Ready for a heartfelt author interview with a twist of sisterhood and adventure? In this episode of Author Express, Catherine Matthews—award-winning indie author—talks about her new novel that brings together estranged sisters for an unforgettable road trip across four states. Catherine opens up about the Pacific Northwest’s unique inspiration, the wisdom of embracing your voice, and the magic of writing communities. Plus, if you love stories where dogs have just as much personality as their human companions, don’t miss this chat!
Want to know what sparked a story filled with secrets, forgiveness, and fresh starts? Tune in for teasers on Catherine’s creative process and her most influential book picks. Perfect for fans of women's fiction, family dramas, and anyone who believes the journey is just as important as the destination.
A former educator, coach, and school administrator, Catherine Matthews combined her teaching and project management experience with her writing craft to become an award-winning indie author. After her debut, Releasing the Reins, won five, she decided to indie publish her second novel, Roadside Sisters, as well. Catherine writes stories of strong women finding the courage to face the storm and live their dreams—usually in the company of a faithful hound. She embodies this as an indie author. In addition to writing, Catherine serves as a board member and the Vice President of Technology for the WFWA. An early riser, she begins each day writing with colleagues across the globe—always in the company of her two favorite hounds, Delta and Wally.
Support your local bookstore & this podcast by getting your copy of Roadside Sisters at Bookshop.org.
A little about today's host-
Kristi Leonard is a modern Renaissance woman deeply rooted in the book world. When she's not immersed in crafting novels, she's orchestrating writing retreats through her business, Writers in the Wild, or lending her voice to non-fiction audiobooks. She leads the Women’s Fiction Writers Association as the president of the board, and interviews her writer pals as one of the hosts of the Author Express Podcast. She will start querying her first book in 2024.
Beyond the realm of words, Kristi embraces the Florida sunshine by hiking with her writer-hiker group and leisurely walks on the beach. She and her husband juggle a couple side businesses and take turns sharing the couch with their goofy Golden-doodle, Maddie. Kristi enjoys travel adventures with her twin sister and living vicariously through her grown children. You can learn more about her and connect at: https://linktr.ee/kristileonard.
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Learn more about our hosts, the guests we've had, and their books -
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Catherine Matthews [:
Welcome to Author Express. Thanks for checking us out. This is the podcast where you give us 15 minutes of your time and we give you a chance to hear the voice behind the pages and get to know some of your favorite writers in a new light. I'm one of your hosts, Kristi Leonard, owner and host of Writers in the Wild Retreats, nonfiction voiceover artist and president of WFWA.
Kristi Leonard [:
I'm excited to share with you a little about today's guest.
Kristi Leonard [:
As an award winning indie author, that combination comes in handy as she juggles writing, publishing, and marketing. Catherine writes stories about strong women finding the courage to face the storm and live their dreams, usually in the company of a faithful hound. While one side of her brain monitors the data, the other side hopes readers will connect deeply with her words. Catherine lives in the Pacific Northwest, where she writes in the early mornings with her dogs, Delta and Wally. Welcome.
Catherine Matthews [:
Oh, thank you. I'm thrilled to be here.
Kristi Leonard [:
Oh, it's so great to have you. We ask this the same question every time, and mostly because the answers end up as different as the authors. Are you ready?
Catherine Matthews [:
Sure.
Kristi Leonard [:
Tell me the most interesting thing about where you're from.
Catherine Matthews [:
I would say the most interesting thing about being from the Pacific Northwest and more specifically the Puget Sound, is that we have everything. You know, we have mountains and we have the ocean nearby and beautiful farmland and I mean, it just, it feels like a microcosm of all of the different environments in the country, really. You know, you can go to. Go to the desert in a couple of hours if you want, or you can be skiing in a couple of hours.
Kristi Leonard [:
That sounds amazing because I'm in Florida and we don't have that.
Catherine Matthews [:
It really is amazing. I love it here.
Kristi Leonard [:
That's awesome. So we like to start off getting to know you as a person a little bit. We always say we're getting to know the authors behind the books. So let's get to know you.
Catherine Matthews [:
We.
Kristi Leonard [:
What is a piece of advice that someone has given you that you consider sort of the best of the best? It could be about writing. It doesn't have to be. It can be about anything.
Catherine Matthews [:
Wow. What a great question. I feel like I have an entire blog devoted to this exact question. I guess let's talk about writing first. And I think the best advice that I've ever had is to trust and believe in your voice. If you start from a place where you're writing, really from your voice, and from that place that you most deeply connect with, then it will be a beautiful story.
Kristi Leonard [:
That's awesome. I can see where that would actually also be kind of true in life.
Catherine Matthews [:
Yes. Yeah. I would say, especially if you're thinking about parenting, you know, that, you know, when you act from love in those deep parts of you, that's really the best place to be.
