Sharyn McCrumb: Nut Cases Get the Form Letter

Stephen King Wasn’t Kidding, Y’all


Crazy people write to you, too, right? I’m not the only one getting this stuff.

She seemed so normal at first. She e-mailed a brief message to the “Contact the Author” address on my web-site, saying how much she loved my books, and then she asked if I planned to write another book in the old series that was still her favorite,

She was referring to books I wrote twenty-five years ago, back when I was in graduate school, back when I had two children in diapers and very little time for contemplation. Short, fun books that were marketed as genre fiction, but when you’re working full-time, writing term papers, and taking care of babies, you don’t have time to be Virginia Woolf, trust me.

I get about one letter a week asking about those books, and I have half a dozen stock replies, depending on my mood. I sent her the nicest one, I promise you I did. I explained that while many wonderful, clever people read those books, far too many other people read them as if they were verbal Twinkies, missing all the satire, symbolism, etc. And those people then mistake my later works for genre fiction, too, which I will not stand for. I said that since people were teaching my later works in universities and writing dissertations about them, and awarding me literary prizes, I thought it best to move on. Often I compare my career to that of actor Tom Hanks, who, after winning two Academy Awards, is not going back to doing his old sit-com Bosom Buddies, either.

She wrote back with a stern lecture saying that I had “sold out” and that I had abandoned my fans to curry favor with academics. The tone was strident and over-wrought. She lectured me as if I were twelve years old. I did not reply. The next day another letter arrived from her, this one even more hysterical, beginning with her declaration that I had lost her as a reader (Thank you, Jesus), and saying she would tell everybody that I had sold out. What she was saying did not seem even remotely connected to the response I had originally sent her.

What reply did she expect to her diatribe? Did she think I would beg her to keep reading my work? That I would see the “error of my ways” and begin immediately to write a new installment in a series I had written back when Reagan was president? Not bloody likely. I hope she does stop reading my work. It makes me nervous even to know I’m sharing the planet with a lunatic like her.

I was tempted to send her one sentence “Thank you for your interest in my books,” and add a postscript saying “Nut cases get the form letter.” But I did not reply.

Do not write back to crazy people. Not only because some fans are dangerously crazy – remember Selena? John Lennon?—but also because you can never convince these people, and you can never get the last word. They want to be angry for two reasons: 1) It makes them feel emotionally connected to you; and 2) As long as you even read their messages, they are exerting control over you. You are giving them power.

I get one whacko letter a year, and you can never tell from their first message that they are mentally disturbed. They say the same sort of nice things most people say, but they take exception to even the most innocuous reply. It is usually evident when they reply by arguing with you, and taking a hostile or condescending tone. They are embarking on the power trip. At that point, I’m gone.

You know, when I first read Stephen King’s novel Misery, back when it first came out, I thought it was a wonderful imaginary tour-de-force. As the years went by, I came to realize that it is as close to non-fiction as you can get without being an autopsy report. Stephen King wasn’t kidding.

Remember Misery? It is less of a horror story than it is an examination of the dynamics between the reader and the writer. Oh, readers thought it was scary, because the best-selling author of historical romance novels is injured and trapped in a remote mountain cabin with an ax-wielding maniac who calls herself “his number-one fan.”

When “Annie Wilkes” discovers that her favorite author has no intention of writing that series any more, she keeps him prisoner, chops off his foot, destroys his new novel, and forces him to write the book she wants him to write.
All successful but sincere writers would be terrified by that book-- even if the hero had been kept in comfort in the sunny guestroom of the president of the Charleston Garden club, because the horror to us isn’t the deranged sadist, it is the readers who think that devotion to your work gives them any say-so in the process.

In part 11 of the first section of Misery, the author Paul Sheldon thinks of his captor:

“ …And while she might be crazy, was she really so different in her evaluation of his work from the hundreds of thousands of other people across the country-- ninety per cent of them women-- who could barely wait for each new five-hundred page episode in the turbulent life of the foundling who had risen to marry a peer of the realm ? No, not at all. They wanted Misery, Misery, Misery. Each time he had taken a year or two off to write one of the other novels-- what he thought of as his “serious work” with what was at first certainty and then hope and finally a species of grim desperation-- he had received a flood of protesting letters from these women, many of whom signed themselves “your number one fan.” The tones of these letters varied from bewilderment (that always hurt the most, somehow) to reproach to outright anger, but the message was always the same: It wasn’t what I expected. It wasn’t what I wanted. Please go back to Misery. I want to know what Misery is doing! -- He could write a modern Under the Volcano, Tess of the D-Urbervilles, The Sound and the Fury; it wouldn’t matter. They would still want Misery, Misery, Misery.”

