Award-winning writer, eco-freak and mother of five, Julia Park Tracey has some explainin’ to do.
UPDATE: Talk about hot under the collar! Today is the official launch date of Tongues of Angels! Meaning it’s the perfect time to meet the author and hear how the novel was based on a true story.
We’ve got some celebrating to do! Today would’ve been the 103rd birthday of Doris Louise Bailey, star of I’ve Got Some Lovin’ To Do: The Diaries Of A Roaring Twenties Teen, 1925-1926. The first volume of her diaries were recently edited and published by her great-niece, Julia Park Tracey, an award-winning writer, editor, journalist and activist. I’m a big fan of Doris’, and of Julia’s, so I thought it was a great time to kick off my new “A Person of Interest” feature on Chloe Gets A Clue. I chatted with Julia – a self-described ecofreak, cat/chicken lady and mother of five creative geniuses – about her newly famous aunt and some other projects she’s got in the works. Here’s what she had to say.
How did you decide to publish your aunt’s diaries, thus striking fear into the heart of everyone who’s ever kept a journal of their secret hopes and dreams? Explain yourself. 
Julia: I was posting snippets on Facebook and seeing such a great reaction that it seemed they were made for a book. I think writers tend to see the world in terms of “Can I make a poem or an article out of this? Is this the book I’ve been wanting to write?” I knew, when I had the thought, that is was exactly the book I’d been wanting to write.
Do you think Doris would mind that you published them?
Julia: I think she would be dismissive, on the one hand, that anyone would care about her youthful gushing, but thrilled at the attention, on the other. She did leave the box to me, knowing full well that I’m a writer. She knew I would read them and entrusted them to me – so I have no worries that she would be unhappy about the sharing of her stories.
Do the glimpses you get of Doris as a teen reshape your perceptions of the adult woman you knew?
Julia and Doris at 99.
Julia: I do feel as if I know her better. But I don’t know that I know her differently. She is so much the same, just more energetic and vivacious. The one surprise was in how she wanted to be a writer. I didn’t know that about her, and didn’t see that in her letters to me at any time in my lifetime.
Doris is kind of a rock star on Facebook and Twitter. Why do you think that is?
Julia: Because Doris is so typical a teen, I think people connect with her immediately. She is so self-centered and naïve about her actions and reactions – I think we all take a look and recognize ourselves. The charm, however, is in her authentic 1920s voice, slang, expressions and the setting of her own real world.
Have you also kept diaries? If so, how would you feel having them shared with the world? (Personally, I have the literary equivalent of a porn pal, someone to come confiscate mine in the case of my untimely demise.)
Julia: I used to keep journals. I can sum them up in about three sentences: Woe is me! I suck! When will I become a writer? The end. A few years ago I went through those and decided that most of them had to go. As a good treehugger, I 
recycled them. I kept a few – the ones where I was pregnant and which were basically love letters to my unborn children. Those, I have given to my daughters. Nowadays, I have Facebook for my existential yawping.
Your next project doesn’t involve Doris but is just as close to your heart, can you tell us about it?
Julia: My other project is both old and new. It’s a novel called Tongues of Angels about a Catholic priest who meets a woman in need, and falls in love. The book is about his struggle to choose between his faith and his heart, which, in the Catholic Church, do not always mesh. Their story is complicated by church politics, by her secret past, and by his jealous best friend, a gay priest. Such a love triangle! The story is old because it’s based on the true background story of my former husband, who was a priest when we met. He left the Church so we could marry. However, it’s fiction, not a documentary! (It has a poignant, happy ending, for one thing.) It’s new, again, because while I published Tongues of Angels independently 10 years ago, that was before social media and the ebook revolution. So distribution and sales were very low; bookstores just wouldn’t sell or promote indy books then. So, thanks to Indie-Visible Ink, Tongues of Angels will be back in a 10th anniversary edition in April. Drama in the Catholic Church is a far cry from Doris and her Roaring Twenties, but I think readers will like the sexy, sassy, behind-the-scenes tattle-telling.
To learn more about Julia and her works, visit thedorisdiaries.com or her Tongues of Angels page on Facebook.
(Photo credit: J Astra Brinkman)
