Writer’s Corner: Linda Raines

Where did you grow up, and what was that like?

I grew up on a farm in southeast Missouri, right at the confluence of the Mississippi and Ohio Rivers. We were way out in the country, so much of my time was spent playing with the farm dogs and cats, or riding my bike to a friend’s house to ride her horse. I spent so, so many hours walking through the fields and pastures with my dogs, daydreaming about all of the places that I wanted to travel to someday, and so often wishing that I could find a portal in time to go back to the past that I loved so much from all of the books that I read.

Describe your perfect day.

Cold, grey, windy and rainy autumn day with heavy rain pelting against the windows, thunder and sitting with coffee or hot tea, my dogs, under a blanket with a good book.

How long have you been a writer, and how’d you get into it?

I think that my love for writing must have started in the fourth grade when my teacher had the kids who were in the advanced reading program write their own books about whatever we wanted. She worked with someone she knew to get them “published,” and they were displayed at our local library for a few months so people (likely just parents and relatives!) could check them out and read them. That ignited my love for writing, but I’d never pursued it more than the required papers in my university classes, and then later writing Harry Potter fanfiction with a group of online friends and participating in a many-years-long online role-playing game in which I developed and wrote numerous characters. I actually worked at Lavender for many years before I started doing any writing for the magazine, which I quite enjoy.

What are you reading/watching/listening to these days?

Right now, I’m reading a book called “The Fire and The Light,” a novel about the Cathars in the Occitania region of southern France in the late 1100s and early 1200s. It’s historical fiction, but all of the characters are real people who lived then and dealt with the horrific treatment of the Cathars as heretics by the Catholic Church. I’ve visited many castles, cities and areas in that region that are associated with Cathar history, and it always fascinates me to think of the people who lived through this.

I also recently finished reading a book by Jonathan Cott about Omm Sety, an English woman who had a nearly deadly fall down a staircase as a young child named Dorothy Eady and awoke from a coma to have very vivid memories of having lived in a past life as a young priestess in ancient Egypt during the reign of Sety I at the temple of Osiris in Abydos. She moved to Egypt, married and had a child there, and worked with numerous noted Egyptologists. She has fascinated me since I was in my very early teens and saw a BBC interview with her shortly before she died in 1981. It sounds almost fantastical, but reading the book and realizing what an impact she had on modern Egyptology and the discovery of much of the previously lost temple of Osiris in Abydos because of her supposed memories from this previous life is beyond fascinating. I would have loved to have met her.

As to watching, I’ve been bingeing on a short mini-series on Apple+ called “Masters of the Air,” which is based on the 2007 book of the same name by Donald L. Miller. It follows the 100th Bomb Group of the Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress heavy bomber unit of the Eighth Air Force stationed at Thorpe Abbotts air base in eastern England during World War II. They were known as the Bloody 100th for the catastrophic losses they suffered in their daytime missions over German-occupied territory.

Who or what inspires you?

Beauty and history in art, music, architecture and historic clothing and jewelry. Renaissance and medieval paintings, the breathtaking gowns created by the House of Worth during the Gilded Age and the jewels of Imperial Russia. Walking through magnificent European cathedrals and castles and spending time in Notre Dame and Sainte-Chapelle in Paris. Standing in the French cave of Pech Merle and gazing at the red-painted handprints of the prehistoric people who lived there. It’s almost surreal to stand there in the exact same spot as the person who placed their hands on that wall and blew red ochre paint against the walls of that cave some 20,000 years ago.

Favorite qualities in another person?

A sense of adventure and a love of travel, a love for finding the new, the different, the unique. Most definitely kindness and compassion, especially for animals.

Least favorite?

Arrogance, self-centeredness, a sense of entitlement. Above all, cruelty to the defenseless and the innocents … animals, children, the elderly.

Where’s your happy place?

Two places: France and Scotland. I am so viscerally drawn to both places, both by blood and by my love of the history of both countries and the breathtaking beauty of them. The wild, rugged, untamed beauty of the Scottish Highlands is such a part of my soul because I think of my ancestors that lived there, and the utter beauty of all parts of France is just glorious.

What is your motto?

Nothing is promised, so don’t keep putting off following your dreams and looking for adventure, or it may end up being too late.