Pump Up Your Book Chats with Self-Help Author Steff Dechenes

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Despite a failed attempt at majoring in ice cream in college, Steff Deschenes is a self-taught ice-cream making guru. She has researched her craft all over the world, and believes that the ice cream found at home is the best there is. After publishing The Ice Cream Theory, she began exploring food on more universal level, as a result she now photo blogs daily herself at dinner and the challenges of being a vegetarian in a predominantly seafood-oriented state. Steff also writes two articles a week entitled “Maybe It’s Me” (personal essays and reflection on life and the living of it) and “Fact Is Better” (real life conversations she couldn’t make up if she tried); all of which can be found at www.steffdeschenes.com. You can also visit her at www.theicecreamtheory.com.

Thank you for this interview, Steff. Do you remember writing stories as a child or did the writing bug come later? Do you remember your first published piece?

I’ve definitely been writing my whole life. It’s not only what I was passionate about, but it was one of those few things I felt came natural to me. When I was a sophomore in high school I wrote a research paper on the strike zone in major league baseball and one of the newspapers in Maine hired me on to be a sports clerk (which is basically an on-desk reporter). That’s when I think I first realized that not only did I excel at it, but I truly loved writing nonfiction. Throughout high school and college I wrote personal essays and research papers (I LOVED writing research papers). I think this surprises most people since I’m such a storyteller; but, the best stories to me are directly inspired by real life. I think maybe it’s that whole art-imitating-life concept.

What do you consider as the most frustrating side of becoming a published author and what has been the most rewarding?

Which segues perfectly into what’s been the most rewarding part of being a published author: watching my book succeed. To have won eleven awards, to have done a couple book signings (with hopefully more on the horizon), and to have received my first fan mail has proven to me that all the hard work I’ve put into this book is truly paying off.

I feel like the most frustrating side of becoming a published author is how my attention has completely been diverted from writing and is now entirely on marketing and promoting. I don’t just sit down and write like I had been doing, because there are so many other things I feel I could be doing to help The Ice Cream Theory be more successful.

Are you married or single and how do you combine the writing life with home life? Do you have support?

I made a promise to myself a long time ago that I would try and keep my personal life as, well, personal as possible. I will say this – I am seeing someone, and he, like me, is an artist (he’s a photographer). My mom is also an artist (she’s a painter and potter), and so is my best friend (she’s a chef). I’m basically surrounded by creative types. I’m blessed because along with unconditional love, there’s this mutual respect, admiration, and encouragement of each other to succeed which makes balancing my writing life with my home life really healthy and really easy to do. They’re not only my support staff, but I’m theirs. And having that mutual understanding, that community feeling, is critical I think for each of us to continue to thrive, create, and persevere within our own mediums.

Can you tell us about your latest book and why you wrote it?

My latest book is The Ice Cream Theory, which is a tongue-in-cheek exploration of the parallels between human personalities and ice-cream flavors. In the same way people have ice-cream preferences, people also have people preferences. Like ice cream flavors, social preferences shift based on age, experience, even mood. There are exotic flavors that one craves when feeling daring, comforting flavors to fall back on, flavors long-enjoyed that eventually wear out their welcome, and those unique flavors that require an acquired taste. Like people, no ice cream flavor is perfect every single time, and it is in this realization that the crux of the theory lies.

I wrote it because it was an actual theory created by me after my first teenage heartbreak, that my friends and I started using to explain, compare, and rationalize different people’s relationships to us. I thought it was a really exceptional idea to turn into a book given that I had never seen or heard anyone else use food in such detailed metaphor before.

Can you share an excerpt?

Sure! The first chapter of the book explains precisely what The Ice Cream Theory is:

“Many moons ago, my parents put me to the task of trying every flavor a certain ice cream company made. The prize? They would take me to this ice cream company’s factory. Understand that at the time, this company was putting out roughly thirty-six different flavors of ice cream.

That meant thirty-six different pints of ice cream.

