It’s always interesting to learn about a new Richmond writer doing great things from our relatively small city on the James. Latest case in point: Rachel McRady.

After years of dedicated work, McRady is about to publish her debut novel, “Sun Seekers” (Alcove Press) this week, a very personal book that, as her website notes, “deals with the lasting effects of grief, complex family dynamics, the impact that a disease like dementia can have on everyone involved, and how the innocence of a child can bring light into even the darkest situations.” The book is dedicated to her immediate family as well as her “marvelous grandfather, John Dozier,” who passed away several years ago.

If this sounds like a heavy, bleak subject for a 33-year-old mom and former editor of The Breeze student newspaper at James Madison University, it definitely is, as anyone who has experienced dementia up close can attest. But McRady, who attended Mills E. Godwin High School, pulls it off with aplomb as well as sensitive and sharply focused writing. She wrote the book while raising her family and working her day job as an Emmy-winning writer for “Entertainment Tonight,” where she is an avowed expert on all things Kardashian, in addition to having an “unhealthy obsession” with the royal family, which she covered while working for “ET” in London after her husband took a job there.

[Updated: McRady had two upcoming book events in Richmond this week, but she had to reschedule them due to an illness; now she will be appearing at Book People, 10464 Ridgefield Pkwy. on Jan. 23 and she has rescheduled her appearance at Fountain Bookstore, 1312 E. Cary St. for Thursday, Feb 22 at 6 p.m. Please check her website for details]. Recently, Style Weekly caught up with McRady to talk to her about her writing life, her new book, and maybe get her unvarnished take on Prince Harry, but she didn’t bite on that one.

Style Weekly: Can you tell us a little bit about yourself?

Rachel McRady: Sure, I grew up here in Richmond, moved here from Northern Virginia when I was nine and went to Godwin, which is where I met my husband, Caleb.

It was my greatest fear as a kid to never leave your hometown. That, to me, was like the epitome of failing. So I went to JMU for college [where she was editor of The Breeze newspaper and started the school’s only student-run magazine, Port and Main] and afterwards went straight to New York, without a job. I was very scared and had very little money. I started working trying to find a job in journalism – going to interviews for everything from hotel hospitality to Conde Nast magazines. Finally landed a job in entertainment journalism at a startup that’s now gone, called Wet Paint Entertainment, moved up from there and did celebrity and entertainment news for Us Weekly.

Then I decided I was done with New York and wanted to live abroad. My husband worked for L’Oréal and had the opportunity to move, so we decided to move to London. I connected with someone at “Entertainment Tonight” and they created a position for me to work remotely – before it was cool to work remotely – and live in London. I did that for three years over there, working for them, which is actually where I wrote the book. I had my first daughter over there and then I decided, I could not raise a child alone, so we moved back to Richmond [about four years ago] where all of our family and many of our good friends are from. Went ahead and decided that I never wanted to leave again [laughs].

How about the job with “Entertainment Tonight” – what were some of your favorite things that you’ve done?

I still work for them, I work from 5 a.m. to 2 p.m. and then write in the afternoons and parent my children in the evenings. I love celebrity and entertainment news. If there’s something I’m not obsessed with, just give me some time [laughs]. One of my beats now is covering the [TLC] show “Sister Wives,” which was not a show I watched, but now I could write about it all day. I’ve done a variety of roles for [“ET”]. It was kind of cool when I worked in London, because they didn’t have anyone else there, so sometimes they would send me to do stuff that normal online writers wouldn’t get to do. When Prince Harry and Meghan Markle began their romance … I went to Windsor, they sent the “Entertainment Tonight” team over there and I helped field produce our segments on the royal wedding. When Harry and Meghan first started dating, I went to the Christmas tree lot where they bought a tree and interviewed the people working there – fun stuff like that …  Everyone always thinks it’s so glamorous, like ‘Oh, you can’t come to this thing because you have to work the Golden Globes.’ But in reality, it’s just me in my pajamas writing articles about the stuff everyone is reading on the internet. But I have gotten to do some cool things along the way.

