And as far as I'm concerned, comedy exists because of tragedy, right? Comedy exists because we all know exactly how hard human life is and exactly how much suffering we're all going to have to do.
Like squirrels don't need comedy because they don't know they're going to get run over. But like we know, right? We know we know what life is. We know that we don't we, you know, like and so we invented comedy, right, to cope as a coping mechanism. And in my own life, when things are hard, we get funnier at my house.
you know, when people are sick, when we're struggling, when people have been fighting, when we're late for something, we're funnier in those moments because it's it's like our primary coping mechanism. So, I write these books that have this mixture. and I need that mixture. I don't, you know, my sister reads a lot of very dark fiction. She's really not happy unless everybody dies at the end.
and she's a huge reader and she's constantly recommending books to me and and I've stopped taking the recommendations because I've had so many experiences where like I get to the end and I just have to lie down on the floor, you know, and like reummon the will to live, you know, and I'm like, you should come over to the fun side. Come hang out with me. I do completely agree with you that Gordon is the nicest man and so charming and lovely and so wonderful, but also that Gordon is has serious jobs too. Like Gordon is a teacher. Gordon is a firefighter.
Gordon is very concerned with the state of the world as anybody who thinks and breathes and lives in the world should be. So it's it's interesting too because it's anybody again who poo poos the idea of joy and love. It's not it doesn't it's not at the exclusion of being serious. It's not at the exclusion of taking things or being proactive or you know research or academia. It's it's both.
You can have both in the world. And also I'm sorry I totally cut you off when you looked down. I was like, but I appreciate so much and you know, you nailed it there when you said it's both. It's that you do women's fiction and romcom. It is so true that's I think your that is your special place of existence and I think you do that unlike most people.
you really have an ability to and there are other authors who do it and they that I'm not saying but I feel like you are really that is that is really what you're getting with a Katherine Center book because and that's what's so great about it like I can remember reading the Lost Husband which is like I said this one right here and I can remember and it's so funny because I'm gonna give something away. This book has been out for a long time, so if you haven't read it yet, like I'm okay with the fact that I'm going to be a spoiler here. It's not I'm not giving the whole book away, but basically there's a part and I don't remember the character's name, so forgive me because I wasn't going to talk about this, but it comes up where the daughter there's a young daughter and she's being bullied. She's being bullied at school and something happens and the you know the man we're all rooting for the other half of what's going to be this couple has basically kind of is almost acting like a father figure type of advisor to her that you know he's just giving her some man advice that is very different from her mom's advice. Her mom's advice is like look the other way, turn the other cheek, blah blah.
And does she punch the kid or does she say something? But she very much says he teaches her how to how to hit him in the solar plexus like right here, you know, like he teaches her. So he teaches her like physically how to like get this kid, but then also what's the other thing? He she says the word Doesn't she say the word He says, and it's so shocking in this book because up until this kid is like, you know, totally following the mom's advice, like she's trying really hard to be this what her mom what everybody what society is telling us is like the best version of herself, right? Which is to to look the turn the other, you know, turn the other cheek, look the other way, ignore, ignore.
And here she just comes back and real matter of factly she says this and I remember laughing so hard but really like isn't this every mother's worst fear, you know, that their kid is going to be the one that's being bullied and that they're going to be in this situation and you don't know how to tell them to help themselves. And it's, you know, as when I read this, my kids were young. This is this is like a really big thing I think that parents struggle with their children. And so like this turnaround was so unexpected and it's not like her life was therefore perfect. It just was like these are real moments.
It's like you're you've captured real moments through fiction. It is really about love. Like all these other things we do to make money, to provide for our families, we grocery shop, we do to what? To provide for our families, to provide for our friends, to be there in the moment, to exist. But it's more than existing.
It's living a full life is more than existing. It's loving. It's laughing. It's connecting. Yeah.
And it and this goes back to actually some of the questions you were asking earlier because I do think one of the things that my books, all the characters, all the main characters in my books, I think have to sort of learn to do better. And it's something that I myself am always trying to learn to do better is to pay attention to the good stuff in their lives, right? I think that's kind of like the key to it all, you know, is to like notice what's working and like be excited about it, right? Notice what's good and savor it. Like, notice even tiny little flashes of joy or comedy or connection or anything good that comes along and just like, you know, be grateful for it, right?
