Like so many great story tellers before her, it all began in the south.
Southern Beginnings...
Reba Ponder Weiss was born and raised in Jones Chapel, a small farming community, outside of Cullman, Alabama. Although country life was a lot of hard work, she had plenty of time to roam the woods, visit neighbors and barge in on relatives. Her huge extended family and close knit community provided twenty-five years of precious memories not to mention, writing inspiration!
Later she moved to upstate New York, lived in the suburbs of Georgia, and enjoyed her home on the prairies of Wyoming. Currently, she lives and works on the East End of Long Island, but dreams of retiring one day (real, real soon) with her husband, Joseph, their children and two golden retrievers, to Fayetteville, Tennessee.
That's where she hopes to write fulltime and do lots of “poodaddling” (her daddy’s term for working really hard on something that doesn’t pay a lot of money) with photography, oil painting, sewing and genealogy.
Reba draws her inspiration from her Southern roots and life long night terrors. Years of vivid nightmares are kept in a personal journal, full of hand written notes and sketches, detailing the hours in the night when her mind seems to take its own little road trip. Her current series: After The End including, this I know- Sarah’s Confession, tells me so–The Last Witness, and to him belong-Asa’s Chase are spine chilling, and sometimes disturbing, paranormal thrillers based on one of those journeys…which began when consciousness ended.
When asked what future books are in the making she laughs and says, “Oh, I don’t think I will live long enough to write down all the stories I have in my head. There have been a couple of independent film director’s talk to me about making my After the End series into movies. That would only happen if they filmed it in the Deep South and used local actors. Who knows, it could happen. Other than that, I am thinking about a book about caretaking and caring for family members with dementia. I would also love to do a compilation of short stories using some of my grandmother’s (on both sides) wonderful life stories of growing up during the depression in the Deep South. I already have a title: Tales of the Plummy Pile. Plummy Pile, you say? Well, you have to wait to read the book to find out!” Then, she giggles and whispers, “You never know where poodaddling will lead you.”