Or one thousand one hundred-twenty tablespoonfuls.

I gained ten pounds.

I was so proud of those ten pounds, though. Who else in my world could say that they had tried every current flavor of that company’s ice cream? I strutted down the halls of the ice cream factory knowing that I had achieved a level of professional ice cream eating that no one else around me could touch.

I was invincible.

At the end of the tour, my parents bought me shirt to mark this momentous and historical moment in my life. Standing in front of the cashier, I confidently told the young college student ringing us up, “I tried every flavor your company makes.”

She looked down at me, grimaced, and said, “Wow. That’s absolutely disgusting.”

Crestfallen? Just a tad.

Regardless that my little bubble had burst and I had not gained the respect that I thought I deserved for my feat, I still got a t-shirt, ten extra pounds, and a very knowledgeable lesson in life and romance from my ice cream project.

It appeared that my ice cream experiment, at the time, paralleled my love life: I went through a lot of different flavors/boys, some that didn’t get more than a fraction of my attention, some that I thought I liked but made me nauseous in the end, some that I wish I could have had more of, and some that I learned to simply appreciate.

And thus the Ice Cream Theory was born.”

Where’s your favorite place to write at home?

My balcony! I have this gorgeous balcony that’s hung with fairy lights and Tibetan prayer flags. It overlooks my work-in-progress garden. There’s a little café table on the balcony that’s set up with a tomato-basil scented candle and a bamboo shoot in one of my old Nalgene bottles on it (‘cause reusing it as a vase is WAY better than throwing it away!). It’s really this amazing creative haven!

What is one thing about your book that makes it different from other books on the market?

I never intended to write a self-help book. I mean, I’m a sassy, emotional twenty-something who shoots from the hip half the time. Who am I to tell people how to live their life? All I was trying to write, what I tell my friends and family, was a “super cool collection of almost true, but slightly inaccurate anecdotes from my life.” But that genre doesn’t exist (yet), so I got lumped into self-help, which is really unfortunate given that the market is inundated with these books.

I feel really blessed, though, that I had a tremendously unique concept – like comparing people to ice cream flavors – to share with the world. It was something that while people may have thought about or talked about, hadn’t physically been written about yet.

Friends, and even reviewers who’ve never even spoken me, say that it reads like you’re having a late night conversation with your best friend. This excites me! I definitely had hoped for that! More than anything else, I not only want my readers to find the book relatable, but I also hope that they’ll be able to take something away from it that will inspire or encourage them.

I think most self-help books force some very opinionated central theme down the reader’s throat, which, in my opinion, makes it counterproductive. The Ice Cream Theory, I think, does an exceptional job at letting the reader interpret, digest, and gleam what they specifically need to from it which sets it apart from other similar books on the market.

Tables are turned…what is one thing you’d like to say to your audience who might buy your book one day?

Call me. Seriously. Let’s talk before you read the book. I can’t stress enough how conversational The Ice Cream Theory is. I really do write like I talk. My friends tell me it was uncanny how similar reading the book was to talking to me on the phone late at night. I am seriously contemplating an audio version of this book – read by yours truly, of course! – because, while I’m confident the book is really well written, I know that its message is even more effective after people have met me face-to-face and listened to me naturally story tell!

Thank you for this interview, Steff! Good luck on your virtual book tour!

Thanks again for this awesome opportunity! I am continually humbled by all the support and positive attention I’ve garnered for, what I like to affectionately call, my “little indie book that could.” The Ice Cream Theory and I have been so well-received, and I couldn’t be more grateful for it!

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Question of the Day

How do you make sales happen for you?

A lot of hard work! I sponsor a lot of on line parties, festivals and contests. Book sales don’t magically happen, believe me. An author has to work hard to earn her readers. And then she has to work hard to keep them by giving them something they’ll enjoy reading. I try hard to make my books worth a reader’s time.

-- Sheila Roberts, Author of Winter at the Beach