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Author Update 2023: RJ the Story Guy

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RJ the Story Guy (aka RJ Mirabal) is a retired high school teacher turned author. He has written three series: the completed Rio Grande Parallax trilogy (adult fantasy) and the ongoing Dragon Train Quest for young adults and Trixie the Brown Dog for children. His newest release is Dragon Train Rebellion (December 2022), the second book in his Dragon Train Quest series. You’ll find RJ on his websites at RJMirabal.com and TrixieTheBrownDog.com, on Facebook at RJMirabalAuthor and TrixieTheBrownDog, and on Instagram and Twitter. To find out more about RJ and his writing, visit his SWW author page and follow the links to previous interviews.

Distill the story you tell in Dragon Train Rebellion into a few sentences and include the themes you explore.
Rebellion takes up the story of Skye, the big blue dragon, and her human friend, young Jaiden the farmer, as they prepare themselves and the rest of the small community of free dragons to fight to stay free. In addition, they want to free all their fellow dragons who are enslaved. The dragons want to live once again in the mountain caves as they always had before humans won the Dragon Wars a generation before. Jaiden is captured when he tries to rescue Skye’s children who were abducted during a human raid on the free dragons’ desert community. Things come to a head which will lead to all-out war. The main themes of the story involve the quest for freedom, the importance of friendship and family relationships, and dedication to a cause.

Jaiden returns as your main character in book two. What challenges does he face, and why will readers connect with him?
Jaiden, who is now 17 years old, struggles to take on the responsibilities of adulthood and strives to offer himself to a cause greater than himself and that is, in fact, seemingly against his own kind—humanity. He encounters an attractive and very capable young woman a few years older than himself and a teenage girl whom he barely knew back in his hometown. The difficulty of relating to members of the opposite sex are mostly a mystery and somewhat frustrating for him. He also wants to gain independence from his demanding and mercurial father but he fears he isn’t capable of standing on his own feet until he is challenged by his new dragon friends.

Who are a few of your other characters, new or returning?
Skye and her mate Caerulus turned out to be rather demanding of Jaiden, though Skye still handles him with the compassion of a substitute mother, but she isn’t quite as supportive as he expected her to be based on his earlier experience with her.

A new character is a silver dragon (about the size of a horse with the intelligence of a ten-year-old child) called Trigger. He and Jaiden train together because when Jaiden goes into battle he will ride Trigger. Trigger is annoying and mischievous but also proves to be brave and humorous. The two start to bond by the end of the novel. Another new character is Dog, a small gold dragon about the size of a dog and the intelligence of a four-year-old child. Because of his size, he can easily sneak around to explore and help Jaiden once they start to work together with Trigger, Skye, and Caerulus.

Wyetta is a young woman, probably about three to four years older than Jaiden. She is very self-sufficient and athletic which makes her both attractive and threatening to Jaiden. Her beauty makes her irresistible to Jaiden, though there is a mysterious air about her.

You’re currently writing book three of Dragon Train Quest. At what point while working on the first book, Dragon Train, did you know the story was strong enough for a series? What has been the most challenging aspect of writing this series?
When I came to the end of the first book, I knew I had to tell the story of how Jaiden would get involved in the dragons’ quest for complete freedom. The freedom of Skye’s family that she and Jaiden accomplished at the end of the first book was fine, but it wouldn’t be enough for either of them to simply quit while they were ahead.

The most challenging aspect of writing this series is to limit the complexity because this is a story intended for teen and young adult readers. I could easily take this story into levels of complexity and a cast of characters as extensive as a major epic fantasy. But I wanted to keep the focus on Jaiden, Skye, and others closest to him as he goes through his whole coming of age quest. He is a part of a monumental struggle for freedom, but I didn’t want to bog the story down with a lot of politics and cultural theories. Though those elements are present, the story sticks to Jaiden and his quest since he is the narrator throughout, except for a few rare occasions.

What makes this series unique among all the other dragon books on the market?
Though there are a lot of dragon stories, most of them focus on people’s struggle with the dragons with usually the dragons as antagonists. Some stories allow dragons to be intelligent, but I decided to make them very intelligent, wise, and highly moral. They only want their own freedom, not to destroy humanity through death, destruction, and dominance. They do not have unusual magic abilities, but they communicate with Jaiden mentally. They have a highly developed culture but virtually no technology since they don’t possess hands and the more compact bodies of humans. I slowly reveal interesting elements of their highly developed culture as the story progresses. Also, the setting for the series is not medieval as is typical for many dragon stories. In this world (which I don’t name) people have developed a 19th-century kind of life and technology but they haven’t developed steam power, so they use dragons for heavy labor to do farm work and to tow trains, etc.

Did what-if questions help shape your Dragon Train books?
Yes, the unique aspects of the series mentioned above were the what-ifs I started with. In fact, the title came to me before any story ideas once I began thinking about developing a dragon story. Somehow, the words “dragon train” came to me one night when I was falling asleep. Later, intrigued by the idea, I imagined why dragons would pull trains and it all went from there, including the characters, storylines, etc.

What writing projects are you working on now?
Dragon Train War, which will conclude the Quest series, is this year’s project. It’s been the hardest to develop because I had to do a lot of research about war, battles, strategy, weapons, and battle techniques, as well as coming up with a satisfying conclusion that deals with the contradictions and horrors of war that will be comprehensible to young readers. And of course, I had a lot of storylines and character development that began in books one and two to contend with! Sometimes, a one-off book seems very appealing knowing that I don’t have to develop characters, storylines, and themes beyond the conclusion of one book.

Is there something else you’d like to tell readers?
Love and value freedom before you lose it. Value the people in your life and make the unique contribution to life as we know it that only you can do. Accept some failure and celebrate your successes. And remember, people (in broad enough terms to include the other intelligence forms of life we share this Earth with) and your relationships with them are the most important things.

KLWagoner150_2KL Wagoner (writing as Cate Macabe) is the author of This New Mountain: a memoir of AJ Jackson, private investigator, repossessor, and grandmother. Kat has a speculative fiction blog at klwagoner.com and writes about memoir at ThisNewMountain.com.



Author Update: Dan Wetmore

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Among retired Air Force officer Dan Wetmore’s creative outlets is his passion for writing poetry. In 2016, he released My Mother’s Gentle Unbecoming: The Absentings of Alzheimer’s, a poetry collection published by Saint Andrews University Press. His second collection, Phoboudenopanophobia: Words Now for a Possible Then (July 2022), explores “dementia’s emotional toll on the leaving and the left behind.” You’ll find Dan on LinkedIn and his SWW Author Page. Look for his book on Amazon, and learn more about his work in his 2017 SWW interview.

Why did you write Phoboudenopanophobia?
Penning My Mother’s Gentle Unbecoming, about her descent into dementia, got me contemplating a similar fate, so I wrote this volume as an extended last letter to my family, sort of an “epitaph in absentia”; hoped insurance against having last feelings go unexpressed, in the event the body outlives the being.

Tell us about the structure of the book and how you worked through “putting everything in order.”
As the number of poems multiplied, I saw six different tones emerge: overwhelmsion, dread, desperation, gratitude, resolve, and acceptance, similar to the five stages of grief, it being a book about loss, simply of self. So, to reassure the reader—at risk of spoon-feeding them—that the “voices” constituted an evolution rather than an equivocation, I grouped the birds of a feather, in hope the whole would ultimately take greater flight.

When did you decide to make this a project and step into the journey to put it together?
As the previous volume was dwindling down to completion, this one suggested itself. Though having said all about the subject (my mother), the subject matter wasn’t exhausted, since we speak our empathies and our personal experience with different voices. It was the passing of a baton from one runner to the next.

How did you choose the book title?
The title is a mash-up of three fears:

The norm and the hope is that animacy and identity will prove co-terminal, but death by dementia denies that. So, first fear is of its final phase—having lost all which effectively makes one human: fear of (having) Nothing: oudenophobia.

I suspect the penultimate state of consciousness—just shy of unawareness—is incomprehension. And as what’s feared most is the unknown (and, at that point, everything will be unknowable), the final fear will be that of panophobia: fear of Everything.

And the double-teaming by those possible tomorrows threatens to taint today, prompting a fear of succumbing to dread, sacrificing all remaining moments to a prolonged flinch: fear of Fear (phobophobia).

