What Inspires Author Debbie Macomber?

Celebrity Q&A
on November 26, 2012
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I am a big fan of author Debbie Macomber. What inspired her to write about angels?
—Shelley Reedus, Tulsa, Okla.

Macomber, 64, likes to write books that leave her readers feeling hopeful, but the idea for the angel series did have an inspiration: the portion of the Bible’s 23rd Psalm that reads “Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life”—and catalog shopping!

“It did come from the Psalm,” says the Yakima, Wash.-born author, whose current holiday book, “Angels at the Table,” features angels Shirley, Goodness and Mercy and apprentice angel Will. “The day before [I had the idea], I had been going through catalogs and there were a whole bunch of angel figurines. I think my mind just clicked between the two—the catalog and the verse.”

Despite making the No. 1 spot on the “New York Times” best-seller list seven times and having more than 160 million copies of her books in print, Macomber admits she still has trouble reading and writing because she is dyslexic.

But she uses her experience to encourage others, saying, “When you have a disability, you are given an abundance of something else. You just need to find out what that something else is. For me, it was a creative imagination. I am a storyteller. That is the gift God gave me.”

Fans of Macomber’s “Cedar Grove” series will be able to watch it come to life when the movie pilot for the series, starring Andie MacDowell, premieres on the Hallmark Channel on Jan 19.

“You have to let go,” Macomber says of the process of converting her books into films. “There is no way you can make a movie based on every scene in a book. It would be six hours long, so they have to take what would translate from book to film, and I have to trust their judgment.”

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