The Pulpwood Queen DECLARES Don't Quit Your Day Job!

Everything good that has ever happened in my life is because I have been a reader.  Being a reader is a part of me as my slightly crooked front tooth, the fact that I bite my fingernails, and that I am slightly pigeon toed.  But I never knew you could make a living from being a reader, that came much later to me in life. All I know is what I have learned through my mistakes only now I use the word "discoveries.  Funny how that sounds so much better.  I have discovered you just don't quit your day job and for me that being a hairdressing bookseller.

When I was growing up education was always stressed in our family home.  I never knew what I wanted to be as all the things that interested me were things that I never dreamed you could make a living from, but I tried.  I grew up in the city pool, my dad managed it, so we kids were swimming as babies.  I eventually became a lifeguard.  Great job as you could work on your tan and get paid.  For me that was $2 an hour at the Eureka Country Club.  Sounds like not much but I could fill up my VW bug on three bucks, but that kind of job kind of peters out after college.  This was years before I learned their were professional lifeguards, okay, but the television series Baywatch made me realize that was NOT going to be a possibility.  I love art, creating, but everybody knows being an art major is the kiss of death as far as jobs are concerned.  So what do I do, I go to Kansas State University and become a Design major.  Well, you can dream can't you but it sure doesn't pay the bills.
 
After my second year of college my mother informed me I needed to get a REAL job to help pay my way through college.  So after checking out the job market for a two year college student I pretty quickly learned that cooking hamburgers at McDonald's, (they turned me down as being overqualified), I needed to get a serious career.  I dropped out of college and became a hairdresser.  Makes sense, right?  I know you are laughing.

No, seriously, becoming a cosmetologist was a legit way of making some big bucks.  Vidal Sassoon was on the rise and Farrah Fawcett had driven young girls in droves to salons to emulate that iconic cut.  I excelled at beauty school and became a graduate of Crum's Beauty College in Manhattan, Kansas.  This was to be a means to the end of me getting a REAL education.  I could work my way through college doing hair.

Fast forward to years of searching for my life work, in and out of colleges, seven to be exact to end up with my dream job of becoming a book publisher's representative. (You have to read my book to get the back story which will be mentioned up ahead). 

Ah ha, you could make a living from being a REAL reader.  Then I got fired, downsized, was how my boss explained it.  The big box chains had come in to independent bookstore territory and were shutting them down by the dozens including pretty much all in my four state client base.  I was back to square one.

That is where my book begins, "The Pulpwood Queens' Tiara Wearing, Book Sharing Guide to Life", my life story of how books have saved me over and over again.  My beginning chapter began with getting fired and I aptly titled the chapter, "When Life Hands You a Lemon, Forget Lemonade, Make Margaritas", well I paraphrased that chapter title as it has been some time, 2008, since that book was published.  I ended up going back to cutting and coloring hair.  Yes, that's right I opened my Beauty and the Book, the ONLY Hair Salon/Book Store in the country. 

So that's my day job, I do hair and talk and sell books!  I love it!  I have combined my two passions, creating art, (doing hair), and talking books!

Now my Daddy always told me it never hurts to learn a trade with your hands, that advice has served me well but it is books that have taken me all the places I never dreamed I would go.  Or the people I would meet...including Diane Sawyer of Good Morning America, see photo above.  You see my book club that I started shortly after I opened Beauty and the Book, The Pulpwood Queens, has become the largest "meeting and discussing" book club in the WORLD!  516 chapters, folks, coast to coast, everywhere inbetween and in over a dozen foreign countries.  Diane even asked me and my book club to help Charlie Gipson and her kick off their READ THIS Book Club on Good Morning America.  Who would have ever dreamed that this small town Kansas girl now an East Texan turned hairdressing bookseller would ever have that kind of opportunity.

Then I just recently was sponsored by Random House Publishing to film 12 episodes of an online book club talk show, Beauty and the Book, www.beautyandthebookshow.com!  Who knew I would be flying to California to do shows with the likes of Janelle Brown, Lisa See, and Fannie Flagg, see photo above, and many more from my shop like, Susan Vreeland, Paula McLain, Karen Abbott, Anna Quinlen, and the like.  Oh, the places reading good books can take you!

Then I have this annual Pulpwood Queen Book Club Convention every year called Girlfriend Weekend.  The last two years have brought the likes of Pat Conroy, about fifty authors every year to this sold out venue, see photo of my Pulpwood Queen SIRENS of Katy, Texas!

We won't even mention or perhaps we will the Pulpwood Queen literacy adventures to Europe, trip to Monroeville, Alabama for the 50th Anniversary of "To Kill a Mockingbird", (my favorite book), or cruising to the Bahamas, and now our trip to England in December of this year with The Pulpwood Queens of Houston!

Now back to my day job, doing hair and selling books.  Running the hair salon part is easy.  I have a client base that is spread far and wide.  Authors mecca in to my shop and book club groups too.  We always have fun.  The book part is hard, no doubt about it. I learned right away that the only true books I sell are local, regional, and Pulpwood Queen Book Club Selections so that is what I carry.  But even selling those has become a daily battle.  With online book sales offering the moon and e-readers, my only course of action is hand selling big time.  Now I can talk books all day and night but I need people to come to my shop to do that so why not plan a literary road trip to my little ole independent bookstore/hair salon!  We'll leave the hair dryer on for ya and recently have become a jewelry store too!  We have many Pulpwood Queen branded items for sale.  I only sell what I truly believe in so I think my shop is the best kept secret in the country, perhaps the world afterall, we are the WORLD WIDE HEADQUARTERS OF THE PULPWOOD QUEENS!

Everything I carry I believe is a treasure.  This is my life's work creating beauty and sharing books.  I may never have known what I was going to be when I grew up but God did have a big plan for me and I know now it's all centered around Beauty and the Book!  So again, don't quit your day job, you never know where it may take you!!!
Tiara wearing and Book sharing,
Kathy L. Patrick
www.beautyandthebook.com, official website!
www.beautyandthebookshow.com, official book club talk show site!
www.pulpwoodqueen.com, official blog site!
www.girlfriendweekend.blogspot.com, official Girlfriend Weekend site!
www.booksalive.blogspot, official Christian Book and Author Event site!
P.S. Check us out on Facebook under Beauty and the Book and Kathy L. Patrick.  I'm on Twitter too under Pulpwoodqueen!

The Pulpwood Queen says, "Pinch me, I'm dreaming!"

Dear Readers.

From top to bottom: Authors, Mark Childress, Sonny Brewer, Marshall Chapman, Fannie Flagg, Pat Conroy and Mary McDonagh Murphy

Yes, those are my Keynote Speakers for my 11th Anniversary Girlfriend Weekend which begins this Thursday evening, January 13 - 16. 2011 here in historic Jefferson, Texas.  Last night my husband, Jay, daughter, Madeleine and I took a break in preparations of the book club convention to go see the film COUNTRY STRONG starring Gwyneth Paltrow and Tim McGraw.  Though we enjoy those celebrities we truly went to see Marshall Chapman, as she is the headliner for our show on Friday night of Girlfriend Weekend.  Marshall portrayed Winnie, Gwyneth Paltrow's characters agent in the film in which she had a big presence. 

Will somebody pinch me, I do believe I am dreaming.  There is something hard to express about seeing someone you know and love on the big screen.  I mean, WOWZER!

Marshall is just one of the almost 70 authors coming in for my biggest book club convention I have ever done.  She has a NEW film. NEW CD Big Lonesome, and now a NEW book, They Came to Nashville!  How did I ever get so lucky?

AND you may not even know that Marshall Chapman wrote a song along with Kathi Kamen Goldmark of their experience of coming to my Girlfriend Weekend, I Want My Hair Considered, that I now have published at the beginning of my book, "The Pulpwood Queens' Tiara Wearing, Book Sharing Guide to Life".

AND it keeps getting better and better, for the first time EVER, Marshall Chapman, Kathi Kamen Goldmark, I are going to sing that song at Girlfriend Weekend!

That is just a few minutes of a weekend that has now become the best bookloving party of my life! 

So, if you think reading is homework, or boring, or just not very entertaining then mark your calendar for the third weekend in January when I hold my Girlfriend Weekend every year!  You see this year we are SOLD OUT except for the Film Fest on Sunday, email kathy@beautyandthebook.com for tickets!

The Pulpwood Queens and Timber Guys Book Clubs who host this author extravaganza, their sole mission is to promote authors, books, literacy, and reading and have some BIG TIME FUN while we are at it!  I mean how many other book festivals can you go to where they have a dance that we call our "Great Big Ball of Hair" Ball which always has a costume theme for our Grand Finale.  This year IT'S ALL ABOUT THE STORY so everyone is to come as their favorite book character!

Go to http://www.girlfriendweekend.blogspot.com to view the program!  All my life has been about books and it looks like for 2011, all the fruit of my labors will harvest a beautiful bounty!

Happy New Year and let's make this a year where it is indeed, ALL ABOUT THE STORY, and no better place to being to read those stories from than A Good Blog is Hard to Find!

Truly Happy Tales! 
Tiara wearing, Beauty and the Book sharing!
Kathy L. Patrick
www.beautyandthebook.com
www.pulpwoodqueen.com

The Pulpwood Queen If Not an Author, Bookseller, Hairdresser, Book Club Moderator, Blog Moderator, High School Youth Group Leader, Literary Chair for Rotary, would be TARZAN!

