Articles by Pam—

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Ten Things I Wish I’d Known (Before I Began Seeking Publication)

1. It’s easier to sell nonfiction than fiction. Because I enjoy reading fiction, especially novels, so much, I write novels. But, if I had known as much about writing when I started as I know now, I would have tried to turn some of my knowledge into book proposals. My love of fiction is still intact, but the rejection rate is quite high.

2. Agents and publishers don’t want a diamond in the rough. I’m a lousy proofreader. As a former English teacher, it’s hard for me to admit this, but I really don’t catch every error when I read. During my years in the classroom, perusing student work, I certainly saw enough to be able to evaluate those papers effectively, but I know I sometimes missed errors. With my own work, it’s much worse. The best proofreading technique I have learned is to read it aloud. Every word. That helps more than anything else.

3. Never, ever, pay for an opinion on your writing. You’ll find many people or writer’s sites which disagree with this advice, but I spent money to have a literary agent read my work, only to find that she hadn’t read it too closely, and she had no helpful advice. I paid a marketing firm to have “a targeted focus group” to read it as well, and I got limited feedback and few ideas for improvement. I didn’t learn much from either experience, and I was out quite a few dollars. The best bet for paying a reader is next up.

4. A writing school can be a good investment. On the advice of a publisher, I enrolled in the Writer’s Digest Novel Writing Course. While the mentor teacher only reads the first 12,000 words, the advice I got from him was the most helpful I have received, by far. I got specific feedback on my query letter, synopsis, chapter outline, as well as the opening scenes. I won’t say this step is necessary for everyone, but I learned a lot, and the one-on-one approach worked well for me.

5. Mine the internet. Over the years, I have spent too much on books and magazines that gave me the same information I could have gotten for free online. I have some great books on my shelf, both on writing and on book promotion, but I have gotten even more online. AOL users have access to a writer’s section, which covers most of the basics. Other sources include writer’s world.com and absolute.write.

6. Don’t jump too quickly while following my advice in number five. When I first began surfing, I paid to have my work posted on one of those sites that supposedly gives agents and publishers a chance to see your work. No one looked, and those dollars went out the door with absolutely no benefits.

7. Beware contests. I just love contests, and I’ve thrown away a few dollars on those as well. Most contests are simply money makers for a publisher or writer’s organization. It’s like gambling at a casino or buying a lottery ticket-- many people pay and only a very few benefit. Play if you must, but don’t expect to derive any benefits.

8. Networking is just as important for writers as it is for people with “real jobs.” Often a publisher or agent will look at your work if someone can give you a recommendation. Seeking publication without having an “in” is sort of like cold calling when looking for a job. I’ve never gotten a job without “knowing someone” and just being able to say I heard an agent speak at a conference was enough to get me past the query letter stage.

9. Self-publishing is a viable option for those who don’t mind doing a lot of self-promotion. Without aggressive marketing, many books will fail, even great ones. But books of marginal quality often make money if there is a force behind it. The profit per book is much higher for self-published authors, especially those who use a conventional printer rather than one of the many POD printers you’ll find in magazines or on the web.

10. There isn’t much money to be made from royalties, but teaching and speaking fees can make a being a writer more profitable. Combining speaking and book sales is probably the best technique for a struggling writer. If you can get a small fee for speaking, along with having the audience prepay for a “gift” copy, you’re in a win-win situation. This works better for nonfiction than fiction, which makes these this last tip circle back toward the first one.

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During the time I was enrolled in the Georgia Mountains Writing Project at North Georgia College, one of our weekly assignments was to write a character sketch of someone who had been influential in our lives. Rather than choose one person over the others who were also important, I wrote instead about a horse named Shorty. Although I dashed this off in a hurry, just one more piece of paper in my quest for a master’s degree, it has become a favorite piece, because I read this instead of excerpts from my fiction when I am asked to visit elementary or middle school classrooms.

Character Sketch— Shorty

 

Has there ever been a little girl who didn’t want a horse? Maybe, but I was among the majority; I wanted a horse. I waited a long time before I got one.

