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I am incredibly excited about sharing today’s post with you, as it’s an interview I did with Jackie Lea Sommers, author of Truest, which will be published next month!
Jackie and I met back in February of 2004, and I’ve loved having her as a friend. I’ve loved getting a front row seat to what the writing process looks like, and it’s been exciting for me to watch her passion for writing come to fruition. A few months ago I published a blog post with a review of Truest (if you missed it, check it out!), and I’ve only grown more excited since reading the book the first time to get my hands on the official copy. Until Truest is published next month!
Here are a few questions that have lingered since I read the novel:
How did you originally come up with the story written in Truest? Was there any inspiration from your life included?
Truest began with the Hart twins—in one hand, I had Laurel’s mental condition; in the other, I had Silas’s personality. Everything started there, even though the story lent itself to being told through Westlin Beck’s eyes. You could say that both of the Hart twins were inspired from my life—I had gone through similar thought patterns as Laurel … and Silas was my seventeen-year-old self’s dream boy!
You included mental health themes throughout the book. What prompted you to do this, and what do you hope your readers take away from this component of the book?
My own life is a storied history of obsessive-compulsive disorder, so mental health awareness and advocacy are close to my heart. They flowed naturally out of who I am and into my book. I am not sure that there’s any one thing that I want readers to take away from this element of Truest, but I do hope that it makes them stop and think about suffering. Sometimes I think the world is moving in the right direction toward compassion, and then sometimes I realize just how far we have to go in understanding the nuances of mental illness.
What character do you most relate to in the book?
I’ve not been asked this before! I relate to each of the main characters in different ways—to Silas as we are both writers, to West as we are both readers. But I especially relate to Laurel, since she and I have each known suffering at the hand of mental illness. We are in a sisterhood of suffering—and of suffering imposed by our own minds. Mental illness is a civil war.
What do you hope your readers will take away in general from the book?
I hope it makes them think deeply—about anything: stories, history, religion, family, and especially about rescue.
Do you have a favorite quote or short passage from the book?
I love Silas and West’s first kiss:
And then he kissed me—soft, sweet, seeking—and there was only room in my thoughts for one boy, this boy: Silas Hart, whose kiss was exploding my heart from a bud into a blossom with such alacrity that I marveled I could be so full without bursting.
Would you ever consider writing a sequel?
Maybe not a sequel, but I would love to explore Mark Whitby’s story a few years down the road. More of a companion novel. I have a rough sketch in my head of what happens to the Green Lake crew in the 4-5 years following the events of Truest. And I know that West’s college roommate ends up being pretty important.
Could you summarize what the writing process was like for you? What were your most and least favorite parts of that process?
Writing is a blessing and a curse. Writers have to have open hearts in order to write—but then we are also supposed to have thick skins when it comes to criticism. It feels like a paradox. What happens for me is that I just feel everything deeply. That means really terrific joy when things are going well and very, very dark lows when things are not. That said, I try to write or edit six days a week. Writing the first draft and perfecting the final draft are the best parts. The hard parts are the hours and hours and hours of in-between work when the goal never seems to be getting any nearer. I remind myself that showing up to do the hard work is always productive and what shows that I’ve matured as a writer. In earlier years, I could never finish anything! Now, it’s all about showing up, day after day (and year after year), and working hard.
In Jackie’s blog, she not only shares more about her writing process and about her upcoming books, but also writes all sorts of fantastic mental health posts! If you’d like to follow Jackie on social media, you can find her the following places:
We still have a few weeks until Truest comes out, but in the meantime, you can read more about the book on Jackie’s blog!
[…] there’s an interview with me over at The Little Things blog, in which I discuss the mental health themes in Truest, along with which character I relate to […]
Awesome interview! I would love to see at LEAST a short story about what happens to the Green Lake crew!
I really hope so!!
[…] The Little Things Blog: this interview really focuses on mental health themes […]