In the past, I’ve interviewed numerous area authors for WBOM streaming radio, www.wbomradio.com, originating from high atop the Mendolssohn Performing Arts Center in Rockford, Illinois. One of my sessions won a second-place award from the National Federation of Press Women.
As the author of my memoir, “The View from a Midwest Ferris Wheel,” I traded places and answered questions from WBOM’s Pamela at the Ethnic Museum book fair last Saturday. I don’t know when my interview will be broadcast on the In Print Radio program, which can be found on the computer Sundays at 7:00 a.m. and Mondays at 7:00 a.m.
I talked about my background and my book. I slipped into the writing world though the side door of learn by doing. After our three children were enrolled in school, I answered the Rockford Morning Star’s ad seeking correspondents to report news from the small towns surrounding the county seat. An editor said all I needed was a typewriter and a 35 mm camera–no training or experience in journalism was necessary. I attended civic meetings, chased fire trucks and submitted feature stories about Durand area people and their passions. After thirteen years, the daily abruptly dropped all part-timers. I sent query letters to national publications for women, farmers and police officers. Some of my proposed magazine articles were accepted.
After my ninety-year-old mother passed away, I read her daily jottings about our life on the family dairy farm during the 1950s. I used her diaries as the basis to write a memoir of my seven-year courtship that began with a Ferris wheel ride when Kenny and I were teenagers and continued through his four-year hitch in the U.S. Navy and my five months in a sanitarium recuperating from a serious bout with tuberculosis.
A couple of my writer friends had been published by Adelaide Books, an independent New York firm. I submitted my manuscript and I was thrilled when they offered me a contract. The book is available from Amazon in Kindle and paperback. Signed copies can be purchase from me.
I continue to write by posting on Wednesdays to my blog, lolita-s-bigtoe.com. It’s aimed at older women but is also read by a few men.
We are all children and most of as become parents. Have you ever traded places with any others?