Episode 133
Crafting Stories of Healing: Virginia McCullough’s Brand of Hope and Second Chances -133
Curious about the real stories behind the writers you love? In this inspiring Author Express episode, host Kathleen Basi welcomes Virginia McCullough, a powerhouse in both fiction and nonfiction who’s penned over 150 books! Virginia shares the unexpected ways her background in classical ballet shaped her discipline as a writer and recounts how a life-changing move and tough circumstances pushed her into a long career supporting her family through writing alone. Hear about her journey from ghostwriting and editing to crafting women’s fiction—particularly her novel "Amber Light," which explores themes of hope, healing, and second chances.
Interested in what connects a heroine’s journey with real-life trials and triumphs? Tune in for thoughtful reflections on storytelling, resilience, and personal growth, and unlock the secrets to a writer’s longevity and passion.
Virginia McCullough is an award-winning author and ghostwriter of both nonfiction and fiction. She’s served as a ghostwriter or “book doctor” for professionals in many fields, including healthcare, psychology, law, business, and professional speaking, and she’s co-authored more than a dozen books with experts. She currently writes women’s fiction and multigenerational series romance for Harlequin’s Heartwarming line. Set on the shores of lakes, rivers, or oceans, Virginia’s romances and women’s fiction, such as AMBER LIGHT and ISLAND HEALING, feature relatable characters facing and overcoming everyday challenges, and her themes always come back to hope, healing, and plenty of second chances.
Born and raised in Chicago, Virginia started her family there, but then spent years on the move. Home has been an island in Maine, coastal Maryland, the U.S.V.I, and the mountains of Western North Carolina. Currently living in Northeastern Wisconsin, Virginia is a member of the Authors Guild (AG), the Women’s Fiction Writers Association (WFWA), and Romance Writers of America (RWA). Unlike so many of her talented colleagues, she’s not a gourmet cook, a gardener, a knitter, or a pet parent, but Virginia’s interest in politics started in the ‘60s and never let up. She also walks on local trails and loves nothing more than hanging out with other writers.
Sign up for Virginia’s newsletter, learn more about Amber Light and her other books, and check out her workshops and resources for writers here: www.virginiamccullough.com. Find her on Facebook: Virginia McCullough
A little about today's host-
Author and musical composer Kathleen Basi is mother to three boys and one chromosomally-gifted daughter. Her debut novel, A SONG FOR THE ROAD, follows a musician on an unconventional road trip. Bestselling author Kerry Anne King writes, “In a novel filled with music, heartbreak, and surprising laughter, Basi takes us on a journey that encompasses both unimaginable loss and the powerful resilience of the human heart.”
Meaty, earnest, occasionally humorous, and ultimately uplifting, Kathleen’s fiction highlights the best within ourselves and each other. She writes monthly reflections on life, writing and beauty on her newsletter. Subscribe at https://kathleenbasi.substack.com/.
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Learn more about our hosts, the guests we've had, and their books -
Transcript
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Kathleen Basi [: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, Kathleen Basi. I'm an award winning musical composer, feature writer, essayist, and of course, storyteller. Let me tell you a little about Today's guest. Virginia McCullough defines her writer's life as writing books and helping other people write their books, nonfiction and fiction. A ghostwriter editor for decades, she also writes women's fiction and series romance for Harlequin.
Kathleen Basi [:As shown in her book Amber Light, readers can count on Virginia's themes of hope, healing and plenty of second chances. Watch for her fall 2025 release, how to Be a Writer and Stay A the first 50 years are the Hardest. Virginia, welcome to Author Express.
Virginia McCullough [:Well, thank you so much for having me, Kathleen.
Kathleen Basi [:I can't believe we haven't had you on yet in all the time we've been on.
Virginia McCullough [:Well, it's a real pleasure.
Kathleen Basi [:So we start everybody in the same place. We want to know what's the most interesting thing about where you are from. I'm guessing you have had a lot of places that you are from, so pick one.
Virginia McCullough [:Well, I'm gonna pick where I was born and that I grew up in a neighborhood m mid north neighborhood in Chicago. But the most interesting thing about my life there that had to do that extended to my later life was that I took the train several times a week down downtown to the Fine Arts Building which is near Orchestra hall and the lions at the Art Institute. And I studied classical ballet. Classical dance. I consider that my writing career started when I studied dance because the focus, the discipline, everything that you need to be a writer over a long haul started in that dance studio. And a lot of it still comes back to me. And I think self discipline has not been part of my issue with writing. And I think it started there.
Virginia McCullough [:I think it started with the dance and studying dance.
