Interview with D.F. Jones, Author of Lee’s Lesson

What can you tell us about your new release, Lee’s Lesson?

Lee’s Lesson is the fourth full novel in the Ditch Lane Diaries.

Ruby’s Choice, Anna’s Way, and Sandy’s Story is a mystical tale about three best friends. They go spelunking in a cave and leave with gemstones that trigger supernatural powers.

Lee is Ruby’s mother.

It is only with Lee’s Lesson that the reader understands there is a much larger storyline afoot.

The prologue picks up an epic battle scene from Sandy’s Story. It is this scene that becomes the catalyst to the novel.

The first chapter sets up Sacred Heights Sanatorium, a place Luc and The Army of the Fallen control. Lee’s mother, Jenny, undergoes treatment for debilitating migraines at the facility. While her father signs Jenny’s release papers, Lee finds herself on the fourth floor, which is also a portal to hell. She runs into Luc whom she thinks is a physician. That meeting releases a sequence of events that will test her powers and threatens her soul.

On the day of her college graduation, Lee meets Erinelle, a warrior angel and her guardian. She reveals that Lee has extraordinary powers designed by The Creator to be a lethal weapon. Lee is dumbfounded. She has no clue who and what she was before the rebellion, before Luc, along with one-third of heaven’s angels, were thrown out of heaven.

Lee must train, and her powers must be realized to save someone she loves before Luc consumes their soul.

Side note. The reason I used a sanatorium: my mom in the mid-fifties was hospitalized after her mother died. She was also suffering from postpartum depression. In those days, they use ECT without sedation. It created lifelong nightmares for her, and I think may have contributed to her memory loss later in life. I did loads of research, and my findings would curl your toes.

What or who inspired you to become an author?

I have a long line of storytellers in my family. My father was a master weaver. He inspired me to write.

The storytelling bug hit me in the fifth grade during an oral book report of The Tell-Tale Heart by Edgar Allan Poe. I turned out the lights and relayed the story to my classmates using a flashlight and sound effects. I scared them to death. I wrote my first screenplay in middle school, an adaptation of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. Tennessee is rich with folklore and storytellers.

After I graduated college, I landed a job at the ABC Affiliate in Nashville as a Broadcast Consultant, and from there I opened Jones Media. I love to create. In late 2014, I decided to downsize my agency to care for my parents. The day I resigned my largest client, I wrote the first page of Ruby’s Choice, and I fell in love with writing.

What’s on your top 5 list for the best books you’ve ever read?

The Bible (The Book of Enoch recently blew my mind)
Outlander (series)
Harry Potter (series)
The Hunger Games (series)
All Souls Trilogy
Interview with a Vampire

Say you’re the host of a literary talk show. Who would be your first guest? What would you want to ask?

Diana Gabaldon. What’s your favorite curse word? Ha! Okay, it’s a literary talk show. How do you develop character names?

What is a typical day like for you?

My husband and I own a family business, rental property, and we recently bought my parents farm that’s been in the family since 1802 situated on a ridge in the country. Which coincidentally is similar to the one in the Ditch Lane Diaries. After marking off my list of to-do’s, I come home and write for a couple hours, after hubs goes to sleep, I may write several hours. I am a night owl. I love to write in total silence while I develop a project. I may jam to music during the editing process. I will never live long enough to develop all of the concepts and ideas in my imaginative brain.

What’s your favorite thing about writing?

Worldbuilding. It takes me to places that sometimes I wonder how I got there and how I returned, intact.

What scene in Lee’s Lesson was your favorite to write?

Writing Lee’s Lesson took an emotional toll on me, yet the most fulfilling. My parents passed away last year within six months of each other. It’s not been quite a year since my dad died. Lee’s Lesson is a tribute to them. Lee and Harry have some of my parents’ traits. The best scene was the hardest to write, the last one.

Do you have a motto, quote or philosophy you live by?

May love light the way. It is a salutation the angels say when greeting or departing. I use it frequently.

D.F. Jones is the author of the new book Lee’s Lesson.

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