S5 EP238 | Stacy Hawks: Unearthing an Unsolved Murder in the Blue Ridge Mountains

Hello, My Happy People! 

In today’s episode, I’m sit down with award-winning author Stacy Hawks for fascinating book chat about her journey from the classroom into full-time writing. We talk all about her love for local history and how her Appalachian roots in Allegheny County, North Carolina, continue to inspire both her historical fiction and her poetry. 

Our main focus is on her debut novel, Dividing Ridge: The Unsolved Murd3r of Elva Brannock. This haunting, real-life 1937 cold case left a tight-knit mountain community shaken, and Stacy uncovers how local secrets, fear, and tradition kept the truth in the shadows for decades. We also chat about the rest of The Ridge Series (Devils Ridge and Patriots Ridge). Starting with Dividing Ridge is the absolute best place to jump in and move on to the next two. 

Plus, stick around for our "Five Quick Questions" segment! They are never actually quick but they are too fun to stop asking! You will get to hear how Stacy picks songs for her book playlists, her favorite family travel memory, which DC and Marvel superheroes she identifies with most, and which section of the bookstore she hits first. 

Be sure to check out my blog at BurckhardtBooks.com/blog for BTS insights on today episode. Then subscribe to our newsletter with the link below so you never miss out on any Burckhardt Books/Book Banter Productions updates. 

Stacy's Linktree

Dividing Ridge Website

Dividing Ridge on Facebook

Dividing Ridge on Instagram

Dividing Ridge Store

Stacy on Amazon

Transcript

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Dianne Burckhardt 0:01

You're listening to BookBanter with Diane Burkhart, your Book Talk podcast. Join me every Wednesday for real conversations with authors and publishing insiders, where you get to connect with the humans behind the books you love. Let's get on with our show today. Well, hello my happy people. Today is Wednesday, September 2nd, 2026, and it is such a special day for me. For those of you who aren't following along with our newsletter, and shame on you if you're not, you should really sign up for that. You probably don't know that my husband surprised me this year with a birthday trip. Do wait for it? Scotland. So while you're going about your week, we're off exploring castles, wandering historic streets, and discovering everything beautiful that Scotland has to offer. I'm really excited about those. At this very moment, I'm probably sitting in a cozy Scottish pub with a good book and a well-aged whiskey. Not to mention my husband Pedro, who's probably watching a football match. But that's enough blather about me. Today's interview is what you came here for. This author is going to take you on your own journey to the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina, where history, mystery, and a true crime and Appalachian storytelling come together in a fascinating way. So let's not waste any more time. Let's get right to today's interview. Please welcome to Book Banter with Diane Burkhart, award-winning author, Stacy Hawks. Please tell everyone who you are and what you do.

SPEAKER_00 1:41

So my name is Stacy Hawks. I am the author of the Ridge series, Dividing Ridge, Devil's Ridge, and Patriots Ridge. And I appreciate you having me here. It's uh it's a pleasure to be on Book Vanter.

Dianne Burckhardt 1:54

So well, I tell you, one of the things I love is just talking with such a wide variety of authors. And you kind of fall into a category that I haven't done lately. Your book is actually based on real events.

SPEAKER_00 2:08

So, yes, this story is about Elva Branick who went missing and was unaligned along the Blue Ridge Parkway in Allegheny County, North Carolina in 1937, and she is the main topic, and her case is the main topic of this book.

Dianne Burckhardt 2:21

Your books have a strong connection to the Allegheny County and its history. What is it about that area that inspires your writing so much?

SPEAKER_00 2:32

Well, first I grew up here. It's my mountain home, and I'm very familiar with the history of the county. I've studied it for several years. I started in high school and then just sort of bloomed out into college. And I've also written a paper called The Importance of the CCC in the Cherry Lane area. I wrote that while I was in college, and it just, you know, it just furthered my knowledge on Blue Ridge Parkway and its impact that it had here in Allegheny, Ash, and Wilkes County.

Dianne Burckhardt 3:01

Was that something that was a big news story when you were younger?

