Two Blog Entries for the Price of One Today

After reading Pam's blog, scroll down and read guest blog John Jeter.

Where I'm From

by Pamela Duncan

On the first day of classes this semester, I asked my students to read George Ella Lyon’s wonderful poem Where I’m From (http://www.georgeellalyon.com/where.html) and then write their own version. It’s a great ice breaker and a way to start getting to know the students. Their responses were so creative and interesting, I felt inspired to try the exercise myself.

Where I’m From

I am from woodstoves and kitchen tables,
from, “Here, honey, set down and eat a bite,”
from cornbread and gravy, biscuits and Karo,
from Neil Price Avenue in Black Mountain, NC, a rock road named for my Pawpaw.
I am from a red tarpaper house in a mill village,
from furniture that lasts longer than the people who made it.
I am from hedges and the women telling stories on either side of them.
I am from gardens making food three seasons out of four,
from under the house, climbing on the coal pile or the wood pile,
from chickens chasing and bee stings cured with tobacco and laying on a blanket under the trees to keep cool and the slam of a screen door.

I am from a white brick suburban ranch with a pool,
from football in the front yard, throwing dirt clods at cars, laying in the middle of the road on warm summer nights.
I am from the Brady Bunch, the Waltons, Happy Days,
from top 40 radio and cruising the strip in a 1972 Chevy Impala, black.
I am from Bulldogs and Tigers and Chargers,
from red brick schoolhouses filled with millworkers’ kids just like me.
I am from J&C and Dover Mills, from the dye house, the winding room, quality control.
I am from cigarettes and Lord Calvert, CoCola and SunDrop,
from lawnmowers, microwaves, a TV in every room.

I am from Mama and Daddy, Nanny and Pawpaw,
brothers and sisters, aunts and uncles and cousins.
I am from growing up surrounded by kin – people and mountains.
I am from leaving and going back
over and over and over again,
still looking for home.

(Novelist Pamela Duncan is the author of Moon Women, a Southeast Booksellers Association Award Finalist, and Plant Life, which won the 2003 Sir Walter Raleigh Award for Fiction. She is the recipient of the 2007 James Still Award for Writing about the Appalachian South, awarded by the Fellowship of Southern Writers. Her third novel, The Big Beautiful, was published in March 2007. She teaches creative writing at Western Carolina University in Cullowhee, North Carolina. Visit her website at http://www.pameladuncan.com/.)

Guest Blogger: John Jeter

First the Olympics. Then the political conventions. Watching Michael Phelps dolphinize his way into the history books was nearly as much fun as watching Mark Spitz do the same thing and—yes, let’s hear it for gray hair—watching Neil Armstrong land on the moon the same night Dad arrived home from Vietnam. Watching an American black man—that is, an African-American politician—accept the nomination for the highest office in the land … why, that was way more fun than the night my grandmother dragged me to a friend’s house—when we wanted to be swimming in the waterin’ hole—to witness the watershed moment that Richard Nixon resigned the highest office in the land.

So much for an essay on How I Spent My Summer Vacation.

Now, after all these fireworks, if your brain is anything like mine, it may do what analog TV does come February: It’ll shut down. By then, our collective minds should be obliterated by all the summer/fall data, too oversaturated and overwhelmed to process any more of the sensory overload that we high-definition Americans have been generating in all of these history-defining moments.

The time has come, then, to simply retreat to the comparatively quiet and easy task of writing.

I love to write. I love to read, too. Writing teachers, gurus, seminar leaders and fellow writers all chant the same relentless mantra: to read well is to write well.

Well, yeah, here’s a roundabout way of explaining how that can really mess you up.

I’m co-owner of a really cool concert venue, The Handlebar, in Greenville, SC, http://www.handlebar-online.com/ , and I’m not afraid to come right out and say how proud I am of it; after all, Mom always said, If you don’t toot your own tuba, somebody’ll pee in it. (Guess I won’t be using that in my Party’s nomination-acceptance speech.) The point on the way to the point is that since 1994, we’ve put on some 2,000 shows, with artists including John Mayer and Joan Baez and David Sanborn and Maynard Ferguson and Tower of Power and Nils Lofgren, who I last saw playing at an arena in Bruce Springsteen’s E Street Band. That is to say, I’ve watched some talented musicians. Among the greats have been mind-boggling guitar players. Keyboard great and British blues legend John Mayall has played our room several times with his band, The Bluesbreakers. Since the early 1960s, John has mentored in his band the likes of Eric Clapton, Coco Montoya and Mick Fleetwood of Fleetwood Mac. John will tell you that while his protégés have been gifted (y’think?), the guitar (specifically the BLUES guitar) is still a uniquely American instrument. Here I’m nearing the point: Patrons come to see these performers, often with their sons, and they have ecstatic, visceral, even life-changing experiences. Then we see them leave, their faces often long, their countenances sad, depressed.

“What’s wrong?” I may ask, fearing the worst. Was the concert hall too hot? Did their seats suck? Was somebody in front of them, behind them, too loud or obnoxious?

“No,” they usually say, “I have no idea what that guitar ever did to that guy, but I’m going to go straight home and throw mine into the fire . . .”

And so it was this summer and spring. I read, for no particular reason and not quite in this order: Moby Dick; The Once & Future King; Elizabeth Cox’s pithy and beguiling The Ragged Way People Fall Out of Love; nonfiction: The River of Doubt: Theodore Roosevelt’s Darkest Journey; Alexandra Fuller’s powerful Don’t Let’s Go To the Dogs Tonight, about growing up in Rhodesia/Zimbabwe; and now, Junot Diaz’s surrealistically too-incredible The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao.

How many times have I looked at my keyboard and said, Let’s just toss that Toshiba into the heap with the busted-up Fenders, Telecasters and Martins?

But then Michael Phelps kept on swimming and Barack on kept orating and the heartbeat of the country keeps thumping and …

Just the other day, a little spark hit just the right time.
Joshilyn Jackson, the bestselling Southern writer who needs to figure out how to bottle That Stuff and mass market it, told a room full of people who paid a lot of money to see her talk about what makes for great Web-marketing, said something really nifty and inspirational:

Only YOU, she said, can write the book you’re supposed to write.

Which, she went on to explain in a much more eloquent way, means that we’ve effectively wiped out the competition.

Basically, the way I heard that is this: If reading is supposed to help your writing, then reading should be sort of like watching the Olympics knowing that the next time you go for a dip in the pool, you really don’t have to feel compelled to swim your 100 meters in under a minute (I think I can do 100 meters in about 2 minutes, but that’s when I’m in considerably better shape than I am now). Likewise, watching Barack Obama soaring to his oratorical heights doesn’t really mean anything … unless you happen to be a political junkie who likes to watch a lot of CNN.

All that said, I guess what all this is supposed to mean is that you’re free to decide that an action-packed summer of high-octane reading and full-throttle sporting and political events is just that—the only history that you have to make is the one you write yourself.

Alrighty then.
It feels good to get all that off my chest.
Thanks, everybody.

Now that I’m feeling better, it’s best to get on with it.
After all, I’ve got a novel to promote, THE PLUNDER ROOM, coming out Jan. 20 (now, that’s going to be a huge news day, Inauguration Day), published by Thomas Dunne Books/St. Martin’s Press. http://theplunderroom.blogspot.com/.

The novel took me three months to write (I always say God writes ’em, I type ’em), and three months to get through my wife’s rigorous, loving and generous editing (the editors didn’t change a word in the manuscript). The thing is, after working, bleeding, crying, typing, researching, networking, scrapping, knocking, struggling and bleating for 20 years to get published, I guess it’s okay to take a little vacation from writing.
The other thing, too, is that this summer’s reading and all those Olympian feats of strength and political history left me mentally, emotionally and creatively dyspeptic. That is, until our dear mutual friend, Karin, gave me a swift kick in the blog.

Feels good to stretch these muscles again.
Kinda makes me wanna go out for a swim, too. In a very short pool.

