Today we’d like to introduce you to RaeAnne Thayne.
Hi RaeAnne, it’s an honor to have you on the platform. Thanks for taking the time to share your story with us – to start maybe you can share some of your backstories with our readers.
I am not one of those people who always knew she wanted to be a writer, though I was always a voracious reader and loved writing assignments in school. When I was in high school, I took a journalism class, writing for the school newspaper, and fell in love with the power of story. I earned a degree in journalism and spent ten years as a reporter and editor at a daily newspaper in northern Utah. During that time, I began to dream about writing a book one day, the kind of book I love to read about happily ever after.
When I was on maternity leave from my job as news editor at the paper, I decided I would have no better time to act on those dreams. It took me five years from the time I started writing my first work of fiction to my first sale but in 1995 I sold the first two books I had written and re-written to Bantam Doubleday Dell.
I quit my newspaper job two years later and have been at it full-time ever since. I’ve written more than seventy books, have more than 10 million books in print, and have hit the New York Times more than a dozen times … all because I had a dream of writing a novel and worked hard to make that dream come true.
Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall, and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
When I started out, I had the erroneous idea that once I wrote a book, I would instantly have a successful career as a novelist and become a bestselling author. It doesn’t work that way, unfortunately. I had written about forty books before I hit the New York Times for the first time, slowly building a loyal readership. Building a career that now spans nearly more than twenty-five years took energy, patience, persistence, and much thicker skin than I had when I started.
I had to learn to be okay with knowing not everyone will love my books (Okay, I still struggle with that one!). Every single time I sit down to start a new book, I have to fight feelings of self-doubt and insecurity. Imposter syndrome is real, no matter where you are on this publishing journey! I had hoped that writing would become easier but the process of writing every single book challenges me more than the one before, mostly because I must try harder try to give my readers something fresh and new with every book.
Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your work?
I write small-town women’s fiction and romance novels about characters who must struggle through difficult things to find their happy endings. For years I’ve used a simple tagline to describe my books: “Stories of Hope, Healing, Heart.” My books are sometimes described as comfort reads and I love that, knowing that when people pick up one of my books they can set their own worries and troubles aside for a little while to read about others who are working through their own.
The wallpaper on my computer is a saying that has lifted and sustained me through many long days of writing. “I may not change the world but I can change someone’s afternoon.”
Do you have any memories from childhood that you can share with us?
I grew up in a large family of seven children. When I was 8, my parents moved their family to a 3-acre hobby farm in rural Indiana, surrounded by cornfields. It was a wonderful place to grow up.
We had several outbuildings on our property and I adored rainy summer afternoons when I could grab a book and hang out in the screened gazebo, safe and dry from the clicking rain on the metal roof as I hid out from my mom and her inevitable chores!
Contact Info:
- Website: www.raeannethayne.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/raeannethayne/
- Facebook: www.facebook.com/AuthorRaeAnneThayne
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/raeannethayne
