The Gold Rose – Author Interview

Since the early 1940s, THE GOLD ROSE, a secret rescue agency with Asian origins, has used unique systems to ferret out and save victims in every corner of the world. Charlotte Hunt-Basse has faced dangerous and often deadly challenges in her decade as an agent with the agency, not the least of which was the past rescues of two of her assignments, Pinkie and Babe.

Two-year-old Pinkie is discovered abandoned on a dirt road during a violent storm. She is whisked off to Mexico by oil heir Clint Sutton and his girlfriend, Angelina, as they attempt to escape the lies of Clint’s father’s second wife. Three years later, Pinkie is stolen away to Argentina by an aging Romani. Pinkie suffers from the malice of her captor but wins the fatherly love of a Buenos Aires circus owner and his fiance. Shortly after landing in the crosshairs of THE GOLD ROSE, Pinkie’s life takes two more shocking twists. When the agency locates Pinkie again, Agent Charlotte must throw all caution to the wind to rescue her.

Babe, the child of Texas-based missionaries, is hidden by two Chinese families during the Japanese invasion and ensuing Communist takeover of China. She is forced by the second family to live incognito as a “boy” for several years to save her from soldiers invading China from the North. Martial arts are banned, but the grandfather of the family teaches Babe Yǒng Chūn in deepest secrecy. The civil war escalates, and Babe finds herself on a dangerous quest for survival as she journeys alone through enemy territory toward the faintest hope of rescue.

Interview with Jodi Lea Stewart

 Where did your love of books and/or storytelling come from?

I believe a person is born with a propensity to either take words for granted or to love words with some degree of fierceness. A love of words leads to reading, writing, and a search for some way to handle and utilize those words, perhaps by storytelling, business writing, poetry or journalism. Two childhood facts heightened my love of books and reading:  1) Curiosity. I have always been curious about everything. What satisfied my curiosity as a child was asking a million questions, reading, watching movies whenever we went to town, or creating and acting out stories. 2) Solitude. I grew up on a ranch in the mountains with no nearby neighbors. My sole interaction with other children was in the small school in our ranching community. This was before satellites, so we didn’t have television or radio on the ranch. I had my own imagination and books to keep me entertained. When the bookmobile showed up at our school, I nearly died of joy picking out so many books I had to make two or three trips to carry them inside. I was one of the few kids who cried when school was dismissed for the summer.

What do you think most characterizes your writing?

Diversity, Location, and Voice.

1. All kinds. Celebrating our human differences is exhilarating. What a boring world it would be if we were all alike. Further, no matter where you come from or where you are headed, regardless of how much money you have or do not have, no matter your size, ideals, or color…you have great merit. You are important. You matter. That theme runs through all my writing and undergirds the diverse characters I create.
2. Whether placing my characters in the beautiful Navajo Nation where my Silki, the Girl of Many Scarves trilogy is located, or in the lush but scary Louisiana swamps where my novel TRIUMPH, a Novel of the Human Spirit takes place – there, and in Texas, New Orleans, and St. Louis – or around the world in regions of Mexico, Argentina, Italy, China, and Hong Kong, I capitalize on the parfum d’unicité that exotic localities can offer a writer.
3. I live my characters and their emotions as I write their stories. I often cry and laugh aloud as I write. Once created, they exist to me.

What inspired you to write The Gold Rose?

As a person, I’m guilty of having a deep need to see a wrong “righted,” to see the scales of justice balanced. As an author, that proclivity influences every novel I write. Oppression is prolonged cruel or unjust treatment or control. It doesn’t matter one’s age, gender, race, locality, or creed… oppression in any form is the dark enemy of both the human condition and the beautiful spirit that lights our very existence. In my novel, The Gold Rose, an international, clandestine rescue agency operates under the auspices of a special group of people dedicated to fighting oppression wherever and whenever it rears its ugly head.

What did you enjoy most about writing this book?

I loved studying about Mexico, Argentina, China, and British-held Hong Kong in the 1940s so I could confidently put my characters there. I loved telling the story of three strong females who survive all that the world throws at them, and it’s a lot!

What was the hardest part of writing this book?

