I’m thrilled to have Lisa McKay back at Relz Reviewz sharing about her brilliant novel, My Hands Came Away Red. Re-released, this story is not to be missed by anyone who wants to be immersed in a meaningful and enthralling story, that is authentic and challenging. I love that this story was born of Lisa’s own experiences and it shows. I’m giving away a Kindle copy as I love it so very much and think everyone should read it!

Enjoy the fascinating insight into this book and Lisa’s own journey!

Thanks Lis…

*****

What inspired you to write a story about a missions trip?

In 1994, right after I graduated from high school, I went on a short-term mission trip to the remote island of Camotes in the Philippines.

My motivations for signing up were complicated. I was looking to do something “for God”, sure. But I was also looking for a grand adventure. And I chose the backpack team mostly because I figured it would be less work than a construction team.

Boy, was I ever wrong.

I’d envisioned acting out gospel stories for eager kids, hiking along gorgeous beaches, and bonding with new friends around a campfire. To be fair, I found some of that. But right along with it came no shower, and no toilet. We washed clothes in buckets and slept in tents. We pumped our drinking water through hand-held filters. There was an epidemic of blisters. And there was heatstroke.

I didn’t have the gracious fortitude to be thankful for it at the time, but all of this did come in handy later when I buckled down to a task I’d set myself before I even left on the trip…

Someone should really write an honest story about a mission team that collides with some of the worst this world offers, I’d thought after reading an article about piracy in south east Asia months before leaving on my own trip.

Somehow, during the following weeks that thought slowly became a conviction.

I should do that.

Then it morphed into a promise.

I will do that…

Why Indonesia?

I originally intended to set the novel in the Philippines, but I changed the setting to Indonesia after my own family moved to Jakarta in 1996. My parents and brother lived in Indonesia (and I visited frequently) for four years. Those were very challenging years for Indonesia. They spanned the overthrow of the Suharto regime, violent riots in the capital (that meant my family was rushed out of the country in a scary emergency evacuation) and the sectarian conflict that exploded so dramatically in Ambon in 1999.

I chose to set this novel in Ambon because it provided a fascinating real-life backdrop for my story. The Ambonese conflict was talked about in the media and elsewhere as a religious conflict but at its core it was political and cultural more than religious. Religion just happened to be the most convenient fault line for the region to fracture down.

Share a little about Cori – her personality, hopes, and fears

I won’t lie… there’s a lot of me in Cori. Her sense of rootlessness after having grown up in different places around the world, and many of her deepest struggles and doubts about how a loving God can possibly stand by and watch what people are capable of doing to each other are closely linked to mine. In many ways I wrote HANDS to name and face my own struggles. And when the book was first published people who knew me well used to laughingly mashup “fiction” and “autobiography” and call it a “fictionography.”

But there are ways Cori is different than me, too. I think she’s braver, more proactive, and more of a leader than I would have been under similar circumstances.

Was it difficult to write in the first person voice of an 18 year old?

Nope. Because I was 18 when I started writing it :). Although it should be noted that very little of what I wrote as an 18 year old actually made it into the finished book a decade later!! But I never struggled with the voice. It does seem like a younger voice to me now, when I re-read the book from the other side of 40!

Right up until the day they burned the church, I thought I understood things. You know… God, people, myself. Life. Then, suddenly, I understood nothing except that we had to run. And that we might never make it home.

When eighteen-year-old Cori signed up for a mission trip to Indonesia she was mostly thinking about escaping her complicated love life, making new friends, and having fun on the beach.

She never expected a civil war to flare up on the nearby island of Ambon.

She never expected violence to find them.

And she never expected that seven teenagers would be forced to flee into the hazardous refuge of the mountains on their own.

Now, haunted by blood and fire, Cori and her teammates must rely on each other to survive.

What was the working title?

Oh, gosh, I’m terrible at titles. I think the working title when I submitted the manuscript to publishers was “A Ring Entwined” which is awful. I mean, it’s not awful for a Victorian era-romance. But given that this book is about as far away from that as you could get, it was a truly awful choice. It was a talented editor that plucked the phrase “my hands came away red” from the pages of the book and proposed it as the title. Bless editors, seriously.

Describe My Hands Came Away Red in 5 adjectives

Gosh, this is hard. How about…

Intense. Realistic. Gripping. Thought-provoking. Funny.

Which character did you enjoy writing most?

Apart from Cori, probably Kyle. Because he’s got a naughty streak, and they’re always fun.

Which character gave you the most grief?

Probably Mani, because I wanted to stay true to how someone using English as a second language (or third, or fourth!!) would speak, so all of that dialogue took a lot more energy and attention.

What emotions did you experience while writing this story?

So many! And as a first time author that surprised me. I remember how much writing some of the scenes took out of me emotionally—how exhausted and shell-shocked I felt after writing some of those scenes. I remember literally crying my way through some of them. But there was also plenty of lightness and humour there, too. The connections and back and forth between the characters usually helped lift the writing tension for me. Most of the dialogue came fairly easily to me.

What emotions do you think your story will generate in readers?

I’m not sure, honestly. I’m clearer on what I hope people walk away thinking about. I wanted to explore themes of conflict and faith and doubt and hope and friendship and suffering in this story, and I hope people are entertained reading it. But I also hope they are pushed to think about what they believe-in their core-about meaning and purpose in life, and times in their life when their “faith” (whatever that faith looks like) has been strongly challenged.

How did you choose your characters names?

I just picked most of them because I liked them and they seemed to fit the character I had in mind. But I chose the main character’s full name—Coralie—because that was the name of my father’s youngest sister. She drowned in the family dam in Australia in a tragic accident when she was just two.

How has life changed for you since writing this story?!

Oh my gosh, I could write a whole book about that. In fact, I have written one! My memoir, Love At The Speed Of Email tells the very strange story of how I met my husband when I was living in LA and he was living in Papua New Guinea. In fact, that first odd connection happened because of the initial publication of MY HANDS CAME AWAY RED in 2007. Life is really strange sometimes.

Anyway, since getting married we have spent five years in Laos, where Mike worked for World Vision. We’ve had two little boys. We’ve had more than our fair share of medical misadventures. We moved to Vanuatu to take up another position with World Vision a mere three weeks before the most powerful cyclone in Vanuatu’s history (Category 5 Cyclone Pam) devastated the entire country. Life has certainly not been devoid of challenge.

I hear MHCAR is being optioned for a movie! Can you tell us anything about that?

Yes! Someone I met briefly in LA—the actor Justin Baldoni—has optioned the film rights for his studio, Wayfarer Productions. I don’t know if anything will come of it—there are no guarantees—but it will be really fun to see what happens. It’s a bit extraordinary that 10 years after it was first published this book is still bringing surprises into my life.

Any thoughts on actors you could see as your main characters?

LOL. No. Mike and I are SO out of the loop with movies. That’s partly due to Laos & Vanuatu. Port Vila only recently got a movie theatre, so we feel positively cosmopolitan now. Mind you, we’ve been exactly twice in the last year, so it’s not ALL due to where we live. Two young kids have had something to do with the lack of time and energy for media lately.

Any more fiction in your future?

I really hope so. In fact, I have an idea I would love to work on, but for various reasons the rest of this year is not a great time for me to focus on that idea. But hopefully soon.

Thanks so much for hosting me on your blog, again, Rel! I’ve really enjoyed answering these questions, and hope that anyone who’s looking for a fast-paced new read will enjoy HANDS.

xo

Lisa

Always a pleasure, Lisa 🙂

Relz Reviewz Extras
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Buy at Amazon: My Hands Came Away Red or Koorong

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