At what point did you know you had taken the manuscript as far as it could go, that it was finished and ready for publishing?
When the flow slowed to a trickle, and further attempts at purging felt affected; trying to fabricate emotion rather than free it. That said, every quake has aftershocks, and the ledger—echoing the life—is ever a work in progression (and hopefully of progress). A few guests always arrive late at table, but fashionably so—the most composed of the bunch, because not rushed by the deadline which some impatience or another dictated.

What were the expected, or unexpected, results of putting this project together?
Somewhat managing to untie the Gordian Knot of emotions the situation set to roiling; to at least depict the Moebius nature of the matter, given the impossibility of ironing it perfectly flat. Gaining an appreciation of how many others are walking this particular road, and having the opportunity to hopefully return the favor done for me by so many others, of finding something to point to and say, “Yes—THAT!”

Do you have a favorite quote from the book that you’d like to share?
“Though fast flat on a mountain of limestone-capped granite, this is akin to falling: moving without the ability to arrest, orient, or anticipate; the trifecta of entropies which constitutes chaos.”

What does your mature self now bring to the writing table that your younger self never could have?
Appreciation that (despite occasional appearances otherwise) less is more. An identifiable/consistent voice, reflecting settled priorities and a gelled perspective. Grudging admittance that Ben Franklin was right about that perspiration business. And realization that writing is primarily about having written (vice being read). If you can comprehend your own words, you’ve already achieved audience, and everything else is icing on the cake, which liberates you from chasing acceptance beyond (and potentially exclusive of) your own, insulating you from the temptation to pander.

Knowing what you know now, what would you do differently if you started your writing/publishing journey today?
Resist viewing quantity as the enemy of quality, rather as one means to it, having realized that the more frequently you go to the pump, the less you have to prime it.

What do most well-written poems have in common?
Concision, to include leashed ambiguity (selectively implying multiple things for the price of saying one). Perspicuity, to include exercising the rods of the mind’s eye rather than the cones—seeing peripherally, intimating rather than stating (to include liberal use of simile and metaphor—the more novel, the most mind-blowing).

Is there something that always triggers your creativity?
Always? A strong emotional spasm, usually of the yearning sort; a visceral (pre-lingual) feeling. Which throws down the gauntlet to become midwife to that muddled. And, as closest kin to the ineffable is the oblique, it usually comes into the air as poetry or poetic prose.

Often? Discerning a way in which seeming incommensurables are some way kindred.

What writing projects are you working on now?
A third volume of verse, On Our Knees in Ironies, about my dad’s dissolution at Alzheimer’s hands. Though the last generated, that’s an accident of time, it being thematically second. (Viewing the disease—more to the point, its host—as the subject, when the afflicted was my mother, Dad was serving as caregiver, and I merely spectator [third-person]. In a succession of roles, he became she, and I he, raising [razing?] my status to second-person. Trying to place myself in their shoes had me not only behind the lens, but in front of it; the wolf, at end, fully at the door.)

Is there anything else you’d like readers to know?
Building on the question (above), about what my mature self brings to the writing table, as far as dividends go, adulation and commiseration are nice, but catharsis suffices.

KLWagoner150_2KL Wagoner (writing as Cate Macabe) is the author of This New Mountain: a memoir of AJ Jackson, private investigator, repossessor, and grandmother. Kat has a speculative fiction blog at klwagoner.com and writes about memoir at ThisNewMountain.com.



An Interview with Author Connie McNeil

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Connie McNeil, PhD, has worked as a clinical psychologist for over 20 years. In 2022, she published Co-Creating, her debut release which she calls a guide to her “years of experience in teaching individuals to take a hold of their lives, with the guidance of their Higher Power.” Visit Connie on her website at ConnieMcNeil.com and look for her book on Amazon.

Why did you write Co-Creating, and who would benefit from reading it?
I wrote Co-Creating for everyone. As a psychologist I have seen scores of clients who live defeated lives, repeating the same old patterns and mistakes. They solve small problems, quit therapy, but return within a few months with another issue. I think most people miss out on fulfilling dreams that would transform their lives from good to off the charts! I believe it is our birthright to live this type of life as a child of the Divine.

Co-Creating is not a book to tell you anything you do not already know. It is a book to help you remember who you are: a Divine child of the Universe. I believe we are born with everything we need to live our best lives. All of us are blessed with unique gifts and talents and can sense whether a decision “feels” right. Co-Creating is about honoring our Divine self. It is not a book about religion, but of radical love for you and others. This book increases awareness that working with the Creator can create a satisfying, productive, and fulfilling life. One filled with love, joy, peace, health, and wealth.

Tell us about your journey to publication.
This book has been a lifetime in the making. I grew up in a restrictive household with a God that I believed was judgmental and waiting to catch me making a mistake. As a young child, I became afraid of displeasing my family and the Almighty so I started making choices that limited my options. My life became smaller and smaller, and I was increasingly miserable. And then one day I had an “aha” moment when I realized I was creating my own misery. I realized that if I could create a life of misery, I could also create a life of joy.

I found books that opened my heart and mind to a loving, gentle, understanding, and supportive Divine Being who was a far cry from the critical God I grew up with. The truth that was driven home to me time and time again was that my thoughts create my reality and that I am a creative being, responsible for making my life what I wanted.

I dreamed of being an author for over a decade. I made some attempts to write but, honestly, what I wrote wasn’t particularly good. One day I asked a friend to critique an article I wrote, and his review was so negative I threw the article away and shelved the idea of writing. My dream stayed on the shelf for a long time.

About two years ago, the Creator sent people, places, and events into my life that were instrumental in my future success. At the outset, I didn’t know any of the people who would be the ones to help make this book a reality. I still had the desire of being an author even though I was not writing.

Then one day, during a session with a new client, George (who has given me permission to use his name), I started talking about “co-creating with the Creator” which is a phrase I had never used before. After several sessions, George told me that the phrase stayed with him and that I should write a book. I hesitated. The fear of failure and another negative critique kept me from taking a risk. But George kept after me to write and later told me that Spirit had guided him to tell me to write about co-creating. He kept asking me, “Have you started writing yet?” Finally, I told him I had. He then told me he used to be in the publishing business, and he guided me through the publishing process. Also, a client introduced me to a friend who led me to my editor. She had a son who just happened to be an Emmy-winning graphic artist. He and his team did my entire book production.

What makes this book standout in the crowded inspirational/motivational market?
A unique feature of Co-Creating discusses the process of change. We are a product of what we were taught and what we heard growing up. Many times, we were told what we wanted was impossible or impractical. Many were left feeling they were not good enough or never got lucky breaks. These negative messages leave a mark on our self-esteem and our ability to succeed. Unless we change, we are destined to miss out on what we can achieve.

I don’t know that every self-help book discusses the shakeup that can happen in our lives when we go through the process of change. Sometimes problems arise out of nowhere that can bring us to our knees. These are called spiritual storms and are necessary for our growth, prosperity, healing, and creating. These storms can support us in getting rid of clutter in our thinking and in our environment, which could block us from receiving our heart’s desires. These storms bring us out of the old and into the new. Enduring a spiritual storm is not a sign that we are being punished. It is the exact opposite. We are being prepared for a tremendous blessing.

Do you have a favorite quote from Co-Creating that you’d like to share?
I have two quotes: “We only travel two paths. One is the path of love and the other is the path of fear.” and  “We are always creating. It is our nature. We either create what we want or what we do not want.”

Any “oh, wow!” moments while doing research for this book? And what was the most rewarding aspect of putting this project together?
The “oh, wow!” moment for me and most rewarding aspect was realizing the Creator wanted me to go beyond just writing Co-Creating. I was Divinely led to write a workbook that walks through areas that may hold us back from being our best selves. The workbook has space to write what we want to create and exercises that challenge thoughts and behaviors that could be holding us back from bringing our desires to us. The workbook includes opportunities to create affirmations that can replace tired, negative thoughts with empowering ones. We cannot bring our desires to us unless we change our thoughts and behaviors. I was also inspired to create a deck of oracle affirmation cards that provide positive statements that can change your life when you keep your mind on uplifting thoughts. I use these cards every morning in my meditation to give me a powerful positive statement to supercharge my day.

KLWagoner150_2KL Wagoner (writing as Cate Macabe) is the author of This New Mountain: a memoir of AJ Jackson, private investigator, repossessor, and grandmother. Kat has a speculative fiction blog at klwagoner.com and writes about memoir at ThisNewMountain.com.



