Look and Listen

Biography

I came into the world this (hopefully last) time in Minneapolis, MN, but spent most of my formative years in Wyoming. By the age of seventeen, I'd left college for Los Angeles, CA, where the smog was fairly intermittent and the sparkling lights of the valley could still be seen from the surrounding hills on most nights. Prior to,throughout, and after my three marriages (two divorces, widowed once), I worked as a secretary, administrator, radio personality, business owner - a span of forty years. Although I'd felt the urge to become a writer from an early age and was always jotting down musings, it wasn't until I'd been retired for a number of years that I began to think seriously about it. In 2003 I completed writing two of a children's series of twenty-six books about "Jack, the Calico Rabbit" who learned the secret of traveling to different countries around the world in one big hop...sort of a fun geography lesson for six to nine year olds. This project was interrupted and put on hold by circumstances involving two popular western singing groups and a garage full of boxes with unknown contents...which leads me to: Inspiration

Inspiration

Cleaning out my garage the winter of 2003-2004, I came across a box filled with dozens of cassette tapes - verbal letters from my husband, Foy Willing, who had passed away in 1978. Foy had formed a country western singing group in 1943 that he named, "The Riders of the Purple Sage." The group had tremendous national success in the 40s and 50s on network radio, recordings, and in "B" western movies with Monte Hale and Roy Rogers. After disbanding the group in 1952, Foy battled depression - and alcohol. He spent years working toward a musical comeback ... and he nearly succeeded. My book, "No One to Cry To, a Long, Hard Ride into the Sunset with Foy Willing..." is the story of my husband's turbulent life and, by extension, mine with him. As one reviewer stated so well, "Foy was more talented than his recording history tells, more creative and passionate than he is given credit for." That is exactly what I tried to portray in telling his story. Foy was a musical genius, an incomparable arranger, a fine singer and songwriter (a so-so actor), and had a remarkable sense of humor. He was also a very nice man. Working with over 600 pages of typed transcriptions of cassette tape letters and a four-and-a-half hour 1975 interview by Douglas B. Green (Ranger Doug of the Riders in the Sky), along with my own interviews of people Foy had known and worked with, I felt I had enough material with which I could present to the public the real Foy Willing. The book, published in October 2006, is historically correct (I was fortunate to have received valuable assistance from music history researchers and others) and includes never-before-seen photographs, a complete filmography and discography, a list of all the members and musicians of the Riders of the Purple Sage, and a list of the 132 songs written/co-written by Foy. To date, "No One to Cry To" has won four awards, the latest (November 1,2007) being an Award-Winning Finalist in the Biography: Historical category of the National Best Books 2007 Awards. It will be one of sixty exclusive featured titles to participate in the high-traffic USA Book News booth at the Book Expo America Convention in Los Angeles, May 29 - June 1, 2008. I shall certainly be there and will be autographing my book, a time to be determined.