Where Life Inspires Fiction: Rebecca Hodge on Creativity and Career Pivots -135

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Kathleen Basi [: 00:00:03

Welcome to Author Express. Thanks for checking us out. This is the podcast where you give us 15 minutes of your time and we give you a chance to hear the voice behind the pages and get to know some of your favorite writers in a new light. I'm one of your hosts, Kathleen Basi. I'm an award winning musical composer, feature writer, essayist, and of course storyteller. Let me tell you a little about today's guest.

Rebecca Hodge [: 00:00:33

Rebecca Hodge is an award winning author of Heartfelt Suspense, a retired veterinarian and clinical research scientist. She lives in North Carolina where you will find her sipping tea on the screened in porch with a dog at her feet and a computer on her lap. Robert Dugoni, the New York Times best selling author of the Tracy Crosswhite series, said about Island Endgame that it is a thriller that thrills. Kenzie Adams is a protagonist to root for. Smart, intuitive and unpredictable and Endgame soars. Welcome Rebecca to Author Express.

Rebecca Hodge [: 00:01:08

Thanks so much Kathleen. It's great to be here.

Kathleen Basi [: 00:01:10

What a great quote that is about your book. That must feel really good to see.

Rebecca Hodge [: 00:01:14

It was a very kind and generous statement on Bob's part. I really appreciated it.

Kathleen Basi [: 00:01:19

Yeah, well, having read the book myself, I agree with him. It is an extremely good book and Kenzie's a very good protagonist.

Rebecca Hodge [: 00:01:26

Well, thank you. Always good to hear.

Kathleen Basi [: 00:01:28

Well, we'll get to your book here in a few minutes, but first we want to start with the same question we ask everyone, which is tell me the most interesting, interesting thing about where you are from.

Rebecca Hodge [: 00:01:37

So I'm from central North Carolina and still live here. And the best thing about North Carolina is that we've got the Appalachian Mountains in the west and the Atlantic Ocean and beautiful beaches in the east with plenty of outdoor environments in between. And so I certainly grew up spending a lot of time outdoors and traveling and that certainly has informed my writing.

Kathleen Basi [: 00:02:02

Yeah, it definitely has. And that's one of the most endearing and interesting things about your books, I think. Tell me about clinical research scientist. What exactly does that mean?

Rebecca Hodge [: 00:02:13

So I'm a veterinarian by training and was in practice for a number of years, then home full time when my kids were little. And I fell by accident at that point into what I thought was going to be a temporary job working with data from early phase clinical research trials and ended up with a career working in early phase drug development for human, focusing mainly on metabolic disease, primarily diabetes and obesity. And it was not an expected pathway, but one that I found I enjoyed very much. I loved the variety and all the data.

Kathleen Basi [: 00:02:53

That's really interesting. So you worked a couple of different careers, you had kids. Now you have a writing career. You clearly like to be outdoors. How do you recharge when it all gets to be too much, when you start feeling drained or overwhelmed?

Rebecca Hodge [: 00:03:12

Yeah, well, it's easy to get overwhelmed in today's environment, particularly if you even glance at the news in a brief few seconds. For me, getting out and moving, walking long walks with the dog, exercise is a real cornerstone to my mental health and calmness and just kind of staying anchored in good food and plenty of sleep and trying to keep a balance of things.

Kathleen Basi [: 00:03:43

You know, good sleep is not always like just something you can just. It's not something you just snap your fingers and achieve. Tell us, Rebecca, how do you manage that?

Rebecca Hodge [: 00:03:54

Yes, yes, yes, yes. Well, the one thing you can control is the number of hours, and then you can kind of try and ease into it with some transition time. Reading before bed is definitely a cornerstone activity for me.

Kathleen Basi [: 00:04:10

All right, well, let's talk a little bit about this book, Island Endgame. Can you summarize it in one sentence?

Rebecca Hodge [: 00:04:15

So, in Endgame, a grieving nurse takes a job at a summer camp where she's hoping for a few peaceful months to heal. But when three fugitives invade the island and take hostages, she has to fight for her life and for those of her companions.