SPEAKER_00 3:06

No, this um this was not even talked about. It had not been talked about for like, yeah, it was like 70 some years at the time. Nobody had mentioned Elva Brannock. I only saw it because my grandmother brought it out in a scrapbook. And I thought, that is interesting. Why has no one said anything about this? It happened when she was a girl. She was born in 32, it happened in 37. So when I got back from college, I saw it again. And I thought, oh, you know, this this the story just keeps speaking to me. And I thought, I'm gonna do a little digging and just see what came of it, if anything came of it, because I didn't know anything past the Terry Martin newspaper clipping from the Winston-Salem Journal. And it was titled The Awfulest Thing.

Dianne Burckhardt 3:55

I just thought a lot of times when something like this happens, especially in a small, tight community, it kind of becomes a cautionary tale. And as later generations grow up, they say, we need to tell you about this. You need to be careful because these kinds of things happen. And I just didn't know if maybe that was a cautionary tale that you were told when you were growing up.

SPEAKER_00 4:15

No, I just remember my grandmother telling me when I first saw it, she says, No, you don't understand. This changed it changed everything for us. Like we used to not lock our doors, now we do.

Dianne Burckhardt 4:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 4:27

So yeah. Yeah, it was a cautionary tale for her, for her generation, I think. Um, and it just sort of just didn't get talked about a whole lot. But yeah, seeing that article and thinking, you know, nobody's really looked into this kind of made me curious.

Dianne Burckhardt 4:41

Besides this story, history seems to be a very important part of your life before you even became an author. What is it about history that appeals to you?

SPEAKER_00 4:51

I think it's the stories because you know, being from Appalachia, we love a good story. I think that's what I think that's what draws me to history so much. I just love to learn and find out about uh different places and people and things and events and how they went down, and especially if it's fascinating, it's fascinating events, and there's a story to be told there. I'm the first person to want to read it. So yeah, it's it's it's just the way that that history tells a story. And you can do it in a multitude of ways. You can do it through biographies and stuff like that and read those, but you can also do it in like a historical fiction type of way, which is where I wanted to go with with my books.

Dianne Burckhardt 5:32

It's one of the things that I love about historical fiction is it's kind of like getting a history lesson in a passive entertainment way.

SPEAKER_00 5:40

Yes, yeah, yeah, I love it. Like I like Dan Brown, um, you know, anything like that, Steve Barry, they're like my favorite all-time authors, and I just love the way they they weave in real historical events into their stories and the time that they take to research all those stories and to make sure that they are, you know, they're accurate, but they're not accurate. And you still have a you still have a good time reading those types of books.

Dianne Burckhardt 6:09

Now, before becoming a full-time author, you had a very different career path. How did your earlier experiences prepare you for the work that you're doing now?

SPEAKER_00 6:20

Well, I was an assistant teacher and I was a substitute teacher for a little bit, and then I was also a case manager. And of course, being a case manager, you have to write case histories, you have to, you have you keep up some aspect of your, you know, your historical training and your background. So, especially in schools, you do that too, especially if you're teaching like history courses or social studies or something like that. So, you know, either way, I'm using and I'm utilizing my degree and and what I've learned in in all these classes in the background. So, you know, it just it just sort of it was just a different foundation and gave me a different perspective on how to write things and also how to uh you know how to present them in different settings. So that uh yeah, that's how that kind of helped out a little bit.

Dianne Burckhardt 7:03

Since you were so involved in teaching, what was it that made you decide to start writing a book?

SPEAKER_00 7:11

It was this article that just kept speaking to me and I kept seeing it and I said, Hey, you know, I really want to just research this and get back to some of my history stuff. At the time I was doing my master's degree, uh, I thought maybe I might go back and get my PhD eventually. I thought maybe this might make a good case study or something. I could use it for something in the future. And as I started researching and started putting things together, I started hearing these voices in my head of these people, and I kept saying to myself, what were their conversations like when they had to deal with this case? What was that like? Because, you know, I mean, you could just imagine having something like that come up in a small community that's never had any crime, that's never had anything this big happen to them, and all of a sudden here it is, it's front page news, it's and it went nationwide. I found it went nationwide. So I was like, this is yeah, this is kind of a big deal for this small Appalachian area. And, you know, being, of course, like I said, being a teacher, being a caseworker, being involved in those careers, I write anyway. But it was just the creative ability to jump in and say, okay, I'm gonna add a little something extra extra to this book because or to this story because I had seen it done before in certain books, but I didn't know if I could do it or not. But I really wanted to do, like I did with Dividing Ridge, I wanted most of some of the book to be fact, and then behind the fact, I wanted, you know, the figures that had been involved talking about those facts and the case and then turning it into a story. That was my path with that.

