Luanne Rice's Blog, page 16
December 3, 2012
THE LEMON ORCHARD
i am thrilled to give you a first look at the cover of my 2013 novel–THE LEMON ORCHARD. it will come out on July 2, but you can pre-order now if you like. it’s never too soon to dream about summer reading!
Very thankful to my librarian friends for this lovely mention of THE LEMON ORCHARD in Library Journal:
House-sitting for her aunt and uncle in Malibu, with only her dog for company, Julia seeks solitude so that she can quietly mourn her daughter’s death. Then she befriends Roberto,who tends the nearby lemon orchard and has sorrows of his own: his daughter has disappeared, but he has yet to give up hope. Classic Rice and doubtless another best seller.
November 25, 2012
Discussing Little Night: A Conversation with Luanne Rice and Ceri Radford
LITTLE NIGHT–Rice’s milestone thirtieth novel–is a riveting story about women and the primal, tangled family ties that bind them together. Amazon • Barnes & Noble • IndieBound • Apple
Q. What inspired you to write this novel?
I wanted to write about the way a family can look great, “normal,” from the outside, when abuse is taking place behind closed doors. Also, write about how abuse, no matter who it’s directed at, affects the entire family.
Q. You recently wrote a piece for the Huffington Post about your own experiences in an abusive marriage. How did your marriage compare with Anne’s? How did you get away?
One difference is that I didn’t have children. I received the whole brunt, and although he didn’t hit me, the psychological and emotional toll was high. Like Anne, I kept the abuse secret. I became more and more isolated from my friends and family. There was a moment when I saw things clearly. I imagined what my mother would say if she was still alive, how she would help me get away from him. So I used that strength and got away myself.
Q. In that piece, you mentioned being angry with a friend for seeing through the veil of secrecy. What advice would you give to those—a friend or family member—who want to help a victim of abuse? Should they expect to be met with anger?
A hallmark of being in an abusive relationship is denial. That’s how you survive. He’s telling you it’s all your fault, if only you’d be nicer, more understanding, less suspicious, more patient, things would be better, and he wouldn’t have to get so mad. So you twist into a pretzel, trying to set things right. Part of you hates yourself for this behavior, and part of you is hoping that this time it will work. How you react to a friend’s concern depends on the day. If you’re beaten down and in a “had enough” mode, you might listen and even open up. But because life with an abuser is like a kaleidoscope, ever shifting, when the picture changes, so does your hope and ability to see straight. So as a friend or family member, I would say be honest but be prepared for a negative reaction—until she’s really ready to hear you. And even then, she might hear for that moment and then pull back and retrench and believe him when he tells her you’re putting ideas in her head, you’ve never liked him anyway, that she’s disloyal and can’t keep her mouth shut.
Q. How did you go about putting your life, and yourself, back together again?
I think the biggest part is learning to be kind to yourself, recognizing that you don’t have to put someone else’s needs first, starting to focus on taking care of yourself. So much energy was put into trying to placate the abuser, there were huge gaps in self–care. You have to relearn—or learn—how to nurture yourself to the point of reminding yourself that you’re hungry, tired, it’s time to eat, sleep.
I wrote novels, and I surrounded myself with people who loved me. People I’d driven away over time came back to me, and no one said, “I told you so.”
Also I attended a support group called Domestic Violence Valley Shore Services. It was led by two strong, wonderful women. We’d meet on Thursday night, and by sharing our stories and tears, we healed. A group of united, supportive women is never to be underestimated.
Q. Many of the characters find solace in nature. You also blog about nature and, specifically, birds. How would you describe your relationship to nature?
I think I have a character in another novel say, “Nature is in my nature.” It’s true, it’s in all of ours. My sister Maureen has always loved the poem “Lines Written a Few Miles Aabove Tintern Abbey” by William Wordsworth, and we often quote the line, “Nature never did betray the heart that loved her.” From the youngest age I can remember I sought nature to soothe and inspire me. My father was a navigator during the war, so he’d take us on night walks and show us how to identify constellations and find our way home. My mother painted and taught us that the beach was not only for walks and fun, but, with her easel set up in the marsh, a deep and endless source of inspiration. I love getting lost in nature—not literally—but in the sense of forgetting everything but the feeling of wind in my hair and the call of a pine warbler high in the canopy of trees in Central Park’s Ramble.
Q. This is your thirtieth novel. How would you say your books have changed? How have changes in your life affected your writing?
