IERNDIT

That was the vanity plate on a new Mercedes convertible I saw recently, in fact one that I later found out belongs to fellow Hilton Head Islander and published novelist, John Maxim. It made me smile, and it got me to thinking.

Before we go any farther, let me say that I’m going to tell you how old I am. Well, I’m not exactly going to tell you, but unless you’re incredibly math-challenged, you’re going to figure it out. And that’s okay by me. Somewhere along the line, it’s become acceptable for a woman to reveal her age, especially once she’s come to terms with it herself.

And I have. Come to terms with it. My hair has probably been silvery-gray since my thirties, but I never knew it, not for certain. At the first sign of those initial telltale strands, I became intimately acquainted with the bottle. Up until about eight years ago, I maintained that same rich brown I’d been born with. And then it became too much bother. My husband’s hair is white. I decided, what the hell.

Despite Atkins and South Beach and walking so much I go through a pair of Nikes a year, the extra pounds I acquired during menopause have stubbornly refused to be shed. Even a weekly sweat-fest I jokingly call two sets of singles tennis has failed abysmally to budge the scale. The laugh lines that looked so charming twenty years ago have deepened to become a permanent part of my face. In addition, last year I passed a milestone, one many of us on the outside cusp of the boomer generation will be experiencing shortly: I received my first Social Security check. Okay, I did take it early, but the math made sense for me. (However, as the e-mail and text-message jargon goes, YMMV—your mileage may vary.)

The point is—I’m officially of retirement age. A member of the Over-the-Hill Gang. And I’m ready to begin acting like it.

I wrote here awhile ago about my husband’s illness. He’s still not completely recovered, and he’s decided to give up his part-time job. That means he’s here, with me, 24-7. And it’s made me realize how many things I’m involved with and how much of my time they take up in an average day. My writing takes precedence—it has to because I’m on a deadline. But this past week I began to make a list of all the other activities—most of them as a volunteer—that send me off to meetings or keep me chained in front of the computer. And I didn’t like what I found.

My desk calendar looks like it did when I was working fulltime. Some of it’s book promotion, much of that involving travel, but a hefty number of my appointments have to do with other things. I’m on boards and a member of Friends of this and that. I help edit a magazine for my neighbor. I’m treasurer of a couple of big writers’ organizations. There are meetings to attend and e-mails to answer, phone calls to return and financial reports to prepare. Committee meetings, planning meetings, presentations. Conference calls and blogs and listservs.

And frequently there’s that soft, familiar voice drifting into my office from the doorway: Are you done yet?

It’s time to get my priorities straight. And I will. It’s just going to take a little time. As my dear husband is fond of reminding me, we live at the beach. And I’d much rather have calluses on my feet from the hot sand than on my fingertips from pounding the computer keys.

In the meantime, I’m thrilled to have reached the milestone of being on Social Security. Although in my heart I’m still a thirty-something, my body knows the truth. And so, apparently, does my government. I’m going to start taking it a little easier, start spending more time with my husband and less trying to organize the world. I’ve paid my dues.

IERNDIT.

Kathy Wall grew up in a small town in northern Ohio. She and her husband Norman have lived on Hilton Head Island since 1994. Her 8th Bay Tanner mystery, The Mercy Oak, was released in May by St. Martin’s Press

Is It Me -- or Are Californians Creepy?

By Annabelle Robertson

I have been out of the South for nigh on three years now, which, granted, is enough to make anyone lose perspective. But still, I'm starting to get worried. When you live in California, it can become increasingly tempting to grow sympathetic toward the natives – try though you might to resist.

Admiration starts to creep in around their Hawaiian-flowered edges, after a year or so. Two years in, and you're shaking your head -- instead of narrowing your eyes -- when they forget to use turn signals (“Turn signal? What turn signal?”). Three years in and you actually crave carrot juice. Then, before you know it, you discover that you actually enjoy hanging out with these people.

Geographical Stockholm Syndrome, I call it.

But never fear, good Southern people, because this feeling will not last. Just when you think it’s safe to go back into the Pacific (with your big toe only, because them thar waters are cold), you will be abruptly reminded that you are not in Texas any longer.