Stephen King wasn’t exaggerating. He spoke for all of us who write because we have something to say instead of to push a product at consumers. Maybe you can vote what a genre hack will write next (I can name you twenty), but their works are ultimately as ephemeral as cotton candy.

Here’s the truth about any real writer’s work-- Stephen King, again, in Misery: “It was never for you, Annie, or all the other people out there who sign their letters “Your number one fan.” The minute you start to write, all those people are all at the other end of the galaxy or something.”

* * *


Real writers all have the same moral standard: Never write just for money; never tell lies to curry favor with readers, and never write a book unless you have something you feel is worth saying.

That’s all I owe anybody. Integrity.

The “number one fan” thinks that she can tell you what to write. She thinks that having read your book (probably via used paperback) that she is entitled to dictate your career choices, but writing is a strange vocation-- it's not like Burger King, where the slogan is "Have it your way." Good writers never really write for anyone other than themselves. The ones who don't turn out garbage. Trust me. You know what they say about people who do it for money instead of for love.

Writers are crazy, too, but since most of us are loners, at least we don’t torment real people.

#30




Sharyn McCrumb is an award-winning Southern writer, whose novel St. Dale, is the story of a group of ordinary people who go on a pilgrimage in honor of racing legend Dale Earnhardt, and find a miracle. This Canterbury Tales in a NASCAR setting, won a 2006 Library of Virginia Award as well as the AWA Book of the Year Award.

McCrumb, who has been named a “Virginia Woman of History” in 2008 for Achievement in Literature, was a guest author at the National Festival of the Book in Washington, D.C. sponsored by the White House in 2006.

She is best known for her Appalachian “Ballad” novels, set in the North Carolina/Tennessee mountains, including New York Times Best Sellers She Walks These Hills and The Rosewood Casket, which deal with the issue of the vanishing wilderness, and The Ballad of Frankie Silver, the story of the first woman hanged for murder in the state of North Carolina; and The Songcatcher, a genealogy in music, tracing the author‘s family from 18th century Scotland to the present by following a Scots Ballad through the generations. . Ghost Riders, an account of the Civil War in the mountains of western North Carolina, won the Wilma Dykeman Award for Literature given by the East Tennessee Historical Society;

McCrumb’s other honors include: AWA Outstanding Contribution to Appalachian Literature Award; the Chaffin Award for Southern Literature; the Plattner Award for Short Story; and AWA’s Best Appalachian Novel. A graduate of UNC- Chapel Hill, with an M.A. in English from Virginia Tech, McCrumb was the first writer-in-residence at King College in Tennessee. In 2005 she honored as the Writer of the Year at Emory & Henry College.

Her novels, studied in universities throughout the world, have been translated into German, Dutch, Japanese, and Italian. She has lectured on her work at Oxford University, the University of Bonn-Germany, and at the Smithsonian Institution; taught a writers workshop in Paris, and served as writer-in-residence at King College in Tennessee. A film of her novel The Rosewood Casket is currently in production, directed by British Academy Award nominee Roberto Schaefer.

Joshilyn Jackson: The Upsidedown Unthankful Meme

IMMEDIATE pre-blog digression: I say this entry is PG-13 because it contains a word that rhymes with...well. Nothing. Unless pesticles is a word? I didn't think so. ANYWAY, you have been warned: Pesticles ahead! Maiden aunties and grade school children, get thee hence!

Because it is almost Thanksgiving, the memes of the day are tempting me to hurriedly say three things I am thankful for and then bounce off to Alabama to begin a three day slavering bacchanalia that centers around my deep, deep, deep gratitude for nut pies and savory roasted meats. I have bad priorities, tra la.

I could quite hurriedly say, for example, that I am thankful for my family, because, Lord knows, I AM. I could say, I am thankful for digressions, because without them, I would not have a blog. And I could say, as a person who woke up jonesing hard for Ghirardelli, that I am deeply, burpingly, satiatedly thankful for the ziplock bag full of freezer burned dark chocolate chip cherry oatmeal cookie dough I magically found while rooting lunchlessly around the six bags of Jolly Green Giant testicle corn* that have built up in my freezer.

*To digress again (thankful!) rather than save the asterisk for the end and risk forgetting I put it there, I should explain that testicle corn is actually a just a regular bag of frozen corn kernels. I THINK of it as testicle corn because it is the same kind of corn, brand and bag size, that a woman at Publix was buying a couple of years ago so that her husband, who had just had a vasectomy, could press the cold veg to his, er, meat and two veg. Making him technically have meat and THREE veg, but who is counting? NOT. ME.

