'Walking on White' with Jennifer Graeser Dornbush

Now I would like to welcome a best-selling author, Jennifer Grazer Dornbush. How are you? So good, thank you. Great to be here. Of course, thank you so much for taking the time to come on. And so you have a new book out that is a part of a collection of very interesting stories. But before we kind of look at those, tell us a little bit about who you are, where you're from, and what really made you want to become an author? Yes, of course. So yeah, I'm originally from Michigan, West Michigan, and I still have a home there, go back frequently. All my family or friends are there. So I always say like, You can take the girl out of Michigan, but you cannot take Michigan out of the girl. So, and I grew up in a small community called Fremont, home of the Gerber baby food. And I knew I wanted to be an author when I was eight. I remember telling my family, I'm going to be a writer. No idea what that actually meant. But yeah, so many, many things along the path. But yes, I've been writing professionally. Unfortunately, I did my first professional... writing assignment when I was 19 as a journalist so that's um I did journalism for a long time and it lives deep in my heart and soul I love it but yeah it just kind of evolved from there into screenwriting and then eventually novels and now I just kind of do all of it so yeah it's always good like I think like journalism at the foundation is like We'll take you any and everywhere. Like, that's what my, you know, degree is in journalism, but it's so broad. Like, it's so much more than just being on camera. Like, you do the digging. You do everything that's, like, behind the scenes, you know? Yeah, because we're storytellers, and that's the, like, I love telling stories, if they're real or fictional. Like, I love hearing people's stories. I love digging into stories. Yeah. I love making up stories. I love making up stories. I love killing people in my stories. I said. I'm like, oh yeah, you're deranged. Like, no, I know good TV. We promise. You're all good. And so you have a new book out. It's called Walking on White, which is a part of your Coroner's Daughter Mysteries. You have quite a few within this series. So before we kind of get into the new book, tell us a little bit about what's involved through your other ones leading up to this one. Sure. So I'm not going to give away too much. So I'll make it kind of brief. But basically, it's a story about a young woman who was a surgeon in Chicago, like in her residency, being very successful, had kind of run away from home when she was 16, became estranged from her father for a mysterious reason, which you find out about in the first book. And then her father experiences a heart attack and she's called back to her small town in Michigan to kind of tend to him after all this time and sort of gets caught back up in his medical examiner world. He was the coroner for this county and she kind of helped him as a young girl. And so she gets back into this world and realizes like, Kind of home is where the bodies are. And so throughout this series, you see her kind of latching onto that and eventually returning home. And so basically every book, she's back home solving a case, you know, solving a mystery, a murder mystery, and as she's taking over her father's medical examiner post. Now, with this latest book, how long did it take you to finish this one, like from start to finish? Yeah. So because I was on a production schedule, deadlines are good. Um, I think from my first, you know, pen to paper to final edit was maybe nine months. So yeah, which is fast, you know, especially when you have like all these different books, which I find it very interesting, you know, at like how authors are able to come up with. Even though it's within the same storyline, you kind of have a different premise and plot within each one. So how do you keep these stories like fresh? Right. So I, like you, as my journalism background, I love to research. I just, and you know, a lot of what I do when I'm getting ready to, okay, I start with like, cause I kind of know where her personal journey is going to go. You know, I have that sort of mapped out in my head, but it's always like, you got to find the fresh new case. I literally just start researching a lot of times newspapers, like the small hometown newspapers. And I, I try to keep it to Michigan because it's just so fascinating to me. And I want to really ground it in in kind of reality and things. So I'll just research and I find the strangest cases are out there. It's always in the newspapers, even in the horror movies. They're like going back to see why the house is haunted and they're looking through like the newspaper archives. Guys. There are history journals. Yeah, exactly. And so are you going to continue this series or do you think you're going to kind of venture off and do something else for a little bit and then maybe come back later? I am contracted for two more books. So I definitely will round that out. I have other books in the works that are like in production. So kind of both. But after eight, I think I'm going to take a little break and then we'll see where Emily goes. I And so what, what, if there was a message out of all don't of the books in this series, but particularly the walking on white, what is one lesson that you would like readers to take away from it? I mean, of course, Dr. Emily is very focused on justice, right? know. And she's going, she's goes at great lengths to make sure that justice is served, but it's also deeply rooted in community because back to this small community where everybody's connected and she finds that that's really where her fulfillment and purpose and meaning for her life can can live out because she's in a community I think that's so important especially in our digital age when we're all over the place our online communities communities can never suffice for our like personal communities and she Purpose is funny because I created this character where she purposefully doesn't have social media or like she's kind of against it, you know, even though she's of the generation that really embraces it. And she's, you know, she said, no, I don't choose that. I choose to live like, you know, face to face with people. Oh, stop. And also, like, that's how you solve a murder. You don't solve a murder online. You might get clues, but there's not going to be the full scope of things. Yes. Yes. Yeah. And then do you have any final words for fellow book lovers out there, especially with reading being so huge right now? I know. I'm so happy it's huge because I grew up a reader. My parents really stressed reading. It's, I mean, just keep reading. Never, you know, always have that stack of books by your bedside, right? Right? My bedside table. Or have it in your bag, you know, like a little Kindle or a book. You never know. I had one fellow book lover that we follow each other on Instagram, and she was like, she was so deep into a book one time that she, like, started reading at a red light. I said, no, we are not accepting that. That is a no-no. But, you know, when you get that book and you're just like, okay, I need to finish it, like, you're on edge. But I was like, a red light? Girl. But Sydney, better than texting at a red light, right? That is true. I don't really want to pull you over because at least it's not a phone. It's, you know, just books. But sir, I got caught up in my chapter. I'm sorry. Like maybe you should take a page out of this book. You know, you'll love it. You'll love it. But Jennifer, thank you so much for, you know, all your amazing stories. And most importantly, for taking the time to come share it with me and fellow book lovers out there. We greatly appreciate it. Thank you, fellow book lovers and fellow Sydney book lover. Thank you.