Thank you for joining us for part two of our exclusive interview with best-selling LDS women’s fiction author, Rachel Ann Nunes. If you missed part one, click here.
Rachel, when we left off yesterday, we were discussing the books you have published. What projects are you planning for the future?
I have two books on their way. The first, “Flying Home,” is a national women’s novel, meaning that it has no LDS element, though it will be published by Deseret Book. The book follows the story of Liana Winn, adopted at age four, who has always felt like an outsider in her own family. She is plagued by questions surrounding her parents’ death in India and the secrecy behind the estrangement of her birth mother and the aunt who adopted her. Her fear to search out the truth has limited all her relationships, preventing her from finding happiness. I also plan to write novels about two of the major characters in “Flying Home.”
The second, “The Gift of Angels,” is more a novelette. This is a short inspirational novel about a woman who learns she has a serious, possibly terminal, illness. How does she tell her children, especially her youngest, who is only fourteen? Her faith wavers as everyone around her seems to receive divine help—everyone except her. Doesn’t she, too, deserve an angel of mercy? This is a story for anyone who has faced or is facing trials of any kind.
What are your favorite things to write about?
I enjoy writing about strong women or women who become strong. I write about issues that face not only LDS women, but women all over the world, though I have generally set these in an LDS environment. My novels are romantic, but not in the national sense of the word. They are much more like some of the national fiction that’s being called women’s fiction. Romance is important, but not the entire focus. I personally cannot stand simple romances where attraction is the only real plot. I need to have solid plots that revolve around families and things dear to my heart. I write the kind of books I want to read.
Is there a message or a theme to your writing?
I am one of the pioneers in LDS fiction in the so-called “issue” books. I’ve written about drugs, abuse, AIDS, death, kidney failure, divorce, kidnapping, adoption, remarriage–to name a very few. Good does triumph in my novels, though not always throughout the entire novel. Bad things happen to good people. One theme I did stress in my early writing years was the fact of our divinity as daughters of our Heavenly Father. It’s the same message I share with Young Women groups all over the state through my picture book “Daughter of a King.”
But my ultimate goal in writing has always been to tell a good story, to take the reader away from their lives for a span and totally immerse them into another world. I have always adored reading, and I still read avidly. I love the feeling of becoming someone else for a time, or looking at things from another point-of-view. That’s what I want for my readers. In fact, any message or theme in any given book will always be much stronger if readers feel they are a part of the story. My favorite statement was once when a man told me he was at the temple with his wife and she said, “There’s someone whose name we need to put on the temple prayer list. Who was it? Oh, never mind. It was just a character in that novel of Rachel’s I was reading.”
Thank you for sharing your thoughts with us, Rachel. We’ll continue our interview tomorrow. In the meantime, be sure to visit Rachel’s website.
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