RoseMary The Writer New Book Swimming Through The Mud Interview

Host BJ talks with RoseMary The Writer abut her new book Swimming Through The Mud, growing up in St Louis, how she decided to write the book, and why she chose the title.

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
Hartfeat Saint Louis with Akaiji Holiday bringingyou the pulse of the city. Hey,
what's up this boy? DJ jAka DJ Holiday? And today is
a special day for me on theshow because I get to interview a lady
that interviewed me when I started datingher daughter. You're right, yeah,

(00:27):
so so now the roads have changedand I think I passed the test.
But anyway, I have my motherin law, Rosemary, coming in in
the studio. How you doing today, I'm doing just fine. Son in
law. Well, anyway, youwrote this book, it's called Swimming through

(00:49):
the Mud. But before we getto the book, let's just talk about
you and you being here in SaintLouis native correct, that's right, born
in People's Hospital, People's Hospital.Yeah, it was the black hospital,
the black private hospital in Saint Louis. Well, the only hospital I knew
that was a black foce was homeof g Well that was there too.

(01:12):
Oh okay, People's Hospital. Uh, born and raised right here in Saint
Louis. You know, we gotto ask the question, you know,
what high school did you graduate from? Soldan? So there, oh,
lord, there we go. Shegraduated from Sodan. I'm a Soldan tiger.
Yeah, I'm a bowl mout bluejacket. I know you my mother

(01:37):
in law, but hey St.Louis, that's the way we do it.
Anyway, let's grew up. Wentto Soldan High School. Uh did
you go? Did you get achance to go to college? I went
to Washington University. I initially wentto the University of Missouri at Columbia.
Uh huh. That didn't quite workout for me, and so I came

(01:57):
back and went to Washington University,where I had gotten a scholarship. Oh
okay, yeah, and what didyou take up? I mean, what
did you major? My major wasurban studies and most of my career has
been involved in urban development. Ohokay, so what do watch you?
I do believe you had something todo with bistate metro or something like that.

(02:22):
Yeah. I've had a really greatcareer. I actually started my professional
career working for the Missouri Commission onHuman Rights investigating complaints of discrimination in housing
and employment and public accommodation. AndI worked for Rosston Purina, where I

(02:44):
managed their corporate giving to low andminority communities. And then I got into
the planning area, which is whereI spent most of the rest of my
career planning transit systems and planning anddevelopment developing transit systems. I worked here
at by State and I worked initiallyon the initial line for Metrolink. I

(03:10):
was going to say that, Iwas gonna ask you about that. Were
you partied it? You know,I was going to ask you where you
parted the metrolink. Yeah. Thein fact, that's why I went to
by State is to work on thatproject. And you know, I had
other responsibilities, but that was themain reason I was recruited to come there.
I had been working at the planningagency here in Saint Louis East West

(03:35):
Gateway Coordinating Council, and I leftthere to go to work for by State
to work on what eventually was calledMetrolink. It wasn't called metrolink when I
initially started working on it. Oh, okay, so they called it?
Did they just called it the link? Or did they call it a light
rail? The light rail? Okay, light rail? And then not for

(03:58):
I think you went to Cleveland,is it? Yes? I did.
I went to Cleveland to work onwhat became the bus rapid transit program,
and it was the first one inthe country. Actually, it started out
being a rail program, but likemany projects, it got extremely expensive and

(04:19):
a number of other countries, includingthis country, we're looking at alternatives to
rail and bus. Rapid Transit wasa major alternative and it's running now and
it's a great success, and I'mvery proud of it. Okay, So
after Cleveland, what was it?Was it? Maryland? Was it?

(04:42):
Actually? I worked for a consultingcompany and was able to do work on
a number of different projects across thecountry, primarily getting the projects marketed and
started. And I did that fora company that was then called Parsons Sprinkerhof.
It was a major engineering company.I was in charge of their Cleveland

(05:06):
office, and then I was movedto DC, the District of Columbia,
of course, to work on anumber of projects and to help them get
work across the country. And thatwas a very exciting time for me,
and I left that company to goto work for the District of Columbia itself

(05:28):
to work on their streetcar project,which they may have finally gotten built.
I'm not sure. I know someof it was built, but the district
is a very difficult place to work, and I ended up leaving there and
going to where I am now inSacramento, sunny California, right. And

(05:51):
in California, I was able towork on a rail project out to the
airport, and I was there longenough for the first portion of the project
to get built. But I camethere, quite frankly, to work on
that project and retire. And that'swhat I did until you retired. And

