How I Got Here by Dee Phelps

The Disappointment Room will be available soon at all venues and at:

rivercitypublishing.com

deephelps.com

 

Dee can be contacted at her web page at deephelps.com, dee@deephelps.com, or on facebook.

 

She will be participating in the following book conferences/festivals/fairs:

 

February 2014:  Murder in the Magic City, Birmingham, Alabama

                          Feb 8-9

                          Savannah Book Festival, Savannah, Georgia

                          Feb. 15-16

                          Amelia Island Book Festival, Amelia Island, Florida

                          Feb. 20-23

May, 2014:        Malice Domestic, Bethesda, Maryland  May 2-4

                          South Carolina Book Festival, Columbia, SC

                          May 16-18

June, 2014:       High Country Festival of the Book, Boone, NC

                          June 28

August, 2014;    Killer Nashville, Nashville, TN  Aug. 21-24

HOW I GOT HERE
by
Dee Phelps

Nearly every writer has a past occupation before they jumped into the murky waters of literature.

I’m no different.  Here’s my former life:  I schlepped bed pans for a living, aka, a nurse.  When my three sons, (lovingly called, The Three Stooges) were little and before I transferred to our local hospital’s surgical floor, I worked in a physician’s office for a gastroenterologist.  Yes, yes –a proctologist--a butt doctor.  But it was the perfect mommy job – 9-5, off weekends.  Here’s the rub…as the stooges got to be teenagers, they began teasing me about my job.  David:  “Hey guys, come meet my mom, the butt nurse.”  Ross:  “Mom, you never recognize anyone until they walk away.”  Wade:  “Mom, you know ever butt-hole in town.”   Hahaha.  Very funny!  NOT! 

I loved my nursing career.  It was fulfilling and I felt like I was “giving back” so to speak.  Making a difference with the life I have been given, and making a difference in the lives of those I cared for. 

Nearly ten years ago, my precious husband passed away tragically, and suddenly.  Understandably, I was a mess, but I also had a big life altering decision to make.  I could go along down the familiar path, OR, I could take the thorny, scary rutted road of writing.  I wish I could tell you that I have always wanted to write, but I didn’t.  I also wish I could tell you that I had always written, but just never had the time to do so, but that would be untruthful.  I chose the road less traveled; the scary path, because it was therapy for me (and a lot cheaper than a shrink!)  I wrote because my heart was broken; my soul shattered.  And because the heinousness of my youth would have looked like the Conroys grew up in Disneyland, I had buried a child, and after Bill’s death I needed to purge my mind of my past.  I had to learn to like and love me and life in all of its beauty, that I had repressed my entire life.  I pulled up my boot straps and took the first step on the scary road of writing full time. 

I started with a children’s book, The Flower in the Thickets, about a seedling unknowingly dropped in a thicket patch by a gardener on his way to plant his garden at a mansion on the hillside, and how that little seed struggled to grow and receive nourishment as the horrible thorn-laden thickets tried to prevent him from surviving.  Subconsciously, perhaps I was writing about my life.

Then I went on to do international travel journalism for a national magazine and some feature writing for a local on-line newspaper.  But I wanted more. I wanted to write fiction—the Great American Novel. (Don’t we all!?)  Thus began my journey writing The Disappointment Room.  Now, a disappointment room was a real thing.  A fact.  My husband’s family, before the Civil War, owned a cotton and indigo plantation nearby where I live in Beaufort, South Carolina.  One day, and I remember it as if it were yesterday, my mother-in-law and I were sitting around her kitchen table drinking coffee.  David was on her knee and she was feeding him cheese grits with little pieces of tomato and eggs cooked in.  She looked up at me and said, “Darlin’” in her sweet, thick, Lowcountry accent, “I want to tell you a story…”   She told me about disappointment rooms and a hundred different tales of life on the plantation that had been passed down to her from generations before.  I was enthralled with every story and shocked at some of them, especially the one about the disappointment room.  I carried those tales with me for years…and the day I decided to quit my day job and began my journey as a writer…I knew exactly what I wanted to write about.