When I grew up in Eureka, Kansas, I had no idea of what I wanted to be when I grew up.  My youth revolved around nature, I spent most of my childhood outside with my two younger sisters.  We created our own world pretending to be the characters in mostly the books I was reading.  My favorite place in the whole wide world was up in a tree whether cottonwood, elm, walnut or otherwise.  If I could shimmy up in it, I would climb clear to the top and sway with the breeze in the branches.  Then I discovered TARZAN!

 I loved playing Tarzan. My sisters and I watched the movies mesmerized and I read all the books.   I was a real tomboy as a kid, I truly identified with Scout of "To Kill a Mockingbird".  I hated to wear dresses, anything girly, frilly, fou fou.  When I discovered  Tarzan, I thought man, he had it made.  All he wore was an animal skin, how cool was that?  Bare chested he would fly through the jungle swinging on these vines.  I lost all the skin on my palms summer after summer of trying to swing out of my sisters and my tree houses.  He made it look so easy.  That was my dream and then I just realized, it still is my dream.  When I grow up I want to be TARZAN!

I mean he rules the jungle.  He has a great sidekick with Cheetah.  All he has to do is this really cool yell and elephants come trumpeting!  He was always fighting off the bad guys and  me too, me too!  Whether the neighborhood bully as a kid to those individuals as an adult that are forever trying to squelch my big dreams.  Did I mention I love animals?

Yes, our dog Snickie we would pretend was Cheetah.  We even taught him, a little Jack Russell like mutt, to climb a ladder up into our tree house.  We always had to carry him down but hey, Tarzan always had Cheetah on his hip too!

Jane never interested me as she was too much like the real me, lame.  She couldn't swing through the jungle, Tarzan always had to carry her around too.  What a bummer!  Everybody was always trying to get her. She was helpless and needy.  Tarzan always had to come to her rescue.  She had to wear a full animal skin like dress sheath, how constricting and man do I hate anything constricting.  No, Tarzan had it going on. He was strong and brave. Tarzan ruled.

That was my childhood dream and fantasy, to be just like Tarzan.  Then I realized as I was writing this, that I kind of have recreated that Tarzan world right here in Jefferson, Texas.

I have a really cool clubhouse, Beauty and the Book, where I can hang with all my friends, hmm, The Pulpwood Queens and Timber Guys Book Clubs!  It's not a tree house but it is made of wood in the trees of East Texas. My bathroom is literally a jungle, come check it out!

 I have not one sidekick, like Cheetah, I have now hundreds and hundreds of sidekicks, The Pulpwood Queens and Timber Guys Book Club members.  AND we all wear animal print, perhaps more yardage than Tarzan, but leopard our my favorite. 

When I do my Tarzan yell, "WOO HOO", Pulpwood Queens and Timber Guy Book Club members come running, trumpeting too for literacy.  Last night we had a whole stampede, as it was our annual Christmas Party!

We, like Tarzan, fight off the bad guys too, we call it illiteracy!  We are on a sole mission to promote authors, books, literacy, and reading and also to help undiscovered authors get discovered in a big way!

So, yes, I have indeed become a Tarzan, so to speak, through my imagination that was fostered from librarians and teachers who mentored me that reading was important.

I now have my BOY too, actually it's my two girls, Helaina and Madeleine.  I read to them before they were born and now can say they are big readers too.  The TARZAN tradition and mission continues.

Now, my husband is, Jay, is no Jane.  He convinced my children for years that the Johnny Weismuller photo I had framed in our house where he is clad in that scrap of animal skin standing up in a tree in all his Tarzan glory was Jay when he was younger. Everytime I see that photo, I still laugh.  They bought that story big time.

 And then one year I convinced Jay that we were to go as Tarzan and Jane for the Friends of the Library Literary Ball where you were to come as book characters. They shut down that event after our appearance.  Yes, Jay wore only a scrap of animal skin over his skin colored speedos! 

 Aaahaaaahaaaahhahahahahhaha, indeed!

Come by my Beauty and the Book and I will show you the photo. I guarantee you'll get a good laugh.  It's worth the trip, consider it a Tarzan adventure!  It's a jungle alright, here at Beauty and the Book.  I may have created my own world but it's world that is filled with books and for me that is heaven on earth!

Welcome to my jungle!

Kathy L. Patrick

Author of "The Pulpwood Queens' Tiara Wearing, Book Sharing Guide to Life", Grand Central Publishing

"Hairdresser to the Authors"

Founder of The Pulpwood Queens and Timber Guys Book Club, now with 403 chapters, the largest "meeting an discussing" book club in the world!

Beauty and the Book, the ONLY Hair Salon/Book Store in the country!

608 North Polk Street

Jefferson, Texas 75657

903-665-7520

kathy@beautyandthebook.com

http://www.beautyandthebook.com/

http://www.pulpwoodqueen.com/

http://www.girlfriendweekend.blogspot.com/

P.S. I also have fantisized about being a professional roller skater, country western singer, getting my own book club talk show and winning an Emmy, starring on Broadway and winning a Tony, becoming an actor and winning an Oscar on the Academy Awards, a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist, and perhaps being featured on "Dancing with the Stars"!  Oh wait, that's my future.  Hey, a girl can have dreams, big, big dreams!  Dreams do come true when you become a "real" reader!

The Pulpwood Queen Bows to SHELF AWARENESS!

Dear Readers,

As always I have a lot of things to say when it comes to great books! I consider my mission in life helping authors get their books into the hands of good readers. I do this as it's just a part of who I am. Books saved me and to explain this you just have to read my book, "The Pulpwood Queens' Tiara Wearing, Book Sharing Guide to Life", Grand Central Publishing you can order from my website, http://www.beautyandthebook.com!

But what has happened in the last 24 hours has blown my socks off! First, I had the most incredible reception as I spoke by invitation from The Women's Council at The Dallas Arboretum yesterday. I think all the lovely ladies and yes, men too, came by to personally comment on my presentation and then they proceeded to buy every single one of my books. That made me feel pretty good since I had just received a notice from my agent that I had only sold 350+ books the last six months. I left that event on Cloud NINE! All the women told me they were roadtripping to my hometown, historic Jefferson, Texas. They just had to see my shop, http://www.beautyandthebook.com/!

So I woke up a little late this morning and scrambling to get all my postings and reminders done for today is the beginning of the first of the three book festivals I do, Books Alive at http://www.booksalivejeffersonfumc.com/! You have to see it to believe it! Please come, your life will be blessed and what a great gift to you and others. You see these books can be personalized by the author and make fantastic Christmas presents. I will even gift wrap for FREE!

But then something happened, I started getting a ton of emails on a Shelf Awareness feature that I was supposedly featured in today. I found the Shelf Awareness posting and as I read, I started crying because Robert Gray gets it. He understands exactly what I am doing and shared it with the world. Here it is folks, my story in his story. This is what my life is all about so sharing now with you below!

Make authors, books, literacy, and reading a big part of your life. Reading has taken me places I never dreamed and I am living proof that doing so leads to an authentic and purposeful, wonderful life! I am going into this weekend knowing that the next few days are going to get us all on the same page, that reading is important from THE GOOD BOOK to good books! Won't you join my reading life?

Tiara wearing, Beauty and the Book sharing,

Kathy L. Patrick

Hairdresser to the Authors

Author of "The Pulpwood Queens' Tiara Wearing, Book Sharing Guide to Life"

Founder of the Pulpwood Queens and Timber Guys Book Clubs

http://www.beautyandthebook.com/

http://www.pulpwoodqueen.com/

http://www.southerauthors.blogspot.com/

http://www.readinggroupguides.com/







Deeper Understanding



Robert Gray: Indie Booksellers & Publishers--It's About the Book





Earlier this year, when Kathy Patrick, owner of Beauty and the Book

, Jefferson, Tex., read and loved My

Orange Duffel Bag: A Journey to Radical Change

, a self-published

book by Sam Bracken and Echo Garrett, she did not hesitate to take the

next logical step and dye her hair orange.



Well, no, the story is not that simple, though Kathy's passion for this

book is a classic example of how, in our ongoing discussion about

independent publishers and independent booksellers, we might pause to

remember that sometimes it really does come down to the book.



Kathy loves books and authors and readers. Talk with her for a minute

and you know that if you know anything. Even a partial list of her

accomplishments in the book world is impressive: the Pulpwood Queens

Book Club

,

which now has 400 chapters nationwide; her book The Pulpwood Queen's

Tiara-Wearing, Book-Sharing Guide to Life; and her now legendary

Girlfriend Weekend

, an annual

convention hosted by the Pulpwood Queens and Timber Guys book clubs.



I forgot to ask Kathy whether she plays poker, but if she does I suspect

she goes "all in" with every hand because that's how she handsells the

books she adopts. Traditional publisher? Independent publisher?

Self-publisher? Kathy's response is the same: Show me the book.



