- Aug 14

Meet Terresa Haskew

A native of the South, Terresa and her husband, Ben, have lived at Lake Murray in the Midlands of South Carolina since retiring in 2016. They have three children and five grandchildren, who all enjoy swimming, boating, and fishing on the lake.

Terresa Cooper Haskew’s award-winning poems, short stories, and book reviews have appeared in over 50 printed journal and anthology issues including American Journal of Nursing; Archive: South Carolina Poetry Since 2005; Atlanta Review; Press 53 Open Awards Anthology; Pearl; and The Main Street Rag. Her story, “Living the Dream,” premiered in 2013 as a short film produced by Ron Hagell and Shirley Smith. Haskew’s poetry chapbook, BREAKING COMMANDMENTS, was published in 2014 by Main Street Rag Publishing Company. WINSTON’S BOOK OF SOULS is her first novel. She is a member of the Poetry Society of South Carolina; the Ruminators poetry writing group (17 years); the South Carolina Writers Association—Chapin fiction writers’ chapter; and is a past Board Member of the Emrys Foundation, Greenville, SC’s association for writers.

Please share a brief synopsis of Winston's Book of Souls.

It’s 1961 when small-town life insurance agent Winston Taylor finds a man dead on the floor of a North Florida forest. Once he learns the identity of the deceased, Winston quickly realizes the corpse has the ability to incriminate him in his own unethical business practices. Protecting his family and career, Winston dumps the body into a wet sinkhole, vowing to clean up his transgressions and never tell a soul. Two years later, despite the current racial divide, he hires a new agent—a charismatic young Black man with a mysterious past. Unbeknownst to Winston, his recent recruit may hold the power to blow the sinkhole secret straight out of the water.

You have a successful poetry chapbook, Breaking Commandments, under your belt. What inspired you to make the leap from writing poems to penning your debut novel?

I have always loved words, and I always wanted to write. But I didn’t know how to start. In 2005, when my youngest was preparing to leave for college, I signed up for an adult learning class at Greenville, South Carolina’s Furman University (OLLI Program). The only writing class offered was poetry, which I didn’t read or have any real interest in, but I hoped it would at least get me started. So, I took that Beginning Poetry class. Then I took another. I fell in love with free verse poetry, and discovered I was pretty good at it. Most of all, it touched my soul.

I found success in getting my poems published in many literary journals. I won several prizes. Still, I longed to write fiction. With the help of my Furman poetry instructor, now my good friend, I branched out into a few short stories, once again getting most all of them published. When I submitted one of my tiniest tales, “Living the Dream,” to a state-wide SC Short Film Contest/Festival, it was selected as inspiration for a short film by filmmakers Ron Hagell and Shirley Smith. That was an incredible experience! Getting published has always been affirmation, the fueling of my writing fire.

In 2016, my husband and I retired and moved to our lake house in the Midlands of SC. I soon joined the South Carolina Writers Association and began meeting twice a month with their Chapin Chapter. All of those members were writing fiction. Two and a half years later, after listening to and critiquing their stories and novels (and forcing them to listen to a little of my poetry!), I raised the bar for myself and began drafting a novel— Winston’s Book of Souls. So, after telling you this long story about how I jumped from a tiny little poem to an 80,000-word novel, I’d have to say it was not a leap, but rather a very slow evolution and finally an awakening of sorts, an acceptance that I was indeed a “real writer” and that I could go the distance of a full-length novel.

Winston’s Book of Souls is such a realistic story. Was it based on true events? If so, can you elaborate? If not, please share how you came up with the idea.

I love your questions! I’m very glad you found the story to be realistic. Winston Taylor carries the story, and he is as real as a relative staying in my house. Winston was created from bits and pieces of my father, with some of his traits exaggerated to dangerous levels. He is NOT my father, mind you, but I borrowed enough from my dad to make Winston feel real. Once I had Winston walking and talking, I had a ball with him! My father would have never done what Winston did concerning Jackson Smith. But I pushed this character to the limit, and he had to make some hard choices.

Regarding events . . . yes, some things that happened were based loosely on true(ish) events, or maybe more like distorted and flawed memories from childhood. The inciting event of Winston discovering Jackson Smith dead in the woods comes from a story I heard when I was little, like maybe six or seven years old. The “true” story goes like this: my dad and some hunting buddies found one of their group dead on a dirt road, the victim of an accidental self-inflicted gunshot wound. Because they were so far out in the wilderness, and they had no way to call for help, my dad insisted they take their friend’s body to town. They put him in the back of Daddy’s station wagon (some of the men protested) and took him to either the sheriff’s office or maybe the funeral home. I recall seeing my dad hosing out the back of the station wagon. I am still not clear if I really saw that, or if my mind just conveniently illustrated what I heard. Doesn’t matter how much of this is true, though. What I dug up from my old memories worked!

