Meet Patti Lacy, Day One

Patti Lacy graduated from Baylor University with an education degree that allowed her to continue the passion and tradition inspired by her school teacher parents and husband. The Lacys moved to the Midwest in 1995, where a red-haired Irishwoman befriended Patti and shared an amazing story of forgiveness and betrayal. By 2005, the Spirit’s urgings culminated in a new career path: novelist. Patti hopes to write God’s stories as long as He provides the way! Patti Lacy is the author of An Irishwoman’s Tale and What the Bayou Saw, releasing soon from Kregel Publications. Leave a comment here to be entered into Friday’s drawing for a double treat – the winner will receive a copy of both of Patti’s books! Visit her website to learn more.

Patti, welcome! What can you tell us about yourself and your road to publication that uniquely defines your themes in your books?

Thanks so much for having me on your “show!” Somehow our gracious God pieced together quite a few strange life fragments to create a Christian writer outta me. Only now can I see how my background as a Certified Court Reporter, an English and earth science junior high teacher, a community college Humanities instructor, a wife, a mother, a wanna-be hippie in the 1970s, could be used for the glory of God. Oh, I forgot to include my love of stories and a wild imagination, which got me in trouble for quite a few years, like Francie in A Tree Grows in Brooklyn.

Romans 8:28 has certainly been a life verse—and is the theme of my series of novels, which also have a kaleidoscope metaphor sprinkled throughout the pages.

How has your education and teaching experience worked to your advantage and disadvantage in your writing?

Oh, goodness, the stories I’ve heard from Midwest college students! The gestures and faces I’ve observed in those half-adult/half-child creatures that attend junior high school!

Both teaching and education rest on the pedestal of reading. You’re talking to a woman who grew up with two teacher parents. When you opened our bathroom cabinets, instead of toilet paper and towels, you found Zane Grey and C.S. Lewis and Tolkien and Louis L’Amour.

Reading all those stories gave me a voice and snippets of life that are probably woven into my works. Imagine, keeping hobbits and cowboys and fantasy lands alive in my women’s fiction! Every minute I’ve spent in the classroom, either learning or teaching, helps tweak those words, helps grapple with that phrase. Teaching is a glorious profession! Not easy. Not often appreciated. But a chance to touch young lives and thus stay young yourself.

You’ve lived in the South, and now make your home in the Midwest. Have you found location to be an influence your work?

Once you’ve breathed in the languid thick air of a Southern summer morning, scented with attar of magnolia, you must try to capture such a glorious place on paper! And since God actually did yank our family from our warm Southern porch in 1995 and plop us in the Midwest, which we now call home, I just have to tell y’all about it!
It’s fascinating to explore strange and familiar lands and their people and try to tell others, through my stories, what I’ve been through and what others have been through.

After traveling to the mystical cliffs o’ County Clare for An Irishwoman’s Tale, I got to take my readers to Ireland without buying them a plane ticket. Since my tagline is “Spanning Seas and Secrets,” my goal is to show women from different cultures who still must grapple with age-old problems such as lying, abuse, mental illness, all for God’s glory. As good realtors know, it’s all about location, location, location!

Tell us about your inspiration for your works of fiction, both from the volunteer work you do, as well as the written word. Which authors have had the greatest influence on your particular voice?

Every one of my stories (so far) have been germinated by an image, a phrase, a conversation with a real-life woman that has grabbed my brain and won’t let go, haunting me at one in the morning, during the middle of a “relaxing” run.

In the first book, it was that Irishwoman I barely knew, lasering me with blue eyes and asking, “What is your first memory?” In What the Bayou Saw, it was the oral narrative of Sheila Flanagan, director of the Museum of Mobile, who had to reach through a chain link fence to hand toys to the girl next door, since segregation and racism separated the young girls to the point that neither parent would allow the other child in their yard.

I have gathered stories on airplanes, at a food pantry, from new and old friends alike. WARNING: Talking to me may land you in a novel!

Oh, dear friends, I have a hard concept with this idea of voice though I’ve certainly read enough books about it. What I had decided is that your DNA, your parents, all the mysteries of life, form the seed that is your “voice.” As you fertilize your impressionable mind with the books of your favorite authors, blooms develop, as does richer, better fruit. Like all good agronomists, you keep tweaking your stock, trying to improve on the cultivation process. I do not think your voice can be destroyed by editing or tweaking.

So many people have nourished my writer’s mind that it would be impossible to list even a fraction of them. I thank Carolyn Keane for letting me be one of Nancy Drew’s volunteer sleuths. Dostoevsky and Cather and Kingsolver and Gayl Jones and Steinbeck and Hemingway got the ground ready. Currently, I leach the energy from Julie Lessman and Charles Martin and Lynn Austin and Tosca Lee and Lisa Samson—oh, there’s soooo many great writers out there. Modern literary fiction also provides wonderful fodder. Some favorites are the brilliant Kim Edwards, Barbara Kingsolver…I’d better stop. Y’all are losing readers in droves.

I doubt that! Join us tomorrow to learn about the very personal stories that Patti shares, as well as what musty smells mean to her.