I was trying to write broadly enough that anyone who had childhood or church trauma or abuse could relate and be inspired by it.

Penny Lane – 26 June 2024

The Back Flap

Penny is just four years old when she is snatched away from her all-American home by the Hungarian father who abandoned her when she was a baby. After facing isolation and neglect in a strange, dysfunctional household where heartache, rejection, and physical abuse rule her life, she escapes—only to find herself in a relationship with a man who’s just converted to fundamentalist Christianity. Penny’s road is long, winding, and often painful, but gradually she begins to listen to her inner voice, stand up for herself, and refuse to bow to the pressures of either her family or society—freeing herself to build a life on her own terms and find her way to happiness.

A rise-from-the-ashes hero’s story of overcoming abuse, trauma, and unbearable odds, of being waylaid by both family and religion’s promise of love, and harnessing the resilience to find the way home, Redeemed offers a rare window into Eastern European immigrant culture and reads like a page-turning thriller. Especially relevant today—a time when marginalized people are increasingly finding a voice—this memoir will serve as an inspiration to women everywhere, encouraging them to overcome their obstacles and go after their dreams.

About the book

What is the book about?

It’s a rise-from-the-ashes story about a motherless, unwanted girl who endures abuse and neglect, only to fall into similar trauma in the church and marriage, until she breaks free and creates her own identity and happiness on her own terms.

When did you start writing the book?

I started in January 2020, before the pandemic.

How long did it take you to write it?

It took about 6 to 8 months to write, and another six to edit and revise.

Where did you get the idea from?

It is my survival story. I love books and writers, so after people have told me for thirty years, “Penny, you need to write a book about this,” I knew it was time to do it. Writing it was following my path. It’s almost a calling to write it.

Were there any parts of the book where you struggled?

I struggled on how to start it, and how to end it, and what to leave in and what to take out. When you are talking about abuse, I was told that no one wants to read a “misery memoir,’ so I left a lot out, and I was careful to balance it with cute vignettes and funny stuff when I could. When I came to ending it, I wanted to bring readers up to date, but my publisher thought it was too much, so I left just enough in the epilogue to finish the point of the story, which was that I triumphed over my odds tenfold, and in the end, was happy.

What came easily?

For me, because I was writing memoir- the stories of my life that affect me to this day, the initial writing came easily. Keeping the reader ‘present in the story’ was harder, painting a scene and fleshing out the characters so that the reader knew the whole person, and felt like they were in the room was harder.

Are your characters entirely fictitious or have you borrowed from real world people you know?

All my characters are real and exactly as I remember them except names and some details like occupations have changed to protect their privacy. I tried to be fair and evenhanded even with my enemies.

We all know how important it is for writers to read. Are there any particular authors that have influenced how you write and, if so, how have they influenced you?

I love books and reading more than anything else, and I read constantly. There are authors I read to know how to write, like Anne Lamott’s Bird By Bird, and Mary Karr’s The Art of Memoir, which taught me how to write memoir. I admire the sparseness of the language in Cormac McCarthy’s books, and tried to copy his style. I loved the brave storytelling of Jannette Walls in the Glass Castle or Augusten Burroughs in Running with Scissors. I have to credit Dorothy Allison for Bastard out of Carolina, for showing me that other people endured abuse too. Because I hid my abuse for so long, I naively thought I was the only abuse survivor.

Do you have a target reader? 

No. I was trying to write broadly enough that anyone who had childhood or church trauma or abuse could relate and be inspired by it.

About Writing

Do you have a writing process? If so can you please describe it? 

Yes. I took a great class with Irene Graham of the Memoir Writing Workshop, who taught us to use mind-mapping to access ideas and stories that may be forgotten or pushed down, then to use a timeline to list major life events and categorize them into a central theme or message. Once I found my theme, in my case surviving and triumphing over abuse, I used the mapping technique to flesh out people, places, scenes; to put readers into the scene so they feel like they were there. My editor then helped me keep my present day thinking and reflections off the page in order to keep readers in the story as it was unfolding. It also helped create suspense and tension.

Do you outline? If so, do you do so extensively or just chapter headings and a couple of sentences? 