Knowing an untrained novice writer has a snow ball’s chance in hell of succeeding in the world of literature; I went back to school at our local college then spent a year learning the “business”.  The next year was spent on researching the historical aspects of the book—then there was no turning back.  I was all in.  I felt compelled to tell the story of a child, whose mother was so ruthless and selfish, and her husband about to be elected to the US Senate, that she, in order to save face, sentenced her toddler son whom she mistakenly thought was mentally challenged, to a disappointment room. 

Here is my question for you:  What did you do before delving into your career as a writer and what was it that made you do so?

 

A few words of thanks . . .

I've been having a really tough time with my writing.

I thought writing the second Whimsey would be a snap.

oh ho ho, have I ever been dealt a reality check.

Easy?  Pffft.

No.

far from it.

And then I had a little conversation with a friend who said she had moved to a different project because she was having a difficult time writing the sequel to her first novel.  I replied that I was having the same issues and for the very first time admitted I was worried I wouldn't be able to maintain the same level of magic I had for Whimsey #1 (as it's come to be called here at home).

And it's actually the first time I've admitted it to myself.

Because, honestly, I didn't even realize I was fighting with those feelings.

An honest chat with a trusted friend is priceless, isn't it?

Once admitted, and shared, another friend popped in to tell me that what I was feeling was normal to probably everyone writing their second novel. 

I cannot begin to explain how liberating all this has been. 

I feel like the walls around my writing have been knocked to the ground.  And yesterday was the first truly decent day of writing I've had since starting Whimsey #2.

HUGE thanks (along with a lot of hugs!) to my friends Dee Phelps (whose first novel will be released in September) and Beth Anderson (a deliciously grand writer of long standing).  You gave me what I needed when I didn't even know I needed it. 

And then - wow - then this lovely review pops up at amazon from  Elaine Drennon Little (who, I hear, has her own book out.  Just released - "A Southern Place.") - - -  

"Whimsey--Harper Collins /Webster's Dictionary defines it as " a sudden passing fancy." In Whimsey, a novel by Kaye Wilkinson Barley, it refers to a mystical island off the coast of the Carolinas, serving as a nirvana-like home for artists and artisans of the visual, spiritual, and creative arts. My first question, as I began to devour this lovely piece of southern Americana, was of course "does such a place exist?" I wanted to go there, to mingle among the natives, absorb their culture, and then hopefully become one with this magical pseudo-family of the gifted and talented.

I've read about many artists colonies; I've even applied and been rejected from a few, but this one seemed altogether different from the rest. On the positive side, the residents all spoke my language--a sweet, dipthonged drawl served best with sweet tea, shrimp salad sandwiches and desserts that made me drool as I read. They also welcomed stronger drink--from mimosas and mint juleps to wine, bourbon, and punch bowls full of happy liquids that invite all to share the laughter.

On the downside, there were fairies, pixies, spirits of "the other kind" and regular, normal people (who could converse with fairies and shed an effervescent glittery substance wherever they went!) There were also a few family ghosts who favored verandas and porches and told a decent story, when prompted to do so.

Aside from Dickens's A Christmas Carol and a few isolated Stephen King books, I don't naturally cotton to speaking with the dead or with non-human entities, yet I couldn't seem to put this book down. Barley makes these mystical creatures as easy to converse with as my cat on a cold night. The only thing I DIDN'T like was that I can't visit this place--the author was simply too greedy to share the isle of Whimsey's whereabouts, email, or dot com address.

She does, however, share several authentically scrumptious-looking recipes for southern and low country food.

Don't let the ghosts and pixies scare you away. If you're in need of a short vacation for talented, mystical artists like yourself, whisk yourself away to the magic of Whimsey. If we can't really GO there, at least we can pretend... "
 
Thank You, Elaine!

Friends.  I cannot imagine my life without my friends. 

And now I have a whole new group of people who I feel as though I need to include in this group.  And those are people like Elaine who I've never met and don't know other than through this lovely review she wrote after somehow hearing about WHIMSEY: A NOVEL.  And taking a chance on it, and surprisingly enough, enjoying it enough to take the time to review it. 

The reviews for Whimsey have knocked me off my feet.  I never expected to read such lovely words from people I don't know.  I thought Whimsey would get bought and read by friends and family and I hoped they would enjoy it enough to help spread the word.  What I've gotten is magic in the purest sense.  I'm humbled and grateful and totally gobsmacked. 

and all I have to give back are simple words -

Thank you.

but they come from so deep . . . oh, my - so deep.