I SHOULD NOT KNOW THIS INFORMATION.
I SHOULD NOT THINK OF CORN THIS WAY.
But I do and I do because the woman was loud, and on a cell phone, and had forgotten she was in public, and I am an enthusiastic and meticulous grocery store eavesdropper. (You should be careful what you say on the phone in the grocery. If I do not hear you and shamelessly steal it and put it directly into a novel, someone else will.)

The woman was saying to her friend, “Do you think he could put a bag of CORN on his testicles? The doctor said to buy him bags of frozen PEAS, but the peas are expensive and this CORN is on sale.” There was a pause where the other person talked---and truthfully, I would pay ONE HUNDRED FOLDY GREEN AMERICAN DOLLARS to know EXACTLY what the person said, because the woman listened very carefully and then said, quite earnestly, “No, it isn’t buttered.” <---TRUE STORY.

But everyone is going to do that meme. And then they shall ask YOU to say in the comments what YOU are thankful for, and you will say your family or your dog or your good friend (because, LORD knows, you are thankful for them) but that is EASY because your family, your dog, or your good friend are lovely things. What’s not to be thankful for?

Let’s you and I INSTEAD find one of our niggling little flesh thorns, the grating things that rub away at our tender nerve casings day by grinding day, and let’s find something to be thankful for in these …challenges. Can I say challenges without sounding like the perky comb-over dude who runs those corporate bonding weekends where you have to hold a spirit stick and cry at least twice? No? So be it.
CHALLENGES, I say, shamelessly.

I am going to look at a fly in my soup and call it protein. Or, perhaps I am going to look at the fly in my ointment and assume he is like the royal supper-taster of yore, helpfully making sure the ointment is safe for human topical application. Although I think the fly in that expression is actually dead, right? So perhaps I shall be thankful that he died in the ointment and can’t GET in my soup? Because I would rather topically apply a dead-fly-tainted ointment than eat a dead-fly-tainted soup, even if it was something really great, like crab and corn chowder.

Anyway, point is, we are getting jiggy with the THANKFULNESS MEME, and we are looking at something that drives us batcrap and trying to find a way in which we are Thankful for it.

Mine is Insomnia. My hideous insomnia has taken on a new form, in which I go right to sleep, but then wake up for at least fifteen minutes out of every hour. It sucks, but some good came out of it recently, and I am thankful for it. She said with gritted teeth. THANKFULTHANKFULTHANKFUL.

The good was because of this OTHER thing that makes me batcrap:

It looks NICE, doesn’t it? Lying in the dappling sunlight, dandling its lamb-like feet? HA, I say. It’s awful. I like most cats beyond all reason, but I do not like this thing you see pictured. This is mostly because if I try to TOUCH him, touch him in ANY way, even glancingly in passing, he rears back and gives me a PERFECT Charlton Heston “Get your paws off me, you damned dirty ape,” look.

He also will not play with me. He likes to take his furry mouse off alone and play. If I pull a string for him, he looks at me like he thinks I am demented. It’s quite patronizing. If he sees me WATCHING him play with his furry mouse, he stops, lest I suck some scant, vicarious pleasure from his solitary gambolings. I have courted him and courted him, courted with treats and love and kind voiced approbation, all fruitlessly, and after a SOLID YEAR of him not liking me I started to genuinely just NOT LIKE HIM BACK.

And yet he is in my house. Eating kibble I buy and racking up vet bills and shredding my furniture. Indoor cat life being what it is, I am obligated to support this little yellow jerk for a at least a decade, maybe two. So, since he is my responsibility until death takes him, I have been trying to find something to like about him, ANYTHING, really, because SURELY he cannot be a purely AWFUL little cat in all ways, right? RIGHT? RIGHT???

And then, THANKS TO MY NEW FORM OF WILDLY IRRITATING AND EXHAUSTING INSOMNIA, I found out that Boggart actually does like me. Secretly.

Boggart is a secret snuggler.

He waits until I am dead out, which with the old form of insomnia would have been about two am or so. When I am dead to the world, he CREEEEEEPS into my room on his insidious pink-padded feet, and he cuddles up as close as he can get to me, and there he stays, all night.

I have found him there every time I have woken up, limply and blissfully tucked into my neck or armpit or the bend of my knee. If I stir or move at ALL, he leaps away and hides and pretends it never happened. But then if I am very still, and feign snoring, he comes creeping back to press himself up against me and make sly biscuits and PURR. He STEALTH purrs, under his breath, and marks me with his scent glands by face rubbing. Insomnia sucks, but I feel much more warmly toward Boggart now that I know he is a secret snuggler…

SO what’s yours? What thorn can you find a reason to be thankful for this season? I really want to know. Put yours up in the comments here or on FTK, or blog it meme-style and link in the comments here or on FTK? Over-sharing inquirers (read: me) want to know.

