Author Linda Lee Greene: Women Writers Over 50
Fifty Odd supports women writers over 50.
Author Linda Lee Greene is featured this week.
Bestselling author and award-winning artist, Linda Lee Greene was born in the farmhouse bedroom of her maternal grandparents located on the rim of the famous star-wound in Peebles, Adams County, Ohio, USA known the world over as the Great Serpent Mount Crater. Mother of a son and a daughter, and grandmother of two grandsons, Greene resides in Columbus, Ohio. She works part-time as an interior designer for a firm in Columbus. To date, she has authored three books.
Linda Lee Greene: I Want to Change the World One Story at a Time
I’ve played with idea of being a professional writer for as long as I can remember, and I knew intuitively how to do it, but I don’t believe that I ever chose to actually do it—seriously, I mean. I believe that it chose me. I’m convinced that in my case, it was one of those gifts of grace given to me to save my life at a time when I was desperately ill with a decade-long disease, one that was about to do me in.
The worst part of the illness was that it had blind-sided me just when I had finally pulled my life together and was preparing to soar. One minute I had been perfectly healthy, and the next, grossly sick. And I hadn’t done much with my life to that point, other than marrying young, birthing two children, and divorcing into the unenviable, but also heroic, status of a single parent—but anyone can do those things. When my children were grown and on their own, I had big plans to make up for all of the time I had been able to only dabble in the wonderful talents God had given to me, to put my nose to the grindstone and to begin to fulfill the real purpose for which I had shown up in this life as Linda Lee Greene. But ten years passed while I lived in that particular gauzy cocoon that is the by-product of serious illness, and my life grew smaller rather than larger—so much for the big destiny to which I felt I had been called.
It was early morning, Thursday, August 10, 2000, (three days before my 57th birthday) and I was home on yet another extended disability leave from my position as an interior designer for a local firm. I crawled out of bed and repaired to my bathroom, and while in the shower, the words to a story poured over me as if they were contained within the molecules of the water. And not only were there words, but I saw it unfold in my mind’s eye. It was like a movie reel playing in my brain. I saw Oma Mae Adams; I knew her name: I heard her voice; I knew her life in a flash. I liken it to stories we hear about people who’ve had near-death experiences and their lives play out in full before their eyes. I returned to my bed with a notebook and a pen, and began to write my first book, the murder mystery that I titled, Jesus Gandhi Oma Mae Adams.
Suddenly, my life had meaningful purpose again, and I knew my destiny. I also understood the importance of what had happened to me in that shower. I knew immediately that God had given to me the avenue to a cure for my illness, one that in large part required that I get out of my own way, in essence that I climb out of my self. He gave me Oma Mae Adams, a presence that was all-absorbing, and a life, although fictional, that was so satisfying to me that I forgot to worry about my own life. I forgot to be anxious about the future. I gave up my past except for the parts of it that complimented the story I was writing. I stopped regretting old mistakes because I realized they are the ready-made fodder for my stories.
When I finished the original manuscript, I recruited my maternal first cousin, Debra Shiveley Welch to work on a part of the second draft with me. It was the first book for both of us, and to our surprise and delight, it was an Amazon bestseller upon its release six years later. For these reasons, I don’t have the luxury of taking lightly the gift of writing that was given to me. It’s a big debt that I owe to God, and I will die doing my best to do justice to it.
You ask, Peggy what I want to accomplish with my writing. First and foremost, I want to change the world with every story that I write; I want to promote understanding, tolerance, and love; I want what I write to raise the consciousness of every reader of my work. Also, since I have had the privilege of living a lot of life over a long period of time, I have knowledge and experience to impart. But I manage to add a bit of levity to my work, so if readers get some joy from my stories, then I will have done my job well.
Asking me to choose my favorite part of my books is like asking me to name my favorite child. It’s an impossible task, but I will share the following with you. It is an excerpt of my latest book, Guardians and Other Angels, a historical novel.
Based on a true story of three generations of my family, it takes place in a region of deep back country in Southern Ohio, and most of it during the Great Depression and America’s early years of involvement in World War II. Included in the novel are transcriptions of real letters spanning 1936 to 1941 that were written by the main characters of the story.
Lee, in the following excerpt from Guardians and Other Angels, is my father when he was a young boy:
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“The one-room, Cedar Fork schoolhouse across the holler from the little log cabin on the near side of Peach Mountain was a tolerable two-mile walk in nice weather. It was an enjoyable walk actually, if one had time to swing from a grapevine on top of a high cliff and drop into Cedar Fork Creek for a lazy dip, or stop by the Workman’s place for a quick smoke of their corn silk tobacco. But in snowdrifts as tall as thirteen-year-old, Lee Greene, in threadbare clothes, thin hand-me-down coat, and barely covered feet in holey socks flopping in an old pair of secondhand shoes that were several sizes too big for him, the walk that frigid morning was worse than pure misery.
