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 Neela Sakaria: Thank you for your time. BLOODY HANDPRINTS surrounds the story of your grandmother's death. How did you first become aware that your grandmother had been murdered, and what inspired you to write a book about it?
Shannon Rudy: I first heard this story from my father, Willie Dee Martin. When I was a little girl, my Dad would sit me on his lap and comb my long hair while telling me stories of what it was like growing up on the farm in Oklahoma. He made it should
>like the best place on earth to grow up. He said many frightening things happen while they sat out on the porch and watched the sun go down. What inspired me to write this book was two-fold. (1) I wanted to vindicate me Grandfather from any wrong-doing. And (2) there were so many different spins on this unsolved murder that I had to know the truth once and all, so I could pass on the facts to all the children in the Martin Family. No one knew all my relatives had there own version of the truth-which is why I left the ending of this story open, so the reader could decide "whodunit".
Neela: You include several documents throughout the book. What kind of research was involved in recounting this story? How long was the process of researching and writing the book?
SR: Researching this book was a long and arduous process. By the time I decided to investigate, most of the people had already died. The whole process took years, because I had a full time job at the telephone company. My Grandmother worked for the same company 85 years earlier, and it was while I worked for SBC that I started to become curious. Four years would pass before I would have all the facts. The research was a combination of old news articles-(provided by the Oklahoma Historical Society) dozens of interviews with elderly people still living in Braggs, and surrounding territory and interviews with the Martin family in Tahlequah, OK. Lastly I sought the help of two professional psychics. They were instrumental in filling in the blanks and unfolding the misconceptions in this story-like code, and both came to the same conclusion which in turn helped me find the missing pieces of this story.
Neela: Did your family's perception of what had happened to your grandmother change in any way, after you published the book?
SR: Originally, each member of the family had known very little fact and had their version about who killed Annie Martin. As it turns out, most of them were right about it. Members of the community also had a suspect in mind because it was rumored that someone hated Annie and made threats on her life while boosting one night at the local watering hole. It was there that rumors started to circulate around town of a building threat to kill her was formed. My family and the people of Bragg's all believed it was the work one someone closes to Annie and not the work of a crazed AX Fiend, as reported in the press.
Neela: What were some of the biggest challenges you faced in completing BLOODY HANDPRINTS? How did you overcome them?
SR: The hardest part was finding the truth and deciphering the facts from rumors. This book would not have been written if I wasn't confident that I have found the truth and solved the mystery. With all the news articles, pictures, interviews and the help of two psychics, it finally started to make sense, and I could quantify the details & events leading up to the murder, and see the motives behind what seem to be a senseless attach of an innocent mother of two. Luckily, people still living in the territory remembered this story, and were anxious to know the truth and happy to help put the mystery to rest.
Neela: Did you ever feel worried that you weren't doing the tale justice or that you might have the facts incorrect? How did you fill in any holes that you might have had in your research?
SR: No. As mentioned above this story took a tremendous amount of work, time, money, travel and learning to achieve. It was buried with the dearly departed, but some how I was driven to unearth the truth or die trying. This was important to me because my Grandfather was in the story, and may have been the perpetrator of the murder! I didn't know until I spent four years digging for the truth. At the end of that journey, I felt that by writing this book and exposing the true killer, it could somehow put Annie Martin's soul to rest. Actually the day I sent the book to the printer, I felt proud knowing that no stone went unturned and writing Bloody Handprints was a remarkable accomplishment. Prior to writing Bloody Handprints, I worked for the Telephone Company, and my job was to profile and write about the telecommunications industry. So digging for hard
facts was second nature to me. Moreover my training gave my the ability to use the internet as a research tool where I was able to find out facts about the characters background--solidify by the families in Oklahoma, the Madden Family, and others who lent a helpful hand in putting together a timeline of some of the characters in the book.
Neela: Are you working on any other current/future projects?
SR: Chapter One of Bloody Handprints summarizes the events leading from the Trail of Tears to Oklahoma Territory were the story of Annie Martin starts. I did this for two reasons (1) to give the readers some background understand of the roots of the people living in the territory, and (2) to educate the readers' who are interested in the culture of the Cherokee Indians, but do not want to read a long traditional textbooks of American history. The first five pages simply outline the chain of events.
My next book Bloody Tears will zero-in on and chronicle stories from surviving family member on the Trail of Tears, where Cherokee Indians who fought and died along the way were forceful removed from there homes, and told by the military to cross the mountains in winter and were exposed to the cruel punishment inflicted upon them by American soldiers. It won't be a history book because we have enough of those; instead, it will be a collection of untold stories-explaining how they picked up the pieces of their broken lives and survived the hardships, as 4000 lives were lost along the trail.
In addition, I'm working on a fairy book story entitled: Fairy Town, CA. A children's book about a boy who gets lost in the California Redwoods and accidentally fall into the magical world of Fairies. He must find his way out before sunrise or be trapped in their world forever. The boy learns many things along the way and helps us all understand the importance of fairies and why they are here.
Bloody Handprints can be found at: Barnes & Noble, Border's, Price Grabber.com or your favorite book store. To order on line, please visit www.bloodyhandprints.com or call 800-247-6553.
Bloody Handprints
ISBN: 0972451803
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