Episode 65: Cara Sue Achterberg, Award-winning author of Blind Turn
Cara Sue Achterberg, author of Blind Turn, chosen as the Maxy Awards 2021 Book of the Year.
Cara shares her inspiration for the story described as a “deeply felt” page-turner, which explores a mother’s worst nightmare – when her daughter is responsible for a fatal texting and driving accident.
Books Mentioned:
Blind Turn by Cara Sue Achterberg
When Harry Met Minnie by Martha Teichner
Take What You Can Carry by Gian Sardar
Connect with the author:
Transcript:
Lainey 0:00
Hi, this is Lainey Cameron, I am here with Cara Sue Achterberg. And I love this book, we're going to talk about Blind Turn. Oh my goodness, this is a book that I had to keep reading. I couldn't put it down. I was so into this story. Congratulations, because I believe it also one book of the year from the Maxy awards? That's kind of amazing.
Cara 0:21
Yeah, I'm so excited that you liked it.
Lainey 0:24
Yeah. So let's tell people about the book. Oh, it's five stars. For me. I need to write my review Actually, this week. I know it came out earlier in the year. I think it came out back in January. But I just read it like in the last few weeks. So thank you. So let's start by telling people a little bit of the book itself, why don't you give folks a sense of the story and what Blaine turn is about.
Cara 0:46
So it's a mother daughter story. And it's really a story about forgiveness. And in the aftermath of a texting and driving accidents, fatal texting and driving accident, and it was sort of the pondering that question of like, if your kid does something awful. How do you get beyond that? How does anybody get beyond that? And yeah, that's kind of I don't want to give anything away. But that's the premise.
Lainey 1:10
I'd love to share like a review I pulled in or a review here from the book that I think might give people a good sense of it. So let's take a quick peek. This one is from Kelly Estes who is an amazing author herself, USA Today best selling; people might know our from The Girl Who Wrote in Silk. "A heart wrenching telling of any parent's nightmare when our teenager makes a decision or mistake that has lifelong repercussions. How these characters pulled together to survive incredibly difficult times is a testament to the power of love and family. This book will stay in my mind and heart for a long time." What a beautiful blurb from Kelly!
Cara 1:56
I love her. So that was huge for me.
Lainey 1:59
So I'm always hesitant to ask the inspiration for this one. because like you said, it's one like every parent's nightmare. I'm a step-parent myself. And that nightmare scenario of of discovering that your kid has been in an accident and has hurt someone. Oh my goodness, like, like, where did the whole concept come from? How did the genesis of this come about?
Cara 2:21
It was a while ago. So I have three, three now young adults, but at the time, I had three teenagers going through that hole. And it is the hardest thing to do. As a parent, I believe it way harder than the little kids stage is teaching a child to drive. And I was really, I was in the midst of that and write about that. About that time. In another county over from us there was this tragic accident where a young man hit an a family of four in a car head on, it's not what happens in my story. Head on, and killed all of them. And there, there was no explanation. Nobody knew what what made it happen. And it was just the most tragic story. And I couldn't get past the game like he was 18. What if that was my kid? Like, how do you how do you move from there? And so that sort of was how I started it, you know, like, writing my way through my worst nightmare. I do that a lot in my parenting like, that's how I figure it out is by writing.
Lainey 3:17
Wow. And you know, I've been reading up because it's slightly relevant to a story. I'm working on myself. And there's this concept called moral injury, which is the idea that if something horrible happens, like you do it, like that example of someone killing people in a car accident, that you're unable to think of yourself as a good person after that, that you're basically unable to kind of bring these two ideas together, then I'm a good person than I deserve to exist in the world. And I did this thing, which is horrific and bad. And so I really oh, my goodness, I learned so much from from from reading this book, thank you for being a little bit of a role model at the moment that I needed to read a book like this. And so how did it change? Like, this is not your first rodeo, you're not your first book, right? And so like, how did it change over time? And how's your whole process of writing and editing changed if you want to share that like compared to where you started?
Cara 4:06
So I wrote this book A long time ago, the first time, I've actually written like, people always say, did you change anything, I changed every word at least once, probably twice. So I rewrote this book, three different times because I wrote it initially, just strictly from the mother's point of view the entire thing. And then gave it to an agent who said, this is a young adult story, you should write this as a young adult story. So I went back to the drawing board, rewrote the entire book completely from the teenagers viewpoint. And then my agent, my current agent, now, Carly represents women's fiction. And so I told her, I have this young adult book, she was representing me for my dog Noir, one of them. And she said, Well, what would you do with it if it was a women's fiction and not young adult and so I went back again, went back through the whole book again, and I weave the tuber. Together, that's why the voices flip back and forth between Jim and I mean, just he was Jim at the time, Jess and Liz. And so it was, you know, a really, really long process with this book, because I rewrote it so many times, but I feel like it got, it was the best, the last version was the best, because you really do need both sides. It was it was both of their stories. You know, I, I'm a mom. So it was, for me the mom's story, but then I couldn't understand it unless I understood what the daughter was going through. So I think it all worked out, even though it was a long, long, long, winding road. And
Lainey 5:37
it definitely worked from my perspective, because like, the mom is so worried about her daughter, and she's trying to do the right thing by her daughter in this, you know, dramatic, horrible situation. But also, when you're hearing the daughter's perspective, you're worrying even more for the mom, like from my perspective, that was part of what kept me turning the pages is like, oh, my goodness, is she going to be able to help her daughter here? And so like, I felt like like even having that daughter's perspective actually make the mom's perspective more dramatic? Because you at points knew more than she did, if that made sense. Mm hmm. Yeah. So what about reading advice? Like, like I said, this is not your first rodeo is an award winning Book of the Year? What do you advise people who are maybe a little farther, like back in that journey? Or maybe going through some of what you did have? Like, do I read it? And this perspective, that point of view, do I rewrite it? Do I do what an agent asked me? Like? What have you learned from that whole perspective and experience that you might want to share?
