The Nature of People

This months wonderful topic is how nature plays into our writing. I've been looking forward to this for so long, waiting for my day because nature in my fiction weighs in loud is remarkable and redemptive ways. Lightning crash, thunder roar, hurricanes abounding. From moonlit magical nights to breathless sunrise the good Earth plays itself out full of Glory.

But then I realized my most recent offering has been one of a very, different. type. The book I never meant to write. A non-fiction memoir that surrounds itself in nature of another kind - the human heart. In December of 2008 I had the strangest idea for a resolution - to say a silent prayer for a stranger I passed in life every day for the coming year. A different stranger each day.
2009 revealed a landscape and side of nature that I had never dreamed would be something that I would capture by putting pen to page. I met the lonely, the hungry, the famous, the broken, and the beautiful - all thirsty for a touch from a stranger that surprised me day after continuing day.

What I discovered was that the nature of the world is that it seems to be so dry, so thirsty for a good word, for a prayer , for a stranger's touch that time and time again my whispered resolution brought a smile, a respite, and a story.

The stories of these short but amazingly, meaningful and lasting encounters, and of how they affected my life are captured in Praying for Strangers: An Adventure of the Human Spirit which just debuted Tuesday. As such, I am currently on the road reading, speaking, and discussing how this ongoing adventure has continued to play such a major role in my life. I completed the resolution at the end of 2009. But I never stopped praying for strangers. It's two years, and four months later, and the adventure continues.


Thank you for visiting the new Praying for Strangers website, and sharing with friends. It continues to be an honor to be here at A Good Blog is Hard to Find, to have the privilege to write the stories that find us, and to be in your good company.

River Jordan is a critically acclaimed novelist and playwright. Her fourth novel, The Miracle of Mercy Land, a southern mystical work set in 1938 features a protagonist full of moxie and a ‘backbone of worthy’in this suspenseful story about love, mystery, and the choices we make. Jordan’s first non-fiction
narrative, Praying for Strangers, An Adventure of the Human Spirit arrived from Penguin/Berkley in Hardcover April 5, 2011. She speaks around the country on the “Power of Story,” and produces andhosts the radio program, Clearstory on 107.1 FM from Nashville, TN where she makes her home.

My Best Friends are All Adventurers

by Patricia Sprinkle

My friend Miriam once confided, "I always wanted to be an adventurer."

She and I recently returned from a five-week trip to India and Nepal. She wrote me a note afterward: "Thanks for the adventure of a lifetime."  It was. The real purpose of our trip was to teach creative writing for three weeks to middle school students in a small village school, but we can also check "Ride an elephant," "Visit the Taj Mahal," and "See the Himalayas" off our bucket lists.

Only recently have I begun to appreciate how brave we were. We went alone and made our own travel arrangements, staying in moderately priced hotels and hiring our own guides. Everything went exactly as planned except when our train from Agra to Delhi took us to a station across the city from our hotel. We will never forget our late-night ride through Delhi traffic in an auto-rickshaw, also known as a tuk-tuk. Most of the tuk-tuks we saw had some religious talisman swinging from the mirror or painted on the front. We know why. Riding a tuk-tuk through India's traffic does wonders for your prayer life.

Or maybe we weren't so brave. Maybe we were just finally having some of the adventures our favorite characters have been having for years. You see, Miriam and I are both avid readers. As I think about it, all my best friends are avid readers. Seldom am I with a good friend that we don't discuss at least one book.

     If people who read are adventurers at heart, that goes double for writers of fiction. We inhabit two worlds most of the time--the mundane world our bodies move around in and the far-more-exiting world our characters know. No reader enjoys an adventure in a book that the author hasn't already experienced, revisited, and honed down to its bare bones.    


Maybe that's why the authors I know are so enjoyable to be around. Every one of them is as interesting as the people s/he writes about. While the mystery writers don't generally go around killing people, the romance writers are seldom involved in torrid affairs, and the southern novelists don't spend their entire days drinking mint juleps and coming up with cute new expressions, they are all curious about life and aware that there are more things under the sun than any of us will ever comprehend. As the late Charlotte MacLeod once said, "Don't write what you know, write what you want to know."  Anybody who meets Charlotte's quirky characters will be astonished at how many things Charlotte wanted to know.