My Orange Duffel Bag is a perfect example. When co-author Echo Garret

sent her a copy, Kathy quickly realized it was "exactly the kind of book

that I want to get into the hands of readers, an incredible story but

more important, Sam Bracken is doing something proactive to help

homeless teens and those aging out of foster care. As the youth group

leader for my church, children are as close to my heart as authors,

books, reading and literacy. I am a firm believer that if we treat our

children as our most precious gifts, this world would become a much

better place."



Echo recalls the beginning this way: "We had a pilot program with the

state of Georgia to train 25 foster youth on the principles in the book,

and it had been tested in a school in Roswell as well. We printed 5,000

books in our first print run, and got our first shipment in May. I

happened to see a write-up about how influential Kathy Patrick is in the

book world, so I wrote her an e-mail, said a prayer and put a book in

FedEx to her. By the time I got back from the FedEx box, she'd already

written back, saying that our book sounded like exactly the kind of book

she looks for.



"The next night she called me and told me she was making our book her

November pick. We talked for an hour, and I explained that we were

self-publishing because we didn't neatly fit into the traditional realm.

Nobody knew what to do with us. But we knew where we were heading. The

more I told her about our crazy journey to trying to get My Orange

Duffel Bag published, the more engaged she became. I told her that we'd

invested a ton of our money and time and love and life into this

project. For us, it's a passion. We're creating a movement to help spark

literacy and positive change for kids that most of our society

overlooks. When she understood that we needed help selling the book fast

to pay for our printing bill, she declared that she'd dye her hair

orange if we sold 1,000 books in that first month. We did and she did.

Kathy was the first one I sent our full vision to. She believed in us

from the beginning. Having our vision validated by someone as

influential as Kathy gave us great courage that we were on the right

path. Now we've almost sold out of our first printing, and we've ordered

10,000 more books. We're on a rocket ride and the momentum is building

fast."



Kathy launched her national campaign for My Orange Duffel Bag on her

Facebook page. "It was kind of

a crazy promotion," she said. "We sold like 326 copies the first day and

made our goal after a week and a half. I was just a walking billboard

for the book. I didn't even know the power of Facebook until then."



Echo noted that while their agent had shopped the project to major

publishers and found considerable interest, "each wanted to turn it into

something very different from what our vision was." Kathy said she also

called some publishers, but did not have much luck "because they didn't

know what it was. Is it a book? Is it a journal? Is it a diary? Whatever

it is, it's a tremendous story. I just know that every time people read

it they call me."



Kathy's orange hair may have faded, but the orange book lives on, which

pleases her. "I'm a big believer that a book is not a six-week

commodity. Who made up that rule? I question everything. People either

think I'm an amazing innovator or a pain in the rump."



She also shared a story that occurred this week, which sums up nicely

what indie booksellers can do when they choose to make a book their own:

"A judge and his wife stopped by who had heard about me through their

Methodist Church in Canton, Tex. I took my youth group to help repair

homes and paint houses as part of U.M. ARMY project there. Anyway, they

stayed for two hours and when they left, they had decided to purchase My

Orange Duffel Bag for all their Christmas presents. As they were getting

ready to leave, this judge handed me his card and told me that if I do

indeed start my own Pulpwood Queen Publishing endeavor, give him one

week, and I will have all the investors I need. I am in awe of the

wonderful places books take me, so it just energizes my batteries and my

endeavors to help authors, their books, literacy and reading efforts.

Thank you Echo and Sam for letting me be a part of your book and it's

message. I have done nothing more than share a great read and it just

proves to me sharing a good book is a gift that keeps on

giving."--Robert Gray (column

archives available at Fresh Eyes Now

The Pulpwood Queen's OFFICIAL PRESS RELEASE for 11th Anniversary Girlfriend Weekend, January 13 - 16, 2011!

Contact: Kathy L. Patrick
kathy@beautyandthebook.com
903-665-7520
Cell 903-445-2353

Press Release for Immediate Release:

November 3, 2010
Jefferson, TX-

11th ANNIVERSARY GIRLFRIEND WEEKEND
AUTHOR EXTRAVAGANZA
BEAUTY AND THE BOOK
January 13 – 16, 2011
Jefferson, Texas

On January 18, 2000, I opened the first ever Hair Salon/Book Store in the country, Beauty and the Book! Did I have any idea of what I was creating, I think not. Oxford American Magazine covered that event and the feature that ran dubbed me “Hairdresser to the Authors” written by Texas author, Carol Dawson. Shortly thereafter, I started The Pulpwood Queens of East Texas Book Club. What began with six, really complete strangers, has now grown to nearly 400 chapters of women and yes, a few good men who have become my nearest and dearest friends for a lifetime. After appearances on Oprah Winfrey’s OXYGEN NETWORK, ABC’s Good Morning American, The Oprah Winfrey Show and more newspapers, magazines than you can shake a stick at; we are now the largest meeting and discussing book club in the WORLD!

In celebration of our 11th Anniversary, the theme this year is
“IT’S ALL ABOUT THE STORY!”
Because you see, it really is. It’s all about the story and our relationships sharing and telling the story.

So shall we begin at the beginning, our story,
BEAUTY AND THE BOOK!

Once upon a time there was a young girl who always had her nose stuck in a book. Libraries passed through her fingertips as she read and read and read mentored by her wonderful teachers and librarians. A shy child, she grew tall and brave with those words being as nourishing and comforting to her body as food, water, and shelter. That woman was Kathy L. Patrick who became a woman with a mission, a mission to get everybody on the same page that reading was not only important, but leads to an authentic and purposeful life. She had big dreams,
really big dreams!
What if you created a world where all your favorite authors and readers gathered to share their stories!
Her dream became true!

You now may begin to read this story of a book festival like no other.
What is this story about?
Why don’t you read it yourself and see!


January 13th, 2010
THURSDAY
INTRODUCTION OF CHARACTERS OF BEAUTY AND THE BOOK
AUTHOR DINNER THEATRE
7:00 p.m. Featuring all our calvacade of author stars: Author chefs preparing the dinner, authors waiting the tables, and author’s play with all roles portrayed by authors! It’s called Conversations at Buzz Cut Barbershop an original play by MICHAEL LISTER.
Author chefs preparing dinner are:
JANIS OWENS of The Cracker Kitchen
KATHY L. PATRICK of The Pulpwood Queens’ Tiara Wearing, Book Sharing Guide to Life
EVENT SOLD OUT!

January 14 – 15, 2011
FRIDAY AND SATURDAY
Jefferson Convention and Tourism Building
Austin Street
EVENT SOLD OUT!
The Pulpwood Queen Package includes all events on Friday and Saturday EXCEPT Pat Conroy/Bernie Schein Luncheon, it’s ticket to was to be purchased separately. Official 11th Anniversary T-shirt, and publisher give a ways will be included for those who purchased Pulpwood Queen Packages ONLY. 11th Anniversary T-shirts with original art by Children’s Author/Illustrator, MELISSA CONROY will be for sale at Pulpwood Queen Booth in VENDOR ROOM as long as supplies last!

All authors featured at their times will immediately go to AUTHOR AUTOGRAPH TABLES in VENDOR/BOOK STORE ROOM following their panel! You will need to pre-purchase books prior to having the books signed. As all authors are encouraged then to participate in all activities, feel free to ask for books to be signed throughout the weekend. But do note, some authors will not be able to stay. To ensure you get your books signed, go immediately to the AUTHOR AUTOGRAPH TABLES after they speak and have books already pre-purchased.
We will have a CONCESSION STAND in back of auditorium at convention center to purchase drinks and snacks run by the Junior and Senior High First United Methodist Youth Group with all the proceeds to go to the kids to help pay for their NEW Youth Building.

Barnes and Noble will provide the BOOK STORE for all the author books for the event unless self-published, in that case the author will provide the books themselves for sale. Also we will have a VENDOR ROOM, (open 8:00 a.m. – 5:30 p.m.), Friday and Saturday that will feature the best of the best SHOWCASED for our book loving attendees. For the first time ever we now are offering access to just VENDOR ROOM and BOOK STORE. Tickets are $5.00 per person and available at the outside entrance to VENDOR ROOM and BOOK STORE.

A SILENT AUCTION will be held with showcased items signed and donated by the authors around the perimeter of the VENDOR ROOM. All proceeds from the SILENT AUCTION will go to the Dolly Parton Imagination Library Literacy Project here in Marion County that is being spearheaded by the Jefferson Rotary Club which is a not for profit civic organization. The Pulpwood Queens of East Texas endorse this literacy project and are partnering with the Rotary Club to help
Both Friday and Saturday night events will be B.Y.O.B. but we will provide the setups.

FRIDAY MORNING
8:00 a.m. Registration and Ticket Sales

CHAPTER ONE
9:00 a.m. BEAUTY AND THE BOOK, THE STORY BEHIND THE STORY
KATHY L. PATRICK, founder of The Pulpwood Queens and Timber Guys Book Clubs, Author of The Pulpwood Queens’ Tiara Wearing, Book Sharing Guide to Life
ROBERT LELEUX, Author of memoirs of a beautiful boy
Columnist for The Texas Observer, Editor of LONNY Magazine are back to host yet again their version of BEAUTY AND THE BOOK, a television talk show!
Dubbed BOBKAT by their fans, Robert and Kathy will welcome you to their show!

CHAPTER TWO
9:15 a.m. – 9:45 a.m. CRAZY IN ALABAMA to GEORGIA BOTTOMS!
Keynote Author and Speaker, MARK CHILDRESS of Georgia Bottoms!