Why? Because Californians, I am convinced, are simply waiting for the opportunity to horrify the rest of us.

I am not sure whether they do this intentionally -- or whether it is merely a byproduct of their longstanding obsession with all things marijuana (which, if the turn signal situation is any indicator, puts the Lohan to shame). But if there's one thing I have learned, it’s that Californians possess the innate ability to transcend all sense of decency and decorum.

And no, I am not talking about what New Orleaneans do on an average day. I’m talking about shock and horror. I’m talking outrage. I’m talking sex.

A few weeks ago, my husband took his annual all-expense-paid vacation to Iraq, courtesy of the United States Air Force. Having learned the hard way that infinite goodbyes at airports lead to hysterical small children, we bid adieu on the front lawn. The girls were still hysterical, of course. Only this time, instead of their hysteria lasting several days, it began to abate after an hour. Or five.

Because we life off base, this tender scene became the afternoon entertainment for everyone who happened to be watering their lawns that Sunday. Meaning, all neighbors within eyesight. Including, a particular one whom I believed to be a really nice guy.

My bad.

My husband hadn’t been gone 24 hours when this guy came a’callin’, on the pretense of checking to see if we were okay. Thanks, I said, we’re hanging in there. Followed by all the things I usually say to make people feel better about the fact that my kids don’t have a daddy for the next six months and could get his legs blown off at any moment. Everyday chit chat, you know.

But before I can launch into my spiel, the neighbor asks me out. On a date. As in, me and him, strumming his six string.

Hellooooo? I sputter, thinking that I have surely misunderstood. Surely. You mean, a glass of wine, right? And why don't we invite a few neighbors to join us, while we're at it? Ahem.

Oh, no, he says. He wants to “comfort me in my husband’s absence.” Wink, wink.

Comfort me?

Comfort me???

Comfort me????????????

Honey, the only thing that’s going to comfort me right now is a one-way ticket back to the South, where men still have manners. And no, I don't mean opening car doors -- or even regular doors, for that matter -- because, with a few rare exceptions, we all know that’s been gone with the wind for way too long. Sad but true. I’m talking about basic old-fashioned courtesy. You know, the kind of thing mothers drill into their sons around the dinner table on Saturday nights.

As in, don't offer unsolicited sexual favors to wives of soldiers. Soldiers who are in Iraq or Afghanistan. Fighting a war. And who also happen to be ministers.

For example.

Oh, Southern habits die so hard, though. And I tell you, this is not always a good thing. Caught by surprise – and to my immense belated regret – I did not fire off a caustic reply. Instead, I feigned ignorance. Then I smiled and shooed the man back to his house (and his own wife and kids, bless their hearts).

He called me several times the next day, then again a few days later.

I ask you, is this normal – or is this California?

I don’t have the answer, and you probably don’t either. All I have is the retort that I sure wish I’d given, and which I am fully prepared to use, make no bones about it, next time that hound dog comes sniffing around my front porch.

“Bubba,” I’ll say, holding my head high and looking my California neighbor straight in the eye, “I am a Southern Girl. I have dignity. I have STANDARDS. Which means you won't catch me dating a man who wears socks with flip-flops.”

Annabelle Robertson is the author of The Southern Girl’s Guide to Surviving the Newlywed Years: How to Stay Sane Once You’ve Caught Your Man. It’s not really for newlyweds, though. In fact, you need to be married a really long time to get it.

I QUIT

Usually the topic for my blog doesn’t make itself known to me until the day before I have to post it. This month it was a rhyming phrase with a bit of profanity in it and it came to me when I was inside a church. Plus, it came FIVE days before I had to post, and has literally followed me around and given me no rest. I’m hoping sitting here writing it out will deliver me.

