About Shirley Dicks

 

 

I was born and raised in Concord, New Hampshire and moved south because of my fathers health.  I'm the oldest of five kids, one sister and three brothers. We have a lot of fun when we get together, most of us play guitar and sing
and we all have a good sense of humor. 

 

      David, Roger, Mike
Shirley & Brenda

These are my three brothers and one sister.  Roger rides a Harley, he's the youngest of us, only a year older than my oldest son, Jeff.  David is the one brother that still 
lives in New Hampshire.  I wish I still did as it's so hot in Tennessee, but guess I'm too old now to try and begin again.

   

I had four kids of my own, and adopted my granddaughter so I had five kids, six grandkids and one great grandson, Jeffrey, and his sister Madison. 

 I lost my son Jeff due to medical neglect
while he was in prison.  He was not guilty but he received the death sentence.  His story
is found at www.jeffdicks.net          Two years ago, my youngest son Trevor was killed in a one car crash in NH.  www.trevordicks.com

 

I started the Jeff Dicks Medical Coalition to help other prisoners from being abused And denied their medical care.  I also fight the death sentence because too many people are found to be wrongly convicted and sentenced to die.  Many have been let off death
row in the past few years due to DNA testing.  My book is out about my life story,  A Mothers Torment

 

The Choice Is Yours is a program I founded in 1993. Going up on Tennessee's death row, I had five of the death row inmates come out of their cells to talk to the kids about crime, violence, gangs, drugs and alcohol. They come out in chains and sit down for fifteen minutes and talk to the kids straight out, telling them what it's like being in prison and on death row. They tell them how they got there and warn them that it's not the place they want to ever come to. I also have a book by the same title.  

I've taken the video to schools, colleges, drug rehabs, kids at risk and churches and the kids all tell me that they never thought of things like that, and that they will watch what they're doing in the future. It had a big impact on them to see Tennessee's electric chair, and saw where a prisoner sits in front of the chair, waiting for his life to be ended.

 I fight for medical care for prisoners because too many are being killed and abused by the people hired to look after them.  Prisoners are put in prison to serve their sentence for committing a crime, and not to be abused, killed and raped while serving their time. That's why I started the Jeff Dicks Medical Coalition to fight these abuses. This after my own son was killed by medical abuse while in prison wrongly convicted.  No matter what anyone feels about prisoners, they are not put in prison for us to abuse them by denying medical care.

How did I start writing.  A lot of people ask me that.  It began when my oldest son, Jeff was wrongly convicted of a crime and sentenced to die.  Because the prosecutor lied, two detectives got on the stand and lied, he was convicted.  People may think this does not happen, but I can tell you it does. It happens more times than you'd like to know. Read Randal Dale Adams Story, it was documented in The Thin Blue Line. The whole police dept in Texas lied and covered up his innocence because the real killer was a Texas kid under age for the death penalty, so someone had to pay and they chose Randal. 

He was freed after thirteen years on death row and found to be innocent. The guilty man is now on death row convicted of a second murder.  In the past two years over one hundred men were freed from death rows because of DNA testing. How many were executed before DNA came to be?  Too Many. I could site you many cases, and I have in my books and I will continue to do this.  They don't get punished for lying. They get promoted to Chief of Police in Tennessee.

I tried to get on F. Lee Bailey's show Lie Test but it was cancelled that year I was to be on it. I wanted them to have two detectives, myself and my ex husband on to prove they killed my son by lying. It's all in my book. Trial transcript from both trials to show how they changed testimony from one trial to the other.

I wrote my life story telling about him and that was the beginning of my writing career.  It started out with non fiction works.   now the new one due out in July, A Mothers Torment, brings it up to date to the present time.  

The first book that was published was Death Row, about the prisoners on Tennessee's death row.  I started the Murfreesboro Writers Club at that time because there was so much I didn't know about writing.  I admit it, I never paid attention in school and now I wished I had of.

Through the writers club, I learned how to write, how to make the manuscript look and had fun while doing it.  I sold my first three books to McFarland Co, Death Row,  Victims, and From Vietnam To Hell.   Then I sold They're Going To Kill My Son to New Horizon Press.

They however cheated me out of money and one time I saw my book in the Enquirer under the True Book Club.  They'd sold over five hundred copies and I never got paid for any of those.  They'd written in the contact that they could sell as many as they wanted, and called it promotional.  Well, to my way of thinking, selling five hundred copies to one place is more than promotions.

The next three books I sold to Prometheus Books.  Congregation of the Condemned,  Young Blood and In The Devil's Playground.  It took close to two years for the books to hit the stands and no one set up book signings or any promotions that I could see.  Plus I only got ten percent of the cost of the book.  Being non fiction the price was 24.99 and one of them I believe is 35.00 today.  They use two of them at the colleges for research on the death penalty issue.

Over the years, I spoke out on the death penalty issue, telling about my son's case and what had happened to him.  I did it for free because I believed in what I was saying and the talk shows all wanted me on it.  Jeff refused to go on any of them, so I went myself and three times Trevor was with me as was Maria.  All of the shows never talked about my books, so I didn't get any more sales after the shows then I had before.  I realize now that they only do that for those who are 'famous'.

The BBC contacted me and they did a segment on my life story but it wasn't played in the US, but over seas.  Then we decided that we should get paid for speaking and my younger son Trevor and I was called to a college in NY.  They paid us plus all our expenses to get there.

I decided to publish my own books because the way I saw it, they wouldn't take two years to get out to the public, plus I would make all the money and not just ten percent of it.  And if I had to do my own publicity and promotions, then I might as well do it all.  I started my own company, Mathews Books, and USA publishing.

I published the next books, Road Angels, The Choice Is Yours and A Mothers Torment and I prefer doing it myself.  That way I have all control over what goes in the books, and how and when they are published.  And I'm learning how to promote myself as a speaker and author.  And I'm learning more all the time thanks to others who have been there and help me with it.  Authors are great in that they always try to help others with what they've learned themselves.

So now that I'm getting so old it's harder to travel and to do these things by myself, I'm trying to do more on line to sell my books and will still do the speaking and book signings during holidays.

I'm working on two new books, one is about women fifty and older, called, There IS Life After Fifty which I'm hoping to have ready by Christmas sales this year.  www.thereislifeafterfifty.com