My first novel was about sisters and family, and so is my thirtieth. I am more interested than ever in how families work—how we love each other, break up, stay together, lose each other, hold on through the worst storms. Life has taught me a lot in thirty years. Both my parents died after long illnesses. I’ve been married and divorced . . . .more than once. There’s been much love, heartbreak, and love again. A friend was murdered. There have been family estrangements. I stopped drinking. I experienced domestic violence and found strength I never knew I had. After living in New York City most of my adult life, I’ve begun spending most of my time in Southern California. I’ve been seeing the same wise, compassionate, wonderful therapist since before writing my first novel. That’s a lifetime. To have her support and perspective is invaluable in ways I can’t begin to calculate. I fly home to see her or we talk on the phone. She once remarked that my novels seem prescient; my characters would have wild experiences, and a year after publication, my life would echo theirs. It’s fascinating, the writer’s unconscious. My characters learned the lessons I needed to learn before I was actually ready. So in that way, my characters pave my way through life.
Q. What were some of the particular challenges that writing this novel presented?
This novel flowed from my fingertips. It’s full of emotion, the horror of losing a relationship with someone you love as much as yourself, and the tentative—then growing—joy of meeting a niece you never thought you’d get to know. Writing about birds and birding in Central Park gave me the chance to share one of my favorite parts of New York City. Many people don’t realize how wild the park is, one of the best places to observe migratory birds in the world.
Q. Would you argue that Anne should be held accountable for the actions that helped her escape from her husband?
I am very involved with the Domestic Violence Clinic at Georgetown University Law Center and am so proud of the work done by Professor Deborah Epstein and her students do on behalf of abused families. Anne’s actions will obviously provoke debate, but I imagine Clare immediately contacting an attorney such as Deborah or one of the Georgetown grads, finding a strong advocate who’ll fight for Anne.
Q. What do you hope readers will take away from Little Night? Did writing it teach you anything unexpected?
I hope readers will enjoy reading about the complications and secrets of a family. Love isn’t always straightforward. I also hope that a reader might recognize herself or someone she loves and find a way to start talking about what’s going on, the first step in getting help.
Q. What can we look forward to in your next novel?
Love between two people from different worlds, united by the knowledge of how it feels to lose a daughter.
(Photo by Adrian Kinloch)
Buy the Book
Amazon • Barnes & Noble • IndieBound • Apple
August 22, 2012
The Letters
“At once humorous and heart-rending . . . The evocative style of Luanne Rice meshes splendidly with Joseph Monninger’s in a moving collaboration [that] brilliantly illuminates the precious value of relationships.”—Wichita Falls Times Record News
“For those who love and those who hope to love again.”—Lincoln Journal Star
Available for order now:
The Letters is published by Bantam (Random House)
Alibris
Amazon
Barnes and Noble
Book Passage
Books-a-Million
IndieBound
Powells
The Tattered Cover
Tower Books
Walmart
Sam and Hadley West are both trying to survive a shared, unthinkable loss. For Sam, a sports journalist, acceptance means an arduous trek by dogsled across the Alaskan wilderness. For Hadley, it means renting a benignly haunted, salt-soaked cottage off the Maine coast, where she begins to paint again. Waiting for their divorce to be finalized, they begin to exchange letters, filled with longing and truths they’ve never before voiced, as they recall their marriage—its magic moments and its challenges—and rediscover the reason they fell in love in the first place.
In this remarkable collaboration, acclaimed writers Luanne Rice and Joseph Monninger combine their unique talents to create, through a series of searching, intimate letters, a powerful novel of an estranged husband and wife—and the moment that changed the course of their lives forever.
“It’s hard for the reader to remember that she is reading fiction and not eavesdropping on personal correspondence. . . . A journey of discovery that celebrates the beauty of letter writing, an art fast disappearing.”—Booklist
“Exquisite . . . a story of hope, healing and possibilities.”—Concord Monitor
August 21, 2012
the letters! (a novel)
Dear Friends,
Time alone, a fresh piece of stationery, the right pen, the chance to think deeply and let feelings flow. Before I wrote novels, I wrote letters. To friends, family, people I love, people I wanted to know better. Letters turn me inside out. I’ve written letters that are truer than true. I’ve told secrets in letters. I’ve mailed letters filled with emotions so raw, I’ve wanted to dive into the mailbox to get them back.
The Letters, a novel written with one of my oldest and dearest friends, Joe Monninger, is out in paperback on August 28th. It’s filled with real-live letters between characters we created. Writing them startled and thrilled me. I can’t wait for you to read them.
Here is more about our friendship and writing process:
JOE AND ME
We met in 1980 at a café on Thayer Street. I’d answered his ad in the Providence Journal. He was a professional writer and for a fee would critique work. I was burning to be published. He was married to a woman in the Brown writing program. I’d been married for two months to a just-graduated lawyer. We were all so young.