Winston was a life insurance salesman. Who would have ever thought that a life insurance agent could be interesting. Right? Well, when I was a little kid, my dad sold life insurance. Door to door. Carrying around a big, fat black binder with handles. All his customer names and insurance premium payments were recorded there. (In the novel, Winston’s wife called this “the book of souls.”) My dad ran into all kinds of crazy situations on his debit routes. And Daddy loved to tell stories! He embellished the most mundane events so that they became as exciting as television shows! Our whole family was often spellbound at the dinner table.

The storm . . . there was a real storm that hit the North Florida/Big Bend area thirty years ago. It was a low-pressure system not predicted to be anything too serious. But over 40 people died in Florida, approximately 14 of them from the 12-foot storm surge. The storm hit in the early morning hours and people were totally unprepared. I took this event, changed it around some, and backed it up to the 1960s.

Remember the squirrel Winston brought home? My dad brought me a squirrel once. A logger found it in a tree he cut down. Remember the girl injured by her horse? My dad always said I would never have a horse—the child of one of his customers had been kicked in the head by her horse. There are other minor events in the story that were sparked by my memories. They helped make the story feel real.

How long did it take you to go from idea to publication?

The idea started with one of my early short stories titled “The Book of Souls.” It was sixteen pages long, published in the Winter 2012-2013 issue of The Main Street Rag. But I didn’t get serious about trying to write a novel until late in 2018, at the urging of my husband, Ben. I decided to use that short story as a diving board into the Olympic-sized pool of a novel. It took me about a year to write the first draft, maybe another year to edit and polish, then almost another two years to figure out how to publish it. Winston was released at the end of February, 2024. Five and a half years? Good grief!

Many aspiring authors are torn between finding a traditional publisher or agent and self-publishing. Did you employ a hybrid publisher to help with the publication of Winston’s Book of Souls? If so, how did you find the experience?

I did not want to self-publish if I could help it. I did not want a hybrid publisher. I thought this story might be my only novel, and I wanted the full experience of searching for an agent and a publisher. And I wanted to be successful in my journey. I never found an agent. After about ten query letters to agents, with either no response or a form letter rejection, I lost patience. I knew I couldn’t get into the big five publishing arena without an agent, so I started researching and submitting to small traditional presses. It didn’t take long to get an offer from TouchPoint Press. I signed at the end of August, 2022. I was on the waitlist for 18 months before the final product was in my hands.

Please share your unique writing process. How do you structure your writing day? Do you begin with an outline or are you a type-as-you-go kind of writer?

I have never had a strong writing practice. When I write poetry (which is rare these days), I am only able to write when inspired by something I’ve seen, felt or heard. I’ve almost never been successful writing to a prompt. Not even in a workshop setting. That feels clinical, and poetry is magic. Poems seem to find me when the time is right.

Fiction comes from a different “well” than poetry. I daydream my way to the story, especially when I’m walking, or floating on a raft in the lake. I figure out what I think should happen overall, the storyline, and I make sticky notes written partly in shorthand, and put them on the inside of my writing room door. I line them up in a pyramid shape. I use shorthand so nobody visiting my writing room can understand what it means. It needs to be as secret as possible, except for my writing group—we share five pages of text twice a month. It’s bad juju to talk too much about what you’re writing. I usually write only when I’ve got an idea or a scene cooking. When the ideas are strong, the writing is very, very good. For my novel, I built a loose outline as I went along. I didn’t know the details of life inside that story when I started writing it . . . it just evolved.

The passages in your novel are filled with descriptions that not only transport the reader into each scene, but also transport them straight into the 1960s. Your use of lingo from that era, incorporation of real events such as the Kennedy assassination, the inclusion of products, songs, cars, TV shows, and news reporters from that decade make for a compelling realistic fiction story. How many research hours did you clock before or during the penning of your novel or did you rely on your own experiences and memories from the time?

I didn’t keep track of the time I spent researching, but I’m sure it was a hefty chunk. It was almost an addiction. I loved it! It was very easy for me to stop in the middle of writing a scene to find out what my characters would have worn for a particular event, what colors were in style, what color and make of car they’d drive. All those historical events! What trees grow around sinkholes? Do buckeye trees grow around sinkholes? How deep are sinkholes? Is the water clear. How cold? How cold are the springs? Were drivers’ licenses made of paper back in 1960? Did they have pictures on them? (Nope!) How much can a human see in complete darkness? Do dead bodies stink right away? Can you smell the guts of a newly-dead body? Could a dead man make a noise if you lifted him from the ground?

Some things, of course, came from my own memories. I was born in 1954, so I was a child of the 60s. The Beatles, Dean Martin, Frank Sinatra. World Book Encyclopedia (we had a set). All of my primary schooling was at Gladys Morse Elementary in Perry, Florida. I actually attended a birthday party at nearby Hampton Springs, once the site of an old, historic resort. I actually swam in the hotel’s remaining cracked and creepy pool, which was filled with sulphur water from a spring. Can you imagine that? Even as a child I knew something was wrong with that picture!

