Which of your characters do you relate to most and why? But moving back home after 30 years and seeing some of the same issues, well, I had to deal with it in my own way, telling a story. I was not unaware of racial inequality growing up in the South. Bezellia was more about me trying to come to terms with a period in our country's history and my own personal history that had left me feeling very sad. Particularly in Dairy Queen and some in Bezellia. Some things are rooted in real life experiences. Simply put, I was homesick!Īre any of the things in your books based on real life experiences or purely all imagination? I really really missed them and was not prepared for that. They had become so real to me that I felt as though they had left behind to live on my own. I really missed all the characters in Ringgold, GA. When I finished the first one, I thought it would be the happiest day of my life. What was one of the most surprising things you learned in creating your books? 50 pages into my first novel I realized I was doing what I was meant to do. I looked at my husband and said, 'I gotta find a new gig.' I tried a few other things first - screenplay writing among them - but then literally fell, kicking and screaming into fiction. What inspired you to write your first book?ĭo you want the honest answer or one that makes me look like an inspired artist wanting to pusher her craft to new places? OK, honestly, I wrote a big long article for a newspaper that took months to research and then was paid $450.00. I wrote for newspapers including The Los Angeles Times and the Christian Science Monitor. But I always wanted to be a journalist not a novelist. She wrote for The Los Angeles Times, The Christian Science Monitor and the Chattanooga News-Free Press and others before finding her home in fiction. You can feel her love of the South from within the pages of her books.

Looking for Salvation at the Dairy Queen and The Improper Life of Bezellia Grove are two highly entertaining books written by Susan Gregg Gilmore, an author born in Nashville.

The improper life of bezellia grove