Donna Carbone on the evolving nature of friendship

Donna, a teacher, has just published her debut novel, All that is Sacred, about lifelong friends who have drifted apart. The story explores the secrets that divided the group and the love that draws them back together. Join me with Donna as we discuss the fluctuations of relationships over a lifetime, her publishing journey and more.

When did you first want to become a writer?

I was probably a writer before I was a teacher, although not yet a professional one. When I was choosing my major, I told my college professor in creative writing – a Pulitzer Prize winning author – that I wanted to write, and he said, “You need something to pay the bills.” So, I became an English teacher.

I taught as an adjunct at college until my children were of school age, then I started at the high school level, juniors and seniors. The students are very receptive, and I’m so lucky to share my passions in my job: creative writing, film, and British literature – I’m a huge Anglophile.

Tell me about the evolution of your novels.

I was in my late teens, early twenties, when I wrote my first novel. It was not good. I probably recognized that. Then I had a family and life took over, so I stopped for a while and didn’t return to it until my friend, Donna, passed away fifteen years ago. My friend’s sister called and asked if I would write something about Donna for a book they were putting together for her daughters, so I penned a letter to them. The idea of this memory book stuck with me, and I started fictionalizing a story around it about ten years ago.

After I completed the novel, I queried it a bit but got nowhere. I walked away from it and wrote a romcom with the goal of writing something different and going in another direction. When I queried that one, I got some bites, but it never sold, so I shelved it.

I went back to my friendship story and started working with critique partners, which is where you and I met. The story went through a major overhaul. I queried again but still got nowhere. Then had an opportunity to work with an editor for a small press who needed test students for a webinar. In return for our feedback, she offered discounted author coaching, so I did another rewrite with her guidance. I queried again and only received interest that led to dead-ends – that was a very low period because I believed in this story whole-heartedly.

Soon after, the phone rang while I was at school. I never answer calls at work, and my creative writing students were filing in, but something made me pick up. It was Lynn from one of the publishers I’d queried, Red Adept Publishing. She offered me a contract, and here I am about to publish my book baby.

Can you please share the blurb for All That is Sacred?

When Lynn and her husband set out for a weekend retreat to repair their rocky marriage, icy roads lead to a collision that ends Lynn’s life. Stranded between the physical world and the afterlife, Lynn experiences the grief of her loved ones as they process her death.

Lynn’s life-long friends are not only tortured by loss but also unspoken wounds in their friendship. With clever influences from above, Lynn coaxes them to reunite at a beachside cottage on the one-year anniversary of her death. Determined to prompt their healing, so they could help her family move on, Lynn reminds them of a sacred promise, hoping it will lead to truths they couldn’t face on their own. Will it be enough to remind them of the power of their bond?

As Lynn struggles to repair the relationships she left behind, she soon realizes the greatest challenge will be letting them go.

What qualities do you value in a good friend?

Somebody who sees me at my worst and loves me anyway. Loyalty. I relax with laughter, so levity is important to me. I like to surround myself with friends who are willing to listen and pick me up when I’m down, and I like to do the same for them.

How do you maintain friendships with people who have moved away geographically or emotionally?

I do have friends who live a distance away from me. Facebook has been wonderful for that, that’s why I joined. Even though there’s the superficiality of social media, it also offers the opportunity to stay in touch.

I could make more time for friends. It’s easy to get tunnel vision with everything going on in life. Periodically, I give myself a reality check and tell myself to be a better friend. Like many young kids, I had a core group, and while you can lose touch with those friends, that bond remains unbreakable. It’s like the ebb and flow to life. I used that idea in the book.

What other real-life experiences fed into the book?

Some years back, I went to a medium with a friend whose mum had recently passed away. She wanted a reading, but I was read instead. The message was: you need to get in touch with your friends because you’re going to need each other.

I reconnected with a friend from high school, and she said, “I like that you believe in that. I don’t, but it’s good you find comfort from it.”

A year later, she broke the news to me that our mutual friend, Donna, had died.

How have your friends responded to the novel?

I’m a firm believer that even if something isn’t a true story, a writer uses what they know, so I drew upon different facets of my life and friendships and morphed them for the story. I scattered Easter eggs throughout the book, little odes to my many friendships. If I took a piece from a friendship, I took a part that wasn’t too invasive. I was cognisant of being respectful.

Friends from different circles who have read the book picked up the elements drawn from life that are relevant to our friendships. They homed in on different details and spoke to me about them after.

Do you have any tips for authors?

Believe in yourself. If you are a writer, you are a writer. It’s not something you can walk away from, it’s a soulful thing. If it’s in you to be a writer and you want to pursue a writing career, stick with it in whatever way you can. There are so many times I wanted to give up, but something always brought me back to it.

Have a growth mindset. This book took ten years from start to publishing, but everything I did was for my growth, and that is necessary to pursue this kind of career.

What next?

I have another book coming out in about a year. Of Lies and Honey is about mothers and daughters from different time periods. It starts with a 17-year-old debutante in Georgia, whose life has been defined by social class. She gets pregnant with an older man, and her parents want her to have an abortion. She refuses, so they send her to a home for wayward girls. It also features a contemporary woman who would like to grow her family, and another who’s questioning whether she wants to be a mother at all.

I’m also reworking the first draft of the next book on domestic abuse. A woman takes her daughter and runs away from abusive husband to create a new life, but she can’t until she deals with the old one. She goes for therapy and is hypnotised and returns to the root cause of her problems.

You can follow Donna on:
Email: dncarbone727@gmail.com
Website: https://donnanormancarbone.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/dncarboneauthor
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/donnanormancarbone/
Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/61112275-all-that-is-sacred?ac=1&from_search=true&qid=EBnPVWH7wE&rank=1
Twitter:  https://twitter.com/dcarbs727author
Linktree: https://linktr.ee/donnanormancarbone
Book sales link: Amazon

Next time: an interview with author Mariam Ottimofiore on being an eternal expat.