Kathleen Basi [:Virginia, I know that you have a story, a powerful story about how you had to become a writer in order to support your family. Could you tell us a little bit about that?
Virginia McCullough [:I was already a writer. I had been writing articles and I had a portfolio of about 70 articles. But then in the midst of a divorce, I took my children, who were young, sort of preteens, and and took them back to Chicago and that's when I had to then support myself and the kids. And that's when I started to do temp work and look for jobs and I couldn't find any writing jobs. And one break after another, kind of lucky breaks, allowed me to get my first book contract on a nonfiction healthcare related book, which, which led to more books, more contracts, which then led to ghostwriting, editing, book doctoring, all came from that.
Kathleen Basi [:You know, one of the things that's the most amazing I think about you as a person in the years that I've known you, is that you were a single mom and you supported your kids by writing. Like we're all told that you just. That's just not something you can do. Everybody's told you have to go get some other job.
Virginia McCullough [:That's absolutely true. But I'll tell you what happened to me that made a big difference. Once I started ghost writing and I realized I was good at it, and co authoring with experts in a field, I could take their complicated information and turn it into words that a lay audience could understand. I loved working for myself so much that I would just do anything to keep working for myself, whatever it took to market. And I joined the National Speakers association so I could be around speakers. I went to medical conferences so I could connect with healthcare professionals because I love working for myself. I think that was the driver of everything that came.
Kathleen Basi [:So then the fiction came later in your career?
Virginia McCullough [:The fiction came later. I fooled around with it once in a while. At one point, I wrote a book, a novel, in longhand in a diner every morning because I was missing the idea of reading, writing fiction. And so I would take those notebooks to this diner that was about two blocks from my house and I'd scribble my book and then I would go home and I'd be ready to start the real work. But then in the late 90s, I joined my first critique group and they were all such great writers, I was kind of embarrassed almost being that group, even though I'd had the long writing career, but not in fiction, and they didn't have long fiction careers either. But they were really very talented. And learning how to write fiction, I mean, it's like learning how to write nonfiction. It's a learning curve, folks.
Kathleen Basi [:Well, you have a wealth of books out in the world. I believe the number is around 125 now, which is.
Virginia McCullough [:It's about 150 altogether, counting the fiction, it was the 125 of the nonfiction. And then the ones that have been added more recently are the novels, because I ghost write some novels too.
Kathleen Basi [:Okay, very good. So 150 books she has written. You have a lot of books over.
Virginia McCullough [:A period of 40 years. I mean, I always want to clarify that because we are talking about when all this started. The original move to Maine was, I always say, Richard Nixon was still president, but not for long. So it was early 1970s, so. And then by the time I was going full time with it, it was the mid-80s. So this is over a long period of time. And professional speakers don't necessarily say, I want a 75,000 word book. A 50,000 word book was just fine.
Kathleen Basi [:I gotcha. Yeah, that makes sense.
Virginia McCullough [:And same with the ghosting with some of the ghosting clients. And I just think of them all every once in a while so fondly how when you hire a ghostwriter, you are entrusting information, in some cases extremely personal information to this other person. And I don't think I recognized or appreciated the full extent of that until later on.
Kathleen Basi [:Well, let's focus in on some of those newer fiction books and particularly today we're talking about Amber Light. Can you tell us about that book in one sentence?
Virginia McCullough [:I can. It's a heroine's journey in which a single act of violence upends Sarah's life. She's 18 years chiseled and she spends several years reclaiming her life and trying to get back some old dreams.
Kathleen Basi [:Beautiful. How do the experiences of your characters reflect parts of your own life or imagination?
Virginia McCullough [:Well, interesting you should ask that because this act of violence was. Was date rape. And she ends up pregnant from it. And that's why, of course, her life is upended. I was assaulted myself many years ago when I was still living in Chicago, but by a stranger. By the time I got to ASHEVILLE in the 90s, it was. I volunteered at a rape crisis center. And that's when I learned the difference.
Virginia McCullough [:How profound. It's a profound difference in experience when someone you know assaults you versus a stranger. I could be anybody. But this very personal connection, and I think that always stuck in my mind. I would take late night calls from people. I showed up at the hospital with the professional from the rape crisis center. And the volunteers would, would stay with this victim for a long time. Sometimes the middle of the night in the emergency room.
Virginia McCullough [:And that's where I picked up more of what a young girl would go through when she knew somebody. And sometimes we all know this, but sometimes it's family members and abuse that has gone on for years. And this was a recovery, the recovery process that I saw with these women. So I started writing about sexual assault in nonfiction. I wrote an article for a Catholic family magazine in the 1970s, and they'd never touched this kind of a subject. And it was about talking about the issue, bringing it up, talking to their sons and their daughters about what's out there, and then also to just stop. Stop making jokes about it. Stop blaming victims.