Here’s how it came: I walked into the social hall of Watkinsville First Methodist a few minutes till 9:00 A.M. last Monday. Now, I must confess I arrived there carrying a good bit of personal baggage: my ten-year-old had left the house kicking and screaming that he didn’t want to go to VBS (Vacation Bible School) and that he hated me and would never talk to me again for making him go, I’d had to move heaven and earth to awaken my 17-year-old to drive us there (I don’t drive due to a head injury), and, now this is the one that was "consuming" me; I’d recently found myself with the need to find a new agent and was immersed in that overwhelming, ego-squashing job of researching and sending out query letters. I was distracted, fretting over everything from Bookscan numbers to websites I needed to visit when I got home.

I’d barely had time to strap on my volunteer nametag and make my way to a table surrounded by third graders before I was assaulted. Another human body slammed into me, wrapped itself around me, and literally claimed me with a breath-squeezing hug.

Startled, I looked down and this dark face tilted up; the forehead laced with scars, snot bubbling out of the nostrils, and the body below it dressed in hand-me-down-down-downs. A smile spread across that face so big the eyes turned into slits. "Mrs. Lady," he said, "which one’s your car? I want to see your car!" I motioned out the big window at a 1987 Honda Accord. His eyes opened wide. He looked back at me with admiration and that was when my blog topic made itself known. "Quit your bitching," a clear voice said to me.

Now I am not wealthy compared to most people. But to Franklin I am unfathomably rich. Over the next few days I learned a lot about my new friend. Franklin lives with 21 "brothers and sisters", he rides to VBS and home on a bus, he wants to know where to find a Bible verse that assures him that when birds die they go to Heaven, and he is scared of robbers.

There were 17 kids in my group of squirming 9 and 10 year-olds, but Franklin picked me to be his constant pal. He literally attaches to me like a barnacle every morning - either by constant hugging or sitting in my lap. No matter what activities we engage in; art, music, science, etc. . . he is holding my hand, whispering in my ear. I sense that what Franklin wants most is for someone to simply pay attention to him, to love him. I do. This may sound like I am doing him a favor, but oh, no. Franklin has given me much more than the A-ha moment that led to this blog. That kid is so full of love it literally splashes out of him. I need those hugs, kisses, the playful joking.

My Daddy likes to say I am hard-headed, stubborn. Well, I always deny that, but this morning, when I got up to check my e-mails before leaving for VBS, I found one from Kristy Barrett (she agreed to let me use her real name). Kristy found me while reading this blog. She asked if I’d send her an autographed copy of The Romance Readers’ Book Club. She promised to write a review for my trouble. Kristy freelances for three newspapers in Kentucky, and she’s getting ready to launch a book blog.

Now, of course I plan to send a book to Kristy. It will be a great career move. But that is not what struck me about her. Reading on down the note Kristy sent I found that she illustrates what I’m trying to say here.

I’m going to quote a bit from her note: "I would be over the moon with joy and gratitude....books could literally, but joyfully, bankrupt me.... I was born with Cerebral Palsy and in my twenties 4 other illnesses crept in to make things truly interesting....this means I am chronically, sometimes critically ill, and I spend 85-90 percent of my time in bed devouring books. I’ve almost left the planet 5 times in 16 years. I would rather read than eat!! .... If you choose to send anything my way, I would be blessed beyond measure. I’ve only very recently started contacting authors and publishers for my upcoming blog and the experience has been beyond my wildest dreams. Unabashed book joy is wonderful medicine for me. Blessings Always."

I am in awe of Kristy. I believe her story reflects joy despite the valleys. She knows that bitching can ruin a person’s day. She’s so grateful to have the joy, the escape of books! I believe that gratitude keeps her balanced. Franklin and Kristy make me see that it can keep me balanced, too, so I’m going to try and make gratitude a habit. I may be hard-headed, but I’m going to try and recognize all that I have to be thankful for and quit my bitching.

My ten-year-old will most likely forgive me for forcing him to go to VBS, my 17-year-old will one day grow out of the need to sleep until 2:00 P.M., and God willing, I will find a new agent. Anyway, if I stop fussing long enough to listen to a couple of author friends who went down this same road a while back, it may well be the best thing that ever happened to my writing career.