Where The Heart Is by Jackie Lee Miles

I’m in the middle of my latest novel and have no idea how to fill up the additional pages I need to complete it. I have two hundred pages that I love and the ending in place that I’m more than satisfied with. I know where the climax is going and what it must contain. I have an understanding of exactly what it is I’m trying to say. Still I’m stuck with eighty blank pages. I’ve reread what I’ve written, so far, thirty-three times. I’ve left the manuscript alone for two entire weeks. Nothing—the pages sit there, large and inviting, but with no spark to ignite them.

I decide I need a distraction, something fulfilling and enriching. My daughter comes up with the perfect solution. She’s coming to Atlanta for a trade show. (She has a clothing line for little girls called Isabel Greika in honor of her firstborn daughter.)

“I’ll leave the kids with you,” she says. “It’s just the distraction you need. It’ll put everything into perspective. You’ll be so glad to get back to your writing the words will fly onto the page—guaranteed.”

She’s very convincing. And of course, I’ll be so glad to see them. They live five hundred miles away. It’s not like I can dash down the street like I used to and catch a glimpse of their latest antics. I have a one-year-old grandson and a four-year-old granddaughter coming to my rescue that I haven’t seen in over three months. It’s perfect.

Isabel arrives with her suitcase in hand. She’s a big girl. “I can carry it myself,” she says and drags it across my newly polished hardwood floors. I’m thinking if I can’t write next week when they’re gone I can at least re-polish the floor. This plan is working already.

Dolan, my one-year-old grandson is sound asleep and doesn’t realize he’s being handed over to the grandmother he hasn’t seen since he was nine months old. I swallow the lump in my throat and glance in the mirror in the entry way. My hair is combed and I have lipstick in place. I'm sure he won’t remember me, but hopefully I won’t scare him.

My daughter dashes off to her show. With Dolan asleep, Isabel and I sit on the front steps. It’s a beautiful day. She saunters down the circular driveway and examines a large crack in the cement. A colony of ants is pouring forth from a crevice.

“Nana,” she says, “Ants are really kind of cute, but I just gotta kill’em!” She proceeds to stomp on the crack. I burst out laughing. Kids really do say the darndest things.

Later we’re unpacking her suitcase and she hands me a small stack of photos sealed inside a plastic baggie. “I’m taking gymnastics,” she says proudly and eagerly pulls a hand full of pictures out of the plastic bag. “This is my friend Charlie,” she explains. “She’s taking gymnastics, too. She’s four, like me.”

Charlie towers over Isabel by a foot and a half.

“My, she’s a big four,” I say, realizing it may be true, but noticing also that Isabel is a petite four which makes Charlie’s height all the more pronounced.

Isabel examines the picture. Her brow is furrowed and her lips are pinched tightly together. “Well, next year when I’m five,” she quips, “I’ll be a big four, too!”

Hhhmmmm, wonder how that works? I take hold of her and give her a hug. Dolan’s awake now and crying. I go to the port-a-crib and pick him up. He takes one look at me and starts howling even louder. I decide to start with a clean diaper and go from there. In no time he’ll be used to me. But it’s not to be. Clean diapers and an offer of apple juice and a bottle bring no relief. He continues to howl.

“Don’t be scared, Dolan,” Isabel says. “This is my nana!”

Now that the introductions are out of the way, I spend the afternoon staging a puppet show. It works. Dolan is laughing and running around the family room, his tears long forgotten. Next we settle down on the sofa. Isabel produces a handful of storybooks. One by one I read each of them. Then I read them again. It’s time for a snack. I settle on bananas and crackers and fruit juice. It’s a hit. Movie time follows. Isabel produces her portable DVD player and slips a disk into the slot. Cinderella and Prince Charming
fill the small screen. Dolan’s not impressed. He sits and attempts to stack his assortment of blocks. I join him and show him the way to stack the blocks one on top of the other. He quickly knocks them all down. He thinks it’s hysterical.

“Nana,” Isabel says, “Come and see Dumbo.” She slips another CD into the slot. I plop down next to her on the sofa. These little tykes are starting to wear me out. Maybe it’s time for a nap. I put Dolan back in the port-o-crib and join Isabel on my bed. She’s curled up on her side, her favorite doll by her side. Before long they’re both asleep. I tiptoe down the hall to my office and check my email. I pull up my manuscript expecting a creative burst of energy to spill onto the page. Nothing. I tell myself I need more time with the kids. I’ve simply returned to the project too soon.

Two days later my daughter returns. Now I’m completely worn out and realize, if we’re smart, why we have children when we’re young. We pack the car and say our goodbyes. We load Dolan and Isabel in their car seats and fasten the safety harnesses.

I hug and kiss each of them one last time. I turn and hug my daughter, pat her head and pepper her face with kisses.

“Good luck with your writing,” she says, snapping her seatbelt in place. “I know whatever you do, it’ll be great.”

I wave and watch as they drive away. As the car disappears down the street I realize I don’t care whether or not the experiment worked. I’ve had three absolutely, positively, wonderful days. I’ve staged puppet shows, poured bubble baths, baked cookies; finger painted, played in the park, watched Cinderella three times, and read enough children’s books to know them by heart. I’ve soothed numerous boo-boos and kissed um-teen owies. I’ve tucked tiny toes under the covers and kissed little fingers poking out from above. And, I’ve collected more hugs and received more kisses than I ever thought possible. Nothing can top that—not even finishing a bestseller.

Jackie Lee Miles is the author of Dear Dwayne, Divorcing Dwayne, Cold Rock River, and Roseflower Creek Visit the website at http://www.jlmiles.com/. Write to the author at Jackie@jlmiles.com

All The Reasons -- Patti Callahan Henry

This weekend, tomorrow, I am headed for the Southeastern Independent Booksellers Association meeting in Mobile, Alabama. So as we sat at the family dinner table last night I heard the inevitable and ever-present question from children and spouse: "why do you have to go to these things?" (If you read deeper in teenage lingo, this really means: why won't you be here to take me wherever I want to go?).

My response was pure and not very helpful. "Because I was invited."

Blank stares.

I tried again. "Because I was invited and I really want to go."

Obviously I still wasn't getting through the fog of teenage self-absorbing thought patterns.

One more time.

"I'm going because I love writing and books and authors and booksellers and sales reps who work so hard for m, I adore the sweet sight of stacks and stacks of newly released books."

But by the time I reached the end of this long-winded sentence my family was onto something new: who Auburn would play this weekend (Of course this is a very important subject, but I was talking after all).

The subject changed as quickly as a passing cloud, as it does and should at a loud dinner table. But the question they'd asked stayed with me for the remainder of the evening. Sometimes, only sometimes, we love someone or something without being able to explain "why". We just DO. That's it. The end.

And that is how I feel about book festivals and writing conferences and bookseller meetings -- I love them without giving much thought as to "why".

In my logical (not so much) writing fashion I made a list of my Top Ten Reasons I love going to these events.

In case you care more than my children did at the dinner table, here are my (right now) top ten reasons. Of course they can change tomorrow....

#10. It means I'm not doing car pool.

#9. Books everywhere. And I mean everywhere.

#8. Laugher. There is always so much laughter.

#7. Readings -- I just so love hearing other authors read their work. Seriously, have you ever sat in on a reading by Ron Rash? Better than a good glass of wine.

#6. Nobody, absolutely nobody, asks me "Where are the _______" (insert here whatever the family can't find at the moment -- ranging from baseball uniforms to keys to food).

#5. Every once in a while a reader will sidle up to my signing table to tell me how much my writing has meant to them. This is heaven. (by the way -- this really doesn't happen at home on a regular basis)

#4. The Question and Answer Sessions -- these often make me look at my work and life in a new way.

#3. When I am there, I am always reminded why I do what I do: The power of story and the written word.

#2. Friendships. Not much to elaborate on here -- old ones. New ones. Every kind.

#1. Because I am around people who care as much as I do about books, story and the written word.

Maybe after SIBA, I'll have some new reasons -- I'll let you know!

Have a beautiful weekend with a good book.

Patti Callahan Henry

WORDS ON FIRE, a short excerpt of three Alabama Women Writers

WORDS ON FIRE
by Kerry Madden
edited Megan Sexton,
editor of Five Points: A Journal of Literature and Art































TOP: HELEN NORRIS BELL with Kerry and her daughter, Norah, in Black Mountain, North Carolina.
MIDDLE: MARY WARD BROWN, at home in Marion, Alabama.
BOTTOM: KATHRYN TUCKER WINDHAM with her Gee's Bend Quilts in Selma, Alabama.

