Deborah L. King: On Writing
I was a fantastic liar as a child. For years I told people that four fingers on each hand were smashed and broken by a heavy window that I attempted to close when I was four years old. I told how I removed the screwdriver that held the window up. I described the pain and wearing casts on both hands and not being able to eat or wipe.
The truth was that I really had tried to close a very heavy window when I was four, and narrowly avoided having my fingers smashed; but at nine years old, after hearing others tell of breaking arms and legs, I had the best-broken bone story of all and was considered, for a time, the toughest kid in my fourth-grade class. I made up all sorts of harrowing tales about my early childhood…car accidents, fires, dog attacks… each an astronomical embellishment of my real-life experiences.
Growing up in Chicago, I had friends in three different south-side neighborhoods and cousins on the west side. I told each group stories about the others, knowing that they were unlikely to ever cross paths. The stories were wild and often vulgar (as much as my little-kid mind could create). I practiced cuss words and told stories about kids I knew doing it. I often lied about people to their faces and my stories were so convincing, the victims sometimes even believed me themselves. My friends would sit enthralled, listening to my tales.
In fourth grade, our teacher read “Little House on the Prairie” to the class, but she read slowly, and I wanted to know what happened next, and I discovered that I could read the whole book myself. That was like a great awakening. I could read whole books with chapters and no pictures and small printing the same size as in my mother’s books. I read EVERYTHING I could get my hands on…. even the books I found that were supposed to be hidden from me… Harold Robbins, Jackie Collins, Donald Goines, Nancy Friday… everything.
Then I started writing for real. I channeled my lies into dramatic stories. I changed names, though my stories were all based on real events and often subjects I was exposed to in forbidden books. I wrote about hard lives and relationships and violence and sex. In sixth grade I wrote a play based on the book Roots, complete with whipping and rape scenes. My teacher said it was very good, but we were not allowed to stage it. I am forever grateful to Ms. DaLuga for allowing me to write anything I wanted.
I wrote and shared stories all through high school… most at least a notebook full of handwritten pages. My teachers frequently chided me for doing English homework in math and science classes. Of course, it wasn’t English homework (I never did homework, anyway), it was me writing the stories that the characters in my head and heart were telling me.
In 1992, I took a women’s writing class at a junior college in Chicago. One evening, the prompt was red. In five minutes, I wrote a scene of a young woman walking across a street on a hot summer night. She was wearing a long heavy coat and cradling a pair of red pumps. In her head, she argued with her mother who was berating her for heading to a bar carrying red whore shoes. I later enhanced the scene with descriptions of the street and the neighborhood and the people around her.
This was the beginning of a story, and I watched as the scenes of this young woman’s life played out. She went into the tavern, traded her gym shoes for the pumps and ordered drink after drink, feeling the vibe of the blues music that sounded to her like gospel. She drank until the voice in her head, her mother’s voice, was silent… and that’s where the sunrise found her; stripped down to her soul and dancing on the bar. I piddled around for years with that scene, eventually abandoning it to write more short stories and books that would go unfinished. After a while, I stopped writing altogether.
In 2013, after living out most of my childhood dreams, the woman with the red pumps started telling me her story again. This time there was no piddling around. The scenes came in bursts and I had to sit down and write them immediately. Her name was Glory Bishop. She was 16 and came of age in the 1980s. Her story was long… so long in fact, that it became two books. She told me about her teenage years and her arranged marriage… then she started telling me about her childhood, so I wrote it into the second book.
All while writing Glory’s story, I’d get flashes of her mother’s story… like Mary was trying to explain herself, so I wrote her a book too. It was a wild and confusing time, but I wrote down everything. I even got a bit of JT’s story… he’s Glory’s childhood sweetheart.
I don’t know what my inspiration is. I write because I have to… because my characters talk to me. As I wrote all three books, I kept certain songs playing on repeat on Spotify… like one song over and over again for days on end. They were my character’s theme songs and now I can’t hear those songs without feeling what I felt when I was writing. I’m finished with Glory and her family, and I’m working on my fourth book. I don’t know how it’s going. The characters aren’t really talking to me right now and I don’t have a theme song yet.
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Deborah L. King published her first short story at seven years old, she took 32 years to complete her first novel. All three of her books have won awards. Most recently, Mary Not Broken won the Literary Global Independent Author Award in the African American category. As a fiction writer, Deborah loves the work of Octavia Butler, classic Stephen King, Peter David, and the illustrations of Dan DeCarlo. She loves storms, champagne, Old Time Radio, and 70s Blues and Soul. Thanks to an interesting childhood, she’s afraid of escalators, bill collectors, and sometimes fresh produce. Along with being a Vulcan and a bread-bender, Deborah enjoys cartoons, baking, photography, and classic Star Trek. Born and raised in Chicago, she has managed to achieve all of her childhood dreams and still lives in the area with her husband and youngest son. According to her daughter, she has “literally aced her life!”
GLORY BISHOP
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MARY NOT BROKEN
Literary Global Independent Author Awards: Winner – African American Fiction
Bookshelf Writing Contest: 2nd Place in New Releases
In 1930s Mississippi, Mary Johnson hates the oppressive heat, working on her family farm, and having to attend her minister father’s church several times a week. But she loves Mason Carter, her musician boyfriend. Both fantasize about living the high life up north in the big city.
When William Bevers, a wealthy old preacher, comes to court her, he promises a life of luxury along with money and status for her family. Mary wants nothing to do with him, but her parents decide for her. Determined to avoid a forced marriage, Mary elopes with Mason to the bright lights of Chicago.
But life up north is not the dream they expected. Multiple tragedies push Mary to the brink, and she soon returns home to the very world she tried so desperately to escape.
Too numb to stave off the pressure from her father, Mary considers accepting William’s proposal. But she soon realizes that life as the preacher’s wife might not provide the safety and security she craves.
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