That's the thing. And so you know as all these characters are kind of going through their stuff those little kinds of lessons are just all throughout the books and I think that's a way you know I believe that stories can teach us things in ways that textbooks cannot right that they can make us that they can teach us lessons. So, like my main character in the book I have that's coming out this I have a new book coming out in May called The Lovehat Haters. And the main character in The Lovehaters gets a job to go profile a US Coast Guard rescue swimmer. She's a video person.
So, she has to make a promo of a US Coast Guard rescue swimmer, but she doesn't know how to swim. And also, she has not owned a bathing suit since the eighth grade. And so she has to go to Key West and she has to do all kinds of things that are super uncomfortable and super hard for her. And you know it's a it's a kind of a story where she kind of goes through what in the romance world we would call an enemies to lovers journey, but it's with her own body, right? So, okay, she starts out not feeling comfortable, not liking the swimsuit, like in a standoff with this swimsuit she's supposed to wear.
And she has to go through this kind of healing journey. And I think all the little points along the way where she's learning things you know, they might resonate for people. Not maybe not everybody. If this doesn't resonate for you, God bless. you know, like I'm so happy for you if that if you're like, I don't understand what her problem is.
But I think for a lot of women, they're like, I've always felt really confident in a bathing suit. I mean, just looking at the reviews, I mean, it's fascinating to see that like every single generation of people who have found this journey resonant. It's like, you know, people are like, you know, for millennials who grew up in the Britney Spears is fat era, this is very resonant. or, you know, for Gen X who watched Madonna go on a diet, this is very resonant. Or like, you know, for boomers who grew up wearing girdles, this is very resonant.
And I'm like, I think it's just resonant for everybody. I think we're all finding a resonance. But anyway, you know, part of what, you know, I put that storyline in there because I felt like I had some earned wisdom around that topic that I wanted to throw out there for people to chew on. Use or not use, you know, make use of it if it resonates. Otherwise, move on and just enjoy all the smooching or whatever you like whatever does resonate for you in the story.
But, you know, my hope is always that these stories have like I want those little nuggets of wisdom, right? I want those little sort of deep thoughts about what really matters in life or how we can live our lives better. And whether that's pay attention to the good stuff or like force yourself into that swimsuit, whatever it is, I want to see that. I want to I want the stories to give me a little bit of something to chew on in terms of like how to live a good life, right? Yeah.
It's not just And not that there's anything wrong with that. Well, I was going to say I think that's a that is that is very much what I was talking about earlier of like you have to pay attention as a writer to what you love, right? Because there are people who don't want that, right? There are people who just want like romcoms or romance novels or any kind of story that's very that's very light and very comedic and really doesn't touch on anything darker and they just like they're like I don't want anything to bring me down. I want to get in this book and forget about all sadness.
And I totally get that. But just for me personally, that's not what I want in a story. I want a story to have a kind of deeper level. I want to feel all of the feelings. You know, I want to laugh, but I also want to cry.
Like, I'm not happy in a in a in a love story or a romcom if I haven't like at least had some tears spring to my eyes at some point during the story. Like, I want to feel all the feelings. But that's just me. But that's so I write that kind of story because that's the kind of story that I happen to like, right? And hopefully and I think that's why your stories you can sink your teeth into so much of it.
And not that I don't enjoy a story that's just funny or like every so often, you know, you watch a comedian. I love Nate Vargasi. Oh my god, he's the cutest. And his humor is just, you know, it's it's just funny. He's not he's not he's not overly political.
He's not degrad He doesn't degrade anyone degrad. He doesn't he's not overtly he's not sexual. He's not. His humor is completely non-offensive. If you are offended by Nate Vargasi in any way, I don't even know what to say.
He's literally the most like user friendly comedian on earth, right? And that's awesome. And I love watching him for just that reason. But when I read a book, and again, sometimes I want that. Sometimes I just you just want the laugh.
But I don't remember those as much. I will say your books and your characters, I think and this isn't meant to be just like a complimentary interview like I'll take it. I'll take it. I'll throw it at you. I think you can sink your teeth into them because they offer both sides of it.