WORDS ON FIRE by Kerry Madden
When Harper Lee barred her door and would not speak to me regarding a young adult biography I was writing about her, it wasn’t personal. She turns everybody down—she’d even turned down Oprah and George Plimpton, so I was disappointed but not surprised. I ignored my father’s advice: “Wear her ass down! Try again!” He is a former football coach, and it was much like the guidance he used to give us as kids after a forced move to another town, a new mascot and team colors looming: “Get in there and make new friends,” he’d demand. “Wear their asses down! By God, they’ll respect you for it.” Maybe it was good advice, and I certainly followed it now and again out of sheer desperation, but I knew “stalking” Miss Lee would not work, and I didn’t have the stomach for it. It seemed, well, wrong.

When I first began my research, Jeanie Thompson of the Alabama’s Writers Project told me that since I was writing this biography of Harper Lee for teens, I absolutely needed to speak to Mary Ward Brown, Kathryn Tucker Windham, and Helen Norris Bell. With close to three hundred years of living between the three of them, they were Alabama women and writers of Harper Lee’s generation born in 1916, 1917, 1918. Miss Lee is the youngest of the group – born in 1926. They would be a wonderful resource, if they agreed to talk. Mary Ward Brown and Helen Norris Bell both won the Harper Lee Award for Distinguished Alabama Writer. Harper Lee nominated Kathryn Tucker Windham to be inducted into the Alabama Academy of Honor in 2005 and when “Nelle Harper” calls Kathryn up for a talk, she typically begins with, “Hey kid!”

My initial impulse in talking to these three Alabama authors was to gain insight into the world of To Kill A Mockingbird, but that went out of the window almost immediately. All three are such rich storytellers themselves that I longed to capture their own stories and not just interview them as conduits into a deeper understanding into Miss Lee. How did they keep their hope and stories alive? How did they sustain decades of writing and not writing? Listening to them talk also brought me back home. They used phrases like “take the cure” (to dry out) and “hanging crepe” (writing sad stories.)

These women hadn’t left the South as so many of their contemporaries had in search of a more literary life. They were like Flannery O’Connor, Ellen Douglas, and Eudora Welty – writers who dug in and stayed in towns like Milledgeville, Georgia, and Jackson, Mississippi. When I asked Kathryn Tucker Windham of Selma, Alabama, “Did you ever want to leave? Move to New York?” her answer was a declarative, “NO!” as if it were the craziest question, which made me laugh, and she laughed too.

I grew up in a family where a man’s work was sacred and unquestioned, especially during football season. My father was always in search of the opportunity to win, which meant we moved regularly to new football towns in the South and Midwest to build up new programs. Vince Lombardi and Bear Bryant were quoted often with reverence and respect. In order to drum up team support, my father even had the team schedule printed on my parents’ wedding napkin that said “Follow Jan and Joe on the Green Wave.” A 1980 nationally televised kickoff return in overtime for a touchdown against my father’s Detroit Lions Special Teams lost the game and postponed Thanksgiving for three days of mourning. So I was taught to treat men’s work with respect and “no high drama,” thank you very much.

Kathryn Tucker Windham’s first writing job was as a journalist on the crime beat in Montgomery, Alabama during World War II, and the police chief said to her, “What’s a lady doing covering crime? Why don’t you write about weddings or society?”

She replied, “I don’t know enough adjectives.”

Mary Ward Brown lives out in the country, and folks used to say to her, “You still writing out there? You ought to join the D.A.R. or the Garden Club.” They quit asking after she published in one of the “big slicks.”

Helen Norris Bell’s young son used to say, “Mama, you should be building up your muscles! (pronounced “muskels”) instead of writing stories.”

It took weeks for me to contact each of them through letters first and then phone calls. Only Mary Ward Brown has an email address, which she checks regularly. Kathryn Tucker Windham doesn’t have a computer, because she says that she “doesn’t need one,” and if it’s not convenient to answer the phone, she doesn’t fool with it. Helen Norris Bell has a computer but claims her knowledge extends as far as the on/off button.

But the more I researched them and read their stories, the more I longed to meet them in person. All three are widows with children, grandchildren, (one has great-grandchildren) and between them they’ve published some thirty-odd books of stories, poetry, essays, and novels. Mary Ward Brown and Helen Norris Bell are former Alabama Poet Laureates. Helen Norris Bell attended Yaddo and MacDowell, three times, and was nominated for a Pen-Faulkner Award. Kathryn Tucker Windham performs regularly at the National Storytelling Festival in
Jonesborough, Tennessee. Mary Ward Brown didn’t begin writing full-time until she was in her sixties, and she still runs the family farm today. She wouldn’t speak to me until she’d finished the final draft of her memoir, which she considered a race against time. Two of the three have lost children. Mary Ward Brown and Kathryn Tucker Windham live twenty-five miles apart, Kathryn is in Selma and Mary is out in the country near Marion Junction. Helen’s son sold her home in Montgomery after she suffered what was possibly a stroke. She now resides in a nursing home in Black Mountain, North Carolina.

I suppose I became a little obsessed. I was reading their stories and missing the South more than I ever knew I would. It’s been this itch - a longing “to go home” that has increased over the years. And much of my writing life lately has been consumed by what Charles Baxter calls the Internet’s “data smog,” which for me has translated into the constant pressure to reach out to readers through a blizzard of blogs, website updates, myspace, facebook, and livejournal until it feels like an electrical wire throbbing in your brain. I needed to talk to these women who didn’t know or care about Amazon rankings or Book Scan or World Cat. They wrote because they loved to write—because they had to write stories. And it wasn’t good enough to talk to them on the phone or exchange letters. I had to go see them in person and do it right. I think I went looking for hope...

(The entire essay and meeting Helen Norris Bell, Mary Ward Brown, and Kathryn Tucker Windham will appear in the next issue of FIVE POINTS: A JOURNAL OF LITERATURE AND ART, editor Megan Sexton. Kerry Madden is the author of the Maggie Valley Trilogy for children: Gentle's Holler, Louisiana's Song, and Jessie's Mountain. Her biography, Harper Lee Up Close, will be published by Viking Children's Books in March 2009.) www.kerrymadden.com

Questions anyone? PLEASE!

Weve all been here. In this place.

At the end of most writer’s readings, there is a moment of reverence where a pause hangs in the air and complete silence is heard. It’s right when the moderator opens the floor for questions. It’s right before the author looks around and wants to slide into a book and disappear because there are many eyeballs on the author but NO ONE is raising a hand or asking a question.

As a book festival promoter, moderator, and writer I have stood in the back of the room and watched the silence fall like an old testament plague and land on the shoulders of the audience over hundreds of times and for hundreds of authors. Known and unknown. And some REALLY FAMOUS FOLKS. And some people who were downright delightful and funny and heartwarming and still NO ONE ASKS A QUESTION. And so this writer who has poured out their heart, read till their throat bled, and given their best presentation ever, suddenly has an event that falls flat because there is a pregnant pause, and then a nervous moderator saying, “Well, okay then - if there are no questions, thank you for coming.” And suddenly everyone feels like the kid on Christmas Story that couldn’t think on Santa’s lap to ask for the thing he desired most but it’s TOO LATE because the question box is closed, it's over and the dazed, tired, and deflated writer is heading to the book table hoping people will be more eager to buy books than they were to ask questions.

And because of witnessing this scene over and over, I have learned to stand with questions at the ready to sail forth. I can ask writer questions at the drop of a hat and all day long. Maybe part of that is because I don’t just ask the writer questions. 1) how long did it take you to write your book (all my life) 2) how did you find your agent (through a fortune teller at a strange circus on Route 66 on hot summer night when my car broke down ) When can a person quit their day job (you can’t quit your day job when writing becomes your day job - or you buy a VW van to live in it down by the river - which appeases my gypsy soul just fine)
My questions tend to be 1) What did you parents discover you were a writer? Are they over it yet? 2) How long have you known you were different? 3) If you could only write one book, and it was the only book you would have to read for the rest of your life on a desert Island - what would it be? 4) Are you currently on medication?