My father gave me that horse when I was thirteen. He was a small bay gelding named Shorty. The name was appropriate, for he had a powerful body on very small legs. He was wise beyond his nine years. He liked small children, the smaller the better. My youngest sister, Barbara, was five years old when we got him, and she could climb over him or under him without any fear. However, the bigger the child, the less Shorty liked him. I was a heavy child. Shorty didn’t seem to like me very much.

Shorty had a rare talent for unseating any reckless rider. Somewhere between a trot and a gallop he had a habit of putting on the brakes, allowing his rider to fly through the air until gravity took over. Fortunately, I always fell on the biggest part of me, which has invariably been well padded. Shorty would toss me off and stop, usually turning his head as if to inquire what my problem was. That horse always managed to make me feel like a fool. He would wait patiently until I got up, dusted myself off, and got back on.

Old Shorty ate a lot. He would eat mostly anything. He loved watermelon, corn cobs, and cold buttered biscuits. He would not eat cheese or citrus fruits, but he would eat potato chips if we had nothing else to offer.

I soon found that shoeing Shorty was a difficult matter. He had small, hard hooves, and his shoes came off quickly. Getting a blacksmith to come out is expensive. Another problem with Shorty was that once the blacksmith came out and set to work, he had trouble holding his feet up high enough to work on them. Shorty was a short horse!

My father decided to take on the task of shoeing the horse. He was always so patient, trying to fit the shoes properly and make them stay on. While Shorty was standing on three legs, he seemed to get tired. Gradually, he would lean on Daddy, as Daddy held up his foot up to work on it. Once, as he was driving in the last nail, Daddy grew weary of trying to prop up a 750 pound horse, so quickly, Daddy dropped the foot and scooted out from under Shorty. The bigger they are, the harder they fall. Shorty bounced!

Shorty would never try to get out of the pasture as long as there was a single strand of wire up. However, as soon as he saw an open gate, he would be out of it in a New York second. He would playfully avoid anyone who tried to catch him, often making the game outlast our patience.

My father, who was always an inventive soul, decided that chasing a horse while on foot was mighty poor recreation. One day, he came home with a Kawasaki 125 motorcycle in the back of his pickup. Every time Shorty would get out and begin playing his “catch me if you can” game, Daddy was ready. He would chase the horse up and down the road, cutting him off from all the gates until he got tired. When Shorty got tired, he would gallop up to the nearest gate and wait to be let back in the pasture.

Shorty hated my cousin David, who weighed in at about 200 pounds, and Shorty seemed to think that was too much. Every time Shorty saw David, he pitched a fit. Usually, when David went off on Shorty, he came back with dirt on the seat of his pants. Once, I was getting the saddle out of the barn. David’s girlfriend was holding the rope which I had attached to Shorty’s halter. When David came out of the barn, Shorty saw him and reared straight up. David’s girlfriend had wrapped the rope around her middle finger. I honestly hadn’t thought to tell her that she couldn’t hold a horse with one finger. She had a cast on that hand for more than six weeks.

Mother and Daddy had a chicken house which was built in the pasture. Shorty really liked watching the chickens. He’d stand for hours, looking through the screen doors, but I never figured out why he thought they were so interesting.

When the chicken company demanded that an automatic curtain be installed on the chicken house, my parents contracted to have a man come out and do the installation. This guy drove his little hatchback car right up to the front of the chicken house. While he was working, he left his car door open and the radio blaring. You should’ve seen the expression on his face when he turned around and saw Shorty with his head and shoulders in the car, his ears next to the radio.

As I got older, I rode Shorty less and less, but I couldn’t sell him, for he was literally a member of the family. I still cared for him when I came home from Piedmont College on the weekends.

One autumn Friday, I drove in from college and heard Shorty the minute I got out of the car. Knowing that something was wrong, I went to the pasture. Shorty was standing beside the watering trough, moving about nervously. His hindquarters were covered in blood. I got a sponge and cleaned him off. I soon realized that he had been shot. There was a clean furrow across his hip, right next to his tail.