Dianne Burckhardt 8:40

You know, one thing really struck me about what you said that you had people in your head talking to you.

SPEAKER_00 8:45

Yeah.

Dianne Burckhardt 8:46

I have had so many authors, we've all been saying the same things. Like, oh yeah, there's characters in my head telling me the stories. You know, I'm not writing them, I'm just writing down what they tell me.

unknown 8:54

Yeah.

Dianne Burckhardt 8:55

I'm so there thinking if there was any other job, like you know, you're a train conductor and you told them, Oh, yeah, I don't think about driving the train. I have people in my head telling me what to do. They would just say, Okay, we're gonna take you into a nice quiet room.

SPEAKER_00 9:12

Yeah, you don't need to be driving.

Dianne Burckhardt 9:14

Yeah, as authors, it was just accept as yeah, that's good. That makes sense. Yeah, we're all like that. It's okay.

SPEAKER_00 9:21

Well, we all have we all have movies planned in our heads too when we're doing our books. I mean, a lot of people don't understand that, but it's like instantly I saw like characters in my head and these scenes and these places and wanting to get them on paper as soon as possible because you know if you lose it, you lose it. But but I tried my best to get it on paper as quickly as possible. And a lot of the places that are in my book are real places, they really exist, and and they still exist here now.

Dianne Burckhardt 9:46

So that's one thing that I always tell people is like whenever I sit down to write, I don't think about the story. I just sit down and put my hands on the keyboard and a little movie starts playing in my head, and I just write down what I see.

SPEAKER_00 9:57

Mm-hmm. Yep. Yep, that's how you do it. And a lot and a lot and a lot of authors are turning to screen writing, uh screenplay writing too now because they're they're doing that. They're learning more about the screenplay and how how to write one, how to turn their books into movies. And that's fascinating to me, actually. So, you know, that'd be something to look into.

Dianne Burckhardt 10:17

Oh, yeah. I mean, there's so many books that are being adapted for streaming services now because there's so many streaming services popping up. That's a great avenue for authors to get their work out there.

unknown 10:28

Yeah.

Dianne Burckhardt 10:29

Since you published Dividing Ridge, you have built quite a body of work from novels to poetry. And looking back, what surprised you the most about your journey as an author?

SPEAKER_00 10:41

I think what surprised me the most was how many indie authors were out there and how many were, yeah, how many you could connect with on different social media platforms and how helpful they all were to one another. Oh, yeah. And I thought, this is an insane community of support. It was wonderful. I mean, I didn't know, I didn't know anything like that existed. You start using the hashtag writing community on on Twitter at the time. Now it's X, but Twitter, you could gain an instant following of, and I just watched my following go up from like a hundred to three hundred to five hundred. And and you know, you just make connections and friends with all these authors and and you just help them share their book. They share your book. You just give yourself writer lifts and and give them writers lifts. It's just a terrific way of like I mean, just networking, really. Because that's also how you find podcasts, that's how you find uh, you know, other outlets and people that would be interested and possibly feature your story or stories. And yeah, it that that was just that was uh amazing to me. And and to see some with as many as like a hundred thousand followers.

SPEAKER_01 11:46

Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_00 11:47

That was I mean, I'm sure I'm sure you know, I'm sure you see it. It's like a hundred thousand followers to a million followers. It's just it's insane how big the community is, but it just goes to show that a lot of people really love writing and they really love storytelling and they want it and they have a story to share, and I think that's I think that's wonderful.

Dianne Burckhardt 12:06

And no matter how many authors we have, there's always going to be way more readers because all the authors are readers too.