And I have dutifully carried out this ministry of being Question Girl across the nation. Let me be at a festival with a friend presenting and BY GOD I’ll be there just for that back of the room moment. Even if I have to ask, Prefer Broccoli or Cauliflower? Do you read Joyce or Twain before retiring in the evening? What’d you have for lunch? Wear Pajamas?

But as much as I take asking these questions seriously, and I do and ask them fervently on BACKSTORY on the Radio every Saturday from 4-6 (shameless plug), it occurs to me that the fact of the matter is = I cannot cover every festival, every friend, and every opportunity to be Question Girl - and after just having watched two years of SMALLVILLE on DVD in two nights, I realize ultimately all super hero's don’t work alone in their best save the world moments. I thought maybe we could band together as writers and readers like the Justice League and come up with a plethora of creative questions for writers and share them. Then we’ll type the list and spread it around. Seriously, we’ll make copies of the questions and carry them with us and rip them into tiny assigned portions to divide up with the audience when we arrive.Not kidding. It makes it so much easier for us, and for the readers. Imagine! When the moderator asks if anyone has any questions, a bevy, a bushel, a literal harvest I tell you of hungry hands will rise quickly to the rescue with some enthusiastic people saying things like, "Me, me - I had my hand up first."

Okay, okay - I know. It’s question planting and in a political year maybe that’s frowned upon just a little teeny, weeny bit. But hey, we are writers and carry the banner for the creation of creative human interaction as one of our obligations.

So I say we do it. We ban together and share the questions. The best ones that we’ve ever been asked. The ones we wished we had been asked. The ones that took our breath away.
Just close your eyes and imagine . . . no more pregnant pauses. No awkward moments. Just brilliant, lighting-quick, authentic author finishes with a flourish. Well, almost.

RIVER JORDAN is a storyteller of the southern variety and has been cast most frequently in the company of Flannery O’Connor and Harper Lee.
Ms. Jordan is the author of two highly praised novels of southern mystical fiction, The Gin Girl and The Messenger of Magnolia Street. She teaches and speaks on ‘The Passion of Story’, is a monthly contributor to this wonderful southern collective blog, and produces and hosts the radio program BACKSTORY, on WRFN, 98.9 FM, Nashville Saturday’s 4:00-6:00 CST. She has recently completed a new work of fiction, Souls in Limbo which will be published by Random House/Waterbrook in Spring 2009. Jordan and her husband make their home in Nashville, TN. You may visit the author at http://www.riverjordan.us/ or email your best questions from the road to river@riverjordan.us

THE SUNRISE REMEMBERS

The Sunrise Remembers

When I started writing as a second career I pulled thoughts and images from my mind and used them as the basis for my stories. I wrote about things that happened to me in my childhood, things in adolescence, and things as an adult. I wrote about my family, my friends, and even a celebrity or two.

It was strange how I would sit down in front of the computer and something would jog loose a memory from a few days ago or a few years ago. Sometimes only one memory would drift down but at other times it was raining memories. All I had to do was stop and collect them.

When I started my fifth book a memory came back to me of life in Clinton, South Carolina. I was transported back to a summer when I was six years old. My mother and father had announced early in the year that they were going to build and operate a corner grocery store. And sure enough the grocery store was built and “Cooper’s Grocery” opened in the spring.

By summer my mother had fallen into a routine of having the store opened by 8:00 and having it close at 7:00. Since the store was on the lot next to our house Daddy hooked up a buzzer people could ring in case my mother was at our house for some reason or other. The buzzer would sound and off she would go.

There were two benches in front of the store and many were the times when I would sit out front on one of the benches between two women known to me as Aunt Ida and Aunt Lula. Aunt Ida was a tall woman who dwarfed Aunt Lula. To me she was a giant and one of the smartest women I have ever known.

Aunt Ida knew everything about everything. She knew all the people in our neighborhood and what their history was. She knew who was kin to who, and who had had some trouble in their past. She was a walking repository of wisdom and knowledge.

I would sit beside her, drinking a soft drink and drinking in everything she said. She loved to talk and I loved to listen. Many times Aunt Lula would censor a certain story before she got into it. “Remember the boy,” Aunt Lula would say with a nod of her head.

I remember one day telling Aunt Ida she was the smartest person I knew. I told her she knew more about everything than anyone else in the world. That made her laugh and she hugged me and said, “No honey, I don’t know much at all. And sometimes I don’t know anything at all.”

“Not you, Aunt Ida, not you,” I countered.

“Honeyboy, when I lay my head on my pillow at night every thought in my head goes away. I go to sleep and my head is as empty as can be, and the same thing happens to you,” she said.

I thought about that and worried that somebody might wake me up in the middle of the night and I wouldn’t know who I was. It also dawned on me after a few days that something had to happen to give us our thoughts and memories back.

I asked Aunt Ida how we had our memories returned to us and she quickly said, “Why the sunrise remembers. Every morning when that sun comes up it brings back your thoughts and memories and my thoughts and memories. It does this for everybody all over the world.”

Later in life whenever I would worry about forgetting something or someone, Aunt Ida’s voice would come back to me, and I would know that the sunrise remembers so that we can’t ever forget. Because of that reason I remember Aunt Ida and I remember those sun drenched days of summer in South Carolina.

Life takes a lot of things away from us but it gives a lot back to us with our memories. That’s why I write my stories and put them in my books, the latest of which is titled THE SUNRISE REMEMBERS.

Jackie K Cooper writes memoirs and is a son of the South.

Hanna, Ike, and Josephine

I grew up and spent a good part of my life in northern Ohio. We had blizzards, ice storms, tornadoes, and the occasional flash flood. Typical Midwest stuff. My first experience of hurricanes came a couple of years after we’d purchased our first vacation condo on Hilton Head, South Carolina. Hugo blew by just a whisker north of the island and spent its wrath on beautiful Charleston. I had a niece going to college there at the time, and she and some of her equally insane friends decided to ride out the storm in a house down on the Battery, a row of antebellum structures which directly face the water. Only two good things came out of their youthful stupidity: they all survived, and I learned a healthy respect for the power of tropical storms from listening to their horrifying descriptions of roofs being ripped off and large boats ending up smashed to splinters in the front yard.

Oh, and I used some of their experiences while writing a hurricane scene in my second book, AND NOT A PENNY MORE. When you’re a writer, no good story ever goes to waste.

So when I moved to Hilton Head permanently, I felt fairly well-prepared to deal with our infrequent brushes with hurricanes, comforted by the fact that the island hasn’t taken a direct hit since 1893. We’ve evacuated three times in the nearly fifteen years we’ve been here, nightmare excursions of heat and exhaust fumes and not being able to stop to go to the bathroom for hours. The absolute worst part was pulling away from my marshfront townhouse, hoping I’d managed to stuff everything important in my life into the back seat and trunk, and glancing over my shoulder wondering if I’d have anything to come back to.

And after every one of those anxiety-ridden, desperate flights away from our island, the storm ended up hitting North Carolina, hundreds of miles from our shores.

Okay, the scene is set. Fast-forward to the first week of September. On that Friday, the 5th, I was throwing a birthday party for my dear husband. Beachfront party facility rented, caterers engaged, nearly 100 RSVPs received. It was a particularly significant birthday. Friends and family were driving in from Tennessee and Florida, flying in from Ohio and Texas.

Then murmurs began about the “Big Three” rumbling around out there in the Atlantic. A follow-the-leader trio of tropical depressions quickly morphing into tropical storms: Hanna, Ike, and Josephine. I flipped on the Weather Channel and rarely left it for a week. Hanna looked like the most likely to give us trouble here on the Southeast coast. For a few days she meandered around the Bahamas and Hispaniola, doing swoops and dips and circling back on herself, flirting with hurricane status but never quite getting there. Then she headed north.

We’ll be okay, I kept saying to myself. It’ll skirt on by and give us a little rain. Maybe some wind. I can live with that. But before long, Hilton Head had become ground zero in their little “cone of disaster” models. I toyed with canceling the party. Everyone said not to worry. They’re almost never right five days out. I waited. The cone shifted slightly north and east. Inexorably Hilton Head moved to the outer limits of the danger zone. The weather forecasts ameliorated. Forty per cent chance of showers. Winds around 25 mph. We’d had worse conditions in summer thunderstorms. I forged ahead.