BREAK FOR AUTOGRAPHING AND VENDOR/BOOK STORE

CHAPTER THREE
10:00 a.m. – 10:45 a.m. EVERYONE HAS A STORY
Author Panel featuring:
MARCIA FINE of Stressed in Scottsdale
JENNY GARDINER of Slim to None
CAROLYN HAINES of Bone Appetit and Delta Blues
TODD JOHNSON of Sweet By and By
TONY SIMMONS of Dazed and Raving in the Undercurrents
HELEN SIMONSON of Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand


BREAK FOR AUTOGRAPHING AND VENDOR/BOOK STORE

CHAPTER FOUR
11:00 a.m. – 11:45 a.m. STORIES THAT YOU WILL FALL IN LOVE WITH THE CHARACTERS
Author Panel featuring:
JUDY CHRISTIE of Goodness Gracious Green
DEEANNE GIST of Maid to Match
DENISE HILDRETH JONES of Hurricane in Paradise
SAM MCLEOD of Big Appetite: My Southern Fried Search for the Meaning of Life
JANIS OWENS of The Cracker Kitchen
LISA WINGATE of Beyond Summer

BREAK FOR AUTOGRAPHING AND VENDOR/BOOK STORE

12:00 p.m. Noon LUNCH ON YOUR OWN (historic Jefferson, Texas has many fine eateries, many within walking distance)

FRIDAY AFTERNOON

CHAPTER FIVE
1:30 p.m. – 2:15 a.m. IT’S ALL OVER BUT THE SHOUTING to THE MOST THEY EVER HAD!
Keynote Speaker, Author, and Pulitzer Prize Winner RICK BRAGG of The Most They Ever Had!

BREAK FOR AUTOGRAPHING AND VENDOR/BOOK STORE

CHAPTER SIX
2:30 p.m. – 3:15 p.m. STORIES FOR KIDS OF ALL AGES
Author Panel featuring:
KATHI APPELT of Keeper
MELISSA CONROY of Poppy’s Pants
KIMBERLY WILLIS HOLT of The Water Seeker

BREAK FOR AUTOGRAPHING AND VENDOR/BOOK STORE

CHAPTER SEVEN
3:30 p.m. – 4:15 p.m. MANLY MAN STORIES THAT WOMEN WILL LOVE
Author Panel featuring:
AD HUDLER of Man of the House
MARK E. GREEN, MD of A Night with Saddam
ROBERT GREER of Spoon
CHARLES MARTIN of The Mountain Between Us
NEIL WHITE of The Sanctuary of Outcasts
DAVID MARION WILKINSON of Not Between Brothers

BREAK FOR AUTOGRAPHING AND VENDOR/BOOK STORE

4:30 p.m.
Closing Remarks by KATHY L. PATRICK and ROBERT LELEUX


FRIDAY EVENING

CHAPTER EIGHT
8:00 p.m. PULPWOOD QUEEN, TIMBER GUYS, AND AUTHOR TALENT SHOW!

CHAPTER 9
9:00 P.M. GOODBYE LITTLE ROCK AND ROLLER to THEY CAME TO NASHVILLE
Author, Actor, Singer, Songwriter, MARSHALL CHAPMAN will speak of her book They Came to Nashville and perform of her latest CD, Big Lonesome!
B.Y.O.B, Set ups and soft drinks provided.
EVENT SOLD OUT!


January 15, 2011
SATURDAY MORNING
8:00 a.m. Registration and Ticket Sales

CHAPTER TEN
9:00 a.m.
BOBKAT is back to host their BEAUTY AND THE BOOK author/talk show featuring KATHY L. PATRICK and ROBERT LELEUX.

CHAPTER ELEVEN
9:15 a.m. – 9:45 a.m. FRIED GREEN TOMATOES to I STILL DREAM ABOUT YOU!
Keynote Speaker and Special Author Guest, FANNIE FLAGG of I Still Dream About You!

BREAK FOR AUTOGRAPHING AND VENDOR/BOOK STORE

CHAPTER TWELVE
10:00 a.m. – 10:45 a.m. AWARD WINNING STORIES
Author Panel featuring:
CATHIE BECK of Cheap Cabernet
JAMIE FORD of Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet
RIVER JORDAN of The Miracle of Mercy Land: A Novel
NICOLE SEITZ of The Inheritance of Beauty
SUSAN PARKER of Walking in the Deep End: A Memoir
ALLEN WHITLEY of Where Southern Cross the Dog

BREAK FOR AUTOGRAPHING AND VENDOR/BOOK STORE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN
11:00 a.m. – 11:45 a.m. STORIES THAT ARE KILLER
Author Panel featuring:
KATHRYN CASEY of The Killing Storm (Sarah Armstrong Texas Rangers Series
KIT FRAZIER of Morgue File: A Cauley MacKinnon Novel
MARK E. GREEN, MD of My Night with Saddam
KATHLEEN KASKA of Murder at the Luther
MICHAEL LISTER of Thunder Beach and The Body and the Blood
M.L. MALCOLM of Silent Lies

BREAK FOR AUTOGRAPHING AND VENDOR/BOOK STORE

CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Noon Luncheon
MY READING LIFE to IF HOLDEN CAULFIELD WERE IN MY CLASSROOM
PAT CONROY/BERNIE SCHEIN LUNCHEON
New York Times’s Bestseller, Publishers Weekly Bestseller, and Southern Independent Bestseller PAT CONROY of My Reading Life and his best friend and author, BERNIE SCHEIN of If Holden Caulfield Were in my Classroom: Inspiring Love, Creativity, and Intelligence in Middle School Kids!
Luncheon catered by STAGEDOOR DELI of Mt. Pleasant, Texas!
Pat Conroy’s latest book, a signed My Reading Life will be handed out as all depart the luncheon.
EVENT SOLD OUT!

CHAPTER FIFTEEN
1:30 p.m. – 2:15 p.m. THE PULPWOOD QUEEN PRESENTS STORIES I WISH TO SHARE BIG TIME
Author Panel Featuring:
SAM BRACKEN and ECHO GARRETT of My Orange Duffel Bag
MICHAEL MORRIS of King of Florabama
KAREN HARRINGTON of Janeology
JENNIE HELDERMAN of as the sycamore grows
SONNY BREWER of Don’t Quit Your Day Job: Acclaimed Authors and the Day Jobs They Quit

BREAK FOR AUTOGRAPHING AND VENDOR/BOOK STORE

CHAPTER SIXTEEN
2:30 p.m. – 3:15 p.m. STORIES TO SHARE WITH BOOK CLUBS
Author Panel featuring:
AMY BOURRET of Mothers and Other Liars
JEANINE CUMMINS of The Outside Boy
KARL LENKER of For Dear Life
KAREN ESSEX of Dracula in Love
CAROLYN TURGEON of Mermaid: A Twist on the Classic Tale
KAREN WHITE of On Folly’s Beach

3:30 p.m. Break, as we know it gets crazy towards the end to rush out and get ready for the ball. It’s almost your last chance to buy books if you want to get them signed before the closing panel and Awards Presentation! Don’t miss this opportunity to purchase the authors books while they are still at the convention center. Barnes and Noble Book Store will be open too after Awards Ceremony!

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

3:45 p.m. – 4:15 P.M. STORIES FIT FOR A QUEEN
Authors featured:
DIANA BLACK and MARY CUNNINGHAM of WOOF: Women Only Over Fifty
DAVID VALDES GREENWOOD of The Rhinestone Sisterhood: A Journey Through Small Town America, One Tiara At A Time
OLIVIA DeBELLE BYRD of Miss Hildreth Wore Brown: Anecdotes of a Southern Belle
CINDY RATZLAF and KATHY KINNEY of Queen of Your Own Life
SHELLIE RUSHING TOMLINSON of Suck in Your Stomach and Put Some Color On: What Southern Mamas Tell Their Southern Daughters That The Rest of Y’all Should Know Too


CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

4:45 p.m. – 5:15 p.m. AUTHORS AND BOOKLOVERS WHO ARE AWARD WINNERS FOR SHARING THEIR STORIES OR THE STORIES
Awards Presentation as follows:
MELISSA CONROY to present Pulpwood Queen Children’s Book of the Year
JAMIE FORD to present Pulpwood Queen Bonus Book of the Year
PAT CONROY to present Pulpwood Queen Book of the Year
KATHY L. PATRICK to present The KAT Award
Special Presentation: MARY GAY SHIPLEY to present THE DOUG MARLETTE AWARD presented to an individual for the Lifetime Achievement of Promoting Literacy.
Silent Auction winners announced!

CHAPTER NINETEEN

5:15 p.m. RED CARPET PREMIERE OF BEAUTY AND THE BOOK!

SATURDAY EVENING

CHAPTER TWENTY

8:00 p.m. IT’S ALL ABOUT THE STORY PARADE OF BOOK CHARACTERS!

CHAPTER TWENTY ONE

8:30 p.m. AUTHOR ENABLERS to WRITE THAT BOOK ALREADY!
Authors/Musicians, KATHI KAMEN GOLDMARK and SAM BARRY of WRITE THAT BOOK ALREADY!


