An Interview with Debra R. Borys: Freelance Writer & Author

Sylvia: Hi Debra, it is such a pleasure to interview you. Please give our readers a brief introduction of yourself and a little about your book.

Debra:I spent eight years volunteering with the homeless on the streets of both Chicago and Seattle. I am a freelance writer and the author of several published short stories and am currently working on a second novel in the Jo Sullivan series which combines mystery and suspense with the reality of throw away youth striving to survive.

Though I live in Seattle now, I am still channeling the lessons I learned on the streets of Chicago. I am surrounded here by mountains and ocean and emerald green trees. Solitude and peace can be found a short drive from home. But until the human element can find a way to treat themselves and each other with respect and understanding, there is ugliness out there as well. Face the ugliness, I say, and tell it to go to hell.

Sylvia: What inspired you to write your first book?

Debra: The original idea for the suspense plot came from a news article I read years ago in the Chicago Tribune. It was about a new method of preservation being used by taxidermists who freeze dry people's pets to produce lifelike replicas that would last indefinitely. One person they interviewed stated that freeze drying could be used on people as well, and compared the process to cooking pizzas in an oven. He sounded so bizarre and unconcerned that it immediately sparked an idea for a character based on him and became the premise for my story. In my research, I actually found an article in a mortuary magazine about a firm that did preserve a man in this manner.

The idea to use homeless kids as important characters came about from my experience volunteering with The Night Ministry in Chicago. I was struck by how many times homeless people are treated as sub-human, like they don't matter. Some people seem to have only contempt for someone who is homeless even when they know nothing about the circumstances. Most people just want to pretend that the homeless don't exist, walking by them with averted eyes. I would like to make these invisible people visible so we can find solutions to the problem, not ignore it.

Sylvia: Is there a message in your novel that you want readers to grasp?

Debra: I want my readers to understand that the important thing to recognize about homeless people is that they are PEOPLE. The homeless part is incidental. They are no more inclined to be dangerous or annoying than any other human being. As I wrote in one of my blog posts at www.paintedblacknovel.com “Is there a chance the homeless drunk might hurt me? Yes, there is. Is there a chance my drunk neighbor might hurt me? Yes, there is. Because they are people, people. People can be dysfunctional–ALL people.” I really do believe that if you treat the homeless with respect, they’ll treat you with respect. Not everyone, not always–because they are people, just like everyone else.

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