Escaping with Kimberly Belle



Kimberly is visiting Writers Corner to share why you should escape with The Ones We Trust.  This is her most recent novel.  You can see my review of her novel here.  We might also discuss some other ways to escape.

Thank you for having me!

Why is The Ones We Trust a good novel to escape with?

One reviewer described The Ones We Trust as an episode of Scandal mixed with A Few Good Men. I love that! What’s better than a good story to suck you in? Any good book is an escape, a place to lose yourself in for a few hours. A place to forget your problems and the world, and to experience someone else’s drama for a bit, and escape from your own.

What would make these concepts of trust and love important to us and your characters?

Trust is, as the title implies, an important issue in The Ones we Trust. Love, too. My characters struggle with both, and they find that sometimes the lines between them get blurred. You can’t always help who you love – family or romantic – but trust is a more rational choice. It’s such a hard thing to give sometimes, and we don’t give it unconditionally. There comes a time when we draw a line in the sand, where we can no longer justify what we are experiencing with the belief that the other person is behaving with good intentions. Abigail, my main character, finds this to be true with her father, and how she works things out with him is a big part of the story, and their journey is something I think a lot of readers can relate to.

How have you found this to be true in your own life?

Hmm, thankfully, I’ve not had to face these types of big-issue problems with my closest loved ones, but I do have a couple of teenage kids, and every day is a lesson in letting go, in trusting that their own choices will be good ones. So far they haven’t disappointed me (the opposite, actually; I’m a ridiculously proud mama), but their choices are not always the ones I would have made for them, and that’s okay. But it’s a constant lesson for me to hold my tongue and trust their judgment enough to let them shape their own lives.

What would be your message to the Breast Cancer survivors?

I have a couple of survivor girlfriends, and their journey has made them so, so wise. I know how easy it is to get caught up in things that don’t really matter, to put work and other commitments before friends and family, to slog through the days until the next weekend, the next vacation, the next whatever. Why do we do this? Why do we waste a moment of our precious time with petty emotions and unimportant crap? All that goes to say, my message is one I’m stealing from my survivor friends :: live and laugh and love every moment of every day, treat it like the gift it is.

How does Kimberly escape the real world?

I am a yoga fan, some might even say a fanatic. For me it’s more than getting up and out of my writing chair; it’s about getting grounded, about letting the story go long enough to let my subconscious take over. Especially when I’m stuck, I’ve found that as soon as I let go of the story and do something physical, my plot knots unwind and I figure out how to move forward. The longer, leaner, stronger yoga bod is an added bonus.

What writers would you also recommend for escape?

Oh, gosh, how much time do you have? I adore so many of my colleague authors – Cathy Lamb and Mary Kubica and Pam Jenoff to name just a few – but there are so many other good ones out there. In women’s fiction, Heather Gudenkauf, Steena Holmes, Laura Dave, and Allison Winn Scotch are automatic buys for me. Jonathan Tropper can always make me laugh out loud, and whenever a new Black Dagger Brotherhood book from J.R. Ward comes out, I will literally block off a day or two on my calendar to read it. I will read pretty much anything, and I love pretty much every genre. Books are my favorite way to escape.

You can purchase Kimberly's novels here:  
 
The Ones We Trust ~ One of Star Magazine’s Summer Beach Reads
The Last Breath
 

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