SALT LAKE CITY, UT March 12, 2013
Becky Lyn Rickman’s latest novel was born at a dollar store in a small Midwestern town. She was standing at the end of a long line, impatient to get home. There was only one cashier open and when she called for backup, the second cashier hollered out, “I’ll take the next person,” at which point the person behind Becky ran up. Indignant, Becky thought, “Well, that’s certainly a sign of poor breeding!” And Gertie Thump was born.
Becky says, “I took the easily provoked and silently outspoken part of myself and gave her a voice. Then I gave her a mutt, a town full of colorful characters, a lot of opposition, a baseball card worth a quarter of a million dollars, some crime, some mystery, and a little redemption.”
And it is Gertie Thump turned into humorous fiction that sold WiDo’s acquisition editor Allie Maldonado. She states, “It’s really difficult for a writer to take an unpleasant main character and make her appealing but somehow Becky does just that with Gertie Thump. I enjoyed this story immensely. It’s the kind of book that is highly marketable to today’s readers– pure fun and entertainment!”
Becky Lyn Rickman is a prolific writer and the author of three self-published books. She hoped to place her fourth with a traditional publisher. “In my search, I came across words that I felt perfectly described my new novel: ‘readable but not formulaic, entertaining without being fluff, uplifting without being preachy, literary but not obtuse, realistic and thought-provoking without being graphic and tells a darn good story.’ I also read that they (WiDo Publishing) were fairly new, fairly small, and did not require agent submissions. Those qualities made me feel comfortable. I felt like I had found home.”
She continues, “When I submitted my first five chapters, I was contacted promptly and asked for the rest of the manuscript. It wasn’t long before I got a lovely letter offering me a contract. I was thrilled! My first submission to a traditional publisher was accepted. Now I knew I was home.”
Having only attended a handful of creative writing classes and workshops, Ms. Rickman defers to her life experience for her credentials. She follows the Evelyn Waugh school of thought: “Novel-writing is a laborious trade. The raw material is every single thing one has ever seen or heard or felt, and one has to go over the vast rubbish-heap of experience, scraping and delving, until one finds a few discarded valuables.”
Ms. Rickman’s rubbish heap includes over seventy addresses, a marriage to a man who dated other women and one to a man who dated other men, a significant hand in raising over forty-five children (including biological, steps, and fosters), serving and advocating in the areas of Special Olympics, literacy, hospice, pre-school reading programs, drug rehabs, and domestic violence. She has, herself, spent fifteen months as a homeless single mother.
She is a paid contributor to Deseret Connect, where she puts her vast array of experience to good use writing articles on a multitude of topics surrounding family. Her published books are: When Renoir Loved Thomas Jefferson, Grimm’s Last Fairy Tale, How to Be a Man in a Woman’s Life and How to Be a Human in a Cat’s Life.
Ms. Rickman lives with Mr. Darcy and Mr. Bingley, her cats, and pines to see her grandchildren more often. She is actively involved in humanitarian causes and serves in her community when she isn’t pounding the keyboard of her old laptop. Learn more about Becky Lyn Rickman at her website From the Dumpster of My Life Come the Riches of Storytelling.