By Joseph Knoop
When an 8-year-old Deborah Roach found herself on a family vacation in Tennessee, she didn’t expect her father to be rushed to the hospital after a heart attack. She didn’t expect to wind up alone with her brother in a desperate attempt to find transportation there. She most definitely didn’t expect to make lifelong friends along the way, and it was those friends that later inspired her to recount her misadventure in the form of a short story, leading to a career as a full-fledged author.
Roach’s father would go on to survive his heart attack, but her passion for writing wouldn’t spark until after college. Though she performed well in school, being the daughter of two immigrants brought more of an emphasis on speaking instead of reading. Now, the Zionsville resident and mother of three has utilized her skills as a storyteller to raise awareness of her son’s rare disease, Vascular Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome, in “Rarity.”
“I wanted to give some hope to those that are diagnosed with it,” Roach said. “Someone actually contacted me and said, ‘One of my family members died young of an aneurysm, and I wonder if they had something like this.’ I wanted it to be something that got people thinking and presented it in a way that’s for regular people.”
Roach’s latest offering, “Between the Bleeding Willows,” is decidedly more fantastical in nature. The first in a planned series, “Between the Bleeding Willows” follows a young girl named Cassidy who suffers the incredible loss of her grandmother and boyfriend. When she goes looking for an old heirloom, she’s unexpectedly thrown into a magical realm full of demons and monster hunters.
“There was this abandoned cemetery near where I lived, and I remember stories saying, ‘Oh yeah, the devil worshippers go there at night and have rituals,’ so I was petrified,” Roach said. “It was a challenge because you kind of become a god and have to create the world that they live in.”
“Between the Bleeding Willows” and “Rarity” are now available on Amazon US and UK in both paperback and Kindle editions. Fans and readers can follow Roach on Twitter at @daroach12books and facebook.com/DARoachDA.