I think you and also I want to say the men in your romances, you're not ignoring their backstory either. It's not just like this vacant face that shows up and he's handsome and blah blah and we like him and he's the local doctor in town who saves cows. He's got a backstory and he's got his own Yes. He's got his own hurdle to overcome right without fail. I believe it's been like that.
And I think that's also the awesome part because you're making them real and funny and they're both coming and because that's what it is, right? That's real life. Nobody's coming at things with no history. Unless you have two people with amnesia, then they both come and they've got a fun idea. Yeah.
No, I agree with you. I mean, I agree with you. So, I always think of my I think that love stories always have two main characters, you know, and I always think of my stories as having two main characters, but the woman is a slightly more of a main character because she's also the narrator, right? So, she's telling you the story like you're her very best friend, like it's a late night coffee, you know, and and she's like your favorite funniest friend is like laying it out and telling you how it is, right? And that's that's always how I write them because that's what I like again and but within that context she is telling a story of generally some thing she went through and some man she met and yeah they are straight romances because that's kind of what I know what you know right so but he's they're messy they're real people they're complicated and generally both of them have an arc that I mean always both of them have an arc something in their life that they need to figure out, confront, find the courage to deal with, right?
They each have an arc. And it's only after they've kind of dealt with their stuff that they can like be together, right? And that's kind of one of the things about romance novels is that like and love stories is that you have to like the love is the thing that gives you the courage to figure out your life, right? And to deal with the things that scare you and the things that are hard for you. And so I love that about I mean like that's one of the many many endless infinite great things about love, right?
Is that it inspires you to be brave with your life. so yeah, my guys are complicated. I saw a very funny quote that stuck in my head. I have no idea who said it. Somewhere on the internet, somebody said, "There is no man quite like a man written by a woman.
" Like they are. They are really good. And not because they're perfect, because they're not perfect. And that I think is the real key to making them so good. I mean, they're so good.
They're so good. And well, anyway. Okay. All right. Wait.
Let me So, let me ask you another I'm back to women. I'm back to women. And I will not keep you all day. I promise. but you know talking about how reading and joy and love well not reading but this is how we're getting this through this message of joy and love through reading is so important culturally for women specifically.
Do you see reading and writing and reading as a way for women to reclaim their own stories? What I get questions about a lot is like how do you like people start to write something and then they immediately want to move into like how do I publish this? How do I get it out in the world? And I, you know, I'm I'm much less interested in let me back up. I would say that the process of trying to publish things is a lot less nourishing than the actual process of doing the work, right?
Doing the writing. And whether you're writing a novel for yourself or writing the story of your life as a memoir, doing that is inherently going to connect you with the things you care about in your life. There's no way it couldn't, right? Every choice you make about what sentence to include as you write whatever you're writing is telling you what you're interested in and what you care about. And that's a kind of deep self-nowledge that you're not going to get, you know, anywhere.
And so I think the process of writing is always nourishing and always good for you. But the process of publishing is a lot more complicated. There's a lot more rejection, misery, frustration, agony, misinformation, bad advice. I mean, it's just that's just a whole different thing. And then of course, even if you do write something and then publish it, then you have to find people willing to read it.
That's a whole another couple of decades of your life right there. So that's absolutely. Yeah. So I would say the real reward is in the doing. The real reward is in the writing and yeah, anybody who feels like a pull to do that should definitely do that because even if no one reads it but you, it's still good for you.
So, I guess the thing I'm interested in or the thing that's more exciting to me is just like how can we make the very best use of our very brief time on this planet, right? How can we not waste a single second? And for me, for me personally, writing has always been my way to sort of dig deep and try and understand like what's going on around me and who I want to be in the face of all of that. It's funny because so many times in your books I highlight quotes that I'm like, I got to write this down. I don't ever write them down.
I just save them and then I don't know where they go because, you know, you do that while you're reading if you're reading online and then I don't know what happens to them. But I do it all the time. And you actually give them in real life. Like I'm like, "Oo, there's so many good quotes in here. " So thank you.
So all right, I'm gonna just ask you one last thing. Okay. How do you create these characters that relate to women so much? Or how are you inspired by something? Or is it innate?