An Interview with Author Alan E. Diehl

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Dr. Alan E. Diehl is the author of nonfiction investigative books and historical fiction that use his real-life experiences as a pilot, psychologist, investigator, and whistleblower. His newest novel is Armageddon’s Angel: Cuban Missile Crisis Thriller (December 2022). You’ll find Alan on his website at AlanEDiehl.com and his SWW author page.

Armageddon’s Angel is the first volume of the Pandora’s Keys Trilogy. At what point did you realize you had a trilogy versus a series?
The manuscript was intended to be a standalone novel in 2012. But John J. Nance, who had written best-selling books and TV screenplays, felt my project might make a great television series, if it were longer. So, I begin thinking about what could have happened after the protagonist-school teacher stole the Russian missile launch keys during the 1962 crises.

Can you give readers a broader perspective of what your story is about? Characters? Setting?
During the Cuban missile crisis Nick, a Russian major, falls for Maria, a beautiful local school teacher. When the major’s colleagues mistakenly think the Americans are attacking, she steals their missile launch keys. The two lovers, with the help of her student, Elian, hijack an aircraft to escape from the island in a protracted chase scene.

You’ve had a distinguished career as a pilot, design engineer, research psychologist, and investigator. When did you realize you wanted to become a writer?
During a multi-decade career, I produced hundreds of technical papers, magazine articles, and a couple of book chapters. Once I retired, my media contacts suggested I write nonfiction tell-all books about what really happens during civil and military crash investigations, etc. So, I decided to write narrative nonfiction books, revealing insider information and how the system really works and why it sometimes fails with deadly consequences.

On your website you state you were a “whistleblower.” Was there ever a time in your career when you felt threatened by your decision to come forward with controversial information?
Yes. Government officials don’t want the public to know how the system works, or fails. When another scientist and I exposed an FAA top official for lying to Congress, he diverted the sky marshals to harass us. I was soon told to leave Washington immediately, or there would be severe consequences. Fortunately, John Nance had just written a book (Blind Trust) about my success in reducing airliner crashes, and the US Air Force hired me. I was immediately sent undercover to investigate a mysterious Soviet jetliner crash that killed President Machel of The People’s Republic of Mozambique. I was recently informed that a KGB major by the name of Vladimir Putin was also there.

While working for the Air Force, I was assigned by President Clinton to investigate the worst fratricide since Vietnam, where 26 US and allied troops died. The incident was caused by a four-star general (who had ignored one of my important recommendations). When I refused to go along with the Pentagon cover-up, I was immediately threatened, demoted, and reassigned. I then warned that other crashes would occur if my recommendations were ignored. Two years later, 35 people were killed when an Air Force 737 crashed in Croatia, killing Clinton’s secretary of commerce, Ron Brown. When I disclosed why the tragedy happened, the Pentagon established a “blue ribbon panel” headed by the former FAA administrator who I blew the whistle on earlier. Our Deep State works to protect their own interests and control whistleblowers. But a few of us are still willing to speak truth to power and try to educate and entertain the public at the same time.

That’s how the system works, but it gets more interesting. A classmate of mine from the USAF Academy, who became a senior Pentagon insider, informed me that the Secretary of Defense was furious at my exposing problems in his department and that they might go to a federal judge, claiming that I was a national security risk, which would allow them to take my clearance, pension, and job. Fortunately, I had friends in the media, so they never carried out the threat. But I was also told that someday my car might explode. Yeah, being a government whistleblower has interesting moments.

Given your extensive background, are there any parallels in your fiction that mimic your own experiences?
Many! For instance, in Armageddon Angel I discuss how a general briefed me on why the Pentagon-planned attack and invasion of Cuba never occurred. What actually happened was the super-secret plans were being transported from Washington’s Andrews Air Force Base to MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa. But the baggage compartment on the Air Force jet came open and the plans were lost. The officers at MacDill informed the Pentagon that because nobody knew where the plans had ended up, there would be a significant delay in the hastily planned attack. This gave Kennedy time to consider other options. He went with the naval blockade instead, literally preventing World War III. In subsequent decades, I interviewed many officials involved with similar situations, but knowing the government would never allow me to reveal the information in nonfiction books, I tell such stories in novels, but interject my actual role in the story. There used to be a commercial that said, “Is it real or is it Memorex?” Readers will have to figure that out in my “inspired by real events” treatises.

In my first novel, Kidnap Marilyn: The Daring Scheme to Save Her, I also wove my real involvement into the fictional story after I interviewed a J. Edgar Hoover senior staffer who gave me details on how the FBI “monitored” the involvement of Marilyn with the two Kennedys. The novel tells what could and should have happened to this iconic actress if a CIA psychologist had been willing to risk his own life to rescue her. Furthermore, a close acquaintance who worked in Hollywood disclosed her own MeToo situations. That helped me describe such rapes in realistic terms. The use of hypnosis in that novel was also based on my own training in those techniques by the FBI and Pentagon. My involvement with interesting situations is included in my novels, but I wouldn’t dare put such information in nonfiction books.

What sets Armageddon’s Angel apart from other thrillers in today’s market?
Perhaps the most significant difference is that this novel deals with the most dangerous situation in human history. The Cuban missile crisis could very easily have resulted in World War III with hundreds of millions of casualties. While many novels are “inspired by real events,” my fictional thriller includes factual information that I witnessed or discovered from credible sources. It reveals what really happened during that seminal 13-day period. Of course, I spent decades researching information about that critical fortnight and thought the public needed to hear these revelations. In fact, the most dangerous element of the Cuban missile crisis was not the strategic rockets aimed at America, which were under the control of Nikita Khrushchev, but the well-hidden smaller battlefield nuclear weapons that were in the hands of junior Russian officers. How that happened is described in the thriller.

When can readers expect book two in the Pandora’s Keys Trilogy?
The second book in the trilogy will come out early next year and the third in late 2024.

You’ve written investigative books and historical fiction novels. Of the type of books you’ve written, is there one you find more enjoyable to write over the other?
Great question! Marilyn Monroe’s untimely death had always interested me. But the events involved in the Cuban missile crisis were world-changing, so I’d have to say Armageddon’s Angel was probably more important, and therefore enjoyable to write. I want readers and influencers to know what really happens behind the scenes, and I was fortunate enough to witness some of these events.

Who were your early influences, both personal and literary?
Safety advocate Ralph Nader, whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg, President John Kennedy, and ABC News’ John Nance (who helped me master both nonfiction and novel writing).

Is there anything else you’d like readers to know?
Yes, to use an aviation cliché: “Fasten your seatbelts. This is gonna be a bumpy ride.”

Also, readers might want to check out the following:

  • A one-minute video that explains my non-fiction book Air Safety Investigators: Using Science to Save Lives—One Crash at a Time
  • My CNN State of the Union interview.
  • The AP interview about the jet that crashed after flying over the capital in June 2023.

Su Lierz writes dark fiction, short story fiction, and personal essays. Her short story “Twelve Days in April,” written under the pen name Laney Payne, appeared in the 2018 SouthWest Writers Sage Anthology. Su was a finalist in the 2017 and 2018 Albuquerque Museum Authors Festival Writing Contest. She lives in Corrales, New Mexico, with her husband Dennis.



Author Updates: E.P. Rose & Patricia Smith Wood

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E.P. Rose and Patricia Smith Wood are examples of the diverse membership of SouthWest Writers (SWW) who write in several genres and consistently produce excellent work for their readers. These award-winning authors each had one new release within the last year and have more than one interview posted on the SWW website.

Author, sculptor, and poet Elizabeth Rose (writing as E.P. Rose) has published three memoirs, a collection of poems and artwork, and a book of children’s verse. Her latest memoir release is When Cows Wore Shoes (2022) which has been called “a sensitive portrait in words and photos of hardship, poverty, loss, and longing of a time and place lost to history.” Visit Liz’s website at GalisteoLiz.com and her Amazon author page. For more about her work, read her 2015 and 2019 SWW interviews.

What would you like readers to know about the story you tell in When Cows Wore Shoes?
Romanticized maybe, harshly honest, the book describes the final years of a rural way of life during Franco’s reign that we can only dream of today. I’d like readers to think back to a time when man had no use for machines or money, a time when cows really did wear shoes, and people threshed grain on a communal village threshing floor with wooden sledges embedded with knife-sharp flint stones; where the only sounds were the calls of villagers and the sigh of the sledges sliding over the golden grain.

