I love having Cynthia Ruchti visit! Cynthia is a beautiful person who pens beautiful and moving stories, filled with drama and infused with hope. Delivering a story about people stuck in the cycle of fear and anxiety that results in hoarding things isn’t a topic much explored in fiction, but there’s no question Cynthia’s gift with do the subject matter justice, with sensitivity and compassion. Rhonda Rhea, award-winning humor columnist, TV personality, and author certainly thinks so in this endorsement, “Cynthia Ruchti delivers it all in this masterful, compassionate tale of redemption.”

I’m delighted to introduce you to Cynthia’s Camille Brooks today – be sure to enter the giveaway below, thanks to Jeane Wynn and Kregel Publications.

Clinical psychologist Camille Brooks isn’t put off by the lifestyle of her hoarder clients and the distress of their families. She lost her mother to the crippling anxiety disorder–so she’ll go a long way to help others avoid the same pain.

Despite Camille’s expertise, her growing audience for her Let In the Light podcast, and the recognition she’s gaining for her creative coaching methods, she’s not prepared for the pushback. A client who looks uncannily like her mom catches her off guard and raises long-dormant issues. And the revelation that Camille has her own hoarding problem sends her spinning.

With the help of a cadre of unexpected friends, an enigma of a man who refuses to be discouraged, and the God who created and loves her, can she face her fears, pull back the curtains, and let the light into her own life?

Introducing Camille Brooks

Physical Stats

Height: 5’6”

Hair colour & style: Chestnut brown hair with blond highlights which disposal truck driver Eli calls “those streaky things”; slight natural curl; worn just a tad too short for a ponytail

Eye colour: Pale blue eyes like her mother’s

Dress sense: Dresses monochromatically, business casual because of her job, but not high-end, since she’s usually interacting with her hoarder clients in their homes and knows her clothes are likely to suffer from less than sanitary conditions, but primarily because she doesn’t want to distance herself socially, economically, or relationally from her clients. At home, she dresses simply in soft jeans and French terry shirt.

Resembles

Alexis Bledel

Can’t live without

Tea

Strengths

Camille’s strengths lie in her compassion, her passion to help make a difference for other families, her determination, and her empathy for her clients.

Vulnerabilities

Camille’s vulnerabilities are the flip side of her strengths, in many ways. She cares so much that she’s tempted to break the rules or buck against authority if she feels protocol doesn’t serve her clients well. She’s driven to make a difference, so she’s frustrated and guilt-ridden if she can’t. Her determination sometimes crosses a line into meddling or stubbornness, which Eli knows all too well. Her empathy for her clients goes home with her at night, disturbing her sleep, and making it hard for her to establish relationships other than through her job.

Passions

Anything that seems like the opposite of hoarding. Minimalism to an extreme in her apartment. Cleanliness that borders on obsession. Refusing to save leftovers because she knows “what neglected leftovers can become.”

What book would she recommend?

Camille, at least at the beginning of the story, spends little time in recreational reading. She reads mostly online, and primarily research to help her do a better job with her clients or her podcast.

Your inspiration for the character

Sometimes when we’re hurt or traumatized in childhood, we become adults who repeat the same patterns. Sometimes we turn so dramatically opposite of that it becomes an extreme in the other direction. We often hear stories of hoarders. I wanted to explore the lives of family members of those with a hoarding disorder. What did life look like through their eyes? Feel like? My heart aches for the young people who fight their parents’ hoarder tendencies until they completely lose heart and become their parents. Those who either battle a hoarding disorder or other addiction-like mental illness—so often misunderstood—inspired me.

Background to the story

Many times my novels are born from a single incident I observed or a snippet of an idea inspired by real people in my circle of friends and family. In the case of Afraid of the Light, it wasn’t the hoarders I’ve known, but their family members. A friend’s mother dies, and he’s left wondering what to do with her accumulation. The word bulldozer comes to mind, but he also doesn’t want to dishonor his mother’s memory. A young girl is too embarrassed to admit the reason she doesn’t invite friends to her house is because of her mother’s mental illness that shows up as hoarding. EMS staff can’t reach a person in distress because they can’t squeeze past the debris the person would call his or her collection. I was inspired too by the idea that as many of us who are afraid of the dark, at least as many are afraid—truly afraid—of stepping into the light, or letting the light shine on what they’ve tried to hide.

When I started writing Afraid of the Light, I had in mind a first scene—a woman like Camille trying to reach her client’s home through a trash-filled yard with rain-soaked stacks of magazines and mountains of black garbage bags bloated with unknowns. But a yellow plum tree is still alive amidst the rot and decaying. Then I had in mind the final scene, which became a one-page poetry-like epitaph at the end of the book. All I had to do was fill in everything in between!

Thank you, Cynthia!

Cynthia Ruchti tells stories hemmed-in-hope through award winning novels, nonfiction, devotionals, and through speaking events for women and writers. She is the professional relations liaison for ACFW (American Christian Fiction Writers) connecting authors with booksellers, libraries, book clubs, and readers. She serves as a literary agent with Books & Such Literary Management, and lives in the heart of Wisconsin with her grade school sweetheart husband, not far from their three children and six grandchildren.

Relz Reviewz Extras
All things Ruchti @ Relz Reviewz
Visit Cynthia’s website and blog
Buy at Amazon: Afraid of the Light or Koorong

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