Are you thinking about are you thinking at the outset of what they're going to overcome? I'm just curious how that works for you because I feel like you very much capture I hate to use this phrase, but like the every man, the every woman, like they really are universally relatable. A thanks. That's nice. Well, you know, even reading what's the one what's the one where she's God, I have your list of books, right?
The bodyguard. The bodyguard. So, she's small, right? She's slight. Isn't that right?
She's slight if I recall. And I remember thinking, well, I'm not slight. Like, this is immediately not relatable. You're not that small. She's like 5'6, but she's not as tall as he is, right?
but she's a bodyguard and I'm like I'm nobody's asking me to watch anybody like that would be preposterous. I'm basically like help I it's just so it starts off in this place where maybe I'm not relating but eventually she's totally me. Eventually I'm I'm in it with her. I've you've gotten me like I am I'm like yes she can do this. Of course she can.
And I too can be a bodyguard. So, so how do you do it? How do I do that? How do I do that? Okay.
Well, I think yeah, The Bodyguard and this book I wrote called Things You Save in a Fire are probably two very good examples of characters who would not perhaps at first glance seem like people you could just like relate to because in Things You Save in a Fire, the main character is a very bad to the bone woman firefighter. Yes. And I didn't even pick that topic actually because I had just written a book called How to Walk Away and the main character was in a plane crash and at the start of the story and at the very beginning as she's being rescued from the plane crash. This is in like chapter one. this she gets pulled out by a firefighter with a mask on.
She assumes it's a guy and then at some point the firefighter takes off the mask and it's a woman. And that was just it was like two pages of the book, right? And it was just this little sort of it was just this fun thing that I threw in for no particular reason just like as a little shout out to like women doing cool jobs, you know, like it was not and we never saw that character again, right? She they just had a little moment and then the firefighter went off and Maggie in the book goes off to sort of deal with all of her stuff and that was that. But then when it was time to figure out what the next book was going to be, I was having lunch with my agent in a restaurant in New York.
No, it was not my agent. It was my editor. " And I said, "I don't know. " And my editor is a very brilliant person. I know better than to like disregard her advice if she ever has a suggestion for me.
I take it very seriously. So I went home and I really thought about it and I was very intimidated because my husband is has been for many years a volunteer firefighter. He's an EMT paramedic and I've seen him like I mean in the in the day back in the day it was a beeper that he had but I've seen him like get paged right for fires get up in the middle of like a steak dinner and like head out to go rescue people at a fire, right? And I've watched this from the outside for many years and I know that's like a world. It's like a culture, right?
I'm not a part of that culture. I don't know that world. I cannot think of anything that would ever compel me to walk away from a steak dinner. There's nothing. There's nothing.
So, you know, I was like, I don't know how to relate to this person, right? I I would not want to be a firefighter. Like, I'm not a person who does things. I'm a person who sits on the couch and thinks about doing things, right? So, I was like, I don't I can't relate.
I don't get her. And, you know, when they go into a fire, and I live in Texas where it is hot, right? If you're going into a fire, you're putting on a 100 pounds worth of bunker gear in the 100 degree heat and you're going into a fire. Like you there's no money that you could pay me to do that, right? So I was like, I don't know how to write about this person.
Like I'm really kind of struggling with this. And I was talking about it with my husband and he said, and it was so helpful. It changed everything. He said, maybe it's not about the firefighting. Maybe she just has this thing that she's really, really good at, which just happens to be firefighting, and she just wants the world to let her do that thing, right?
She just wants the world to let her do the thing she's good at, and she's having trouble making the world do that. And instantly relatable instantly. And that I could relate to, right? I mean, I think we can all relate to that, right? And that was me with writing.
I mean, I spent all these years trying to build this career and just hitting roadblock after roadblock and putting these books out and thinking this is going to be the one that everybody reads and like my mom reading it and you know, so I could so relate to this desperate feeling of like I've got this being that like the kid in little league who's like just put me in coach like I can do it. And so once I had that piece then I could I could make her be her own self, right? She could be a firefighter. There's a scene in there. She is not me.
There is a scene in the book where she just globe trader style just makes basket after basket. Nothing but net out on a basketball court. That is not me. I could not do that ever. Ever.
you know she's really good at her job. She can do parkour. You know she hand she's she's she's like a superhero. I am not that person. But taking this character and then bringing what I do know about, right, which is vulnerability and longing and struggle and also kind of a maybe like a slightly neurotic tendency to kind of overprocess everything and be super verbal.