(OH! LASTLY, because it is Thanksgiving and because Roxanne asked, I am linking you to the beautiful and bigger-butt inducing recipe for Pure Irish Love, also known as Fat Potato Fat Fat.

To your mouth, I say, “You’re welcome!” and a handwritten sympathy note to your arteries is in the mail. With that check. Yeah.)

Bestselling novelist Joshilyn Jackson lives in Powder Springs, Georgia with her husband, their two kids, a hound dog, a scurrilous Boggart-thing, three aging gerbils, and a twenty-two pound, one-eyed Main Coon cat named Franz Schubert. She wishes their neighborhood was zoned for goats. Both her SIBA award winning first novel, gods in Alabama, and her Georgia Author of the Year Award winning second novel, Between, Georgia, were chosen as the #1 BookSense picks for the month of their release, making Jackson the first author in BookSense history to have Number 1 picks in consecutive years. Her latest, The Girl Who Stopped Swimming, is now in bookstores!

The Wedding From Hell

Comic novelist Ad Hudler's Christmastime Wedding certainly was ... uhhh ... turbulent!




When my family sits down to recall Christmases past, it's hard to top the drama of the Christmas of 1989, when my wife and I got married on the coldest day in Florida history, a day as freakish and improbable as a snowman coming to life with the aid of a magic hat.

Some background: Carol and I had won an island-weekend-getaway package at a fund-raiser auction. Since we both lived in Fort Myers, Florida, we decided to use it when we got married on Christmas weekend because our parents would be in town for the holidays, escaping the cold North.

On the morning of December 23, our small entourage set out for Useppa Island ... I, my future in-laws, and the Christmas presents in a rental boat, and Carol and the others on a ferry.

Now ... cue the theme song from Gilligan's Island: "...Juuuuust sit right back and you'll hear a tale, a tale of a fateful trip ..."

The day most was un-Florida-like: gray skies, choppy water, vigorous and brisk winds.
"This is great," I yelled over the motor, to my in-laws. "We're the only ones out here."

Well, it didn't take long to discover why. I, Mr. Novice Boater, had not bothered to check the weather report that day. Little did I know, the Coast Guard had issued a small-craft advisory.

Very soon, our voyage felt like a stomach-wrenching carnival ride, waves pushing the bow up two to five feet at a time, then letting it fall back down with a slap. Other, larger waves came crashing down directly upon us. We started taking on water. The howling wind blew some of the Christmas presents overboard as if they were paper cups. I stole a glance of my future in-laws, dressed in their Sunday best. Wanda's beauty-parlor hairdo was now plastered upon her scalp. Both of them had abandoned their umbrellas, letting them blow overboard, so they could hold onto the railing with two hands. Wayne yelled to me, through the wind, "I sure as hell hope you're better at navigating a marriage!"

I decided to hug the eastern shore of Sanibel Island, looking for protection from the wind, and this seemed to work for awhile ...until the boat suddenly jerked to a stop, jettisoning my in-laws from their seats, onto the wet floor. I had run us onto a sandbar. Like a beached whale, we could not move.

I tried to radio the Coast Guard, but got no response. However, Sea Tow, Inc. was trolling the airwaves for a catch that day, and I quickly became educated in the economics of saving stranded boaters who have no options.

No way, I said. Way too expensive.

Suit yourself, replied Sea Tow, Inc.

And then I felt my father-in-law's grip upon my shoulder. "Pay him whatever he wants," he said. "We have no say in this matter, son."

They arrived about 30 minutes later and dislodged us from the tropical equivalent of a snow bank. I, however, was too rattled to drive the rest of the way in this storm, so I agreed to pay them to tow us to my wedding.

My dad met us at the dock. Evidently, everyone was atwitter. We had been, after all, missing in action for three hours. The Coast Guard had told them they'd received no distress calls. (Note to self: Write my senator and ask that Coast Guard officers better coordinate their bathroom breaks.)

Dad handed Sea Tow, Inc. his American Express card. "Charge it," he said. "This boy has a wedding to go to." (Total towing bill: $426)

He ushered me into the lodge where I changed into my tux in the bar's bathroom. When I emerged he handed me a shot of whiskey and said, "Drink this."

With no power on the island, we were married by candlelight. And because we were marooned, all our friends had to share our condo on our wedding night. It soon became evident that my tumultuous day was not over yet.

The two of us retired early, but my wife's single, female California friends went back to the bar and managed to befriend the only other guests on the island that night: two wealthy college boys here on their parents' membership. They brought these young men back with them to the condo around 3 a.m. One of them vomited on the couch, another in the kitchen sink. At one point, we heard two of our visitors engage in loud, uninhibited sex. I giggled in the dark with my wife, trying to keep my anger on a leash, and I was fine ... until someone tried to light up the fireplace without opening the flue, filling the condo with black smoke.

