interview with shira rodriguez
- Grace A. Johnson
- Apr 10
- 16 min read
Y'all, when I tell you this interview has been a long time coming, I mean it. I first interview Shira back in August-September of 2024, and we finished right when Hurricane Helene hit. When I finally got power back after 16 days, I'd totally forgotten about this interview and it got lost somewhere in my Google Docs. Somehow, I stumbled upon it the other day and immediately apologized to Shira for never posting! But better late than never, eh?
I decided to leave it as is, without updating things to reflect the time lapse, so I'll preface our interview by saying Novelists in November has already released and is available for purchase on Amazon and Wild Blue Wonder Press's website!
Hey, Shira, and welcome to Of Blades & Thorns! I’m ecstatic to have you join us today, and I can’t wait to jump in to the interview—but first…tell us a little bit about yourself! Who are you? What do you do? What are some little-known facts about yourself?
Hey Grace!! I’m so delighted to be here!! Thank you so much for inviting me! gives big warm hug
And now, I’d love to introduce myself to you, lovely readers! My name is Shira Rodriguez and I’m an author, screenwriter, and YouTuber. I love helping people find life-changing books and write life-changing stories through my podcast, Her Reading Life, as well as through my Instagram and YouTube Channel. It’s often so difficult to find books that you’ll close the cover to and think “Wow! What a good story!”
You know, the sort that make you feel like you’ve just had the most glorious feast of a meal?
Well, I believe everyone deserves to have that feeling, and I’ve made it my mission to help readers find those kinds of stories.
However, I’ve often wished more stories like the ones I resonated with existed. Books with old souls and vibrant new imaginations. Stories with twists on things you thought you knew all too well, only to find so much more to explore! So the transition from reader to writer wasn’t exactly a marked change. It was really about trying to find more of what I loved and wanted to read.
Little known fact, I always felt a little awkward because I was the girl who preferred a good old dog-eared classic book to a romance novel or New York Times Bestseller. While my teenage friends revelled in handsome heroes, I preferred to dive headfirst into the themes of Shakespeare, Dickens, and Bronte! This isn’t to say I didn’t like romance. I just honestly felt a little like the ugly duckling. But what I thought was a weakness or something silly eventually became the thing that strengthened my writing. I’d even go so far as to say that it enabled my writing to come as far as it has today because it was a classic book that inspired my short story The Lost History of Lavender Lockbourne, which will be published as part of Wild Blue Wonder Press’ Novelists in November Anthology in — yes, you guessed it haha! — November!
When did you first begin writing? What inspired you?
Honestly, it was such a slow, gradual thing, Grace. I have no idea when I could say that I first began writing!
The first time I remember being proud of a little fiction project I’d written was probably in third grade. I was homeschooled, and my mom and I both loved the Charlotte Mason teaching method, which utilized a certain activity called “picture study”. The student would be given a painting and then be asked to study it and write a little piece on the painting.
Well, on this one particular morning, I remember I sat on my desk staring at the picture before me. It was of a bucking chestnut horse, with its forelegs reared up, kicking wildly, its mane flying in the wind as a cowboy with a great yellow straw hat held on by the reins, his arms flailing as he tried to grasp the horse’s neck. You could see the red in his face and the sweat shimmering on the horse’s flanks. I can still remember the picture so vividly, even though it’s been more than a decade since that day. It was so alive, dripping with motion and energy.
The prompt below asked me to write a story based on this painting. Perhaps for the first time, the story unfolded before me. This story would be too long to write by hand, I decided with my mother. So for the first time, I opened up a Rich Text Document on the old beast of a desktop I shared with my little sister and typed out the first chapter.
Then the second.
And then the third.
I never got farther than that, though.
(Sorry to be a spoil-sport!)
But it was a start. I later encountered the Chronicles of Narnia series, which I fell head-over-heels in love with at around the age of eight or nine. I also eventually fell in love with film and scriptwriting and by the time I was thirteen and in middle school, I realized that the key to great movies was a great story. So I decided I would learn to write.