Virginia McCullough [:We were at that point in the women's movement where we could really talk about that too. Stop blaming victims. Let's talk about this. Let's bring it up in the open. But, you know, but really that I think the heroine's journey, Hero's journey, heroine's journey. I still use both versions of that. I think that Amber Light was my first experience with consciously writing this heroine's journey. And then I began to think about the heroine's journey in just a general way and hero's journey and how it seems like now I look back and it seems like this whole writing life has been a heroine's journey with all of the elements of the helpers and the mentors, the snares, the traps, the call.
Virginia McCullough [:Every book is a call. And are you going to refuse the call? Are you going to accept the call? To me, every individual book, every individual project ends up having some of those elements.
Kathleen Basi [:Yeah. You kind of talked about that to me in your emails beforehand. I thought it was really beautiful.
Virginia McCullough [:Who don't see it talked about that way that often.
Kathleen Basi [:I think you're right. You had said to me that most people who write book club kind of women's fiction feel like this is the kind of journey that their characters are on. And we do start to see parallels in our own lives, too.
Virginia McCullough [:Yes. And we can see a parallels in our children's lives. We can see the parallels in life all around us, even if it's only a certain slice. You know, I mean, I've had friends, I'm sure you've had friends who have faced real serious illness. Right. So you watch them. This is a journey. This is a hero's journey.
Virginia McCullough [:What goes on during a long illness and recovery. It has all the elements of the call and the wanting to deny it, wanting to refuse it, taking it on, finding the ups and downs, the helpers, the mentors, the traps, the snares, it's all of that. And I just. I hadn't thought about life quite that way before.
Kathleen Basi [:Makes you understand where the hero's journey came from. It's because it's reflecting life. And I think that's what's so great about fiction, is that it allows us to enter in. And I Think the kind of nonfiction, when you're writing autobiographies and things like that, that it also, it's story. We connect through story and we connect other people's stories to our own lives and it sheds meaning. And that's one of the beautiful things about what we do.
Virginia McCullough [:Well, I think what I realized and this when I started writing, nobody talked about brand. You know, I mean, it just was not a thing. And then when I was new in Romance Writers of America, RWA people started to talk about branding our work. And I had to come up with the brand. And I came up with Hope, Healing and Plenty of Second Chances. I might have even come up with that around the time I was writing, at least making notes for Amber Light, I don't know. But most of my work will include this. Hope, Healing and Plenty of Second Chances.
Virginia McCullough [:And then I discovered not too long ago, few years ago, that when I looked at the body of the ghosted work, the theme was pretty much hope, Healing and Plenty of second chances. If I was writing a cancer book, a cancer therapy book, which I've done, several of them actually, that's all about hope, healing and plenty of second chances. I mean, it just is. And people. And some of what I was saying about people entrusting me with their personal stories, I wrote a lot of personal stories about recovery, recovery from addiction, divorce, death, death of adult children. There were just so many personal stories and they were all about hope, healing and plenty of second chances. Or sometimes I would have to say it's not always plenty of second chances, but second chances.
Kathleen Basi [:Well, you have given us lots of things to think about today. If people want to come and find you and the body of your work, where do you want to send them?
Virginia McCullough [:They can go to my website, virginiamccullough.com okay, very good.
Kathleen Basi [:And then tell us what book or story inspires you the most these days.
Virginia McCullough [:Well, actually, I was thinking about that. And there are two. There's a two part memoir by Rumor Godin, the late British author. And one is called A Time to Dance, no Time to Weep. And the second volume of it is A House with Four Rooms. And for some reason, I don't know why, this woman and I would have very little in common other than writing. I completely immerse myself in those memoirs. Every once in a while I reread them.
Virginia McCullough [:She talks about her writing process. She talks about some of the hardships. She talks about a literary world that most of us know nothing about from the 1950s and 60s and a whole different world. And she was writing by hand and exotic places or places we thought of at the time as exotic. And so I go back to those. There's something about I feel like a kinship with her.
Kathleen Basi [:Well, thank you for that. We love having our reading lists expanded on this podcast. So thank you so much for being on with us today. Virginia.
Virginia McCullough [:Well, you are entirely welcome. It's been a pleasure. And I think this is a great idea, interviewing authors.
Kathleen Basi [:Thanks for joining us today. Reviews help other people to find us, so please take a minute to give us a rating and leave a few words. We'll be here again next Wednesday. In the meantime, 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.
