Y'all are in for a treat today! I'm joining in the blog tour for Stop the Rain by Kassie Angle, which erases TOMORROW!! *queue excited squeals* I'm currently reading an ARC, so keep an eye out for a review coming up soon. ;)
Today, obviously, I get to interview Kassie herself—but first, a little bit about her!
Kassie Angle is a teenaged Christian author, cowgirl, therapy dog trainer, stereotypical INFJ, and Army girl to the core. Her first love, i.e. debut novel, O to be Like Thee, swept her unexpectedly into the world of indie authors. She tries to use her stories to fill the silences in literature, helping more people understand the world of the Army and showing how God heals the broken-hearted.
He left his entire world in Iraq. So why did the war follow him home?
Harley Keane and his best friend Nigel were just kids when 9/11 rocked their world and changed their lives forever. When they're finally old enough to join the Army, all their childhood dreams seem about to come true. But war wasn't supposed to be like this. A kid's dream isn't supposed to become a living nightmare. Fellow soldiers aren't supposed to bleed out in front of your eyes.
Back home, safe and unwounded, Harley feels anything but. Why would God spare him when so many others were taken? Why won't the nightmares stop, even when he's awake? And how long can he hide the truth that threatens everything he has left? When Harley's invisible scars refuse to stay hidden, will he let anyone close enough to help? And how do you go on with life when "okay" isn't okay at all?
Now, on to the interview!
What inspired the story behind Stop the Rain?
Every time someone asks this I dodge the answer and say I was listening to a song late at night and being sappy. Which is exactly what I’m doing again (dodging the answer, not listening to music…). I never intended to write a story like this; it was too dark and complicated for me to tackle. But something that night just clicked, and I knew I needed to write it.
If you could go back five years and say one thing to your young writer self, what would you say?
(Fun fact, it’s been five years nearly to the day that I first started O to be Like Thee so I love this question) Write that story—just write it, don’t worry about anything else—and trust God with the rest. Pour your heart into it, but don’t let that get in the way of sharing the story with the world. You’ve been given a special story for a special reason—let go and let God. (Was that one thing? 😇)
Which character in Stop the Rain do you relate to the most?
Ooh! I like this twist on which one’s most like me, which is Harley, which sounds weird if you know anything about him. 😝 Savanah Carter, all the way. She’s not exactly like me—she’s far more extroverted—but otherwise, if I had to pick a character from StR to be, it would be Van. And I hope if I were ever in her place I would be like her. Besides, anyone who says they’re diehard Army automatically has a big chunk of my heart…
What was the most difficult part of the writing process for this book?
Worrying I would mess up the story. Writing it was easy, but I was scared to death of doing it, and of doing it wrong. Or what if I did it to the best of my ability and someone *thought* I had done it wrong…? I finally got to a point I knew I’d done the level best I could do and I wasn’t getting anything else done worrying about it. Back to that second question, right? 😉
What is the message that you want readers to come away with after reading Stop the Rain?
You are never alone, even in the rain. It might sound contradictory to write a book about PTSD awareness and pick a top theme that doesn’t necessarily pertain to that—but it’s more important for those who are in the thick of it to know God has never left them and someone else out there gets it than anything else someone might take away from the story. And yeah, I want someone to understand PTSD more than they ever did. But that’s not the most important message.
How come Kass is the queen of interviews??
ReplyDeleteThank you so much for this!!
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