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Rachel O'Laughlin

author of the SERENGARD series and other dark meat

Portfolio

Family in the Wildwood

Young Woman and the Sea

January Stills

Train Traveling

A quick summary of my current existence.

I adore strong coffee, The Fray, long drives in the country, and compelling stories about humans. Most of my writings are epic fantasy or historical fiction, but occasionally I get distracted by a thriller or short story project. My most recent novel, Blood of Ashlin (the final installment in the SERENGARD series) is just a little bit gritty with a dose of redemption. I live in Maine with my husband and kids. Together we grow roses and spinach.

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Occasionally I type up deep (or shallow) things and post them. You can be so informed.

The Only Social Media I Update: Insta

"Our tragedy today is a general and universal physical fear, so long sustained by now that we can even bear it. There are no longer problems of the spirit. There is only one question: When will I be blown up? Because of this, the young man/young woman writing today has forgotten the problems of the human heart in conflict with itself which alone can make good writing because only that is worth writing about, worth the agony and the sweat. He must learn them again. He must teach himself that the basest of all things is to be afraid; and, teaching himself that, forget it forever, leaving no room in his workshop for anything but the old verities and truths of the heart, the old universal truths lacking which any story is ephemeral and doomed -- love and honor and pity and pride and compassion and sacrifice. Until he does so, he lives under a curse. He writes not of love but of lust, of defeats in which nobody loses anything of value, of victories without hope and, worst of all, without pity or compassion. His griefs grieve on no universal bones, leaving no scars. He writes not of the heart but of the glands. Until he relearns these things, he will write as though he stood among and watched the end of man. I decline to accept the end of man. It is easy enough to say that man is immortal simply because he will still endure: that when the last ding-dong of doom has clanged and faded from the last worthless rock hanging tideless in the last red and dying evening, that even then there will still be one more sound: that of his puny inexhaustible voice, still talking." --William Faulkner, from his address accepting the Nobel Prize in Literature December 10, 1950 in Stockholm, Sweden

Late evening gardening self-portrait. I've been thinking a lot about the things I love to do, how they're a part of me, how I hate to professionalize them because I truly adore the state of being an amateur (from the French amor, which literally means "to love", translated roughly "to do for the love of") and how that has effected my squeamishness in asking for money for anything I do. I reject the diddly phrase "time is money" because the two things are light years from each other, actually. Money is a mathematical substance. You can always multiply and divide money. You can find money sitting around on a sidewalk. Someone can hand you money for no reason at all, or you can hand it to someone who needs it more than you. Time? None of us can add a single hour to our lives. Not even the richest human has been allotted more days. We can buy babysitters and quiet spaces, but all we've done is shuffle around what we're doing with our time; we can never actually purchase it. Getting paid for what I do is not a bad thing, but it runs the risk of cheapening it. I pour my heart into something and then slap a $10 price tag on it? Ick. This is why The Arts have such a messed up value system; because art is a labor and expression of love, and money can't buy you love. Love is always a gift. Money paid for art has to be a gift in return--a simple, "I know that this love cost you in physical form, so here is something that cost me physically to produce as well." There are so many investments we make in life--art is only one of them--that are tangible, valuable, and even virtuous, but can never be measured mathematically.

Volume 2 is dog-eared within a month of arrival. Eldredge boys, we need Volume 3. "ANOTHER!" (in a Thor voice) #AndSonsMagazine #printcomeback #initiation #heart #soul #adventure #podcast

My favorite jobs are the ones we do together. In 9 1/2 years of married life, he has had much pulling him one way, I have had much pulling me another. He is practical and driven. I am artsy and often go the long way around. It can be hard to synchronize. We've worked at it. Worked and worked at it. If every day is ice cream, the days we spend working together are whipped cream, nuts and a cherry.

10-month-old puts a fresh spin on "mudding".