Riley Redgate (Photo courtesy of Ally Schmaling Photography)
MELISSA WHITLER | NBCU Fellow
Melissa@DallasVoice.com
Riley Redgate’s latest novel, Come Home to My Heart, released May 6, is set in South Carolina, and it follows high school students Gloria and Xia, two friends who couldn’t be more different.
Gloria comes from a very devout Christian family and plays the part of the perfect straight daughter. Xia pushes everyone away so they won’t find out she’s a lesbian. The two form an unexpected friendship, and feelings they’ve tried to deny come forward.
Redgate handles the topics of homelessness and family rejection carefully and with respect while telling the love story of two young girls.
Ahead of the book’s release, Redgate discussed her writing and publishing experience with Dallas Voice.
Dallas Voice: This book deals with a lot of traumatic topics. How did you get into the characters’ mindset? What was it like writing this for you? Riley Redgate: Those issues really developed over the course of multiple drafts. It was given the final polish by Angela Sanchez, who is super passionate about advocating for the homeless population. I worked on developing Gloria’s character with her. She provided insight into the precarity mindset.
Xia is a very comfortable, cozy space for me, so writing her was very easy. She has these feelings of mistrust, of social persecution that she somewhat brings on herself. Their dynamic was really the foundation to build out the rest of the story.
I enjoy writing about characters who have to unlearn really large world views, the paradigms they didn’t realize defined everything about them. It was important to include Gloria reconciling her religious upbringing with her arc of queer self-acceptance.
I wanted to write a story where coming out didn’t mean socially coming out to everyone.
That’s not a requirement for the end of the narrative. This book is more of a personal coming out to yourself and feels more like the starting point. There’s so much left, and the end is filled with possibility.
With this book, you’re also donating a portion of the proceeds. Can you tell me about that? Because this story deals with homelessness, I wanted to give back to the people in real life working on this issue. The specific organizations I landed on are doing incredible and important work. This way, even if only a handful of people ever read the book, it will have a material impact.
The Harriet Handcock Center offers the LGBTQ community support in the midlands of South Carolina, where the book is set. The Relatives is more housing-focused and does incredible work to support young people in crisis in my home state. North Star is a LGBTQ community center operating out of my hometown and actually opened the year I graduated from high school. Covenant House provides housing for young people facing homelessness. The Night Ministry offers housing support in Chicago.
Things are tough right now, and these spaces are more important than ever.
It’s been almost 10 years since your first book was published. What has this experience been like for you? Working on this book felt so different. If you are in publishing for a long time, you kind of adopt a relaxed attitude about what you can and cannot change.
You just have to ride the ebbs and flows. I have less anxiety about certain things than I used to, and I’m a more confident writer. I know more about what I want to say, and my priorities have changed.
I’m also better at maintaining boundaries now. It really was rough to see people reacting to my fourth novel by saying it wasn’t queer enough. I felt like I needed to justify or prove my queerness. Now, I don’t feel that pressure as much and want to let readers and reviewers have their own spaces.
You’re also a music creator. How is that different from writing for you? Has this influenced your writing in any way? Creating music and writing are totally different for me. I have no expectation that anyone will listen to my music. I find myself being more expressive. I could easily write a song with no lyrics and just wail into the void. I don’t see my music- making as storytelling. I also have very little sense of music discipline, which is funny because I teach piano and tell my kids to practice regularly. In writing, I really feel like I’m trying to get away from myself while music is expressing myself.
You also have a project up on webtoon, Angel of Death. Yes, it’s been really fun! I love the editor; she has a wonderful visual sense. It has been a different kind of writing process. With prose, I have no constraints on what I can describe. For a comic, I have to think about what the art team is going to have to deal with later. It’s much more collaborative. Writing a novel is intensely solitary. For Angel of Death, we have a whole art team, line artists, storyboard artist, colorists, lighting, two background artists, lettering. They’re all really fantastic.
How do you practice self-care as a queer author? Writing-focused support systems are really important. The biggest act of literary self-care is to find a writer’s group. You don’t want to be alone in the room, and it helps to speak to people whose opinions you trust. You need friends who will give it to you straight and emotionally support you.
It’s also important to know what feels like artistic injury. If you know that reading your old work makes you feel bad it falls to you to avoid that. If talking about your work during the early stages makes you feel overwhelmed, it falls to you to protect yourself. Self-knowledge is the first step to self-care.
For more information and to purchase the book, visit RileyRedgate.com/books.