Tiffanie DeBartolo

Hi. I’m Beatrice Jordan, a.k.a. Trixie, the cynical but loveable main chick in the book God-Shaped Hole. I want to tell you a little about my friend and creator, Tiffanie DeBartolo.

Tiffanie was born in Youngstown, Ohio, on November 27, 1970, just 22 minutes after Thanksgiving Day ended. I remember once when we were having dinner at AstroBurger in L.A., she told me that until she was about eight, she thought all the food and festivities that took place on Turkey Day were all about giving thanks for her. I laughed so hard, chocolate milk shot out of my nose.

Eventually we ended up talking about her being a high-school dropout, which stunned me because I knew she’d tested out of all her college English requirements freshman year and gone on to earn a degree in philosophy from the University of California at Berkeley.

With a shrewd little smile, she explained it was a crazy, parochial school thing. By the end of her junior year at Villa Maria High School (an all-girls high school that Tiffanie described as “The Facts Of Life in O-H-10,” Tiffanie had fulfilled all of her required courses (except for typing and gym) but the school wouldn’t let her graduate because they wanted to milk her parents for another year’s tuition, so Tiffanie said “screw you,” which is only slightly ironic to say to a bunch of nuns. Then she dropped out, aced the GED and went on to college.

To this day, though, Tiffanie can only type with three fingers. You should see it. Really, it’s like watching a couple of woodpeckers.

And for someone who pecks like Woody, Tiffanie has had a fairly successful career on the keyboard. Before she started writing novels she penned three screenplays (one of which she directed and saw released in theaters nationwide called Dream for an Insomniac which starred Ione Skye and Jennifer Aniston.) Still, Tiffanie says she was never cut out to be a film maker. She doesn’t see the world through the eyes of a camera lens. To her, it’s all about the beauty of the words.

So, after barely surviving life in Hollywood, a place where she said she never fit in, it was time to move on to new challenges-like writing novels. Which brings us to the part where she explored her own God-shaped hole by writing about mine.

I recently saw Tiffanie at her house in Boulder, Colorado (she splits her time between the Rocky Mountains and New York City.) It’s kind of a yin and yang thing. Or perhaps it’s more Green Acres, I don’t know. What I do know is that if Tiffanie’s not typing for twelve hours a day, she’s either running or hiking, or chasing her favorite rock bands around the country.