Besides, a book was always a nice accolade to have on a desk.
I don’t know if I ever really thought of making it a career per se. I just wanted to write a good story.
Eventually, I stumbled on a fantastic writing curriculum called Excellence in Literature, which introduced me to the exquisite canon of English literature. As I narrowed down on making a career of my writing and neared my graduation, I looked for a complementary writing curriculum that would train me using the classics. But I found nothing.
So, I created a writing curriculum for myself.
One that would teach me how to write stories that would stand the tests of time.
That year I spent imitating classics and learning from the greats was one of the most beautiful and formative years of my writing life. I learned to wield words like a goldsmith forms intricate filigree art. It taught me to find beauty in the writing process and to realize that inspiration is everywhere if you only have eyes to see it.
How has your writing—your stories, style, etc.—changed over the years? Looking back, what have you learned since you began writing?
Oh, I love this question!
Yes! So I’ve always had a quaint, old-fashioned writing style and, in Anneish fashion, used words that were far too big for my little mind. So big, frankly, that I sometimes didn’t know what they meant. Only that they sounded nice.
Since then, I’ve learned words are like bookshelves, not frames. Bookshelves are beautiful, but they also hold practical value (i.e. storing books) in addition to their aesthetic value. In contrast, frames are decoration. Unless, of course, you’re covering up some wanton holes in the walls. In that case, fix the holes. Just because you can’t see them doesn’t mean they aren’t there. (And yes, I am talking about plot holes and other story issues, lol!)
In the same way, every word carries a meaning and purpose. While words are aesthetic and delightful, we have to approach them like painters play with paint. Toddlers and painters can both play with paint, but one carries purpose and meaning, while the other usually doesn’t. Words are the medium we use to paint an image in a reader’s mind. It’s the car that takes the reader to his destination. Often, less is more and fewer words or ideas make for a stronger story.
You’re being published in Novelist in November, an anthology from Wild Blue Wonder Press, this year! Could you tell us about this collection and your story?
To be completely honest with you all, I’m still a bit in shock myself, haha!
But in a nutshell, Novelists in November is a short story collection featuring eleven emotional tales of authors finding their calling in Christ and pursuing hope, joy, and inspiration. This anthology contains touching stories from contemporary and historical fiction authors with a mix of romance, women’s fiction, and mystery! It’s a delightful ode to all things autumnal, sweater-weather, bookish, and writerly.
If you love sweaters, mugs of pumpkin latte, rainy days, and the smell of books, you will find so much to adore in this collection.
Here are some short descriptions of the stories:
“Melting-Pot Thanksgiving" by Andrea Renee Cox
An imperfect daughter must pull off the perfect Thanksgiving while meeting her tight writing deadline and helping her two foster kids deal with difficult times.
“And As She Talked" by Bethany Willcock
A writer seeking rest and quiet in a country inn finds herself spiraling down a path of seeming insanity when her story starts randomly coming to life around her …
“Reasons to Be Thankful" by Hannah E. Gridley
A woman is in search of new dreams after losing the life she loved in a near-fatal accident, but when she has trouble finding words for the next novel in her series, she might lose that dream too.
“Act in the Living Present" by Katja H. Labonté
In 1934 Québec, a young woman has one burning question: How does one make her life and writing worthwhile?
“My Heart Still Sings" by Faith D. Cox
An Olympics-bound swimmer meets with a life-changing accident and struggles to resurface through her pain.
“Tollemache House" by Kellyn Roth
A newlywed author Effie Harriot must finish her next novel in a month—or risk her family’s livelihood.
“Finding Beauty in Suffering" by Katie Zeliger
When Rowena’s best friend surprises her with a NaNoWriMo retreat at a German castle, she must confront her unresolved grief and rekindle her faith amidst a community of quirky creatives.
