Writers Wednesdays with Linda Sittig

Today I’m pleased to feature author Linda Sittig. Linda has been doing freelance writing since the 1970s, specializing in articles about education and literacy, and she has also just completed her first novel.

Tell us about your book: My most recent book is KinderBooking: Looking at Life through Love, Laughter and Literature. It is a collection of 100 newspaper articles that encourage parents on using literature in the home to enrich their children’s lives. My novel is Cut From Strong Cloth and is about an Irish ancestor who transformed herself from starving immigrant to entrepreneur by designing a special cloth for Civil War uniforms.

Did you always know you wanted to be a writer? Well, I always kept a journal when I was in school, but became discouraged when teachers did not give me high marks in writing. I didn’t start writing professionally until I was 35.

What is your “day job”? I taught kids, and then teachers, for a long time. Right now I still teach as an adjunct professor at Shenandoah University in Winchester. I teach Children’s Literature.

Who is your favorite character in your book, and why? In my novel, Cut from Strong Cloth, I love my heroine Ellen Canavan because she never gives up on her dream of being an entrepreneur, even though in 1860 few women ever achieved that goal.

Are any elements of your book autobiographical or inspired by elements of your life? Ellen was actually my great-grandfather’s first wife and she did become an entrepreneur, but he got all the credit.

What’s the strangest place you’ve ever been? Each place I have ever been has been fascinating in some way.

What’s your favorite scene or location in the work you’re currently promoting, and why? I love the part of my book when Ellen travels to Savannah, GA. It is 1861 and she is trying to establish herself as a businesswoman, but she has never been in the South before and has to learn quickly about Southern conventions.

If you were to be stranded on a desert island, what non-survival item would you bring along that you couldn’t live without? A journal.

Are you working on any other projects at the moment? I’ve started the research on my next novel. It’s about a group of miners’ wives back in 1894.

What question do you wish I had asked? Where you can buy KinderBooking!  answer: Around the Block Books in Purcellville, Va.

Finally, where can we find you? linda@lindasittig.com, and www.strongwomeninhistory.wordpress.com,