I jumped out of bed in my underwear, burst into the living room and yelled, "Anyone who was not part of my wedding party will leave right now!"

I watched the silhouettes of two young men silently grope around in the dark for their clothes. On the way out, one of them whispered, "groom without a heart."

We awoke late the next morning to a knocking on the front door. It was the dockmaster with my now-rattled Manhattanite friend, who naively thought she still could meet her boat shuttle at 5 a.m. that morning, though, of course, no smart boaters would be out there. She had wandered the island for an hour, lost in the dark (power failure so no lights), yelling for help, stepping on and squishing the countless dead lizards that had perished in the freeze.

My marriage, however, would not be a fatality of that night – we're still together, having weathered sundry storms over the years. And though my wife still pesters me about returning to Useppa for a visit, I just can't seem to muster up the courage.

Ad Hudler's newest book, "Man of the House," was named "Required Reading" last week by The New York Post. He blogs daily at AdHudler.com

SINGING THE BLUES

By Carolyn Haines

Nov. 24


Mississippi is a state of great diversity. When I was in my 20s, I had the terrific good fortune of working as a photojournalist for several newspapers. In that role, I got to travel the state covering politics and “soft” news. While I grew up in the southeastern part of the state, an area called the Pine Barrens, I also got to spend time in all of the other regions.
This has stood me in good stead for the series of mysteries I write set in the Mississippi Delta, a place I came to love when I was “newspapering.” The Pine Barrens and the Delta are worlds apart. My region of the state was settled by timber men, “dirt” farmers who had smaller plots of land and who produced vegetables and cattle. The Delta, where it’s said the topsoil is eight feet deep, was one of the most profitable regions of cotton production. The land holdings there stretched into the thousands of acres for a single family.
In the Pine Barrens, there were well off people, but not the wealth of the Delta, which had two classes—the very rich and the very poor.
In the piney woods I grew up with the sound of fiddles, piano and guitar, sometime mandolin. The music harkened back to the Irish and Scottish ancestry of many of the settlers. The Delta is another story. This is the land and the people—coming from a heritage of slavery—who created the blues, the root stock of rock-n-roll.
In the last few months I’ve been working on a collection of short stories centered around the Mississippi Delta blues and a crime or noir element. In researching the history of the blues and the colorful array of musicians who played in cotton field “juke” or “jook” joints, gradually working their way north, I’ve learned many new things about my state. And the work has given me an excuse to explore the music that sends shivers down my skin.
Last week, I was listening to Big Mama Thornton as I drove to the feed store to get my weekly supply of horse feed (600 pounds—which I have to unload, thank you very much). The power of the music is undeniable. My little hound, Lucille, was riding along with me and howling softly. She’s developed a fine appreciation for Big Mama Thornton and loves to sing along with her in the pickup. (Pickups technically belong to country music, not the blues, but I have a cross-over pickup.)
As the stories for this collection come rolling in, it’s so much fun to see what the blues mean to different writers. Several of the contributors are authorities on this music and others share my experience—a love of the blues but not necessarily a total knowledge of the history.
One of my first introductions to the Mississippi Delta came when I, along with other reporters, went into the Mississippi State Penitentiary at Parchman (known for many decades as Parchman Farm) undercover to do a story on prison conditions. The prison was under fire for a long history of chronic issues, so a group of reporters was allowed to stay in the prison to document conditions.
Even though we were only “in” for a couple of nights, I have to say that I got my first real taste of what the Delta might mean to someone without money and rights. Standing in the prison yard, gazing out over the thousands of acres of cotton that was flat and straight all the way to the horizon, I understood how effective the land itself was as a prison.
Parchman and other southern prisons like Angola in Louisiana were formative influences in the blues. Some of the finest musicians did time in those institutions. There’s a terrific book, THE LAND WHERE THE BLUES BEGAN, by Alan Lomax that recounts how the prison experience shaped so many blues musicians.
The pub date for this book (tentatively titled DELTA BLUES), which includes some of the finest writers working today, is fall 2009. Bleak House is the publisher. You’ll be hearing more about this anthology, but right now all I can say is that this project has brought together many things that I love greatly: the blues, aspects of Mississippi, and crime. What could be better?

