Today we’d like to introduce you to Leara Rhodes
Hi Leara, can you start by introducing yourself? We’d love to learn more about how you got to where you are today?
Reading has been a part of my life since I learned to read. Early in my childhood, I feasted on books. I read a dozen books a week during the summer months in 5th grade when I got them off the book mobile that came to our rural area. Books and the worlds they let me create often made me search for stories. I loved a good story. I gravitated toward the page turner that built on character and plot. I abhorred the horror, science fiction, heart breaking stories that would leave me devastated and thinking long into the night, and not good thoughts. I did not like to remember the scenes of destruction and despair. I read the classics, even the harsh ones. I longed to walk into a book shop and be able to identify the authors and books on the shelves. Years into reading, I was in a book shop in Atlanta where they had put Mary Stewart’s Merlin trilogy in the gothic romance section. I was appalled. She indeed wrote many gothic romance books, but her trilogy was a stand out in myth and history, not romance, not gothic.
As I read through the years, I began to read everything I could find on authors I liked: John Irving, William Styron, Richard Russo, Charles Dickens, and others. I noticed that I was reading male authors. I searched for women I liked and found the Mary Steward trilogy, Mauve Binchey, Agatha Christie, Louisa May Alcott, and then Maya Angelou. My father gave me Angelou’s book, “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings,” and I have never turned back reading devastating stories about life. I went to hear Angelou speak several times. I could not get enough of her voice power in what she wrote and how she said things.
All of the reading, all of the sorting through stories has given me insight into what I write. I may write historical fiction, but is it about my Irish heritage, about the people who made impressions on me through my life, and on the values I deem important. In my writing, I write about issues I feel strongly about but told in a historical context with fictional characters who happen to have qualities I want to talk about.
“Spancil Hill” has the protagonist, a young man from Galway, Ireland, struggle to learn after having major losses in his life. How he succeeds is the struggle many of us have made in our “today” lives: putting pieces together and leaning on friends and family for support. Cahey becomes the most sought-after horse trainer of the Vanderbilt American Horse Exchange in New York.
“The Darkest Midnight in December” is how a woman of Irish immigrants in 1906 struggled to have a career in accounting and not settling for the accepted “women’s” jobs. She lived in a boarding house in Savannah, Georgia among Irish women learning to be nurses. These women and their matron become friends who discover that their strength is in their friendship and nurturing each other.
My third book, to be released in 2025, “Tybee Rapsody”, is set on Tybee Island, Georgia, and is the story of an Irish woman who wants to be a concert pianist and compose music in an era when women musicians could teach piano but not produce music. Gertrude learns that she needs support to be able to produce the kind of music she wants to write. She makes some bad choices and lives alone on the island during the winter of 1907. She has to come to terms with loneliness versus solitude, and how to take care of herself. She had wanted to do it all by herself but quickly learns that she needs friends and family to give her the support she so badly needs to seek her goal.
I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
Writing is not easy but the effort to get published is greater. There were days when I stood at the back sliding door looking out at the garden and thinking, my dream of getting a book published will never happen. I am getting older by the day and this is not happening. But when the moment came, it happened fast. A publisher liked my ideas, offered me a contract and I thought that I had finally found a way to make my dream come true. There were hiccups. Long delays in getting the final contract, delays in the editing process, delays in finding ways to market the book, delays to what I actually enjoy doing and that is writing. I have learned that none of these things are intentional…they are part of the process. I have learned that my publisher is my strongest cheerleader and spends long hours trying to figure out ways to get my books out to the public.
Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know about your work?
Creative thinking is one area where I love to spend time. how to solve a problem creatively. For example, a heavy box of books arrived at my door. There is no one there at the time to help me move the box inside. So I open the box and move the books in groups of two and three until I have them and the box inside. Small example, but one that triggers other ideas as I move through the things I have to do in life and in my writing. How do I get the protagonist to do what they need to do to solve a problem they find themselves deeply involved. As a researcher, I enjoy solving these problems through history and facts. In “Spancil Hill,” Cahey needs to bring four horses across the ocean from Galway to New York. In my research I learn that the ship he needs to take at the time only sails to Boston and then he needs to get them to New York. Many readings later and much digging, I solve his problem and he arrives safely in New York. In “The Darkest Midnight in December,” Sharon wants to help fund a nurse during the summer and because of the time period, she realizes that the women learning to be nurses are from Irish backgrounds where the women in the neighborhoods made fabric flowers to sell as adornments to dresses and hats in 1906. The nurses begin a project of making these flowers and successfully selling them to meet their goal. Creativity matters in solving problems.
Networking and finding a mentor can have such a positive impact on one’s life and career. Any advice?
I have found mentors by being engaged in things that matter to me. People I meet notice the enthusiasm and the time and effort I put into the project. The more advanced folks will offer advice and guidance. I willingly accept and have made a lifetime of friendships and support. My first example has to be the work I did for the JoAnn Shop when I was in high school. I did not have any goals of working forever in retail sales, I just needed money for college. But I worked hard and kept my promises to show up on time, have a positive attitude, and learn everything I could during the four years I worked in the shop. When I finished high school, the owner offered me a management position with his group of shops, a wonderful offer for a girl from a rural, poor background. But, I wanted to go to college. So instead of being disappointed in me, she wrote a reference letter that got me a major scholarship to college. I value what I learned from her.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://leararhodes.com
- Instagram: @undertheoakswriting
- Facebook: undertheoaks-novels by Leara Rhodes
