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This might be more than you want to know, but here goes:
1. I’m 68 years old. I self-published my first novel when I was 60, but I didn’t get professionally published until I was 66.
2. I’ve been married to my husband, Doug, for almost 26 years, but I’ve been divorced twice and Doug has been divorced three times. When we went to the county clerk in Las Vegas to get our marriage license, the clerk just shook her head at us. We have outlasted the sum total of all our previous marriages.
3. I can recite “The Night Before Christmas” word for word, though there are a few verses in the middle that I sometimes get out of order. I have a head full of commercial jingles and television show opening songs from the 1960s memorized. I also know a ton of old kid songs and nursery rhymes. They won’t go away, lol.
4. I’m partly disabled from several diseases and chronic back pain. Even before the pandemic, I didn’t leave home much. And before I got vaccinated, I only left home once in fourteen months. Now I go out a little bit.
5. I have an eclectic job history. I’ve been a babysitter, a motel maid, a janitor in an industrial plant, a food server, a waitress, a cashier, a nurse’s aide, a proofreader for a large daily newspaper, and I staffed the gate for a country club swimming pool. I started a tofu salad manufacturing company, I managed the Austin Peace and Justice Coalition, and I managed nonprofit housing for a college student co-op for fifteen years. Since then, I’ve worked for a public insurance adjuster, a real estate developer, and now I do bookkeeping and income taxes from home.
6. As part of the Austin Peace and Justice Coalition, I produced fundraising concerts featuring Joan Baez and Pete Seeger. A few years later, a friend and I started Mockingbird Productions to promote concerts and raise money for causes. We did shows with Bob Dylan, Neil Young, Tracy Chapman, Indigo Girls, Todd Rundgren, Chick Corea, and Lionel Hampton. I got to meet all of them except Ms. Chapman, who was extremely shy. We couldn’t make enough money to stay in business, but it was fun.
7. Lots of people know this, but for anyone who doesn’t, in the 1970s I lived off the grid for many years as part of a hippie spiritual community called The Farm in rural Tennessee, and my sons were delivered there by midwives. We were soy-based vegans—pioneers of veganism, really. But then I discovered that I’m allergic to soybeans.
8. As a kid growing up in Oklahoma and up through my twenties, I was extremely shy. Don’t know what happened to that, but now I’m what my grandmother would have called a chatterbox.
9. In junior and senior high, I was a straight-A student, until the final semester when I got one B and one C. Still, I graduated 6th in a class of more than 800. I had a full-ride scholarship to college, but it wasn’t to the school I wanted, so I left after a week and took off with friends to hitchhike to San Francisco, back when people did that.
10. When I was a junior in high school, I wrote a short story called “The Blue River” which won runner-up in a national short-story contest. And the story was about… guess what? An apocalyptic world.
A standalone sequel to IF DARKNESS TAKES US
A solar electromagnetic pulse fried the U.S. grid fourteen months ago. Everything’s gone: power, cars, running water, communications, all governing control and help—gone. Now northern lights have started in Texas—3,000 miles farther south than where they belong. The universe won’t stop screwing with eighteen-year-old Keno Simms.
All that’s left for Keno, his family and neighbors is farming their Austin subdivision, trying to eke out a living on poor soil in the scorching heat. Keno’s still reeling from the the death of his pregnant sister. His beloved Nana is ill, Grandpa’s always brandishing weapons, and water is far too scarce. Desperate thieves are hemming them in, yet he can’t convince his uncle and other adults to take action against the threat.
Keno’s one solace is his love for Alma, who has her own secret sorrows. When he gets her pregnant, he vows to keep her alive no matter what. Yet armed marauders and nature itself collude against him at every turn, forcing him to make choices that rip at his conscience. If he can’t protect Alma and their unborn child, it will be the end of Keno’s world.
IF THE LIGHT ESCAPES is post-apocalyptic science fiction set in a near-future reality, a coming-of-age story told in the voice of a heroic teen who’s forced into manhood too soon.
Read an Excerpt
“These northern lights bug the crap out of me,” I tell Alma. “What are they doing here? They’re supposed to be tied to magnetic poles. I saw this show a couple years ago that said the north pole was drifting north, not south. So how did they end up here? The poles can’t drift around randomly. That’s impossible.”
