Did you use an agent to sell your book for you?
By the time I had finally finished Cold Rock River I’d lost my agent. She’d birthed two babies back-to-back and left the industry to raise them. I was orphaned, not a good situation for a newly published author. I began the query process of sending Cold Rock River to agents in hopes of securing a new one. In the interim I sent the manuscript to my publisher Cumberland House Publishing. Ron Pitkin, the president, called and said he liked the book so much he was bringing it out in hardcover immediately. Six months later it hit the stands.
Do you have any southern women’s fiction writers that you admire?
Yes. I’m particularly fond of Connie Mae Fowler (Before Women Had Wings, When Katie Wakes), Robert Morgan (Gap Creek), Judson Mitcham (The Sweet Everlasting, Shem Creek), Earnest Gaines (A Lesson Before Dying, Of Love and Dust.).
You tour with the group, The Dixie Divas. Can you tell us more about this?
Booksigning appearances are often times a lesson in humiliation. Sometimes the only people who show up are your mother and the person who booked the event. We formed our group with the understanding if we were to be humiliated we’d at least be together.
The Dixie Divas are four southern book-writing belles with a passion for promotion serving up helpings of down-home humor and warmth. We each have our own persona and dress in costumes and put on quite a show. We’ve made over three-hundred appearances all over the south. The group consists of Julie Cannon, our Home-grown Tomato Queen Diva (Truelove and Homegrown Tomatoes, ‘Mater Biscuit, Those Pearly Gates), Karin Gillespie, our Dollar Store Diva (Bet Your Bottom Dollar, A Dollar Short and Dollar Daze), Patricia Sprinkle, our Sleuthing Diva. We call her the Agatha Christy of Georgia, and myself J. L. Miles, the Roseflower Diva (Roseflower Creek, Cold Rock River, Divorcing Dwayne).
If you could summarize your whole book into just three words, what would they be?
Forgiveness brings peace.
Article comments
1 - Cheryl Malandrinos
This sounds like a wonderful and inspiring novel. Southern fiction has such a charm to it. I just read Karen White's "The House on Tradd Street", and though it's spooky in many parts, southern charm and Confederate legends flow through it.
Best of luck with your book!
Cheryl