SPEAKER_00 12:13

Yeah, even we devour books. Like I'll go on there and I'll see some, I'll be like, ooh, I need to bookmark that so I can go read that. And that's what I'm saying, you know, it's it's it's a huge community of support.

Dianne Burckhardt 12:25

Now you write both poetry and historical fiction. Do those different styles challenge you in different ways, or do you find that they more complement each other?

SPEAKER_00 12:34

I think poetry is a lot different from writing historical fiction. Poetry is coming from another place, it's coming from a more personal space, it's coming from you know experiences and and things like that. But with historical fiction, it's coming from factual and research and data-driven and and and a lot of times just imagination. You're just using your imagination to to fuel some stuff. But with poetry, it's not it's not that way. So poetry is a little more challenging for me. Um, I do try to I do try to write it every now and then. Some of the poetry collections I put out, these are poems that I wrote years and years ago, that I just put together in collections and just said, hey, I'm gonna I'm gonna put these out there and just publish. And that's what I did with those. So some of them are new and some of them are old, but I just re-retuned and put out there for people to enjoy.

Dianne Burckhardt 13:28

Now, this is something that I always love asking historical fiction authors, because I that's what my first series was, historical fiction. How hard is it to keep yourself from falling down a research rabbit hole once you start?

SPEAKER_00 13:41

Oh, it is so hard. It is so hard. The struggle is real. Um, you can you can start looking at one thing, and I guarantee you there'll be something like when I was researching Dividing Ridge, and because I I start researching Dividing Ridge truly and in earnest, probably in late 2008. I came upon another story that was somewhat tied to it, and I thought, oh, how interesting. And I swear I was supposed to spend like an hour in archives looking at dividing rich stuff, and I ended up spending an hour looking at this other case, and the other case became Devil's Ridge.

SPEAKER_01 14:21

Oh, wow.

SPEAKER_00 14:22

So, yeah, so that the bones of that book started that day too, and I was just building that out, and I built that out and had the skeleton for it and everything ready to go, but I was mainly focused on dividing rich and really wanted to get it out there. But it is so hard. I mean, you just you see things and you're like, wait, I want to say I want to read more about this or find out more about that. And the way our newspaper archive was, they have it set up where they've got these great big giant leather-bound books, and they go from like the 1920s on up to the 60s, I think, somewhere, maybe later than that, maybe the 80s. But you can pull them out and you can flip, you can easily flip from one edition of the Allegheny Times News to the next, and you can say, Oh, there's that story. I wonder how that turned out. Let me flip to the next edition. So it was really easy just to turn the page and look over and say, Oh, that's how that turned out. So, yeah, it it it can be it can be hard. And it's it was the same way when I was doing genealogy research, uh, when I was doing Dividing Ridge, because I had to learn a little bit about Elba's family, and I had to learn about who the care, you know, who the players were and who the family was and and how they all fit into her life. And so I did just a little bit of that just to see. But you know, you you see an you see a document, you're like, oh, that's fascinating. Let me dive a little bit more to that. So I mean, it happens, it does happen. It's hard, but if you indulge just for a few minutes, you don't never you never know because you might actually find another story that you're that you're willing to write or be interested in writing. So yeah, it's hard.

Dianne Burckhardt 15:52

Well, I think one of the dangers for historical fiction authors is one of the reasons why we do historical fiction is because we enjoy research.

SPEAKER_00 16:00

Yes, yes.

Dianne Burckhardt 16:01

And so whenever we find an interesting tidbit, it's just hard to stay on task.

SPEAKER_00 16:07

Yeah, yeah. I uh my my brother is a history lover too. He's a political science major. Me and him go, we try to beat each other at historical sites. So, like I've been I've been to certain historical sites he's been, he's not been to. Monticello was one of them. We went to Monticello together, it was really great. But you know, I I look at him and I said, Man, if you left me here, I would I would never leave, I would be the happiest person. Like you could just leave me in a museum somewhere or leave me here at a historic site, and I would, I I would be perfectly fine. I mean, I could give tours all day to these people. But but uh but yeah, I mean you could you could be happy anywhere, anywhere there's there's historical artifacts or or papers or archives or yeah, it's it it's it's a lot. It's a lot, but it's it's fun, it's always fun.

