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- Author interview - |
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| Interview with Rosey Dow a delightful author whose first mystery Reaping the Whirlwind (WinePress Publishing, July 2000) is in bookstores this summer. It’s a unique combination of fact and fiction, and we’re pleased that Rosey has taken some time to share its conception with us. Author's website Read our review. Feature by PJ Nunn. PJ NUNN - Reaping the Whirlwind is difficult to classify since it's half fiction and half true life. What prompted you to mix a fiction mystery with a true account? ROSEY DOW - When I stumbled onto the story of the Scopes evolution trial, I was fascinated. That event was by far the most bizarre trial I had ever heard of. Mystery fiction is my first love. So I took the factual events surrounding the trial and mixed them with the story of a serial killer in a tiny town, where the jail was mostly used for storage, and sometimes as an overnight motel for the local drunk. Dayton, Tennessee had been a dry town since 1903. Nothing ever happened there. What better place for murder and intrigue? I'm sure there was a significant amount of research involved. Did you find anything in particular that surprised or intrigued you? Definitely. The trial began with an ad by the ACLU. It asked for a teacher to test a new law which would forbid the teaching of evolution in Tennessee's public schools. The local biology teacher was a family man. He refused to stand trial and tarnish his name. John Scopes was single, fresh out of college, and he taught Physics when he wasn't coaching the basketball team. The town boosters discussed the idea and called Scopes in. That was when Scopes volunteered the information that he had substituted for the biology teacher to review for the final exam. He had never mentioned evolution that day, but the town boosters didn't care. When he agreed, they swore out a warrant for his arrest and the snowball began to grow. Then they came to the problem of witnesses. Since Scopes had never taught evolution, there would be no one to testify against him. Scopes was always popular with his students. He was hardly more than a kid himself. So, he picked a few of the brighter boys and coached them to testify against him. When the day arrived, one of the boys ran to the woods and hid. He didn't want to hurt Mr. Scopes by testifying against him. Scopes had to leave the courtroom, find the boy in the woods, and convince him to come back. An hour later, he returned with young Jack in tow and the trial continued. George Rappelyea was another interesting actor in the plot. He was the one to first spot the ACLU ad and bring it to the notice of the town. Then, once legal wheels began to turn, Rappelyea staged several publicity stunts to keep Dayton in the nation's papers. He pretended to shoot at a man sitting in a barber's chair getting his hair cut, because of an argument about evolution. In fact, Rappelyea was not an evolutionist and had never claimed to be one. Clarence Darrow was another fascinating character, a man who would have fit better in the 21st century than in 1925 - both in his personal life and his legal philosophies. He was a champion of liberal causes and a fierce opponent of capitol punishment. The ACLU didn't want him to lead the defense. He was a loose cannon and they were afraid of what he might do. But Scopes had always admired the man and insisted that Darrow represent him. The one thing the ACLU hadn't counted on was the legal right of the defendant to choose his own counsel. REAPING THE WHIRLWIND contains dozens more incidents like these. In order to let the reader know which portions are factual and which are the product of my imagination, in the front of the book I have listed the names of people who actually lived during those days. Any significant happening involving those people came from the pages of Dayton's history. | Before the research caught your attention, what prompted you to write REAPING THE WHIRLWIND in the first place? My husband and I travel a great deal, speaking. One night we happened to be in northern Delaware with a night free. We heard of a seminar at the University of Delaware and decided to attend. In a stray comment, the presenter said, "No one really knows what happened at the Scopes Trial. The drama INHERIT THE WIND was pure fiction, not at all based on the actual events." That statement intrigued me. I wrote it down and as soon as I could get to the library, I got more information. I read Scopes's biography and other accounts about the trial. The more I read, the more intrigued I became. Again in our travels, my husband and I stopped in Dayton and visited the local library. Another time, I met Dr. Richard Cornelius, Scopes Trial Specialist at Bryan College. Dr. Cornelius opened his files to me and took me on a personal tour of Dayton. REAPING THE WHIRLWIND is the result. Now that it’s done, do you have another project in the works? What author doesn't? Currently, I'm working on a romantic suspense novel involving the FBI, the CIA, the Russians, the Chinese, and the Israelis. I've always loved romantic suspense and when another writer suggested we collaborate, I quickly agreed. The working title is BETRAYED! and an editor is looking it over now. How did you get started writing? It was very strange. I minored in English while in college, but I despised the assigned compositions and papers. After I married and had two small children, I was reading a ladies' magazine and saw an ad saying "You can write children's books." It was a full page of text with an order form at the bottom. By the time I finished reading the ad, I was hooked. This was something I could do at home. I filled out the order form and they mailed me an aptitude test. Anyway, I ended up enrolling in a correspondence course at the Institute of Children's Literature. I finished the course, found out I wanted to write for adults instead of children, and my