#WhatsYour Story Featuring Judy Mollen Walters

Judy Mollen Walters is the author of seven novels about strong women struggling to help their families and themselves.  Her latest book, The In-Between Place, was released on March 19, and can be found on Amazon.  In her spare time, Judy likes to spend time with her family, bake, and read. She lives in New Jersey with her husband and pet rabbit.

I still remember my father coming into the classroom. It was around noon on an ordinary Saturday, and I had been in the rec center at a Creative Writing class for about an hour. I’d been going there for a few weeks and I liked so much about it. The teacher was nice and all the kids just wanted to write stories, like me. I was nine years old.

The teacher pulled my father aside, but I overheard anyway. “I asked the kids to write a story making an inanimate object become animate,” she said, “and most of them chose the usual things. Your daughter, though, she chose to use George Washington’s wig. She has real talent.”

I don’t recall how my father responded or if he responded at all. I just remember feeling very proud.  I was in fourth grade then, and had realized I would never, ever be good at math or science and was sort of average in most other subjects.  But this writing thing – this I could do.
Growing up, I didn’t have allusions of a career as a novelist. I knew what I had been told – you can’t make a living as a novelist.  So, for a while, as a teenager, I thought I would be a photojournalist for Life magazine. Of course, I didn’t have the photography skills, nor was I interested in learning them. When I left high school, I went into college a student with no major and no idea what I wanted to do.

After a semester in college, I declared English as my major.  I loved to read and write. I discovered, through an internship, that I could have a role in publishing. I could put together other people’s books. I could meet authors. I could work at some of the best publishing houses in the country.

After college I got a job in real publishing.  Through several stints as an editor and then as a Managing Editor for various small publishing companies, I realized, with great dismay, that the business of publishing was not for me. By then I was the mother of a three-year-old with another on the way. My husband and I discussed it and hoped that if we were really careful with money, I could be a Stay-at-Home Mom for a while, which I wound up doing for nineteen years, until my kids left home.

Writing never left me, though. When my girls were in school, sometimes I would write.  I was the one who wrote and edited the PTO newsletter. I always had an idea for a story in my head.  

Without noticing, I wrote a novel.  It was so bad. I laugh now at how bad it was. At the time, of course, I thought it was fabulous. When I showed it to a couple of people in the business, I learned it was not. I wrote another good three or four books before I wrote the one I thought was good enough for the world to see. That became my “first” book, Child of Mine.
Since then I’ve published six more books, one a year, each spring.  My books are about strong women struggling in their families with real problems – serious medical issues, career struggles, divorces, family divides.  

My latest book, just published on March 19, is The In-Between Place.  It’s the story of a mother who finds out her four-month-old son has a terminal illness called Spinal Muscular Atrophy, considered the ALS of children.  He’s supposed to die by the age of two but mysteriously lives on for many more years. How does this mother balance caring for him while raising his sisters? How does she manage to hold on, day after day, knowing the end will come, but not knowing when that will be?
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I like to write about the things we never can imagine happening to us, yet sometimes they do.  When they do, it’s all about holding on, about fighting for love over despair. I believe in that. I hope my readers do, too.

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The In Between Place

Alice Connelly was headed for the perfect life, with her steady-as-a-rock husband, Ryan, a successful architect, her beautiful, smart toddler daughter, Olivia, and a great career of her own, which she was sure was about to include a promotion and raise.But when Alice has her second child, Oliver, from the beginning, it seems like everything is wrong. At four months, Oliver is diagnosed with a rare condition, Spinal Muscular Atrophy, or SMA, and given only two years to live.But Oliver surprises everyone by[ living much longer than anyone predicted. Although he can’t move any of his muscles, his is brilliant, funny, and takes his limitations in stride. His mother, Alice, has given up her career to care for him, and his sisters, Olivia and Poppy, are forced to pretend he will live forever, even when they know the real truth, while Ryan keeps pushing his raw feelings away, staying disconnected from everyone around him.Filled with surprising twists and turns, The In-Between Place will have you up reading until the wee hours. It makes us ask: How much can one family endure without being shattered and how do you pick up the pieces when life throws too much at you? You’ll laugh and cry and wish for something better for the Connelleys and think about your own family and feel grateful for it.

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Where to Buy The In Between Place

Amazon