Some random bits of Allyson trivia: 1) She’s been skydiving, paragliding, bungee jumping, ziplining through a rainforest, and scuba diving with stingrays; 2) she has an extensive PEZ dispenser collection; 3) she played Connor Walsh on As the World Turns for seven years; 4) she’s been in the Oval Office at the White House after hours; 5) she’s related to the Hatfields of the infamous Hatfield/McCoy feud; and 6) her comedic rap music video “Fine, I’ll Write My Own Damn Song” won numerous awards in the film festival circuit and can now be seen on YouTube https://youtu.be/7Xe3nuVDkC4.
Also available from Allyson Rice is her line of women’s coloring books (The Color of Joy, Dancing with Life, and Wonderland), and The Creative Prosperity PlayDeck, an inspirational card deck about unlocking and utilizing your creative energy in the world. She’s currently at work on her second novel and her fourth women’s coloring book. But she is most proud of being mom to musical artist @_zanetaylor.
Thanks for stopping by! What attracted you to the women's fiction genre?
Thank you, it's a pleasure to be here! Honestly, when I started writing the book, it wasn’t
a choice that I made, like “I’m going to write a women’s fiction novel.” As far as I knew, I
was just writing general fiction. I came up with a skeletal outline and the characters of
the two sisters and then followed where the story and characters were taking me as it
unfolded. The “women’s fiction” aspect unfolded as well.
I wanted the sisters to be older than an ingenue might be. At just under forty and just
over forty they’re at a point in life where they’ve amassed a great deal of life experience.
They’re also at an age where certain things might not have turned out exactly as they
had imagined. There would’ve been disappointments and struggles as well as youthful
adventures. It’s why on the back cover of the book I say, “A coming-of-age story
sometimes doesn’t happen until later in life. Then it’s about second chances, and about
finding the people you choose to call family.”
But it’s really a multi-generational story. The flashbacks about the deceased mom’s life
focus on characters in their teens and 20s. In the current-day storyline, in addition to the
sisters and the brother, many of the supporting characters are the older versions of the
characters in the flashbacks who are now in their 50s/60s and above. I wanted a funny
story that would appeal to readers of all ages (though because of some sensitive topics
in the mom’s backstory, it’s really not suitable for YA readers).
When my manuscript was complete and I was about to begin querying literary agents, I
had to decide what genre was the best description for the novel. Chick lit seems to
always have a relationship central to the story. This book doesn’t (though there’s a hint
of a relationship beginning at the end of the book… in case I decide to write a sequel).
The term “women’s fiction” is described as an umbrella term for stories focused on
women and women’s daily life issues. That’s exactly what my book turned out to be.
There are male characters in it, but the predominant characters and stories are about
women. And though I’ve had many men read and enjoy it, I market it primarily to female
readers. So it seems like I fell into that category in the natural course of writing.
The desire to write female characters and to include plenty of female characters over
the age of 40 probably stems from the many years I’ve spent in the entertainment
industry where the number of female characters is so much lower than the number of
male characters. For instance, the statistics for films’ major characters in 2021 show
females at only 35% and males at 65%. And within that 35%, older female roles drop off
considerably!
Do you write in any other genres?
At this point, women’s fiction with a healthy dose of humor seems to be where I’m naturally drawn. My second novel is also focused primarily on female characters (though there is a romance in this one!) I suppose it’s not surprising considering the coloring books I’ve also created are women’s coloring books that were born out of the women’s retreats I used to run in Sedona. Though I love men and have a lot of fun writing those characters too, I find that the older I get, the more I want my work to elevate women in general.
However, I also love reading or listening to a good murder mystery! Especially ones that aren’t too graphically violent. And if there’s humor in it as well, even better. So… one of these days I might just have to write a cozy mystery myself!
And I’m writing spec scripts for film and TV.
.
What inspired you to write The Key to Circus-Mom Highway?
It was early 2016 and I was re-watching an older film, a 1980s dramedy called After
Hours, with Griffin Dunne and Rosanna Arquette. I love its premise of a guy in NYC just
trying to get home one night, but obstacles keep getting in his way, and the supporting
characters are all very quirky/strange. And I thought, “I’d like to write something like
that.” So that’s all I knew in the beginning–that it was going to be someone trying to get
somewhere in a landscape populated by funny/quirky characters. The similarities with
After Hours end there. Then the process of building the storyline happened by
answering one question at a time–who, what, where, why, and when.
I was already a few chapters into another novel at the time. But I set that one aside to
work on The Key to Circus-Mom Highway. I always knew I’d go back and finish that
other one eventually.
