Former SBHS Student Returns to Santa Barbara with Debut Novel

Book author Rachel Hochhauser returned to Chaucer’s Bookstore in her hometown, Santa Barbara, on March 23, as part of her nationwide tour for her brand-new book, Lady Tremaine. 

Hochhauser published Lady Tremaine this March and gave a talk about its message, her process while writing the book and her motivation to tell the story. She grew up on Upper State Street in Santa Barbara, attended high school at SBHS, took an undergrad program at NYU, then went to grad school at CSU, got a day job, but eventually, took a leave and wrote a book.

Hochhauser always knew that she wanted to be a writer, but “it didn’t translate to a lot of actual writing or words on a page” she said. She didn’t always have it easy to become a writer, even in her adult life.

While attending USC, she minored in creative writing (as it was not available as a major). During that time, she “…wrote a novel, and then I rewrote it about 17 more times, and couldn’t sell it and couldn’t get representation… and I dramatically quit writing because I decided I wasn’t cut out for it. It wasn’t happening for me,” said Hochhauser

The event took place at 3321 State St, Santa Barbara, CA 93105, on March 23, 7:00 p.m., with around 20 people attending, all seated in the children’s book area in a side room. Most of the audience was from a local book club, and everybody was placed in rows of chairs around her, with the audience including her mother, husband, and some previous high school teachers.

The whole event took around 25 minutes for the talk and about 20 minutes for all of the book signings. Hochhauser spoke briefly about the book for around 2 minutes, and the rest of the time was used for Q&A with the audience, asking a total of around 13 questions, with some of them having multiple parts. 

Hochhauser did not open the book or read a passage from it for two reasons. One, because she didn’t want to spoil the storyline, and two, because she said, “I’m a writer, not a public speaker”.

One of the teachers there was Tania Viscarra, a current English teacher at Santa Barbara High School. She described the atmosphere of the connection with the speaker and audience as “cozy…[and] family oriented”.

Another teacher who attended the event was John Gannon, AP US History teacher also from Santa Barbara High, who was very happy to see his former student publish her first book. “It was really nice to see a former student become a published author,” said Gannon.

Lady Tremaine originally comes from the fairy tale of Cinderella; she is considered to be an evil stepmother, forgetting about Cinderella and focusing all of her attention on her two actual daughters. But Hochhauser thought differently, “… If you read [the original Cinderella storyline], I don’t think you’ll find Lady Tremaine to be a villain,” she said.

2023 was a rough year for Hochhauser and her family since her husband had what was later found out to be a brain abscess and had to receive emergency brain surgery, while the husband and wife had to take care of an 18-month-old baby, and if that wasn’t enough, Hochhauser had to balance a full-time job. Hochhauser believed that the motivation for the book came from a hospital room when she said, “and in one of the many hours spent in the hospital waiting rooms, I was scrolling on my phone, really sleep deprived and bleary-eyed, and I came across a depiction of Cinderella’s evil stepmother, Lady Tremaine. And I was stopped in my tracks…and that was the seed of my book”. 

Hochhauser’s plan from now is to make another novel. The sneak peek that she gave us is that it is based on the city of Santa Barbara in 1862, which, for her, involves extensive research from a while back. About her research, Hochhauser said, “… So that’s been really fun. I’m poking around in some archives here in town.”