Were you always a pop culture junkie, what made you want to go into celebrity news?

Well, when I was in high school, I was convinced I was going to be the next Broadway star. I was in the Virginia Rep stage version of “High School Musical.” I did “Les Mis” at my high school theater. I was like, ‘This is it! This is for me.’ And then, you know, as I continued through high school, I did not quite make it to the top tier of the choir or whatever, and I was like, ‘If I can’t make it at Godwin High School in Richmond, Virginia, I don’t know that the world of Broadway is necessarily for me.’ So, I started looking into critique and movie reviews.

In college, I started my own blog called “Honest Unmerciful” [with] all these critical film reviews. [The name of the blog] was based on a quote from “Almost Famous,” Philip Seymour Hoffman’s character [Lester Bangs] said that to be a music critic, you just have to be honest and unmerciful … Us Weekly was owned by Jann Wenner when I was there. I would walk down the hall to the bathroom and see all the Rolling Stones covers.

I aged out of the target demographic for popular culture long ago. I was curious though, maybe you can explain the appeal of something like influencer culture, or the Kardashians, to someone who is older, who didn’t grow up living in it.

Sure, yeah I think it’s kind of like, you get this backstage pass to someone’s life, or at least what they want you to think is their life, right? So they’ve got the show, and these brands, and social media. I always think it’s funny. My parents are both history teachers and they don’t understand the entertainment world at all. I often joke that I went to college to write about Kim Kardashian and they get upset about it [laughs]. But the old catchphrase of “why is [Kim Kardashian] even famous?” Because she’s a very smart person. She knows how to take that attention and make it a lucrative business decision. Not only that, but she has continued on to actually try to do some good in criminal justice reform and stuff. I could write a TED Talk, but …

So it kind of started with reality TV and celebrities allowing us into their glamorous lives in a PR-manicured way. And it has transferred over and exploded with social media. Now there are more and more ways for people to control their image and market it to the masses.

 Yeah, so you see their life and want to maybe emulate it. Or you are fascinated by it. Or you see a headline from a site like I work for, where some big news story with a Kardashian happens. And then you want to know their take is on it, so in two months, you watch their show to see what they thought while going through the experience. It’s actually pretty genius.  They are at a level of fame where they don’t need the show now. It all kind of works back into the narrative they want to create. So they know how to work that whole system. I think they’re pretty intelligent people. But it’s a whole industry and brand that I am fully immersed in.

Tell us about how the idea for your new book, “Sun Seekers,” started? [Dementia] is a hard subject, especially to deal with at a younger age.

So when I was searching for a job in New York, I was dabbling in writing fiction. I wrote a book about a girl who lives in New York and is looking for a job. But I was very much trying to figure out what story I wanted to tell. I went to evening classes, met authors, and formed a friendship with one writer named Brenda Janowitz, who has published many novels. She had read some of my stuff and said, “You need to write the story that is your story. You can’t write something if you’re not passionate about it, or you don’t have a personal investment in it.” I was in my early 20s, I was still naïve … [but] I kept working on novels and then I moved to London.

I’m overly extroverted and when we moved, I was working from home, so I knew nobody. I would get off work at 2 p.m. and it was just me talking to my French bulldog for hours at a time. [Back in the U.S.] my friends were all at their jobs, as were my parents, and the only person who was available to talk to me was my grandfather, who was in a nursing home in Richmond [Spring Arbor of Richmond] … A couple years before, my grandfather had lost his wife of 73 years. And he was in this new place in the early stages of dementia. While we were at very different stages in our lives, I felt a kindred spirit to him a lot of the time, in terms of the loneliness and the isolation and being in a new place. So I would call him every day and we would talk. Some days were better than others, as people who have experienced dementia can attest to. I always knew him as the most complimentary person in the world, he was a larger-than-life personality … then as he got older and struggled with the dementia, he became angrier, more depressed.

