RaeAnne Thayne

Laura: [00:00:00] I ran Welcome to watch your next podcast.

RaeAnne Thayne: Hi, I'm so thrilled to be here. Thank you for inviting me.

Laura: I am so happy to chat with you. You've been like we've been I have a group of friends who we will love your small town romances and you've been a fan of yours since like 2017

RaeAnne Thayne: Oh, wow.

Laura: 2016. So it's like you're like early Romans. I'm like, Oh my gosh, these are like my books are just like my comfort, small town romances, little bit of Hallmark little bit of everything just It's good stuff. So

RaeAnne Thayne: I'm so happy to hear that.

Laura: yeah, there's some early episodes where we talked about your series.

So I'm very excited to chat with you., tell us a little bit about yourself. Tell us like what kind of books do you tend to write and all the fun stuff.

RaeAnne Thayne: Sure. Well, I'm RaeAnne Thayne I have been writing for a long time. I sold my first book in 95.

Laura: Oh my gosh.

RaeAnne Thayne: And I finished my 76th last week, so

Laura: Oh

RaeAnne Thayne: I've been at it for a while, so lots [00:01:00] of backlist books for people to read if they're just discovering me, but I've been writing sweet, well I've done kind of a little of everything in my career, I wrote quite a lot of Romantic Suspense when I was first starting out, so a lot of my early books I did about 30 years ago.

Or 35 Romantic Suspense, but since then I've been writing mostly community, feel good, small town. I call them uplit reads. They're, they make you feel good at the end of them. There's not a lot of, I mean, there's drama and there's tension and everything, but there's not a lot of, tragedy in my books.

In the back history there is, but not on the page, usually when I'm writing. I want people to close the book and feel like, they had a happy experience and they like being in the community. I really try hard to write communities about people that care about each other, that work hard to make their world a better place, and, work together to solve problems and things like that.

Those are the kind of stories I write. And, of course, there's romance involved. I love writing romances. My last, I'd say for about the last five or six years, I've been doing a little more women's fiction [00:02:00] once a year, and then I do a Christmas romance. So my summer books are typically a little more women's fictiony on the border between romance and women's fiction.

There's definitely romance in them, but there's a few deeper issues. It's relationships between sisters and mothers and children and things like that. So, but always a romance because that's my base and that's what I love.

Laura: That's your love. So talk to us about like, how to get started. So women's fiction where your summer romance was like, or summer women's fiction, your summer releases tend to be more women's fiction entry point to romance a little bit, there's more depth in the issues, where can get we just can get started?

Like, do you have like one or two entry points, you would say, like, you should turn right here, and then go down this rabbit hole, or

RaeAnne Thayne: Sure. Well, if you're looking for my women's fiction they're really all standalone books. They, like, I had five of them that are set in the same place, but the characters don't intersect at all. So there's no, there's, it's not like you have to read the first one to understand what's going on in the next one.

[00:03:00] It's just, they're just, Connected by geography because I created a place that I liked it. I liked writing there and I had a lot of story ideas for that place. And so that's Cape sanctuary book. So the first one of those, if you want them in order, it was the cliff house. It was the sea glass cottage. It was, I'm going to run out.

I'm going to not get them right. Anyway, summer at the Cape is one of them. The path to sunshine Cove is one of them. And then the cafe at beach end is one of them. And then this year I had a new one out. It can start there if they want. That's not related at all to Cape Sanctuary. It's set in a little fictional small town in Idaho, sort of roughly based on Sun Valley.

It's called 15 Summers Later. If they want my strict romance kind of series, I have two mains. single title romances. I did my Haven Point and my Hopes Crossing series. And there's seven books in Hopes Crossing that are kind of connected, especially the first three. After that, it doesn't really matter what order you read them in, but I tend to tell people, read the first three because they, the second and third build off of something that happened in the first one.