What led to your decision to spend eleven summers in rural Spain?
Stuck in London in the late 1960s, I had nightmares that if I were to suddenly die, my two boys would never know there were choices…other ways, other cultures to explore than chasing material success. The British Way was not the only way. London in July and August was no place for my 4- and 6-year-old boys to spend the long British school holidays. I wanted them to roam free, to have the freedom to develop their imaginations as I had as a child.

Sticking the proverbial pin in a map, we found Ruesga, a small mountain village in northern Spain. No electricity, running water, shops, and no shared language, the village boasted two bars, a church, mountains to explore, and a twenty-mile long lake to go swimming. It took time, but once we began working in the fields beside the villagers, and acquired a little Spanish, finally we were accepted. Embedded with Ruesga’s village people, we discovered the real meaning of wealth, success, and civilized. Through them I learned Small truly is Beautiful. Armed with my Kodak Box Brownie camera, though I had no idea at the time, my photographs captured agricultural methods and tools first recorded in the 3rd millennium BC.

Why did you write this memoir?
Mainly I wrote the book for myself, my boys, and for those of us who question aspects of the world’s modernization. Also, I wanted to remind us there are simpler ways to live. And I wrote the book for posterity. How pompous those words sound. But truth to say, by happy accident, When Cows Wore Shoes does indeed record a slice of rural history that ended with Franco’s death. In 1975, civilization happened. Electricity, plumbing, communication, transport, telephones, tractors, machines, bidets and television, and money, money, money catapulted Ruesga into the twentieth century. The Spain we knew was gone. So it may be that during our final summer in Spain—our village friends, my boys and I—may have witnessed the last threshing sled in use, the last field of wheat scythed by hand, and the last cow wearing shoes. Fields died. Lanes grew over impassable. Carts, sledges, yolks lay unused and rotting. Cows forgot how to work.

Do you have a favorite chapter in the book or did a portion of it affect you more than others as you wrote?
Maybe chapter 17, Juanna’s picnic or chapter 16, Juanna’s birthplace. Both illustrate the plus and minus sides of isolation. Then there’s chapter 18, Ignacio’s chapter, of course. His untimely and unnecessary death. And, and… As I recalled each detail, I relived what I have lost.

How did you go about choosing the title?
When I mentioned my time in Spain when cows wore shoes, people assumed I was joking. Then they became intrigued. That was it, I’d found the hook I’d been looking for.

Tell us how When Cows Wore Shoes came together.
Deciding how to marry factual information and the personal without sounding like a manual or travel book took at least two years to evolve. Thanks to Covid’s gift of time, I was able to edit, edit, and re-edit again and again. Fed up with incompetent and expensive editors, I decided I could edit at least as well as they did. It must have worked somewhat. When Cows Wore Shoes won first place in the Self-Editing category of the 2023 New Mexico Press Women Communications Contest.

A writer friend and I have met for two hours a week now for over ten years. Not to make nicey-nice comments, oh no, our critique of each others’ work is too often harshly to the point. A writer’s master class, we laugh. For example, we might ask…Went? Went? BORING. Did the person skip, slouch? And beautiful? What does the word “beautiful” really bring to mind?

Do you have a message or a theme that recurs in your writing?
Seems I’m drawn to nonfiction. I really enjoy creating something readable without information dumping…thank you SouthWest Writers from whom I learned this lesson, and all I know about the craft of writing.

Is there anything else you would like readers to know?
I’ve nearly finished compiling the short stories I’ve written over the past ten-plus years into a book—The Long and the Short and the Tall. Looking for a common thread to connect the stories, I realized the common thread was me. Each story reflects something that happened, an impression, a reaction I had as an immigrant to America. A separate page records a potted autobiography as an introduction. The short story follows.

Once my book of short stories is formatted and published, I’ll get back to writing the prequel to Poet Under a Soldier’s Hat (20,000 words along) titled A Raj Baby Speaks. Set in India, my autobiography chronicles the not-so-perfect life of a child born into the British Raj.

Also, once a month, I read at the Santa Fe poetry group open mic get-together at Theatro Paraguas. Recently I’ve focused on rewriting a prose story as a prose poem.

Patricia Smith Wood is the author of the Harrie McKinsey Mysteries. After publishing the fourth book in the series, she took a break from that genre to write a historical biography of her mother’s life. In 2022, Aakenbaaken & Kent released Raising Ruby: The Amazing True Story of a Twentieth Century Woman. You’ll find Pat on her website at PatriciaSmithWood.com and on Facebook and Twitter. For more about her work, read her 2015, 2017, and 2020 SWW interviews.

What do you hope readers will take away from Raising Ruby?
I have difficulty with the passage of time. It moves so fast, and I can’t keep up. When I realized the dawn of the 21st Century was now 23 years past, I thought about how many new “adults” had been born since then. I have the impression they don’t know much of what people dealt with in the 20th Century. If I could tell my mother’s story and liberally include the history of her time, perhaps these “new” adults would have a better understanding about older generations.

How much pressure did you feel to get your mother’s story just right?
I don’t think I felt pressure, but I did want her story written so the reader could understand the past. Unless people learn how different life was for their ancestors, they can’t comprehend the struggles, the hard work, and a raft of other issues they lived with. I particularly wanted my audience to know how different life was 100 or even 50 years ago. By telling Ruby’s story and intertwining the history she lived, I hope the reader will give the older generation some slack.

How did the book come together?
I first thought about writing her story within a year of her death. It took me another year to get serious about it and start writing. It took me about three years to get it done (what with researching historical events and editing). Aakenbaaken & Kent, the publisher for my mysteries, said they would like to publish Raising Ruby.

Tell us about Ruby, her flaws and strengths, and why readers will connect with her.
When you read her story, I think you’ll be impressed with her ability (at a young age) to stand up for herself. She never minded working hard, and she had definite ideas about how she wanted to live her life. She saw a vision for herself that her siblings and most of her other relatives didn’t understand. She taught herself how to do a lot of things, and she was never afraid of trying something new. Even as a child, Ruby knew what she wanted. That can be good or bad, depending on the situation. She grew up with a step-father who wasn’t kind and seemed to resent her. Her emancipation came early on, and she went out on her own. These were her strengths. Some of her flaws were fairly petty: impatience, trying to take on too many projects, and often being too critical of people who didn’t live up to her standards.

This historical biography is a departure from your Harrie McKinsey Mystery series. When did you know you wanted to write your mother’s story, and what prompted the push to begin the project when you did?
That’s a really good question! After finishing Murder at the Petroglyphs, I couldn’t come up with a story for the next book. That’s when I thought about doing a book about my mom and about the history she lived through. I had lots of stories she told me over the years. I also found a box of spiral notebooks. After she, my dad, and my little brother moved away from Albuquerque, she always kept a notebook on the kitchen counter by the telephone. She made notes to herself and my dad and brother. Soon, my brother and my dad did the same thing. I found a box of notebooks and spent hours reading. I found dates for events throughout the late 1960s and up until the late 1990s. It helped me be accurate about many of the things I wrote about.

Was there anything surprising you discovered while doing research for this book?
I was surprised when I kept discovering more and more things to write about. I really had to pick and choose because we did not want a 300-page book to publish with the cost of printing these days!

What writing projects are you working on now?
I’m sort of torn. I feel a need to get another mystery out there, but I still haven’t found the exact mysterious element. So, I’m thinking of writing a book about my father’s side of the family. It’s still only an idea, and I might decide it’s too much to handle after going down that road with Ruby. We’ll have to wait and see where my muse takes me!

KLWagoner150_2KL Wagoner (writing as Cate Macabe) is the author of This New Mountain: a memoir of AJ Jackson, private investigator, repossessor, and grandmother. Kat has a speculative fiction blog at klwagoner.com and writes about memoir at ThisNewMountain.com.



Author Updates: Patricia Gable & Linda Wilson

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Patricia Gable and Linda Wilson are former teachers who now write middle grade and children’s books, respectively. These members of SouthWest Writers (SWW) each had at least one new release within the last year and have an interview posted on the SWW website.

