Sylvia Dickey Smith, Mystery Novel Dance on His Grave

Posted on October 6, 2007 
Filed Under Fiction

Dance On His GraveBorn in Orange, Texas, Sylvia Dickey Smith entered this world backwards—feet first and left-handed—and says she’s done most things backward ever since.

Dance On His Grave is the first book in her Third Eye Mystery Series.

At seventeen, Sylvia married a local boy and became the “pastor’s wife” while still a senior at Stark High School. After graduation, the two moved to Fort Worth where he attended seminary, and then later, to several small Texas towns where he pastored local Baptist churches.

After being appointed as foreign missionaries to the Caribbean island of Trinidad, they lived and worked there for six years before returning to the U.S, and settling in El Paso, Texas.

At 41 Sylvia took her first freshman class at the University of Texas at El Paso and fought her way to a BA in Sociology and a Masters in Educational Psychology, all while rearing four children, being a pastor’s wife, and a foreign missionary.

After graduation, her life took a different turn. She struck out on her own and began a career as a single mother working with non-profit and for-profit organizations within the human services field, and conducting private practice as a licensed professional counselor and marriage and family therapist.

Several years later, she married a retired Army Colonel, and they eventually relocated to the central Texas area where she continued employment within the human services field. After retirement, she took on the challenge to write a mystery novel.

After she decided to set her mystery series in Orange, she conducted research on the area and found a rich history she’d never known existed. She discovered a fascinating county full of folks from all walks of life, and of all color, each with an iron strength and determination. She also developed a new sense of awe and respect for the meandering Sabine and Neches Rivers, once plied by Paleo-Indians, pirate schooners, steamboat captains, Confederate Cottonclads, and then WW II Destroyers.

The result of this research inspired her to weave the past with the present in Sidra Smart and The Third Eye mystery series. The first book, Dance On His Grave, is available at bookstores now. The second book, DEADLY SINS-DEADLY SECRETS, launches November 1, 2007.

Want to know more about Dance On His Grave? Read the synopsis of Dance on His Grave at BloggingAuthors.

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Comments

3 Responses to “Sylvia Dickey Smith, Mystery Novel Dance on His Grave”

  1. Max E. Pettit on October 9th, 2007 6:05 pm

    Sulvia writes a compelling mystery tale mixed with personal issues as Sidra inherits her brothers private investigators business in fascinating Orange, Texas. I think you will enjoy the tingling sub plots, the well worded description of the area entertwined sub plots that take you through the various avenues as she solves the mysterious plot of the story. She at the same time is able to verbalize some of her own feelings about churches and pastors. Congratulations Silvia.

  2. Wanda C. Keesey on October 10th, 2007 6:20 am

    There’s never a dull moment–or page in this book. Sylvia Dickey Smith has built a novel worth staying up all night to finish, if necessary, and it’s the first in the series. How great is that?

  3. Nina Hoover on March 10th, 2008 10:31 am

    Look forward to reading sylvia’s newest novel. Is this the one that included several references to Riverside?

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