SINGING THE BLUES

By Carolyn Haines

Nov. 24


Mississippi is a state of great diversity. When I was in my 20s, I had the terrific good fortune of working as a photojournalist for several newspapers. In that role, I got to travel the state covering politics and “soft” news. While I grew up in the southeastern part of the state, an area called the Pine Barrens, I also got to spend time in all of the other regions.
This has stood me in good stead for the series of mysteries, the Sarah Booth Delaney 'Bones' books, I write set in the Mississippi Delta, a place I came to love when I was “newspapering.” The Pine Barrens and the Delta are worlds apart. My region of the state was settled by timber men, “dirt” farmers who had smaller plots of land and who produced vegetables and cattle. The Delta, where it’s said the topsoil is eight feet deep, was one of the most profitable regions of cotton production. The land holdings there stretched into the thousands of acres for a single family.
In the Pine Barrens, there were well off people, but not the wealth of the Delta, which had two classes—the very rich and the very poor.
In the piney woods I grew up with the sound of fiddles, piano and guitar, sometime mandolin. The music harkened back to the Irish and Scottish ancestry of many of the settlers. The Delta is another story. This is the land and the people—coming from a heritage of slavery—who created the blues, the root stock of rock-n-roll.
In the last few months I’ve been working on a collection of short stories centered around the Mississippi Delta blues and a crime or noir element. In researching the history of the blues and the colorful array of musicians who played in cotton field “juke” or “jook” joints, gradually working their way north, I’ve learned many new things about my state. And the work has given me an excuse to explore the music that sends shivers down my skin.
Last week, I was listening to Big Mama Thornton as I drove to the feed store to get my weekly supply of horse feed (600 pounds—which I have to unload, thank you very much). The power of the music is undeniable. My little hound, Lucille, was riding along with me and howling softly. She’s developed a fine appreciation for Big Mama Thornton and loves to sing along with her in the pickup. (Pickups technically belong to country music, not the blues, but I have a cross-over pickup.)
As the stories for this collection come rolling in, it’s so much fun to see what the blues mean to different writers. Several of the contributors are authorities on this music and others share my experience—a love of the blues but not necessarily a total knowledge of the history.
One of my first introductions to the Mississippi Delta came when I, along with other reporters, went into the Mississippi State Penitentiary at Parchman (known for many decades as Parchman Farm) undercover to do a story on prison conditions. The prison was under fire for a long history of chronic issues, so a group of reporters was allowed to stay in the prison to document conditions.
Even though we were only “in” for a couple of nights, I have to say that I got my first real taste of what the Delta might mean to someone without money and rights. Standing in the prison yard, gazing out over the thousands of acres of cotton that was flat and straight all the way to the horizon, I understood how effective the land itself functioned as a prison.
Parchman and other southern prisons like Angola in Louisiana were formative influences in the blues. Some of the finest musicians did time in those institutions. There’s a terrific book, THE LAND WHERE THE BLUES BEGAN, by Alan Lomax that recounts how the prison experience shaped so many blues musicians.
The pub date for this book (tentatively titled DELTA BLUES), which includes some of the finest writers working today, is fall 2009. Bleak House is the publisher. You’ll be hearing more about this anthology, but right now all I can say is that this project has brought together many things that I love greatly: the blues, aspects of Mississippi, knock 'em dead fine writers and crime. What could be better?

The Miami Book Fair, Wrecking Cars, & Computer Paranoia by Kristy Kiernan

Okay, so, some of you know of my computer woes, but for those who don’t, here’s the lowdown:

We took a longer “vacation” than normal this year in order for me to complete this new book. See, my theory was that if I scheduled a “vacation” (gosh, the quotes are really giving me away, aren’t they?), in which I had nothing else scheduled, then I would buckle down, stop obsessing about Matters of Faith, and would be able to get the final 20,000 words of my new book cranked out.

HA.

Six days after arriving on vacation my fabulous, nine month old Hewlett-Packard motherboard died. DIED. Just plain dead. This is, clearly, a problem. But here’s the larger problem: because we are on a rather remote island in the middle of the Gulf of Mexico, we have hours to go to get to a Best Buy (where I bought said computer and where I have an actual extended warranty, something I normally refuse as a matter of pride [what IS that?!] but which I got at the prodding of my brilliant husband).

Once we get to the Best Buy, they would send it to Hewlett-Packard, who would take one to three weeks to repair it and send it back. No telling whether it would be one, two, or three weeks. So what was I supposed to do?

WHERE was I supposed to tell them to send it back TO? Back to my home? What if it was done in one week? Then it would sit in front of our door for another two weeks until we got home. Back to the vacation house? What if it was done in three weeks and the lucky folk who rented the place after us got a nice new HP laptop delivered to them because we were already gone?It was a bad situation. So…I chose to do nothing. As in not get it fixed on vacation, as in NOT WRITE on vacation. We were actually *gasp* ON VACATION.

Wow. VACATION is really, really nice. Do you know that this is the first time in over ten years that I’ve NOT worked on vacation? Lovely. I highly recommend it.