I sprinkled iodide powder into the would, covered it with a large gauze patch, and taped the edges to him with elastoplast. I doctored him again on Sunday, told Daddy to keep a bandage on him, and drove back to Demorest, confident that my folks would take care of him. I suppose that the wound much have started to itch as it healed because Shorty rolled the bandage off. After a couple of tries, Daddy got tired of putting new bandages on Shorty. Daddy glued the next one on with pipe glue. The next weekend I had to cut that one off with a razor blade.

I never had to call a vet to Shorty until he died. He became ill early one Monday morning. We called for the veterinarian to come to him. Our vet told us that Shorty had a twisted gut, which could not be operated on in the field. Due to his age, little could be done for him, so Shorty died while I was at work. My father had stayed home with him, and he had him buried before I got back. I’m glad that I did not see him die, because I loved that old horse more than most people that I know.

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I've given variations of this speech several times. This one was given at Lunch and Learn, sponsored by the Friends of the Braselton/West Jackson Library, in February of 2005. I have omitted the "reading" portion, which was a small part of Chapter One of The Gift Horse, designed to let prospective readers know something about the book. I sold several copies at this function and there were a number of questions, as some of the audience had already read the novel.

 

How I Became an Author

Thank you for inviting me come visit with you all.

Did you ever wonder what it would be like to have a book with your name on the cover? That’s a dream many people have, so I am going to share with you a bit about how I got started in my writing career.

First, some background. I grew up here in Jackson County. My folks bought a farm over in the Arcade area, in the early 1960’s. Both of my parents were hard workers, who wanted the best for their three daughters, but they weren’t always able to provide that. I don’t feel that I had an underprivileged childhood, but we had some real struggles, especially financially.

The small farm where we lived kept us a bit more isolated from our peers than if we’d lived in town, so my two sisters and I had to entertain ourselves much of the time. Of course, this was before the advent of cable and satellite television, video games and other modern forms of entertainment, so we had to use our imaginations quite a bit. After we’d seen the rerun of Gilligan’s Island, it was time to read or write something.

My sisters used to write radio commercials and tape them, as if they were radio actors. Most of their efforts parodied what we saw on television, but they really were entertaining. And those exercises served them well— one of them has a degree in advertising and is a vice president for corporate communications at a bank in Atlanta. The other has a degree in marketing and is the owner of a business in Virginia called Print Solutions, which does marketing for many prestigious clients including the Baptist Association of Virginia and Dupont. And each sister makes about 15,000 dollars a year more than a teacher with a master’s degree and twenty years of experience, so I guess it is safe to say they are successful.

Back during our childhood, my sisters and I accompanied Mom almost anytime her car left the farm, and she always took us to our local library every two weeks, b/c we weren’t the kind of folks who could buy many books— and all of us read voraciously. Libraries are still near and dear to my heart, because they provide such wonderful opportunities as well as entertainment. As I was a bit older than my sisters, I read more novel length fiction, which we got in our biweekly visits to the library, and that led me in a different direction. While my sisters are involved in the corporate world, and I am a former teacher and a fledgling writer. And it all goes back to the fact that I never wrote any commercials, although I laughed quite a bit at my sister’s versions of what we heard on television and radio.

No, when I wrote, I wrote stories, often really bad stories about women who were as lovely and as deadly as Mrs. Emma Peel of the Avengers, who was the celebrity I most wanted to emulate when I was twelve years old. I don’t know what my generation would have thought of Britney Spears. I really don’t.

When I graduated from high school, I went to Piedmont College in Demorest, Georgia. Although I was proud to be going to college, my fiction writing almost ended right there.

My mother had already taught me more about literature than many of the student teachers I’ve had come into my classroom, so I didn’t have too many problems with my course of study in the English department. Except for Butch Hodge. Dr. Hodge was a long-haired, bearded mountain man— a professor of English, a poet, and my personal nemesis. Somehow he found out that I wrote fiction as a hobby, and he insisted that I bring him something, so I took him a short story. After giving it a cursory reading, he said, "Miss Dodd, you’re a damn fine critic, but don’t bother writing fiction. Forget it."