And so [00:04:00] it's good if people can read. read those. And then Hopes Crossing was a spin off, or Haven Point was a spin off of Hopes Crossing, because I created this family in like the last four books, and there was one son, one brother that, who's, who I needed to have somewhere distant for his story, and so he moved to this.

Oh, and I like Idaho. I live in Utah. So I write a lot of books set in around me, Wyoming, Colorado, Utah. Just because that's sort of what I know the most, but, and then my Christmas books, I have a Christmas book out this year, that's called the December market. Which is my 75th book. So I'm really excited about. And it is actually the second book in a series. And I would recommend if people did not read my Christmas book last year, that they maybe try to pick that one up. It is coming out in mass market paperback again this year. So you can find it digitally. It's available all the time, but the trade paperback was out last year and it is called Christmas at the shelter in, and the book this year, the December market is Is the sister of the hero of the first book so that she does appear [00:05:00] and she was the best friend of the heroine.

So she does appear in the first book. So if you really want the full context of her story, you might want to read that one first. You won't be lost or anything if you just pick up the December Market because it is, I mean, it's a standalone story, but you might have better subtext if you read the first one.

Right.

Laura: come back to, she leaves town, comes back to town to help her sister who is pregnant and basically has to take care of the inn, like any other, swinny holiday romance, come back to town and it's like against my will. And it's like, Oh, but everything is so wonderful.

You should stay here. Yeah.

RaeAnne Thayne: kind of falls for her brother's best friend. So that's an old trope, one of my favorite tropes and. They were friends. I mean, she knew him before, but never looked at him romantically and until she comes back to town and sees everything through different eyes. And I, I loved writing that book because it's kind of one of my favorite tropes.

Friends to lovers is one of my absolute [00:06:00] favorite, but it's also, she's been traveling. She couldn't wait to leave this little town in Idaho. And for the last 10 years, she's been traveling. She makes her job as a, Digital nomad. She's an editor, but she can work anywhere. So she travels all over and house sits and pet sits for people and things like that.

So I love the idea of her coming back, coming home, trying to figure out this is actually what I'm looking for. I still love the travel part of it, but I, I love home too. And I really, I love writing that kind of story.

Laura: So what is it like to write Christmas books because I'm assuming you're not writing them during holiday season, you're writing them on the off season just to get ready. What's the process? Do you like listen to Christmas music? Do you watch some Hallmark movies? Are you like, how do you get in the mood

RaeAnne Thayne: All of those things. So I actually am lucky enough that my writing cycle happens to be I'm getting ready to start my next year's Christmas book right now. So I will be writing it, at least doing the rough draft during the holiday season, which is perfect. And then I'll have to wrap it up, in the springtime, it'll be February or so before I'm done with it.

So [00:07:00] what I do I put my Christmas tree up as soon as I start. So I'll be putting the Christmas tree in my office up probably next week when I'm traveling this week and I'll be as soon as I get back, I'll be putting my Christmas tree up and getting ready to start writing Christmas. I do listen to Christmas music.

I used to listen to music a lot when I write and as my writing has evolved, I guess, and maybe as I've gotten older, I need to focus. And so, music tends to distract me too much. So I actually still listen to music, but I listened to like, it has to be lo fi with no words or anything. What I listen to when I'm revising when I'm writing I need silence, because I do a kind of hybrid dictation and writing I, I dictate but I look at it on the screen as I'm dictating and I'll type a thing that you know if something else comes to me, so I have to have silence for that.

But, to get in the mood, it really, because I've written a lots of Christmas books I love writing them and it really feels like I'm slipping back into a comfortable zone for me to write a Christmas book. I think they fit very well with my voice because I tend to write, about families and about [00:08:00] community and about, caring about each other, which is all the things that people love to think about at Christmas time, and so it I seem to slip quite easily back into the, Christmas zone when I'm writing one, but, and then I don't take the tree down until I'm done.