Patricia Gable has authored essays, memoirs, children’s stories, and educational articles. In 2021, she published the first in her middle grade Right Series, The Right Address. Her latest release is The Right Choice, book two in that series. Visit Patricia’s author pages on Amazon and SouthWestWriters.com. For more about her work, read her 2022 SWW interview.

What would you like readers to know about the story you tell in The Right Choice?
When writing this series, I wanted to feature good characters that relate to the reader. They have problems along the way, but they are resilient. Strong friendships develop, and they support each other. Also, they have no devices to distract them. Set in the early 1980s, readers will learn some things that are different from the world today.

Annie and Willie, introduced in The Right Address, return in the second book along with a new character. Tell us about your main characters and why a middle grade audience will care about them and their plight.
Christopher is a new character in the second book of the series, The Right Choice. He is a talented basketball player, the youngest and best player on the high school varsity team. When his dad is deployed to the Middle East, he and his mother move to a small town to live with his grandmother, a woman with wise advice. He is allowed to continue playing at the high school for the current season. A college recruiter comes to watch the boys play and he sets his sights on Christopher. But when misfortune strikes, will Christopher ever realize his dream?

Annie and Christopher do not get along at all in the beginning. When six-year-old Willie gets hurt, Christopher takes care of him. Annie sees that Christopher is not as bad as she thought.

When did you know the characters were strong enough for a series?
In 2005 I entered a short story contest with two homeless children, Willie and Annie, as characters and was awarded Honorable Mention. The story kept nudging me in the back of my mind. When my sister and I took a novel writing course, I used the story as a springboard to write the first book. Then I just couldn’t put the characters away!

Do you have a message or a theme that recurs in your writing?
My message is for middle graders to not give up on their dreams. If you have an obstacle in the way, take another path but always move forward.

What is the greatest challenge of writing for the middle grade market?
Middle grade readers are a wonderful audience. My personal challenge is making my books and stories exciting, funny, and inspiring to readers.

What projects are you working on now?
I’m working on the third book in the series, featuring the kids from the two previous books. When a winter storm closes school, the friends hang out at Christopher’s house. After board games and television, they decide to play hide-and seek. Willie hides in the basement and discovers an underground tunnel built during prohibition. What will he discover?

Linda Wilson is the author of the Abi Wunder Mystery series and other books for children. Her two newest releases are Waddles the Duck: Hey, Wait for Me! (2022) and Cradle in the Wild: A Book for Nature Lovers Everywhere (2023). You’ll find Linda on her Amazon author page, on her website at LindaWilsonAuthor.com, and on Facebook. Visit the Writers on the Move blog where she’s a contributing author. And read more about her writing in SWW’s 2021 interview.

Waddles the Duck was inspired by a family of mallards that came to live in your swimming pool. Did you also have a personal experience that inspired Cradle in the Wild?
My picture book, Cradle in the Wild, was inspired by an idea I found in a craft book that I used when my two daughters were in grade school. The idea is to gather natural materials that birds use to build their nests, such as dried leaves, grass, bird feathers, soft parts of weeds and flowers, small pieces of bark — virtually any type of materials birds might find in the wild. In the spring, we would scatter these natural materials on the grass and watch for the birds to discover them and carry them away. The birds didn’t always discover our materials. I remembered how disappointed we were when they didn’t find our contributions to their nests. The two young sisters in the story were disappointed, too, when the birds didn’t come. So, they brainstormed about what they could use to attract the birds. I love to sew and especially love colorful fabric and sewing incidentals. My collection of ribbon, yarn and lace gave me the idea of adding these colorful snippets to the natural nesting materials, and the story was born.

What topics does Waddles the Duck and Cradle in the Wild touch upon that would make them a perfect fit for the classroom?
Waddles: The main message I want readers to come away with is to realize that feeding waterfowl foods that are nutritious for them (such as waterfowl pellets available at pet stores, dandelions, wheatgrass, chopped lettuce leaves, and cracked corn) are far better for them than feeding waterfowl bread. The boy in the story must discover a solution to finding a good home for a mallard duck family that has taken up residence in the family pool. He realizes that the ducks wouldn’t survive for long due to the chemicals in the pool and the lack of natural food that ducks ordinarily find in their natural habitat. I’ve purchased little rubber ducks and plan to have them float in a tub filled with water to demonstrate to students what happens in the story.

Pygmy nuthatches, March 2021, gather to wait out a storm and eat the thistle in Linda’s bird feeder.

Cradle: I’ve presented a program for Cradle that has worked well with students and adults a number of times now. I begin by passing around a collection of about ten bird’s nests that I’ve gathered over the years and discussing birds while the students are feeling the nesting materials, especially the soft fuzzy insides that birds use for protection of their eggs and hatchlings. I show the adults a terrific book — Bird Watch Book for Kids: Introduction to Bird Watching, Colorful Guide to 25 Backyard Birds, and Journal Pages, Dylanna Press, 2022 (Amazon) — which suggests taking water, sunscreen, etc. on bird-watching trips with their children. The book encourages children to keep track of the birds they see in the book’s journal pages. I show the parents a bird guide for adults to keep on hand and tell them about bird-sound apps they can save on their phones. I either read or tell the Cradle story, then give them a craft I’ve put together in a Ziplock bag for them to make a bird nest of their own at home.

Tell us about the journey to choose the evocative and poetic title for Cradle in the Wild.
Creating the title Cradle in the Wild was just one of those inspirations that came to me one day. Many times I write title ideas in a notebook over many days and weeks. Sometimes nothing works. Then if I’m lucky the aha moment arrives and I’ve got my title.

You released two books in less than one year. How did you accomplish this?
I have to chuckle at this question because, though these book ideas marinated for quite some time before they made it to the page, I wrote both books during COVID when we were all stuck at home. While doing that, I thought I needed a special COVID project, too, so I erected a bird feeder close to my kitchen window. So, while writing the books I enjoyed watching many kinds of birds frequenting my feeders.

In your last interview for SouthWest Writers, you shared what you wish you’d known when you began your writing/publishing career. What did you learn from publishing Waddles the Duck and Cradle in the Wild?
I learned something about marketing from writing these two books. As a self-published author, for a few years I tried to make sales by placing ads on my social media, I wrote blog articles, I became the newsletter editor for the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators (SCBWI), and more. Though I enjoyed doing all of that, I made very few sales. Once I accumulated the five books that I’ve published (a chapter book and four picture books), I began selling at book fairs. It’s a lot of work, but I started meeting readers and selling books. Since I don’t have a publisher backing me up and helping to distribute my books, I’ve decided my biggest reward is coming from meeting local readers. This is how I plan to spend my time from now on — sharing my stories with parents, grandparents, and their children in venues where they can also purchase my books.

What writing projects are you working on now?
Sometime in 2023, I’m hoping to finish the second book in my chapter book trilogy, Secret in the Mist: An Abi Wunder Mystery, which is a ghost/mystery story. I’m also working on creating a new Tall Boots book which will be a side-by-side Spanish/English bilingual book, and after that making my other picture books bilingual. And for a new project, I want to write a book about turtles/tortoises. The working name of my character is Twiddles.

KLWagoner150_2KL Wagoner (writing as Cate Macabe) is the author of This New Mountain: a memoir of AJ Jackson, private investigator, repossessor, and grandmother. Kat has a speculative fiction blog at klwagoner.com and writes about memoir at ThisNewMountain.com.



Author Updates: Marty Eberhardt & Katayoun Medhat

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Marty Eberhardt and Katayoun Medhat are mystery writers hard at work adding to their respective series. These members of SouthWest Writers (SWW) each had a new book published within the last year and has an interview posted on the SWW website.

Author Marty Eberhardt started the Bea Rivers cozy mystery series in 2021 with Death in a Desert Garden. Her latest release set in the Sonoran Desert is Bones in the Back Forty (Artemesia Publishing, 2023). Look for Marty on her website MartyEberhardt.com, on Facebook, and on her Amazon author page. For more about her work, read her 2021 SWW interview.

What trouble does your main character, Bea Rivers, face in Bones in the Back Forty?
Lots of trouble. A skeleton is found on the grounds of the garden where she works … this doesn’t seem to be much more than an interesting puzzle at first. But then somebody’s car hits her boss on a bicycle, and he’s in a coma. She has to take over. And someone seems to be stalking her. It’s not clear if these things have to do with her help with the murder investigation related to the skeleton. Her boyfriend lives halfway across the country and she’s a single parent with way too many responsibilities.