It’s rather obvious that I kept on writing. But I quit showing it to anyone. Anyone. I put all of my writing in used manila envelopes which mom got at the church where she worked as a secretary and hid each story after I finished it.

Time passed, and I graduated from Piedmont College, taught school for a while, quit teaching school, sold lumber, and worked in a bank in Jefferson. During the time that I was a teller at the First National Bank of Jackson County, I short changed one of my customers, a young lawyer named David Motes, and within a couple of years, we were married. By that time, I had returned to teaching, because my then Assistant District Attorney boyfriend said he couldn’t afford to marry a girl who worked in a bank.

Teaching was for me a love/hate relationship. I love talking with kids and seeing what they have to say, because they are so funny. But I found that teaching English, with all those essays, to be very time consuming, and I hated not having as much time as I wanted for my personal life. Despite the lack of time, I did sometimes write fiction, especially in the summers. Then we had children, and I wrote very little fiction for quite a while. I did my first real "word processing" about that time, though. And somewhere along in there, I began to take old story ideas, still in their beat up manila envelopes, and I would rewrite them, putting them on the computer. I did this for years, just as a hobby. I’m telling you, when I had a bad day in the classroom, I went home, and Angie had a worse day. So, more than any of my other pieces, The Gift Horse was the stress relief book.

When our son was in the first grade, he began having some emotional problems and it became increasingly apparent that while David might be a good judge, and I might be a good teacher, we weren’t doing too well as parents. We took a long hard look at how difficult it was for us to care for our school aged children and do our jobs— jobs that often took many more than the traditional forty or so hours a week, and we decided that one of us should quit. As a superior court judge he makes a lot more than I ever did, so I didn’t sign that little thingy known as a contract, and in short order, I went from being teacher, annual staff advisor, and so forth to just Mom. During the transition period, David and I talked about what I might do with all that extra time. Early in our marriage, I had told him that I would not ever iron his shirts, so instead of expecting a lot of domestic work, which was totally unrealistic, he suggested that I "do something with that book I was always working on."

By this time I actually had several partial manuscripts sitting on the hard drive of my computer, but one of them was closer to being finished than the others, so I decided to concentrate on it. I went to a writer’s conference at UGA and pulled it together into what I thought was reasonably good form. I sent a lot of query letters and got a lot of rejections. I did get a few nibbles from agents. I talked with agent from a well known firm in New York who said that I had a great deal of talent, but she felt the only way to make my story palatable to a publisher would be to set the whole thing in outer space. I just didn’t think I could do that. About that time a small publisher in Wisconsin sent a four-page critique and said that if I’d rewrite the whole book, they would like a second look.

Okay, that was not good, but they didn’t mention outer space. Disgusted, I threw the box in a drawer and worked on important things like cutting the grass and eradicating weeds in the flowerbeds. I didn’t rewrite The Gift Horse until it got too cold to do much yard work. After I rewrote it, I sent it back to the publisher that had expressed interest in it. Finally, Gardenia Press in Wisconsin accepted my novel, about a year after I first sent it to them. That was really a cloud-nine experience. And then nothing much happened.

Actually, that was good timing, because I had promised a fellow teacher that if her husband won a Fulbright Fellowship to go teach in Israel for a semester, that I would fill in for her. He won, and I went back to the classroom for that semester. When my sentence to the classroom was up in late May, I called my publisher and said, "Where’s my manuscript?"

There was a bit of silence on the other end of the phone. "Oh, we thought you were busy teaching."

"I was. Now I’m not. It’s hot down here in Georgia, and I need an excuse to stay inside where it’s cool. Don’t you have some rewriting I need to do?"

"We’ll get back to you."