To me, that was one of the hardest parts. Watching the personality change completely from what you know, to a stranger in essence.

Yeah, watching that happen was difficult for me. One day I had called him when I was having a tough day, feeling alone and isolated. And instead of having a loving, caring response, he said some of the nastiest things he’s ever said to me. I was just really not in a good place, got off the phone, was in tears, and was really beside myself.

All of a sudden, I had this strong image of myself as a little girl, holding his hand, and we were standing outside in the sun. He was younger again, not affected by dementia, not in a nursing home. He was just my protector and someone who wanted to see the world with me. And I was overcome by this strong image and sat down and started writing. I wrote a six-page short story complete with the characters of Gracie and Dan and LeeAnn, the characters in this book now. At the time, I just wrote and it came out of me. I sent it to my mom … I used to literally hide inside of my sweatshirt when she would edit my papers in high school. And she was like, “Rachel, I think this is what you need to write.” So I sent it to my author friend and she also said, “I think this is your book, this is your story.”

For the next six months I wrote the book, fleshed it out … I struggled to find an agent or any kind of positive response. At first the reaction was: “You can’t tell an adult story from a child perspective. We can’t market that.”

I’m surprised they didn’t push you to go the Young Adult route, given your knowledge of pop culture, etc.

Well, they have done that on other books … but I’m not precious about my words. However that part of the book felt like the heart of it to me. So I wasn’t really willing to change that, so I continued to struggle. Then I had my daughter, moved back to America, found my agent, who believed in the story and went to bat for me. We went out on submission in early 2020, which I’m sure you remember was not a good time to try to get your book published … Several agents asked me to rewrite it without the child’s perspective as the main narrator of the story. That was the main thing. But her voice as narrator was what made it special to me.

I was going to ask which character you felt closest to.

In terms of personality, LeeAnn. A lot of myself is in her. My pessimistic side. It’s so funny, the early reviews have been pretty good so far. But the negative points are like, “Well, I couldn’t stand LeeAnn.” I was like, awesome! I love that for me.

I didn’t mind LeeAnn, for what it’s worth.

Well, thanks! But they were like, “she’s insufferable, but we love Gracie” [the child]. Which is so funny to me, because that was the main thing all these editors and agents were like, “we just can’t” … So my agent connected with this editor who had experienced Alzheimer’s in her family and she really understood the story and took it to heart. Honestly, I met her in person and told her it was the most rewarding editing experience I’ve ever had. Because she just understood it, and she made it better.

Smart move by your agent.

Yeah. It comes down to, a lot of times, if you’ve personally been impacted. And unfortunately, if you haven’t yet, you probably will in your lifetime. It is more universal than people may think. Especially people my age who maybe haven’t had a parent have it yet.

And it’s a genetic disease. So once you’ve dealt with it and seen how awful it is, you live in fear of having it yourself. That complete and utter loss of control that most people are headed for, whether they know it or not. You just have to keep hoping they make medical advancements … So were you able to spend time with your grandfather?

 Yeah, we started calling in 2016, he passed away in early 2017. But I was able to come home for Christmas in 2016 and spend some time with him. I normally don’t talk about writing to many people in my life. But the last time I was with him, I was able to tell him that I was working on this book and that I planned to dedicate it to him. He understood, yeah, and he was really touched by it.

I thought you did a nice job portraying the emotional toil this disease takes on everyone in its orbit. I don’t want to sound too negative about how depressing it is, because there are funny parts in the book. But the flipside of the whole thing, or that I’ve noticed as I’ve gotten older, is that whenever you deal with incredibly low or bleak moments in life – including life or death situations – there are always these amazing people who show up and provide hope: Like the caregivers. What was that one thing you hoped that readers take away from your book?

Thank you … Well, it’s exactly that. I didn’t want to write a book that was just depressing and sad about a tragic situation. I wrote this book to help myself go through my own grief about the situation and also to see things through Gracie’s eyes, which are much more innocent and light and looking for the best in people and trying to find a solution.

