Reading Corner | Author sees no end to the marvelous Miss Julia

Ann B. Ross — B is for Brown, her maiden name — author of the popular Miss Julia series, projects the genteel manner of a true southern lady.

“My dear, I just appreciate you wanting to do [the interview],” she said when contacted by telephone. She said she’s transparent and welcomes questions, but the most fun in interviewing this successful author is the added benefit of her delightful sense of humor.

“I can tell you the silliest thing in the world,” she said, admitting she wanted to be a writer since her childhood in Georgia. “I was going to name my heroes things like Richard Richards and call him Dick, and William Williams and call him Bill. I was into all these double names. I was probably 10 or 11 or 12.”

Her imagination has skyrocketed through the years to create lovable, unique Miss Julia, the elderly widow who dares to accept challenges the average person, man or woman, would avoid. Ross came to fame in 1999 with “Miss Julia Speaks Her Mind” and has progressed through 17 books to this year’s release of “Miss Julia Lays Down the Law,” the topic of a presentation she gave April 10 at The Moveable Feast luncheon at Kimbel’s Restaurant in Pawleys Island.

Ross said she wrote pieces for her high school newspaper but after graduation chose nursing as her career and earned her credentials from the S.C. Baptist Hospital in Columbia. “My main purpose at that time in my life was to make a living, and that seemed to be the way to go,” she said.

Nursing was part of her life until she began to raise a family. She stayed home with her three children, but as they grew and went off to college, she said she needed more. “I started doing a bit of writing,” and in the early 1980s, Avon original paperbacks published her mysteries, “The Murder Cure” and “The Murder Stroke.”

“Neither one of them did very well,” she said, “and I thought, ‘I tried that, and it didn’t work out very well,’ so I thought I’d do something else.”

And she did. Ross earned a bachelor’s degree in literature from the University of North Carolina at Asheville and continued at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where she earned a master’s degree and a Ph.D. In 1987, her hardback, “The Pilgrimage,” a story of two sisters going west “to convert savages” during the heyday of that migration, was published, but none of these three early works is still in print.

What has surprised Ross the most about the Miss Julia series is “how many people seem to think that I am Miss Julia, and I am not.” She said she hasn’t had the adventures Miss Julia experiences, but it also amazes her that the series is so popular and all the books are still in print. No firm sales numbers were available, but the books also have been translated into several languages including Italian, German, Polish, Croatian and Japanese.

Ross took a detour when she wrote the 16th book in the series, “Etta Mae’s Worst Bad-Luck Day,” by switching point of view. “[Etta Mae] just kept speaking to me, and I knew she had a story to tell,” Ross said. In July, Ross goes on tour to promote that book’s paperback publication, and she plans to continue writing Miss Julia books “as long as [my editors] want me to.”

If their attitudes change, she won’t stop writing. “This sounds far-fetched, but I would really, really like to write something about the fourth-century A.D. That’s my field of study.” She explained the fascination includes the fact that Constantine, Jerome and Ambrose were all born in that century.

She said, however, she has a wish that won’t be fulfilled. “I would love to go to Europe and see all the cathedrals and ancient ruins and churches,” she said, “but I don’t fly, so I’ll never get there.”

She no longer pursues her past hobbies of needlepoint, horseback riding and playing bridge, but her desire to read has not abated. She is rereading John Sanford, who writes thrillers, but she adds, “In order to make myself look good, I will tell you I have just finished the first volume of Gibbons’ “The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire,” which I have never gone through entirely.”

One idiosyncrasy she said she has is reading about the Roman Empire and the early days of Christianity, and learning the Lord’s Prayer and the 23rd Psalm in Latin.

“That’s my secret,” she said.

You can read more about Ross and Miss Julia at www.missjulia.com, or send her an email at aross@missjulia.com.

Jo Ann Mathews, For The Sun News

This story was originally published April 11, 2015 at 8:00 AM with the headline "Reading Corner | Author sees no end to the marvelous Miss Julia."