As a military family, she and her husband, Al, lived in Europe for nearly six years and met people from all over
the world. Rosemary sold her watercolor and oil paintings to feed her creative
streak. She also wrote poems and stories but never shared them with anyone outside
her family.
When Al retired after twenty-six years in the Army, they
chose to come back to Louisiana
for him to fly for Petroleum Helicopters. He loved it. Rosemary continued with
her real-estate career, and life was good.
They discovered very quickly that they’d both missed the
sounds of cicadas in the summer heat, the tastes of crispy fried shrimp, spicy
boiled crawfish and icy cold Sugartown watermelon, and definitely the people.
Rosemary likes watching the egrets fish in the coulee (a
fancy name for a fancy drainage ditch) in the woods behind her house. The
little green lizards even inspired her to write a series of books for children.
She enjoys making a big gumbo on the first cool night of autumn. Most of all,
she enjoys hearing the voices of her Cajun friends as they sit around her table
to share it.
How do you decide
between right and wrong?
I ask myself if I
would want my mother to know about it. My mother must have instilled a massive
sense of guilt in me from birth. She nearly died having me, so even now I feel
like everything I do has to justify my existence. I only recently realized that
all my novels and many of my stories have an underlying theme. I am sixty-five
years old and still trying to please my mother. My characters seem to feel the
same way. Even my Vampire. His mother was the one who asked, “Does it have to
be human blood?”
Tell about a
"special" gift that you received when you were a child.
My first really “special” gift was a set of World Book
Encyclopedias….Red Covers… I read them from the front cover of A to the back
cover of Z more than once. My parents thought it was to help me with my school
work, but it opened doors to all kinds of exciting worlds and made me even more
curious about EVERYTHING. It made me want to see it for myself.
When do you feel most
confident?
When someone reads something I wrote and says good things
about it. Praise makes me brave.
Say something about
spontaneity.
I am quite spontaneous. Heap a little praise on me about one
of my books or stories and then take a few steps backwards. It could get
dangerous…in a fun way.
What is one thing you
could do to improve your life?
Write a book that people like well enough to tell their
friends about so that it ends up a NYT bestseller. And be Richer, Thinner and
Taller…..lol………if all that fails, I want to win the Powerball….
To learn more about Rosemary and her writing, visit:
Thank you for stopping
by, Rosemary. I remember the first time I opened up an encyclopedia – it was
like getting access to a world I’d never known existed. I couldn’t concentrate
on what I was actually looking up because of all the interesting tidbits around
it!
On Wednesday, Jo
Briggs will be answering five questions. I look forward to seeing you again
then!
