Ma Jackson

You will see a lot of my family in my books.  After all, that’s who I know best. When  I first started writing Stalked By The Devil, I imagined an elderly couple trying to save their pregnant  granddaughter from an evil monster.  As I thought about the grandmother, Cordelia McIntire, I knew I wanted a very strong, highly principled woman. My mind immediately thought of my great grandmother, Harriet Jackson McNabb.  I didn’t know my great grandmother, but my mother told me stories about her, and in later years as I took up genealogy, I read other people’s accounts of her.

Harriet Jackson was a unique woman for her time. She was a Jackson and came from Marshfield, MO. Harriet Jackson met John McNabb in Marshfield and they married, but till the day she died, she was known as Ma Jackson. It was quite confusing when I was younger hearing my mother  talk about Ma Jackson when she was talking about her father’s mother. Eventually the McNabb family moved to Bolivar, Mo, which is often in my books. Ma Jackson was quite a character.  She chewed tobacco, smoked a pipe, and spoke her mind, once telling a newspaper reporter, she’d never vote for a yellow dog democrat.

I have pictures of Ma Jackson, and as I wrote the first chapters of my book, I could visualize her sitting by the bedside while her granddaughter writhed in pain waiting for the doctor to come. The doctor had been delayed by a blinding snow, her granddaughter is getting ready to deliver, and Cordelia McIntire never shows any fear. If the doctor doesn’t come, she’ll deliver the baby.  My mother use to say, “Yiou do what you have to do.” Since Ma Jackson raised my mother until age fourteen, I’ve often wondered if she heard Ma Jackson say the same thing.

Houses Lost to Time

The old houses stand empty, their weathered siding a haunting gray that provokes a curiosity in us. Who lived in that house? Why did they move? Why didn’t anyone buy it?

I remember walking my cousin’s farm as a boy and finding rock foundations that were no bigger than some closets today where someone lived and raised families. Some people lost their homes during the depression while others just left them to go elsewhere. They are hidden by tall grass and volunteer trees,  while others stand in the middle of a field surrounded by grazing cattle. Sometimes there are  rusted farm implements scattered around that remind us of a different time.

Many things can invoke an idea in a writer’s mind, and these old houses lost to time stirred my imagination. It is in one of these old abandoned houses in the mid 1930’s that Stalked by The Devl begins. A love affair gone wrong and the threat of the baby being murdered. An elderly couple brings their granddaughter to an old abandoned house to deliver her baby in secret. The weather is against them as a heavy snowstorm has invaded the Ozarks and time has stopped.  As the young girl writhes in pain on an old bed, the grandfather looks out into the storm waiting for the doctor-or the stalker.

I am working hard on this book and hope to have it out by Christmas.

Back Writing

I started writing Stalked by the Devil in the summer of 2013. I liked the characters the moment I started writing. The first ten chapters (draft) were enjoyable, easy, and the characters were alive. I was slam dunked by the news I would need a major operation for a non-malignant cancer. The novel went on the shelf as I concentrated on the operation.  After reviewing my choices, I decided to go to MD Anderson in Houston, Texas to have the operation. This would be the sixteenth time under the knife, and I wasn’t too thrilled with the idea. The operation was successful, but only when physical therapy started did I realize that the major surgery was far more major and complicated than I first envisioned. The doctor told me that “old guys” like me take anywhere from one and one-half to two years to fully recover. I’m doing well, but still in the recovery stage. After the surgery, I married a wonderful woman and the vigors of starting a new life with someone and recovering from the surgery curtailed returning to Stalked by the Devil.

A month ago, I picked up the rough draft and read it again. I liked it, but my confidence was shaken. For some reason I didn’t know if the flow of the book was just right. I asked two of my friends, who are very critical, to read the manuscript. The next three weeks were hell as I continued to write and wait for their critique. They liked the rough draft and felt the flow was okay: just wanted to know when I’d finish it.

I’m now half-way with through the first draft and write a chapter a week.

I’ve returned to memories of my childhood for this book.  The southern Missouri counties of Polk and Hickory provide the backdrop for the story that takes place in the mid-thirties during the depression, but it is a tale susupense that is old as time and present today.