The southern small-town backdrop of Pineville is perfectly situated against the silhouette of racial divide, civil rights issues, and social history of the 60s. What prompted you to choose this specific time period and the Florida setting?

As I said previously, we lived in Perry, Florida until I finished sixth grade. Our schools were segregated in Perry. Everything was segregated. I think it was maybe in fifth grade that we had one Black girl in our classroom. I felt sorry for her at first. But it didn’t take long before she was just one of us kids. I never thought of setting the story in any different time period because that was the real time period of my dad’s job selling insurance door to door.

Police procedure in Pineville and in towns close by gave off a Mayberry feel with an Andy Taylor type sheriff from the American sitcom, The Andy Griffith Show. Was this intentional and what made you decide to write it that way?

I believe that people in small towns are more familiar with each other than in larger cities. It’s easier for people to be more relaxed with each other, more friendly. I don’t think I intentionally wrote it to feel like Andy Griffith. I think Mayberry was patterned after a real small town, not vice versa. I wrote it based on my childhood memories of people in a small town knowing each other, from neighbors to church congregations to law enforcement officials. I personally enjoy dark comedy, so I gave Winston a darkish sense of humor. That played into how Winston interacted with people he knew. And Winston was rarely intimidated by anyone, so he joked around even with people in authority.

Winston Taylor is a flawed character living with inner demons and secrets created by his own transgressions. Louis Fisher with his mysterious past also carries secrets. Though both characters were born under different circumstances, lead dissimilar lives, and have opposing statuses in the community they each possess redeemable qualities and blend flawlessly as they intersect in the story. Did you use character boards to create these characters, or did you simply envision them and let their issues and traits flow out organically as you wrote?

I think we’ve already talked enough about Winston that you now know how he came to be. But Louis . . . his appearance was a mystery to me. I didn’t know who Louis was when he first materialized. I didn’t know what to do with him. I knew he was a young Black man. I saw him walking down to the river to go fishing on his day off. Day off from where? I knew he had a secret; I didn’t know what it was. But it didn’t take long before he was moving fast onto the main stage. And it wasn’t long before I loved him almost as much as Winston. I had to keep a tight rein on him, though. I couldn’t let him have equal or more power than Winston, or it might spell certain death for the whole novel.

Prominent civil rights issues from that time weave through the story. We see and feel discrimination and prejudice at its worst but also redemption and some positive progress. You seamlessly balance the issues and outcomes for the characters and Pineville. Why did you choose that specific subplot and what were you hoping to accomplish?

Your word “seamlessly” makes me smile. I’m glad you didn’t see where I’d stitched it all together, the blatant discrimination and those tiny steps toward acceptance, then ripped out the seams and sewed them back in a different direction—the warp and woof of equality. But I didn’t consciously choose civil rights as a subplot. It was just a necessary part of that time and place.

Please tell us about your chapbook, Breaking Commandments. Is there a specific theme that runs through the poems? Can you share one of your favorite poems from the book?

Thank you for asking! Breaking Commandments (published by Main Street Rag Publishing Company in 2014) is a small collection of primarily Southern free verse poems, some covering my childhood and coming of age. All twenty-five poems are from my life experiences. They have been said to offer “a vision at once earthy and deeply ethical, a voice that locates grace in a dead dove in a father’s hunting jacket or a Bloody Mary on Sunday morning.” The former editor of the Atlanta Review, Dan Veach, said “One would have to go back to Caravaggio to find such delicious darks and brilliantly lit details . . . poems set in the rich earth of a country childhood, but with an art that would illumine any time or place.” It’s hard for me to choose a favorite, but since we’ve talked so much about Winston, and the fact that he’s made of bits and pieces of my dad, and the fact that my novel is dedicated to my father, and my mother as well, I’ll share this prize-winning poem about the loss of my dad:

URSA MAJOR

For WWC

After that final goodbye with her father

she headed home across the Ochlockonee,

eyes full as the river flowing below the bridge,

and an early memory surfaced

of a stone establishment

that once clung to those steep banks,

when she was the child

of the world’s strongest man.

In streams of remembrance she glimpsed him again,

vibrant inside that roadside bar,

buying a round of beer for the crowd

and one for the caged Florida Bear out back,

a shaggy black mass with fly-blown eyes

that rose from a manmade lair

and wrapped the drink in practiced paws,

rivulets foaming around its mouth.

Without even a growl, the bear shuffled away,

lay staring across the river.

In her dimming, half-century vision,

she still recalls those great clawed feet

scrabbling air with the inherent need

of all God’s creatures to reach home.

Will there be a sequel to Winston’s Book of Souls, or do you have any other projects in the works? Can you share a tidbit?

At the request of so many readers, I am certainly considering a sequel. I’m not sure if it’s going to work yet. And it’s summertime—my favorite time at the lake. I’m distracted by boat rides, cold beer, and floating on my raft. But seriously, I think there’s at least another book or two in me.