Miss Kansas City Kitty: Doris Markham's Story
- Deborah Dilks
- Fiction
- Historical, Biography
- 15-Jan-2020
Doris Markham’s Story takes you back to Kansas City in the 1930s and 1940s as well as rural Missouri living at the turn id the twentieth century. Join Doris on her escapades through three marriages and a dozen boyfriends. Miss Kansas City Kitty Doris Markham’s Story is based on a true story about one spirited country girl’s struggles to survive in Kansas City when it was a wild town; some called it “The Paris of the Plains” with illegal gambling, speakeasies, gangsters, barbecue and jazz.
Her story is a love story, okay several love stories mixed with drama and comedy. People described Doris Markham as a pistol, a free spirit and stubborn. She could be called an early woman’s rights activist because she often said “What’s right for the goose is right for the gander”.
IN this book you will see Kansas City from a working girl’s view and find gangsters, kidnapping, murder, prostitution, speakeasies, supper clubs, bars and even a famous person or two. When Doris won Kansas City Kitty competition, her life changed.
AUTHOR Q&A
1. What is your book about?
Miss Kansas City Kitty is about my mother, a woman who moved from rural north Missouri to Kansas City, Missouri in the 1930s. She worked in dinner clubs and drinking establishments during the ending of Prohibition when gangsters, illegal gambling and crooked politicians were running rampant in the city. This book includes love stories, in fact several love stories of her life. She was married three times in this book. One husband was abusive and one offered her up as a prostitute to a hotel client. My father was her third husband and the love of her life. The book tells about the gangsters, murder, prostitution, kidnapping, illegal gambling and love with a gentle mix of comedy.
2. What inspired the story?
My mother always wanted me to write a book about her life. She was a spirited woman who believed in women’s rights.
3. I understand that this is based on a true story. How much of it is real?
Most of it is real. I would say about 90% and what isn’t real is me changing people’s names to avoid problems and/or building a story around what I knew happened. What you may think can’t be real is and what you may think is real isn’t.
4. What are some of the more powerful themes in your book?
As I stated above, my mother was a strong woman who had to fight for everything she had or did. She was a survivor. She had several boyfriends and in the end four husbands (my father died and she remarried). The book tells her story about surviving kidnapping, knowing two murder victims, married to a murder suspect, meeting famous people and love stories. I included letters from past boyfriends, husbands and family to show the writing style of the era.
5. What type of reader would enjoy this book?
Readers who are interested in the historical look at the 1930s and 1940s, Kansas City history, women’s rights, and love stories. There is some action in the book as well. I have found that men as well as women have enjoyed reading my book.
6. What was your biggest challenge writing this book?
When I started writing the book, it was 2011 and I was working more than 40 hours a week at my full-time job. I could only work on it from time to time so it took me a long time to finish. Just when I thought I was finished, I would find a box of letters and memories of hers that had me go back and either rewrite some parts or add to other parts. The last things I found were the letters from old boyfriends and more letters from husbands. It was very overwhelming and the book was huge over 800 pages so I made it into two books. Because the book was my baby for eight years and something I and my mother talked about writing many, many years before that it was hard to release it to the public and open it up for criticism and scrutiny.
7. Who is your favorite author and what are some of your favorite books?
I like Dan Brown, Agatha Christie, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, J.K. Rowling, Richard Matheson, and any author who writes with a historical perspective. I don’t have one favorite book. I like them all.
8. What was your hardest scene to write and why?
The hardest scene was when my Uncle Ross was hitting and hurting my mother. When I knew him, he was my favorite uncle and not like that at all.
9. How much research went into writing your book?
I did look into the history of a few things, but mostly I went with what my mother told me. I interviewed her and recorded it in 2000 through 2002 so I would have exactly what she said to refer to later. I just wish I had asked her more questions and then just let her talk. (I kept interrupting her. Now I am mad at myself for doing that.)
10. When did you first know you wanted to write this book?
When I was nine years old I wrote an English paper that was published in my hometown newspaper. My mother always encouraged my writing. I don’t remember exactly when she started telling me that she wanted me to write a book about her life, but I remember talking about it as a young adult.
11. What is your writing process?
I write down a type of outline with topics to cover and start writing. I like to work on it for a while and then walk away from it for a few days, a week, or even a month or two. Now that I am retired, I can get back to writing sooner but still set it down for as long as a month or as short as a day to do other things in life. I wait for an inspiration, but when I am writing I don’t get anything else done and stay up as late as 4 or 5 a.m. working on the document.
12. What is the best advice you have received about writing?
Don’t worry about grammar, punctuation or sentence structure just get the story down and then work on correcting it.
13. What advice would you have for anyone getting ready to write a book?
Find a place that allows you to concentrate on your writing and set your ideas down on paper first so that you can refer to them later. When I wrote this book, I listened to music from the 1930s and 1940s to put me in the mood. Then just start writing and don’t worry about sentence structure, you will hire an editor to catch those errors. When you are finished writing and making all of the corrections initially, read each chapter separately and out loud. Best way to see if it makes sense to you. Then ask two or three Beta readers, then look for folks outside your closest friends to read it.
14. What is the most surprising thing you discovered about yourself during the writing process?
Once I started writing, I don’t want to stop. I have my third book almost finished and gathering information and research for the fourth and fifth books.
15. Where can people learn more about you and where can they buy your book?
I have a website: www.Deborahdilks.com and a Facebook page, Deborah Dilks, Writer. There are links on my webpage where a person can purchase my books or they can be found by googling my name or on Amazon or Barnes and Noble.
My name is Debby Dilks, although I am trying to become accustomed to using my given name Deborah Dilks again. I was born and raised in Northwest Missouri, moving to the Greater Kansas City area when I graduated from high school. My husband and I will soon be married for 49 years. We have two children and four grandchildren. Past foreign exchange students and former college students are also considered to be a part of our family.
In 2017 after thirty-three years, I retired from the University of Missouri Kansas City in the School of Computing and Engineering. While there I wore many hats, but the ones I am the most proud was advisor to seven different engineering and computer science student organizations and two different honor societies. One group, the UMKC Robot Team bares my name in their title and their lab is also named after me.
