I’ve recently taken a keen interest in local authors from the Pacific Northwest, specifically from Seattle. This weekend I had the pleasure of meeting Rachel Linden, author extraordinaire, at her author talk at Edmonds Bookshop. Her third book, The Enlightenment of Bees, was released this summer and it tells the story about a young woman whose planned future is thrown into turmoil and how she finds inner resilience and courage and finds a new definition of happiness.
Rachel believes her stories need to show three things: 1) hope, 2) courage, and 3) a little romance. Even though she believes in giving the heroine a happy ending, it doesn’t mean that she doesn’t give her heroine grief and setbacks along the way. I picked up her two earlier works, Ascension of Larks and Becoming the Talbot Sisters, and look forward to reading these stories of hope and love.
For me as a writer, I took away the importance of understanding your voice as a writer. How you need to be so intimate with what themes and stories you want to tell that it’s second nature, there’s no hesitation when someone asks you about who you are as a writer. She also spoke about how as an author you need to understand marketing, because when you publish a book, unlike years ago, it’s really up to the author to get the word out. Marketing, social meeting, networking….all things a typical introverted writer doesn’t like, is a must.
Rachel’s story of how she obtained her agent genuinely resinated with me. Her belief in herself as a writer, her determination and tenaciousness was a powerful motivator. On the last day of a writing workshop, she saw a man get up to leave. Knowing him to be an agent, she went up to him and introduced herself. He was on the way to the airport and graciously gave her his card telling her to contact him. Eight years later, yes, eight years later, she reached out to him. His response was that although he rarely took on new authors, he liked her pages so much that he wanted to represent her. And the rest as they say, is history.
Oh, and I might add that she is a fabulous cookie maker. The gluten-free, oatmeal and raisin cookies she brought to the reading were wonderful! I took two home.
Rachel Linden can be found at rachellinden.com and rachellinden_writer (instagram).