I met with Rochelle Weinstein, best-selling author of seven women’s fiction novels, including This Is Not How It Ends. Rochelle’s eighth novel, We Are Made of Stars, which releases on February 25th, is a romantic suspenseful page turner. It’s got everything. Characters who are hiding things, bad decisions, flawed people who love each other, betrayal and redemption, all taking place in an idyllic, magical inn in North Carolina.
Not only did I feel like I was on a vacation at this sumptuous inn, but the complex characters plus distinct back stories pulled me in. I liked watching their dramas unfold, building to a page turning emotional climax.
A little background: Renée and Jean-Paul De La Rue face the daunting decision to close their beloved inn Vis Ta Vie for good. Meanwhile their 8 guests are facing their own struggles. Three couples are in crisis: Hollywood celebs, Leo and Penny, are spending their silver anniversary together while on the cusp of divorce.
Lucy, a practical minded therapist, and Henry, an astronomer with his head in the stars, are on the rocks. And former lawyer, now stay at home mother, Sienna, and dynamic sports agent, Adam, look perfect, but looks can be deceiving. Add finally, self-absorbed single mother Cassidy and her sulky 15-year-old daughter, Rosalie are barely speaking.
Below are some edited highlights from my conversation with Rochelle. You can listen to the full episode here on my podcast Elena Meets the Author available wherever you listen to podcasts.
Elena: Rochelle, before we get into your book, can you tell us how you went from being a secret writer into a somewhat prolific one with eight books out there.
Rochelle: Well, first, thank you, Elena, for having me. It’s a pleasure to be here. I was laughing when you were listing all the characters, because I’m like, Oh my God, how did I write all these characters and keep up with it?
I was always a writer, a secretive journal writer back in the day. I was also a huge reader. I used to steal my mother’s Sidney Sheldon, Danielle Steele. I was reading those books when I was about 10 years old. I like to say that they raised me in a way. They were my salvation. They were healing for me. My parents were divorced at the time, so there were some lonely times.
And I felt such refuge in books. At the same time, I was the journal writer, and I never had the courage or the self-confidence to put any type of writing out in the world.
My career path went an entirely different way. I was in the music business in South Beach in Miami and the company was bought and moved to New York City. I had just had twin boys. I’d always worked since the age of 14 and I felt I was at this career crossroads. I always felt that I had a story to tell. I literally sat down, wrote 110, 000 words of What We Leave Behind and that was the start of a career. It was a lark that turned into something bigger than I had expected.
Elena: Wow. Did you have that story percolating for a while?
Rochelle: There’s a lot of fiction and non-fiction in my first novel. A lot of it is my own self-discovery and the way I dealt with my parents’ divorce, the way I dealt with the men in my life and what I learned from years of work on myself. I had a message that I really wanted to share with the world, and I felt like I could help other young women navigate through loss, insecurity and abandonment.
And I just basically fictionalized all these deep feelings into a story, and I made it entertaining
Elena: Of these eight books you’ve written, is there a common theme or thread to all of them?
Rochelle: There’s always some type of loss and resiliency, some emotional depth. There’s always a grey area. I like to explore the grey area. I’m not a very black and white person. I see things in the shades of grey. I like to portray stories where we can see all sides and be able to show a little bit more compassion for the people around us.
Elena: I read that the working title of this book was The Inn, and you described it as The Big Chill meets Nine Perfect Strangers. Can you elaborate on that?
Rochelle: It’s so funny because as the iterations of this book have developed, now I like to say my elevator pitch is, One Week in Summer, Eight Lives Forever Changed. Think White Lotus Meets Virgin River.
Elena: How did you choose to set the novel in North Carolina?
Rochelle: I live in South Florida, and we spent our summers in the mountains of North Carolina, starting at the age of four, when my single mom was head of Girls Hill, a sleepaway camp in Hendersonville, North Carolina.
And I lived for these summers in the mountains, the smell, the scenery. I’m a nature girl at heart. So fast forward, I got married, we had kids, we would take our kids to the mountains of North Carolina. We have a place that we go to in the summers in Beach Mountain.
And nearby there’s this inn called the Inn at Little Pond Farm. And the inn in my novel is based entirely on the inn at Little Pond Farm.