That was actually the only thing that my editor and I disagreed on. She wanted to know what happened to John [the grandfather character] in the end.  I was like, “No matter what, that’s not going to be an uplifting thing.” He goes back to the nursing home, he gets arrested, he dies. I wanted Gracie picturing him out there, having a better life.

So for me, I just hope people can find these lighter moments in what are very dark and depressing situations. And that they can see the bits of humanity. See the moments, even if they have a complicated relationship in their family, as LeeAnn has with her father in this book. That really makes it even more challenging when you have to advocate and take care of someone who you may have complex relationship with. But even then, you can find the person’s good points, even if they didn’t always do right by you.

When you do the tour with this book are you talking about any specific issues related to dementia or nursing home care, or is it mostly on the personal side?

I’m sticking more to personal stuff. As you noted, if someone in your family has it, you have a higher chance, so I do keep an eye on advancements, as do my parents. When people read the book, they sometimes talk to me about that stuff, but I don’t have any answers. I worry that people will think I’m their therapist. I wrote this book to help myself through a difficult time. I’m by no means a medical expert or someone who should give speeches.

You’re like the rest of us, you experienced it firsthand and were shook.

Yeah. I experienced a loved one go through this and wanted to find a way to express what I was feeling. Maybe what I would’ve hoped would’ve happened. There are fantasy writers and there are fiction writers and I don’t think they’re that different.

How did becoming a mother change you as a writer?

It’s so wild. I wrote this book before I became a mother, but so much of it is about motherhood. I was nervous when I started that, if I publish it people would say, “You’re not even a mom!” Come to find out that wasn’t an issue [laughs]. I still had seven years to go [to get published]. But it’s very bizarre. I was talking to someone about this the other day. I now have a 4-year-old. She is so much like Gracie, it’s a little bit creepy. It’s almost like I wrote this child into existence. She asked me the other day about how we see the sunrise and sunset, and I started explaining how the earth orbits around the sun … That was very strange to me how many similarities there were between her and this character that existed years before she was born …

One of my editor’s notes wanted me to focus more on LeeAnn’s mental health, which is always an undercurrent … After I’d had children, with both of them I’d had pretty severe postpartum anxiety, which isn’t the same as postpartum depression, it’s somewhat opposite. But it was the first time I had experienced mental health struggles that I could physically feel in my body. And so, I really was glad that note came after I had children, so I could try to put that into words on the page. Things that I’ve written since have touched more on that.

But the main way [the writing] changed since having kids, was going more into the mental health [of the character]. Like Gracie says, her mother has “storm-cloud days and sunshine days.” Or days where she doesn’t get out of her pajamas.

You went through the publishing process here in Richmond. What kind of advice can you give local would-be writers?

I think the cool thing about present day is that you don’t have to live in a big city like New York. I’ve never met my agent before in person. So much is done on the phone, on Zoom, in emails. I’m not the best person to give advice, but I do think persistence, and in my situation, sticking by something you believe in.

While I’ve always taken criticism and edits, it’s not always easy. But you have to step back and absorb what the person is saying … I wrote 500 drafts of this book, tried different timelines, different perspectives, started it at different points. I’m always willing to put in the work, but when it comes down to someone asking you to change something you know you wrote the book about in the first place, you have to stick by that.

The formula I always heard was talent plus perseverance equals luck.

I just joined James River Writers like a month ago. But you have to take advantage of everything your city has to offer, that’s always your best bet. When I was in London, I went to a writing group on a regular basis. Or if there’s an author in the Richmond area that you really admire, you can reach out to them … I wanted to be as informed as possible going into the writing process and marketing process.

Last question: How can people follow your latest work?

Definitely my website, I put everything up there. And also my Instagram page.

Rachel McRady has upcoming local appearances on Jan. 23 at Book People, 10464 Ridgefield Pkwy., and at Fountain Bookstore, 1312 E. Cary St. on Thursday, Feb 22 at 6 p.m. For updates and to learn more, visit her website or Instagram.