I found Laura's words about her own book writing experience so perfect, I'm including them here. In short, she's remarkable and funny and I love the book (not quite done yet), and hope you'll join me in welcoming her to Richmond. - Kelly Justice, Owner of Fountain Bookstore
I used to build departments for corporations for a living, but I wasn’t a corporation kind of girl. Or any kind of anybody who was supposed to answer to people for a living. I was all about the asking. Corporate life paid the bills but I knew it wasn’t for me. Still, I had a good education and a good resume and a good dose of breadwinner’s guilt so it stuck for too many years. It wasn’t until I’d added a high-risk, multiple-babies pregnancy to my high-stress environment that I finally gave up the security of a good job for fulfillment of a different kind. While the girls were swimming in my ever-expanding belly, I began to write in a this-iswhat-I’m-going-to-get-paid-for-or-I’ll-starve kind of way.
Even after the first draft of Veracity, and knowing I had something worth getting out into the world, I didn’t go willingly into that good night. The bills were piling up. I had a Master’s Degree... The girls went through boatloads of formula a day. I had been making decent money before... I prayed for an answer as to whether or not to pursue getting Veracity published, but didn’t get one. So I went everywhere looking for that divine and elusive Yeah or Nay including every state park within driving distance, my Grandma’s farm, and, eventually, via some very strange and karmic nudges, on a sabbatical to Captiva Island where Anne Morrow Lindbergh had written A Gift from the Sea. It was here I had one of the most intense experiences of my life. I will sum it up in this way - I left Captiva Island in no question that I was not only to write, but to pursue a trip to that year’s Maui Writer’s Conference (a suggestion from another writer). Feel good footnote: it was at this conference just five months later that I won the Rupert Hughes Literary Award (and enough money to more than pay my way there and back again).
Having won the award, I attained representation by one of my favorite people in the world, Dan Conaway, from the Writer’s House, and my books-to-film agent, Sylvie Rabineau. I spent the next few months editing Veracity and out it went to the publishers.
To call this next period of Veracity’s
evolution hard isn’t quite the right descriptor. It was necessary,
terrifying, beautiful, clarifying. The day I left my corporate job, I
wrote a note to myself and stuck it up on the visor of my car: Make
your truth mine, God.
I realize now, that the period of time referenced below was God’s way
of clearing away all the cobwebs I’d accrued through life. I still have
that note in my visor today (see right).
Shortly after Veracity had been put out into the world for purchase, my husband got a job in Washington D.C. and moved on ahead of me and the girls to a small town in Northern Virginia. I stayed behind to take care of our three daughters and sell the house. The day we sold our home, I found out I needed a biopsy that I would have to wait for due to some scheduling issues. I drove the girls to Virginia where we purchased a new home, then drove back again to prepare for a back surgery I’d been scheduled for that July. The biopsy, for which I’d waited four weeks, came back positive for cancer. I skipped the back surgery and, instead, had my front bits and pieces tended to. The day of my biopsy, I received the bid from Pocket. God’s timing might seem strange to others, but for me, the editing and excitement was a source of comfort. It kept my head in the what-is-now instead of the what-may-be.
After my surgery, I flew back to Virginia and began radiation. Unfortunately, I got quite ill during my treatments and, consequently, there are some edits I truly don’t remember making. Reading the manuscript later, I was surprised and happy to find they made sense. I should also note that I am now cancer free.
The last bit of editing has also come at a time of great change and pain. My Grandmother - the same one whose farm serves as the setting for Veracity - died of a brain tumor three days ago. My family and I spent a good week at her bedside, holding her hand with one of ours while making the last copyediting notes Veracity would require with the other. Not three hours after the last editing query was answered, my Grandmother’s soul was called home again.
This novel represents many things. It has been a birth in more ways than I can count. I hope it inspires in others a rekindled interest in finding out who we are, individually and collectively, and a desire to reacquaint ourselves with what we believe and, maybe more importantly, why we believe it.