So let's lift a glass to readers and writers, people who know that life is short and ought to be lived to the fullest. As a note says on the bulletin board above my desk, "Life should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well-preserved body, but rather let's skid in broadside, thoroughly used up, total worn out and loudly proclaiming, 'Wow! What a ride!'"

If your own life gets too dull, let me recommend a ride in Indian tuk-tuk.

Patricia Sprinkle is the author of twenty mysteries and three novels. Her most recent novel is Hold Up the Sky. A fourth, Friday's Daughter, will be released in March. 
 








   

Teachers have no idea how influential they are in the lives of some students. It's thanks to a ninth grade civics teacher that I became a writer. One day when I was absent she assigned oral reports on careers.By the time I got back, other students had taken all my preferred careers. I got sent to a box of booklets, and the only three booklets left were "Farmer," Mortician," and "Writer." I've always been glad I chose writer. I'd have made a lousy farmer.

What a revelation to read that writers spend their lives on research, telling stories, writing/editing, and talking with people about books. Next to reading, those are my favorite things to do. My gut feeling as I finished that booklet was not, "I want to be a writer," but "I am a writer!" I have never looked back. I chose a college with a good writing department and worked a year afterward to save enough to go live in a small Scottish Highland village for the winter to see if I had the discipline to write. I was delighted to discover that was still what I wanted to do. I was more delighted to get a guinea (about $5 in those days) for my first poem.

However, although I grew up in the South and have deep southern roots, I am not fond of Faulkner, O'Connor or Welty. They didn't write about southerners I know, yet a class on southern literature at my New York college convinced me some Northerners truly think southerners are uniformly weird, degenerate, illiterate, and/or retarded, based on those books and other literary depictions of us.

Granted, we southerners tend to enjoy the bizarre in life. We have few inhibitions about repeating crazy things our friends and family have done. We even repeat crazy things we ourselves have done--like the night I found myself riding through Atlanta with two men I did not know, at 3 a.m., wearing my pajamas.   

I love being a part of this collection of southern authors because in our various ways, we are educating the rest of the country about the rich variety of people who live down here. I've tried to do my part. In twenty southern mysteries and three southern novels, I've written about taxidermists, aristocratic old women, trailer trash, and blue grass musicians of international fame who live in a secluded mountain cove. My mysteries are set in Atlanta, Charleston, Jacksonville, Montgomery, and Middle Georgia, and I have tried to make each of those places and the people in them as real as I can to introduce my readers to folks they might like to know.

Recently I have put mysteries aside to write novels. Hold Up the Sky, this year's novel, is about four contemporary women who end up on a dairy farm in West Georgia one hot summer, and who have to learn the hard way that true strength for women comes not from independence but from interdependence. I think that's a lesson that applies to readers wherever they are. The book I just finished, Friday's Daughter, deals with a woman who has devoted her life to caring for her family only to discover at forty that the family never appreciated it. The story explores how one person's decisions about her own life can cause major changes in the lives of others. That, too, is not a uniquely southern theme, although the characters are Georgians.

I hope you'll visit me at my website, www.patriciasprinkle.com (it's temporarily out of order but should be up again within the week) and pick up some of my books. If you do, let me know what you think of them. I've written them for you.

And if you like, I'll tell you the story about that night when I rode through Atlanta in my pajamas . . .

