We Celebrate Ramona!

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: How many of you have had a guardian angel? A mentor, a guide, a muse, a cheerleader- teamleader-guide?  For oh-so-many of us, the answer is: Yes! Ramona!

Ramona DeFelice Long –well, let’s talk about her. Personally? My book THE OTHER WOMAN  would not be what it is without her brilliant editing. But that’s just me.  Just the beginning. She’s the iron fist in the velvet glove (she’d tell me that’s a cliché, gently but firmly) for all her grateful authors n her daily writing sprints. She’s a generous and brilliantly reliable presence in her beloved Pennwriters, and every organization she’s has blessed with her presence. She’s a dear and treasured friend of the Reds, and of  all of us.

Plus. What a rock star. She’s hilarious, and wry, and knowing --and so many writers, like me, rely on her every word. We have shared many a glass of wine. Yes, Ramona.

Okay, and listen—that’s not even the point. Her new book is out! The Murderess of Bayou Rosa. Go right out—okay, not OUT, you can stay inside,  and not RIGHT NOW, because now you need to read this interview, but after you do, click click click and get Ramona’s book.  

Yes, Ramona.

HANK:   When was the first moment you knew you wanted to write? Or wait--did loving to read come first?

RAMONA: In 5^th Grade, I entered a patriotic poem contest sponsored by the VFW. This is how my poem began:

The grand ol’ flag of the USA

Flies in the wind of the windy day.

Clearly, poetry is not my wheelhouse, but my poem won the contest. “Grand Ol’ Flag” was published in the state VFW newsletter, and I was presented a $25 Savings Bond at a ceremony at the local VFW chapter. (Named, incidentally, after the first American soldier to die in WWII, Freddie Falgout lived one town away from where I grew up. He died one day before his 21^st birthday.)  After the presentation, the  VFW president handed me the original hand-written poem and asked if I’d like to read it. I was too surprised to be terrified, so I walked to the mic and read to an audience of foreign war veterans. Walking back to my seat, I was stopped by a man who whispered, “I could never read in front of people like that. You are braver than I am, young lady, and I fought at Guadalcanal!”

Add this up, and this is what you get: On a single night when I was twelve years old, I was published and paid, I gave a public reading, and was praised by a fan. I was young, but I had enough sense to realize I’d found my place in the world.  

HANK: Where did you grow up? What books did you read as a child that you remember now?

RAMONA: I had two childhoods. From birth to age seven, I lived in a neighborhood full of family: my grandmother, three aunts, one uncle, and nineteen cousins lived on my lane in Golden Meadow, Louisiana. The town was so named because fields of wild goldenrods grew every summer. It’s about 60 miles southwest of New Orleans. I spent summer weekends at Grand Isle, an island beach on the Gulf of Mexico that is also the setting for Kate Chopin’s The Awakening.

After a particularly nasty hurricane flooded our house, my father and a professional carpenter built our future home out of flood zone. It was in the middle of sugar cane fields. Our closest neighbor was my great-grandfather. I was eight; he was eighty-eight. The name of the closest town was Larose (ahem). My siblings and I spent summers in the middle of nowhere all summer because my mother, a nurse, always worked. I rode my bike, watched TV, fought with my brothers, and read. My mom took us to the library once a week. We were allowed to get 10 books. I usually read my 10 books in two days, so I read my sister and brothers’ books, which is why I know a lot about the U.S. space program and baseball.

My favorite books were Rumer Godden’s doll books, The Secret Garden and The Secret Language. I devoured all the brave girl books: Pippi, Anne with an e, Donna Parker, Katie John. All wonderful role models.

HANK: Donna Parker! Seriously. We have to talk. I learned SO much from Donna Parker.  Anyway. You have helped so many writers--including me. How did you come to be an editor?

RAMONA: I owe my career to my Great Friend and mentor, Nancy Martin. When Nancy started her Blackbird Sisters mystery series, we were in a critique group together. Brainstorming the Blackbirds was heavenly, because in between all the brave girl books I’d read thousands of mysteries, I had a knack for understanding characters and mystery plots. I must have absorbed how mysteries were supposed to work by reading so many at a young age. After critiquing Nancy’s first couple of mysteries, she asked if I would read a mystery manuscript from a friend, then another, until I realized I had a marketable skill. I decided, with no experience in business at all, to open my own editing service. I got my first big break when I was asked to edit the first Guppy anthology. Since FISH TALES was published in 2011, I had steady work as an editor.

Before anyone sends me a manuscript, I retired earlier this year. Working as a development editor, teaching online courses, and presenting workshops were an excellent way to spend the last decade.

HANK: What's the biggest mistake new authors make?  (Tell us as many as you want. Sigh.)

