Featured Interview With Jackie Ross Flaum
Tell us a little about yourself. Where were you raised? Where do you live now?
I am a water aerobics enthusiast, amateur jewelry maker, struggling bridge player, and kick-ass grandmother in addition to writing stories. I grew up in Kentucky, went to college at the University of Georgia where I had way too much fun, and graduated from the University of Kentucky with a degree in journalism. After college, I worked for the Associated Press then became a reporter for “The Hartford Courant” in Connecticut. I married there and our two daughters were born there. My newspaperman husband got a job in Memphis and we moved there. I became a freelance speechwriter, publicist, and marketing person for major companies in town, but my favorite gigs were with the Memphis City Schools and the Memphis Symphony Orchestra. I retired and began doing what I’d always wanted to do: write fiction. I wrote short stories that appeared in such anthologies as “Now There Was a Story”, “Low Down Dirty Vote II and III”, “Mayhem in Memphis,” and “Mystery, Crime, and Mayhem”. Since I liked short stories, I tried my hand at a longer form and wrote a novella of love and murder, “The Yellow Fever Revenge.” What I really wanted to write a novel, and so was born the civil rights era suspense/thriller series, Sterling Brothers Ltd. So far the series includes “Justice Tomorrow,” “The Price of a Future,” and coming soon, “Wigs, Mustaches, and Other Disguises”. I am the immediate president of Malice in Memphis a Killer Writing Group and mother to one very disobedient dog.
At what age did you realize your fascination with books? When did you start writing?
I was reading before the first grade and always listening to radio programs and making up stories to go with them. Many times teachers had to remove a novel from inside my math book—needless to say I stink at math today. I actually wrote my first ‘novel’ in the sixth grade and my mother, bless her heart, typed all 100 pages of it.
Who are your favorite authors to read? What is your favorite genre to read. Who Inspires you in your writings?
Harper Lee, Zora Neale Hurston, SA Cosby, Faye Snowden, Charlaine Harris, and JD Robb (Nora Roberts)
I love all their books. I stumbled on “Their Eyes Were Watching God” when my granddaughter asked me for help with an essay on the book. What a treasure I found.
But I love thrillers and mysteries and suspense stories, especially those with a romantic flavor. I am constantly surprised by authors and books that I read just to please a friend or because I’m about to meet the author. For example, I didn’t think I would like Charlaine Harri’s Sookie Stackhouse series because I’m not into vampires and werewolves. Boy, was I wrong! That proves a well-written book in almost any genre will get me interested.
Tell us a little about your latest book?
“The Price of a Future” took me two years to finish. I wrote short stories in the meanwhile, but mostly I stewed and stewed about it.
First, I couldn’t think of a way to make the exchange after Socrates Gray is captured and his partner Madeline Sterling agrees to give up her newborn daughter for him. All her angst wore me out and I cut a bunch of it (You’re welcome, readers.) I had to be smart: Sterling has no intention of keeping her end of the bargain, but it took me a hot minute to figure out how to make all that happen. Second, I finished with 105,000 words, and my Malice in Memphis critique partners went “Whoa! Nobody’s gonna read a thriller that long. Besides, you have two books there.” So I divided it–the third book in the series “Wigs, Mustaches, and Other Disguises” will be out by summer.
Third, I spent a lot of time making sure the scenes and the dialogue in the book were true to the 1960s and the people of that time.
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