What makes Bea the kind of protagonist that readers connect with and root for?
She’s an overwhelmed working parent who’s trying to do a good job. There are lots of people like this everywhere! As the story progresses, her confidence and competence grow. I was pleased to see this.

Bones in the Back Forty is the second of the Bea Rivers Mysteries. When did you know you wanted to write a series?
I figured I would write at least three books, showing how the protagonist changes. I also wanted to show the Sonoran Desert in its many seasons; the series is in some ways a love song to the Sonoran Desert.

Why do you write cozy mysteries as opposed to other kinds of mysteries?
I don’t much care for gratuitous violence, nor do I wish to be explicit about sex. I like mysteries with great characters, a complex plot with a murderer who’s not easily discovered, and plenty of humor. Cozy mysteries and traditional mysteries fit these categories. These genres are also appropriate for conveying some messages that matter to me … such as climate change is real and threatening; water conservation is essential in the arid Southwest; and natural and cultural diversity can provide great joy to all humans. In this book, I also have a message about respect for our ancestors.

Do you have any writing projects in the works?
I’m working on a third Bea Rivers mystery, set in southern California, and also a long-time project … a historical novel set in early 1960s Saigon.

Katayoun Medhat is the author of the Milagro Mysteries that began with The Quality of Mercy (2017) and continued with Lacandon Dreams (2018). Her newest book in the series is Flyover Country published in 2022 by Leapfrog Press. You’ll find Kat on her website KatayounMedhat.com and her SWW author page, as well as on Facebook and Twitter. Read more about her writing in SWW’s 2020 interview.

What would you like readers to know about the story you tell in Flyover Country?
As Old and New West collide and bad faith actors prepare for future rule, the bucolic idyll of Milagro crashes and burns. A gruesome find, the slaying of a miniature horse by a cougar, and the mysterious vanishing of a park ranger give cop Franz Kafka, aka K, plenty of opportunity to misinterpret events, overlook clues, and create some more adversaries. As K deals with the tragic fallout of his job, he finds himself caught up in a lethal clash of worlds. So it’s basically a tale of contemporary life—with twists.

For those who haven’t read the first two books in the Milagro Mystery series, tell us about your main characters.
K is a stranger in a strange land. He is a natural rebel, great at subverting authority and questioning the status quo, and so isn’t really cut out to be a cop. Maybe he is jinxed, because every time he tries to do his job properly, inevitably tragedy follows.

K’s soul brother and sidekick, Robbie Begay, ex-Navajo police officer and track-reader, is everything that K isn’t — pragmatic, cynical, great at his job, and not at all given to illusions. The cases Begay and K work on bring out their differences and challenge their friendship, and often it is facing hazard and danger that draws them back together. There is a gruff tenderness and generosity to their relationship, which has led some readers to call their friendship a bromance.

A third main character of my books is the community of Milagro in which K, who is quintessentially a loner and, like so many men who must go down these mean streets, commitment-phobic, has found a kind of Ersatz family.

Did I mention that K is now the owner of a bookstore? And the bookstore is becoming something of a community hub, which, as we shall see, brings with it an entirely new set of conundrums.

How did you choose the title of the book?
Apparently “flyover country” is used as a derogatory term for the swathe of rural land between the metropolitan seaboards. To me it holds a suggestion of the forgotten, the hidden, and the elusive; the friction between a bird’s-eye view and the teeming, bustling reality on the ground. The novel’s plot takes place down in the valley and up in the unknowable territory of the Mesa, in a kind of hell and heaven scenario.

What makes your series unique in the mystery genre?
The Milagro Mysteries are ethnographic and psychological mysteries. They are about a place, Milagro, and its people and the ravages and havoc that is played upon them, mostly by larger outside forces that are hard to withstand. The series’ core lies in its unique outsider’s view of rural America, and my conviction that deadly serious subject matter is best served up with a dose of satire.

Which of your three published novels did you enjoy writing the most, and which one was the most challenging?
The newest one is always the favorite one, and the most challenging—until the next one comes along. Writing my first book, The Quality of Mercy, was stress-free: entering terra incognita with no road map, no expectations, and an explorer’s enthusiasm. Milagro #2, Lacandon Dreams, in retrospect might have been the most challenging, because writing your second book is a whole other ball game to writing your first.

What writing projects are you working on now?
Currently I am editing Vision Quest, Milagro Mystery #4, the most ominous book in the series so far. And I’m working on a stand alone, which may turn out even more sinister and is set in Europe. And, of course, I’m seeding Milagro Mystery #5…

KLWagoner150_2KL Wagoner (writing as Cate Macabe) is the author of This New Mountain: a memoir of AJ Jackson, private investigator, repossessor, and grandmother. Kat has a speculative fiction blog at klwagoner.com and writes about memoir at ThisNewMountain.com.



Author Update: Jodi Lea Stewart

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Jodi Lea Stewart is the author of four historical fiction novels for adults as well as an award-winning contemporary young adult trilogy (Silki, the Girl of Many Scarves). The Gold Rose (Progressive Rising Phoenix Press, February 2023) is her newest historical fiction release. You’ll find Jodi Lea on her website JodiLeaStewart.com and her blog, on her Facebook pages at jodi.lea.stewart and AuthorJodiLeaStewart, and on Instagram and LinkedIn. Read more about her writing in her 2021 interview, visit her YouTube channel, and go to her Amazon author page for all her books.

The Gold Rose “is an international, clandestine rescue agency that operates under the auspices of a special group of people dedicated to fighting oppression wherever and whenever it rears its ugly head.” What sparked the story idea for this novel that is classified (according to Amazon) as Crime Action & Adventure, War & Military Action, and International Mystery & Crime?
Since The Gold Rose is historical fiction, and because I wanted to place my characters in numerous places around the globe in the late 1930s through the early 1950s, I had no choice but to include what was happening politically and militarily during those years. Strangely enough, I was not a lover of history, especially war history, when I was younger. Now, because of the type of novels I love to write, I immerse myself in the history of wherever I place my characters. You might say I’ve been on my own personal journey of character development, proving that one must always be receptive to change. Winning a first-place award for War Fiction recently almost blew my mind, to be truthful.

Whose story did you find more enjoyable to write, that of Pinkie, of Babe, or of Charlotte, the agent tasked with saving the other two? Was one plotline more challenging to write than the others?
Honestly, I lived out every minute detail about Pinkie, Babe, and Charlotte. My desire was to show female characters defying the odds of whatever life throws at them. To make their journeys even more remarkable, I placed each of them in unusually susceptible positions.

For Pinkie, what can scream vulnerability more than a little two-year-old alone on an old country road during a storm, in shock, escaping a tragic scene? Who would find her? What lay ahead? I wasn’t going to let her trials end with the good people who found her that fateful night; she was going on to suffer a plethora of other people’s bad intentions. Bottom line… she would survive with dignity. I was going to make certain of that.

Babe was the strongest of all of them in that she would learn early in life that one’s comfortable circumstances might collapse at any time. Living in China during the Japanese takeover and the ensuing civil war presented her with a catastrophic life decision: was she going to crumble as she had after viewing a devastating tragedy and lose her voice for more than a year, or was she going to seek actual remedy from the behavior of people weak in mind or character? She decides to fight back, to never be a victim, and as she says, “Now, come and get me. I’ll be waiting!”

Charlotte had a wonderful childhood until her mother died and her father hired a surreptitiously evil nanny companion for her while he traveled constantly for his business. What she went through during the rest of her childhood made her realize later that those awful experiences “… shot me into the adult world with an over-developed sense of guilt, which when properly channeled, has the potential of becoming a burning desire to see justice fulfilled.” She became, from her sad childhood, a perfect candidate to be a ROSE agent.

To finish answering the question, no particular plotline was harder to write than the next one. The strings of the plot began to braid themselves into cohesion at some point in their creation, and I really don’t know how else to explain it.

The novel begins in Texas and takes readers to Mexico, Argentina, China, and Italy. With several storylines and multiple settings, how long did it take to plot and write such a complicated book?
I had the general idea of my main characters and of Charlotte being the “umbrella character” reflecting on her experiences as a ROSE agent, especially those memories pertaining to two of her favorite assignments, Pinkie and Babe. Charlotte had the honor of becoming the uniting force for this novel with her remembrances, her growth as a person on that long, cold night in Bangor, Maine, and eventually as the “older sister” type to the younger women.