Then Friday morning dawned, the storm shifted slightly back west, and the rumors began. Just a trickle at first, but soon the whole island was abuzz. Voluntary evacuation. Mandatory evacuation. The only bridge off the island would be closed because of anticipated high winds. Our small commercial airport would close. Businesses and government offices were shutting down and sending their employees home early. My anxiety level, fed over the past few days by the ever-increasing doom and gloom predictions of the forecasters, rose to almost unbearable levels. Cancel the party? Get out of town ourselves? What about the people coming in from out of state? Would they be stopped at the bridge? Could those flying in be rerouted to Savannah?

It began raining about noon. Nothing heavy or continuous, just a few short bursts followed by calm. In my mystery novels, my character, Bay Tanner, is fond of saying, “In for a penny” when she’s about to embark upon some action she isn’t quite certain will prove to have been the wisest choice. It became my mantra. I dressed in my party duds, loaded the decorations and my husband into the car between rain bands, and headed for the beach. If no one else showed up, we’d be drinking a lot of wine and eating a lot of leftovers.

But this story has a happy ending. The dire predictions proved inflated. Once again. Yes, it rained. Yes, we had a little wind. The Beach Club at Shipyard proved a perfect spot from which to watch the waves, higher than usual but not threatening, tumble onto the shoreline. Everyone from out of town made it, including the fliers. And so did most of the guests. A few were scared off, but it was still a hell of party. It’s certainly a birthday my husband won’t soon forget, for any number of reasons.

There’s a point to all this. I’ve heard a lot of criticism of the folks on Galveston Island who didn’t evacuate ahead of Hurricane Ike. The devastation wrought there after the storm passed made my heart hurt. It was truly a “there but for the grace of God go I” feeling. It could happen to us one day. But all the wolf-crying that goes on whenever a hurricane develops has jaded many of us who could potentially be in harm’s way. So many times the predictions for landfall are off by hundreds of miles, and tens of thousands of people have evacuated or boarded up, stripped the stores bare of bottled water and batteries, and suffered days of anxiety, only to be told, as Saturday Night Live’s Gilda Radner as Emily Latella used to say: “Never mind.”

So I’m cutting the Galveston folks some slack. Unfortunately, their decision to stay proved disastrous, even fatal for some of them. It was a bad choice. But it’s one most of us on the hurricane-prone coasts can understand.

Except if Jim Cantore of the Weather Channel suddenly shows up in town. Then you definitely want to get out of Dodge.


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. Watch for Covenant Hall coming next spring. Visit her at http://www.kathrynwall.com/ .

Coffee, Tea and Me Back Home

By Annabelle Robertson

I spotted the first sign just a few miles over the Texas state line.

"There!" I said to my kindergartner, trying to contain my excitement. "See it?"

"Oh.....yes!" she said, her voice filled with awe.

She paused.

Then she said, with far more wisdom than a five-year-old should ever have, "Now why do they call it Cracker Barrel?"

Fortunately, a few minutes of reseach at an actual Cracker Barrel Restaurant solved that little riddle (the name comes from old country stores, where people used to gather around an barrels of Saltine crackers) - as well as our hunger pains. While we enjoyed our first authentic Southern meal in 18 months.

Pass the collards, y'all!

We ate biscuits. We ate chicken-and-dumplin's. We ate Coca-Cola cake (not to be missed - it's warmed up with vanilla ice cream and is the best dessert I've eaten since I can positively remember). And of course, we sloshed it all down with WAY too much sweet tea.

Yes, I gave sweet tea to my two-year-old. Before getting back into the car and continuing our cross country-journey.

I know. I'm certifiably insane.

See what three years in California will do to you?

We were in the process of moving -- lock, stock and barrel (pun not intended) -- from California to South Carolina, which happened just a few weeks ago. And, arriving in Texas -- not to mention eating at a Cracker Barrel -- made it all too real.

Going back home is something I'd been thinking about for awhile, and when my oldest daughter (the only one who could understand what was going on) found out, after she began dancing around the room, singing, "We're going to the South! We're going to the South! Uh, huh! Uh, huh!"

Yep, I raise 'em right.

And now, as my girlfriend said, when I told her I was going back to the newsroom (a daily paper in Sumter, SC), "Ohhhh! Your girls are going to have Southern accents, after all!"

Amen and amen.

Still, three years on the West Coast has a way of growing on a body -- even a dedicated Southern one.

Don't get me wrong. I love the South. And I am thrilled to be back. I've always been a Palmetto State wannabe, and here I am, hallelujah. Not only that, but California is STILL the land of fruits and nuts. But sometimes, however, ou can get used to the flavor of those nuts.

Take, for instance, the no-smoking culture.

Now I'm sorry if I'm offending some of you out there, but for us non-addicts (at least when it comes to nicotine), cigarettes are just plain old nasty -- and they're even nastier when they're polluting an expensive dinner. Even from across the room, they make everything smell and taste like ashes. And they just plain ruin food. We're just starting to see the devastating effects of secondhand smoke, too. So as far as I'm concerned, Californians have got this one down pat. Away with the cigarettes, please.

It also goes without saying that Californians do "authentic Mexican" better than the Mexicans. Actually, come to think of it, these are pretty much the same thing.

Also at the top of the state food chain are their strawberries - especially where I was living (Lomoc/Santa Maria, in Santa Barbara County). Honey, you've never SEEN strawberries like these. Humongous. Deep red, all the way through. Available 10 months out of the year from local vendors, for cheap. And you've never tasted anything so sweet in all your life.

The great thing is that you didn't need to worry too much about gaining weight from all this great food, either, because California a very health-conscious culture. You gain a few pounds, you start to notice people staring at you. So you hit the gym. Regularly.

Back South, I'm the exception -- and I'm barely working out at all these days. Too much to do, getting moved in and all. While eating biscuits. And waffles, from Waffle House (another Southern institution). Dang, those waffles are good. But they sure can make you think twice about working out, especially when they're weighing down your stomach and forcing you down from that sugar high.

Then there's the wine. At the risk of sounding like an alcoholic, I will tell you right now that leaving an area with more than 270 of the country's best wineries within an hour's drive is a little like leaving the beach after a two-week vacation. You get used to it, and it's impossible to go back.

We lived in the second-largest wine producing region in the country, after Napa/Somona, near the town of Los Olivos (the setting for the movie "Sideways"). On Sunday afternoons, we often went wine tasting, driving up to Paso Robles, in and around the Santa Maria Valley, or across the way to Santa Ynez. For my husband's birthday, we once rented a limo with friends and drove to all of our favorite the wineries, picnicing in between (don't kid yourself - no one ever spits that stuff out).

We joined wine clubs, which allowed us to pick up wine at hugely discounted prices. And it was not uncommon to enjoy a $60 bottle of wine at a friend's house.

I thought of those wine bottles last night when I was drinking three buck chuck at a local fundraiser. Your palette really does adjust.

Then again, they didn't have chicken and dumplins out there. Or biscuits. Or decent waffles.

They do have plenty of Starbucks, however -- a sight that is nonexistant in Sumter at the present time. And, lemme tell 'ya:

I am jonesing for my non-fat latte.

I guess it's all a trade-off. Everything in life always is.

Fortunately, at the end of the day, however, having my girls saying "y'all" and "yes m'am" is, as Mastercard would say, priceless.

With Southern love,

Annabelle

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. A former longtime Georgia resident, she has just moved to South Carolina, and she would be very grateful if Starbucks corporate would wake up and smell the coffee.

GROWING UP SOUTHERN . . . IN FLORIDA

A reporter is interviewing me. She is from the North and has just referred to my protagonist, Elizabeth Goodweather as a Yankee transplant to Appalachia. Horrors!

“No way!” I exclaim. “Elizabeth’s like me -- Alabama on her mother’s side, pioneer Florida on her father’s. What in the world makes you think she’s a Yankee?” I am incredulous at this assumption. But it’s the reporter’s answer that really stuns me.

“Well, Elizabeth reads the New Yorker . . . and she eats grapefruit . . .and goat cheese. And anyway, Florida isn’t really the South.”

