Thirty-Eight Days of Rain received a 4+ star review, making it an IndieReader Approved title.
Following find an interview with author Eva Asprakis.
What is the name of the book and when was it published?
Thirty-Eight Days of Rain published on the eighth of March, just in time for International Women’s Day.
What’s the book’s first line?
Rain hammers at the window as Androulla hoists herself up onto the examination table.
What’s the book about?
Thirty-Eight Days of Rain follows Androulla Demetriou, who is twenty-four and newly married when she learns that she is infertile. In a bid for Cypriot citizenship she is undergoing adoption by her stepfather, and wondering if she will have to adopt a child one day herself. As this reality sets in, Androulla’s marriage unravels. Between migration departments and doctor’s appointments, she must question what it means to be from somewhere, what it means to be a woman and, when an impossible choice presents itself, which of these things means the most to her.
What inspired you to write the book?
Last May, I suffered a missed abortion due to complications with polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS). Prior to that, three doctors had told me that I would never conceive. As a writer, I tend to process emotions through my work. This was how I coped in the weeks following my pregnancy loss, when my partner and I were forced apart due to visa issues. We could not grieve together, and so I channeled my anguish into writing a story inspired by our experiences. Imagination took over, and that story became Androulla’s.
What’s the main reason someone should read this book?
Read this book if you’re looking for one that will resonate as you find your place in the world. As a daughter, a partner, a mother. A person who exists between households or homelands, and who has never quite known where they belonged.
What’s the most distinctive thing about the main character?
Androulla’s most distinctive quality is her analytical nature. She thinks deeply about things great and small, which works sometimes to her advantage and other times to her detriment. This tendency towards rumination is compounded by the fact that she is alone a lot, as a remote worker. As the story progresses, we see her think her way into phases of both gloom and growth.
When did you first decide to become an author?
I have written for as long as I can remember. It’s a compulsion for me. Becoming an author was never a question of if, but of how and when.
Thirty-Eight Days of Rain is my seventh written and second published book. My first, Love and Only Water, came out in September 2022. It follows twenty-one-year-old Daniela, who retraces her roots from England to Cyprus in search of a purpose. As whispers resound through her grandparents’ home, Daniela senses their anguish at Turkey’s invasion of The North, still as raw as it was almost fifty years ago. Then her aunt invites her across the border for a picnic. Beyond the buffer zone she runs into Beyza, who was her girlfriend five years ago when they both lived in London and were from ‘the east’. Here and now, with Daniela in The South and Beyza in The North, everything is different. Faiths conflict. Preconceptions collide. The divided island unravels alongside a war-fractured family. Daniela’s is a story of living with uncertainty, and of forging an identity as both yet neither.
What do you do for work when you’re not writing?
When not working on my own projects, I can be found ghostwriting and editing other people’s. Before now, I’ve done a stint everywhere from clothes shops and call centres, to estate agent’s and coffee shops. But I have always been happiest among books.
How much time do you generally spend on your writing?
I spend as much time as I can on my writing. There is nothing I would rather do – unless I’m reading a particularly good book.
What’s the best and hardest part of being an indie?
For me, the hardest part of being an indie is balancing my time between writing and the administrative side of things (PR, marketing, etc.). Truthfully, this is a balance that I’m still trying to get right. I’d love to spend all day writing, but there would be no one to read my books if I didn’t take the time to promote them. Having said that, something I love about being indie is the bond I have formed with my readers by engaging with them directly. I’m not sure that relationship would exist with a big corporation standing between them and I.
What’s a great piece of advice that you can share with fellow indie authors?
I would advise fellow indie authors to be themselves. You don’t have an agent or a publisher pushing your work in a certain direction, so make the most of that creative freedom and write the stories that speak to your heart.
Would you go traditional if a publisher came calling?
By the right publisher and the right deal, I think I could be tempted? But I would struggle to give up the creative freedom that I have now.
Is there something particular that motivates you?
I am endlessly motivated by my love of writing, to dig deep and tell meaningful stories.
Which writer do you most admire?
I admire authors who write multicultural, multigenerational stories. A few favourites are Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Maggie O’Farrell, Zadie Smith, Anne Enright, Yaa Gyasi, and Ocean Vuong.
Which book do you wish you could have written?
If there’s one book I wish I could have written, it’s On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong. The prose is searing.