Cara 6:31
I have two mantras that I kind of teach Creative Writing sometimes. And there are two things that I always tell tell everyone, both all bets are off, I feel like with the whole pandemic, but the first one is to just keep throwing spaghetti at the wall, something will stick. Because it's so hard. And people will send out some piece that they've worked on and worked on worked on, and they get a rejection and think, Oh, god, I'm awful. Or they make that happens 10 times. And the thing is that as you know, in the publishing world, especially if you're just trying to get an agent or your agents trying to sell your book, it's good. It's a needle in the haystack thing, like you got to find the right person and not only loves your story, but loves the way he writes and wants to spend a lot of time with you and your story. And it's got to be just right. So a lot of people are gonna say no, it's not for me, and it doesn't necessarily mean there's anything wrong with your writing. So I when I was first starting out, I was freelancing, a lot of magazine articles, I called it throwing spaghetti at the wall. So I had this book, and I wrote spaghetti on the front of it, and I would write in it everything I sent, I would write where I sent it, who I sent it to when I should hear back, blah, blah, blah. And then I had a color coding system where I like if it was rejection, I code it one color. And if I if I got it another color if if they gave me some fee, but you know, I had this whole system. And it was just a way to have a little control over a very what felt like an uncontrollable situation. But but that whole idea that if you just put enough stuff out there, eventually something will stick. And so you just have to you just have to, you know, write for anybody and everybody who ever wants you to write something, write it because you don't know what connection is going to pay off. You know, and if you really love to write, then you write. So that's the first piece and the other piece is to always say to yourself, I have nothing to lose. That's what I used to say to myself when I was like terrified to hips, and I would be like, nothing to lose, they don't know me, it's not gonna happen, like I'm just sending it in. And so that gave me the courage sometime to send it to some of the bigger outlets, and especially when I was freelancing. And so those two things.
Lainey 8:27
I love that you teach creative reading, and you should this book is so well written and I love like the emotion you drew me into the emotion in this book. But what do you see your students struggle with the most like as a teacher, like what are the things you consistently see stroke students cannot really have to work hard on.
Cara 8:44
They write too much. They overwrite, and they write too much. And because they feel like they have to tell everything. And there's somebody some famous writer who said, assume they're wearing pants. And I always use that when I'm teaching, because you feel like you have to tell every little step that you need to you need to you know, give your reader some credit. They're pretty smart. And they get they're gonna assume that your characters wearing pants unless you told them they weren't wearing pants, and like they're gonna assume you close the door when you left, like all those little things that you don't need to give every single detail. Because it just bogs it down. And it's hard. So that's, that's probably the overriding for sure is the biggest one, you know, just the telling and not showing and telling me too much.
Lainey 9:24
So what do you enjoy reading when you have time to read? Like, what genre? What kind of books any recommendations for us?
Cara 9:31
So I love of course, to read women's fiction. I just finished one that I love calledTake What You Can Carry by Gian Sardar, and it was a beautiful, beautiful book. And I loved it. I'm not gonna say any more about it. I mean, I could say a little I mean, it's, it's really, really good. That one was wonderful. And then the other thing that I'm reading a lot of right now are what I call dog books because I love reading about dogs. I am very deep into dog rescue. And so I just finished When Harry Met Minnie, which is adorable. It's by Martha Teichner. She's on CBS Good morning are one of those shows. And it's just a beautiful, beautiful story of friendship between what two dogs but also two women and two famous women. And it's just a really great story. So I loved but those are the two I finished this week, and I really enjoyed.
Beautiful. I will I will put the links to both of those on the episode page. Those are two good recommendations. Thank you. And um, let's take a quick peek before we wrap up at how people can connect with you. You are at on Instagram, you're at @carasueachterberg And we'll put that in the in the Episode Notes too. And then Carawrites.com is your website. And I could talk to you all day because I think you have so much insight but is there anything I haven't asked that you want it to be sure to say about this book or but to other writers or anything at all? Why haven't I asked that you want it to make sure to mention?You know, right now the dog thing is totally on my mind because I'm also in the process of forming a nonprofit or we did form it but we're getting legal about it, I guess called who will let the dogs out and in it's just to raise awareness and resources for homeless dogs and the heroes who fight for them. And so I've been really deep into that right now because I just got back from touring 13 shelters and dog pounds. And this weekend I'm going to see a screening at a film festival as a film I help produce during the pandemic about rescue in the duck pounds of Tennessee. So yeah, I'm a novelist. But the dogs kind of take over my world all the time. And right now in particular, they're really really in my mind in my heart so but there are links to all that if you go to care writer calm there are links to my blog that I write about the rescues and about my foster dogs and of course writing so they're all on my blog.
Lainey 11:52
Awesome. Awesome. That's such a huge cause and when you get through trying to solve it in the US Mexico really needs it too. We have a lot of street dogs the uneven brief dogs that are not one next door that I feel so bad for he does on the roof 100% of the day and the sun and nobody came to this room. It's sad. So yes, we need it down here as well. So you know when you solve world hunger, dog, dog homelessness and hunger in the states come on and help us here too. So it has been a pleasure to talk to you I encourage folks to read Blaine turn it is such a great book. It's got such great reviews I I noticed the reviews are talking about how much of a page turner people couldn't put it down how compelling thought provoking I agree with all of those assessments. So thank you for for spending time with me and talking to me about a book that I really enjoyed. Thanks so much, George. Thank you for having me on. Bye.