“The Lost History of Lavender Lockbourne" by Shira J. Rodriguez
A young and timid bestselling author with terminal leukemia must look for the parents she lost in a foreign country before her time runs out.
“Pages of Grace" by Heather Flynn
An overworked woman struggles to find her purpose in life amidst tough work decisions while also trying to rediscover her joy in writing.
“The Sound of Healing" by Avrie Swan
A young woman with a dark past must confront her memories in order to achieve her dream of becoming an author.
“Between Moor and Mountain" by Kelsey Bryant
A thirty-year-old woman with broken dreams travels to Scotland, longing to regain hope and restore her ability to write.
What’s the story behind the story? For example, what inspired you to write it? What’s the heart of the story?
Absolutely! My story, “The Lost History of Lavender Lockbourne”, is set in November 1984 and tells of Lavender Leoni’s search for her lost family. A bestselling romance author struggling with social anxiety, she’s been diagnosed with terminal leukemia just two weeks shy of her twenty-sixth birthday. Or what she assumes to be her birthday. Her only hope of ever tracing her lost family hinges on a single locket left in the box where her adopted parents found her while on a trip to Yorkshire, England. As her fate ticks down, she sets out on a journey back to her birthplace to unearth her lost history, where the answers—or the lack of them—may haunt her for the rest of her life.
This was actually a story I wrote in my senior year of high school after reading Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë. The wild beauty of the setting and Heathcliff and Cathy’s story gripped my imagination so hard and simply would not let go when I read it for the first time. So when it came time to write my creative writing assignment for that month, I scribbled down a story about a young woman with terminal leukemia on a desperate search to find the story of her lost family in a house not unlike Wuthering Heights, where a family holds secrets and long-forgotten stories and ghosts of the past.
Now, at the time, it was a very different story. My main character was fairly morose and suffered a tad too much from melodrama. The narrative was also set in the 1920s. But I was so proud of that little fellow. However, it didn’t garner much attention or anything at the time, so I eventually stowed it away and forgot about it.
When I heard about the anthology and the autumnal vibes the collection would showcase, this story came to mind. The idea had lingered, like the stubborn creature all good ideas are, but it now took a new shape.
What if I set it in the 1980s and opened it in New York (like in You’ve Got Mail) and later transposed the story to Wuthering Heights’ heathery Yorkshire moors? And what if, instead of Lavender’s voice being morose and smacking of melancholy, she was a little tongue-in-cheek — a bestselling romance novelist who suffered from social anxiety?
It was a crazy idea.
But in my experience, those are the best ones.
I had recently also fallen in love with Katherine Center’s rom-com novels The Bodyguard and Hello Stranger (which my sister first introduced me to) and the witty, slightly sarcastic voice of her main characters. I decided to experiment with that style and write a story that I knew my sister would love and yet still held the old-soul attachment I had for classics like Jane Eyre and The Secret Garden.
So I wrote the first page of the story and showed it to my sister. I was, quite frankly, trembling under my smile and bit my lip as her eyes scanned the the words. When she turned to me, I asked her what she thought.
“I think it’s the best thing you’ve written so far.” She said.
So I rewrote the rest of the story and submitted it, and as you can imagine, I was incredibly shocked when it actually got accepted. But overall, it’s been a delightful process, and I can’t thank Wild Blue Wonder Press enough for this experience and their beautiful care and love for this anthology.
If there’s one thing you want to communicate to your readers, what is it? Why does your message matter?
There’s one quote in Wuthering Heights that’s always struck me. It’s a scene where the anti-hero/antagonist, Heathcliff tries to get revenge on his adoptive family for mistreating him as a child by abusing his adopted sibling’s children. But instead of fighting with hate, Heathcliff’s niece, Catherine Linton, decides to fight with love.
“Linton is all I have to love in the world, and though you have done what you could to make him hateful to me, and me to him, you cannot make us hate each other. And I defy you to hurt him when I am by, and I defy you to frighten me!”
