Gibbens finds dream job writing romance novels

It took Dee Gibbens 60 years to start her dream job as a romance author.

Born Sarah Dianne Walters Gibbens in New Orleans in 1947, adopted at three months of age, and raised in Richland Parish, she’s done a little of everything along the way.

An admitted daddy’s girl, she was the chosen daughter of the late Reuben Walters who owned Planters Feed and Seed and Lou Walters who was active in many civic clubs and the Rayville Garden Club. Her brother, Lonnie, was involved in publishing in the 1980s, publishing five newspapers and magazines. 

“I was always a country girl,” she says. “I got my first pony when I was six and rode horses all through high school.”

Her first jobs were making pocket money picking pecans and working in her mother’s garden. As an adult she worked as a lab technician, cashier, secretary and manager at a number of business, not the least of which was her husband, Mike Gibben’s restaurant as it was starting out, then working for two decades at the University of Louisiana, Monroe.

 Now in the seventh decade of her life, she is realizing her dream.

 Five of her novels are now available at Barnes and Nobles. They are For Better or for Worse, To Love and Protect and the first three novels in her White Pillars series, A Creole in Charleston, White Pillars and Always Love Me.

“Writing has provided both emotional and creative outlets for me for as long as I can remember,” Gibbens said. “It’s my way of venting when I’m sad or angry ... or ecstatically happy. It’s fun to create word pictures of a fantasy world, the people who occupy it, and then breathe life into them. It’s addictive.”

Gibbens who has always had a love of the arts, turned her hand to writing in her 50s, when a younger relative introduced her to the world of Back Street Boys fan fiction. 

Over the next seven years, she would produce four novel-length works, four novellas and 32 short stories, honing her craft as a member, moderator and secretary treasurer of the Mature Back Street Boys Fan Club International. 

She was eventually enlisted to edit the organization’s 500-page membership manual.

From fan fiction, she branched out into writing her first novel, For Better or Worse.

The novel centers around a guilt-ridden Louisiana man who was temporarily paralyzed in an accident returning home from a horse auction. Even though the wreck was not his fault, and the paralysis is temporary, the main character descends into a state of depression and pushes everyone out of his life -- including God.

Gibbens was able to draw on her youth in Richland Parish to bring the story to life. Growing up on a farm, she was more than familiar with the details of raising livestock.

“I had a show calf that got grand champion at the livestock show in Delhi,” she remembers. “I was so scared of that thing. It was bigger than I was. It got second place at state.”

She also remembers the first time a horse threw her off as a young girl.

“I stood up and grabbed him by the bridle and just looked straight in his eyes and said, ‘That won’t be happening again’,” she said.

Her next novel, To Love and Protect, was the story of a woman who endured six months of living hell after being beaten, raped, abducted, and having her father murdered, and the state trooper who vowed to protect her.

“I knew nothing about the weapons and equipment state troopers use,” Gibbens said, “but there was a man in our church who was a retired state trooper and he kindly helped me get the details right.”

This set the stage for her greatest work, the novels in the White Pillars series.

“I have put about 30 years of research into those novels,” Gibbens said. “That’s the part I really love. Researching the Civil War has been fascinating. There is so much that went on we were never taught in class.”

Her work at ULM gave her access to the library and other resources. Gibbens said were invaluable in making sure she got the facts and feel of the times in the novels which range from the 1850s through 1960s.

The three novels chronicle the adventures of wealthy Creole planter Alex Montclair and the love of his life, Katherine Layton.

In A Creole in Charleston, Montclair, travels to Charleston at the height of Mardi Gras to attend a Planters Conference where he falls in love with Katherine. He also is ambushed by a thug hired by a jealous, former suitor of Katherine’s.

In White Pillars, Montclair returns to New Orleans with a bride on his arm. The scandal of the Creole planter marrying an Americain woman leads to conflict with the Creole woman who’d planned to be his wife and his estranged uncle. Murder, attempted murder, kidnapping, and voodoo all come together in a story of greed and revenge.

In the third novel, Always Love Me, 32-year-old Montclair is one of the wealthiest Creole planters in Louisiana. His cotton and sugar cane crops for the 1859-1860 season are his most profitable since he had inherited White Pillars Plantation at the age of 17. He and Kate have been married five years and have three sons. Life had not been without obstacles that would have weakened most marriages, but Alex and Kate had conquered each one with courage and their faith that God would get them through the trials.

Despite attempts on their lives, kidnapping and the loss of a baby boy, their love had withstood the storms and had only grown stronger and deeper than ever, but life as they knew it was about to change drastically. 

In 1860 there were rumors of war to come between the North and the South over the issue of slavery. In April 1861, war came with the shelling of Ft. Sumter in Charleston Harbor, SC.  In April 1862, the war came to New Orleans, and to the front steps of White Pillars Plantation.

Would Alex lose everything he and his forefathers had worked so hard to accomplish over the past 180 years? Could their love survive the Civil War?

Gibbens is currently working on the fourth novel in the series, Ghosts in the Mist. She hopes to finish the tale of life at White Pillars during reconstruction by the end of the year and would also like to write a series of novellas about the Montclair heirs.

“I’m a pantser,” Gibbens admits. “I can’t work with an outline or a plan. I just have to write the story as it comes to me. Sometimes I’m moving chapters around like a jigsaw puzzle because I wrote them at different times.”

She still writes out her first draft in longhand, keeping it in a folder until the time comes to type it up, editing as she goes. She is also constantly looking for new ideas and jotting down notes for new scenes and plots.

“Writing has always provided emotional and creative outlets for me,” she said. “My poetry reflects the emotional side of me. My stories reflect the creative side of me. I always try to keep a pen and writing pad handy to jot down ideas that come to me out of the blue or to record a quote or something that catches my eye. The world is full of ideas if you just take the time to stop, look and listen.”

Dee Gibbens novels are available online at Barnes & Nobles, Apple Books, Kobo Plus, Scribd, Smashwords and other bookstores.

You can also contact Dee Gibbens’ at bigibbens@yahoo.com for information about her books.