📚 A Bookish Chat with 'The Road To Me' Author Laura Drake | Author Interview | @LauraDrakeBooks @TheStoryPlant #AuthorInterview #BlogTour #Interview

Today we welcome Laura Drake to The Writer's Life e-Magazine! Laura is the author of the women's fiction, The Road To Me. This interview is part of her The Road To Me Blog Tour by Pump Up Your Book. Enjoy!

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. She is a founding member of Women’s Fiction Writers Assn, Writers in the Storm blog, as well as a member of Western Writers of America and Women Writing the West.

Laura is a city girl who never grew out of her tomboy ways or serious cowboy crush. She gave up a corporate CFO gig to write full-time. She realized a lifelong dream of becoming a Texan and is currently working on her accent. She’s a wife, grandmother, and motorcycle chick in the remaining waking hours.

Her latest book is the literary fiction, The Road to Me.

Visit her website at: https://lauradrakebooks.com/ or connect with her on Twitter and Facebook.

TWL: Welcome to The Writer's Life! How did you come up with the idea to write your book?

Laura Drake: I’ve ridden over 100,000 miles on my motorcycle, exploring the west. The legendary Route 66 captured my imagination. I even rode my bicycle on an abandoned part of it. (don’t recommend – potholes!)

TWL: Can you give us a short excerpt?

I should be preparing for the show that could be the rocket fuel to propel my small business to the big time. Instead, I’m picking up my jail-break grandmother in the desert in back-of-beyond, Arizona.

It turns out, to get to this Show Low place in less than two days, I had to fly from Seattle to Phoenix, rent a car and drive a hundred eighty miles. And the earliest flight I could get arrived here at two.

I spent the last hour driving, worrying about how much all this is costing me. I had to withdraw funds from my safety net for the plane ticket, and none of this was in the budget. No helping it, though. No one can accuse me of not taking care of my grandmother. When she broke her hip, falling out of a chair in geriatric yoga class, I had her seen by the most imminent orthopedist. He didn’t take Medicare, so I paid the bill myself. If Nellie’d been in charge, she’d have had a native shaman. The rehab center is the best in the desert, but they’re not used to patients trying to get away. Especially ones with fresh pins in their hip.

A deputy called last night to tell me they found her. They did a raid on a charlatan doing ‘sweats’ in the desert. They arrested the leader, but most of the followers scattered. Nellie couldn’t make a clean getaway, what with her walker. And the fact that, except for several strands of Mardi Gras beads, she was naked.

I tried to talk him into putting her on a plane, but he said he’d only release her to next-of-kin. She’d told him there was a conspiracy at the facility to sell her into sexual slavery. He didn’t buy it, but he wanted a family member to come take charge.

That’s me. The last of the line. I’m a failed third-generation hippie. I know where the second generation is—under a marble slab at Long Rest Cemetery. It’s the first generation who’s gone AWOL. Again.

TWL: What part of the book was the most fun to write?

Laura: The whole thing – so much opportunity for humor with an octogenarian hippie and her uptight granddaughter. But I think my favorite was the scene with the goat in the convertible. A friend gave me the idea, and it almost wrote itself!

TWL: What’s one fact about your book that would surprise people?

Laura: Though it is humorous, there are also very dark, hard-hitting scenes.

TWL: What other books are you working on and when will they be published?

Laura: I just turned in my next to my editor, tentatively titled, Amazing Gracie. It’s about a female soldier who returns home from the desert with a heavy load of guilt. She takes her nine-year-old sister along on her cross-country motorcycle trip to save her from her mother's boyfriend. But her sister ends up saving her.

Should be published 2023.

TWL: Finally, what message are you trying to get across with your book?

Laura: Pain is universal; suffering is optional. While you’re here, live.

TWL: Do you have any final words?

Laura: I can’t wait to see what readers think of this book – it’s become my favorite.

Title: THE ROAD TO ME
Author: Laura Drake
Publisher: The Story Plant
Genre: Women’s Fiction

BOOK BLURB:

Jacqueline Oliver is an indie perfumer, trying to bury her ravaged childhood by shoveling ground under her own feet. Then she gets a call she dreads―the hippie grandmother she bitterly resents was apprehended when police busted a charlatan shaman’s sweat lodge. Others scattered, but Nellie was slowed by her walker and the fact that she was wearing nothing but a few Mardi-Gras beads. Jacqueline is her only kin, so, like it or not, she’s responsible.

Despite being late-developing next year’s scent, Jacqueline drops everything to travel to Arizona and pick up her free-range grandma. But the Universe conspires to set them on a Route 66 road trip together. What Jacqueline discovers out there could not only heal the scars of her childhood but open her to a brighter future.

“The Road to Me is an unforgettable story of self-discovery and survival, reconciliation and redemption.” — Barbara Claypole White, bestselling author of The Perfect Son and The Promise Between Us

“In The Road to Me, Laura Drake takes on the complexities of one family struggle to get over a lifetime of mistakes and misunderstandings, expertly blending the heartbreak of a grandmother’s past and a granddaughter’s reluctance to trust her. The Road to Me offers a fresh and entrancing take on reconciliation and forgiveness, a truly captivating story filled with wisdom and a whole lot of heart.” — Donna Everhart, author of The Education of Dixie Dupree

Book Information

Release Date: April 19, 2022

Publisher: The Story Plant

Soft Cover: ISBN: 978-1611883251; 320 pages; $16.95; E-Book, $7.49

Amazon: https://amzn.to/3rLfg82

Barnes & Noble: https://bit.ly/3oFFvdZ

Apple Books: https://apple.co/3BeUEIy

Book Depository: https://bit.ly/3subeQs

Indigo: https://bit.ly/3Js09GJ

IndieBound: https://bit.ly/3rGew41

Book Trailer: https://lauradrakebooks.com/2021/11/18/book-trailer-the-road-to-me/