Dianne Burckhardt 16:51

Oh yeah, definitely. One of the biggest challenges that I hear from most authors is trying to build a mailing list and connecting directly with readers. What kind of marketing strategies have worked for you while promoting the Dividing Ridge series?

SPEAKER_00 17:08

I think being from a small community has been very, very helpful because as soon as as soon as the book came out, everybody was like, oh, I want to know more about that. So they of course came out to the book signing, which I was grateful for. But they came up for the book signing and then of course I started building my author's pages. And I found that a lot of times the promotions on Facebook they worked very well. I got more views, I got more uh interest in the book, I got more interest in the story. The same with Instagram and didn't really do any pay anything for Twitter or X. I just put it out there and people just started following me naturally because they were following me on other platforms, so they would follow on that platform. And I think just word of mouth is is a big one. Also, just being able to, you know, provide free copies every now and then, like do like a special or do like a giveaway or something like that. That's what uh that's another thing that's helpful. But yeah, it's it's a struggle to promote and to advertise as an indie author. It really is.

Dianne Burckhardt 18:08

And I'm getting into it. One of the most frustrating things for me has been every time I put up my book series on like a free giveaway deal for the weekend, it will shoot right to the bestsellers list, you know, top like five for the free giveaway. But the minute that it goes back on sale, it's like dead.

SPEAKER_00 18:27

Yeah, it's dead. It's dead. Everybody wants something for free. I mean, I mean, and I understand, I get it. I think after a certain point, you know, you can you can do that. But I mean, I think that it the authors put a lot of time, a lot of effort, and a lot of money into creating these books. The books are not just us writing and then us publishing them. You know, authors have to think about the costs of formatting, they have to think about the cost of editing, they have to cost think about the cost of printing and getting them out there to people to read. So that's part of the reason we charge. But, you know, I mean, just just promoting it and being online and and offer just even offering those small little giveaways every now and then, I think it does, I think it does overall help. Um, I just wish there was more work I could do. Yeah, to boost it for sure.

Dianne Burckhardt 19:17

One of the things that I always like to do before an interview is spend some time going through an author's website and their social media. It helps to give me a feel for who they are and how they connect with their readers. And one thing that I found that was really interesting was that whenever I went to your website, you have to sign in to be able to access your website. Was that something that you did as a way to help your marketing?

SPEAKER_00 19:42

Yeah, actually, it was just a way to check traffic to see how much traffic we would get on the website and how much traffic, you know, it it's it's not a way to spam anybody. We're not gonna spam everybody with with unnecessary messages. You can log in anytime and look at what's going on with our blog, look at the events, look at the books, um, the reviews, things like that. And of course, we have a gift shop, so you can look at the gift shop link and things, but a lot of our stuff that we post on the website is also on our social media pages. So I kind of feel like it's uh you know it it's doing double time really for that. But it was just a way to just check traffic and just see how many people would would log in.

Dianne Burckhardt 20:19

And I noticed the same thing kind of on your Instagram page, that it's set to private so that you have to have approval before you can view it. What is it that led you to take that approach with your Instagram?

SPEAKER_00 20:31

Instagram kept getting hacked.

Dianne Burckhardt 20:33

Ooh.

SPEAKER_00 20:33

And Instagram, I kept losing my stuff on Instagram and getting locked out. So I ended up having to make a decision, albeit a tough one, because a lot of people can keep their books public. I couldn't keep my book public, so I've marked it down as private, and I was like, this is insane. I mean, I got hacked like maybe three times in one year, and I said, that's yeah, it was really, it was really annoying. And it and of course, when you when that happens with Instagram, it's really hard to get anything back because you you really have to have the patience of Joe trying to go through all the little codes they give you and everything and then it'll unlock it and open it back up for you. So that was one reason I set Instagram to private.

Dianne Burckhardt 21:13

Now, with these things set like this though, has it been able to help you with your marketing?

