New Release!
Write. Now!
A wealth of inspiration and guidance for writers and want-to-be writers
Write. Now! will get you to do just that: Write Now. Whether you’re a new writer, a seasoned writer with writer’s block, or an accomplished writer seeking to reach a higher level of proficiency and inspiration, this book is for you. Sylvia Dickey Smith has condensed more than twenty-five years of writing and book publication into this one volume. Technique, motivation, wisdom … there’s something in here for everyone wishing to write more productively and with more confidence. Within these pages, you too might find the key to unlocking your passion for words and the track to show you how to Write. Now!
“Write. Now! evokes the essentials for memorable stories. A must for the toolbox of writers, published and unpublished.”
-NYT Best-Selling Author, Parris Afton Bonds
Dance On His Grave
A Sidra Smart Mystery – Book 1
Sidra Smart, rookie private eye, struggles to survive her own internal conflicts as she plunges into a surreal world of passion and murder. Fifty-year-old Sidra Smart is not your ordinary rookie private eye. A recently divorced preacher’s wife, she knows nothing about running the private detective business she’s just inherited from her brother. But soon her first client bursts in with vague flashbacks of a grisly thirty-year-old murder. The story takes place in and around Orange, Texas, in the borderlands where Texas and Louisiana meet, a region filled with colorful characters, good food, and dark secrets.
Deadly Sins, Deadly Secrets
A Sidra Smart Mystery – Book 2
Rookie PI Sidra Smart thinks she knows where she’s headed. She’s divorced her preacher-husband, she’s inherited a private detective business, and she’s solved her first case. But then she moves into a ghost active house and discovers that the past holds the key not only to her future, but the to the lives of innocent people trapped in an unholy web of deception that spans decades. This mystery/suspense novel is set in a small Texas town where everyone knows everything about the other-or at least think they do-until the sins of the past catch up with the secrets of the present. Where yesterday’s lighthouses, yellow fever, and Civil War skirmishes play a significant role in uncovering the sins of today. When Sid’s second case requires she clear the name of a dead man, she finds herself confounded by clues that lead nowhere. She battles her own prejudice, a burned-out office, the disappearance of a local preacher’s wife, and a midnight trip through a murky swamp before clues begin to fall in place. Then, with assistance from a seemingly unknown and perhaps ghostly force, Sid learns something about herself-when the cause is right she never retreats. The interaction between Sid and her client, a tobacco-spitting, chair-rocking old codger more interested in the shine on his shoes than the dust on his furniture, once again brings small-town America to life.
Dead Wreckoning
A Sidra Smart Mystery – Book 3
Sidra Smart’s search for an elusive pirate schooner stirs up a bayou bonanza of treasure hunters, smugglers, and the spirits of the infamous Jean Lafitte and his pirate queen, Mary Anne Radcliff.
New P.I. Sid Smart, ex-preacher’s wife, is back for another puzzling case, as she tackles the strange tale of Boo Murphy, who has just been accused of murder. When Boo tells a tale of stumbling on the Hotspur, Lafitte’s privateering schooner, half-buried in a Texas swamp, most everyone is convinced she’s not telling the whole truth.
As Sidra searches for both the schooner and evidence to clear her client, she begins to suspect that her trusted mentor and friend George Léger is involved in something fishy as well.
What would she do without the help of companions Aunt Annie and Slider, her faithful mongrel pooch, as the dangerous investigation takes Sidra from the small town of Orange, Texas, out into the nearby bayous? Interwoven families and feuding neighbors muddy the clues, swirling from past to present, as elusive as a spectral schooner.
Swamp Whisperer
A Sidra Smart Mystery – Book 4
In this latest Sidra Smart mystery, Sid takes a bumpy road trip with her Aunt Annie. In the meantime, Boo Murphy – a cranky old swamp-rat who prefers to spend time in her pirogue, hunting and fishing, to spending time with people – is pulled into a strange world when she discovers a deserted brush-hut deep in the bayou. The discovery leads Boo deeper and deeper into a clandestine effort to resurrect a cultural site for the Atakapa-Ishak natives. But are the leaders legit, or do they have other self-serving passions?
In The Swamp Whisperer, Boo has to rely on her wits and swamp wisdom, as she and her cousin Sasha are pulled into an maelstrom of backwater mayhem. The story takes place in the bayou border- lands where Texas and Louisiana meet, a region filled with colorful characters, good food, and dark secrets.
Painted Ladies
A Sidra Smart Mystery – Book 5
Old houses . . . do they celebrate happy times with us? Do they hurt when we hurt? Or do they have their own stories to whisper in the night, their own dark secrets to hide?
In this 5th book in the award-winning Sidra Smart mystery series, slightly psychic private investigator Sidra Smart has a new female client who has inherited not one but three mysterious Victorian houses in Hot Springs, Arkansas.
Original Cyn
A Novel
Drowning in the lack of identity beyond the one assigned by her preacher-husband, Cynthia wonders whether she should stay in the relationship, but before she can decide, events force her to flee. If she goes far enough fast enough, those back home will have to deal with the chaos they created. Deal with it or go to hell in their sanctimonious handbaskets. Until a phone conversation leaves her with even more difficult choices.
War Of Her Own
A World War II Novel
A War of Her Own is a compelling World War II historical novel, set in Orange, Texas, in 1943, about a Texas version of Rosie the Riveter in search of happiness. In the summer of 1943, Orange, Texas, is a sleepy little town overrun with tens of thousands of new workers. With jobs galore at the wartime shipyards, the workers are rich with cash and looking for a good time. Bea Meade, mother of an infant son, finds her life shattered when her philandering husband announces he is leaving her for another woman. To make ends meet, Bea takes a job at a shipyard as a riveter. Meanwhile, she searches for the love missing in her life. Life is good for everyone in Orange—except Bea, who has to fight her own battles against a no-good husband, the prejudice facing women in the workplace, and the mysteries of her own past. Bea’s journey to discover who she really is, a vibrant woman of her times, serves up an entertaining story of the World War II homefront you’ll remember long after the final pages.
Sacred Lesons: From Wilderness Wandering
Nonfiction
Sylvia Dickey Smith’s wilderness wandering started in 1981 when her father died suddenly and unexpectedly. For several years, she felt abandoned by the God that she had faithfully served for decades, both in the U.S. as the wife of a pastor, and on the island of Trinidad, West Indies as a foreign missionary. Later, as the healing came, she made an important discovery. Wilderness is a mighty sacred place. In “Sacred Lessons from Wilderness Wandering,” she shares with the reader a few lessons she learned along the way.
Sassy Southern, Classy Cajun
Sidra Smart Mystery Series
Sassy Southern, Classy Cajun, by Sylvia Dickey Smith, is a “Good Times” cookbook by the author of the Sidra Smart mystery series. It includes 87 recipes, featuring a mouth-watering assortment of favorite southeastern Texas regional foods. Categories include appetizers, breads, breakfast recipes, desserts, main dishes, and vegetable dishes.