Virginia Evans

But, you know, somebody who's honest and loving.

Very honest and very loving.

And so that was where I started.

And I think I really did kind of build the thing brick by brick.

You know, letter by letter.

The first letter in the book was the first letter of my first draft.

This letter she writes to her brother.

And so, you know, the engine of the story felt like, to me, for the reader, for the reading experience, you know, what's the story?

You sort of asking yourself, what's the story?

What happened here?

What came before?

Because there's all these indications that,

things have happened in her life and something about the story makes you want to know, you know, something about caring about her, I guess you want to know what happened before.

This is my eighth novel.

And I've always said writing a novel is like, for me, the first draft or sort of the beginning or the first sort of,

act as the writer is you take this big blob of wet clay and you throw it on the wheel.

And that's the beginning, you know, whatever you're kind of working with, whatever kind of first draft attempts you have, that's the beginning.

At least that's how I work.

I think other people probably have a more elegant way of doing it.

But for me, it's you throw this big wet thing on, but then through the process and through building the story and through revision and through