Brought that to her as well. I do that bring that to all the characters because they're narrating so they have to have something to say. so that so I think that's how I think that's I mean I think that's how I do it, right? is that I have to love them. I have to get them.
I have to understand them and relate to them. And that's the compass that I use is like if I can see why she's doing these things and if I get her and if I'm rooting for her and if I understand like what she's struggling with and what she's scared of then hopefully other people will too. You don't know, you know. And I sometimes see reviews where people are like h the main character was so irritating. And I'm like, "Oh, but you know, not everybody's going to like everybody.
" But I do, you know, all I can do is just try and make her lovable to me and make her relatable to me and then just hope that resonates for other people. So that's kind of I think that's that's it. You just nailed it, by the way. And like I think you gave such a good explanation because it's not always what they do, who they are, what they look like, the specific challenge that they're facing. God forbid, being in a plane crash, like whatever these things are, losing a husband, like whatever the thing is, that part is unique to the character.
But their relatability as people who have goals, who have dreams, who have wishes, who want love in their lives, that's the part that's just infinitely relatable. And I think that's the part that is the part that is what's pushing love into the world and relatability and connection and community and resilience. And I feel that your characters teach women, I know that's like really not your goal here, but they can teach women to recognize their own self- resilience and their own strength in a way that you're not going to learn from a self-help book. I totally agree with that. I fully agree with that.
You know, that I think stories are more powerful than self-help and I think stories are more powerful than textbooks and I think stories are more powerful than statistics, right? Because stories have heart to them. Stories are where we really connect in an emotional way to whatever it is that we're learning about. And that I mean there's all kinds of studies on this too that like that you retain that information so much better if there are emotions attached to it, right? So yeah, I mean in a very real way, I write stories that I hope are going to teach me things that I need to learn and will be useful and nourishing and helpful in my own life.
And then I also hope that anybody else who wants to come along will also get those benefits. like I am aware that those are potential benefits from the stories and I try to put a lot of that in there, you know, without it ever feeling preachy or pedantic or anything like that because it's mostly about the story, but I'm throwing that stuff in there. If you want to chew on some wisdom from if you're just there for the rescue swimmer, enjoy. You're still going to be entertained. Absolutely.
That's fine. You're still going to have a good time. But if you're looking for little nuggets of things to think about, chew on, ways to have your perspective shifted, that's in there, too. And you're it's you're welcome to it as well, you know. So, I'm trying to do all of that for everybody.
Well, and you are you are totally doing it. You're knocking it out of the ballpark. I can't wait to see what's next. I'm going to not keep you on the phone anymore because I could stay here all day. All day.
I mean, that's why I if you see me looking, it's because I'm looking at the questions that I planned to ask you and then I'm like so off track that I'm like, what was I trying? So, forgive me if I didn't go over anything that you wanted to go over. Was there anything you wanted to mention that I didn't? I think we talked about great stuff. This is super fun.
Good. Because I feel like this is a kind of, you know, so by the way, the ROAR podcast is supposed to be highlighting women that are doing work on behalf of women. And so, you know, I've spoken to people as diverse as somebody who's creating the first female liner and somebody who's an abortion doctor and somebody who's teaching self-defense to women. And you and it's that's the whole point is that there are so many ways to elevate women in the world and that and that this certainly can't be ignored as one of the really key things but not necessarily things we think about as helping women in the world. You know I mean people aren't like oh we've got Katherine Center a cultural lifesaver you know we're like we've got novelist Katherine Center but you're also a cultural lifesaver.
So, thank you. I'll have the links to all of Katherine's, her amazing website, all of her books, which are awesome. Okay. Thank you so much. Have the best day.
Okay. You too. Bye. Thanks. Thank you.
And that's a wrap of season two of the Roar Podcast. Thanks so much for tuning in, sharing the episodes, and following along this season. I hope you've enjoyed the stories, the conversations, and the incredible guests as much as I have. We'll be back in October with all new episodes and conversations I can't wait to share. In the meantime, make sure you're following the show wherever you listen to podcasts so you don't miss a thing when we return.
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