Episode 91: Laura Drake, award-winning author of The Road to Me
Award-winning author, Laura Drake introduces us to her newest novel, The Road to Me.
The novel has been described as “an unforgettable story of self-discovery and survival, reconciliation and redemption.” (bestselling author, Barbara Claypole White).
Laura Drake's first novel, The Sweet Spot, was a double-finalist and then won the 2014 Romance Writers of America® RITA® award. She's since published 11 more novels in both romance and women’s fiction.
In The Road to Me, Jacqueline Oliver gets a call about her hippie grandma, and drops everything to travel to Arizona. They end up on a unique and healing grandmother - granddaughter road trip.
Books Mentioned:
The Road to Me by Laura Drake (Bookshop.org / Amazon.com)
Write My Name Across the Sky by Barbara O’Neal (Bookshop.org / Amazon.com)
When Crickets Cry by Charles Martin (Bookshop.org / Amazon.com)
Other Resources Mentioned
Laura’s book trailer for The Road To Me
Margie Lawson’s Writing Academy
Barbara O’Neal’s interview on The Best of Women’s Fiction
Connect with the author:
Transcript:
** Transcript created using AI (so please forgive the typos!) **
Lainey 0:00
I am here with Laura Drake. And I've wanted to get Laura on the show forever because I'll tell you guys a little story that the first time I met Laura, I was starstruck because I had studied Laura's writing in Margie Lawson's classes for like, I don't know a year and then I'm face to face with like the Rita award winning Laura Drake. Everybody who knows me knows I don't easily get starstruck, but you may be the only author I ever actually got starstruck in front of. You may
Laura Drake 0:29
be the only person who has ever starstruck meeting me.
Lainey 0:35
So I love that we're going to talk about your women's fiction books because you write both you write romance and you write women's fiction. You're very successful with romance, but I know that your heart is in your women's fiction novels. And this one is fabulous. The Road To Me. So first off, where are you joining me from? Laura, are you in Texas right now?
Laura Drake 0:55
I am outside of Fort Worth, Texas. Yep.
Lainey 0:58
So this book came out last week, and it's funny and witty and poignant. Folks won't have had a chance to read it yet. So tell them a little bit more about The Road To Me.
Laura Drake 1:09
It is brutal and sad and hysterically funny. And it's a little bit of everything. Let me give you the quick blurb on it. The universe conspires to send a young woman on a route 66 road trip with the hippie grandmother she bitterly resents. But what she discovers out there could open her to a brighter future.
Lainey 1:35
And I love that like the beginning of the book, so she goes goes off to save the hippie grandma like against her. Well, she doesn't really want to go right. She doesn't want to go save grandma. And Grandma basically got busted, right. And she couldn't escape fast enough because she couldn't run with her walker, this grandma character. Nellie is like one of the best like older generation characters ever. She's brilliant, She's witty, she's sarcastic, she is not willing to be put in a box that says you're an old person, therefore, this is how you should be. I just loved how you wrote that character.
Laura Drake 2:08
I don't want to be Nelly when I get older. Right.
Lainey 2:14
So the inspiration because this is such an interesting mix of things, right? You've got like the older grandma, you've got the granddaughter, you've got the road trip element to it. You've even got a goat in a convertible at one point. Like, where did all of this come from? And how did it come together?
Laura Drake 2:29
You know, I don't know where it comes from. A lot of all of my books come from my experiences riding a motorcycle in the western United States. My husband and I have been probably 200,000 miles on motorcycles and some of the crazy things that happen on the road. And I wanted two very different opposing characters. And that's how the hippie grandma came up. And she was just so fun to write. And the the goat in the convertible. I can't even take credit for a friend of mine, Sherry gross. We were at a writing retreat. And I said, you know, things have been really heavy for a while in the book. I need some humor. She says, you know, I was wanting to put a goat in a convertible in a in a book and I want to let me steal that. So you've heard a prop for that one.