9:00 p.m. GREAT BIG BALL OF HAIR BALL featuring the band,
DESTINY DUKE AND THE HAZZARDS, back by popular demand.
In celebration of the 11TH Anniversary of Girlfriend Weekend the theme is
IT’S ALL ABOUT THE STORY!
Come dressed for the occasion in costume as your favorite book character or book characters for contests as follows:
BEST GIRL GROUP AS BOOK CHARACTERS
BEST BOOK THEMED DECORATED TABLE
MS GREAT BIG BALL OF HAIR BALL QUEEN, best overall book themed character and
TIMBER GUY OF THE YEAR, the man who is the sexiest reader, books will be provided for reading!
Special Guest and Author, SUSAN VREELAND of Clara and Mr. Tiffany will be featured at the Ball.
A royal feast of appetizers will be served and set ups provided for B.Y.O.B.!
EVENT SOLD OUT!


January 16, 2011
SUNDAY MORNING

CHAPTER TWENTY ONE

11:00 a.m. TELL ME THE OLD, OLD STORY
Worship Services at the First United Methodist Church
DR. MARK E. GREEN will be our Special Guest Speaker on his book, A Night with Saddam as Mark was assigned to be with Saddam Hussein on the night he was captured.
Wear your Sunday crown, that’s your favorite hat!

Noon lunch on your own in Jefferson!

CHAPTER TWENTY TWO

2:00 p.m. – 6:00 p.m. 50TH ANNIVERSARY OF TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD FILM FESTIVAL
Featuring: Author, Kerry Madden of Harper Lee UpClose
Author and Independent Film and Television Writer/Producer, MARY MCDONAGH MURPHY of the book, Scott, Atticus, and Boo: A Celebration of Fifty Years of To Kill a Mockingbird and premiering her film Hey, Boo: Harper Lee & To Kill a Mockingbird.
In a documentary and accompanying book, Mary McDonagh Murphy explores the novel’s power, influence and popularity. With reflections from Anna Quindlen, Tom Brokaw, James McBride, James Patterson, Wally Lamb, Oprah Winfrey and more, the documentary and the book chronicle the many ways the novel has shaped lives and careers.
Documentary Film Maker SANDY H. JAFFE of On Mockingbird, Our Mockingbird
Two high schools in Birmingham, Alabama – one black, one white – collaborate on a life-changing production of the play, To Kill A Mockingbird. How many lives have been changed by this story?
Details on all films, authors, and program T.B.A. soon!
$25 for Pulpwood Queen Book Club members, $75 for non-members for the film festival. Tickets are limited so please purchase your tickets while supply lasts.

I am here to tell you we make memories to last a lifetime at our Girlfriend Weekend in historic Jefferson, Texas. Jefferson, Texas was the beginning of our story and will continue to the end of our story.
We could write a book on all the adventures and shared stories from our weekends together! My hope and dream is that all of you too will become lifetime readers and writers. Only you can tell and share your story, so let us begin to write, as well as read. And remember, a story not written is a library lost to all your family and friends.
It’s like our official motto, “where tiaras are mandatory and reading good books is the RULE!” Won’t you join us on as our royal story continues to unfold. Life can be a book loving journey because folks, life is not only about the destination, it’s about the ride! And oh what a ride! Thank you for joining me on our weekend IT’S ALL ABOUT THE STORY! I do believe I will be able to report, a very happy ending!

THE END




For more information on any of the above information, please email kathy@beautyandthebook.com or call Beauty and the Book at 903-665-7520. We accept all major credit cards. Pulpwood Queen Packets and Tickets can be picked up at Registration booth when you arrive!

All information above could be subject to change due to circumstances beyond our control. For the latest updated version of the program, please email kathy@beautyandthebook.com to send you latest revised program or go to www.pulpwoodqueen.com where updates are reported daily.

No refunds will be able to be given on tickets or packages purchased but we will be more than happy to roll over to the next year the tickets and packages you may have purchased if for any reason you have to cancel. Please contact us immediately if you have to cancel on any events as we do have a waiting list of those wishing to attend.

The Pulpwood Queen Adds 50th Anniversary "To Kill a Mockingbird" Film Festival to her Girlfriend Weekend!

Dear Readers!

Anybody who really knows me knows that "To Kill a Mockingbird is my favorite book of all time!

So it with great pleasure and honor that I am pleased to announce our first ever FILM FESTIVAL to be held Sunday, January 16, 2011 as the Grand Finale of our 11th Anniversary Girlfriend Weekend Author Extravaganza! Yes, add to your calendar our 50th Anniversary of "To Kill a Mockingbird' Film Festival, 2:00 p.m. - 6:00 p.m. at the Jefferson Tourism and Convention Center. As I type this NEW announcement, I catch my breath, as to do this event is the greatest thing I have ever done bar none. I have tears in my eyes of the joy I have in bringing this event to you! Books take you, indeed, magical places! I never dreamed in a million years I would be bringing this all to you! You all are in for an experience of a lifetime this Girlfriend Weekend! My hope and dream is that everybody will know that this event marks the event of my lifetime!

Featuring:

Author, Kerry Madden of Upclose: Harper Lee



Up Close: Harper Lee

When her reply came, it was short and succinct. She did not believe in biographies for those still living. She wrote, “I may be old but I’m still breathing." She closed the note wishing me the best whether I pursued the project or not. It was disappointing but certainly not unexpected. She hasn’t granted an interview to discuss her work since 1964 and even turned down Oprah. I thanked her and decided to continue with the book anyway. Harper Lee’s was a story I longed to write. For more on her story go to http://www.kerrymadden.com/



Author and Independent Film and Television Writer/Producer,Mary Murphy of "Scout, Atticus, and Boo"!



Reading To Kill a Mockingbird is something millions of us have in common. In a documentary and accompanying book, Mary McDonagh Murphy explores the novel’s power, influence and popularity. With reflections from Anna Quindlen, Tom Brokaw, James McBride, James Patterson, Wally Lamb, Oprah Winfrey and more, the documentary and the book chronicle the many ways the novel has shaped lives and careers. Harper Lee has not given an interview since 1964, but Murphy’s reporting, research and rare interviews with the author’s sister and friends add new details and photos to the remarkable story of an astonishing phenomenon. Read the Book: Scout, Atticus & Boo: A Celebration of Fifty Years of To Kill a Mockingbird or see the documentary film Hey, Boo: Harper Lee & To Kill a Mockingbird. For more on Mary Murphy go to http://www.marymurphy.net/



The First United Methodist Church High School and Junior High Youth Groups will be running a concession stand with all proceeds going to their NEW youth building and The First United Methodist Church will be hosting a Chili Supper at the convention center with their proceeds to go to their mission and outreach programs, specifically their Food Bank Program!



Last, (see at bottom of letter), I would like to post a feature that was written by author, Mark Childress, photo above), that was written originally for Southern Living Magazine and being reprinted with his permission. This is story that I reread as often as I reread "To Kill a Mockingbird, a feature I hold dear to heart. Mark will be also attending our book festival to promote his latest book, "Georgia Bottoms". He grew up in Monroeville, Alabama and is also featured in the documentary "Hey Boo!". It is with great pleasure that I share his story and announce this big event!



Tickets for Pulpwood Queen and Timber Guy Book Club members are $25.00. Non-members, $75. Email kathy@beautyandthebook.com for tickets or call 903-665-7520 begin_of_the_skype_highlighting 903-665-7520 end_of_the_skype_highlighting.



Tiara Wearing, Beauty and the Book sharing,

Kathy L. Patrick

Founder of the Pulpwood Queens and Timber Guys Book Clubs

Beauty and the Book

608 North Polk Street

Jefferson, Texas 75657

903-665-7520 begin_of_the_skype_highlighting 903-665-7520 end_of_the_skype_highlighting

kathy@beautyandthebook.com

http://www.beautyandthebook.com/

http://www.pulpwoodqueen.com/

http://www.southernauthors.blogspot.com/



Looking for Harper Lee





With a sad smile I close the cover of “To Kill A Mockingbird,” a book I hold close to my heart. Every year or so I read it again, to see if it’s as good as I remember, and to remind myself why I wanted to become a writer. This is the book that did it for me, the first grown-up book I ever read, the one that has stayed with me longest.

I’ll never forget where I was that first time: on Miss Wanda Biggs’ front porch in Monroeville, Alabama, my hometown, a few doors down from the house where Nelle Harper Lee grew up. It was my particular luck to enter the world of Jean Louise Finch (better known as Scout), her brother Jem, father Atticus, the peculiar boy Dill from next door, and all the good and bad people of Maycomb, Alabama, while I reclined in a porch swing on the street where it all happened.

My family had moved away from Monroeville by that time, but we came back in the summers to visit Miss Wanda and Mister Fred and their dog Whizzy. The Biggses lived in a big old rambly house with rooms on both sides of a long dogtrot hallway, and a deep, shady porch on the front.

Over supper, I heard the grownups talking about Nelle Harper Lee, who was by far the biggest celebrity Monroeville had ever produced. Her book spent eighty weeks on bestseller lists, won the Pulitzer Prize, and went on to become a first-rate Hollywood movie, which led to the biggest event in the history of Monroeville: the day Gregory Peck came to town.