So I won't take the tree down until February or March in my office till I'm finished doing it. So

Laura: you're writing at least a couple books a year. So how do you process, do you do you revise, you take time to revise one book, and then while drafting, or how do you block it among that process? I'm just curious.

RaeAnne Thayne: I usually am thinking about the next book as I'm wrapping up the previous book. This particular, the book I'm starting right now, I did not have, I knew the, I know the heroine and I've thought that part, but I don't have anything else. So I'm

Laura: Oh my gosh.

RaeAnne Thayne: So I'm actually going to kind of take this week off. I just finished on Thursday of my last book.

So, and it was pretty intense and it was, I had a lot of family stuff going on at the same time. So getting that done was like a miracle. It feels like everybody's like a miracle that I got it done. [00:09:00] But but I will spend a little, probably a week thinking about it and plotting it, trying to come up with a hero.

I like to plot very much. If you want to know the process, I'm very much a plotter. And so I will I have it pretty roughed out in terms of I know I pretty much know scene by scene what's going to happen and I can, I can change that as we go along. But I like to know that because it helps me have a roadmap for the book.

And then when I sit down to write every day, I know, okay, this is what I got to do. I know whose point of view this scene is going to be. I know what, what needs to happen for the story arc and the romance arc and things like that. And so I, I'm a very intensive plotter. I'm also very lucky enough that I plot with friends sometimes.

Usually one book a year I plot with friends and we go to go to Beach House in San Diego in the wintertime and hang out and eat and talk and have a great time, laugh and help plot each other's books. So everybody brings an idea and we send the idea out to everybody ahead of time so they can look at it.

And then they help us come up with, different plots that we can do to move the story forward. So

Laura: Oh my gosh.

RaeAnne Thayne: It's really, [00:10:00] it's great. And anybody that's a writer, I really highly recommend it, especially, but I recommend that you get people that are kind of the same writing, the same kind of things, but maybe not exactly what you're writing.

So like I write with a dear friend who's a who writes more romantic comedy. So she helps me bring the comedy elements. I sort of help her with the more emotional, that's sort of my forte is all the emotion, emotional intensity of this, of the scenes. And so, and then we've got a couple other friends that are so good at Figuring out women's fiction and things like that.

And so it works. It works really well. If you get the right,

Laura: That's like a brilliant idea. I think it sounds it's also nice to have a community that you can bounce ideas and you're when you're stuck in the problem or an idea like sometimes. Yes, sometimes the shower works and sometimes just like sleep it off and sour go for a walk. But sometimes it's just having someone to just like send a voice note or call and be like, Hey, here's the issue.

Let's figure things out, and having that space of like, an escape to go socialize, and spend time with friends and help you it's a work [00:11:00] business.

RaeAnne Thayne: Oh, good. It's really is. And it energizes all of us. I think we'd come back really excited from it. We didn't, we couldn't do it during COVID. So we just did zoom and that's can be successful. I mean, if you're all spread out and you can't get together, we actually, we found it all really very helpful. To.

But it's better if you're in person because a lot of the fun happens at night when you're all done working, we work really hard. We have two full days of plotting and everybody gets half a day, and it's a lot of work and we're tired at the end, but it's really fun to hang out and just talk about our lives and things like that.

But it, and I do recommend it just because, I've written 75 books at this point, I've written every story I ever wanted to tell, it was, In order for me to keep bringing my readers something fresh and new and original, sometimes I need other perspectives from people who maybe have a different life experience than I do and can offer, they watch different shows than I do, or they, have had something happen to them that's very different from me.

And so, so it does help my books. I feel like it helps my books to be stronger than if I were doing it on my own.

Laura: And can we [00:12:00] expect for book 76? Like, I'm assuming this is the summer release. So talk to us like, if you give us a teaser, so that we know, okay, we can go, we're gonna look forward to 2025.

RaeAnne Thayne: So it was it's my longest book ever. I would say that it's kind of a dual there's a dual story. It's not a dual timeline, but it's kind of a dual story. So it's about basically the opening line is. The day she died, Juniper I can't remember last, Connelly had just finished firing her latest intern.