And I waited a while longer. When the weather got just right, like October, the manuscript came back. I promise you; I never put that many red marks on a student essay. At least I hope not. That manuscript, all three hundred pages of it, was bleeding profusely. The first editor they chose for The Gift Horse didn’t like my writing style, my characters, or my plot. I’m sitting there, reading this stuff, and wondering why the acquisitions editor was so interested in it if everything was wrong! For two weeks, I let it sit, and then I gritted my teeth, wrote a reply to her critique and fixed what I thought really needed fixing, ignored the rest, and sent it back.

A couple of months later, again, I was on the phone, saying, "Where is my manuscript?"

It took another six months and a new editor to get it ready for print. Everything was set for a release within a month, then my publisher died, resulting in total chaos at the company and eventual bankruptcy for her business partner.

At this point, I had been trying to get into print for about three years. My first thought was to start sending The Gift Horse to other publishers, but after all that editing, I thought it was ready to go. That sister who runs a marketing and printing business in Virginia had told me two years before that she’d get into print inside a month, but I was quite concerned about the stigma associated with people who pay to be published.

With Gardenia Press in disarray and people coming up to me in the grocery store asking when my book was going to be out, I had to do something. Ultimately, I chose what is known as a print-on-demand publisher, Booklocker. This company only accepts 15% of the manuscripts submitted, rather than publishing anything— for a big price. Booklocker makes money by selling books, not off wanna be authors. Once they take you on, they handle contacts with the actual printer, and they can handle direct orders via the internet and faxed orders from bookstores. Also, they listed the book with a wholesaler, Ingram, and they have posted it on too many internet booksellers to count, but they are like Amazon.com and Books A Million online. Booklocker’s covers didn’t do much for me, so, I got a graphic artist in Washington State to design the cover. Publishing this way did result in a few expenditures on my part, but I’ve done enough of these speeches and book signings to break even.

I read in the New York Times book review that all first novels are at least partially autobiographical. That scares me just a bit. Yes, there is some of Pamela J. Dodd in this book. But my main character is thirty years younger than I am, and she is thin and I was once, for about half an hour. She has auburn hair-- and mine’s never been any color other than the one you’re looking at, and she’s a gourmet cook— and most of you have no way of knowing, but when we have pot luck dinners, I sign up to bring the paper products. Okay? Those details should lay that theory to rest. This novel isn’t autobiographical.

Some of the characters are totally invented, but some are composites— that is, they share certain characteristics with people I have known, but none of my characters are just like someone I know or once knew. Those of you who have read this know that some of the situations are quite outlandish, and that’s intentional, to some degree. If I had written this too realistically, then someone would have said I lifted it from the court cases that my husband hears in his job as a superior court judge. I’ll say this— you probably wouldn’t believe what passes for dinner table conversation at my house. When David tell us what happened at work, it just isn’t the same as hearing how many widgets were manufactured at the plant. Oh, no. His tales are often quite entertaining.

When I first started The Gift Horse, I was going to write a romance, but it just wasn’t in me. Instead, what I wrote is in many ways the opposite of a romance. This story doesn’t involve two people who are meant for each other and just figure it out yet. Instead, it’s a psychological study of why people do what they do. It isn’t about love at all, but it is about unusual friendships. While Angie gets top billing, this book is in many ways about Billie. To me, she is by far the most interesting character, and she is the character who undergoes the most changes as the story progresses.

Characters are motivated, just as real people are, by what they want. My main character, Angie, wants money, an education, and a family. Those three things are paramount to her because that’s what she didn’t have growing up. If you’ve been poor, then it’s easier to understand Angie. If you’ve lost close family, that helps as well, because Angie has lost both of her parents by the time she is a teenager.

I wrote this story to explore the gray area of "why would anyone put up with…" and I filled in the blanks with lots of crazy stuff. I really don’t like predictable books, so keeping readers guessing "what will happen next" was paramount as I created The Gift Horse.

Presently, I’m trying to find a home for a futuristic story about surrogate parenthood, and I’ve gotten one rejection, so I’ve sent it off to a new publisher, and I’ll just have to wait for an answer. In the mean time, I’m still talking about The Gift Horse, and selling a few at events such as this.

Thanks for your attention. Do you have any questions?