They had a communal table, which only seated ten people, and you could end up talking to complete strangers while the gourmet chef would cook a five-course meal for you.
What’s so incredible are the seeds that are planted at this table when you’re with strangers. I was fascinated by the interactions between the strangers and what you could learn, what you could find out about people, the people who didn’t like each other. I decided that I needed to write a story about the dynamics of this table. I felt like the table was just such a great starting point for a story.
Elena: One of your character’s loves astronomy? Is that something you’re interested in?
Rochelle: Not at all. I did some research on that. Carl Sagan says we all come from stars and from stardust. I felt like the table was a metaphor for the sun.
And the characters were the stars orbiting the sun. They gravitated around this piece, and it connected them or it exploded around them. I viewed the whole star piece as just a metaphor for these relationships.
Elena: I’m wondering if there were certain characters that appeared to you from the very beginning.
Rochelle: This idea has been percolating for a while. So, when I sat down to finally write it, I knew these were my characters. I knew I wanted to do a mother daughter dynamic. I knew I wanted couples who were best friends from college, reliving their youth at the inn. I knew I wanted some celebrity to shake things up. And I knew I wanted to have the Renee and Paul, the owners.
I stapled six giant poster boards together and cut out pictures of celebrities from People Magazine. I’m very visual and I need to just see somebody to describe a face, the curvature of their chin. I had index cards for each day and each character had their arc and their goal for a specific scene. I had to see it visually.
Elena: Were these characters modelled after movie stars? Did you have a picture of a movie star for Leo?
Rochelle: The characters that I pulled out of People magazine three or four years ago are different than who I would have envisioned today. Leo was Rob Lowe. And I had Blake Lively as Sienna, but now seeing all her troubles, I think people might not be thrilled to see Blake Lively.
Elena:, Did you have a particular fondness for any of the characters?
Rochelle: People ask who’s your favourite character. Which is your favourite book? That’s like asking who’s your favourite child. But I loved writing Rosalie. There’s something about writing young girls. Something really pivotal must have happened to me at the age of 15. I’m stuck in this youthful 15-year-old girl’s body and voice.
I also loved writing, Penny and Leo.
Elena:? Is there a particular scene that you really loved writing?
Rochelle: I loved the unpeeling of the onion at the table. I loved the last scene of the book. I loved Sienna and Lucy in the wine cellar. The scenes that are the most emotionally charged, I loved so much.
Elena: At one point in the story, Penny, who has been married for 25 years to the Hollywood celebrity Leo, gives some advice to a younger couple who are having marital problems. She says, if there’s one thing you should focus on, it’s not whether you love this person, because the answer is yes. The real question is, can you live without this person? And if you can’t live without them, then do everything in your power to fix it. I thought that was a very wise piece of advice.
Rochelle: Sometimes I wonder where (these nuggets) came from. It’s been a while since I wrote that book. You know, you get so deep into your characters, and I felt that that was something that Penny would have said, given her history with Leo.
Elena: Yeah,
Rochelle: Like you really get into character.
Elena: Might you ever write a sequel? I thought there were certain characters we’re invested in and we’re not sure what’s going to happen to them.
Rochelle: Never say never. None of my books are part of a series, they’re all standalones. This one definitely lends itself to that more. I turned in my ninth book two Fridays ago. All I can say is it’s an epic love story
Elena: Oh, wow. You write a book in a year?
Rochelle: I’ve been writing a book a year, but I’m going to slow down.
Elena: You clearly have tons of ideas. Do you write them down as they come to you?
Rochelle: Yes. I have a file folder called book ideas. And I actually have synopses for books ten and eleven.
Elena: Amazing. I know that you recommend books for the local NBC affiliate and for some magazines. What books are you recommending?
Rochelle: Nicola Kraus has a new book coming out The Best We Could Hope For. And I’m excited about Jackie Friedland’s Counting Backwards That’s on my night table There’s obviously, the Queen, Annabelle Monaghan, I can’t wait until her new book It’s a Love Story comes out. I read it and it’s of course amazing.
Elena: She’s great. I’m interviewing her in May. I think that’s it for my questions. Thank you, and good luck with all your writing.
Rochelle: Thank you, Elena. I appreciate it. It was a pleasure talking to you.
February, 2025