“I don’t know, baby. They worry me, too, but we need to be quiet.”
“They make me feel like something bad is gonna happen. What do you call that? Fore-something.”
“Foreboding?”
“That’s it. I’ll be quiet, now, and just stew in my foreboding.”
“Silly.” Alma reaches up and ruffles my hair.
When we patrol and we can’t cuddle on account of guns, Alma and I could talk all night. It’s not a good idea for us to talk much when we’re patrolling, though. We get all involved and forget to listen for anyone who might be sneaking around, hunting for food or water, or worse: getting ready to kill us for it.
We walk along with our rifles in the night. It’s cool out here, but not cold…
Alma stops and raises her gun.
“Hear that?” she whispers.
“No, what?” I’ve got my gun up, too, and I’m pivoting around, searching. I want to hide Alma, but she would never let me.
“Over there.” She points at the corner by the park. And I hear a jangly noise, like car keys. No one drives cars now, though…
About the Author:
Brenda is attracted to stories where everyday characters transcend their own limitations to find their inner heroism. She and her husband reside in a grid-connected, solar-powered home in South Austin, Texas. They have more grown kids and grandkids than they can count.
Her first novel, Something Radiates, is a paranormal romantic thriller; If Darkness Takes Us and its sequel, If the Light Escapes, are post-apocalyptic science fiction.
Website: https://brendamariesmith.com/
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/bsmithnovelist
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/BrendaMarieSmithAuthor
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/brenda_marie_smith/
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJlLSnORIyoaygvZ1j49ZKw
Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/52206957-if-darkness-takes-us
Buy links:
Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Darkness-Takes-Brenda-Marie-Smith-ebook/dp/B07WK9BQHN/
Barnes & Noble: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/if-darkness-takes-us-brenda-marie-smith/1133374442
BookPeople Austin: https://www.bookpeople.com/book/9781970137835
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Thank you so much for hosting me and my book here on your blog. I look forward to chatting with you and your readers.
ReplyDeleteThanks for hosting!
ReplyDeleteSounds like a good book.
ReplyDeleteThank you, Rita. I hope you get a chance to read it.
DeleteThe Farm? Cheers! I used to love those soy/gluten concoctions SDA's and other vegans eat, too...my Irish ancestors do show a clear unbroken line of gluten intolerance long before glyphosate was invented, but I wonder whenever anyone *recently* discovers their allergies to wheat, soy, corn, or many fruits and vegetables. Especially if they're suddenly (since 2009) "allergic" to most or all of them, and if they've noticed partial improvement this year.
ReplyDeleteI discovered I was allergic to soybeans in the early 1980s after having soy as the basis of my diet for nearly ten years. I manufactured tofu salad and gave samples in stores all over Texas and even Louisiana and Oklahoma. People called me The Tofu Lady. But I was sick over and over with bronchitis, so I went to an allergist. He tested me for soy allergies and I had the strongest reaction I could have had short of anaphylactic shock. I started crying and said, "You don't understand. I'm the Tofu Lady." Funny now, but I was distressed at the time.
DeleteI did get healthier after I laid off the soybeans. Another thing the allergist told me was that if you have allergic tendencies and you rely on the same foods day after day, you will become allergic to it. So my solution is to eat a varied diet to keep me from becoming allergic to more foods, though I have a lot of food allergies already.
Did you notice partial improvement this year? That's good. No changes for me, for better or worse.
I guess you are never too old to be a published writer. Good for you - and us.
ReplyDeleteApparently not, if you are persistent like me and get lucky. I had to educate myself on fiction and practice and practice for almost twenty years before I found a publisher.
DeleteSounds like a very good book.
ReplyDeleteThank you, Sherry. I appreciate you saying so.
DeleteIt was nice learning more about you.
ReplyDeleteThank you, Kim. That's very sweet of you to say.
DeleteThanks again for hosting me today. I've enjoyed being here and meeting your readers.
ReplyDeleteThe cover is interesting! I love the design and colors.
ReplyDelete