SPEAKER_00 21:18

Yeah, yeah, it yeah, it has, because people still know it's there. And and you and you people that I meet, I'm I'm like, hey, this is what it is, and and you can go to all these different links and see, and and and they're more than willing to do that, and they understand because they've had they've either had similar problems or they've had, you know, they've had to do the same thing to check for marketing and things like that on their end. So yeah, it's just it it's it's a struggle with social media sometimes, and I know I probably I've I've been looking into like getting verified on Instagram, so that way that may not happen so much. But uh but I haven't gotten too far with it yet. But I'm I'm looking into changing things this year.

Dianne Burckhardt 21:55

Now it seems like a great time for you to go ahead and give us the synopsis for your books. series.

SPEAKER_00 22:01

The Ridge series is set in Allegheny, Ash, Wilkes, and Surrey counties and some in Grayson if you're reading uh Devil's Ridge and Grayson is a county in Virginia to the north of us. And it is uh it's it's true crime, historical fiction, and just great reads and you can read them in order, you can read them out of order. It really doesn't matter, but they're just they're just great stories and I'm just glad that I'm able to share them here on Book Banner.

Dianne Burckhardt 22:27

Readers often enjoy Dividing Ridge both as a mystery and as a glimpse into the Appalachian I can never say this right. Appalachian history.

SPEAKER_00 22:36

There you go. There you go Apple atch it we're going through on Appalachia.

Dianne Burckhardt 22:41

That's it Appalachian what do you hope that readers take away from these books?

SPEAKER_00 22:49

Well I hope they find Dividing Ridge interesting. I hope they they find a curiosity about the story as I did. I hope that they're also willing to maybe take a look at Elvis case and go online and and do some research on their own and just check some other things out because there was more to the story and there's more to Walter Irwin's story as as many will find out as they read the series. But yeah I mean I just hope they enjoy learning about Appalachia our small part of Appalachia and the characters and the people that help build our communities.

Dianne Burckhardt 23:19

So are you working on anything new?

SPEAKER_00 23:22

I am it'll be a while but I'm down the research rabbit hole right now. So so so we'll see it may it may it may be one book it may be two books but I'm just really excited about this next project and looking forward to it and I believe it will be it will be a rich series book as well.

Dianne Burckhardt 23:40

Will it also be based on true events? It may be based on true events this seems like the perfect time to do our five quick questions that never turn out to be quick but I'm just too nosy to stop asking the questions. Are you ready? Go question one each book in the Ridge series has its own playlist how did you decide which songs belong with each book oh this is fun.

SPEAKER_00 24:10

Yeah so I decided to go on Spotify and I thought this would be interesting like most movies have soundtracks okay I thought my book needed a soundtrack and there were certain songs that I listened to while I was researching or reading or or getting in that writer mode to do scenes in books. So of course naturally I thought let's do one on Spotify so I did one for Dividing Ridge Devil's Ridge and Patriots Ridge. Dividing Ridge is a little somber you'll hear a little a little more sadness in some of the songs and Devil's Ridge you'll hear well it's about moonshine so you can imagine it gets a little rowdy there's a little rowdy music in there but but it's country based it's country it's Appalachian based and the same for Patriots Ridge Patriots Ridge is kind of it's it's very country it's very old school country and and and it has some new things in there but all of them just sort of take the theme of the book and kind of go with it. So it's that was that was the whole premise of trying to come up with playlists for it and just have fun and give readers something else to connect to and to be able to add that to our link tree because that also writers and readers love music. They love music too and some of them even write to that music. So yeah you know it's it's fun to be able to throw that out there for for followers and readers.

Dianne Burckhardt 25:30

And I do love this trend there's been a lot of authors who create playlists there was even one author that I spoke to I think last season who's also a musician and he wrote and played the music that went with his playlist.

SPEAKER_00 25:44

Oh wow yeah it was fantastic that is interesting that would be fun I'm a musician but I'm a I play saxophone I don't play I don't play any kind of banjo or anything but I would really I mean if I could do it I would do it myself 100% that sounds amazing.

