By APRILL BRANDON •
Originally published April 15, 2009 at 6:21 p.m., updated April 15, 2009 at 6:21 p.m.
If you go:
Local author Lois Barrett will be at the Victoria Public Library at 11 a.m. and signing books at Hastings in Victoria from 2-4 p.m. on April 25.
For more information go to www.brickhillpublishing.com.
Excerpt ...
If you go:
Local author Lois Barrett will be at the Victoria Public Library at 11 a.m. and signing books at Hastings in Victoria from 2-4 p.m. on April 25.
For more information go to www.brickhillpublishing.com.
Excerpt from "Gulf Coast Love Affair" by Lois Barrett
"Arthur gazed in horror as rushing water washed away building foundations, chased people desperate for their very lives to seek shelter where none was to be found. Reason failed him-life was fleeting. Too late to think about his relatives. As he crashed downward into mud below under unbridled waves, [he] quickly forgot hurried last minute instructions to his family a few hours earlier."
Eyes blinded in the dark water, Arthur attempted to hold his breath, something he had never accomplished in years of swimming. He felt, rather than saw, buildings crashing under the weight of angry wind and waves rooftop high. Unseen, unfounded, imagined destruction brought forgotten waves of emotions sweeping over him as he was sucked under, over and over. Flailing around in a savage current, an occasional bit of air sucked out of an invisible sky, choking, gagging on a mouthful of tiny, fine-ground shells from the beach, he knew. He was dying."
CUERO - She was 68 before she wrote her first novel. Little did she know, it would end up saving her life.
Lois Barrett of Cuero was suffering from multiple health problems back in 2003. In danger of becoming what she called a dying sofa spud, she suddenly remembered the manuscript she had started in 1953 when she was 18 that was still lying in a box in her closet.
"I never got another chance to touch it, what with raising kids and working as a reporter. So I decided to dust it off and for the next 30 days and most nights, I wrote" Barrett, 73, said. "Soon I had a rough draft of a novel."
As a first-time novelist, Barrett had trouble getting agents and publishers to even look at the book. Not to be deterred, she started her own publishing company called Brick Hill Publishing. Five years and four published novels later, Barrett has found a new lease on life.
"I remember thinking to myself, I'm 69-years-old and I can't find anyone to publish this book. I probably won't live to see it published. So I'll just do it myself," she said. "And I did."
Three of her books, including her latest, "Gulf Coast Love Affair," are historical fiction that follows the lives of the Smith family. Barrett takes real life natural disasters, such as the 19th-century earthquakes that rocked Illinois and the hurricanes that ravaged Indianola, and puts her characters into the thick of it, she said.
The other two titles in the series are "When the Earthquake Spoke" and "Preacher's Son and Henry Brown," which is about the War of 1812. She also wrote a book that is not in the series called "There Oughta Be a Law."
A huge history buff, Barrett does her homework for each book, researching everything from the clothing people wore back then to the real life accounts of the natural disasters.
"I love research, always have. That's why I became a reporter in the first place," she said.
She was only 18 when she started her "great American novel," but for Barrett, it's more than finally accomplishing her adolescent dream. Despondent from her health problems and recovering from three surgeries in nine months, it was writing that gave her a reason to get up in the morning.
"I'm more apt to write books than clean house," she said. "I thought I was going to stop after the first one, but I already have the idea for a fifth book in my head."
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