To read more about Julie Cannon and her books visit: http://www.juliecannon.info/

Swatting at the Flies on the Butter

I was riding in my car one day listening to my new Wynonna Judd CD when a song came on that said:

Old tin roof
Leaves in the gutter
A hole in the screen door
big as your fist and flies on the butter.
Mamaw's baking sugar cookies.
We were watching cartoons
I heard her holler from the kitchen
which one of you youngin's wants to lick the spoon.
Me and Billy Monroe
sneaking down by the river
and I'm still haunted by the taste of the kiss
I was too scared to give him.

Oh, oh, oh, oh- It doesn't seem like it was all that long ago.
Oh, oh, oh, oh- You can dream about it every now and then. But you can't go home again.

Now I'm not joshin' you, I really did pull over to the side of the road and have me a cry. Because it reminded me of every wonderful part of my childhood that I'd never be able to go back to. But more than that it reminded me of a generation that will never know the simplicity of living that so many of us were privileged to enjoy.

They'll never know a time without cell phones or laptops. They won't know a world before e-mails or game boys. They'll never know a world without drive thru windows or a day and age when seat belts were mandatory and riding on the hump in the middle of your mama and daddy gave you a wonderful view of the world.

So, the other day when I was standing in the kitchen planning my route from the dishwasher to the cabinets and multi-tasking the journey of how to effectively get as many items put away in one walk around the kitchen I realized the distractions of my life were back. So, I stopped for a moment and sang me a chorus of Flies on the Butter and took a moment to remember why I wrote the book in the first place.

I remember asking myself a little over a year ago why I felt so tired. And that small voice inside the soul of me, whispered, "Because every moment is filled. Even the moments that you use to spend reflecting, singing, even praying, you cram with returning phone calls." Don't you remember before we got cell phones car time was a completely different experience? Don't you remember putting on your favorite Barry Manillow CD, (Okay, I'm wierd that way) or Chicago CD or U2 Cd, whatever your choice was, and singing I Write the Songs to the top of your lungs, and pretending in that moment that you were standing on a stage, pretty much like American Idol and the crowd was enthralled in your performance? And by the time you were through you were hoarse as a frog and happy as a camper!

Where did that go? When did life get so crazy that simple joys were lost? Where are the dinner table conversations where no ones rushed and homemade biscuits are mandatory? Where are the evening walks where life stops and enjoying those we're privileged to walk this journey with? Where are the Sunday afternoon naps and bedtime stories? Where's the old fashion game of red light, green light or Chinese freeze tag? Where's the moment where we realize that life can stop and a moment can be enjoyed and the world won't fall off its axis?

I think it might need to be now. So, here's our summer challenge. Laugh more. Smell the roses, I did the other and their fabulous. Cook a dinner where the whole family is required to show up and tell a story about this past year and what they learned. Chase lightening bugs and put them in a mason jar and sit around and watch them make a great lamp. Kiss someone. Love someone. And one morning, before anyone gets up, climb in your car, open that sun roof, roll down those windows and drive somewhere, anywhere, singing to the top of your lungs. And swat at that distraction that has convinced us that we're so important the world will fall apart without us involved in its details. I've realized I'm not quite that powerful. And swat at those flies on the butter, because if we don't, they just might take the biscuits too...

Denise Hildreth makes her home in Franklin, Tennessee with her two Shih-tzu's Maggie and Sophie, where on Sunday's she heads down to church for a time of reflection, then comes home and makes some homemade biscuits and then takes a good ole nap...

Confessions from a Real Writer

Reynolds Price said in a lecture I heard, “Writers are people on whom everything is lost except the most important.” I thought that so profound I wrote it down. Over the years, I’ve come to regard it as God’s honest truth.

It’s a great excuse for being late places. I’m sliding in late today again with this blog, having missed my last date and being late for the one before that. But it’s not just me. Last week some parents of a music composer said their thirty-one-year old son missed the time change this spring. “How was I supposed to know that?” he demanded. I could completely identify.

