CornerShot

Many writers, even successfully published ones, never quit their day jobs.

As a published fiction writer, I know this axiom well. Yet I had it underscored the other morning during a routine dentist visit in Roanoke County.

A dental hygienist I didn’t recognize called my name in the waiting room. Once back at her station, making idle chit chat , I mentioned I worked for the paper. She mentioned that The Roanoke Times had previously done stories about her.

As it turned out, my teeth were being attended to by Linda Hamlett Childress, author of two self-published memoirs, “A Tobacco Farmer’s Daughter” and “Rural Route 2,” that earned her a ton of attention, including an Extra section profile by Beth Macy in 2002.

At that time, Hamlett Childress worked for dentist Fred Coots III, and she still does.

Nowadays, with the advent of e-books and Amazon Kindle, self-publishing is all the rage. Yet Childress did it way before it was cool and sold thousands of copies, numbers that would make many present-day indie authors envious.

But rest assured, she’s kept up with the times. You can find both of her memoirs for sale as e-books on Amazon.

Weather Journal

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