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I've made this speech several times, with a slightly different slant depending on the place and time of the discussion, because it lasts less than 15 minutes, which is a typical amount of time allotted to a civic club guest. This version was delivered to the Winder Lions Club, at a luncheon in the spring of 2005, where I received a very warm welcome and sold quite a few books. My husband, David, and my youngest sister, Barbara, were in the audience, so some of the references were a bit more personal. Enjoy!

Of Cars and Characters

Thank you all for inviting me come visit with you all today.

Do you like car talk? Not just the radio show, but that is a great show. I like cars, and I enjoy learning what’s new in the automotive world. My husband, whose name is David Motes, and I enjoy watching car shows on television, and I regularly read about cars on the internet. We often have differences of opinion on what makes a great ride, but I really enjoy the car talk that we often share.

I don’t remember just when I got so interested in transportation, but it happened early on. I’ve always been the tomboy in our family, and while my sisters were learning how to cook or decorate the house, I was outside with my dad, working on stuff. In fact, I knew a quarter of an inch wrench from a 5/16th wrench long before I learned my multiplication tables.

The first car I remember was a ’52 Cadillac— white with a green velour interior. My mom drove it to work and when she delivered me to school and picked me up. As a very small child, I learned that if that big white Caddy drove up, Mom was coming to the rescue.

My mother was from Barrow County, a former Winder High School basketball star who grew up on a farm in Auburn. Her name was Irene Blackstock, and she was the youngest of eight children, the daughter of a farmer. She attended Piedmont College on a basketball scholarship, but didn’t learn how to drive until she returned home and bought a ’49 Ford. Yes, she bought the car and then learned how to drive. Mom had many adventures in learning, but she was especially embarrassed whenever anyone mentioned how she tore the door off, backing up. Apparently, she found leaning out of the window insufficient, so she had a habit of opening the door and peering out to check the position of the wheels. Her skills had progressed beyond that stage before I came along, and for that I’m quite grateful.

Like most families, we had other cars through the years, and our cars often reflected our family fortunes— or more often the lack thereof. At one time my dad had a vintage Volvo, which he rolled one rainy day, on a poorly banked curve. The roof was caved in a bit, so he took a ball peen hammer and knocked the worst of the dents out and kept driving the thing. It looked just horrible, with lots of dents and rust everywhere, but he drove it for quite a while like that. Let me tell you, Volvos have a reputation for being really are tough, and they are, or at least they were in ’59.

Perhaps the least desirable ride we had was a Studebaker Lark, an early sixties model, like the one Wilbur drove on Mr. Ed. Ya’ll do remember Mr. Ed, don’ t you? But Wilbur didn’t seem to have all the problems with his Studebaker that we did. That car had many idiosyncrasies, but the worst one— the one that always stopped it dead— was a bit of an engineering flaw. The fuel pump was too close to the steering column, and they collided frequently, causing fuel pump failure. I can remember my dad crawling under that car on the side of the road, coasting distance from where it died, and installing yet another fuel pump. My dad put about six fuel pumps on that car before he got rid of it and bought mom a slightly better hunk of junk.

I went to high school in the seventies, and like kids today, all high school kids then thought they needed a car. Of course, instead of the P.T. Cruisers and Eclipses, and Mustang convertibles of today, we drove old Chevys and Fords, but most kids did have some sort of ride.

Alas, my father said I couldn’t have a car, because we didn’t have the money. Then one day, he came in and said he’d found a car for me. I should have been suspicious, but I was just happy to have anything at all. My wonderful "new" car turned out to be a 1964 Chevy II station wagon with well over a hundred thousand miles, a badly dented door, and it ran on about three or four of its six cylinders. An insurance company had already declared it a total loss, so we got it for a $75.00 salvage fee. My dad and I rebuilt the engine in the front yard. I still remember trying to clean out the oil pan. I scraped and scraped, and some where in there, I realized that maybe I wasn’t sure what to do with my life, but I didn’t want to do anything that involved getting grease under my fingernails. So I got some insights about careers and I had a car.

