The Hancock-Henderson Quill, Inc.

The Older Woman In My House Received Attention

by: Dessa Rodeffer, Quill Publisher-Owner

21 April 2004

After writing last week's editorial we all received a lot of comment from many readers that enjoyed the email Shirley had received from her cousin and had published.

In fact, she and I were reading it again on Monday and I commented that it was just too good not to have been published by someone.

With that, I began searching the web by putting in bits and pieces of the email.

On the third try, I put in "A strange old lady has moved into my house" and bingo, the author came up and the complete poem in several places.

I quickly emailed the author and got a very nice response. I apologized for not using her name and told her of the good response and offered to put what I found on her web site in the paper. So along with my apology here goes - as Paul Harvey would say - the rest of the story:

The Stranger in My House

AUTHOR
Rose Madeline Mula

Rose Mula was an executive assistant, a public relations specialist, and an operations manager for a New England theater chain before discovering a passion for writing. She has written business and trade articles to earn a living, and humor for the fun of it.

Her work has appeared in The Saturday Evening Post, Yankee, Modern Maturity, The Christian Science Monitor, The Reader's Digest, The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Baltimore Sun, and more than six dozen other magazines and newspapers.

Actually-thousands of newspapers, since one of her essays, The Stranger in My Mirror (originally titled, The Stranger in My House), was reprinted in Ann Landers' nationally syndicated column in 1999, without Rose's byline. Ms. Landers explained that she had received it from her cousin in Phoenix and wanted to share it with her readers even though she didn't know the author.

When Rose left a phone message for her, Landers returned the call personally, with gracious compliments and apologies, and she promptly printed an attribution.

Meanwhile, Rose did some sleuthing and found her Stranger running rampant (and nameless) on dozens of websites, all but one of which claimed no prior knowledge of the author but were happy to hear from her and add her name.

The exception was the owner of a site who claimed she had had the story for over twenty years. Not true, Rose pointed out, because in the essay she mentioned VCRs, which were very rare back then, and ATMs, which didn't exist for years later.

Rose never was able to identify the original kidnapper who stole her Stranger away. A couple of years before, her hometown newspaper, The Andover Townsman, published it.

She assumes that a reader scanned it, without her byline, and started the whole distribution chain by emailing it to a friend who decided to share it with other cyber pals.

And the saga continues to this day, the Stranger is still popping up in e-mails across the nation. Rose wishes she herself can achieve the same immortality. Meanwhile, she can reached by e-mail.

Rose's new book, The Stranger in My Mirror and Other Reflections is available by special order from most book stores, or on the web at www.amazon.com and www.barnesandnoble.com

P.S....Thanks Rose, for your story that makes so many of us smile back at the woman in the mirror