Dianne Burckhardt 26:01

Saxophone music would be really good to to read to yeah yeah it's good to read to for sure question two you have a post on I think your Facebook page that is titled Family Travels and Fun.

SPEAKER_00 26:16

Where is your favorite place that you have traveled to with your family probably down to Orlando when I was in fifth grade we went to Disney World Disney down there in Orlando and we had a great time we enjoyed the castle and all that and then it came a hurricane and we were stuck in a room for a few days and we got to see but we got to see Epcot and Epcot was really cool my dad's company they made the plastics and stuff for for Epcot so we got to see that and we just missed out on SeaWorld. But we got to see the ocean I got to see the ocean for the first time the waves were absolutely huge because you know coming off of a hurricane it was really it was really bad but but I mean it was a pretty day and we just took our time coming back home. But I mean it was it was it was a good trip. It was all of us together and we just had a good time and it was just before my fifth grade year so I was I was excited hadn't been that far from home before but that was fun.

Dianne Burckhardt 27:13

Question three I noticed on your Facebook page that you had a few posts about female superheroes. Which female superhero do you find that you most identify with oh my goodness because I'm a m I I'm a Marvel and a DC comic fan so I can do either if it's Marvel I would say Wanda the Scarlet Witch.

SPEAKER_00 27:37

Oh good one yeah if it's DC I would say maybe I'm more Catwoman maybe just a little bit and her sneakiness and of course her love of all things precious and historical but yeah I mean that that's probably about the two I would come closest to I think I always liked Catwoman because she seemed like a reluctant villain.

Dianne Burckhardt 28:00

She was still trying to do the right thing in her view.

SPEAKER_00 28:04

Yeah she was she's a good anti-hero example she's a very good anti-hero example and that's and and that's how I wanted one of my characters to be in the Devil's Ridge. I wanted Connor Ridge uh the main character there I wanted him to be this anti-hero because he he was doing what he thought was right for him and his family at the time but he was really breaking a lot of laws at the time too so yeah there's that juxtaposition.

Dianne Burckhardt 28:30

So that that's always fascinated me the anti-hero well and I think there's a lot of things that make them identifiable for people too because they're faced with really tough choices and that makes them likable even though they are doing bad. Yeah exactly exactly now question four whenever you walk into a bookstore which department do you head to first?

SPEAKER_00 28:57

Oh right off I'm I'm heading I'm heading to the historical fiction section if I if it's not if if it's if it's not right away it's it's definitely I'm making my way there. I'm going there first or I'm going to bibliography or I'm going to biographies or I'm going to um to like the art section maybe like sometimes I'll I'll pick up a a book on arts and artists and especially if it's like Impressionism or something like that because I've really been fascinated for years by the Impressionist movement. So yeah. I am such a nerd I go to reference yeah I have so many reference books it's ridiculous I I I love reference books I I like annotated books like if you get annotated versions of things those are always great to have on hand especially if they're scholarly and you need them for something you never know um so I've got a few annotated versions of different books that I just I love.

Dianne Burckhardt 29:54

Now for question five we are asking everyone this season the same question and we're putting a list in the year in book buying guide for Bookbanter magazine for holiday shopping this year. And the question is in your opinion what is the best book to movie adaptation that you have seen so far?

SPEAKER_00 30:14

Book to movie adaptation I would say fried green tomatoes is probably up there. Oh good one only because and I've read the Fanny Flag book it's a little different from the book. It's a lot different from the book in some ways but it is a great adaptation of the story overall and I do like how Kathy Bates portrays portrayed in that and everything and it's just a great it's a great story but also where the crawdad same I forgot that they made that into a movie yeah they made that into a movie and it was really good. I really did enjoy seeing that I went to the theater to see it because I read the book and I was like I want to see if they make it just like the book. So I really did enjoy the movie. I I love the book but I enjoyed the movie too it was well done.

Dianne Burckhardt 30:56

We know and I think you made a good point that there are so many adaptations that they didn't put everything that was in the book into the movie but they represented the overall storyline so well that I think that it would draw people to read the book to get more of the story.