Kathleen Basi [: 00:04:34

You nailed it. That's the book in a nutshell. Holy moly. What a book this is. How did this come to you?

Rebecca Hodge [: 00:04:41

So it's funny because so many of my author friends describe that their books come based out of a plot or come based out of a character, but for me, my books generally have come based on a setting. It's a little weird, but it seems to work. Although I'm not sure it's a very efficient, efficient way to start out. So when I was 18, growing up in North Carolina, I wanted something different, as many 18 year olds do. And I took a job as a horseback riding instructor at a summer camp on Lopez island in the Puget Sound of Washington. And so I spent that summer living in a teepee, taking showers when the campers remembered to build a fire under the hot water tank and falling in love with the beautiful scenery out there. And so the idea, the initial idea of the story was, let me set this on an island in the Puget Sound and let's have a summer camp as the setting. Okay, if that's my starting point, what can I do with it? And so the story evolved from there.

Kathleen Basi [: 00:05:48

Wow, that's amazing. Well, I did Notice that. Cause I've read your two previous books as well and they were more mountain kind of settings. And so I thought, well, gee, I wonder how Puget Sound came into this. That's really amazing that it goes that far back in your life. It just goes to show that you can mine all of your experiences for decades after the fact.

Rebecca Hodge [: 00:06:11

No moment of happiness or horror goes untapped in the long run.

Kathleen Basi [: 00:06:16

Words for writers to live by. So how has writing this book changed or influenced you personally?

Rebecca Hodge [: 00:06:25

That's a good question. This book was somewhat different than my other books in that it's. It's more overtly violent in some ways. You know, I try not to. I don't go into the horror genre. I try not to get too blood and gore, but. But there are people that end up dying as part of this story and that's not the pattern I followed in my previous books. I did grapple with that somewhat and I, I guess have some mixed feelings about it, but I guess I ended up feeling that to serve the story, it was legitimate for me to go down this path.

Rebecca Hodge [: 00:07:06

And so hopefully readers won't be distressed or misled along the way.

Kathleen Basi [: 00:07:13

Well, it's definitely. I mean, you've got some. I was telling, for the benefit of the listeners, I was telling Rebecca before we hit record that I started reading and I was really mad at one character. And then I realized there was somebody to be much madder at as we went down through the book. You've got a real winner of a bad guy in this book.

Rebecca Hodge [: 00:07:34

Good, good. Yeah, the bad guy, Sonny, definitely does not have too many redeeming qualities. He's out for himself, first, middle in, always.

Kathleen Basi [: 00:07:46

Kenzie, on the other hand, is this nurse who is grieving. I don't know how much you're okay with sharing. She's grieving the loss of a nephew who was very close to her. And then we get to have her learning, having to grapple with all of that because there's a boy on the island who is the same age as her nephew. Can you talk about that character in particular, I thought was really interesting because he's young and he's incredibly self sufficient on this island. Tell me about how that character developed.

Rebecca Hodge [: 00:08:18

So once I realized that Kenzie was in this headspace, the biggest challenge she could face would be dealing with someone who reminded her of her lost nephew. And so Chris, the young boy who's the son of the island's caretaker, becomes that challenge and really came alive as the story evolved. I did not originally intend to have him as a point of view character. But he became so vivid as the story progressed that I felt he needed his own voice. And I think that served the story well. He lives with his mom on an island that is mainly unpopulated through nine months of the year. And he knows this island the way you or I know the city block that we live on. And he and his dog are the pair that hang together.

Rebecca Hodge [: 00:09:14

And when things fall apart, Chris rises to the occasion. And so it was a really fun character for me.

Kathleen Basi [: 00:09:22

This is the three points of view in this book. It was a very good balance. They counterbalanced each other very well. It was quite lovely. So how do you know when you've written something that's truly authentic or meaningful? How does that spark in your brain and say, that's it, I did it.