Southern manners prevent me from strangling this interviewer (bless her heart.) At least she didn’t say, “Well, because Elizabeth reads.”

But I find myself feeling ridiculously irritated by her assumptions, particularly as she has just been grousing about ‘stereotypical Southern characters’ in my work – you know, the snake handlers who speak in tongues, the old lady who says ‘hit’ for ‘it,’ the good old boys who chew and spit and wear tractor caps.

Those aren’t stereotypes, I want to say. Those folks are my neighbors. And Florida sure as hell was the South when I was growing up there -- .except, maybe , Miami. I chewed on my annoyance a while after the reporter left. Then I wrote the following. It’s a vignette that is part of a longer unfinished piece – one memory of growing up Southern – in Florida.

STANDING UP FOR DIXIE

I wish I was in the land of cotton; old times there are not forgotten; Look away, look away, look away, Dixie land.

Late October, 1958 -- the Plant High Panthers run out on to the field, their breath huffing visible under the stadium lights. They wear their startling new all-black uniform and the metallic gold numbers and the gold helmets, adorned with leaping black panthers, shine and wink against the green grass. The players, slim-hipped and broad-shouldered, are self-assured and menacing. They look invincible. This morning they were teenage boys: pimply, moody, subject to the whims of parents and teachers, but tonight they are gods.

Bursting through the paper banner held by their handmaidens, the attendant cheerleaders, they thunder toward the home side benches to the deafening roar of the crowd. The opposing players, from some small farming community no one has ever heard of, are pale and weedy; the light blue numbers on their dingy white uniforms almost invisible. The hapless opponents slink onto the field and occupy the away benches. Only a handful of fans have made the long trip from Turkey Creek (can there really be such a place?) and their cheering, a thin, tentative sound, all but inaudible in the packed stadium, is quickly swallowed up by the booming drums and blaring brass of the Panther band.

Turkey Creek’s cheerleaders are unimpressive too -- either heavy bodied and doughy-faced or pale and slightly wormy-looking. Even their uniforms are wrong -- too bulky, like something from a previous decade, and their bobby socks are rolled in great wads around their ankles. (The Plant High cheerleaders have recently taken to wearing their white socks pulled high up their smooth calves and this has quickly become the only way for socks to be worn.)

The visiting cheerleaders are looked over, summed up, and dismissed as of no consequence. For the rest of the evening they will be invisible to Alice and her friends, except at halftime when the Plant cheerleaders, all really cute girls with outgoing personalities, will hurry across the field carrying trays of Coca-Colas to their opposite numbers. The Plant cheerleaders will stand and make small talk with well-practiced Southern hospitality and fixed Miss America smiles, while the visiting cheerleaders grimly down the watery soft drinks. Finally the host cheerleaders will wish the lumpish visitors good luck, y'all! and run back across the field, exchanging snickering comments about the general tackiness of the girls they have just honored with their attention.

The home bleachers are full as usual, with students and families from the surrounding middle class suburb. Plant High (named for a Yankee developer whose railroads and steamships opened up Florida) is the second oldest high school in Tampa, the same one Alice’s parents and the parents of many of her classmates attended, but it has grown to an unwieldy size, almost two thousand students in three grades. In 1960, Alice’s graduating class will number 758 souls, white and Latino. Integration is years away and, as yet, inconceivable but in the following year a new high school will open, siphoning off excess students. And soon other things will begin to change.

On this October night Alice sits with a group of her friends, all girls. In front of her a senior girl languidly pulls her hair into a French twist, all the while talking to a boy on the bleacher below her. Alice is ravished with the senior’s ease and assurance and the graceful lift of hers arms. She studies the other people around her: some couples are sitting so close to each other that they might be Siamese twins; others, those whose status of “going steady” is marked by a class ring on a very long chain around the girl’s neck, seem more casual, hardly noticing or touching one another. Conventional wisdom says that these non-touching ones are the couples who are screwing.

On the track that surrounds the field the cheerleaders – these chosen ones who on game nights seem somehow more alive than ordinary mortals – swing into a clapping dance routine as the band belts out the theme song from “Peter Gunn.” The cheerleaders are totally in the moment now -- untiring, fed by the driving beat. The spectators clap, bobbing their heads and moving their shoulders in time to the music which goes on and on and on. Alice is clapping and bobbing with everyone else. She is totally uninterested in football (it will be several years before she understands the significance of downs and even this knowledge will do little to increase her appreciation.) But Alice, like most of her friends, is there because on Friday nights it is, so to speak, the only game in town.

The PA system crackles: And now ladies and gentlemen, please stand for our national anthem. The stadium lights dim and the spectators stand. The parents – veterans and survivors of World War II, they who will come to call themselves the ‘greatest generation’ – come to their feet eagerly, proud of their country and their flag.

The students stand up more slowly, somewhat grudgingly. Patriotism is not cool. It’s something they learned about in eighth grade Civics but it is not something many of them actually feel. The players all have their helmets off and stand, more or less at attention, facing the flagpole at the end of the field where spotlights capture the fluttering red and white stripes as the ROTC honor guard raises the flag. The cheerleaders too are ranged in order, their right hands laid flat just above their left breasts, their faces solemn, eyes wide with conscious emotion. At last the flag reaches the apex of the pole, a fortuitous breeze catches and unfurls it, the anthem comes to an end, and the crowd cheers perfunctorily and sits down.

A moment passes and the rousing sounds of another anthem demand attention. There is no announcement, no call for respect, but as the bouncy strains of “Dixie” fill the night air, the students stand up unbidden, even eager. Alice and her friend Mary look at one another, half-humorously oh well, here we go again, dragged to their feet by some in-dwelling rebel pride. They stand in the cool air of an October night in Florida, a Southern nation, conquered, but not defeated .

Vicki Lane, author of the Elizabeth Goodweather Appalachian Mysteries from Bantam Dell, draws her inspiration from the past and present of rural North Carolina where she and her family have tended a mountainside farm since 1975.
Dark-edged psychological suspense, the mysteries are set in the present day Appalachians where old ways and new residents are often caught in an intricate and sometimes deadly dance. Lane's work has been praised for authentic dialogue, evocative detail, and rich, clear, intelligent writing that captures the essence of the Carolina mountains and their people. www.vickilanemysteries.com http://vickilanemysteries.blogspot.com/

WHY do I write?