Everyone thought Miss Nelle’s success was wonderful, but some in town were already pondering her well-known tendency toward reclusiveness. Nothing provokes the sociable Southerner like someone who wants to be left alone, and from the time of her enormous success Harper Lee had shown absolutely no interest in acting like a celebrity. "These southern people are southern people," she said in 1961, "and if they know you are working at home, they think nothing of walking in for coffee."

I asked Miss Wanda if she had a copy of the book I could read. She led me gravely to the glass-fronted case in the hall and handed over her copy of J.B. Lippincott’s first 1960 edition, inscribed in an open, ladylike hand: “To Wanda, love, Nelle.”

Tucked in the front cover was a black-and-white snapshot of Miss Wanda cheek-to-cheek with Gregory Peck at the LaSalle Hotel on Monroeville’s courthouse square. She asked me to take special care with the book, as it would be worth a lot of money someday.

I stretched out on the swing, my bare feet on the chain, rocking sideways, and read the opening sentence: “When he was nearly thirteen, my brother Jem got his arm badly broken at the elbow.”

Some hours later, I stumbled out of the swing, the closing lines ringing in my head: “He turned out the light and went into Jem’s room. He would be there all night, and he would be there when Jem waked up in the morning.”

In those hours, I was transformed. Books had always been magical objects to me, but distant from my own experience. Authors were invisible wizards who swept me off to far places to work their magic on me. “To Kill A Mockingbird” was fiction, but it was real. It came from this place where I sat. It was written by a lady my parents actually knew, a lady who had signed her name in this book I held in my hands. It told a story about a childhood lived on this very street, in these houses, in these side-yards, in the schoolyard back yonder.

And not just a story -- the most wonderful story I’d ever read. Certainly it seemed so to me at the time, and I’m not sure that I’ve changed my mind. The book moved me as no book had ever done. It made me want to learn how to make that kind of magic, to tell that kind of truth.

Thirty-seven years after its publication, the book moves me still. Many Americans consider it their favorite novel -- a certified classic, seventeen million copies in print, translated into forty languages, assigned reading in nearly every high school in our land. What no one could have predicted was that “To Kill A Mockingbird” would become for the South of the 1960s what “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” was to the North, a hundred years earlier: a novel to change the minds and arouse the consciences of a whole country. I believe that Harper Lee’s charming story was in fact a work of subversive literature, a popular book that did more to change white Southern attitudes about issues of race than any other work of art in this century.



HOW DID the author work this miracle? She begins gracefully, easily, with that ominous glancing reference to Jem’s broken arm, a quick geneaology of the Finch family and a tour of Maycomb, “a tired old town when I first knew it.” Then we’re out in the yard with Scout and Jem and Dill, telling spooky stories about the house where Boo Radley lives.

Scout is the perfect narrator, a funny little girl with a tart sense of injustice, as sublimely pure and smart-mouthed an innocent as any since Huckleberry Finn. Boo Radley is the boogeyman up the street, the recluse who never leaves his creepy shabby house, the man who wants only to be left alone.

Atticus Finch, widower attorney, treats his children with “courteous detachment.” He is raising them with the help of Calpurnia, “our cook,” actually the mother figure in the household, a source of wisdom and strength. Scout gives us a lovely, affectionate picture of growing up in the vanished world of smalltown Alabama in the 1930s, where everyone seems loving and lovable, eccentric but good-hearted, poor but happy. Life feels almost painfully sweet.

Only after the author has meticulously built this fond portrait does she proceed to undermine it, revealing the rottenness at the core of all that polite gentility. Atticus takes a case that he knows will mean trouble. A black man called Tom Robinson is accused of raping and beating a white girl, Mayella Ewell. Normally this would be an open-and-shut case, but Tom is a “good Negro,” and Mayella comes, literally, from trash -- the Ewells live in a shack beside the town dump.

The white people of Maycomb are roused from their summertime torpor to side against Atticus, simply because he dares to defend a black man against the charges of a white girl. The facts of the case do not matter. Trapped in the elaborate system of oppression they have helped to construct, the people of Maycomb have no choice: they must side with white against black, or risk destroying the illusion that supports their way of life.

The trial of Tom Robinson strikes Maycomb like a bolt of lightning, revealing layers of hidden bigotry along with glimmers of occasional humanity. In the bravura courtroom scene at the heart of the novel, Atticus proves Tom’s innocence beyond doubt. In the end, though, the jury must find him guilty, because the need to preserve the whites-only system is stronger than any notion of justice.

Jem says he’s “got it all figured out. There’s four kinds of folks in the world. There’s the ordinary kind like us and the neighbors, there’s the kind like the Cunninghams out in the woods, the kind like the Ewells down at the dump, and the Negroes.”

Scout contradicts him: “Naw, Jem, I think there’s just one kind of folks. Folks.”

Then Jem asks the unanswerable question: “If there’s just one kind of folks, why can’t they get along with each other? If they’re all alike, why do they go out of their way to despise each other? Scout, I think...I’m beginning to understand why Boo Radley’s stayed shut up in the house all this time...it’s because he (ital) wants (end ital) to stay inside.”

A few weeks later, Tom Robinson is shot to death trying to escape from prison.

Atticus is the rod the townspeople have set up to attract the lightning. He defended the man he was appointed to defend, and for this crime his children are assaulted on their way home from a Halloween pageant.

Boo Radley comes out of his house to save the children’s lives, but not before Jem has his arm “badly broken at the elbow.”

That’s the story, simple enough on its surface. No one in the story is completely good, and no one wholly evil -- except perhaps Bob Ewell, father of Mayella, who winds up under an oak tree with “a kitchen knife stuck up under his ribs.” The sheriff pronounces justice served: “There’s a black boy dead for no reason, and the man responsible for it’s dead. Let the dead bury the dead this time, Mr. Finch.”

Although “To Kill A Mockingbird” was a huge and immediate hit, the author’s combination of darkness and light was too strong for some critics of the time. As Harding Lemay wrote in the New York Herald Tribune: “The two themes Miss Lee interweaves throughout the novel emerge as enemies of each other. The charm and wistful humor of the childhood recollections do not foreshadow the deeper, harsher note which pervades the later pages of the book.... The two worlds remain solitary in spite of Miss Lee's grace of writing and honorable decency of intent."

Of course with hindsight we see that it is precisely the contrast of these “solitary” worlds, the polite fiction of a happily segregated society posed against the “deeper, harsher” truth of racial oppression, that gives the novel its immense power. Subversives do their work from within the society they are trying to topple. The world Harper Lee wrote about was distant enough in time, in the 1960s, to make her revelations acceptable to a wide Southern audience. Writing from a position of sympathy with the white society, she exposed the great lie beneath its surface. Her indictment was all the more devastating because it came from within.



HARPER LEE will celebrate her seventy-first birthday on April 28, 1997. People are sometimes surprised to learn that she is alive and well, still dividing her time between Monroeville and an apartment on the upper East Side of New York City, still invisible to the public. From the outside, her life seems to have been rather peaceful.

The youngest of three children born to A.C. and Francis Lee, she grew up in Depression Monroeville and followed her attorney father’s footsteps as far as law school at the University of Alabama, though she never practiced law. (Her sister Alice practiced with Mr. A.C. Lee until his death, and then on her own.) Nelle Lee spent the 1950s in New York, working for Eastern Airlines and honing a collection of short stories. At the suggestion of a literary agent she expanded one of these stories into “To Kill A Mockingbird.”

Monroeville has always taken it for granted that events in the novel are based on the author’s life. Miss Wanda pointed out for me the house where the real-life Boo Radley lived, and the stump of the tree where he hid his little trinkets for Scout and Jem -- as if they were real children, not fictional characters. Certainly the character of Dill was based on the young Truman Capote, who spent childhood summers in Monroeville and remained fast friends with Nelle Lee until his death.

After the astounding success of “To Kill A Mockingbird,” Harper Lee retreated into a public silence that has endured all these years. She is one of America’s great literary recluses, refusing all interviews, resisting all honors, declining all approaches, as invisible to her fans as Boo Radley was to the people of Maycomb. Aside from the novel, and a couple of essays on love and Christmas she wrote for women’s magazines in the early 1960s, Harper Lee has never published another word. Like Boo, she seems to want only to be left alone.

Perhaps Scout was speaking for the author when she says “I could stand anything but a bunch of people looking at me.”

Nelle Lee spent years helping Capote research the Kansas murders that became his nonfiction novel “In Cold Blood,” which he dedicated to her. As far as I know, she has placed herself in the public eye only once in all the years since, in 19xx when she accepted an honorary degree from the University of Alabama. From all accounts she was generous and good-humored that day, spoke brief thanks from the podium, and went back to her privacy.

I wish I’d been there. Since that day in Miss Wanda’s swing, I have cherished an unrealistic ambition to meet Harper Lee, to thank her for writing that marvelous book. For a while, when I was a reporter for newspapers (and this magazine), I joined the crowd of people trying to break through her wall of silence. I learned that a friend of a friend was in touch with her, and wrote what I thought was a very nice letter, asking if she’d grant me a few minutes on the phone, or submit to an interview in writing. Weeks later my letter came back with “Hell No” printed in green ink across the top.