career began. I wrote for fourteen years without selling a single page. I rewrote one novel five times. When I finally got that wonderful letter with a one-word greeting: 'Congratulations!' My family had to scrape me off the ceiling. What's the first thing you had published? The very first thing was a puzzle I sold to a children's nature magazine. My first novel was a romantic mystery entitled MEGAN'S CHOICE. It's about a marriage of convenience where a young girl goes west with her stranger/husband to settle on a ranch. When they get there, an unpopular rancher is murdered and her husband is the prime suspect. How has your writing changed since that time? First and foremost, I've learned to pare down my prose, no fat allowed. I also want my words to flow in a pleasing cadence that sound good when read aloud. My themes are also deeper and the problems my characters face more gripping. I guess that all works together to make my writing more intense. Someone said that a good writer cuts himself and bleeds all over the paper. That's what I aim for. Has your writing won any awards? My first book MEGAN'S CHOICE was voted a reader's favorite in 1997. That same year I was chosen as a favorite new author. Those were the publisher's polls. My third book FIRESIDE CHRISTMAS made CBA's best seller's list in December 1999 and in March 2000. This one is a collection of romance novellas. My novella "Eyes of the Heart" is one of the four. The main character is a blind girl. Who are you when you're not writing? What kind of work do you do? What are your hobbies? My first job is mothering my seven children. Two of them are now in college, but they still call home often. I have six sons and one daughter ages 20-8 yrs. We've been a home schooling family for thirteen years. For two years I taught all seven of them at once. That was more than a full time job but it was during those years that I wrote REAPING THE WHIRLWIND. We also have an indoor dog, an outdoor dog and a very bossy cat. We came to the tiny Caribbean island of Grenada (of Reagan fame) in 1987, where we work as church-planting missionaries. Every fifth year we return to the US to travel and speak. Usually we put 50,000 miles on our van that year. Writing is a hobby-turned-career. Before I got so busy with contracts and proposals, I used to sew, quilt, and read voraciously. I love to cook and have written a missionary cookbook. However, lately, my day consists of schooling, writing, housework, writing, church functions and writing. I also work with the deaf. Who or what has most influenced your writing? First of all, my personal relationship with Jesus Christ changed my life dramatically. I grew up in a normal home until I reached 13 years of age. When my parents divorced, my mother married a violent man who abused his stepchildren in every way possible. I became intensely shy, fearful, consumed with bitterness. If not for the marvelous working of God in my life, I don't know where I would have ended up. That message of hope weaves through each of my stories. Not preachy, it's a fine, intrinsic thread that I couldn't pull out if I tried. My writing style has been influenced most by reading the truly great - like Agatha Christie, Alistair MacClean, and Rex Stout. I love the plotting of Christie, the description of MacClean and the terse language of Stout. Writing books have also influenced my work, particularly MAKING YOUR WORDS WORK by Gary Provost and SHOW, DON'T TELL by William Noble. Of course I couldn't stop without mentioning ELEMENTS OF STYLE by Strunk & White. As a writer, where do you see yourself in 10 years? Wow, that's a hard one. No one in this business knows what tomorrow brings - the markets, the publishing trends. If I had my choice, I'd like to write a mystery series with a great main character. I'd also like to teach writing - in seminars, online workshops and maybe someday, my own correspondence course. Currently I'm writing a series of articles on fiction for Cross & Quill. Maybe someday I'll compile them into a book. What do you enjoy most about writing? I love the thrill of creating. I love to take a line of text and make it breathe. I want to feel the wind, to smell the salt, to be in the story. What do you find most difficult? Writing proposals. They seem so much like busy work. Instead of crafting cover letters and synopses, I'd much rather plug away at the story. What’s the best advice you have for new writers? Don't quit. I would put my early manuscript of MEGAN'S CHOICE in a drawer and walk away from it for an entire year. Then something inside me made me pull it out again for yet another rewrite. Then one day, the dream happened. If I'd stopped at rewrite four, that sheaf of papers would be molding somewhere today. Also, realize that no one can teach another to write. We can give guidelines and make correct ions on someone's work, but the actual learning has to be an individual achievement. That's what makes the difference between a student and a learner. A student sits in a class and his main goal is a good grade. A learner is hungry to know. He studies more than his teacher assigns, immersing himself in the subject until it becomes his own. To this day I continue to buy books on writing and soak them in, trying to assimilate, striving to improve my work. It never ends. Where can readers find your website and previous publications? My website contains excerpts from each of my published pieces, a short biography, more information about my family and links to some of my favorite sites. The address is http://www.angelfire.com/de/roseydow Books in print by Rosey Dow: Reaping the Whirlwind (WinePress, July 2000) Lisa's Broken Arrow (Heartsong Presents, May 2000) Fireside Christmas (Barbour, Dec. 1999) Em's Only Chance (Heartsong Presents, Oct. 1998) Megan's Choice (Heartsong Presents, Dec. 1996) Missionary Manna - a from-scratch cookbook for those in the third world but great for the American cook, too |
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