The other night my 10-year-old, Sam, was standing at the kitchen table painting a skull on the back of a worn out skateboard. He had removed the wheels and was desirous of affixing this work of art to his bedroom wall when it dried. Sam is partial to skull-emblazoned objects. He’s constantly asking me to buy him hats, shirts, and shorts (which fills the boys’ racks at Rich’s these days, for some reason) and shoes decorated with skulls."Why in Heaven’s name are you fixated on all these dark, ugly images of death?" I fuss from stove where I’m stirring taco seasoning mix and a half cup water into a pound of ground beef. "It’s horrible!"
"It’s just a skull, Mama."
Well, I think, I guess it is a part of the human body. But still. "Don’t you want to get involved in 4-H?" I ask, thinking of a nice wholesome activity. He looks at me like I’ve sprouted horns and keeps painting. Then I tell myself that if I protest too loudly it might make him pursue skull fashion all the more. Hopefully this is just a phase he’ll zoom right through.
Part of the phase includes him sitting down at the computer and googling skate-board tricks and techniques, performed by other skull-emblazoned kids who look like they love defying parental authority and listening to heavy metal music with raunchy lyrics. I’ve been trying to look at the silver lining while I wait for my child to move on to other things. Sam’s a little on the husky side and I like the fact that he’s constantly practicing all these wheel-stands, drop-ins, kick-flips and other maneuvers that get him breathing hard and his heart rate up. He’s begun requesting only half a sandwich in his lunch after reading the biography of Tony Hawk, master skateboarder, who is apparently all sinew and bone and claims this fact makes performing skateboard tricks easier.
"I wish I had the natural inborn talent!" I’ve heard Sam cry out many times, slapping the computer desk as he’s watching some kid "ollie" along a Florida sidewalk or "grind" down a metal bannister somewhere in California.
"I can’t do it! I can’t!" he said to me as I stood on the driveway watching him skateboard off a ramp for the hundredth time, attempting some kind of a jump that lands in a wheelie.
"Practice makes perfect," I quipped, looking at his slumped posture. "You can do it, sweetie. Don’t have that defeatist attitude. You need to think positive and just work at it. You can do it as good as they can."
"No, I can’t. I really can’t." He shook his head. "Some people are born better at it."
I was about to argue with him, but I knew I’d be lying. He’s right. I feel the same way with my writing. I finished a book several nights ago and when I closed it, reluctantly, thinking I’d like to read it all over again, savor it, I also said to myself, "Just give up, Julie. Get a real job. You’ll never write like that." (Okay, I’ll tell you... it was Water For Elephants).
What makes it worse is the fact that I’m currently in that awful, disheartening period of waiting for a manuscript to sell. Anyway, this waiting, this uncertainty, has spawned much soul-searching, of pacing and saying to myself, "Why DO I write, anyway?"
It didn’t help that I’d just read an on-line interview with author Vicki Hinze, which she finished by saying, "If you can quit writing, quit. There are far easier ways to earn a living. If you can’t quit, then gird up your loins, jump into the fray, and go for your dream - no matter what. It’s always been risky. For authors, for publishers."
You’re absolutely right, Vicki! Anybody who thinks writing a novel might be an easy way to make some money is kidding herself. It would be a whole lot easier to be something cut-and-dried, measurable, like a carpenter who makes picnic tables, or even, if I needed some creativity in my vocation, a cake decorator, or maybe, say, an administrative professional (modern way to say secretary). They at least get a regular paycheck, insurance benefits, and have fellow employees to chat with.
This obsession I have with writing novels sometimes feels like a disabling affliction. It can be a torturous way to earn a living because it takes massive doses of perseverance and determination to trudge one long, lonely road after another, through first, second drafts, editing, polishing. It’s fraught with rejections, self-doubt, and loneliness. But, I have to confess I do adore the actual act of writing, of creating and getting lost in these fictional worlds. It’s fulfilling to me in a way that words (isn’t that ironic?) can’t convey. When I’m in doubt like this I try to feel better by telling myself I was born to write, that it’s my destiny, what I have to offer this world. I sit and make myself recall all my teacher’s comments from grade-school on, stuff like, "Julie’s such a good writer. She’s very gifted!" I pull up an image of my mother’s glowing face as she stands over her trunk of treasured keepsakes, lifting a stack of crude handmade books that I wrote and illustrated over the course of my childhood.
But then I wonder if I’m only a victim of delusion. I ask myself, doesn’t desire follow attention, not vice versa? and that if I devote myself to some other pursuit, say teaching English, or basket weaving, wouldn’t I then have a passion for that? And as far as destiny, does God have this "perfect will" for each one of us? Or is there just a selection of things, a menu of permissible things that He lets us have a hand in selecting what we are and become?
There’s a side to being an author that I know is the exact opposite of that wonderful creative aspect. These days an author has to not only write a wonderful story. It’s a competitive market and now they must assume tons of responsibility for the marketing and promotion side of their book. You write the book, happily, but then you have to put on a whole other hat and come up with this tight, compelling synopsis (which is a necessary selling tool), some type of an elevator pitch, names of folks who might blurb your book, etc.... And then, when the book is released, you’ve got to GO OUT THERE and be a super salesperson. You’ve got to be a hawker who stops at nothing. I can’t say I’ve learned to love contacting magazines or radio stations, begging for reviews and interviews, but I do enjoy going to book clubs and small groups to discuss my books. There is beauty in these people’s praise and I have to confess I love it when I get a fan letter or someone says how much my writing entertained or enlightened them. It’s only human to want this type of "love", and this is when it’s easy to think that writing novels is the right career for me. My destiny.
I could pat myself on the back, live on this praise by rehearsing it in my head, but lest I get to feeling too self-important, I have to remember a humbling experience I had just a few days ago. Someone gave me a truly heartfelt response to something I wrote, well, that I copied (it wasn’t plagiarism), and I have to say it was the most intense enthusiasm, the most glowing gratefulness I’ve seen. I’ll tell y’all the story:
I guess it was about a month ago when I felt this nudge inside to send this woman I vaguely know a card. She’s relatively young, (early fifties, I’d guess) and her husband had recently suffered a severe heart attack. I guess I wanted to get it done and get this insistent feeling off my chest, you know, scratch it off my "to-do" list? So, I picked this blank card with an etching of Tallulah Falls on the front, sat down and wrote maybe three sentences, licked it, sealed it, looked up her address and stuck it in the mail. None of my usual flowery writerly phrases, nothing that said, "Hey, look at this genius turn of words!" Sunday afternoon I was sitting outside with my two boys and this car went zipping along past us, then pulled over and came to a halt at the curb. She climbed out, made her way over to me, sat down and said, "I just have to thank you for sending that card! Of the whole pile of cards folks sent, yours was the one with a Bible verse in it. That verse is just what I needed (okay, it was Romans 8:11)!" The intensity of her voice, the piercing sincerity in her eyes, I wish you could have seen it. Again, something beyond what words can convey.
Well, that is enough rambling. With the help of writing this blog right here I have gotten some encouragement. In fact, now I recall something I heard years and years ago, from another author who is also an instructor of creative writing. It was words to the effect of not comparing ourselves as writers. She said we don’t write worse, nor better, we write DIFFERENTLY from one another, and we’ve each got something to offer. Maybe I’ll never write like Sara Gruen, but I’ve still got something unique to give, am still enthused about writing. I’ll do like Vicki Hinze admonished and I’ll gird up my loins, jump back into the fray, and continue laboring to pursue this passion.

Read more about Julie L. Cannon and her writing life at julielcannon.com

Things that make me smile...

There's nothing like that feeling you get when the band starts playing, the people start yelling, and the pom poms start shaking. And it all started week before last for me, when my best college buddy came down to Nashville, to watch our alma mater, the Carolina Gamecocks take on Vanderbilt. Now, because I'm southern and a lady, I shall not tell you what we Gamecock fans shout in our cheers for our team. It's slightly uncivil and I still don't yell it around my mama...

But yell it we did! Didn't do a lick of good because Vandy beat us the second year in a row, but my, my, did we laugh, eat, holler and smile...I donned matching shirts with a friend for the first time since Junior High when we sported "dickies" of every color and oxford shirts. My friend Beth had bought me my shirt for my birthday and her husband had bought her hers as a gift. I'm still not sure why I let my sister-in-law and brother come, seeing as they hate Carolina and pulled for Vandy. Guess I was that certain of a win...But oh well, when you've got Coca-Cola, a Snickers bar, your best college buddy and you have your brother surrounded by a bunch of drunk men wearing garnet and black, you can laugh at most anything!

But now that summer is fading and the hills of Tennessee are getting their first early morning briskness, I'm reminded of all the pleasures summer has held that has made me smile. The beginning brought the birth of my niece, Georgia. (Yes, she is a southern girl...) I got to take her to her first "tea" for her mother's birthday outing. It brought Friday night concerts on the lawn in my neighborhood that ended just this past Friday with 80's night! How green is my valley?! We sang to Footloose and all those other great tunes.

Summer took me to Poland and Germany where I touched the Berlin wall and had the privilege of sharing all of it with my parents. It brought evening walks with my girls, Maggie and Sophie while they sniffed hydrants, did their business in neighbors yards and shed their winter girth. It brought long evenings of good conversations with friends, and new visions in my heart. And it brought a lot of smiles. Smiles over coca-colas, smiles over good books, smiles over sweet conversation, smiles over good food, and smiles over special friends.

I never like to see summer go. I'm a summer girl. But last night, around nine o'clock walking back home from the club house in my neighborhood in the cool September air I was smiling...So, I'm thinking maybe I'll find some things to smile about in the fall too. Granted it probably won't be my Gamecock's record, but Tennessee is 2-0! Yeah, I'm certain fall will give me smiles too...

May you spend a moment recounting yours. Even if there have been a few tears this summer, I bet you'll find you smiled much more than you might even remember...