Hope does continue to spring, however. Some years later I wrote a novel of my own, and mailed a copy to Miss Alice Lee, Nelle’s older sister. Miss Alice had done some legal work for my father when we lived in Monroeville. Shamelessly I traded on that connection. I tried to explain in my letter just how much “To Kill A Mockingbird” meant to me, how it had inspired me to write my own book.

One day a white envelope landed in my mailbox, addressed in the same clear, feminine hand I remembered from the autographed copy at Miss Wanda’s house. A four-page handwritten letter from Nelle Harper Lee, kind words about my own work. I’ll never receive a letter that gives me more pleasure. It was better than meeting her, I think -- I didn’t have a chance to say anything foolish. Her voice, clear and warm and familiar, rose up like a lovely perfume from the pages in my hand.

That was when I gave up trying to meet Harper Lee. I decided to leave her alone. She had given me a gift greater than she would ever know, and if she wanted to be left alone, that was her right. I think ... I’m beginning to understand why she stayed locked up inside her life all these years. She wrote a book that was better than anybody else’s book, and never saw the need to publish another. I think she (ital) wanted (end ital) to stay inside.

The Pulpwood Queen Announces FALL BACK INTO READING at A Good Blog is Hard to Find and MORE!

Dear Readers,

I run this southern author blog outfit but goodness, gracious, I'm an author on the go!  SO!  We had a lapse in author blogs, I am making up for it and now we are back on schedule!  First the photos!

The bottom photo is taken at the Biltmore Estate in Asheville, North Carolina.  Author, Deeanne Gist of "Maid to Match", a Houston, Texas author had an open invitation to take a "Getaway with Deeanne" at the Biltmore!  This was the Ultimate Girlfriend and Booklover getaway as we not only were able to experience the Biltmore Estate from top to bottom of the home to every end of the all the fascinating places on the estate we had our sparkly southern author to lead us!  Author, Deanne is the third person on your left!  I'm that READhead in the back!

Now her book "Maid to Match" was set at the Biltmore and girlfriends, why didn't I think of this.  Note to author, set your book where you most want to go, hehhhehee!  For more photos and story go to www.deeannegist.com!

Now that reminds me of more Girlfriend Getaways that are involving authors and books.  Check out my Event page at www.beautyandthebook.com for all the many literary loving adventures I am planning through the next coming year including, Books Alive and Girlfriend Weekend in Jefferson, Texas featuring authors, Sam Bracken, Echo Garrett, Pat Conroy, Fannie Flagg, Rick Bragg, Mark Childress, Marshall Chapman to name just a few as close to 75 author featured at those two little ole literacy promoting shindigs.

Then if that isn't enough, check out my Pulpwood Queen Cruise to the Bahamas with the authors and so far booked to go are authors, Echo Garrett, M.L. Malcolm, and Deeanne Gist.  Friend me on Facebook at Kathy Louise Patrick and I'll send you the cruise info!  It's going to be amazing! I have already almost two dozen signed up and we launch that cruise, June 24 - 27, 2011 out of Miami, Florida!

Last is the photo of Nashville born and raised author, Sam McLeod, who wrote "Big Appetite: My Southern Friend Search for the Meaning of Life", which currently stands as the #1 Bestseller on my Pulpwoodqueen Top Twenty Countdown of Bestsellers for September at www.pulpwoodqueen.com!  You'll recognize many of you there!  That's Sam McLeod, my minister, Allison Byerley, me, Sara Whittaker, my co-youth leader and youth group members, Sarah Jones and Paige Huntington of the First United Methodist Church of Jefferson, Texas.  Sam spoke and brought in The Waffle House to serve a breakfast dinner for this fundraiser to help pay for our NEW Youth Group Building!  We raised over $2,000 because of this southern author who also just happens now to live in Walla Walla, Washington.  You see great things and good can happen when you feature southern authors and all share a meal!  We learned that COMMUNITY can do good works and so can our Southern Author COMMUNITY!  Thanks for joining us!

Next up will be all our authors writing of their most beloved books, favorite author and who their best friend is that is an author!  It's the story behind their stories so stay tuned tomorrow as we begin this NEW southern author reading journey.  What are you waiting for?  Reading changes lives so please share with all your friends and remember!  A book is a gift that keeps on giving and this blog does too, share it big time everyday!

Last, heading out this week to the southern festivals of all festivals, The Southern Festival of the Book in Nashville as moderating two panels on Friday and Saturday, The Pulpwood Queen Presents the BEST in Southern Authors!  I hope to meet and greet, mingle and tingle with all my NEW and old bookloving friends there!  It's FALL back into reading time and nobody, I mean nobody is as excited as ME!

Your NEW Southern Author Blogger Fearless Leader!
Kathy L. Patrick
Author of "The Pulpwood Queens' Tiara Wearing, Book Sharing Guide to Life", Grand Central Publishing
Founder of  the largest "meeting and discussing" book club in the world, The Pulpwood Queens and Timber Guys!
www.beautyandthebook.com to join the fastest growing book club in the world!
www.pulpwoodqueen.com, my daily to weekly blog with PHOTOS!
www.readinggroupguides.com, of which I periodically contribute and an excellent resource for readers!

The Pulpwood Queen Celebrates her 54th Birthday with this message, EAT PRAY LOVE!

The Pulpwood Queen Celebrates her 54th Birthday with this book message, EAT PRAY LOVE!




Dear Readers of A Good Blog is Hard to Find!



Some time back I read the Elizabeth Gilbert book, "eat pray love" and was taken away by this young woman traveling to Italy to revel in it's food and language, visit to India to visit an ashram, and trip to Indonesia to reconnect with a healer from Bali.  Not a southern book, but a book that let this now southern woman travel to places she always dreamed.



Growing up a small town Kansas girl my mother instilled in me a love of travel from other countries by purchasing me this set of encyclopedias that came with a letter a month then a set of books on countries that came with stickers that you placed in the book.



That's not all, I received a world globe from Santa one year and a real adult Smith Corona typewriter with typing manual my fifth grade year. I did not realize it then but she gave me all the tools I would need to travel a lifetime of learning and writing to places I have never been able to afford to go.



You see unlike the author, Elizabeth Gilbert, I have never been able to take a year off to go find myself. But I have found myself indeed, first, through the reading of books and second, from writing my story of my life in books, "The Pulpwood Queens' Tiara Wearing, Book Sharing Guide to Life", Grand Central Publishing.



Because of reading and writing I have been able to travel places I never dreamed I would be able to go through my imagination and more recently, in actual traveling to the places I dreamed.



I could hardly wait for the eat pray love film starring Julia Roberts because I wanted to see visually the places that I had read. A bunch of us caravanned over to Marshall, Texas, one Sunday after church, to watch the movie and like the book, I became lost in the film.



Every year I have a birthday party for myself where I invite all my friends, not for the presents, but for their presence. Then it dawned on me as we were all sharing a meal after the movie, I announced to the group, I would have an EAT PRAY LOVE Birthday Party!



The Party is tomorrow night! I have invited all my friends but if you are in the area, come join us at our house which I call Grand Central Station. Yes, it will be crowded but everyone is all bringing an Italian, Indonesian, or Indian dish! I am tackling an assortment of truly exotic shish ka bobs! I plan to outdo my last year's theme party of "Julie and Julia" where I prepared Julia Child's dishes!



I have encouraged everyone to come dressed in a costume from one of the countries to put us in the EAT PRAY LOVE spirit! The incense will be burning, the candles lit, the festive party decorations, umbrellas, and paper lanterns will be on. My house is your house, so to speak.  And the one thing about the south is, we do know how to throw a party!



Email me at kathy@beautyandthebook.com for directions. I have learned that life is about not things, but about our relationships with others. For me that is God first, my family and friends and I invite you all is not to be here in person, in spirit!



Thank you for the tremendous amount of birthday greetings. I am humbled and greatly blessed by your enormous blanket of love.



My wish for all of you on my 54th year on this planet is to indeed EAT PRAY LOVE! You can find yourself too in the reading of books and in writing your story! I encourage you all to do so. It's all about the story folks and sharing that story with others. The story you do not record or write is a library lost to your family and friends. Besides, nobody can tell your story as well as you can.  And this blog showcases some of the best southern storytellers in the country, so don't miss and comment on a single day!



Big things are happening in the Wonderful World of The Pulpwood Queens and Timber Guys Book Clubs! Won't you join us on our mission to promote literacy! I have some big southern TRAVEL plans so check out our website often at http://www.beautyandthebook.com/, click on Pulpwood Queens on how to join our book loving fun! Follow along on my daily to weekly literary travels at http://www.pulpwoodqueen.com/ and this NEW blog site I am hosting, http://www.southernauthors.blogspot.com/ as a different southern author is featured every day for the Best of the South when it comes to reading! For an excellent book loving resource, check out http://www.readinggroupguides.com/ as I occasionally do a guest feature there and of course, I am now up on Facebook, at Kathy Louise Patrick, please friend me and for my unique southern Hair Salon/Book Store, Beauty and the Book, please fan me!





And now to truly celebrate my birthday, this video, which in my opinion is the #1 Best Southern Party Band EVER, The B-52's singing, "LOVE SHACK!"



Kat on a Hot Tin Roof, RUSTED!

