PopSyndicate.com

She’s a columnist, peace advocate, champion of the disabled and published author who’s book was banned for a short time from her local library.

A sneak peek of Lion’s Pride premiere tomorrow here at Pop Syndicate’s Book Addict blog, as well as more words from Debbie.

There is a saying:  “Living well is the best revenge.”

I have another way to say it:  “Living your own way is even better revenge!”

I’ve heard that some families encourage children to follow their own path, listen to their own voice, and do what they want with their life.  I never knew anyone like that.  Our father told us his plan for our lives.  We were to follow in his footsteps—for our security, he said.  I tried, but I could never seem to manage it for very long.

For me, there was always something inside me that said, “Don’t listen to him.  Listen to yourself.”  It was my own “inner voice,” and the conflict made my life much harder than it might have been if my parents had encouraged me to do what I was supposed to do with my life.  In fact, almost everyone around me denied my right to listen to my own voice, so I was nearly 40 before I even started thinking about what I should have been doing all along.

When I realized I am a writer, I had to start from scratch in the business.  It took much of the decade of the ‘80s for me to realize that other people couldn’t tell me what I was supposed to write.  I worked with several partners for different lengths of time and turned down offers from more people to do that as well.  I finally realized they just wanted to use my skills at organizing and editing the written word so they could turn out their own ideas.  I’d learned how to write from the nuns in parochial school.  Spelling, punctuation, vocabulary, syntax—the whole ball of wax comes naturally to me without having to think about it.  My first draft is better than most people’s fifth draft.  But errors will get through, and it’s fun to find one or two somewhere down the line!

The problem was, I had my own ideas, my own opinions about politics, religion, sociology, war, and many of them conflicted with those of some people I tried to work with.  The woman with whom I produced a published novel loved the “glory” of war, and I’m a peacenik!  I was able to get the peace movement in Northern Ireland into the last part/generation of “Love’s Legacy,” published under the name of Rosemary Jordan (Leisure Books, December 1986).  But her lack of respect for my principles, among other things, hastened the end of the team.

When I finally broke out on my own, the first novel I wrote that was truly my own—my ideas, my characters, even my style—was “Lion’s Pride,” which is excerpted here this week.  Once I was writing on my own, I discovered that editors and agents wanted me to do something different, even though the book received an Honorable Mention in The BYLINERS of Corpus Christi Seventh Annual (Spring 1990) Texas-Wide Writers Competition, along with another novel I have yet to publish.  Even on my own, I couldn’t please somebody who wanted to be in charge of me.  Ah, well.

So, after a number of “positive” rejections, in which I was told I’m a good writer, I just need to write what other people demand, I put the book away and tried other things.  I published “Night Owl’s Newsletter” for more than five years and got raves and media attention.  Then I became too sick to work, so I put everything away.

Finally, with my husband, Jim, and our two cats, I moved to Arizona in 2000, and in the warm, dry climate I started writing again, this time my own column in the Arizona City Independent Edition.  I write whatever I want in this venue, and I’ve collected a series of columns about my dream for a better world into The World I Imagine: A creative manual for ending poverty and building peace.  I also decided it was time to publish Lion’s Pride.

Jim is also finding his own path, the one he’d avoided for years by moving us to places where the climate was always bad for my health.  Now he’s in the Public Works Department of the Gila River Indian Community, with a specialty in water and sewer.  He’s helping to build a 21st-century infrastructure for people on the Pima reservation who, until a few years ago, barely survived a 19-century lifestyle.

Now, people tell me how wonderful my work is.  My books get mostly five-star reviews, with the occasional four stars to break up the monotony, and I’m reconnecting with the media.  The fun thing about it is, nobody tells me how to do it.  I don’t listen to anyone else unless they say something that helps me do what I want to do.  To quote one late blue-eyed crooner from Hoboken: “I did it my way!”