Ask the Author: Debby Detering
Answered Questions (3)
Debby Detering
Several decades ago, my spouse and I went through the worst time of our half-century marriage with unemployment, housing, and health problems. I suspect those troubles usually come in not pairs, but groups. We needed an escape. We found it together when we walked in the country--running our dog or holding hands together on country roads or hillsides, but a secondary escape was our dream of world travel. I discovered "Aunt Tabby," a world traveler and successful travel writer, at that time. I know she looked like my father's cousin, was a pacifist similar in personality to elderly Cousin Mabel who campaigned for women's suffrage a quarter century before she was allowed to vote, and had an imagination like my Aunt Elizabeth who wrote me notes about birds with messages for me. Aunt Tabby is a traditional storyteller--and a step beyond. Her nephew says, "Be careful what stories you tell," but it's a story about Dad's childhood that arouses the children's curiosity.
Debby Detering
If I'm blocked on one project, I turn to another. I have more projects than time--and I'm retired, which supposedly brings free time.
Debby Detering
Having published in genres of history, Christian fantasy, and memoir, the first in a middle-grade historical fiction series is undergoing final editing. Yes, I know one of the primary rules for authors is to stay within one genre, but I seem to attract diversity like fruit flies to ripe fruit because there is also "new adult" fiction in progress. However, the Aunt Tabby series has the first four of the series in progress. "Aunt Tabby's House" introduces world-traveler Aunt Tabby, her nephew's family, and the great-nephew and niece who visit her and find clues to the Vietnam soldier who didn't come home. The generational trauma must be confronted along with the relationship between pacifist Aunt Tabby and her military family. Again attracting diversity, the next books in this series explore one of the most important persons in Turkish history, the exploration of Timbuktu, a semi-legendary Civil War heroine, and breaching the iron-curtain wall in Berlin (unless I finish the canoe trip in Yellowstone Park first).
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