So we get home, and I truck on into Best Buy. They ship it out to Hewlett-Packard, and I am left with my husband’s rather awful laptop. I spend a couple of days cleaning it up ( you know, anti-virus, spyware, disc clean, defrag), and installing new software so that I can load my memory-stick back-up onto it and get to writing…and the power cord goes.

Of course the battery lasts about 45 minutes, and then I have another completely useless computer. This time we have to borrow a friend’s computer to order a new power cord (hoping all the while that my diagnostic abilities are up to par and this is actually what the problem is), and now all we can do is wait.

I can’t write, and all of my friends and acquaintances are wondering why I’ve not answered any of their e-mails for the past four weeks.

We finally get the power cord in and, amazingly enough, that was exactly the problem, and then we get a call that my HP is back and all fixed up! Wahoo! It’s just like Christmas. So I go pick it up on Friday, but I can’t get much done because I’m going to the Miami Book Fair on Saturday.
THIS is exciting. I’ve been to the Miami Book Fair as a reader, but never as an author, and I have to say that I’m pretty stoked. I’m to present with Connie May Fowler and Cassandra King, two of my favorite Southern authors, and I was going to stay the night with Bonnie Glover, author of Going Down South, and her family. We plan to go see the Rock Bottom Remainders, and to party at The Raleigh with the other authors, and she and her husband, Craig, ask me to go to church with them in the morning, and if you’ve read anything about Matters of Faith you know that I am all over that, and then on Sunday, Bonnie and I are going to go back to the Fair to see some of our favorite authors, like Stewart O’Nan, and Rick Bragg, and Russell Banks, and, well, lots of others…but then…things happen.

Mostly, I wreck my car.

I dutifully print out my Mapquest directions and make my way over to downtown Miami. Unfortunately, the actual Miami Book Fair itself is smack dab in the middle of where Mapquest is telling me I need to go. As in, there are actual blocks of downtown Miami shut off to automobile traffic, which, of course, Mapquest does not know anything about.

For those not acquainted with downtown Miami, there are many one-way streets, forcing you to really put some thought into how to work you way around to where you want to be. I am evidently impaired in this capacity, and I spend at least an hour completely lost in Miami, trying to work my way back to the Fair. I have long since given up on getting to the “Free to Authors!” parking garage, and am just trying to get to the “Sort of Close to the Fair!” parking garage.

In order to do this, I have to SLOWLY wend my way through the streets of downtown Miami, looking for the intricate combination of one-way streets that will bring me to the elusive parking garage. Needless to say, the drivers behind me are NOT AMUSED. I’m doing my best, I really am, and listen, I’m no dummy, okay? I’m not just completely blithely unaware of the fact that I am holding people up. I am making every effort to do this as quickly and efficiently as I possibly can…BUT…the person behind me is getting…

ANGRY.

I mean, you can tell, right? He’s about a quarter inch off my ass, and though he has yet to lay on his horn, he is clearly rather IRRITATED with me. Now here’s the weird thing…

I get flustered.

Really flustered. And nervous. And I just don’t normally get all flustered and nervous while driving. I’m a good problem solver, I have quick reflexes, I know my cars’ capabilities. But, damn, this guy, being lost, being a presenter, meeting authors I’m a fan of, all of it just has me worked up, and by the time I turn onto NE 1st Street where the Suntrust International Parking Garage (NOT the “Free to Authors!” garage) is I am worked into a fine frenzy of shaky, jumpy nerves.

Guess who turns in after me?

Yep, Angry Guy.

This, of course, freaks me out more than anything that has happened so far. For one thing (TOUR GUIDE: Welcome to the inner workings of the fiction writer’s brain! Settle in and enjoy the whole crazy ride! Please keep your arms and legs inside at all times, books will be signed at the end of your adventure…), is this pissed off driver REALLY a book lover going to the Miami Book Fair? Did he REALLY intend to go to the Suntrust International Parking Garage? Could this REALLY be that coincidental?

Orrrrrrrr… is he a homicidal madman who’s going to leap out as soon as I park and pistol whip me into a quivering heap of bloodied flesh clutching my little trade paperback novels to my chest, crying out for a media escort to come save me?

As I search desperately for a space it seems that Option #2 is the only believable scenario. Seriously, this guy is—to borrow one of the few Yankee expressions I treasure—WICKED PISSED at me. Finally on Level Three North I see an open space. I hesitate, briefly, because it seems a little slim for my car, but then I look in my rearview mirror, and this guy is right there, he’s so close I can’t see his bumper, hell, I can’t see his HOOD.

Sound is carrying in that freaky way that sound carries in parking garages, and I hear his engine rev and then…then… I LOSE MY MIND.

