Diversity and equal opportunity have been my passion since a pivotal moment in my childhood. My younger brother and I grew up with parents who expected the same from both of us. I learned to play ball along with my sibling. It wasn’t until he went out for Little League that I realized I was going to be treated differently by society because of my sex. As I watched the tryouts from which I was banned, I realized that I could play baseball better than most of the boys on the field.
My winding career path took me to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, where I investigated employment discrimination complaints. I then went into business for myself. For almost thirty years, I have investigated employment discrimination and taught diversity to thousands of employees.
My life’s labor has produced many heartening moments. I met an older woman who was hired by an accounting firm I had previously investigated and found in violation of age discrimination laws. On another occasion, I recommended termination (and my advice was followed) of a branch manager. He was literally terrorizing the employees by screaming, throwing objects, and verbally abusing them.
Making the world a better place is something I strive for. And, as the saying goes, write what you know. For this reason, I have chosen to write about my experiences in the form of fiction. I have taken portions of real cases and spun them into a story of a fictional EEO office in the trilogy Warriors for Equal Rights.
My novels not only focus on righting the wrongs of discrimination but highlight the difficulties of working in a diverse group. Several of the characters have disabilities and manage to thrive despite their limitations. While these are serious topics, the book is an easy, fun read.
My hope is that readers will reflect on their own biases and prejudices and, when confronted with others who are different, will look for positives rather than negatives. For those who are differently-abled, my desire is that they see characters like themselves who overcome their disabilities and lead productive lives.
The Cause Lives: Warriors for Equal Rights is the first book of the trilogy.
All Alice wants is to retire. Until the call for justice gets in the way.
Alice Arden can’t wait to retire in eighteen months, but her boss at the federal discrimination and harassment agency she works at has other ideas. She assigns Alice to head a newly created task force responsible for catching more lawbreakers, and Alice can’t refuse.
Already burned out and suffering from a worsening disability that might put her in a wheelchair, Alice finds more than she had bargained for in her new team with racism, a sociophobe, and hidden agendas at play. Threats on their lives because of a case they’re working on drive Alice to the bottle until she discovers an unnerving secret.
Forget retirement. Alice is about to embark on delivering justice in the sexual harassment case of her career, and if she goes down, it’ll be with guns blazing.
The book can be purchased from https://www.mariewatts.com/books. The second book of the trilogy, Only A Pawn, is due out by the end of May.
Marie W. Watts is a former employment discrimination investigator and human resource consultant. Coauthor of Human Relations, 4th ed., her work has also been published in the Texas Bar Journal and the Houston Business Journal, as well as featured on Issues Today. Marie and her husband live on a ranch in central Texas. In her spare time, she supports a historic house and hangs out with her grandsons.