I love the USA! I was blessed to be born here. I am ashamed to admit that I have not studied the lives of the founding fathers and I have not read the entire Constitution of the United States ........yet. It has been awhile since I have read the Bill of Rights.
My goal is to read both this week. It is high time. I want to challenge my readers to read these documents before July 4, 2011. That gives you a year.
I also want to read about the founding fathers and each of the presidents and their impact on my life today. That is a tall order for me. I think it is something I can do for more understanding of the blessing of being a Citizen of the United States.
Today, I want to intoduce you to authors, Lillian Laird Duff and Linda Duff Niemeir. Their book is on my reading list. I love this era!
1. What is your name and the title of your book(s)?
My name is Linda Duff Niemeir and I am co-author of Sharecropping in North Louisiana: A Family's Struggle Through the Great Depression. Mama and I wrote the book together because it is her story and she knows all the details.
2. What is one thing you think your readers would like to know about you?
There are a couple things: One, I am the wife of a retired military man whom I folllowed around the world as Uncle Sam assigned him to various Airforce bases, some of which included Europe. Because I love traveling, and because I have always been fascinated to learn how "other people" live, those experiences living in Kansas, Germany, Montana, Italy and England have enriched my life in more ways than I can tell you! Second, readers may like to know that I attended business school after high school which gave me the tools to also have a career as a typist, a "secretary," an "administrative assistant," and various other titles for over two dozen different jobs - all of which I had to seek out as we moved to a different town or continent. That in itself was a challenge, but I managed to work for 40 years and supplement our income enough to finally pay for a home in Arkansas so that I might retire at age 59 and my husband retire at age 62. My goal had been to help my husband (and add to our income) enough that neither of us had to work so long that our health would be too poor to travel in our RV to see more of America and further enrich our lives. I saw so many people get themselves in debt during their "life careers" as they purchased all their "wants" and then they had to work so long to pay off those debts that they were not able to enjoy retirement (or possibly die before retirement) and that was not acceptable to me.
3. When did you know that you wanted to become a writer?
I am not sure yet that I am a writer, and you might ask why? As we traveled the globe with USAF, I was so eager to share those wonderful and sometimes humorous experiences, I wrote short stories and submitted some for publication but each was denied. In each case, I was somewhat surprised and demoralized because I thought the stories were interesting and that other people would enjoy them. Anyway, the other desire I had for many years was to record for posterity the stories my mother had told me as I grew up of her life growing up on cotton farms during the 20s, 30s and 40s. Life was very hard for her and her parents and her sisters as they eeked out a living as sharecroppers moving from one farm to another as my Grandfather sought better land, or better conditions for the family - nearer to a school or church or town. The stories she told made me realize how fortunate I was to have all the blessings I enjoyed daily, and how hard my grandparents, parents and other family members worked to get to the point in their lives where they too had enjoyed many of life's blessings. I realized that many people take for granted the modern conveniences we have and do not appreciate those blessings that God has bestowed on us. Now we were not rich by any means, not rich in what many people would say rich is, money in the bank or fine clothes on our backs or fancy cars in the driveway! But we were (and still are) rich in that we had everything we needed, and sometimes more than we needed, and we had love from our family members and from our God who made each of us in His own image, giving us gifts and a heart and mind with which we can and should serve Him. Mama used those stories she told about her early life and how hard her parents worked to teach me strong work ethics and frugal ways that would help me be more like what God intends for me. Her mother had taught her those work ethics. Sorry, I got off track there, so I need to explain that the other reason I wanted to retire early was that I might still have enough wits about me to write down mama's story so I could share it with family and friends. It did not originally start off as a book to be published, but God had a plan.
4. What are your strong points in your writing style or methods?
My strong points are that I write like I talk, just as I might talk to a friend or neighbor over a cup of coffee. I do not use "big college words" that some people might not understand, mainly because I did not go to college and I wanted people of all ages and backgrounds to be able to read the book and hear the stories as mama told them to me. We wrote the book in the first person so the reader can picture my mama sitting down somewhere comfortable telling me those stories as a child, or picture us working on a chore that might remind her of how that chore was done in the old days.