I, for some strange reason, fight or flight, whatever, I turn into the space and instead of simply pulling in, I…POUND ON THE GAS.

The car, all 335 hp of it, LEAPS forward and SLAMS into the guard rail, taking it from, what? 60 mph to 0 in about 1.3 seconds.

I wasn’t wrong, by the way. The guy behind me is so irritated by my behavior that he SQUEALS past me up the ramp and into the nether regions of the garage, never to be seen again (though I fantasize that he shows up at my talk to have his copy of MATTERS OF FAITH signed).

I am left stunned, shaking, and yes, I admit it, sobbing. It was not so much the impact, but the leaping of the car, the feeling of being completely out of control, that leaves me a basket-case. At 39 years old, I have never been the driver in an accident. I have never run into anything, never bumped anther car, never scraped a wall or come too close to a parking pole. In fact, I haven’t even had a traffic ticket since I was 18 (running a stop sign, my one and only ticket).

I then had to pull myself together, go talk to an audience (which was rather upset that Connie May Fowler didn’t show. As I began my presentation several members of the audience got up and walked out, clearly finding greener pastures now that Connie May wasn’t sitting up there with me and Cassandra King. I get it. I understand. That’s okay. Of course what they don’t know is that Cassandra and I held a raffle for a 2009 Lamborghini at the end of our talk.)

Cassandra King was gracious and entertaining, and the audience that remained was incredibly involved, and we all had a good time with the Q & A session.

But my husband was suddenly called out of town for work, leaving our pup without anyone to feed or walk her for much too long, and frankly, I was ready to just get back home with my severely damaged car (it didn’t LOOK that bad, but there was almost $4,000 worth of damage to the front end) and my severely damaged nerves.

Still…I’m looking forward to next year.

Really, how bad could it be?

Oh! And that computer? Yeah, it came back on Friday…then went right back out again on Monday. I’ve grown convinced that the universe doesn’t want me to finish this book.

But I’m going to anyway.

Letter Writing Campaign

I asked my class of college freshman this week when they had last written a letter to someone. I got the same set of blank stares that I’ve seen before—on a day when I've mentioned Erica Jong maybe, or the BeeGees, or say, dangling participles. Blank stares. Dead quiet. Not that this is not a lively bunch—someone did quote Lil Wayne last week in a discussion about the election. They’re bright kids, my freshmen, and finally, someone in the back of the room offered that he did write thank you notes on occasion. And of course, he’s right. Thank you notes, a condolence note, that’s about it. Letter writing is as dead as disco.

The temptation here is to tell you why letter writing is dead and what sorts of communications have replaced it. However, I am not going to do that (though text me and I will be happy to fill you in). I have a feeling that most of the people reading this already understand these things. You are reading a blog, after all. This is not a private correspondence from me to you—it's a public broadcast. We humans of this decade are nothing if not efficient creatures, so why would we write something beautiful and heartfelt for one person when we can write something and zap it out on the internet for thousands (or maybe dozens) to see?

Well, there are plenty of reasons to write letters, but instead of listing them, I’m going to use my little piece of blog space to issue a challenge: write a letter. Write a letter during this holiday season. Write someone to say something that is long overdue or to tell a story or to deliver some everyday news.

As a fiction writer, I always tell myself that I have no need for correspondence or even a journal because most of what happens to me ends up in my fiction (in some way, shape or form). My fiction is my chronicle. However, a friend of mine recently proved me wrong when he showed me one of my own letters, written to him in 1980.

The letter was a time capsule. In 1980, I was living in Dallas, Texas. I had taken my first post-college jobs selling textbooks and moved to the city all alone. I wrote the letter sitting at the kitchen table of my tiny Cedar Springs apartment on a solitary Saturday night. I wrote unselfconsciously to my childhood (and now lifelong) friend, telling him the kind of things I would even now if we were talking on the phone.

Halfway through my letter, chatting away, I noted that my next door neighbor had returned to his apartment. “There is some high-pitched laughing,” I wrote. “He must have a date.” Thus began my account for all history of the next forty-five minutes—a play-by-play of the end of my neighbor’s date: every giggle, moan and thump thump thump that came through the thin walls of my apartment.

What I would give on any day now to write with such immediacy and fluidity. I am really grateful that my friend kept the letter. Reading it made me laugh, as I surely did as I was writing the letter, and even more, it flooded me with the full memory of this particular time in my life. “A letter is a gift,” says Garrison Keillor. And of course, it is—to both the receiver and the sender.

So here’s your prompt: Dear …

Lynn York is the author of The Piano Teacher (2004) and The Sweet Life (2007). She lives in Carrboro, NC. Her website is www.lynnyork.com.