Kristi Leonard [:
Oh, I love that. Well, I was going to ask what advice that you give to other people most often, and I'm gonna guess it's probably along those same lines.
Catherine Matthews [:
Yeah, I would say so. And I am very big on just reminding people that, you know, the journey is the goal. You know, that we. We so often want to be done or complete or accomplished or whatever, and we forget that, you know, all of this life writing, all of our experiences, you know, the journey is the thing.
Kristi Leonard [:
That's so true. My advice that I always give my kids, especially, and it doesn't have to just be with the kids, but anytime someone confounds you or irritates you or you get in a fight with someone, I always tell them they're not done yet.
Catherine Matthews [:
Right.
Kristi Leonard [:
Because none of us are. Are we ever. We're not done. We all have something we can learn. We all have something, you know, that we can change.
Catherine Matthews [:
Absolutely.
Kristi Leonard [:
Definitely. Well, I am excited to talk about your book. This is your second book. I've actually read both of them, and they kind of hit a little different. They're very similar, just like we said at the top about how you, you know, talk about or you write about women and that type of thing. But this new one really hit home for me because it's about sisters, and I have two sisters.
Catherine Matthews [:
The sisterhood is a powerful thing.
Kristi Leonard [:
It really is. So for context, let's tell everybody. How would you summarize your book in one sentence? No question.
Catherine Matthews [:
When Molly Casey realizes her days are numbered, she manipulates her two estranged sisters into a rerun of their last family road trip before the family broke apart. But she is unaware of the secrets that they have been holding onto all these years. And so her plan really opens all these old wounds, and they spill out across four states, and the women are forced to decide what they forgive in themselves and in each other.
Kristi Leonard [:
That was a very long sentence, but you did it.
Catherine Matthews [:
I love conjunctions.
Kristi Leonard [:
Yeah.
Kristi Leonard [:
I was like, what? And. Yes, that. That encapsulates it quite well. How did you come up with a road trip as the avenue for this? I think that's. Do you take a lot of road trips?
Catherine Matthews [:
Well, it's funny. I was visiting my sister in Georgia during the pandemic, and she and I love road trips. But of course, you know, we were all sort of, you know, halted. So our only road trip that we could figure out at the time was to go to Calhoun, Georgia, where there is a rock garden behind a church. No, it's the most phenomenal thing I have ever seen. Yeah. This church as a meditative and spiritual practice. Their members take these tiny stones, and they have built the Coliseum.
Catherine Matthews [:
Bethlehem. Yeah. Jerusalem out of Rocks. Notre Dame. Yes. It's all, like, three feet tall. And it was just phenomenal. So as we were driving around, my sister said, you know, you should write a book about a road trip, because road trips are so great.
Catherine Matthews [:
You know, you never know where you're going to go. You don't know if it's going to be disappointment or amazing. It's always a side trip. And, of course, she and I are hilarious when we're together. So that's how it started out.
Kristi Leonard [:
That's so awesome.
Catherine Matthews [:
But as I started writing, I remembered this moment when all of my sisters were together and we were looking through my mother's photographs. My mother has been dead for quite some time, but my father was quite ill and dying, essentially. And so we were looking through these photographs, and I saw this photograph of me with one of my sisters, and I had this epiphany moment where I thought, wow, all of my memories are probably not accurate, you know, and of course, we all think that way. And as an educator, I know, you know, that. That children developmentally are very egocentric and, you know, the world is all about them. But it morphed this book into exploring how sometimes, you know, we're all in the same house, but our experiences are vastly different because of our relationship with our parents, because of where our parents are in life at the time that we're at a formative period. And sometimes because those things are so old and so childish, not in a negative way, but in a, you know, a chronological way, we hold onto them deeply and their meaning to us, and it's hard to let them go or to imagine that something happened in a way that's different than we remember.
Kristi Leonard [:
It's the narrative you tell yourself.
Catherine Matthews [:
Exactly. So the book sort of morphed into what would happen if you're stuck in a car for 2,600 miles with somebody that you had been estranged from. And we're trying to hold those secrets in, and often very benevolently, like, I don't want to hurt you, and if I tell you this secret, you're going to be hurt. But also from the perspective of, like, I will also have to own My part in this relationship and in what happened all those years ago. And of course, we know, you know, the oldest. The child shame is the oldest shame, you know.
Kristi Leonard [:
Absolutely.
Catherine Matthews [:
Yeah. So it just sort of went that way. And. And I think that there are very funny parts in this book, for sure. And a friend of mine said it just like, I've had all the feelings.
Kristi Leonard [:
Yes, I totally can agree with that a hundred percent. Well, a big part of that is actually the dogs. So you and I have that in common. My books also have dogs, and you have two very different dogs in this book, and I absolutely love them. And how you wrote them. How much of the. Your own dogs ended up in this story.