(06:12):
then all of a sudden you startedwriting these short stories. And then now
you have this great novel out calledSwimming through the Mud. And for me,
I was thinking it was like astory about you swimming through the mud
of life, right, That's whatI thought. But then when I started

(06:35):
reading the book, I found outit was just a little different because you
got like three different characters. Whatmade you write the book, you know,
to say, now I'm gonna writethis book. Well, I started
writing as a kid, and Istarted writing wanting to write almost as soon

(06:56):
as I could read. And Istarted writing stories as most kids do,
and sharing them with my friends.And so I got to this point in
my life and decided that I wasreally going to do it. I had
told people for years that I wantedto be a writer, and that I
wanted to write a book, andso I held myself accountable and actually got

(07:21):
the book written. I started,like you said, writing short stories,
because the first thing you have todo is learn how to finish something.
And so I wrote several short storiesand taught myself how to begin a story
and how to end a story,and gradually got more and more into writing.

(07:43):
This novel. Didn't happen overnight.I spent several years working on this
novel. I think it took mefive or six years before I actually got
it published. And I think Ihad started writing the initial chapter several times
several years before that, before Iactually devoted myself to writing a book.

(08:07):
The book tells the story of peoplelike US African Americans living in this case,
in the antibell Bellum South, throughthe Civil War through reconstruction, and
it follows three characters. We meetthem when they were teenagers, they were

(08:28):
eighteen fifteen, and a young boywho was eight, and we followed them
as they're trying to decide their futures, and their future happened to be getting
away from the plantational that they wereliving on because you know, things were

(08:50):
happening, and they knew that theirlives would not be good if they ended
up staying there. So we followedthem as they tried to escape, and
then they get separated and they takedifferent paths in life, and we follow
them through those different paths in life, which are very different and very interesting

(09:13):
for each of them. So whydid you pick the three characters that you
pick? I mean, why sayI'm gonna pick these three and then we're
gonna follow their life. I can'tsay that it was anything but magic.

(09:35):
Yeah, I mean, sometimes yousit down to the computer and it happens.
The main character that I started writingabout, the first character in the
actual novel, once you get pastthe introduction, is a character that I've
been wrestling with in my mind fora long time, and so he just

(09:58):
came, you know, fully todeveloped. And the young lady. There
are two young men, and ayoung lady came. I think she'd been
there forever, and in many waysshe's not me, but she's me and
a lot of other young black womenthat I know, So you know,

(10:20):
she came. She developed along theway because that was the Probably everybody would
think that writing the male characters wouldhave been the hardest, but she was
the hardest because she was the closestI think to me and the women I
love. Oh okay, So soin the book kind of expresses some of

(10:41):
the personal things that happened with youand probably some of your friends, but
you just made them into a character. Yeah, and then you were able
to put that out there, thattype of thing. And that's the case
with everything I've written, all ofmy short stories. I mean, they're
not me, but they're they areme and they are people that I know.

(11:03):
So you know, you're embedded inanything you write. Your personality is
embedded in anything you write. Soall right, So the question is,
so did you have to do anytype of what do they call it,
like writing classes or get, youknow, get with some people to kind

(11:24):
of show you how to write,or was this one of those ones where
you just naturally just wrote the book. I wish I could say I did,
And as I look at the proofcopy, I'm going to have to
go back and fix some things.But no, I thought I knew how
to write. I sat down atthe computer and said, I can write.

(11:46):
I know I can write. Everybodytold me I could write all my
life. I've heard I could write. It's not as easy as that,
and as a result, I havetaken classes. I've joined critique groups to
have people read my work and giveme feedback on what they think about it.
I've taken classes online. I've watchedvideos on YouTube. I mean,

(12:11):
I really had to get into whatit is to write something other than a
technical paper for my job or physicianpaper or issue paper. And when you're
writing fiction, their rules and thenthere aren't rules, and you know some

(12:35):
of the rules. You have toknow so that you can know how your
story develops and then how it endsand your character arcs and things of that
sort. Things, frankly that Ireally didn't know a whole bunch about when
I sat down to write. Imean, I'd really not taken a writing

(12:56):
course other than something that I neededto learn to do for my work.
So I really had to do todo things a bit differently. And it
was interesting when you talk about I'lltell you this story, it was because
it's funny and like a lot ofthings, when you're getting into something you
think you know and you really findout you don't know. I was writing

(13:20):
in many people will remember this.You always learned to put two spaces after
a period. You don't do thatanymore, it's period one space, And
so I kept getting my critiques backwith lines telling me to take the space
out, and I'm thinking, whatdo they know? What didn't they go

(13:41):
to grade school? But the thingschange, I know, because I never
knew it was supposed to be twospaces. Its supposed to be one.
Learn something new, right, yeah, well you know, and I had

(14:03):
to learn run on sentences again,and prepositional phrases and you know, things
that I just really hadn't thought aboutin years. So you know, it
was a real learning experience. Allright, I'm talking without Rosemary Coverington,
my mother in law. She wrotethis book it's called Swimming through the Mud.

