With two years and four popular books under her belt, author Kae Wagner returned to her childhood stomping grounds last week to talk about her novels set in Kent County and how The Frankie Girl Series has been on her mind for decades, even as she made her way professionally as an executive coach and business and leadership writer.
Wagner says that her return visit sparked memories of her childhood on the family farm near Kennedyville and revealed that the landscape in her first novel, Saturday Night at the Trailer Park, is replete with identifiable locations even though their descriptions might be slightly camouflaged.
In fact, the trailer park in the novel was a stop on her father’s church bus route, and her lingering curiosity about the park and the challenges its low-income families endured became a central motif for Wagner’s character exploration.
Sixteen-year-old Frankie Taylor, born into family turmoil, financial hardship, and carrying the dark luggage of a family secret, becomes a protagonist whose arc to adulthood is quickly becoming a cult hero.
Twin themes of redemption and forgiveness have captivated readers responding on Amazon and Goodreads, with some reaching out to her personally about their own struggles.
In a recent podcast interview, Wagner said, “I did not expect the amount of feedback that I get from fiction, I think, because there’s this theme of forgiveness and redemption, and it touches people. People have called me, texted me, written to me… I love the impact it has on them.”
And Wagner is not shy about marketing her books. Her years as a business writer and marketing consultant shaped her sense of being direct about “getting her books out there,” an especially daunting task in a world of self-publishing, where so many books are placed on Amazon and forgotten or never found.
As for Frankie Girl, her forthcoming book, billed as the last in the Saturday quintet, will not be the last we read of Frankie.
The Bookplate bookstore is in the process of bringing Kae Wagner back to town for a reading. More will be revealed.
To find out more about Kae Wagner and her books, go here.
This video is approximately eight minutes in length.
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