5. Are you a reader?
Yes, I read the Bible and especially enjoy the chronilogical edition so I can keep the history straight in my head. As a lover of math, and bookeeping (which I did not get to use much after school), my logical mind just wants to know a story, whether fiction or non-fiction, in chronilogical order. It just makes more sense to me. I enjoy a variety of reading materials such as period novels, biographies, magazines about gardening, home decorating and traveling.
6. What are you reading right now? Right now I am reading Winds of the Day by Howard Spring, a period novel set in old England prior to and after WWI. Being in the middle of the book, I do not know where it will end, timewise. I can picture in my mind some of the scenes described and places in England spoken of because I lived there myself four years.
7. Do you have another book that you are working on and hasn't been submitted for publication?Tell about it.
No, but I have always wanted to write a book about some of the places where I lived, especially in Europe and tell some of the ways we Americans had to change our daily lives to fit into our environment. My husband and I took a long vacation last summer to Alaska and back to Arkansas, driving over 12,000 miles in 70 days on the road (with two grandchildren) seeing places we had not seen before and meeting lovely people, each one having a story if we took time to get to know them. I thought I might write a book about those people, but as I made notes on our travel blog that I set up for family and friends, I found that I did not have time each day to write down enough information about those places, and interesting persons we came upon. So I decided to just sit back and enjoy the ride and smell the roses. Perhaps some day I will write another book.
8. What are your biggest obstacles to writing and how do you overcome them?
One obstacle I had was just getting started, so the best way I found to overcome that was to set a date or time and made myself do it. I had to be consistent in those times (daily as I wrote with my mother who lived next door at the time) and not let anything distract me if possible. I know that is easier for a retired person as myself who does not have kids still at home to deal with or household chores that keep calling to a busy mom who also works outside the home! The biggest obstacle for me was finding out how to get the book published after hearing so many friends and relatives say "You need to get it published." I had no idea how to do that. I thought maybe I'd have to print it dozens of times, mail it off to publishing houses and wait forever to hear from them that "it did not fit their needs" - well that was what sometimes happened to John Boy Walton (as I watched the reruns on TV, which thoroughly delited me - the show, not his stories being turned down). And when a friend told me to just google publishers, I was absolutely overwhelmed by the thousands listed. So, I bowed my head and prayed and told God that if the book was to be published, He would have to help me find a publisher. When I opened my eyes there was a publisher listed out of alphabetical order (for some strange reason?) on the pages of As - Tate Publishing and Enterprises! So when I clicked on the name and read about the Christian family working together to "publish the word" I knew I would start there and the rest is history. No pun intended. I told God that I would give a tithe to my husband's ministry, Christian Motorcycle Association, in which we have been involved since 1995. God has blessed me and mama in sales and the joy of meeting so many other people who were either sharecroppers or children or grandchildren of sharecroppers has been wonderful and unexpected. Our own family doctor who read the book told us he had been the son of a sharecropping family from Arkansas.
9. Please put a description of each of your books here.
A family's history lives and dies according to the dedication of its storyteller. Author Lillian Laird Duff is one such historian, and with the encouragement and help of her daughter Linda Duff Niemeir, the stories of this sharecropper's daughter will spark in readers the desire to keep their own family histories alive. Sharecropping in North Louisiana is the true story of the hardship Lillian's family faced during the Great Depressin and World War II. The word pictures Lillian paints are vivid and will bring to life for readers a time when people were forced to get by with what they had. It will also leave readers hungry for a home-cooked meal, as Lillian recalls food preparation on the farm with such richness and delight that you can almost smell the smoked pork and taste the homemade ice cream and butter. Join Linda in listening to her mother's stories once more.
10. How can readers contact you or purchase your books? Please put your website or blog here.
Our book can be purchased through Tate Publishing and Enterprises website, other major websites on line such as Borders, Books A Million, Amazon.com, etc. It is also in audio form which makes fun listening. I have a website at www.niemeir-duff.com as well as a travel blog which I used to document book events beginning in the fall of 2008. Recent blog posts are vacation fun, etc.
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