[Guest post] Author Terri Ragsdale

This time Terri Ragsdale was kind enough to do a guest post for Books & Writing, where she talks about herself and her book “Roots of Indifference”.

I’m retired, after working with the State of Colorado, Department of Revenue for thirty years, and was an Administrative, foreign language interpreter.

My passion has always been to write and understand the English language. I grew up in an area where education wasn’t taken seriously, and especially to minority people, which I am one of. My book, “Roots of Indifference,” is an epic, fictional, historical novel that took over twenty years to compose and write. Most of the narrative is true, and taken from real people who lived and died in a controlled, depressing part of the United States. These are the silent people, that few have known about and their suffering and surviving the aftermath.

My life has not been like a normal person, and my childhood was full of cruel indignities and discrimination. My background is the main reason I wrote the book. We were very poor.  I was raised and graduated in Mercedes, Texas, and shortly after I left the area to find a better life in Denver, Colorado. In Denver, I went to school taking night classes to learn and educate myself, always wanting to better myself.  I was married and moved to The Western Slope, in Colorado, where I have now made my home for many years in Grand Junction.  I have studied at the public library and read many books. I studied in the wee hours of the night, trying to write.  I went to school at Mesa University of Colorado and took many classes at the University of Colorado.

My passion has always been to write, but without an income; I devoted myself to work. Authors like F. Scott Fitzgerald, Emerson, John Reed, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, and Sidney Shelton, that always wrote about history inspired me. I wanted to write like them.
My first story was of a young illegal, Mexican boy, who accidentally killed a police officer and stirred an illegal situation. I was asked to interrupt in a State Case Court. It was very sad to see this boy struggling with the English language, and I wrote the story just to find justification within myself if I were in his shoes.

You can find my work on Amazon.com or if you want more information about me on my website: http://terriragsdale.com/site/. Here you can read the inspiring words of the people who have read this book. The majority are blown away when they finished reading it. It’s not a book that you read, and forget about; it’s a book that will linger long after the final shocking chapter.

There have been many occasions from the younger generation asking me” I want to write, but I do not know where to start?” I kindly tell them, just write what you feel, and write on the subject that you want to write about. Don’t worry about misspelling words or sentence structures, those can be edited and corrected. It takes dedication lots of patience to piece a story, especially a novel together. It took me many years, to do the research; many years of asking the older generation about their stories and their families. I’m pleased that finally a story of this magnitude was put into a successful book.