It was such a poignant passage for me. Because though life can buffet you like a storm and beat you down and turn you out, one thing always remains in your control — your decision to let them win and make you hate.
Love is a choice we make every moment of every day. And love is not easy. It isn’t easy to turn the other cheek or to give up the thing we most want to do to the person we least like.
But that is exactly the choice my protagonist faces in “The Lost History of Lavender Lockbourne”. She finds that love may be risky and hard, but if we don’t take the risk of love, we risk losing everything that matters in life.
Because what is life without love? Everything good flows from love. Love is the heartbeat of God, the rhythm of the universe. It’s the motor of every particle and the spirit of every atom.
It’s the reason why physics kisses metaphysics when you go far enough. Everything is knit together by love. And I think it all goes back to the heart of God, which, if you could press it and squeeze it to its essence, would bleed love.
And it did on Calvary.
So why shouldn’t we find our greatest joy in that, too?
What are your goals or mission as a writer?
My goals and mission as a writer are honestly to tell stories that reflect the heart of God and change lives the way He has changed mine. I’ll never forget that, by all accounts, I was never supposed to become a writer.
Certainly, nobody expected me to become one as a little girl.
When my mother first felt the pull of God to homeschool me, she was afraid to start because she feared I would never learn how to read or write English properly. After all, English was not her first language. But God is such a good storyteller. He always takes your expectations and subverts them in the most glorious, topsy-turvy way. And now, here I am, fifteen years later, publishing a short story in an anthology with ten incredible fellow writers.
So that is why I see words as a gift. They’re the first thing God created, which in turn created light and dark, ocean and sky, sun and moon, and every conceivable thing in the universe. I think God has a heart for words and I want mine to follow His in that. I want to reflect His heart for beauty and love and grace and truth. I want to change lives because He changed mine and I want every word I speak, every action I take, to paint a portrait of Jesus for the world to see his beauty.
That’s why I write.
Do you believe God called you to be a writer? If so, how did that become clear to you and how would you encourage other aspiring authors to pursue their callings from God?
Yes! Absolutely!
From a young age, I’ve been incredibly passionate about stories. They would make my eyes light up and make my face break into a wide grin anytime someone would start to tell one.
Something I learned from my incredible parents is to do what you love and you will be successful at it. God plants seeds of purpose within each person and gives them the tools, the skills and the abilities they need to accomplish the purpose He planted within them. That’s why you’ll see toddlers with a natural gift for music bang on things for the pure delight of the sounds they make, or kids who love sports spend all their time out running and playing. It’s what naturally comes to them.
When God calls you to be a writer, you don’t need to worry about how good you are at first, or how poetic your style is, or how many people read your work. The important thing is that you have a strong desire for it and a vision for where you want to go. A picture in your head and a desire to live and breathe that picture into reality. A strong desire and a dream will bring you the tools and skills and even the people you need to accomplish your goals.
So, how do you know if you’re called to be a writer?
If you have ever passed by a book in a bookstore and thought, “Wow, I want to be in a bookstore someday” then chances are, maybe God put that desire in you. And then I’ve found if that desire and idea lingers with you, burning quietly in your mind and nudging you every so often, then that is definitely a God idea.
It may seem impossible. Or strange. Or unlikely. But believe me, you have so much potential to impact others when you live into the things that God has purposed for you to do since the beginning of time. You have no idea how many lives you could impact and change because you followed your calling and did the things you loved.
The thing that now lies in your hands is the willingness to do it.
To sit down every day and write.
To dream out your career.
To believe in your dreams.
To not sell yourself short.
To dare to get out there and do the things you dream of, even if it’s scary.
The future, dear reader, is in your hands, if you only choose to take it.
If you could give our readers one piece of advice, what would it be?
Find the beauty.
