Today in ‘Fabulous ladies I know’, I want to talk about Ronlyn Domingue, who is my oldest friend, and who is a very successful novelist nowadays. I am very proud of her.
I met her when I was 10 years old. I’d just moved to Lafayette Louisiana, and was going to a new school there. I was used to new schools because I generally went to a different one every year. It was the oil boom in the 80’s, and every time the wind shifted, we moved. I learned to make friends pretty quickly, and to move on just as quickly when it was time to leave a place, but there was one person that I stayed friends with through all that chaos, and that was Ronlyn.
She welcomed the new girl that first week, and we’ve been friends ever since. We didn’t have social media or email then, and getting kids to keep in touch through letter writing was always a long shot, but when I moved back to Houston, Ronlyn always wrote to me, and even when I sometimes got lazy about writing back, she persisted until I did.
That’s her on the left, and me in the back (somehow, I’m the tall one!). Laura, a friend I lost touch with (Ronlyn didn’t, of course!) is in the front.
Even when Ronlyn was 10 years old, she was going to be a writer. At the time, I decided I was, too, and we even wrote a book together. It was terrible, and nobody but the two of us ever needs to see it, but it still exists. Over the years, I didn’t stick with writing in a dedicated way, but she did. Now she is an internationally published author of four novels, as well as essays and short stories. Her first novel, The Mercy of Thin Air, has been published in 10 languages and has been nominated for big book awards. It’s a beautiful book, if you’re looking for some good holiday reading.
She is also a fabulous cook, a lover of nature and animals, and one of the best human beings I’ve ever met. I am enormously proud of her, and I’m so glad we have remained friends.
If you want to see more about her or read her books, it’s all on her website: http://www.ronlyndomingue.com/
Lola's Umbrella 