It was a challenge to learn enough about the Second Sino-Japanese War and the ensuing Chinese civil war leading to the communist takeover to write a novel partially set in that time and place. Also, because it was imperative that I be culturally correct in writing about Chinese people in the 1940s, or in any time period, I knew I had to study hard, walk carefully, and seek opinions from the right people before going to print. Further, I love to sprinkle foreign words and phrases throughout my novels, but I am not a linguist. For The Gold Rose, I had the task of finding people proficient in Spanish, Italian, Chinese, and Croatian. The hardest part of that process was getting the tone marks correct above the Chinese words. My daughter-in-law, who spent thirteen years in China, came for the day and put me through the rigorous task of putting the four tone marks in their proper places. I understand that in the EPUB versions with all the multi-font possibilities, those marks may show up as tiny superscript numbers or as other strange insignias. However, I wasn’t about to take them off after learning Chinese people may not know what a writer is conveying without those trusty accents above the word.

What value do you see in books, writing, reading, and/or storytelling?

In my humble opinion, the value of the written word, specifically, in books of any form, can never be replaced by anything else. Words, written and spoken, are the ultimate communication tools used from the beginning of time. During horrible rampages throughout history, such as in Nazi Germany during World War II, books were burned as a “message” to the people that the people were henceforth enslaved by the thoughts and actions of those in control. My message is that we must never relinquish the freedom of the honest press nor our rights as humans to read, say, and write whatever we desire, think, and believe.

What cultural value do I see in historical fiction?

I have written three contemporary novels, but historical fiction set in the early- to mid-twentieth century has captured my interest. The way I see it, historical fiction is both a tunnel by which to travel and partake as a tourist to a bygone era, as well as a mirror reflecting and educating us about periods of times that are gone forever. Historical fiction holds a special place not only in literature, but also in the social-study annals of all humanity. Therefore, the historical fiction author bears a great responsibility to adhere to unaltered, historical facts while writing his or her fiction to insert into history.

How do you write? Any backstory to your choice?

When my kiddos got to a certain age, I went back to college and finished my BS in Business Management. One course I took was journalism, and it literally changed my writing life. I learned how to hook readers in the first sentence, how to write concisely, how to bring the hook back at the end of a story – which helped me learn how to start and end chapters – and much more. Most of all, I bought into what my journalism professor told me: “Jodi, when your fingers touch the keyboard, that’s when the magic begins.” He was right! I may take notes on any kind of writing materials (napkins, notebooks, scraps of paper) via longhand or shorthand, of which I am proficient, but my writing experiences begins when I sit down at my desk behind my desktop computer. No, I do not use laptops. For me, they do not have the magical element I have come to crave.

Why do you say The Gold Rose is a high-concept novel written with a literary pen?

High-concept stories have action and drama almost on every page. Literary novels focus greatly on the characters and the psychological makeup that causes them to behave a certain way or do what they do. I promise you both worlds in every chapter of The Gold Rose. You will find yourself traveling through Mexico, China, Argentina, British-held Hong Kong, and Italy with three protagonists who will stop at nothing to conquer their circumstances. Their lives will take you places you didn’t expect to go.

Jodi Lea Stewart is a fiction author who centers her themes around the triumph of overcoming adversity through grit, humor, and hard-rock tenacity. Born in Texas and growing up in Arizona smelling cedar berries and cow pens on a large cattle ranch wedged between the Navajo Nation and the White Mountain Apache Tribe, most of her friends were Native American and Hispanic, with a few Anglos thrown in for good measure. On the ranch, she climbed petroglyph-etched boulders, sang to chickens, bounced two feet in the air in the backend of pickups wrestling through washed-out terracotta roads, and rode horseback on the winds of her imagination through the arroyos and mountains of the Arizona high country. Later, she left her studies at the University of Arizona in Tucson to move to San Francisco, where she learned about peace, love, and exactly what she didn’t want to do with her life.

Moving back to her native Texas, Jodi graduated summa cum laude with a BS in Business Management, raised three+ children, worked as an electro-mechanical drafter, penned humor columns for a college periodical, wrote regional western articles, and served as managing editor of a Fortune 500 corporate newsletter. Her lifelong friendship with all shades of folks, cowpunchers, southern belles, intellectuals, and “outlaws” propels Jodi into writing comfortably about the Southwest, the South, and far beyond. She currently resides in Arizona with her husband, two wild and crazy Standard poodles, one rescue cat, her fun-loving ninety-plus-year-old mom, a never-be-still-four-year-old tornado, and numerous bossy houseplants.

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