Lainey 3:29
Well, let me read a quick review. This is an endorsement from Kimberly Brock, an amazing writer to who was actually on the show last week. And let me read this because I think it really encapsulates really well the tone of the novel. She says Laura Drake is at her best with The Road To Me, readers will enjoy her gritty, tender characters and her twist trademark wit. Even as she strikes at the heart of the most savage traumas and deepest loves. Drake delivers a brave piece of women's fiction with unwavering poignancy depth depictions of abuse, grief and what women do in secret to survive. I came away uplifted by the clear reminder of the power of stories to create bonds that heal in even the most fractured families. Wow, that's beautiful. And it captures it so well. Because the reason I was starstruck, the first time we met is you are the author who knows how to get that emotion on the page, like your books draw you in and you're like, you're like so held captivated by the emotion of the character. And that's hard to do. It's a real skill that you have,
Laura Drake 4:32
you know, thank you, but that part comes natural to me. If you know me, you know that. I'm likely to say anything. If you ask me a question, I'm going to answer it. So that telling of emotion is how I connect with people. It was the rest of the stuff that the book that's hard for me is a plot and what happens next and I'm a little weird
Lainey 5:00
And so So what is your editing process look like? And is there anything in this book that people might be surprised to know, like, was different in earlier versions?
Laura Drake 5:09
You know, my goal is to write a book, edit as I go and then turn it in. It's never, it's never gonna happen. But it's a goal. This one though, was the opposite of that. I mean, I wrote it, I loved it. And I sent it out to beta readers and editors, who thought that the main character Jacqueline was way too on personable, that she was really unlikable. I made her an ice queen, which I thought was wonderful because she changes so much at the end. But she they had thought she was too unlikable in the beginning, and people would throw the book across the room. So I had just soften her.
Lainey 5:55
Well, I wonder if part of that was the contrast with Nellie, the grandma character, because she is so easy to relate to Right? Like, who doesn't like living her hippie life?
Laura Drake 6:06
Yes, I had a hard time. The grandmother wanted to take over the story. Everybody was in love with the grandmother and really didn't care about the main character. And that is not a good thing in the novel. So yeah, it was a balancing act.
Lainey 6:22
What's an example of what you had to change in the main character? And as Jacqueline, right, what did you have to change in her to make her more relatable?
Laura Drake 6:29
In the beginning, she is going out with an artist, and I fell in love with him, frankly, but she could not let him close. She didn't let anybody close, much less a man. And she breaks up with him in a fairly brutal way. I had to change that. You know, I get it. I think personally Parshat. Part of it was if he wasn't attached to maybe I had a shot.
Lainey 6:58
You want to do your own character?
Laura Drake 7:01
That doesn't sound good when I say it out loud, does it?
Lainey 7:05
Why not? I mean, we all create boyfriends because they're the one we want. Right? With little love. Yeah. So what did you advise to writers and you do so much to help other writers, you and I know each other through women's fiction writers Association, like what do you advise to writers who would like to one day be Rita award winning writer of amazing romance and women's fiction?
Laura Drake 7:29
My favorite piece of advice I got when I was first starting out from a woman who had put out like 70. romances, she told me, now I look back, and she was right. And even saying this, I know, no one will listen to me. Because I wouldn't have believed it either.
Lainey 7:49
I do see what you're saying, though, because a lot of my debut friends are on their second and third novels right now. And they're on deadline. And you just don't have that same flexibility when you've got a deadline. And you're delivering either in your head or in reality, right to be able to do all the playing around that you would like to do because you've got a hard line, and you need to get that done by that date. And so you kind of have to compromise on the things you would have liked to work on. I definitely see that happening.
Laura Drake 8:14
And I think that's why debut novels are so fantastic. Because you have time to play and edit every word perfectly. And I'm not saying that you don't do some of that with your later books. But you can't do it with every word. There's just not enough time.
Lainey 8:32
That's so true. That's so true. Well, what books or authors do you admire? Have you read anything good recently that you'd recommend?
Laura Drake 8:40
Barbara O'Neal is my number one favorite? I just read her most recent Write My Name Across the Sky. Have you read that?
Lainey 8:50
Yeah, I haven't read it yet. I actually have it on my Kindle. I'm excited to read it.
Laura Drake 8:54
Move it up. It is her characters are so real. And it's set in New York, in an old woman's old brownstone apartments, but it's one of the old fabulous ones, all the emotion and the real character. She always just slays me.
Lainey 9:14
Yeah, she is one of the best out there in women's fiction.
Laura Drake 9:17
She's amazing. Charles Martin is the other one. When Crickets Cry, what a fantastic title. Huh? That was the best book I read last year. It was wonderful.
Lainey 9:29
Ooh. And if folks want to learn more, about Barbara's approach and her writing advice, she actually was on the podcast. Way back in the beginning, you could find her interview on the website. And she was fabulous. She had such great advice for other writers as well, including some great thoughts around finding your voice and listening to what people see you're good at because that's what you should double down on. That's what I remember about her.