A lot of my plots occur to me as I write the story and get better acquainted with the characters. I read about five or six books on subjects I’ll be covering before really writing much more than ideas for the book. That’s where I am right now with my ideas for novel number eight. After I begin writing for real, I use research books and the books I have already read until everything begins to fall into place. It took me a little over a year to finalize the entire plot for The Gold Rose to my satisfaction. I claim to be more of a rewriter than a writer because of my very strict inner editor.

What do you like most about each of your main characters?
In Babe, Pinkie, and Charlotte, it is strength and endurance; their ability to survive horrendous circumstances without bitterness or ruination of their later lives and personalities. It was important that each one kept her sense of humor, and they did.

I loved Luka and his crazy, youthful humor as he “pays back” his terrible tetka for stealing Pinkie. No matter how many times I read it, I double over laughing at his antics while driving his aunt through Mexico when she is nursing a horrible hangover. Clint and Cruz are combinations of every rancher, cowboy, and vaquero I ever knew. I understand them and gave them plenty to work through. Bonzini, the circus owner, is a father figure, first to Pinkie, and later to Luka because that is who he is. He is gifted as one of those men in life who bring peace, hope, and change when they are around.

At its heart, what is The Gold Rose about? When readers turn the last page, what do you hope they’ll take away from it?
The Gold Rose is a mystery-drama about an international rescue agency operating in the 1940s that has, at its heart, people who desire to save those who cannot save themselves. Pinkie and Babe truly needed to be saved, but what lurks in the hidden recesses of us all? Do we need saving of one type or another? It is a story of secrets, deception, and dogged survival. It is a treatise of fighting back the bullies of our lives.

I hope readers will take away a renewed sense of their own personal power to use tenacity, grit, and humor to tackle any circumstances. I want readers to care deeply about overcoming adversity and never allowing adversity to overcome or define them for the rest of their lives.

What writing projects are you working on now?
I am working on another international historical novel that features two women and a man on a quest to seek certain people around the globe to find missing stones that unlock an amazing and hidden door in Germany. They will be traveling to the Amazon, to Ireland, diving for freshwater pearls, and going down to the bottom of the Grand Canyon on mules to seek a Havasupai Native American. It’s going to be quite an adventure!

KLWagoner150_2KL Wagoner (writing as Cate Macabe) is the author of This New Mountain: a memoir of AJ Jackson, private investigator, repossessor, and grandmother. Kat has a speculative fiction blog at klwagoner.com and writes about memoir at ThisNewMountain.com.



Author Update 2023: Charlene Bell Dietz

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Award-winning author Charlene Bell Dietz writes science- and historical-suspense mystery novels and short stories. In 2022, she stepped away from the mystery genre to release the historical novel The Spinster, the Rebel, and the Governor: Margaret Brent Pre-Colonial Maryland 1638-1648. You’ll find Charlene on her website at InkyDanceStudios.com and on Facebook. Read more about her writing in SWW’s 2017 and 2020 interviews, and look for The Spinster, the Rebel, and the Governor at Barnes & Noble and on Amazon.

Why did you write The Spinster, the Rebel, and the Governor? Who are your ideal readers?
This all started from searching genealogy records where I came upon this passage: Giles Brent, a thirty-some-year-old man, married a nine-year-old Indian princess. What? Researchers branded Giles Brent as an opportunist set on acquiring land through this marriage. Then I learned this young Indian princess to be a ward of Governor Leonard Calvert of Maryland and his good friend Lady Margaret Brent, Giles’s sister and a spinster. I had to know more.

Diving into the Maryland Historical Society’s Archives, I found a treasure of a story, not about Giles, but  Margaret Brent. However, mystery surrounded Spinster Brent. She left no diaries, letters, journals, or other primary source material except for a Will and the 134 court cases she presented in pre-colonial Maryland. Dr. Lois Green Carr organized these case documents, recording Margaret’s court appearances. These revealed information about an incredible woman who would right all wrongs. I had to write her story.

Since the American Bar Association honors five accomplished women attorneys each year with their Margaret Brent Award, wouldn’t all women attorneys want to read and learn about this woman? Also, my ideal readers are those who like a dynamic story driven by the characters’ deep internal conflicts; historical buffs who want more than names, dates, and places; anyone interested in stories about unusual independent women who are the first and create change; and Maryland citizens and those who’s ancestors sailed to pre-colonial Maryland. This book inadvertently shows how some of our nation’s key founding principles came into being, so I believe mid to high school students would enjoy learning about early American history through my characters’ trails and errors.

The inspiration for your current book is obvious – Margaret Brent is a fascinating woman, not just for her accomplishments but because of the time period she lived in. Tell us about her, and highlight a few of what you consider her most important contributions to history.
Margaret seemed to be a driven woman. She wouldn’t let the norm stand. Her actions show she sought after what she knew to be impossible and remained intent on having a voice as strong as the men of her times. I don’t believe she was a feminist, but she knew power was in knowing.

During King James’s rule in 1600s, the Church of England had special prayer books for women. Being discouraged from reading the actual King James Bible would certainly infuriate women as devout as Margaret Brent. Knowledge required study, but England denied women much in the form of education. The records indicate Margaret may have secretly taught Bible studies, Latin, and mathematics to other Catholic women, all of which was considered a serious crime.

Once in pre-colonial Maryland, Margaret acquired a voice in court. Many gentlemen landowners hired her as their attorney, giving her knowledge, status, and power. Even though she asked for the right to vote (and was denied twice), as one of the largest landholders and as the Governor’s executrix, her integrity prompted her to do what was right for Maryland at great personal cost and forsaking her own desires. Her actions prevented Maryland from reverting back to Virginia.

This one accomplishment preserved some of our founding principles: our separation of church and state, the path forward for our great American dream of rising from nothing to owning land and being part of the governing body, and today’s ideals of religious tolerance. No wonder the ABA awards deserving women attorneys.

The title of the novel barely skims the surface of this woman’s complicated life. What was the most challenging aspect of writing the book — researching, staying true to the historical record, or filling in/fictionalizing aspects of the story never recorded?
The historical record is what it is. Before I even started, I knew I had to be true to the logical sources and events. I say “logical” because one of the most serious problems with researching is that something may seem like a fact, yet it’s only the result of a long-line of historians parroting what someone said, yet was never verified. This required me to start my researching years prior to Margaret’s story. I needed to know the geography, social mores, religious struggles, and politics of England. Then I needed to do the same for pre-colonial America, not just Maryland. After months and months of diligent study, I moved on to hunting for all references to Margaret Brent. I hit the jackpot when I found her 134 recorded court records in the Maryland Historical Archives. Excited, I had to learn where her friends, neighbors, enemies lived, who they were, what they did, and why had they been mentioned in her court records.

Since this story is completely written from Margaret’s point of view, the fictional part of the story flowed from having to tie events together or to give other eyes and ears to situations Margaret couldn’t personally know. The most difficult part of the fiction came from not hearing Margaret’s voice. But when I studied the 134 court cases she presented before Governor Leonard Calvert, I could hear her and came to know and care for her as a person.

Another challenge haunted me all the way though this story. Anachronistic errors (things, language, and events out of time and place) cropped up unknowingly. For example, I had no idea Governor Leonard Calvert had no gavel, nor had he ever heard of one. Gavels didn’t appear until the 1800s. Halfway through the manuscript it dawned on me I needed to check if gavels were used in the 1600s. Fingers crossed for my escape in using words and objects that don’t fit the time.

Why did you choose to focus on just ten years of Margaret Brent’s life?
My other three books (mystery and suspense) follow an adapted “hero’s journey” plot. Actually, I’ve adapted Blake Snyder’s Save the Cat method of plotting for my novels. This doesn’t hinder my sitting at the computer and letting my characters speak to me and do their things, but it does give them a framework for their exhilarating highs and struggling lows. For a reader to be engaged, a story can’t be a straight road of sameness. It needs a chaotic roller-coaster experience to evoke thrills and concerns. This book isn’t a classic mystery, but when I learned of the different events which occurred in England and in Maryland from 1638 to 1648, I knew history had provided me with an amazing roller-coaster plot placed in a neat, ten-year package.

