| I thought it would be
captivating to write a suspenseful story that begins in Hollywood,
but has a family moving to the center of a small, close knit
community in the Midwest to lose themselves and escape the cloud of
danger hanging over them. Having long-standing roots in the
Midwest, and also a current life in California, I felt qualified to
write realistically about those communities and experiences.
Are most of the characters based on people from your real life?
 While some of the characters in the book are definitely
inspired by people that I know and love, others may have been composites of
people I have known, but were largely products of my imagination. The book is
not autobiographical even though it does mirror some of our family’s
experiences. One character in the book, Doc, is based on a beloved carpenter
from our town in Minnesota. He skillfully worked on our house and became a
close family friend. After spending a lot of time talking with him over the
course of our home renovation, about religion, politics, family and a host of
other things, I knew that one day he would be a character in a book of mine.
One of our two dogs, Legacy, is the inspiration for Sammy, the neglected
Border Collie/Springer Mix the Rain family finds at the Humane Society. Our
true-to-life Legacy, is a dog who was rescued by Homeward Bound, in
Monticello, Minnesota. A young woman looked into her eyes as she was
scheduled for death, and saw her potential and we are ever grateful for her
compassion. Her front paws are not the norm for a dog, but after some surgery
combined with her strength and fierce will, she runs, climbs stairs, rides
boats and lives for her daily walk. I have a very strong passion for dogs,
particularly dogs that have been rescued or need to be rescued, and adopted.
I wanted to include a little bit of that in this book because Legacy has
surely given us far more than we have given her.
"What a
clever page-turner! Caryn Casey has a gift for mixing suspense and humor.
Natalie's conversations with Eden and Max are funny and pitch perfect. By the
end of the book, the characters seem like old friends. Casey's observations
about a mother's love, the movie business, and small town America add to the
enjoyment of the book." Lynne O. Crist, Eden Prairie, MN
How do you approach building a novel? Do you work out
most of your story ahead of time?
 I have had the experience of starting a novel with only
a line in my head that won’t go away. I have lain in bed mentally writing
before I was fully awake with the hope that I could remember what I was
“writing” long enough to commit it to paper. With Hiding Eden Rain, I knew
roughly what I wanted to write about, and who my main characters would be.
Over time, I felt as though I was being channeled when I would sit down at my
computer to work on the novel. The characters began to create themselves, in
a way, particularly with respect to dialogue, and I just tried to type fast
enough to keep up with my brain and not to get in the way of that process.
The following day, I often revised some of what was written, but I gave the
characters license to show me where they wanted to go. When I realized I
wanted to also adapt a screenplay for this work, I made the decision to amp
up the suspense quotient a little more than I had originally intended to.
Feedback from readers of the book has reinforced that it enhanced the plot
and drew them in as they cared deeply for the fate of the Rain family.
|
Natalie Rain, a
widowed mother, is receiving ominous threats targeted at her teen starlet
daughter, Eden Rain, that begin as e-mails, but escalate in their
intensity. She leads her family out of Hollywood to a charming lakeside
community in the Midwest. They forge new and rich relationships that
include a budding romance for Natalie. Unfortunately, the family's
security is shattered when Natalie realizes she has been betrayed and the
danger is closer than she ever dared to imagine.