Laura Drake 9:49
Oh, that's great advice. Yeah, she's amazing.
Lainey 9:53
So what haven't I asked you about relative to The Road to Me that you like to talk about, but this book
Laura Drake 10:00
I have to say that I am so proud of the book trailer I made, you know, I've made them before and they were the little flip books with subtitles on him and everything and they're cute, but I actually use film clips and I voiceover it on it and I just love it. Um, have a promo home anyway, I love marketing. I love promo. So you might
Lainey 10:28
be one of the few authors who actually enjoys that part of it.
Laura Drake 10:32
Everybody says that, but Well, you probably like it too, right? I do.
Unknown Speaker 10:38
I do.
Unknown Speaker 10:39
Yeah, I'm very extroverted. And I love talking. So
Lainey 10:44
although I have more fun talking about other people's books in my own Is there is there anything else in the book that people might be surprised to know is real or inspired from real life? Like you've got this real road trip across a real place? Right, right. 66 aren't any of those real places or experiences you've been like you say on the motorbike?
Laura Drake 11:03
Oh man a lot it well. The experiences are maybe shadows of things I did like there was a outdoor bar scene and I have been that was from Oatman. If you've ever been there, you'll never forget it. They have they have burls wild burls wandering into the buildings downtown.
Lainey 11:25
Okay, what's a burro? I actually don't know what that is. Oh, sorry.
Laura Drake 11:27
It's a donkey.
Lainey 11:30
Oh, burro, sorry. Like Mexican burro?
Laura Drake 11:32
Yes. Yeah, B U. R.R. O S. Yeah. Um, a lot of those places and emotional scene in the book, the really brutal one. Never happened to me, but thank God, but I've channeled a lot of the old stuff, you know, down here.
Lainey 11:56
Okay, what about the nudist camp that they end up at? A totally
Laura Drake 12:01
record. I have never been to a nudist camp. And everybody is very thankful for that. But I would love to have the guts to do it just to let go of all the inhibitions. You know what I mean?
Lainey 12:15
Oh, yeah. And it's a brilliant plot slash a stunning setting device you chose there because talking about a place to get the granddaughter who does not feel comfortable with the happiness of her grandma feeling even less comfortable is when I'll take her to a nudist colony.
Laura Drake 12:30
There you go. What would be worse for her? Right? Exactly. I have I will admit, I am skinny. Oh, probably surprises no one.
Lainey 12:42
So if folks want to catch up with you and learn more about your next book, or see what kind of events you're doing around this book, where do you hang out online? Do you have a favorite place to be on social media?
Laura Drake 12:53
Well, to find out where I'm at and what's going on, if you'll sign up for my newsletter, which is on my website, Laura drink books.com But I hang out and craziness ensues on my Facebook group. It's called Laura Drake's Peace, Love and Books. And it's an I won't it's just a group of like, 2000 people that I post snark every day. I've ended up in jail many times because of it. We just mean,
Lainey 13:26
you mean Facebook Jail? Not real jail, right? Oh, yeah.
Laura Drake 13:29
Yeah, yeah. No, no, not real jail. Facebook Jail. I'll tell you what, it's almost as inconvenient. I did not realize how addicted I was to Facebook until I was in jail for a month. Yeah, well, it is more than
Lainey 13:46
one of the funny memes you post because you post these really funny memes like your grip just cheers me up no end when I'm having kind of a crappy kind of a day. There's always something funny going on in your group that just brightens my day.
Laura Drake 13:57
It was one of those means that landed me in jail. Computers have no sense of humor whatsoever.
Lainey 14:03
That is true. That is true. Okay, so I am going to put in the show notes on the website. So if people go to Best of women's fiction.com on the page for this episode, we'll put the link to the video trailer that you're so proud of, to your Facebook group, and to your newsletter signup, so folks can find all of that. Beautiful. Thank
Laura Drake 14:21
you so much. Lanie.
Lainey 14:23
Well, I'm so glad I finally got to have you on The Road to Me is beautiful and funny and poignant and heartfelt and witchy it's all the things you want in a escapist book. So I would encourage folks to go read it. I was lucky enough to get an early copy. And it's fun. It's so much fun. And I'm glad you're proud of it because it's a great book.
Laura Drake 14:44
Thank you so much.