Advertisement Madison writer Rae Meadows understands that natural obsession and fear. She exchanged letters several years ago with a teen who murdered his college classmate in New York and considered writing a non-fiction book about the case.
Then she turned the focus to herself: What fascinated her about this crime? That question inspired Meadows' stunning second novel, "No One Tells Everything," which explores a fictious murder from the unique perspectives of the young murderer and a slowly unraveling woman who seeks the crime's details and motivation.
"No One Tells Everything," now in bookstores, isn't a murder mystery. The murder tale ventures into mind mysteries after the gruesome act -- but prompts the chills (with more insight) of a sharply written whodunit.
"I'd write for days in a row," says Meadows, "then break out of it to go back to my everyday life."
Meadows, 37, lives on the near East Side with her husband, screenwriter Alex Darrow, and their daughter, 9-month-old Indigo. She finished the book while pregnant.
"No One Tells Everything" marks Meadows' followup to the fascinating debut "Calling Out," which tells the story of a receptionist at a Salt Lake City escort service. Reviews were overwhelmingly positive: Newsweek to The Washington Post to Entertainment Weekly touted "Calling Out." The Chicago Tribune named it one of 2005's best books.
Meadows worked as a receptionist at a Salt Lake City escort service for six months while earning her master's degree in creative writing at the University of Utah in the late 1990s. Unlike "Calling Out's" protagonist, she did not work as an escort.
"I took the job for money, but also I knew it would be interesting in some sense," Meadows says. "I didn't know a novel would come out of it."
The book's "built-in hook," she admits, helped her to leap the huge hurdle toward having a first novel published.
Meadows and her husband have finished a "Calling Out" script for an independent studio. If a "name actress" signs on to play the lead role, the film likely will become reality. (Salt Lake City's literary community embraced the book despite the city's conservative nature. Meadows, in fact, is reading novels now as the judge for the Utah Book Awards.)
"Calling Out" continues to sell in the paperback edition, and "No One Tells Everything" was released nationally in July.
"I'm trying to maintain my distance. The first time I was so anxious about the novel," she says. "There's not a lot you can do." She laughs. "Having had a baby in the interim -- nothing seems quite as anxiety producing as that."
A suburban Cleveland native, Meadows majored in art history at Stanford. She worked in an advertising agency then spent time in Prague and Paris. In her late 20s, she started writing and moved to New York, where she worked as a copywriter and wrote "Calling Out."
In 2006, Meadows and Darrow moved from New York City to Madison.
"We weren't interested in maintaining a lifestyle where we were just scraping by and both writing full time," she says. "Madison's such a lovely place to be. It's a great community for writers."
Meadows still does freelance work, including copywriting for Levi's. She also won Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters' short fiction contest for a woman's adventurous, physically and emotionally, desert tale "In Order Not to Be Alone."
She's also at work on another novel, this one featuring a Madison asylum in 1900 and modern-day Madison.
"Writing makes me feel much better, day to day," Meadows says. "I know there's something for me to delve into and to create a world."
WHAT OTHERS SAY (about Rae Meadows)
"Rae's not afraid to illuminate the most pained or shameful facets of her characters, but she does so without a sense of exhibitionism, and with genuine compassion.
"(The convicted murderer) Charles in 'No One Tells Everything,' for instance, is one of those characters I can't quite let go of, (long) after reading the book. I'm thinking in particular of the smaller moments that show him trying to connect with people, trying to think through and accomplish what everyone else does effortlessly. The kind of emotional acuity she achieves in her novels is no small feat, and she accomplishes it flawlessly."
— Michelle Wildgren, author of the acclaimed novel "You're Not You" and a UW-Madison grad
"Her characters have secrets — sometimes things they are trying to hide even from themselves. They remind me of Russian nesting dolls that are revealed to the reader only one layer at a time. Certainly this is true in her latest book."
— Joan Fischer, former editor Wisconsin People and Ideas
"Rae possesses that wonderful medley of gifts as a writer: originality, precision and compassion. What I like best about her work is that she creates characters that are very complex and she manages to write about them with a mix of toughness and tenderness. She knows how to tell a story, how to pace a narrative and how to turn a phrase. Some people are just born to write novels. Rae strikes me as one of those people."
— Dean Bakopoulos, author of "Please Don't Come Back From the Moon" and director, Shake Rag Alley Center for the Arts in Mineral Point
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