What inspired you to write your memoir?
My daughter Christine
Publishing the book in which I write about my life growing up in rural Southeast Arkansas between 1949 and 1961 as well as my later adult life in the military and corporate America has been a wonderful experience.
Six years in the making, now retired in San Diego County, I was inspired to write after some light nudging by my daughter, Christine, who regularly listened to the stories about my life as she grew up.
She kept telling me that I ought to be writing this down, that I ought to write a book, so about six years ago, I started going out to the Tamarack Beach in Carlsbad, CA. with a personal tape recorder and dictating one story at a time. About 14 tapes later, I was ready to commit to writing, and it all came together.
The project morphed into its present form. My original vision for it was an autobiography, but along the way, more commentary became associated with it. I wanted to leave a legacy, not just a collection of facts.
I don’t solely focus on the hardness of the times I grew up in. I share in equal part my feelings of amusement, happiness, and sense of humor, and my rises above stereotypical thinking, reflective, but never bitter about adversity I faced.
I am not really trying to be anything to anyone; I just wanted to tell these stories of things I experienced, and I feel that in itself is a wonderful accomplishment. There was excitement, humor and history with those times.
About your Book:
You are taken on a journey that highlights the life experiences of a boy from the age of six through manhood. Prejudice and inequality practiced openly in his home town. The people were indifferent and backward. His escape from the Delta wasn’t fully realized until he traveled abroad. He shares with you his intimate feeling, exposing you to a variety of emotions including fear, sadness, happiness, and amusement.
“Alien in the Delta” is a memoir about Thankful Strother who grows up in the rural south on the Mississippi river in Southeast Arkansas during the 1950’s. He spent his early childhood in fear that Klansman in the area were coming to harm him and his family. His fear based on what had happen to his nine-year friend’ father who was found stabbed to death on a Mississippi river levee in his 1952 Chevrolet. He wondered why was he living in a hostile place that felt foreign? Thankful does not dwell on the negative but the inner child never forgets.
How did you decide how to publish your book and where is it published through:
I am self-publisher. I used Amazon’s Create Space. I reasoned that they were the largest and they would give me the most help. So far I have been satisfied.
How do you see writing a Memoir as different from writing other genres of books?
“Alien in the Delta” is the only book I have written. I do not have enough writing experience to answer the question.
Author Bio:
Thankful Strother born 1943 in Grand Lake, AR., grew up in Eudora, AR. Graduated from high school in 1961 and joined the US Air Force. Stationed in Germany for four years, there he learned to speak German and met his wife Barbara. Married forty-seven years, they live in California and have two adult children. He retired in 2003. Thankful Strother had a thirty-five-year career in computers and telecommunications with NCR and AT&T. In his retirement, he has accomplished his goal to write a book about his early life. “Alien in the Delta” is that book. It is a memoir about growing up poor in a hostile environment in the 1950’s to experience unimaginable success later in life.
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http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/16290226-alien-in-the-delta
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https://twitter.com/ThankfulSt
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