RAMONA: Without a doubt, the most common error is front loading the first few pages of a manuscript with background instead of action. “Action” does not need to be a car chase, but a telling event or a character in an intriguing situation.

Others, in no particular order:

Too many characters introduced too quickly. IRL, it’s tough to go to a party, meet a bunch of new people, and remember their names and how they are connect to the host. The same thing applies to fiction.

A character driving/waking up/making coffee, etc., ALONE. Unless isolation is a theme of the story, you are asking the reader to watch a character perform mundane acts. If the car breaks down or the windshield shattered by a gunshot, that’s a story.

Weather. There is weather everywhere, all the time. Unless it directly affects the story, weather is weather.

Misleading first impressions. IRL, we form instant impressions of people when we first meet them. Those impressions can be hard to shake. This means, if you introduce your protagonist in a compromising or weak or silly situation, will I believe it when she’s suddenly competent enough to solve a mystery?

HANK: LOVE this. I am printing it out. Now, you.  We are so thrilled with your new book! Congratulations! Give is the elevator pitch for  The Murderess of Bayou Rosa. . (You made us learn to do it--now it's your turn.)

RAMONA: In 1920, in a small bayou town, a free-spirited women shoots her lover in the back, sticking her hometown with a legal and moral dilemma: Can a jury of twelve men vote to hang a woman they’ve known since birth?

HANK:  Ooh.  I love justice stories. Where did the idea come from?

RAMONA: A couple of years ago, I needed a story to donate to a charity anthology. I was in the habit of walking every night after dinner, and I loved seeing the changes in the moon. It reminded me of a Louisiana saying: “Marry a man by the light of the  moon and he will be true to you.” 

That saying led me to a story about a moonlight wedding that goes awry. That story, “Light of the Moon,” was published in Into the Woods. It had an open ending, because I love open endings. (Others do not.) I was asked several times to write a sequel. Not until Sister Jean, who manages the retreat houses where I went 4 or 5 times a year, asked if I was writing a sequel did I really consider it. I went to Catholic school. I can’t say no to a nun.

HANK: Smiling. How was it to write? I mean--how long did it take to write THE MURDERESS OF BAYOU ROSA, what did you learn, how did it change you?

RAMONA: The first 2/3 were a snap! The short story gave me setting, characters, inciting incident, antagonist, voice, etc. It was like a summary and all I had to do was fill in what happened before the short story began. I did that, and made some significant changes, but writing it was a breeze. Took me six months to write 220 pages. (I hear you book-a-year folks laughing, but this is lightning speed for me!) The final one third took me a year and a half. It began where the short story ended, and the reason I’d left it open was because I had no clue what happened next. I wrote about ten endings (seriously). The last 100 pages took 18 months because I was never happy with the ending. Then I found Carl (who is sorta-kinda based on a real person) and the right ending showed itself. My first draft was 104,000 words. I got it down to 95k.

What did I learn? That I was not immune to some of the mistakes my clients made!

How did it change me?  I had to keep reminding myself that women had different attitudes in 1920. I did not want to write a false protagonist—a woman whose actions or ideas were unrealistic for the times. The lasting impression from this book is an acutely awareness of how very much we owe to the women who came before us, who fought for the vote, fought for women to serve on juries, fought to own property and not be property, fought to work outside the home, fought to hold public office, and fought to be educated, all the while cooking every meal from scratch, washing clothes by hand, and raising a family with no safety nets. I hugged my refrigerator and memories of my grandmothers many times while writing the book.

HANK: Aw. Like I said.   LOVE this. And yes,  open endings are so difficult. Just like life. Reds and readers--tell us someone who—like Ramona for me—has changed your life.

Yes! Ramona.  And TWO lucky commenters will win a copy of her wonderful new book! 

THE MURDERESS OF BAYOU ROSA

In the summer of 1920, in the town of Bayou Rosa, Louisiana, a free-spirited woman named Joelle Amais shoots her lover in the back but won't tell anyone why. Joelle is a woman with a checkered past, and as the weeks stretch between her arrest and a delayed trial, her defiant silence threatens to blow Bayou Rosa apart.

Joelle’s only ally is her daughter Geneva, the town schoolteacher, whose demure demeanor hides the stubbornness she inherited from her mother. Geneva is determined to see her mother get a fair trial, but now the town is faced with a legal and moral dilemma. With rows of new graves in the cemetery from a devastating world war and influenza epidemic, can a jury of twelve men vote to hang a woman they’ve seen grow up since birth?

Ramona DeFelice Long writes short fiction, essays, memoir and one novel about family, women, and quirky things that come her way. Her work has appeared in numerous literary and regional magazines. She is a Louisiana native now living in Delaware.

Website: www.ramonadef.com Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ramona.d.long Ramona’s Sprint Club: https://www.facebook.com/groups/270472177602954/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/ramonadef