SPEAKER_00 31:14

Yeah and and No Country for Old Man is another one by the Cohen brothers they did they did a fantastic job. They really did follow that book step by step. So it's been it's it's up there on my list too and of course I like Tommy Lee Jones. So and Javier Bardim they're they're great actors and so yeah I would highly recommend watching No Country for Old Man.

Dianne Burckhardt 31:34

So now do you have any public appearances that you like to do are you going to be doing any more book signings yes I'm gonna be doing some book signings.

SPEAKER_00 31:42

I'm looking at September October for doing a book signing at Chapter's bookshop in Gaywax Virginia date to be announced I'm also I also just did one in Manor North Carolina at Pages with my fellow author and friend Ed De Gange. Ed wrote a book titled Gliding Through Goodbye but he wrote another book before that it was about his adoption story uh and his mother and he actually took her diary made a book out of it for gliding through goodbye which is really good. But I I did an appearance there and I plan on doing some other appearances in it toward the fall and into the into the holiday season and just looking forward to getting those planned out and if everybody just stays connected with me on Facebook, Instagram or X, it'll it'll come up.

Dianne Burckhardt 32:24

And as always all of your information will be in the description of today's podcast with links to make it very easy for people to just click and go and find you and all of your work. Absolutely so now why don't you go ahead and remind our listeners just one more time who you are and where they can find your books.

SPEAKER_00 32:41

My name is Stacey Hawks and I'm the author of the rich series Dividing Rich, Devil's Rich and Patriots Rich. You can find me on Facebook Dividing Rich Books on Instagram Dividing Rich Author85 and on XDRich Books.

Dianne Burckhardt 32:56

Thank you so much for joining me today this has been really delightful. You're fun to talk to oh thank you so much I appreciate it and thank you again for having me on BookBanter so there you have it folks that was my interview with the award winning author Stacy Hawks if you'd like to learn more about Stacy be sure to visit her website follow her on social media but most importantly check out her Ridge series beginning with Dividing Ridge. And now don't forget to come back next week when I will be sharing my chat with Lindsay Hager. We talk about her heartfelt young adult romance when stars collide in the city a story of first love second chances and discovering who you are while growing up in the spotlight. If you enjoy young adult romance I think you're really going to enjoy this conversation. Now before I let you go I do have one quick update from Burkhart Books and Book Band Productions. We are still working to fully fund the expenses for the season so if you would like to help support everything we do you can become a sponsor by visiting my Buy Me a Coffee page and well buying me a coffee. All funds go directly to support Burkhart Books and Book Band Productions. And I do want to take this moment to thank my husband Pedro who is my tireless support financially emotionally and even occasionally with frappuccino deliveries that keep me going. I would also like to take this moment to thank my two monthly supporters authors Valerie Sherrard and Lynn Hugo you can find their links and their information at burkartbooks.com slash podcast then click on supporters in the podcast menu. If you get our newsletter you can find their information in the supporters section there too. Monthly support comes with benefits of free ebooks and eMagazines now if you would like to support us but also get something for yourself in the process be sure to check out our Zazzle storefront. There you'll find merchandise for Burkhart books, Bookband Productions, all of our individual book lines along with products created specifically for authors and readers alike. Now we're just getting our store built so if you don't see something you love today please keep checking back because we're adding new products all the time. And if there's something you'd like to see us offer just drop us a line and let us know what kind of products you would like to find in our storefront. And don't forget we have a brand new paranormal romance series coming very soon from author DS Stevens inspired by actual paranormal investigations she went on in her college years. The Haunted Heart series combines romance mystery the supernatural and true paranormal investigations. If you'd like the behind the scenes information be able to read emails between characters check out true cast notes from the real investigations that inspired the stories and so much more be sure to subscribe to our newsletter at Burkhartbooks.com slash subscribe or follow us on our Facebook pages. Well I think that's more than enough for today folks so you know what that means it's that time. It's a time for you to go forth and be really happy we've got so much stuff coming for you thank you for joining us today be sure to subscribe to BookBanter with Diane Burkhart on your favorite podcast streaming service. Because if you love books like we do you do not want to miss a single episode of this podcast