I did outline, and used a large drawing pad for thought-bubbles. I used one major event at each pertinent age to tell the story. I made a one-sentence outline of the events I wanted to use- they became my chapters, and I wrote one chapter at a time, chronologically, based on the outline. Typically, it was just story headings. Since it was all in my head, that was enough.

Do you edit as you go or wait until you’ve finished?

I did edit as I went, but then a friend who was a publisher author, Julian Guthrie, told me I had to hire a professional editor. It was good advice. I am very proud of my finished work. It’s much better-cleaner, crisper, more suspenseful than my first attempt. My early readers all told me they could not put it down.

Do you listen to music while you write? If yes, what gets the fingers tapping?

No music, no finger tapping, and if I had my druthers, I’d be alone in the house, but since I was writing during the pandemic, that was not going to happen. I like solitude and quiet to think and unearth my deepest secrets.

About Publishing

Did you submit your work to Agents?

I did. My editor helped me write a beautiful and compelling query letter which I submitted to 84 agents before She Writes Press gave me a chance. I got maybe 15 polite “no, thank you’s.” The rest I never heard back from.

What made you decide to go Indie, whether self-publishing or with an indie publisher?

I have a very successful thirty year career in sales, so cold-calling or emailing was no problem to me, but I just could not break into a traditional publisher, and I was told by an agent a friend in New York knew, that it was because I did not have a platform of at least twenty thousand followers, and that without it, I did not stand a chance. So, I knew, if I wanted my story told- and I did – it would have to be self-published or hybrid. Since I wanted to be in bookstores and libraries- a distribution channel not open to self-published books, I had to go hybrid.

Was it a particular event or a gradual process?

It was a process of many months. I am an early riser, and used to writing many emails and making many calls.  I did a LOT of leg work and research, handcrafting each email to that agent, mentioning the book that I read that THEY brought to market, etc. The tipping point was speaking to that literary agent who kindly told me that memoir was the hardest to sell, and that I did not stand a chance. It hurt, but I am grateful she told me.

Did you get your book cover professionally done or did you do it yourself?

She Writes Press, the indie women owned hybrid publisher I went with had a design team who designed it. It’s a stock image on the cover, but they somehow found one that looks like me.

Do you have a marketing plan for the book or are you just winging it?

I hired Books Forword as my publicists, and on top of what they do, I have been marketing to library systems across the country and indie bookstores in my area, or places that are in my story.

Any advice that you would like to give to other newbies considering becoming Indie authors?

I’d say, go in with your eyes open. Think long and hard on what its worth to you to become a published writer. I think for most of us, the old-fashioned dream of getting picked up by a major publisher, getting an advance, and touring the country on their dime to promote your book is over. For me, publishing and the whole “creating a platform,” building a website and finding a publicist and publisher I liked and trusted was much harder, and more expensive than writing the book, and not what I expected. So know going in, that the writing is only part of the job.

About You

Where did you grow up?

I grew up mostly in Jackson Heights, Queens, a blue color working class neighborhood of mostly European immigrants in the 1970’s, and my very early years in Linden, New Jersey.

Where do you live now?

I live in a beautiful, small commuter town called Mill Valley, ten miles north of San Francisco.

What would you like readers to know about you?

I feel like I had a choice about how to live my life after I healed from my abuse, and I chose to be happy, and to be the best person I can be. I know it does not always end that way. People find ways to self-medicate that are not always healthy. Many people hide their abuse and trauma from shame. I want to inspire people to start talking about it, and get help in order to get validation and heal. I am not sure you can heal if you just lock it up inside. I want people to know that what you went through was wrong, but that you are not. You can heal. What happened to me was horrible, but it also made me a better person, and for that I am grateful. People can reach me at my website, pennylanewriter.com. I am open to joining book clubs, library talks or book discussions about writing or mental health around trauma.

What are you working on now?  

We have a nineteen-year-old at home, so I am still parenting, and I am working on putting together a book tour in places where we have friends, because bookstores expect us to bring people in, and also to places that I write about in my story.

End of Interview:

Get your copy of Redeemed: A Memoir of a Stolen Childhood from Amazon US or Amazon UK.