Marilyn Celeste Morris Author of Diagnosis: Lupus will be dropping by on Monday during her virtual book tour for an interview. I'd like to introduce her today.
Although she was raised as a Military Brat, Marilyn Celeste Morris was born in her grandfather’s house in Toronto, Texas, a small Southern Pacific Railroad Section six miles west of Alpine. Perhaps as an omen of what would be the next twenty years of her life, the railroad’s abandonment of this settlement shortly afterward left her with no “permanent” home.
Schooling consisted of Dependents’ Schools while overseas, in Seoul Korea, 1946-47 and Linz, Austria (1949-1952) and various schools stateside. A rarity for a Military Brat, she was fortunate enough to have attended all three high school years and graduated at Lawton Senior High School, Lawton OK. Further education was attained at Cameron State College, Lawton OK, Tarrant County College, Fort Worth TX, and North Texas State University. She received an AAS Degree in Mental Health in 1995.
After studying under the late Grace Nies Fletcher (author of Merry Widow and In My Father’s House), Marilyn began her writing career as a guest columnist in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, and for ten years wrote a weekly humor/human interest column for Suburban Newspapers in the Fort Worth TX area. Besides receiving a First Place award in the Nostalgia category at an Ozark Mountain Writers’ Conference, two “confession” stories were published (under pseudonyms) in the magazines “Jive” and “Bronze Thrills.”
She has taught creative writing at Tarrant County College, Fort Worth TX, survived numerous book signings and speaking engagements, and her first novel, Sabbath’s Room, a paranormal murder mystery was published in 2001. In August 2002, Once a Brat was released. Described as “part travelogue, part therapy session,” she relates sometimes hilarious, sometimes wrenchingly sad experiences of an Army officer’s daughter from 1938 to her father’s retirement in 1958. Her newest book, Diagnosis: Lupus, The Intimate Journal of a Lupus Patient, chronicles her intensive three-year, five doctor search for diagnosis and treatment of her baffling symptoms, her struggles with God and society her anger and frustration (“But you don’t look sick!”) vividly expressed in her daily writings from first symptoms to current remission. Ms. Morris’s intent is to inform other lupus patients, both diagnosed and still searching their feelings are valid, normal and they are not alone.
She is co-facilitator for the Fort Worth Lupus Support Group, North Texas Chapter of the Lupus Foundation of America and member of the Board of Directors. When not writing or editing emerging writers’ manuscripts, she enjoys searching for former classmates and true to her Brat heritage, she has a suitcase packed under the bed, ready to travel at a moment’s notice.
For more information about Lupus go to www.lupus.org
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