Catherine Matthews [:
Oh, that's interesting. You know, what the. Ironically, because, as you know, I have a pit bull and a boxer, so I have big dogs, and I love big dogs. But the Lhasa Apso. I had one as a little kid. And there is a scene in the book where the girl is comforting this dog. She's very young, and. And of course, her mom is scared to death because she thinks the girl has run off and she's lost this girl, and really she's just sort of hiding in the grass comforting this dog.
Catherine Matthews [:
And, you know, I don't remember the circumstances of it, but I just remember times when I was very connected to this dog. His name was Nelson Rockefeller. I don't know why that's a great name, why I named it that. I was so little. I was like, yeah, I was. I was in elementary school, but I. This dog was so important to me, and it was a very sweet, fluffy, just really comforting dog. So, yeah, that I've never had a Bernese mountain dog, but I think they're beautiful.
Catherine Matthews [:
What I really liked about these two dogs was the way that they navigated their relationship, being sort of much more mature than the women, you know, like, they figured it out.
Kristi Leonard [:
Oh, I can totally see that, 100%. So awesome. We'd like to also talk a little bit about, like, the writing life. And you and I share the fact that we are both on the board of the Women's Fiction Writers Association. But the thing I want you to tell me about is the writing dates, because that's a big, like, how much a part of your, like, writer life is the writing dates?
Catherine Matthews [:
Huge part, as a matter of fact. So the writing dates are put on by the Women's Fiction Writers Association. They started during the pandemic. Michelle Montgomery, one of the members, had this idea to bring people together virtually, since we were losing that sense of Community. And quite often, our members across the country and world will meet in small groups. And of course, we couldn't do that. So now that group is happening two or three times a day, seven days a week. And so it's a pretty amazing thing to behold.
Catherine Matthews [:
And I don't understand the magic of it, but we literally all get together and we. We state what we're gonna work on, and then we turn off our mics and our cameras and we write for 90 minutes, and then we check in at the end, and then we have a chance to ask questions and talk. And it is truly magical. Like books get written in this group. In fact, I finished releasing the reigns in this group, and I started and finished Roadside Sisters in this group. And actually, at the time, I was still working full time, so the only time I could write during the week, I did the writing dates on the weekend, but during the week, I really couldn't get to any other meeting. And there was a woman, Amy Sue Nathan, a wonderful writer, the author of the Last Bathing Beauty. She had started a group at what would be 5am my time, and it was just one hour, and it was sort of a little bit of an offshoot, but I never would have met this woman except for the writing dates.
Catherine Matthews [:
And she said, oh, you know what? Come join us. And so it gave me a chance to write during the week from 5 to 6 before I went to work. So I get up at 4 and work out, take a shower and go write for an hour and then go to work.
Kristi Leonard [:
Yeah, and the accountability is just phenomenal.
Catherine Matthews [:
And the connection to other writers. I mean, I learned everything I learned about writing and publishing probably came from talking to the amazing mentors that just organically happen through this group.
Kristi Leonard [:
Well, if you can believe it, we are approaching the end of this conversation. It seems crazy to me that it went by so fast. We also want to make sure that people know how to find you. So I assume you have a website.
Catherine Matthews [:
Yes, I do. catherinematthewsauthor.com, quite simple. And everything's there. My books, my blog.
Kristi Leonard [:
Awesome. Yeah, your blog's awesome. I love reading your blog.
Catherine Matthews [:
Thank you.
Kristi Leonard [:
So, before we wrap up, I've got one last question that I ask every guest. What book or story inspires you the most?
Catherine Matthews [:
All right, so this is the hardest question I know, isn't it? I love books and authors and. But I'm going to say the Divine Secrets of the Yaya Sisterhood by Rebecca Wells, which was written in, I think, 1992. Wow.
Kristi Leonard [:
I haven't thought of that book in a million years.
Catherine Matthews [:
What I really loved about this book was how she was weaved the past and the present together in this really honest and vulnerable way. How she examined, you know, how the past impacts the future and really those themes of sisterhood where women are really in the foreground. You know, so often those things take a backseat. So it really, I think, influenced how I look at the world, but also it influenced how I write.
Kristi Leonard [:
That is such a great book. I'm gonna have to go back and read that again.
Catherine Matthews [:
It is such a great book.
Kristi Leonard [:
Well, thank you, Catherine Matthews, for joining us today. It has been an absolute joy to have you on the podcast.
Catherine Matthews [:
Oh, thank you. It's a pleasure. The pleasure is mine.
Kristi Leonard [:
Thanks for joining us. We hope you take a second to give us stars or a review on your favorite podcasting platform, form, and we'll be here again next Wednesday. Follow us on Instagram at Author Express Podcast to see who's coming up next. Don't forget, keep it express, but keep it interesting.
