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I am a woman in my eighties, though I defy anyone to say I look it! I have been married to the same man for over 60 years, difficult as that might be to imagine. We have two adult offspring, successful in their own choices of careers. My husband dedicated thirty-five years of his life to the motion picture and television industry. We spent the off-seasons traveling the islands of the Pacific before retiring to Hawaii where we lived for five years. When the ash from the erupting volcano became too difficult to live with we returned to the Mainland. We settled in the sunshine state of Florida where we have enjoyed the past twenty years.
Now, as I look back over my active and eventful lifetime I can easily recognize the experiences that most influenced my decision to write that first Historical Romance novel. Purposely, I drew inspiration from my own Southern heritage.
I was fortunate enough to have known my Great-grandfather, James Mac White. He was still tall and a handsome man with a long, white well-kempt beard, soft as cotton to my cheek, in his eighties and, yes, his nineties, too, when as a very little girl, I sat upon his knee and listened to him tell and retell stories about the Union Army's advance across his family's land. My favorite tale was of the time when as a boy of ten, he had taken cover flat on his belly behind a fallen log to avoid being shot when caught in an exchange of gunfire between advancing Union troops and defending Confederates as they fought, row by white cotton row, across the fields belonging to his family. Those cotton fields stretched as far as the eye could see below their hilltop farmhouse -- that very same farmhouse where so many years later, my Granddaddy White held me on his knee.
While my Great-grandfather was dodging bullets on the homefront, his own father, my Great-great-grandfather, James Alexander White fought in the Confederate Army's Company A of the 8th Georgia Battalion of Volunteers. He was captured in 1864 and imprisoned in a Southern Prisoner of War Camp in Illinois until the war's end in 1865 when he was freed and allowed to return home ro Georgia.
Hearing such unforgetable personal experiences, first hand, helped me to breathe life into all the characters that people my stories. Readers tell me that the real Old South lives again through the lives of the fictional Heirs family, their faithful household servants, their friends, and their wartime enemies as present, living entities within the pages of this, my first book. Suspense and fearfulness exist, side by side, faithfully depicting the times and turmoil of a dedicated Southern family struggling, first, to tame the North Georgia wilderness and, ultimately, to contribute to the establishment of Georgia's capitol city of Atlanta. The finished novel unflinchingly brings vividly to life the difficult Civil War years.
Cousin and family genealogist, Barbara White Hambrick , generously researched my own ancestry and that of my husband, Norman Gray, and in so doing discovered that both our Southern families go back farther than five generations, long before the days of the Civil War -- or, of combat more correctly referred to in the South as "The War Between the States." I had been a writer of short stories for many years, when Barbara's revelations about our two families' heritage added momentum to my cause to undertake that painstaking task of researching and writing the first of three novels, BRIARS: The House of Heirs which is featured on my www.annsgray.com website: "Ann Gray Presents a Trilogy -- New Stories of the Old South."
In the sequel, The INTANGIBLES File: A Gathering of Heirs, I determine to entertain readers in a lighter mood as I aim to draw them into a suspenseful mystery that throbs with ghostly overtones. Characters familiar to readers from the first book reappear, populating the pages. Everyone becomes physically involved with recurring ghostly appearances and spine-chilling episodes of unworldly combative behavior. Children, who find adventure in trying to apprehend the phantom, frequently become involved with the ghostly presence, while their edgy parents vainly attempt to constrain their curious youngsters.
Finally, in They Will Soar on Wings Like Eagles, I compose what I hope readers will find to be a stirring conclusion to this trilogy. In this (first for me) Christian book, young Irish immigrant preacher, Michael Matthew O'Donnell, arrives in Atlanta completing a mission contracted earlier in his homeland, Ireland. Through his distant cousin, Atlanta born Morgana Heirs Moss, he meets all of his American kin and -- one by one - changes their lives for the better. The exception, of course, is the self-absorbed Morgana. Convinced she needs no Godly guidance, she firmly declines Michael's invitation to join his church. However, soon, all of Georgia learns of this young Irish minister when his touching sermons, his caring visitations, and good deeds draw people to his church from counties far and wide. Word soon has it that Michael can perform miracles. Can it be true?
Birth Place: Atlanta, GA USA
Accomplishments: When I sold a story idea for a three part season opening series for "Happy Days" to the show's producer in the 1970s, I hurried to join Writers' Guild, west. I was on my way to becoming a writer for television. Sadly, after that one event, I did not sell another piece of television work. Finally, I withdrew my membership from the guild to save money, besides I was convinced I was not a writer, after all. Years later, after my husband and I retired, I began writing short stories and, lo and behold, they began selling. Then, I wrote my first novel and appreciation was expressed by the (UDC)United Daughter of the Confederacy and they allowed an advertisement for my first book Briars: The House of Heirs to be placed in their official magazine. I received many complimentary letters from the members of the organization.
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