Rebecca Hodge [: 00:09:43

For me, the final question is, is this a book I would enjoy reading myself? And if I can be reading the book for the 150th time through revisions and still feel like, okay, okay, I keep turning the pages here, then that gives me a good vibe. And I do try and bring some emotional depth to what I write. In addition to having plots that move forward with hopefully an interesting series of events. That's the hardest aspect for me. Filling out a plot is much easier for my left brained self than getting all the emotional layers that my characters need to have on the page. But I do try and do that. And if people walk away thinking about a character in the book and feeling like they know someone as the result of reading the book, then I feel like that's a pretty good thing.

Kathleen Basi [: 00:10:46

So this begs the question, you must be a plotter.

Rebecca Hodge [: 00:10:49

I'm guessing I am not.

Kathleen Basi [: 00:10:51

You're not a plotter.

Rebecca Hodge [: 00:10:53

I so wish. So when we say plotter, we mean someone who maps things out before they start writing. And I keep. I crave the idea of being a plotter because it sounds so much more efficient than the mess I create. But the reality is I don't know my story or my characters until I start writing it. Until I start building one scene, followed by another scene, followed by another scene. That's where I start figuring out how these characters are behaving. And that lets me figure out who they are.

Rebecca Hodge [: 00:11:28

And so really, it's only by the time I get to a reality, really messy, gnarly first draft, then I become a plotter. So once I've got a first draft, the next step is a massive spreadsheet and I map it all out and it gives me that 30,000 foot view where I can step back and go, okay, here's my problem here, you know.

Kathleen Basi [: 00:11:54

Or to the listeners, this is the second time since she got on this call with me that she has mentioned spreadsheets.

Rebecca Hodge [: 00:11:58

So I know. Well, I spent my work life up to my eyeballs in spreadsheets and so for me it's a real natural tool to reach for. But it really has been helpful. You can build as many columns as you want, you can track whatever you want. And for me, that is then where I can step back and say, all right, I've spent way too much time on this trivial thing. I am really underplaying this pivotal scene. I need to bring this out and back that out. So I become very left brained eventually.

Rebecca Hodge [: 00:12:29

But boy, that first draft is a mess.

Kathleen Basi [: 00:12:32

Well, it clearly works for you because every one of your books has been really good.

Rebecca Hodge [: 00:12:37

So thank you.

Kathleen Basi [: 00:12:38

This one just keeps getting better. So as we start to wrap up here, let's ask, what's the best place for people to find you? Just where should they go?

Rebecca Hodge [: 00:12:47

The best place is my website, which is rebeccahodgefiction.com and everything is there, including links to social media and more information about books, et cetera.

Kathleen Basi [: 00:12:59

All right, great. And so tell us what book or story is inspiring you the most these days? SHE LAUGHS.

Rebecca Hodge [: 00:13:06

I know. So asking that question is kind of like asking what your favorite child is. And so I'm going to duck it slightly by giving you the most influential book from my childhood. And that was a series of books called the Rick Brandt Science Adventure series, which was 24 books about a team of scientists that went all over the world doing scientific investigations and having amazing adventures along the way. And at the time, I apparently never noticed that this was 100% men and that there were no women involved anywhere except to bring in a pitcher of iced tea on occasion. Apparently that aspect had no impact because I ended up concluding that science must be a pretty cool thing and that has led to a very interesting career.

Kathleen Basi [: 00:14:04

Sounds like it. That's very, very cool. We like representation, but it's good to know that some people managed to overcome and make their way even without representation. Well, thank you so much for being with us today, Rebecca.

Rebecca Hodge [: 00:14:18

Thanks so much, Kathleen. This has been great fun.

Kathleen Basi [: 00:14:20

Great. Her book is Island Endgame, everybody. Check it out.

Kathleen Basi [: 00:14:26

Thanks for joining us today. Reviews help other people to find us, so please take a minute to give us a rating and leave a few words. We'll be here again next Wednesday. In the meantime, follow us on Instagram at Author Express Podcast to see who's coming up next. Don't forget, Keep it express. Keep it interesting.