Dear Southern Authors and our readership!
Yes, this is a Christmas letter to all of you! Ever since I have made my life an open book with the publication of my life story in books, “The Pulpwood Queens’ Tiara Wearing, Book Sharing Guide to Life”, I have vowed to tell only the truth and nothing but the truth. After all it’s like that old adage, “The truth shall set you free!” So let me begin with what prompted me to write a Christmas letter.
I was decorating the last of the five Christmas trees in my house, upstairs in what we call our movie room, our other favorite pastime in the Patrick family besides books. I was cross-legged sitting half on the side table and arm of my chair when one 52 year old leg sprung loose and I was suddenly falling backwards towards the floor. My life did not quite flash before my eyes but I knew the landing was not going to be pretty. It was as if I was falling in slow motion, seriously. I turned to try to break by fall by putting down my hand but not fast enough. The back of my head hit the corner of my inch thick glass coffee table and I landed with a thud. The shock of pain hit my head and hand and I began wailing. As my high school old daughter, Madeleine, ran up the stairs to see what happened, I felt my head to see if a chunk wasn’t missing or if I was bleeding. Nope. My head was still intact and the coffee table was not broken. A miracle indeed as this past year of book release, book tour, and more has fluffed me up to marshmallow stage. To put it nicely, I have become quite fluffy. My weight alone in hitting that table should have caused considerable damage to my head and to my table.
Now I hurt, my head was throbbing; my arm seemed a little out of whack, as my wrist. I checked to see but nothing was broke so I counted my blessings that I am addicted to milk, strong bones my friends. I’m sobbing by now and Madeleine is asking me what happened, what happened. I am trying to explain and she’s laughing as she goes, “Momma are you alright?” As I crawled my way back up to a sitting position, I told her to quit laughing and get me some ice. A goose egg the size of a lemon was popping up on my head. She laughed all the way down the stairs.
First of all, what made that event so funny? Beats me but one thing I know, it could have been a whole lot worse, tragic actually. I could have died. Okay, so maybe that’s a tad bit melodramatic but as I write this, that glass coffee table still gives me the shivers, thus this Christmas letter.
Ever since my book was published this past January, I have had this sinking feeling that I better get my life down on paper. Weird premonition, whatever. I know I have a bunch to say, so let me begin.
Right after the New Year, I hit the road in a Texas Cadillac, (Excursion provided by my generous publisher), with four of my Pulpwood Queens in tow. We traveled ten states through the mid-south and south, 27 stops with sometimes eight events a day for my book tour. I mean how many authors get to go on book tour with their bestest friends, make that paid vacation with their bestest friends. I am counting my blessings having Grand Central Publishing as my publisher. We had a blast as I was doing BIG HAIR Makeovers at all the book store stops! What fun! Our Pulpwood Queen Girlfriend Weekend was right smack dab in the middle of book tour and what was I thinking. It’s all a blur now but a happy blur!
Home at last and both my co-workers bailed out on me while I was gone. Alone again working at my Hair Salon/Book Store, Beauty and the Book but thankfully, many of you all came to visit me plus tons of Red Hatters, book clubs, and women having Girlfriend Weekends to my now hometown of Jefferson, Texas.
This past year I tried to prepare myself for my oldest daughter leaving for University of Texas at Tyler. I did not prepare myself well enough because I spent most of the early fall in crying jags missing my Lainie. She adjusted very well to the college experience, so well, she called us bright and early one Sunday morning to tell her father, sister, and I, if we wanted to see her bail out of an airplane at 10,000 feet to get our booties over to the Gladewater airport a.s.a.p. I have never dressed so fast and in fact, watched all ten of her college Outdoor Adventure Club members jump out of planes that day. My heart was literally in my hands and going ninety miles an hour praying as she jumped, parachuted, and leisurely drifted down to land successfully on sold ground. God is watching over for me and mine for sure my friends. And did I mention the tattoo?
Oh yes, my daughters just a couple weeks ago came to me to tell me something. I panicked. What’s up? Madeleine explains, “Don’t get mad Momma, but Lainie got a tattoo!” I flashed back to the sorority girl who pierced my ears with a needle and potato when I was working for my aunt at the Stillwater Country Club, one college summer and all of us waitresses were on break. My parents threw a major hissy fit and told me I had maimed my body for life. Only white trash got their ears pierced, what was I thinking? As I asked to see where she got the tattoo, praying to God it was NOT above her bootie crack or on a boob, she informed me it was on the instep of her foot. Wow, that had to hurt, I was thinking as I inquired, “What is the tattoo?” She showed me and all spelled out in gothic writing was, “THE THIRTY”. Aha, The Thirty was a heavy metal rock band, a Christian heavy metal rock band of which the members were also my daughter’s best friends. “Why Lainie, why? What if the band breaks up and for gosh sakes, you’re going to be a doctor! With a TATTOO!” Now I’m praying there won’t be any more, or piercings!
