"Sister Mary Olga on the Radio"

Part of the fun of being an author is promoting my book. A lot of that has been hard work, but there's nothing like getting to talk about my stories that is more fun than writing them. This week, I had the opportunity to host a radio show about Misadventures with a few of my fans and fellow authors. We had a blast!

It's a good thing that I'm a ham and can be spontaneous. With the give and take of questions, one always needs to be prepared to give an extemporaneous answer so that it doesn't sound like a canned spiel. I'm passionate about my books and I have no problem telling the stories within the tales or those connected behind the scenes.

Each of those stories is filled with outrageous humor that is guaranteed to keep its readers laughing until their sides hurt; that is, if they have an open mind. Sister Mary Olga is a naughty nun and so are many of the zany characters who live on Dinkledorf Drive in the fictional town of Bucksnort, Wisconsin.

One of my guests happened to have a personal connection to the image used for Sister Mary Olga on the cover of my book. That was the KISS-FM radio personality out of Dallas, Texas, named Rob Anthony. He told the story which belonged to a woman near and dear to him.

A couple of years before Misadventures was published, I asked Rob's mother, Janice Reilly, to pose for the cover in a nun's habit. Like Sister Mary Olga, she was a wise and crusty soul who also had a passion for her Marlboros.

She gleefully told me, “Sure, Davis, I'll do it for you!”

She so much related to the character of Sister Mary Olga that she would call me daily to ask me “what she was doing” as I continued to write my books. I would read her my day's writing and she would laugh out loud in her inimitable full-throated laugh.

Unfortunately, Rob's mother passed away before that picture could be taken. As she lay on her deathbed, I told her, “Jan, I'm going to get you on that cover one way or another!”

Thanks to the marvelous illustrator for the cover, we were able to accomplish that. He used one of my favorite pictures of her and crafted a nun's habit around it. He also placed a cigarette hanging out of her mouth and had her holding a bottle of bourbon behind her back. Janice would have been pleased!

That story was told as well as my story of how I created the characters. When I had been a social worker, I used to entertain a colleague and friend of mine using my gift of humor. I would call up her voice mail and leave spontaneous scenarios of my cast of characters from Bucksnort as I did impressions of each of them. My friend would burst into peals of cascading laughter whenever she listened to her voice mail at work on the following day. That eventually inspired me to write the series of books which I have written.

In the meantime, check out the rave reviews of The Misadventures of Sister Mary Olga Fortitude on Amazon.com in which ecstatic readers have said they can't wait for the next book to be published. They won't have to wait long. The first sequel, Babes in Bucksnort, will be published within the next few months.

In the meantime, feel free to check out my radio show entitled The Funniest Satire Series of the Decade. Just click on the link below and scroll down to the show's title. Then click on “stream” which was posted on March 17, 2010.

Here's the link: http://www.globaltalkradio.com/shows/publicaccessradio

Enjoy!