Rayme’s Comments (group member since Jan 18, 2013)

Rayme’s comments from the Q&A with Rayme Waters group.

Thanks for your question Chris. The thing I'm weakest at w/r/t writing is daily discipline. Many writers I know sit down every morning and write a certain amount of words/time. I do not. I wish I had the discipline to do so--I would be much more prolific.

Otherwise, the only part of writing I don't enjoy is the current state of the publishing industry. I think the publishing world, overall, is in disarray and much like the music industry is being choked to death by middlemen who do very little for the creator of the work or the consumer of the work and manage to walk away with the lion's share of the profit. Hopefully, soon, things will improve, but until then it is very hard to connect quality stories with those who might enjoy them most. That's the hardest part of being an author in my opinion.

Great question! I find myself returning to a few themes in my work over and over. I have a theory on one of them, but for the others I can't say why I'm driven by them. Maybe I've got to keep writing until I figure it out. :)

The one that seems to be the most prevalent is friendships from childhood and how they manifest into adulthood. My characters are constantly navigating re-born relationships, old friendships with new sexual tension or relationships that are in ruins yet can't be completely left behind. In almost all of my stories you can see this happening-- Eduardo and Cinnamon from The Angels' Share are a great example of this, as are Rachel and Maggie from my short story Vocation. I think there is a quality to a relationship you had when you were young that can never be fully replicated by someone you know only once you are grown. That someone knew you before you were fully infected with the larger world makes the bond you have special.

Another theme is development. People building houses where they shouldn't be keeps popping up in my stories. This probably comes from growing up in a rural area that was slowly being subdivided to death.

Finally, I often include little, hidden spaces in my novels that serve to further the plot. The apple orchard and creek in The Watertower. The treehouse in Sanctuary. The chapel in Vocation. All three of these stories started out with me obsessing about these secret, semi-forgotten, yet magical places that didn't yet have a story attached to them. These hidden spaces had meaning that verged on the sacred for my characters and I found them to provide a spring of imagination that would help me bring the story to a satisfying end.

Looks like the auction has already happened. I would LOVE to have it, though.

I wanted something physical that passed through the family that could give Cinnamon some guidance in the novel. At one point it was a pair of earrings, but I felt that was too generic and just used that as a placeholder until I got a better idea. My own grandmother had a bronze statue about the size of the one in the novel. It did not have a bow and arrow nor did she point it in the direction she was going, but gave me the seed of the idea I used to create the cherub. When I was creating it this was the picture I had in my mind. Is this also what you pictured?
http://www.liveauctioneers.com/item/1...

Happy to answer questions about The Angels' Share or The Island of Misfit Girls anytime, but the Goodreads Q&A expires in a few days so please ask away!

Yes, it's on Amazon for purchase. I will send out another link soon with the details. :)

I haven't, but I will add it to the list of books to check out.

Nothing currently scheduled B.j., but I'd love to come to Montana for a literary event, conference or as a guest speaker (did one at Southwest Minnesota State in October and it was great fun). Let me know if you have any leads for such things and I will follow up.

I had an abbreviated Catholic girlhood--10th-12th grade at a Catholic school in Santa Rosa. Until then I had been raised as a sporadic Lutheran. Later, I found out that my mother's mother had been Catholic but had hidden her religion to marry "up".

In Catholic school, although I tried to play along with the rules and ritual, I found very little spiritual comfort. Concerns over this hollow feeling, inside the church and out, are reflected in my stories. I was also at school with many boys who were potentially abused at one of the diocese's feeder elementary schools. Not soon after I found out about this, I wrote The Watertower, the story in the collection that has received the most prize attention. Research on female saints, especially those that have been expunged from the official calendar but still have a cult of followers inspired some of the work here. Also, in my travels as an adult I've found Catholic chapels, cathedrals some of my most favorite places to visit. All of the peace I couldn't find in high school, I've sensed in Notre Dame and other small, forgotten chapels scattered throughout the US and Europe. I pay homage to the spirituality of Catholic architecture in the collection.

Each story in The Island of Misfit Girls has a female protagonist or narrator. But they aren't fitting in as they know they should. That's how I named the collection: girls searching the horizon for truth from the confines of a island conscribed by doctrine and dogma.

It was important to me to write a story where the addict heals not only her addiction, but also the behaviors that made the addiction probable in the first place. The numbers regarding relapse for meth addicts are pretty sobering (no pun intended!)--it often becomes a chronic disease that is managed instead of cured, but I wanted to write a novel where although you don't know how her life will play out, you have a sense she is on a strong path toward a better future.

Hi Mark, thanks for your question. I grew up in Sonoma County, and although my parents were "hippie lite", I had friends who had parents lived communes, didn't believe that children needed to go to school, named their children all sorts of borderline cruel names that make it hard to get along in 'real life' etc. Some of these kids turned out fine and others are still really struggling to find their place in the world. I suppose because I had such personal access to the details many lives like Cinnamon's I was able to construct one that you found compelling. Were you able to believe in Cinnamon's redemption?