(Denise and her niece Georgia at Georgia's first tea. Denise is smiling, Georgia not so much...Denise makes her home in Franklin, Tennessee with her two shih-tzu's Maggie and Sophie where she enjoys good books, long walks and anything USC- Yes "The" USC)

www.denisehildreth.com
www.denisehildreth.blogspot.com

Writing as a Three-Way Street

I don’t think I have ever written but one author whom I didn’t know personally to say how much I liked a book. I distinctly remember the sweaty palms with which I approached the keyboard and the number of times I edited the letter before I finally stamped and mailed it. What if I misspelled a word? Said something dumb?

Yet as a writer, I love to get letters from readers. I don’t care if they are short, long, misspelled, even ungrammatical—although few are. I love to know that my characters reach across the ether and become real for somebody else, that the fictitious places and situations I create can taken other people out of their pain or boredom for a little while.

One of my favorite letters came from a woman who said, “A friend gave me your books just after I was diagnosed with cancer. I laughed my way through chemotherapy.” Another wrote that her bedridden mother in the Midwest loves to travel to Hopemore, GA, each year through my mysteries.

I even appreciate readers who write to point out errors in my books, because that means they have read them carefully—more carefully than my editor and I did, apparently.

This past week I got a letter from somebody upset because she felt my books lectured her when she had merely expected a good read. At first I felt a definite “ouch,” but I invited her to point out instances where she felt that was true. Today I got an e-mail from her with several examples. Tomorrow I will go back and look at the book again and see if her criticism is justified. Whether it was or not, she will make me a more careful writer in the future. And I hope she and I will keep up the dialogue. A reader who takes the time to analyze your books is worth his or her weight in words.

I am delighted to announce three new titles since my last blog. No, I don't write that fast, but the two books in the Job's Corner Chronicles, THE REMEMBER BOX and CARLEY'S SONG, were reissued in late summer and my third Family Tree Mystery, DAUGHTER OF DECEIT, will come out October 1.

THE REMEMBER BOX and CARLEY'S SONG chronicle the story of Carley Marshall in North Carolina at the mid-point of the last century, when Carley was 11 and 12. In the first book Carley learns about race and religion. In the second, she learns about love.

In DAUGHTER OF DECEIT, which is at this point my favorite mystery of the ones I’ve written, Katharine Murray would rather be finishing the restoration of her house than researching military medals, but poor Bara Weidenauer has had a tough year—losing both son and father and now in the throes of a bitter divorce. So when Bara asks Katharine just to find out what her dad earned his World War II medals for, Katharine reluctantly agrees. Unfortunately, they discover that Bara’s dad earned one of his medals in Europe around the time Bara was getting conceived in Atlanta. oops. So who is Bara, really? Can she stay sober long enough to find out before somebody kills her?

If you are a reader and if you happen to read my books, I hope you’ll read these one and let me know what you think. I don’t so much care what you think as that you think! Much of my writing energy comes from knowing that my work is a three-way street of communication between me, my characters, and my readers.

To you, who make it possible!

Patricia Sprinkle

Novel Destinations

by Cathy Pickens

Most readers cherish their favorite places to curl up with a good book, away from worries and interruptions, lost in a delightful place.

Photo: The House of Seven Gables

Two writers, though, have dreamed up something almost as good. A book of special places where the books we love were written or about which they were written!

In Novel Destinations: Literary Landmarks from Jane Austen's Bath to Ernest Hemingway's Key West (National Geographic: 2008), authors Shannon McKenna Schmidt and Joni Rendon have put together my favorite kind of travel book -- one that can serve as a planning guide for a trip as well as one that can take me places while I snuggle in my chair at home.

Of course, I've stumbled on a few literary landmarks as I've traveled. Within easy driving distance from my home, I can visit Carl Sandburg's Connemara Farm or Thomas Wolfe's (rebuilt) boarding house in Asheville. I've been to Anne Hathaway's cottage in Stratford, and I loved the House of Seven Gables in Salem, Massachusetts. (Schmidt and Rendon warn to plan carefully if you want to visit Salem on Halloween -- that's an understatement.)

Photo: Jane Austen's Bath, England

But what about planning a whole trip around a favorite author? The book lists some of Charles Dickens' favorite restaurants. (I once lucked into the Ben Johnson seat in Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese, but didn't know to try to breath in some Charles Dickens aura at Rules in London.)

The first part of the book is organized around topics -- vampires or house museums or literary lodgings. The second part focuses on ten journeys or places made famous by writers: Harper Lee's Monroeville, Alabama or Victor Hugo's Paris or James Joyce's Dublin.

As I read about the places I've been fortunate enough to see, the authors' detail brought a smile of recognition. For the places I haven't yet visited, they had me making mental notes galore.

What a delightful idea for a book! What a delightful book! If you plan nothing more than an armchair journey, you'll feel well-traveled indeed.

While you're journeying in a literary vein, check out the DVD of the movie Miss Potter. The movie slipped quickly in and out of theaters, which is a shame. Rene Zellweger lets us visit the creative life of Beatrix Potter, of Peter Rabbit fame. The English Lake District scenery alone is worth the price of the rental.

I'm supposed to be working on several writing projects, but these travels provided such delightful escape. No matter what you're supposed to be doing, I recommend this escape route! Even if you can't leave home ...

WORK WHILE YOU SLEEP! by T. Lynn Ocean

Put Your Subconscious Mind
To Work For You

by T. Lynn Ocean


People often ask authors where they get their ideas. The answer for me is, I'm not sure. But I do know that I'd never have a writing career if it weren't for my subconscious mind (SM).

Everyone has this amazing tool at their disposal. Scientists still don't understand quite how it works, but they do know that we all have a duality of minds: your consciously thinking mind, and your subconscious mind. Whether you are creating a character that people will want to read, composing a song, or trying to solve a dilemma at the office, your SM can do the work for you. It's true!

Ever been with friends discussing a movie or a song, and you can't remember the name of the lead actor? "It's on the tip of my tongue!" you might say. Finally, you give up. The next morning it hits you. You remember the name. Well, folks, that is your SM at work. It's a very simple example, but proof that your mind can problem-solve while you are not consciously thinking about the problem.

There are two basic things to remember about your SM. First, it never sleeps. It's always working, regardless of what you are doing. Second, your SM has no filters or screens. It's like the mind of an innocent child and will soak up everything without prejudice.

So, how do you put your SM to work for you? Very easily. You must fuel, or feed it! For example, when I'm working on a new character, I will sketch out all the basics. A background, including family and career. Physical description. Accent and manner of speaking. Oddities or quirks, such as a man who always jingles the change in his pocket when he's nervous. Next, I'll think about the plot and how the character fits in. And then it's time to feed my SM. If my character were the owner of a bakery for example, I'd quiz some pastry chefs, subscribe to a trade magazine, and watch cooking shows. If my character was a sleazy landlord, I'd read some articles about fraud and scams, maybe interview a property manager or two, and check out the real estate market where the book takes place.

Bottom line? Go on road trips. Talk to people. Read applicable magazines. Attend pertinent continuing education classes or seminars. Brainstorm with friends. AND THEN FORGET ABOUT IT! One of the best times to put your SM to work for you is just before bedtime. Skip Leno or Letterman and take fifteen minutes to review your notes or read that trade magazine. Go to sleep thinking about your project. You'll be amazed at what you come up with.

Once you begin to utilize the power of your SM, your characters will become multi-dimensional and real. They'll begin telling you what they would say or do in a given situation. Your plots will suddenly come together in a way that makes perfect sense. That song you've been trying to compose will vividly spring to life. And that problem at work? You'll suddenly have the solution, and in hindsight, you'll probably wonder why you didn't think of it sooner.

Oh yeah. One more thing. If you're going to tap into the power of your SM, there are a few rules. You must avoid negative people. You must keep an open, welcoming mind. And you must try to remain stress-free. Like everything else, your subconscious mind performs best when nurtured.

It's how I plan, plot, and write. SOUTHERN FATALITY, first in a new mystery series, has just been re-released in paperback and SOUTHERN POISON, second in the series, is now out in hardcover. Jersey Barnes is such a fun character to write… I just love it when the characters start telling you what they're going to do next!

To read some fun articles or see more about my new 'Southern' series (the Jersey Barnes mysteries), visit www.tlynnocean.com .

Thanks to all for checking out our Southern Authors blog, and happy fall reading!

T. Lynn Ocean