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Kerry Lonsdale is the author of Find Me in California, which is available now.
Kerry Lonsdale is the Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, and Amazon Charts bestselling author of Side Trip, Last Summer, and All the Breaking Waves; the Everything Series (Everything We Keep, Everything We Left Behind, and Everything We Give); and the No More trilogy (No More Words, No More Lies, and No More Secrets). Her work has been translated into more than twenty-seven languages. She resides in Northern California with her husband and two children.
Find Me in California is an achingly romantic novel about chance meetings, buried secrets, and the multiple facets of love and family bond.
Get to know Kerry as she talks favorite novels, the importance of the setting, her TBR list and more!
Q: What are some of your favorite novels?
A: Old favorites include Colleen McCollough’s The Thorn Birds and Marion Zimmer Bradley’s The Mists of Avalon. Recent favs are V.E. Schwab’s The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue, Madeline Miller’s Circe, Taylor Jenkins Reid’s The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo, Adrienne Young’s The Unmaking of June Farrow and Anne Napolitano’s Hello Beautiful.
Q: When did you know you wanted to become an author?
A: I don’t know the exact age, but I was young. I wrote my first story, complete with crayon illustrations, about a witch living on a hill when I was in second grade, and it spiraled from there. In high school, long before Wattpad, I wrote fanfiction short stories about rockstars. While I secretly wanted to become an author, and even though every career-oriented, Myers-Briggs type test I took in high school clearly stated I was ideally suited for a writing career, I never believed I could become an author. It wasn’t until 2010 when I chose to be home with my children that I seriously pursued the idea. I gave myself five years to land an agent and a publishing contract or I’d update my resume and return to my marketing career. That was ten books ago, so I guess we know what happened before those five years were up.
Q: Where do you draw your story inspirations from?
A: Everywhere. The news, movies, other books I read, or gossip I overhear at the coffee shop. Sometimes ideas just come to me, fully formed. Other times, I have to go looking for them. But more times than not, plot elements come to me before characters do.
Q: How important is the setting when crafting your story?
A: Very important. I see the setting as the binding that holds the plot and characters together. In all my books, especially Everything We Keep, Last Summer, and Side Trip, setting plays an instrumental role. It’s almost a character itself in All the Breaking Waves.
Q: Tell us about Find Me in California! What can readers expect when picking up this story?
A: I describe Find Me in California as romantic book club fiction. There is a romance at the heart of the story, but also so much more. With themes of found family, chance meetings, and two estranged friends tangled in secrets that spans decades, it’s really a love story on many different levels. If anything, there will be plenty to talk about after you read, so I think it’s perfect for book clubs.
Q: What are you currently reading and what’s on your TBR (to be read) list?
A: This month I am reading Amy Harmon’s The Outlaw Noble Salt, Kelley McNeil’s Mayluna, and Rick Rubin’s The Creative Act: A Way of Being. On deck for next month is Yulin Kuang’s How to End a Love Story, Annie Jacobsen’s Nuclear War, Tracy Garvis Graves’ The Trail of Lost Hearts, and Max Fisher’s The Chaos Machine. Unless I change my mind. I’m very much a mood reader. Haha.
