D. Vincent DeLorenzo and Clara Wren take listeners behind the pages of Ashes in the Rain, exploring its evocative beginnings, the craft of restraint, and the quiet weight of survival. With a moving excerpt and deep dive into the novel’s imagery and choices, they illuminate how weather, objects, and memory create meaning beyond words.
Chapter 1
Clara Wren
Right, let’s light this episode with that unmistakable, storm-soaked atmosphere—Vincent, can you bring us back to the first image that sparked Ashes in the Rain? You’ve hinted before that sometimes a story doesn’t start where you expect.
D. Vincent Delorenzo
Yeah—I mean, some stories just arrive like a weather front, pressing in until you have to pay attention. For this one, the image was just… two people under an umbrella, right after a night that went sideways, not even looking at each other. I actually thought at first it’d be a romance—turns out, it was about loyalty, and the cost of keeping silent after chaos.
Clara Wren
Isn’t it wild how the heart of a story hides itself? That image makes me think instantly of the book’s title, too. Ashes in the Rain. There’s both destruction and cleansing—grief and, well, maybe a bit of confession too?
D. Vincent Delorenzo
Exactly. The title’s where that tension lives, yeah? Rain’s about letting things out, washing away, but the ash—that’s what’s left behind after everything ends. There’s beauty and wreckage all tangled together. I kept circling those two ideas—confession, and what actually endures after the storm.
Clara Wren
You know, you shared this once—a memory from your time abroad. That moment at a crossroads, rain falling on everyone, but nobody speaking, and it was just… everyone knew, in their bones, survival was in the silence. There’s power in sharing that kind of space, especially when there’s nothing left to say.
D. Vincent Delorenzo
Yeah, sometimes it really is the silence that’s the most honest voice—or, well, maybe the oldest. I remember watching people after some border checkpoint in Cambodia, coiled tight but together, nobody asking questions, just sharing an umbrella for five silent minutes as rain pattered down. That was as deep as any conversation. The book sort of found its pulse there—that loyalty and quiet endurance more than anything dramatic or grand.
Chapter 2
Clara Wren
Let’s take that thread and follow it into the themes, because what’s so striking on the page is what you leave unsaid. What are the ideas readers can hang onto as they turn the pages?
D. Vincent Delorenzo
Well, the ones that stuck with me—grace without permission, I guess you could say. Little acts of kindness in the middle of a mess, and how the weather carries conversations when, honestly, words would do more harm. Sometimes the simplest gesture—sharing part of a meal, drying a coat—becomes the whole story. And I wanted that restraint to shape the book, too: short scenes, white space, not explaining every emotion—letting objects and atmosphere do the real speaking.
Clara Wren
I love the way the scenes breathe. Everything’s spare, but nothing’s empty. You do this thing—I don’t know if you’re aware of it—where the camera’s back just a little, letting us watch, letting small signs—like a battered mug or a coat or a door left ajar—stand in for all that isn’t said out loud. That sort of craft… it invites us to feel the aftershock more than the action, don’t you think?
D. Vincent Delorenzo
That’s exactly it. The moral lives in the distance, and the resonance is in the everyday stuff. The camera “steps back ten inches,” as I keep telling myself. I always believed the most profound truths were in what’s only glimpsed—let the white space and the objects hold memory, tension, even mercy, and skip the sermon.
Clara Wren
And there’s this bit—a recurring metaphor, about ‘the wrong flag’—that gives such weight to a whole decade of conflict, but you don’t tell us everything. It’s, um, reminiscent actually of a moment you mentioned once about seeing a child holding impossibly still at a tense checkpoint. That kind of stillness, that… survival through silence—it just radiates off the page.
D. Vincent Delorenzo
Chapter 3
Clara Wren
Let’s bring listeners closer now with a passage from Ashes in the Rain—a scene that lives and breathes that endurance and stillness. Vincent, would you read it for us?
D. Vincent Delorenzo
Of course. Here goes: No one ever counts the breaths you hold when soldiers pass. No one writes down how still a child can be when the wrong flag is raised. But this family did not vanish. They endured. And the rain, for once, did not wash them away.
Clara Wren
That’s a line you feel in your bones. The way you write about breath-holding—the body becoming a small room when danger passes—it echoes so much about trauma and resilience. It’s not just fear on the page, it’s, well, instructions for survival, almost…
D. Vincent Delorenzo
Yeah, endurance is a quiet verb. Sometimes what keeps us alive is what we don’t say—that instinct toward stillness. Especially for kids, they’re fluent in that sort of silent survival long before they can give it words. And about ‘the wrong flag’—that’s exactly the job of a single, clean image. If a flag plants a decade of context, you don’t need a whole history essay right there.
Clara Wren
And that last line—the rain offering mercy, not erasure. That weather as both threat and reprieve—it feels like grace, arriving without anyone asking for it, you know?
D. Vincent Delorenzo
Sometimes weather is the most impartial judge. When it feels like an ally on a page, it usually means the characters have truly earned whatever peace it offers. I, um, might overuse that—letting the rain carry what can’t be put into dialogue. But I think restraint—letting readers enter the silence—does more work than I ever could with explanation.
About the podcast
Authors, readers, and dreamers—gather round the lantern. Each episode, novelist D. Vincent DeLorenzo and co-host Clara Wren, a curious Australian storyteller, unpack the journeys behind great books, the discipline of writing them, and the meanings they leave behind. Through rotating segments—Behind the Book, For Writers, and For Readers—they offer cinematic readings, actionable craft advice, and heartfelt discussions that remind us why stories matter. Subscribe for weekly conversations that illuminate both page and soul. For more information visit the Authors website www.dvincentdelorenzo.com
I remember that kid. Incredible—how children know, instinctively, to become smaller or even invisible when things get dangerous. That’s real endurance, and honestly, I think those quiet acts of survival are more potent than any battlefield heroics. The book tries to honor that—to make space for how, as we touched on too in earlier episodes, silence and negative space are a story’s strongest tools.
Clara Wren
Absolutely. And we do have some listener questions—one, about how you decide what to reveal and what to leave unsaid. They asked if it’s instinct or just brutal editing?
D. Vincent Delorenzo
A little of both. I’ll write a scene with all the emotion and explanation, then I cut every line that tells the reader what to feel. If the scene lives without those lines, well, they were never needed. Readers are smart—they’ll find the ache and meaning if I just trust the silence to do its job.
Clara Wren
Another: how do you protect people when fiction borrows from real lives and moments?
D. Vincent Delorenzo
Change the details, safeguard the people, but keep the emotional truth. It’s like, keep the pressure point the same, even if the face or setting changes. And if a scene feels like it’s taking more than it’s giving—I try a new angle. It’s about the story’s honesty, not its hunger, I think.
Clara Wren
So, for writers: if you had to give one craft takeaway?
D. Vincent Delorenzo
Let weather carry what argument cannot. Trust the small objects, slice out the sermon—if there’s still meaning left behind, then you’ve probably done enough.
Clara Wren
Gorgeous. And on our next episode, we’re switching gears a bit—we’ll talk discipline without cruelty: the art of actually finishing what you start. Writers, we see you!
D. Vincent Delorenzo
You’ll find book and newsletter links in the show notes, as always. Thanks for reading, and for approaching stories with, well—mercy.
Clara Wren
If this episode resonated, hit follow and leave us a review! It truly helps more book-lovers find their way to our little firelight.
D. Vincent Delorenzo
I’m D. Vincent DeLorenzo. Goodnight, Clara.
Clara Wren
And I’m Clara Wren. Keep the lantern lit, everyone. See you next time.