Being a writer means you live in at least two worlds at once: the one you think we are in and the one of our current book. Writers like me, who walk around with several additional plots in our heads, occupy several worlds simultaneously. I may look like I’m in Smyrna, Georgia, in June 2008, but I may also be down in Hopemore, Georgia, (which doesn’t even exist except in my southern mysteries) in December two-thousand-and-something, wondering how to get amateur sleuth MacLaren Yarbrough unshackled from her desk (What Are You Wearing to Die?). Or maybe I’m exploring a Georgia barrier island in August, and wondering what Katharine will remain of a body buried there over a hundred years ago (Sins of the Fathers). Or I might even be back in central North Carolina in 1949, wondering if Carley Marshall will ever find out about her parents (The Remember Box--to be reissued this summer).

I may look like I’m paying attention to what you are saying—and I’m trying, real hard—but you just mentioned Victorian hatpins, and I realized a hatpin would be a great way to kill somebody if you could get them seated in a chair with the back of their neck exposed . . . so off I go to a restaurant where a villain is creeping up on somebody, and you wonder why I haven’t answered your question about whether I’d like to have tea with you and a friend in this great little place where they let you wear hats with real Victorian hatpins.

It may take me a moment to answer you, because I am trying to sort out in my head which is the most important issue at the moment. That’s the excuse I gave to the cop who asked why I ran smack into a car that had stopped to turn left: I had just realized that what Joe Riddley Yarbrough, MacLaren’s husband, was packing for a fishing trip was not at all what he would choose. So I’d popped down to Hopemore for an instant, to sort that out, and flat-out barrelled into a car that had stopped in Smyrna.

We writers have already mastered the space/time continuum scientists are trying to find. We live our entire lives with one foot in the world you can see, another foot in the world of our current book, and another foot--some of us are built that way--in the world of a future book. It's no wonder we run late sometimes, or seem a bit vague.

So please forgive me for being late with my blog. And don’t blame me if I can’t remember your name right away—I not only meet a lot of people in my travels, but I have this host of people who have been in my books or who are going to be in my book, and they are all rattling around inside of me. So far I haven’t confused a real person with a fictitious one, but it’s only a matter of time.

Speaking of time, I have just realized I’ve gotten the sequence of events wrong in the book I’m currently working on, so I really need to go . . . .

But before I do, I see I've forgotten to mention that you can read all about my titles--past, present, and some of the future--at http://www.patriciasprinkle.com

Let me hear from you!

Adventure on the Nile, by Cathy Pickens

A week ago, I returned home from an interesting journey, one that didn’t, on the surface, have anything to do with mystery writing. I traveled to Cairo and Dubai, one of the United Arab Emirates, with a group of graduate business students.

Naturally, part of my trip preparation included re-reading Agatha Christie’s Death on the Nile.

I had looked forward to exploring countries and cultures very different from my beloved Carolinas , and I certainly found the exotic – pyramids and camels and a tiny nation-city in overdrive to capture the title of World’s Largest/Tallest/Biggest/Best everything, from tallest building to biggest dinosaur park to highest population of people who aren’t from there.

Photo: Burj Dubai, world's tallest building.

What I wasn’t completely prepared for were the similarities.

I knew that in progressive Egypt, women were once again resuming the veil they’d thrown off decades ago. I also knew that in Dubai, a more conservative country making concessions to draw foreign visitors and investment, I’d see women in full gallabiyya.

What I didn’t expect to see were five black-clad young women in the Dubai airport, slight and graceful, like a flock of blackbirds swaying around the counter at … McDonald’s, yep, the Golden Arches. Ordering McArabia meals, with fries and Cokes. I'm not kidding.

I expected to visit the Mall of the Emirates, an elegant shopping mall that could sit in Atlanta or Richmond or Charlotte – except it dwarfs anything in those cities and boasts its own indoor ski slope.

I didn’t expect to see copies of my books in the Borders store (wow!) or to stand in line at Baskin-Robbins with a woman in a full black gallabiyya edged in rhinestones … and wearing Gucci sunglasses and Jimmy Choo stilettos.

We share other things besides fries, Co’Cola, ice cream, and an affinity for shiny rhinestones. In business settings, a Middle Eastern man waits until a woman proffers her hand before offering a handshake. Didn’t your mama teach you that, too?

