“I am a prolific writer, and my hope is to have my storytelling ability to continue to get better and better.”
—Erica Vipond
A member of the Writers’ League since 2024, Erica lives in the Austin, TX area.
Scribe: Welcome, writer! Tell us — what do you write?
Erica Vipond: I write romantic suspense and memoir.
Scribe: If you could choose one author to blurb your book, who would it be, and what would you want it to say?
EV: It would be amazing to have Nora Roberts blurb any of my books! Her 200+ published books cultivated my interest for stories with a romantic quality and meaningful, deeply involved plots. How surreal and amazing it would be if she spoke to the quality of my work, and found herself surprised by my plot twists!
Scribe: You have one book you’re allowed to push onto all of your friends, and they’re forced to read it to remain your friend — which one would you choose?
EV: The Opposite of Loneliness by Marina Keegan. Keegan’s book of both non-fiction and fiction essays was published posthumously. Her stories are powerful because of the intricate language she used to illuminate small, innocuous moments and frame them as timeless, universal. At 22, her writing was more accomplished and self-reflective than most authors twice her age. I reread it anytime I’m feeling a lackluster quality of creativity.
Scribe: Tell us your WLT story.
EV: I discovered WLT a few years ago after a conversation with my former creative writing professor Charlotte Gullick who has participated in classes and events with WLT. After attending one of the One Page Salon’s at Radio, I was so moved by one of the poets reading that I knew WLT was a community I wanted to become involved with.
Scribe: Where do you see your writing taking you (or you taking it) in the future?
EV: I am a prolific writer, and my hope is to have my storytelling ability to continue to get better and better. A dream is to have my books in Book People, attend Texas Book Festival as an author, and maybe find my book in Shakespeare and Co. in Paris. Dreaming big!
Scribe: Here at the WLT, we love sharing book recommendations. What’s one book that has come out within the past few years that you couldn’t put down? (Bonus points if the book is Texas related!)
EV: Expiration Dates by Rebecca Serle. There’s a chronic illness component in the story, which was profound and meaningful for me as someone who lives with and manages a chronic illness. It’s hard relating to characters in books when my life has a disability aspect that changes both the optics of how I’m seen and the path of my experience in life.
Scribe: Is there anything else about you that you would like to share with the world? An opportunity for blatant self-promotion!
EV: My debut romantic suspense novel, Starling Darling, will be published this fall. The idea for the story came to me in July of 2020. The story is about Lucia Starling, who escapes to Italy after her mother’s funeral, and the choice she faces to track down an heirloom stolen from her hotel room in Rome. It was an exciting and searing experience to write this book, as it brought me back to myself in the first year of the pandemic when there was so much uncertainty about the future. I’ve also completed my second novel (project titled Warsaw), and am ambitiously writing a new genre for my third novel, an exciting Romantic Fantasy.
Scribe: Let us know any social media handles you have!
EV: My Instagram is @EricaVipondAuthor_, and I also publish monthly newsletters at https://ericavipondauthor.substack.com/