His name is Joe Monninger, and sitting at Penguins, he read my stuff. I gave him a short story about three sisters whose father caroused with ladies of the town. He showed me a story about a boy fishing with his dad, getting the fishhook caught in his palm. His dad took it out, and the boy didn’t cry.
Instead of charging a fee, Joe invited my husband and me to dinner. He and his wife lived on Transit Street, the top floor of a three-family house, under the eaves. Bookcases lined the crooked stairs. Joe’s office was on the landing, dark and cozy, no window. His wife covered her typewriter with a pair of his boxer shorts. She made boneless chicken breasts, bought from the chicken man who drove around Fox Point playing “La Cucaracha” on his horn, and she pounded them flat on the kitchen floor between sheets of wax paper with an iron skillet while we watched.
We had dinner often. We drank scotch and told stories about our families and the dark side of nature. Joe and I loved shark stories, and collected them. We’d act out skits, our own form of improv. “Be a couple at the prom,” I’d say, and Joe and his would shyly dance. “Be Mim at the gift store,” they’d say, and I’d act out my grandmother being outraged at the price of a ceramic eggplant.
After dinner, they’d walk us down to the street. Passing the bookcases, they’d grab volumes, press them into our hands. Many of those books were biographies or collected letters: Carson McCullers, Virginia Woolf, Maxwell Perkins, Hemingway. I’d take the books home and get lost in writing lives.
Fast forward: time went by, and our first marriages ended. Joe and I remained friends along the way. We wrote to each other, knowing how important our connection was: we had witnessed each other’s youth. We had known each other’s first loves. We knew the sources of each other’s writing, inspiration, fishhooks.
One day we had an idea. I can’t remember whether it was his or mine. But we decided to merge two of our great loves from the early days: literary letters and acting out scenes. What if we took on personas? Became characters? We would write about people on the verge of divorce—we’d both been there. We’d incorporate nature and art. We needed names.
I became Hadley, after Hemingway’s first wife. He became Sam, because I wrote him he had to have a short, punchy name like “Joe.” Our last name is West, in honor of Tim West, a surfer from Half Moon Bay, who survived a great white attacking his board at Maverick’s one December day.
We wrote letters in character. And The Letters, our novel, took shape.
We had a son, Paul, our good, beautiful boy, who dropped out of Amherst to go teach the Inuit in an Alaska village, and who died. Our marriage couldn’t survive his death. Our desolation and grief and love and rage streamed into our letters. Hadley went to Monhegan Island off the coast of Maine, to try to quit drinking and start painting again. Sam flew to Alaska to search out the site where our boy died.
Even now, we find it hard to believe we don’t have a dead son.
Joe and I never spoke on the phone, never saw each other, not even once during the process. We never discussed or planned what would happen, how the story should unfold. The writing had its own life, the writing was all.
Life is full of mistakes and kindnesses, and what love can’t heal, fiction can.
And I love Joe. He’s my writer friend, the one who knows me best, who knows where the bodies are buried, and who tells me about sharks. We wrote The Letters. And we’ll keep writing.
August 18, 2012
grace magazine
an interview i gave about writing, family, inspiration, LITTLE NIGHT, and life’s experiences.
grace magazine is published by the new london day, one of my favorite newspapers, and i thank journalist and writer amy barry for such a sensitive interview.
July 20, 2012
Stars in the Night-Blue Sky
The night is blue and smells of lemons. Standing outside I listen to the waves and look up at the stars. I am far away from the place I grew up and it comforts and somehow surprises me to see the familiar constellations.
“Arc to Arcturus,” is one lesson my sisters and i learned. By following the curved handle of the Big Dipper, we found Arcturus, one of the brightest stars in the sky. It glows warm and orange, easy to admire with the naked eye, and part of the constellation Bootes. 
What is it that makes us want to identify the stars, find out way around the sky? Does it help us know where we are on earth, not in a precise latitude/longitude way, but our place in the universe? We are all here for so short a time.
When i look at the stars I think of love. The stars tell a love story if only you spend the time to read it. This is how I want to live: at peace, guided by the stars. People far away look up and see the same celestial bodies at the same time, or hours apart. The sky brings us together, not only with the living but also the dead.
July 13, 2012
Connie Martinson Talks Books
Connie Martinson is a wonderful and revered book-loving interviewer with one of the best book shows on cable. She has interviewed so many writers, and this year with the publication of LITTLE NIGHT I became one of them.
Here is Part 1
And here is <a [...]
pensive
July 8, 2012
my favorite blog
i came upon this blog about a year ago, and was instantly drawn in. veronique de turenne writes about malibu, nature, dogs, books, life with such heart, soul, and dry humor. she’s a wonderful writer; i sent her an unabashed fan letter, and we became fast friends. we already have [...]