So, she had, this woman has a cardiac arrest in her office, and she's brought back to life by her, this assistant that she was just firing in the middle of firing. And, It turns out there's a secret between the two of them, which comes out really early in the book. So I can tell you they're half sisters.

She doesn't know June doesn't know that they're half sisters. And so, the other sister had gone there to meet her to get to know her to sort of, find out if they find she finds out. About midway through the book that her dad was this famous author that she loved. Her mother had loved this famous author, obviously, [00:13:00] because she had a baby by him, but she didn't know.

And so it's kind of a mystery about what, tore those two lovers apart. And then these two sisters coming together. And then of course, this woman dealing with the fact that she's got this congenital heart issue that she didn't know about. She's very healthy. She's an athlete. She didn't know that she had this rhythm, heart rhythm issue, and so it's dealing with that as well.

So it's called The Lost Book of First Loves. And so there's a, they're looking for a manuscript. The father had just died, six months earlier. So she never got to meet him. But he, she thinks that he wrote this manuscript years ago. And so she's trying to find it, not knowing that it's about his relationship with her mother.

So it's kind of a

Laura: my gosh. This is very exciting. I'm like, now I just want to be summer 2025.

RaeAnne Thayne: I know, yeah. Coming out in, I think in June. I don't know exactly the release date,

Laura: It is. It is so good. So we'll be on the lookout, but we have, you have 75 books for us to dive into in the back list, which is a healthy backlist that gives you, you have small town, you got some [00:14:00] romance is expensive. You want to go to your earlier books, but then you have, your women's fiction.

You're like nice little. issues. And then your Christmas romances. So, which is perfect. So

RaeAnne Thayne: I do like to add the caveat to people who are just discovering me that my books are, I would say, I don't like the term, but they're on the sweet. There's not a lot of intimacy in my stories, but my earlier books were not like that. They were a little spicier. I wouldn't say they were ever super spicy, but if you only want nothing like that, then you need to read my later books.

If you're okay with some of that, you can read some of my other

Laura: that's even perfect. So thank you for making that caveat because I think it's a more into, so it depends on the reader. It depends on their taste. It depends on where they are. Like, I personally skip most of the sex scenes and that's just like my personal preference, but sometimes, some readers are very passionate about it.

Some readers are very passionate about having them. So it is all good. So you have a spectrum there to offer.

RaeAnne Thayne: Right. And I get comments on both sides. I get comments from people who say, I love that. I don't have to skip over a lot [00:15:00] in your books and other people who say, well, I don't need more sex needed more, but I wasn't, they're very sensual. I would say, I mean, there's tension definitely between the hero and the heroine.

There's, it's always there underlying the story, but I just don't, I like to keep the door closed.

Laura: is. Okay. All right. So, Raeann, tell us where you find me online.

RaeAnne Thayne: My website is rayanthane. com. And so that's, it's. Ray with an E, Anne with an E, R A E A N E, and then T H A Y N E dot com. And then I'm on Facebook. I'm most active on Facebook or Instagram. I don't do a lot on TikTok. I probably need to do more there. But I kind of feel like it's a little younger crowd than maybe are reading my books.

But hopefully they will discover my books at some point, I hope.

Laura: Yes. I

RaeAnne Thayne: thing. And I also have a book group. So if people I interview other author friends once a month. And so I have a book group. It's called Rayann Thain's book group.

Laura: love this. And this is on Facebook, the

RaeAnne Thayne: Yeah. It's on Facebook. It's a Facebook group. Yeah.

It's not very, there's not a lot of emails. I post usually about who we're [00:16:00] interviewing, tell them what the book is. And then I do a live Facebook live once a month where I'm interviewing someone.

Laura: Awesome. Thank you, Raeann, for being on the show.

RaeAnne Thayne: That was a delight. Thank you so much for inviting me.