I guess I had long been aware that people are judged not only by what they know, or what they wear, but also by what they drive. And there I was, driving the ugliest car in Jackson County, all through high school and on into college. I was kidded and kidded about that car— which was actually a good investment, since I got $350.00 when I finally sold it. The bad part wasn’t driving the car, because it served me reasonably well, and you could haul all sorts of stuff and people in it. The bad part was enduring the embarrassment of riding around in that ugly car.

Yes, we do judge people by what they drive, and that car was a character building experience.

After I got yet another station wagon, a boring and mundane Ford Fairlane, I graduated from Piedmont College, taught school for a while, traded the Ford wagon for a Pontiac LeMans—my only flirtation with the muscle cars of the sixties and seventies— quit teaching school, sold lumber, and worked in a bank in Jefferson. I worked in the drive in bank, and once again, I found myself judging people by what they drove.

During the time that I was a teller at the drive-in bank, I short-changed a young lawyer, David Motes, who had a really great looking silver Camaro. He says I did that deliberately, but I just couldn’t read his sister’s handwriting. Honest. Anyway, within a couple of years, we were married. By that time, I had returned to teaching, because my then Assistant District Attorney boyfriend said he couldn’t afford to marry a girl who worked in a bank. Even if she did have a very nice Chevy Monte Carlo, bought new at the dealership in Commerce, Georgia. And I always kept it clean and neat as a pin inside, because that was before children.

I don’t know if you’ve noticed this, but neat people drive neat cars. Maybe they aren’t new, but they’re reasonably clean and don’t have too much junk rolling around in there. Messy people drive messy cars. If you see lots of junk inside a car, watch out, because their home is probably worse. Never marry a girl or a guy with a messy car. David kept a nice car, or I might not be married to him at all. You never know.

Back then, I never dreamed I’d be a writer. As a writer— you knew I’d get around to that eventually, didn’t you— as a writer, I use what I know about people, and cars, to create realistic and hopefully interesting characters.

My first novel, The Gift Horse, is about a young lady who grows up poor, then finds wealth later in life. She’s young and she is beautiful, and she’s sexy, so I had to pick an appropriate ride for her. Angie drives a Mazda Miata during the story, because it is a modern rendition of the classic sports car— sleek and sexy, just like Angie herself.

Early in the story, Angie is kidnapped by Billie Chapman, who is efficient and never fails in a mission. Billie drives a Ford Explorer, because that vehicle embodies the "can do" aspect of Billie’s character. It’s a solid and no nonsense piece of equipment, just like Billie.

The source of wealth and sophistication in this story is Marc Avery, the only son of an electronics entrepreneur, and he drives a BMW, which symbolizes certain aspects of his character. It is a vehicle fit for a man of means, a man who insists on having, and driving, the best.

My story is a novel, so my characters are fictional. Angie, Billie, and Marc are not real people, but I chose real cars for each of these characters, because for fiction to be interesting there must be enough authentic detail for the reader to get involved in these characters lives.

The Gift Horse is a contemporary story— about one-third mystery, one-third thriller, and one-third romance, so I needed to use cars that are in current production. As I worked on the manuscript, I tried to keep in mind not only what those characters would drive, but what vehicles would continue to be produced for at least the next few years. Fortunately for me, Mazda is still turning out the Miata, Ford still sells lots of Explorers, and BMW hasn’t lost too much of its caché to Lexus or Acura.

I love writing, even more than I love cars, and I’m sure you can tell I really do love cars, and I genuinely enjoyed bringing the characters in The Gift Horse to life.

I’m aware that some people will buy The Gift Horse solely because a local author wrote it. However, I hope that people will read the book and see what life is like for Angie Donalson, a great looking gal from a small Georgia town, who really does enjoy riding around in that Mazda Miata.

As for me, I currently drive a Honda Odyssey minivan, a latter day station wagon of sorts, which suits me because I’m still following the mom track. I guess things really don’t change all that much.

Do you have any questions—about me, my various cars, or my writing?

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