Scottish-American author Ruth Emmie Lang releases her second novel today, detailing the journey of two sisters with extraordinary qualities who set out in search of their mother using their psychic talents.
Lang’s debut novel, Beasts of Extraordinary Circumstance, hit shelves in 2017, but she was writing long before.
“I’ve basically been writing since I was a kid,” says Lang. “I would write short stories with my friends when I was little, but I really started to get into writing when I was in college.”
For a while, her dream was to become a screenwriter, she even studied film at Ohio State University where she majored in English, but her life ultimately led back to books.
“I was like ‘unless I come up with a lot of money, I’m never going to be able to realize any of these stories,’” she recalls. “So, I decided to sit down and write a book ad that was my way of being able to fully realize a story.”
Her life did not lead completely away from film (her husband works in the industry in Cleveland), but books are where she finds the place to tell the next great story. Part of the fantasies she creates in The Wilderwomen is even based on reality.
“The story deals with a lot of themes of motherhood, and I was, kind of, just trying to use my imagination to figure out what this mother-daughter relationship was,” Lang says. “While I was writing, I became pregnant, and on the final revision, I was at 37 weeks and suddenly my son comes early. I ended up finishing the book while he was a newborn just napping on my chest. It [helped] me go back and revise based on my new kind of insight and what it is to be a parent.”
That experience helped her write the next great road-trip novel with a supernatural twist, perfect for those in the mood for an adventure with fantasy.
“It’s part mystery, it’s part road trip, part magical realist story, about these two sisters just trying to piece together what happened to their mom,” says Lang.
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