Book Stop Corner

Wish y'all a very Happy New Year.

Hope you all have a blissful year filled with joy, success and lots of books! As for me, I already have a good start to 2017 and hope it goes well for me through out without monotony.

On that note, let's welcome a beautiful and extremely talented, award-winning writer to this literary space. Welcome Rae Meadows. And she is here to talk about her latest book, I Will Send Rain.
So without wasting a moment, let's discuss with the lovely author about fiction writing, books, her life as an author and many such exclusive stuffs.

Guys keep scrolling to get all the exclusive scoop about this author.


Read the review of I Will Send Rain


Me: Hello and welcome to my blog, Rae. Congratulations on your new novel, I Will Send Rain. How will you express your feelings about this book that has already won the hearts of so many readers?

Rae: You are very kind, thank you. It is always a big question whether a story that I see and feel will be expressed in a way that resonates with others. It is intensely gratifying when that happens. I am always grateful when anyone reads my work!


Me: How did you research for your book? And what was your source of inspiration behind this story?

Rae: I started writing a novel fictionalizing the photographer Dorothea Lange, but it wasn’t working for me, and I found myself returning again and again to one particular photograph of hers of a young woman nursing her son. They sit in a makeshift shelter, a tarp overhead, the California sun a fierce glare behind them. They are Dust Bowl refugees from Oklahoma. The woman’s gaze is angry and determined. She made me wonder about the life she left behind. We’re familiar with the migrant story from Steinbeck, but I wanted to know what life was like for those who stayed.
I loved the research process so much. I read everything I could. The Worst Hard Time by Timothy Egan is a great non-fiction book about the period. I also read letters, which gave me good details about what life was like on farms. And then photographs. The FSA (a government agency called the Farm Security Administration) archive has 165,000 photographs from the1930s. It’s an incredible resource. These photographs allowed me into the Dust Bowl in a different, more visceral way than just reading about it.
I think I learned from the Dorothea Lange photographs in particular about showing despair without pity, being unafraid to look at what others were refusing to acknowledge, capturing quiet dignity amidst ruin.


Me: Your portray Mulehead during the Dust Bowl era quite strikingly. Did you travel extensively for the purpose of research? Tell us briefly about your experience.

Rae: I actually had never been to Oklahoma until after finishing the book! This was on purpose. I wanted to capture the feeling of the historical images without being distracted by what the town is like now. I spent a week in Boise City, Oklahoma, the town on which I based the fictionalized Mulehead, during the editing of the novel, and I was happy that it seemed to mesh with the Mulehead of my imagination. The people of the town were a little confused about why I was writing about their region, but they were generally open and welcoming, despite our vast political differences. The Dust Bowl plays a big part in their mythology, and most have parents or grandparents who lived through it.


Me: Tell us one trait about your main characters, Annie and Birdie, that intrigues you the most.

Rae: Like most women of her time and circumstances, Annie never questioned her life or her choices. It’s revolutionary for her to think, what about me? I liked exploring how the dust storms inadvertently bring about this crisis in her and cause her to risk everything. And Birdie is very unlike me. She is brave in a way that I find fascinating. Despite the hardships of her life, she is self-possessed and driven. I can’t help cheering her on.


Me: How will you describe your journey so far as an author?

Rae: While I was a graduate student at the University of Utah, one of my jobs was answering phones at an escort service. Although I didn’t take the job to write a novel out of it, I did realize at some point that it was good material. I turned that experience into my first novel, Calling Out. Each subsequent book has come out of something that interests me deeply, obsessively even. I have to live with an idea for a while to see if it will stick.


Me: Was it always your one true dream to be an author?

Rae: No! I was a very late bloomer. I never considered that I could be a writer. It wasn’t until I was twenty-seven and unhappy in my job that I took my first writing class. But it was immediately clear to me that writing is what I wanted to do. I feel very lucky that I found my passion and have been able to keep going with it. Writing is often difficult for me but there is nothing like the feeling of having written something that feels true to what I intended.


Me: What other passions do you have apart from writing?

Rae: Aside from my two daughters, who are six and nine years old, my passion is pottery. I have been making wheel-thrown pottery for many years. I find it is good for my head to connect to my hands in that way. I can zone out and use a different kind of creativity. And making things, particularly useful ones, is really fun and gratifying.


Me: What's next up on your writing sleeves? Please tell us briefly about it.

Rae: After spending time in the Oklahoma Panhandle, it became apparent to me that I wasn’t quite finished with it as a setting. I’m working on a novel that takes place in the 21st century, in Mulehead, with Birdie returning as an old woman. Although it will be modern, it’ll flashback to Birdie’s life in the years after the end of I Will Send Rain.


Me: Thanks Rae for joining me today on this interview session. I wish you luck for all your future endeavors.

Rae: I am honored. Thank you so much for your interest in my work. I love that we live so far away from each other but that we can come together through books.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Rae's Bio:

Rae Meadows is the author of Calling Out, which received the 2006 Utah Book Award for fiction, No One Tells Everything, a Poets & Writers Notable Novel, and most recently the widely praised novel, Mercy Train (in hardcover as Mothers and Daughters). Her fourth novel, I Will Send Rain, is forthcoming August 2016 from Henry Holt. She lives with her family in Brooklyn, New York.








Connect with Rae on: Website| Facebook| Twitter