Women hold high government offices in both countries, including the ministries of finance. But we also share an odd schizophrenia about women in leadership. Women are to be gentle and ladylike, but they can also be in charge. No easier to figure out the rules in their country than in ours.

In Egypt, as in the South, they value hospitality and friendliness. They welcome those who are interested in their culture, and they are warm hosts. In Dubai, 85% of the people who live there come from somewhere else. Interesting to consider what that must be like for their culture. Unlike the South, though, they have strict visa requirements. Many of those workers can stay no longer than two years and must wait five years before they can return.

Cairo driving reminded me of a lickety-split, souped-up tear down a Southern Appalachian mountain road – except their roads are flat and very crowded. Regrefully, I only got to enjoy it vicariously, in a bus or black-and-white cab. The white lines denoting lanes are only suggestions. On a road marked with two lanes, as many as four or five cars would be running abreast.

Horns are constant. Not the rude, your-mama, I’m-gonna-cut-you-off horn honks common in some (Northern) cities here. No, these were polite little I’m here toots. Get over, please. I don’t mind bumping you if I have to. Stock-car racing legend Richard Petty (who once nudged a lady’s bumper on I-85 because she was cruising in the passing lane) would love it.

The best part, though, was trying to imagine Cairo as Agatha saw it early in the last century. Our hotel didn’t sit directly on the Nile, but it did open on a courtyard much like the one she describes. Families and foreign tourists and white-robed sheiks gathered in the cool evening breeze to the smell of fresh-baked pita and hubbly-bubbly pipes of flavored tobacco and to enjoy an evening that stretched late.

Those of you from the South need no explanation of the small can held by the fellow on the right. The photo is from the website of a couple of Alaskans who travel the world with their can of SPAM. Charlotte, apparently, has lost its seat as #1 city in per capita consumption. Ah, the never-ending struggle for supremacy …

I was entranced by the differences and surprised by the similarities – and not disappointed at all in the mysteries. Pull out your copy of Death on the Nile. Agatha captured its essence.

QUOTE YOURSELF!

In MY HUSBAND'S SWEETHEARTS (pre-order here) the main character has an unwieldy mother. She's chockful of advice like:

"You should marry your first husband for his genes; the second for his money; the third (or fourth or so) for love." and "Never let thine ass give into gravity." and "When dealing with a belligerent hairstylist, you must embrace your inner bitch." and "...I like feminism except, of course, when it asks me not to wear a support bra." and "We love who we love -- even when we hate them."

And in the table of contents -- otherwise known as: Sayings Your Mother Never Cross-stitched Into a Pillow -- you may have run across: "Happy strangers can bring out the worst in anyone." "Your mother is a woman you don't have to become." "You can't always eat your way out of a bad decision, but if you want to try, begin with chocolate." "A family can be tied together by an unlikely series of knots."

These phrases are littered throughout the novel because, I confess, I'm a quote-lover and I've been keeping record of quotes for decades -- just the pithy, weird, exotic and ripped-from-context gems that the people around me (and occasionally me my own odd self) find them(our)selves saying.

A lot of people will tell you the value of keeping a journal, but I'm all for a quote-book, homemade and hand-added. No one famous -- no Churchill or Helen Keller. Just your own entourage and the date. You think you'll always remember especially the things your kids say -- "I can fart at will!" "Who's Will?" and one of my random faves in conversation with my then two-year-old: "Aren't you a good boy?" "No." "But you are a good boy!" "No." "Then what are you?" "I a octopus!" -- but you won't remember. (Who can remember what they said at breakfast even?)

And so this wee blog is a giving you a challenge. Try the quote book. Just try it. For a month. Be dutiful. Have it handy. And then look back at that month and see what odd gems you've got. I think you'll dig it.

Julianna Baggott -- Author of MY HUSBAND'S SWEETHEARTS under the pen name BRIDGET ASHER.

For more, visit: http://www.bridgetasher.com/ -- http://www.juliannabaggott.com/ -- or the current issue of REAL SIMPLE (a humor piece - p. 310). For her kid stuff: http://www.theanybodies.com/.