(14:24):
So why swimming through the Mud.Well, because we all swim through
the mud, I mean, andwe swim through the mud more than most
people I think. You know,it's I don't care if you're born into
a family and to stay in theage, that's what we consider black folks

(14:46):
rich or what. It's not easyfor you. And you know you can
you can swim. You can getto where you're going, but it's not
like you're you're dashing, you're racing, you're sprinting to the end. You
are really in most cases having tosupplied. In most cases it's difficult in

(15:11):
their barriers, and it's a lotslower than you think and a lot harder
than you think. Well, yeah, that is true because a lot of
times, you know, people thinkthat you when we jump in we start
swimming, we're swimming like in alake, over swimming in a swimming pool
or something like that. You're correctwhen you talk about swimming through the mud,

(15:31):
because we go a lot slower.We might be moving a horse fast,
but we go a whole lot slower. And nowadays you see a lot
more swimmers out there on the divingboard than we used to see. But
so there are some people who maybeare getting to the point of sprinting,
but it's still it's still for us, training and getting harder as you try

(15:58):
to progress through life. Okay,so swimming through the mud. Where can
people get the book? The bookis available almost any place you buy books.
You can get it from Amazon,which is where a lot of people
buy books. Barnes and Noble,you can get it from them, booksellers,

(16:19):
just almost any place you want tobuy books, including my website,
which is www dot Rosemarycovington dot com. And you can buy it on my
website, so it's easy to find, all right. Well, one of
the things I want to bring outis a little bit of a funny story.

(16:42):
You were talking about you had towork on a format when you did
your book launch here Saint Louis,and you talked about how it was taking
you forever to do it. Youhad to get to a deadline and you
had to call on one person.That's that's you know, it's funny now,

(17:03):
but at the time, it waslike horrible. I was trying to
rush to the deadlines to get thebook done and it had to be formatted,
and I just couldn't get it done. Everybody had told me, oh,
this is so easy. Hear theinstructions, you know. I had
more than one person tell me howto do it, offered to come over

(17:23):
and do it for me, butI, being who I am, I
c of course wanted to do itmyself. So after working on it,
driving myself crazy, I went tomy grandson's house for dinner one night and
he said I was the book going, and so I told him I just
couldn't get it done. I wasn'tgonna make the deadline. I just couldn't

(17:45):
get it done, he said,let me see. So a book that
I had been tearing my hair outover for three weeks. He took it
in two hours, had it completely, format it and off to the printer.
So you know, you learn toyou learn to learn what you don't
know, and to ask for helpwhen you need it. Well, I've

(18:07):
just learned to have young people inyour life, and that's exactly right.
Young people who know something about thisworld because they stay online and they have
figured out these fast ways to getthings done. Understanding that the book is
online right now, you go toAmazon, go to any place where you
purchase a book Swimming through the Mud, and you can get it in hard

(18:30):
copy as well as electronic. Ohokay, so are you planning or do
you have an audio book? Idon't have that yet, but enough people
who have asked me about that thatI'm going to start working on that when
I get back home. All right, So I'm understanding this has been a
family venture as well, because youhad some people that did some things to
kind of help you out with yourbrand and get things going. Yeah,

(18:53):
my daughter has been my agent,so to speak. She's been my marketing
manager and my grandson has done alot of the graphics, including the cover.
My son has done for photography atsome of the events I've had around
Saint Louis, and my granddaughter hasbeen there to make sure everything looked exactly

(19:17):
right. So so there's a majorfamily affair. Make sure you go out
and get the book Swimming through theMud by Rosemary Covington. And she spells
Rosemary a very unique way because it'sa capital R and then it's a capital
M, right, because well,I always say, as a black person,

(19:38):
my name has to look a littledifferent. But also my name is
really two names, and I wentthrough life with it as one name.
Didn't find out it was two namesuntil I don't know I was in my
forties. Oh wow, And soI made a compromise, all right,
So go out get the book Swimmingthrough the Mud. Rosemary Coveington, thank

(19:59):
you so much for coming in today. Thank you BJ. This has been
another edition of Heartbeat a lowis withBJ the dj a K a BJ Holiday,
bringing you the pulse of the city