Our Salad Bowl Saturday guest today is returning author Rebecca Jean Downey, whose second novel, Devil Eye was released March 4, 2014. She asks a thought-provoking question regarding author motivation as you'll read below. I'm interested in seeing the response readers and authors will have to her poser.
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| © Lecajun | Dreamstime Stock Photos |
Guns
are a weighty subject, but I finally got the courage to tackle them in my second
book, Devil Eye, released on March 4,
2014. Writing a thriller about firearms can create a stir, so I run the risk of
generating an armory full of hate mail. But as an author and former journalist who
lives on the U.S.-Mexico border, I am drawn to subjects of controversy and
pain. There are fascinating stories everywhere, and I must select carefully
those I would fictionalize.
When
I first queried agents for The Middle Eye
a few years ago, most said they couldn’t get “all that excited” about the
border. This only made me redouble my efforts to examine issues facing the
citizens who live across the Rio Grande from me, and then to write about some
of the most chilling of circumstances.
I would ask you, is there an issue or a
story left untold in your community? Who will be sharing it with the world, if
not you?
I
made the decision to write what was important for the rest of the nation to know,
whether or not someone in publishing is excited about it or not. For me it’s
not just about selling my work, it’s about making my readers more aware of the
steady infiltration of drug cartels and human smugglers into our nation’s cities
and into major banks and businesses. I tackle the financial implications of
money laundering in my third book, Unbridled
Eye, now in the works.
In
high school I was inspired by writers such as Sinclair Lewis, J.D. Salinger,
Harper Lee, John Steinbeck and Harriet Beecher Stowe. President Abraham Lincoln,
upon meeting Stowe, was reported to have said about her novel, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, “So you’re the little
woman who wrote the book that started this great war.”
I
would challenge each of us to remember those writers who went before us. They
used their writing ability to share freely and well about what kept them up at
night. How about you? How are you using your words to inspire and to impact lives?
And if you are doing so, are you sleeping better because of it? I would like to
hear from you.
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Rebecca Jean Downey has a way of pulling you into her stories. You
don't want to put her books down until
you make sure her characters survive! She graduated from the Indiana University
School of Journalism, and has had a lifelong fascination with the law. She read
Sherlock Holmes in elementary school, and has devoured hundreds of mystery
novels over her lifetime. She finally realized that her home in El Paso,
Texas was a perfect backdrop for sharing the haunting and sometimes horrifying
headlines generated on the U.S.-Mexico border.
To learn more, her website is http://www.rebeccajeandowney.com or you can follow her Author Facebook Page
