We were lucky to catch up with Laura Preble recently and have shared our conversation below.

Laura, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today What’s been the most meaningful project you’ve worked on?

I’ve published six books now, and probably the most meaningful to me was a young adult novel titled OUT, which was published in 2013. It’s a speculative fiction book where the majority of people in the world are what we’d call gay and the minority are what we’d call straight. I called them Parallels ( gay) and Perpendiculars( straight).

This was at a time where the rights of LGBT+ people to marry was being hotly debated and many conservative churches were opposed to it. I wanted to write a book where the reader was essentially forced to see the world from the point of view of the main character, a young man who is the son of a pastor in this theocracy. In this world, the church IS the government.

When the main character Chris finds himself surprisingly in love with a woman, he is terrified. Its against the law in this world. His father, a high-level operative in the Anglicant Church, would disown him and send him to a reconditioning camp.

Its meaningful because I received many letters from teens who had read it and given it to their relatives to read, to help explain that who you love is not a choice. Who you find attractive is not a choice. That the government should not be run by a belief system or religion, and that love cannot be legislated.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

I’ve published six books now, and probably the most meaningful to me was a young adult novel titled OUT, which was published in 2013. This was after California’s failed Prop 8, an initiative intended to ban gay marriage. The book is a speculative fiction book where the majority of people in the world are what we’d call gay and the minority are what we’d call straight. I called them Parallels ( gay) and Perpendiculars( straight).

This was at a time where the rights of LGBT+ people to marry was being hotly debated and many conservative churches were opposed to it. I wanted to write a book where the reader was essentially forced to see the world from the point of view of the main character, a young man who is the son of a pastor in this theocracy. In this world, the church IS the government.

When the main character Chris finds himself surprisingly in love with a woman, he is terrified. It’s against the law in this world. His father, a high-level operative in the Anglicant Church, would disown him and send him to a reconditioning camp if he was found out.

It’s meaningful because I received many letters from teens who had read it and given it to their relatives to read, to help explain that who you love is not a choice. Who you find attractive is not a choice. That the government should not be run by a belief system or religion, and that love cannot be legislated.

I don’t write about only LGBT+ themes, and in fact, this was my only book that dealt with that. I think I decided to do it because my stepson was gay at that time (and now identifies as trans, which is another hotly debated thing among conservatives…I don’t know why they feel the need to control the sexuality of other people.)

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

My goal in writing all of my novels is to create a bridge to understanding. Now I focus on adult fiction, and my last published book, ANNA INCOGNITO, centers on a woman who has severe OCD brought on my significant trauma. I live with someone who has this condition, so I know how difficult it can be.

The novel I’m finishing centers on a woman in middle age who finds herself facing all of the mistakes she made in her life and deciding whether she wants to remember the lessons she learns and grow from the mistakes OR whether she chooses to just forget them, go on being numb. I think we can all relate to the numbness at the moment, and why it’s so tempting to just shut down and forget things.

But I also think confronting the things that are uncomfortable, the lessons, the mistakes, those are the things that help us grow as people and as a species. We are in the midst of a giant reckoning in the United States at the moment. We are faced in so many ways with our past mistakes. We are being called to look at them honestly and to do better. I hope in some small way, my books might contribute to that.

What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?

The biggest lesson I have learned in my creative journey is to trust my gut, which I didn’t always do. An example of this is that I worked with someone who at the time was a great friend who wrote music. He asked me to write the libretto of a musical he was creating, and he had a producer who had the money to put it up on stage once we finished.

Of course I was so excited about getting something I wrote out to the public and on a stage that I agreed. This was fine until I actually met the producer. I sensed when I met him that he was a predatory person, that he would take advantage of both of us, but I swept that feeling away as unreasonable. I had no proof of this, so I just ignored my intuition.

Later, when the show was finished and running on a prominent local stage, the producer talked my composer friend into dumping me from the project. He promised my friend glory and riches, and fame. I was essentially ambushed and told that if I didn’t like it, I could sue. We HAD done a contract (which I guess was because of my intuition) but I also learned another very valuable lesson: contracts are only as good as the lawyers you can hire to enforce them. As a classroom teacher at that time, I had no extra money and was still paying off student loans. So, even though I did have a contract, I couldn’t afford a lawyer to sue. So I was taken off the project, and it continued for a short time without me.

It was a real gut punch, mostly because I had thought this person was my friend, and I trusted him with my creative work. The creation of the piece was one of the most joyful experiences of my life; the stealing of it was one of the most painful.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://preblebooks.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/preblebooks/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/laura.preble1

Image Credits

Laura Preble for all photos except:

OUT book cover designed by Dan McDowell
ANNA INCOGNITO cover designed by Mascot Publishing