Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Renee Beauregard Lute. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Hi Renee, thanks for joining us today. To kick things off, we’d love to hear about things you or your brand do that diverge from the industry standard.

A lot of writers write every single day. Kate DiCamillo (one of my favorites) famously writes at least two pages a day. I think that works for many writers, but it doesn’t work for me. If I don’t have a deadline, my writing schedule is all over the place. Fifteen pages one day, no pages for two days, three pages that following day, etc. I’ve always felt kind of undisciplined in that way. Like “If a writer doesn’t write for a solid week, are they even still a writer??” Well, yes. They are. I was at a fantastic author event a couple of months ago, and heard Angie Thomas (another one of my favorites) talking about this exact thing. She said she doesn’t force it. If she’s not in the mood to write, she reads instead. She does something else that she enjoys, or something that inspires her, and then gets back to the writing when she’s ready. That was one of the most helpful things I’ve heard in my life. There’s no shame in taking writing breaks. Go out and do something else and come back to the writing when you’re ready.

Renee, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

I’m a children’s book author! I write mostly middle grade novels, for ages 9-12, but am currently working on a young adult novel that has been a lot of fun to write.

I’ve been writing forever, but realized that this specific thing — writing books for kids — was what I wanted to do during grad school. I went to Hamline University to get my MFA in creative writing, and I assumed I’d be writing mostly short stories and longer adult fiction while I was there. But I stumbled into a “Writing for Young Readers” class, and that kind of writing felt completely different from the other kinds of writing I had been doing. I loved it. So I took another class on children’s literature, and another, and in one of those classes I began writing the chapter book that would eventually be my first published book: Winicker Hates Paris.

After graduating with my MFA, I joined a critique group where I met other wonderful writers who helped shape that first Winicker book into what it would eventually be. I joined SCBWI, the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators, and started querying literary agents. Eventually, after years of revision and querying and working on new projects, I signed with a literary agency, and then got a book deal. And then another, and then another, and I hope to keep going as long as possible, because writing books for kids is just about the most fun thing I can think of.

My new book, Dinner at the Brake Fast (out with Quill Tree Books / HarperCollins on June 25), is about a twelve-year-old girl named Tacoma who runs a truck stop diner with her parents in North Bend, Washington. Tacoma is kind of desperate to have an adventure, and that’s exactly what she gets to do when a tour bus breaks down in the parking lot of the Brake Fast. She takes an accomplice-turned-friend from the bus through some hairy situations while trying to a.) pick up ingredients for her first-ever dinner at the all-breakfast Brake Fast truck stop and b.) steal back her dad’s prized possession with the intention of helping him through a particularly hard day.

I am unbelievably proud of this book. There are some big themes throughout — friendship, family, food, mental health — and it’s set in the North Bend / Snoqualmie area, which I love. I dragged a dear friend with me to walk the intensely dark and eerie Snoqualmie Tunnel, as it appears in a major scene, and there are a number of other Western WA landmarks in this book. If all books are a love letter to *something,* this one might be a love letter to Washington State.

What do you think is the goal or mission that drives your creative journey?

I’ve been a major reader since early childhood, and I realized at some point that the books I was drawn to were books about kids who did the wrong thing at least some of the time. I felt that way a lot. Like I was constantly making mistakes, even if I was trying as hard as I could. Reading about Ramona Quimby (Beverly Cleary), Anastasia Krupnik (Lois Lowry), Anne Shirley (Lucy Maud Montgomery), and other “kindred spirits” who struggled with mistake-making, anxiety, and giant imaginations that got them into some amount of trouble — I felt absolutely seen. I write characters with anxiety and who make mistakes for the same reason. In my upcoming middle grade novel, Dinner at the Brake Fast, twelve-year-old Tacoma Jones has big anxieties and makes some questionable choices, all with the intention of helping her dad, who is struggling with depression, or of taking care of other people through her cooking. She’s a mistake-maker, like me. Like lots of people. Like Ramona and Anastasia and Anne. I’d love for readers to have the same kind of joyful “hey, I kind of feel like that, too” moment while reading my books, because I loved stumbling across that moment as a young reader.

What’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative in your experience?

As strange as it is to say out loud, my head is a really interesting place to live. Even when I’m not at my desk, I’m thinking about a scene I’m working on, or a character in a current project. I think I would get awfully bored if I didn’t have all of that going on in my head all the time. My husband will walk into a room and say, “Were you talking to me?” And I realize that I’ve been thinking out loud — talking through a conversation that a couple of my characters need to have in a later scene. While that’s vaguely embarrassing, it highlights for me the fact that my job keeps me preoccupied in the best possible way.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.reneebeauregardlute.com
• Instagram: @reneeblute
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ReneeBeauregardLute/
• Twitter: @ReneeBLute
• Other: TikTok: @reneeblute

  Amazon Link to Dinner at the Brake Fast:
  https://www.amazon.com/Dinner-Brake-Fast-Renee-Beauregard/dp/0063324903/ref=sr_1_1?crid=2DEU7Q3TOTU4&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.cg8iMMd0Td_oo_XdMER1DQ.XlbYPTZnVoByDpnSNtRWQsekZacqXYnK4SfcLvO3LPA&dib_tag=se&keywords=dinner+at+the+brake+fast+lute&qid=1717780980&sprefix=dinner+at+the+br%2Caps%2C193&sr=8-1

Image Credits

Dinner at the Brake Fast cover art by Oriol Vidal