About Sarah

I was born on a Monday, Groundhog’s Day, 1959, and yes, I’ve had lots of fun with it over the years. Especially when my Grandma Verlie was alive. She’d call me way before daylight and tell me not to go outside and see my shadow. She didn’t want six more weeks of bad weather. I have two friends from elementary school who remember my special day and call me every year.

I live in the community I grew up in. Elkin, North Carolina our small town close by is shadowed by the beautiful Blue Ridge Mountains and is located only a few miles from Stone Mountain State Park. The old home place sits on a hill overlooking The Big Elkin Creek. I spent my summers wading around exploring the creek-bed, climbing the rocks at Carter Falls, and searching the river bottoms for arrowheads. Needless to say I was very much a tomboy. Born the second girl of four children my parents probably wanted me to be that boy. My older sister and two
younger brothers all live nearby with
their families.

My daddy was a self-employed scrap metal dealer. A junk man is what he was called. He was also a trader. He loved to collect pocket watches, gold coins, knives and antique clocks. I can see him now, bargaining with another trader over this or that. I owe my daddy a lot. He taught me the value of hard work and a good name. No, he wasn’t perfect, but to me, the one he passed down his red hair and freckles to, he was pretty close. My mama stayed at home, always having supper ready when daddy got back from work. They’re both gone now, it’s a sad day when suddenly you become an orphan, no matter how old you are.

I’ve always been the kind of person who does things a bit out of the box. At the end of my junior year I only needed one semester of English to graduate. I just couldn’t see wasting time on senior year, so I went to summer school for six weeks and finished high school a year early.

I have been married to Jerry for thirty-four years. He works in the scrap metal business with one of my brothers; they too, are junk men. We have one daughter Wendy, and a very special granddaughter Emma. I spend lots of time with her, we love to read books, color and be outside.

I started keeping a diary as a young girl, writing down my thoughts, dreams and worries. At fifteen, a good friend died in a car accident, my first poem titled The Black Car, was for his family. Since, I have penned many others to console friends, family and myself.

In third grade, after being made to read a children’s classic, The Boxcar Children, I was forever hooked on books. In the early 90’s I realized I was never going to be happy until I wrote my own novel. An avid reader, I stepped out of the box again, and instead of living through other writers I began my own journey, enrolling in a writing program at The Institute of Children’s Literature. I graduated and started my first book, In the Coal Mine Shadows. It took me over ten years to finish. I was, at the time, a wife, mother and full time Advertising Manager at our local newspaper. Finally, having finished, I didn’t know what to do with it. It was shelved for several more years. All the while it stayed inside my head, willing itself to be released.

Then as fate would have it, almost three years ago, I grasped the opportunity to retire from the newspaper business, stay home and yes…write full time. After In the Coal Mine Shadows, Guardian Spirit was birthed and now The Color Of My Heart is almost complete.

Guardian Spirit is a gripping tale of survival! It brings to life the realities of certain evils in the world, while capturing the essence of hope. I know you’ll fall in love with Sadie and Sammy, the two abused children and their mother, Millie. Together with the Cherokee’s they prove miracles really can happen.

In The Color Of My Heart Laura finds out her birth mother is part African American. Her perfect life becomes less than ideal, as her husband tries to cover up his own secret. You’ll go back in time as The Wanderer, one of the last slave ships brings Laura’s ancestors to a new world. Are things different today? Do you see the color of someone’s skin or, the color of his or her heart?

In the Coal Mine Shadows is a gritty southern tale of Mame. After a coal mining explosion in West Virginia kills her father, Mame soon finds out that trying to survive in a nearly deserted coal mining town, without a father in the early 1900’s is anything but easy. She’s got to find a way out of the sleepy little town of Bergton. Soon she forms a plan of deceit that will bring her nothing but regret and sorrow. In the Coal Mine Shadows placed in the top thirty of four hundred entries in the Santa Fe Writer’s Project. Mr. Andrew Gifford, Project Director said, “In the Coal Mine Shadows stood out as an example of excellence in the craft of writing.”

I have found life to be an ever-changing kaleidoscope of colors. Some days are bright, with sun shiny days, others gray and misty. But there is one thing for certain; there will always be another story spinning around in my head.

— Sarah Martin Byrd