The chronically aching stomach of Lee was hollow and rumbling. His meager breakfast of cornmeal mush and sugar water was quickly wearing thin, but he had more important things than his stomach to worry about that morning. He was stewing about the paucity of milk he had drawn from their cow tethered in the yard just beyond the lean-to kitchen at the back of the tiny log cabin. The two-story structure, built by A. E., Lee, and Bill only five months before, consisted of a common, or front room on the main level, a primitive lean-to kitchen at the back, and a bedroom where Eva Love and A. E. slept, housing the only closet in the place. A rough-hewn timber ladder gained access to the upper deck, where, in an open-to-the-front loft, all of the many children slept on crude cots, or thin pads on the floor. A large ceiling-to-floor fireplace of indigenous stones in the common room on the first floor was the only source of heat in the place. Felled tree trunks supporting its roof, a porch spanned the width of the front of the log cabin.
The soil on Cedar Fork, thin, hard, and dry, a crusty layer of sediment topping bedrock of limestone, dolomite and shale, made for poor farming and gardening, posing a formidable challenge for the growing of adequate food. Squirrels, rabbits, opossums and birds, hunted and brought in by Lee, the insufficient supply of milk from the cow, and scant eggs supplied by their paltry flock of scrawny chickens in the yard, were the only sources of protein for the family. In season, a large vegetable garden and a stand of corn were coddled into fruition in the poor soil, but only if they were favored with enough rain.
His nose and eyes crusty from yet another head cold, gloveless hands thrust into the pockets of his thin coat, and his feet turning to blocks of ice, Lee trudged on to school, his white-blond head under his hat hunkered into his shoulders. Despite the fact that he might not make it through the perpetual hardships of his life, much less that cold, windy, and snowbound morning, his soul was full of dreams, his mind of intention, his body of vigor and endurance, and on the strength of pure power of will alone, and maybe some help from the man upstairs, Lee was determined that if he got out of his childhood alive, nothing would encumber him again.
The schoolhouse was dark and frigid, Lee, by design, having been the first to arrive. The door was unlocked as it always was, and Lee, halting for a few minutes to give his blood a chance to circulate again in his frozen limbs and digits, sat down on one of the benches. He would have wept if he had allowed himself to seriously consider his unfortunate circumstances—but not Lee! No, not Lee! He had a chance to earn fifty cents that week, and every week for weeks to come, fifty cents for building a fire in the “Warm Morning” coal-burning, heating-stove each morning before school, and that was exactly what the Sam Hill he was going to do…”
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The most important thing that I have learned from writing, Peggy, is that it is my best avenue into the part of me that is my private portion of God. I believe that God caused me to write because He/She knew that it is the only way to bring me, and to keep me, home, and the best way to help me to reveal myself to myself and to others. Writing is an act of exploration for me: I weigh ideas, test theories, check facts through the words I write…and by way of it, I find my way in the world.
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I just sent my third book to my publisher. It is a book for young readers titled, Bussy Gaffin and His Champion Roosters. I adapted it from an excerpt of Guardians and Other Angels. My good friend and master artist, Edith D. Wadkins did the wonderful and charming artwork for it. Hopefully, it will be released in a month or two. I have three other books underway. One of them is a murder mystery that takes place in Las Vegas, and the sequel to it takes a young American man on a spiritual odyssey in Australia, where he finds his real home and true love. The third project is a book of non-fiction that comprises transcriptions of the balance of the authentic letters of my family that were introduced in Guardians and Other Angels. It is correspondence that bridges the whole of World War II. I am weaving a chronicle of the war among the letters. It is a huge undertaking that will take a very long time; there is no doubt about it.
The direct link to Guardians and Other Angels is http://amzn.to/PUOXl9
Jesus Gandhi Oma Mae Adams is found at http://www.amazon.com/Linda-Lee-Greene/e/B00864OVWA
My Amazon Author Page is https://www.amazon.com/author/lindaleegreene
The address to my blog, In Good Company is http://Ingoodcompanyohio.blogspot.com
I co-host the new blog, The River Time, found at http://therivertime.blogspot.com
My online art gallery is at www.gallery-llgreene.com
I’m highlighting other authors each week…one per week…women writers over 50. This is a diverse group of writers…I think there will be something here to interest everyone.
Each author has links to her works. Support your Indie Authors! Buy their books! We women writers over 50 need your support!