Kathy L. Patrick

Hairdresser to the Authors

Founder of the Pulpwood Queens and Timber Guys Book Clubs

Senior High Youth Leader for the First United Methodist Church AND

Literary Chair for The Rotary Club of Jefferson, Texas

Beauty and the Book

608 North Polk

Jefferson, Texas 75657

903-665-7520

http://www.beautyandthebook.com/

http://www.pulpwoodqueen.com/

http://www.southernauthors.blogspot.com/

http://www.readinggroupguides.com/

MY CRAZY 10 YEAR PUBLISHING JOURNEY by Maryann McFadden

Since Kathy Patrick asked us to share our publishing stories—how we got started, and all—I’m going to do just that. If you’ve heard it before, sorry! But I love telling it, because it reminds me of how lucky I am to be sitting here, published, and participating in this blog! And yes, it’s kinda long, but hey, this is 10 crazy years we’re talking about!

When I was in my forties, and my kids were heading off to college, I rediscovered a dream I’d all but forgotten, to be an author. It happened quite by accident. You see, I went back to school, too, for a Master’s in Education because I wanted to teach high school English. After a decade in real estate, I wanted security, benefits, and summers off. But a funny thing happened, in the English class we did a lot of writing, and I just LOVED IT! I hadn’t written in a decade, since leaving a freelance journalism career for real estate. But suddenly, sitting in that classroom, writing those creative pieces, something lit up inside me! I was an eleven year old girl again, pecking away at my Dad’s old Underwood manual typewriter as I wrote my first short stories. Dreaming of being an author!

I switched programs and got into a Master’s in English with a concentration in Writing and in my very first class, I created Joanna Harrison, a corporate wife in a short story who runs away to Pawleys Island. Two years later, in 1999, when I wrote my thesis, I wrote 120 pages about a corporate wife who runs away from her life in NJ to start over on Pawleys Island, SC (exactly where I’d still like to run away to!). The Richest Season was born.

After graduating, it took 2 more years for me to finish the novel, getting up at 5 am most mornings and writing before work, and also on weekends. By August of 2001, I had a 500 page manuscript, with not just Joanna, the wife’s journey, but the corporate husband, Paul’s, transforming story, as well as that of an elderly woman, Grace, who gives Joanna a job. I was so excited! This book had everything I love in it, the beauty of nature, the need to get back to the simple things in life. Rediscovering our dreams after getting caught up in the busyness of life! (And I didn’t even realize art was imitating life, it was simply subconscious!).

Well, there wasn’t a happy, tidy little ending to my story. It got rejected for the next 5 years, again and again, and I shelved it 3 times! Now there were some good moments—I got some glowing rejection letters, the best one arriving on October 11, 2001, exactly a month after 9/11. She loved the book, but the publishing world was in flux. I decided to wait a while before trying again. Later in 2002, I had a very big agent call me on the phone! From her vacation home! She wanted the manuscript exclusively, and I was jumping up and down. Two weeks later when she called again, I heard the BUT before she uttered the word… “but I wanted some humor.” I was ready to bang my head against a wall. I had no idea chick-lit was becoming a hot genre, and that’s what agents wanted. Then another agent read my manuscript and asked me to (and I swear these are her words) “ditch Paul and ditch Grace, I just want Joanna.” I realized she wanted a romance novel. I wasn’t willing to give up what I thought were 2 incredible characters.

In the meantime, I kept hearing the same refrain from friends and relatives who were reading the manuscript in a fat 3 ring binder: Your book is wonderful! Why isn’t it published?

A milestone birthday came and went. I began writing another book, while still working full time as a realtor, and I was frustrated as hell. I began to do some soul searching.

I wanted to keep writing. I didn’t want to give up. But what defined success to me as a writer? To be read! And to move people when they read my work. I wanted The Richest Season to be out there in reader land, for people to know about Joanna, Grace and Paul, three characters who I believed deserved to live in reader’s imaginations. I wanted them to fall in love with Pawleys Island, as I had more than 20 years ago.

And so I decided to take one of the biggest gambles in my life: to self-publish The Richest Season. After all, I reasoned, if I could sell houses, which I’d done very successfully for nearly 20 years by then, I could sell this book!!!

I found a small print on demand publisher in California which I’d never heard of, and I was hoping no one else had either. I wanted the book judged on its own merits, not with the stigma I knew it would carry if the truth were known.

My self-published edition of The Richest Season debuted in May, 2006. I immediately orchestrated a book launch at our local college. I sent press releases to our local weekly, and our local radio station. I hung posters all over town. But the week of the launch I was a wreck. I was now feeling like a bit of a fraud. The local paper interviewed me, took a picture, and ran an article with the headline: DREAM OF BEING PUBLISHED COMES TRUE. I thought I would die from embarrassment! Obviously, that wasn’t exactly accurate.


The night of the launch, I was scared to death. I knew most people would have no idea it was self-published. I had no idea how many would show up. Despite a torrential downpour and with little parking nearby, I managed to fill the parlors. One of the first women who came in, who’d gotten the book online—the only place it was available-- hugged me and said, “I loved your book. I wanted to live it.” I went on to sell over 100 books that night. Needless to say, I was beyond thrilled. But still…there was that nagging feeling, despite what they thought: I wasn’t the real deal. I wasn’t a real published author.

I began pounding the pavement. Getting a bookseller to read a self-published book isn’t easy. The big stores and chains simply won’t. So I focused on the independents. I went into each store with shaking knees and trembling hands, as I brought a copy of my book to one store after another.


Then something magical happened. One bookseller loved it, and then another. They began to help me, recommending the book to their book clubs, asking me to do signings. I got up the nerve to call booksellers in other states. Tom Warner at Litchfield Books in Pawleys Island (my setting), loved it and said “next time you come down, we’ll have you for a signing.” I told him, “I’m coming later this month!” (I wasn’t actually, but after he said that, I knew I had to). The next thing you know, I’m on a Southern book tour, with stops at Park Road Books in Charlotte, and McIntyre’s Fine Books near Chapel Hill! I sent press releases to all the nearby papers and got coverage, because I was that squeaky wheel, who called and emailed until they responded.

I even went to a bookseller’s convention and walked the floor, handing out review copies to some surprised booksellers, as the big name authors signed at booths, with long lines, a very humbling experience.

The next eight months were exhausting as I continued to market my novel in any way I could, while still working. I racked up 25 signings, some library and senior talks, and met with nearly 40 book clubs in 10 states, many via web cam. Reader feedback was unbelievable. I sold more then 2,000 books, what some literary books do in a lifetime, I learned. In one indie, The Richest Season went on to become their top selling trade paperback for 2006, outselling The Kite Runner.

Needless to say, I was exhausted. I had no time to write, and booksellers kept saying to me, “You have to stop selling books out of the trunk of your car (I was supplying many on consignment) and get back to writing. People are asking for your next book.”

One night in November, I decided to search for an agent again. I sent out e-mail queries loaded with all my bookseller and reader quotes, newspaper reviews, and the fact that I had several thousand readers waiting for my next book. The very next morning I got a call from The Victoria Sanders Agency, asking me for an exclusive. I agreed. Eight weeks later they called, asking me to come in.

On the last day of January in 2007, after a harrowing trip into New York that included snow, ice and a train shut-down because of a terrorist alert, I was rewarded with a smile and these words from Victoria: “This is a wonderful book!” Validation! Finally!

But we still had to sell it to a publisher. I knew I was only halfway there.

Victoria asked me to add a few scenes early in the book, something I’d already been thinking about because of all my book club discussions. In April of 2007, with those new scenes added, she sent copies of the manuscript to major publishers in New York on a Thursday. The following Monday morning she called me and said “I think we’re going to have multiple offers.” I literally jumped up and down.

Shortly afterward, she decided to hold an auction for the rights to The Richest Season. It was an exciting and nail biting time, waiting for her call. When it came, I was thrilled to learn that Hyperion Books won, offering me a 2 book hardcover deal. This was it! After years of rejection, I was the real deal!

And the astounding thing was this. All during my low moments, and there were many over this entire journey, my best friend kept singing the Disney song, “When you wish upon a star…” I then learned that Hyperion is owned by…Disney!

Within a few weeks, Random House in Germany bought German rights in a 5 way auction, and Mondadori took it in Italy in a preempt. It’s now being translated into Spanish.

In June, 2008, The Richest Season debuted in hardcover, as an INDIE NEXT PICK. The following summer, my second novel, So Happy Together, also an INDIE NEXT PICK, also debuted in hardcover. Both are now out as trade paperbacks.

I’ve just turned in my third novel, The Book Lover, about a struggling independent bookseller who discovers…a self-published author! I don’t think there’s anything out there quite like it! It’s truly fiction, though I do use a bit of my backstory, but it tells the entire journey of how a book begins in an author’s head and ends up in a reader’s hands. And it’s got lots of drama, and some great characters, you’ll just love.

As I begin the first tentative steps into my fourth novel, there are still days I can’t quite believe it’s true, that I’m a real author. And I'd nearly given up.

My advice to aspiring writers with a dream is work hard, persevere, and BELIEVE!

Maryann McFadden lives in NJ, although her heart is in the Lowcountry of SC. She was a freelance writer for ten years, then sold real estate, before returning to writing, her first love. You can read more at www.maryannmcfadden.com