Whether you’re a writer or not, this is the key to happiness. Find the golden streak of light on a rainy day, the flower in the midst of weeds, the sweet in a season of bitter. Don’t see life in terms of circumstantial bad or good. See it as possibility. When I look back on my life, I’ve found that every painful episode in my life was a stepping stone to the most beautiful ones. They shaped me and cultivated a heart that was strong enough to shoulder the weight of the good things I would need to do in the future. It’s your lens of life that makes anything good or bad.
When good times come, savor it. Enjoy it. Don’t wish it away. Squeeze it for all it’s worth. Because even good things don’t last forever, so don’t begrudge good times when they leave or end. Be grateful that you got to enjoy it and grasp it for a moment.
I love to say that in life there is tragedy in every comedy, and comedy in every tragedy. And when you see life like that, suddenly it isn’t so bad after all. It’s just like a novel you’re living out.
And that’s the key to good stories, too.
Find the beauty.
Find the beauty in the sorrow and the joy. The crying and the laughter and everything in between.
Find the beauty, and you’ll write a beautiful life and make beautiful story.
What do you do when you’re not writing?
Ahhhh, when I’m not brewing up some new story idea? Hahaha!
Usually, you can find me tinkering at my piano to some Pheobe Bridgers or Gracie Abrams, belting “I Won’t Say I’m in Love” from Hercules into a wooden spoon while drying dishes (there really is no end to drying dishes, is there?), or concocting some new graphic design on Canva for my merch, among a hundred other things. I love finding the beauty and art in every moment and toying with hobbies seems like a fun way to taste all the world has to offer! I wish I could say I find hobbies…but somehow, it feels like they find me. I’m not quite sure why…
In addition to being a writer, you’re also a podcaster! Could you share a little bit about your podcast and where folks can listen to it?
Of course!
My podcast is called Her Reading Life Podcast and I like to think of it as a place where you and I can imagine we’re sitting across from each other at a table in a coffee shop and chatting about our new favorite books and the things that have changed our lives and inspired us, gossipping about the characters and glorying over the stories. And if you want a big sister to come to with all your writing woes? I’m here for that, too! I also share some of the writing tips that I wish someone had told me when I was younger so you don’t have to go through it. Because I believe every writer has the potential to write a life-changing story and I want to help you get there!
It’s also now available in video form on YouTube, which I’m ecstatic about, so if you want to feel like we get a face-to-face connection, definitely pop over there!!
Have I overwhelmed you with questions yet? Finally, where can readers and fellow writers learn more about you and connect with you?
Yess!! I love connecting with fellow writers and readers!!
I’m fairly active on Instagram (@shirajrodriguez) where I post aesthetic reels about the reading life and snippets of my daily life as a writer. I also love it when people pop into my dms to say hello! That always makes my day!
I’ve also started a Substack where you can see all my notes and possibly some future posts that I’ll be sending out here that you can get directly to your inbox!
And as always, there’s my home-away-from-home, Her Reading Life Podcast, where I invite you on a virtual coffee date so we can chat all things bookish and writerly or eavesdrop together on convos I’ve had with other fellow writers! It’s truly been such a blessing to have this beautiful platform, especially now that it’s available on YouTube and Spotify in video form! I also have started doing vlogs which I’ve been posting on instagram and I’m delighting in this new form of content!
And if you’d like to order the anthology, it’s currently available on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and Waterstones Bookstores and you can head over to this link here to get your own copy today!
If you’d like to have a one-stop shop for all my links, definitely head over to my website which you can find at bio.site/shirajrodriguez.
Thank you so much for joining me, Shira! I so appreciate you taking the time to share with us!
Grace, it’s been such a delight getting to chat with you and share my heart with your lovely readers!! Thank YOU from the bottom of my heart!
Not Shira giving me chills with some of her answers! This girl is full of wisdom and grace beyond her years, and her way with words (both written and verbal) is astounding! She's such a precious friend and talented writer, and I'm so grateful for the chance to know and follow her. Y'all be sure to check out her podcast (especially the episodes I did with her!) and Novelists in November!
Such a fun interview! I agree, Shira is so wise! :)