Can you give us your book blurb so others can find out what your book is about?
I’ll give you two. One that’s the official description on all the bookseller pages, and the
other shorter one is from the back of the book cover. They come at it from slightly
different angles.
Official description:
In an attempt to secure an unexpected inheritance—and hopefully find a few
answers—two estranged sisters and their newly discovered brother embark on a
comically surreal trip through the Deep South to retrace the life of the mother
who abandoned them as infants.
On a Tuesday afternoon, sisters Jesse Chasen and Jennifer McMahon receive a phone
call notifying them that their birth mother has died, leaving behind a significant
inheritance. But in order to obtain it, they must follow a detailed road trip she designed
for them to get to know her—and that includes finding a brother they never knew
existed.
For the next week, this ill-assorted trio treks across Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama,
and Georgia to meet their mother’s old friends, from circus performers to a juke joint
owner, each of whom delivers a shocking vignette into the life of a young mother
traumatized by loss and abuse. Along the way, these three siblings—Jesse, whose fiery
exterior disguises a wounded, drifting musician stuck in a rut; Jennifer, whose carefully
curated family life is threatened by her husband’s infidelity; and Jack, whose enigmatic
Jackie, Oh! persona in the New Orleans drag queen scene helps him escape the
nightmares of Afghanistan that haunt him at night—must confront their own demons
(and at least one alligator). But in chasing the truth about their real mother, they may all
just find their second chance.
This uproarious debut novel is a reminder that sometimes, the family you’d never have
chosen may turn out to be exactly what you need.
Back of book cover blurb:
What do a circus, a murder, an 89-year-old narcoleptic juke joint owner, and a New
Orleans drag queen named Jackie, Oh! have to do with the now-deceased woman who
abandoned Jesse Chasen and her sister Jennifer McMahon as infants? Only
everything.
The burning question is… will they unravel Circus-Mom’s secrets on their one-week
road trip through the Deep South as they attempt to collect their inheritance? Or will
their inadvertent kidnapping by a trucker with a penchant for TV theme songs from the
’70s derail them completely? And I mean, c’mon, no one wants to be listening to the
theme song from Gilligan’s Island during all of that.
A coming-of-age story sometimes doesn’t happen until later in life. Then it’s about
second chances, and about finding the people you choose to call family. Yeah. And
alligators…
How can readers discover more about you and your work?
I have a new author website that has a lot of info for anyone interested.
http://www.allysonrice.com I have another e-commerce website where my women’s
coloring books and handmade jewelry is for sale https://www.allyson-wonderland.com/
(The YouTube link for my award-winning comedic rap music video is also on the Home
Page there.) And if you’re interested in my older work in the entertainment industry, this
is my page on IMDB: https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0723343/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0
Where can readers buy your book?
Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Key-Circus-Mom-Highway-Allyson-
Rice/dp/0982185545
Barnes & Noble: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-key-to-circus-mom-highway-
allyson-rice/1142037363?ean=9780982185544
KOBO: https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/the-key-to-circus-mom-highway
Target: https://www.target.com/p/the-key-to-circus-mom-highway-by-allyson-rice-
paperback/-/A-87939489
Walmart:
https://www.walmart.com/ip/The-Key-to-Circus-Mom-Highway-Paperback-
9780982185544/1605474466
My Own Website:
https://allyson-wonderland.com/product-category/coloring-books-books/
It will also be on Apple Books, but I don’t have that link yet!
Thank you very much for taking the time out of your busy schedule to take part in this interview. What’s next for you?
It was my pleasure. Thank you so much for the interview! What’s up next (after all the initial book launch promotion is finished) is to get back to work on that next women’s fiction novel. It’s a comedy about a woman on the verge of turning 50, newly divorced and entering the online dating world for the first time, and she’s trying to decide the direction she wants her life to go. It includes her friendships with two women she’s known since college and a friendship with a feisty 80-year-old she meets by accident during a panic attack. And there’s an Australian paragliding instructor she meets on one of her new adventures who gets under her skin and she’s not quite sure how she feels about that. I can’t wait to find out how it ends! Lol
I’m also working on my fourth women’s coloring book, and I’m always working on my mixed media art. I’ve started a fun series loosely based on the theme of gluttony. I’d also love to get back to my jewelry-making sometime soon. There have been other more pressing projects that I’ve been focusing on lately. But I feel some jewelry-making coming on… Then there’s the script I recently finished a detailed outline for, a crime drama set in 1920. I think it’s going to be a busy and productive year!