What are some interesting facts you uncovered about Maryland in the 1600s?
When I visited St. Mary’s City, I learned that pre-colonial Maryland used tobacco for their currency and that most of the people went barefooted to keep from wearing out their shoes. The city called St. Mary’s City wasn’t even a town. It had a sturdy brick church and a mill but not one shop nor an inn.

Until the 1800s, Maryland (like England) had a strange law called Deodand. This practice of sacrificing inanimate murderers of humans, probably steeped in superstition, dates back to the eleventh century. English Common Law referred to the fatal offending object (or to a lethal animal) as a deodand. This meant animals and nonliving assassins of humans, or their worth, must be handed over to the king and to God. Deodand ended when the locomotive came into use in England, and the expense of turning over an offending locomotive to the crown became impractical.

The most intriguing facts came from discovering how some of our nation’s founding principles developed from Lord Baltimore’s creation of a religious tolerant colony in the New World. Needing healthy men and families to populate the territory, he required his landowners to apply the headright system. Indentured servants would be released after working off the payment for their ocean passage, with full rights of all other citizens. To help keep peace between the different religions, the second Lord Baltimore instituted the separation of church and state. This had been attempted in a northern colony, but didn’t last.

What writing projects are you working on now?
I’m working on a new series set in the late 1960s in fictional Duke City High School, located in downtown Albuquerque. In this mystery-suspense novel, and as a long-term educator, I create quirky characters based on former student encounters, letting my characters frolic around in a familiar but possibly deadly environment. I enjoy doing fast-paced, scary but witty mysteries. In the meantime, I’m writing articles for magazines and blogs. Here are links to two of my most recent articles published in Mystery and Suspense Magazine: “Perspectives on Creating Suspense” (May 9, 2023) and “Why Murder Mysteries Intrigue” (May 17, 2023).

Is there anything else you’d like readers to know?
I’m excited to reveal that The Spinster, the Rebel, and the Governor has been acquired by Artemesia Publishing and the second edition will be out the end of February 2024.

KLWagoner150_2KL Wagoner (writing as Cate Macabe) is the author of This New Mountain: a memoir of AJ Jackson, private investigator, repossessor, and grandmother. Kat has a speculative fiction blog at klwagoner.com and writes about memoir at ThisNewMountain.com.



Author Updates: Larry Kilham & Edith Tarbescu

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Larry Kilham and Edith Tarbescu are two examples of the prolific members of SouthWest Writers (SWW). They each write in a variety of genres with one in common: memoir. Both authors had new releases for 2022 and have one or more interviews posted on the SWW website.

Author Larry Kilham is a retired engineer and entrepreneur who has published science fiction novels, poetry chapbooks, memoirs, and other nonfiction books with topics ranging from creativity and invention to artificial intelligence and digital media. His most recent release is his 2022 memoir, Curiosity & Hope: Explorations for a Better World. You’ll find Larry on his website LarryKilham.net and blog, and on his Amazon author page. For more about his work, read his 2017, 2019, and 2021 SWW interviews.

When readers turn the last page of Curiosity & Hope, what would you like them to take away from it?
That they can find hope and reasons for curiosity in their world. That their spirit is indomitable.

How is the memoir structured? What was the inspiration for the title?
I wrote an outline of about 12 chapters that covered my childhood through the present and included school, college, jobs, travel, and high-tech start-ups. There could have been twice as many chapters, adventures, and episodes than I used. I tried to focus on my story arc, where each episode led on to the next.

The book title started from a project I’m working on at Santa Fe Prep called Curiosity. It is an elective program to stimulate kids to follow their curiosity. Then I thought, “Isn’t this the thread of my life? I will build my memoirs around my curiosity.” Of course, without hope, curiosity leads nowhere. So I added “Hope” to the title.

Do you have a favorite quote from the book that you’d like to share?
My father advised me, “Don’t be afraid to fail. Be willing to work by trial and error. The life we live is made up of falls and recoveries. The falls educate us and the recoveries enrich us.”

What do you consider the most essential elements of a well-written memoir?
One, clearly explaining the historical context of the central character of the memoir. The inventors of my three memoirs were each focused on the resources and needs of their times. Two, explaining the family and societal support (or lack of them) that fostered the inventor’s personal development and propelled them into a productive and satisfying career. And three, finding universal themes or generalizations that any reader can relate to.

You wrote three memoirs in four years—The Perfectionist: Peter Kilham & the Birds (2018), Destiny Strikes Twice: James L. Breese Aviator and Inventor (2020), and now Curiosity & Hope. How did you manage to pull that off?
Finding a common theme which really makes all three memoirs one story. In this case, the theme is about the whys and wherefores of three generations of inventors who developed useful things. In my grandfather’s case, his invention of oil burners for home and commercial heating; in my father’s case, the invention of very popular birdfeeders; and in my case, the invention of sensing instrumentation for the chemical industry and environmental sensing.

What writing projects are you working on now?
I’m thinking about a second edition or another version of my memoirs to develop some more general themes about where our society is going. I am writing a lot of poetry which has been well-received. And I am exploring various ways to bring my poetry to the public and to finding and perfecting my style. Some of the poets I use for models and inspiration are T.S. Eliot, William Wordsworth, Maya Angelou, and Pueblo Indians.

Author Edith Tarbescu has written essays, children’s books, plays, and a novel. In 2022, she added memoir to her list of publications with the release of Beyond Brooklyn (Adelaide Books). You’ll find Edith on her website at EdithTarbescu.com and on Facebook and LinkedIn. Read more about her writing in SWW’s 2021 interview, and look for Beyond Brooklyn on Amazon.

Why did you write your memoir, and who did you write it for?
I had been reading a lot of memoirs and thought it would be interesting to write one. I wrote it for myself and my two daughters. It was especially interesting to go back in time to my childhood in Brooklyn. I recently learned that Dr. Fauci lived in the same neighborhood as me while I was growing up. I also loved re-living my trip to Romania while it was still under Communist rule. We were followed by a Romanian James Bond who insisted we visit his office, a scary experience.

When you began the project that became Beyond Brooklyn, did you have a theme in mind or did that become obvious with time?
I thought fairly on that since I’m a playwright—I studied at the Yale School of Drama—I should include a few plays. I ended up including three short, humorous plays and a one-woman play titled Suffer Queen, all produced in New York and in regional theaters. One top New York agent, who didn’t take on my memoir because she didn’t think it would make enough money for her, called the writing “cheeky,” including the plays. I was flattered, but wished she had taken it on.

What was the expected, or unexpected, result of writing the book?
I realized I was divulging all my secrets and wondered how my friends, and/or family, would react to learning all the intimate details of my life, but that’s a memoir.

In memoir, does the author’s responsibility lie with the truth of the facts or with her perception about the past?
I think the author’s responsibility lies with telling the truth and let the facts speak for themselves. If an author doesn’t want to do that, or is unable to do that, he or she should probably turn the past into fiction and write a novel.

Of all your writing projects—essays, children’s books, plays, a novel, and now a memoir—which one was the most challenging, and which was the most enjoyable to write?
I enjoyed writing everything and they were all challenging. A couple of my children’s books required research. For the picture book Annushka’s Voyage, I did research at Ellis Island. For my book about the Crow Nation, I traveled to Montana and ended up meeting with several members of the tribe. That was especially interesting to me coming from Brooklyn, New York where I never learned about Native Americans or heard about the boarding schools they were forced to attend.

The plays were also enjoyable, especially when I ended up having staged readings or productions of a play. I had several plays performed in New York, in regional theaters, and one in Valdez, Alaska. It was exciting to work with various performers and directors.

My novel, a mystery titled One Will: Three Wives, takes place in New York and I was thrilled to spend time in Manhattan researching neighborhoods, restaurants, etc. I also visited the police station where my novel takes place, and a policeman took me around the building where I visited a squad room for the first time.

What are you working on now?
I’m revising a middle-grade novel titled The Amazing Adventures of Alison Badger for readers ages 8–12 years old. It’s a fantasy that takes place in the Dumbo Section of Brooklyn (Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass.) One agent loved it, but he wanted novels for boys. I’m not giving up. I’m very persistent. Luckily, I have that trait.

KLWagoner150_2KL Wagoner (writing as Cate Macabe) is the author of This New Mountain: a memoir of AJ Jackson, private investigator, repossessor, and grandmother. Kat has a speculative fiction blog at klwagoner.com and writes about memoir at ThisNewMountain.com.



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