Then if the skydiving, tattoo wasn’t enough, my husband who I swear has been going through midlife crisis the past ten years, decides after watching Lainie skydive, that he’ll take back up getting his pilot’s license. Thanksgiving morning he was gone at the crack of dawn off flying. It was bad enough to have one bird leave the nest now the Jaybird was off flying into the wild blue yonder. What gives?
Did I mention my life with my youngest Madeleine? This past year she has been the Junior Varsity Mascot, Pup Pup, a Bulldog character. I have attended more football games and Pep Rallies than I care to mention and by somebody who hates football. Did I also mention we made the District Playoff’s so more hauling Madeleine and that big grey Bulldog costume around East Texas? Did I also mention it has been freezing cold?
By the last game, I finally got into it and we lost. I was screaming at the top of my lungs, “Blood makes the grass grow, KILL, KILL, KILL!” Again God was watching out for me because I was getting way too into the violence of that game.
Madeleine and I moved on. Screaming and crying, “NO, NO, NO, I will not take you and your girlfriends to the midnight showing of TWILIGHT! Over my dead body, Madeleine, for goodness, it’s a school night. I desperately need my beauty sleep. NO WAY!” 7:30 p.m. that evening we arrived at Marshall Cinema to stand in line for the twenty tickets left for the midnight showing. I was number nine.
I was going to hate this movie, after all, it was about vampires, and I hated all those vampire movies from the 70’s when I was in high school. I could remember, disgustingly, how the last vampire film I watched had a male vampire chasing another male vampire. They were just too pretty, you know what I mean. And I left in disgust after a girl vampire bit another girl vampire on the boob. I mean what was that all about?
To make matters worse, all of us parents from Jefferson and our teenage daughters had to sit on the front row. Talk about a neck crook. As the film, began I was all ready and waiting to hate this film then something happened. I was mesmerized by the characters and the story. I walked out in a daze as all the girls were talking about how they had to come back and see it again. All I knew was I had to read the books. Madeleine and I proceeded to read, (she was already almost finished on book one), all four of the books in one week. We bonded over Stephanie Meyer. I will be forever indebted for her giving me a common ground with my teenage daughter who nothing I do normally seems to please her. We have spent hours talking about the books, the characters, and both think that the Edward character is just about the finest thing to ever walk this planet besides Johnny Depp.
Somehow I have managed to survive this entire year. I have lived to tell the tale and now hard at work on not one but two books. I am alternating between another non-fiction book, “The Pulpwood Queens’ Guide to Reading for a Higher Purpose” and my first novel called “Eureka!” As I have said before, I have a lot to say and feel like time is NOT on my side. Pray for me!
Did I also mention this past year I have done the coolest thing I have ever done, I am teaching a life writing class at the homeless shelter, Newgate Mission in Longview, Texas? I have initiated as President of the Jefferson Rotary Club, the Dolly Parton Imagination Library program here in Marion County which provides books to new borns until they start school, a book a month. I also now have over 200 chapters of The Pulpwood Queens up and running from Anchorage, Alaska, to the Jersey shore, from Florida to California and ever where in between and not. I also have members and chapters in eight foreign countries with a chapter soon in works, in Halifax, Nova Scotia.
My life has been blessed from reading books. As I traverse this country this next year speaking to library associations. Friends of Library Association, Rotary Clubs, (I’m President here), churches and more, don’t think I let everybody know that it’s all because I have been blessed because I am a reader. I may never be rich, moneywise, in my lifetime, but I am enriched because of my family, friends, authors, and books. Okay, this Christmas letter I was going to work in all the skeletons in my closet but that door is going to remain closed. Who has the time to read a 10,000 page book! Nobody can be as up as me to not have their down times too! But I refuse to let my dysfunction get in the way focusing on the FUN in my life. Life is fun and even funner, is that a word, if you become a real reader!
Thanks for inviting me into this southern author book family. Again God has blessed me BIG TIME!
May you all have a Merry Christmas and that may be politically incorrect but so am I. I pray to God, I salute our flag, and I am proud to be a Christian! Thank God we live in America where we are free to make our own choices. May you also make the right choices and choose the right path. I assure you I have stumbled many, many times, but always turn to God, who is leading my way!
Now on to truly celebrating Jesus birth and decorating my shop for Christmas! I’m only doing one tree and standing up the entire time, so no worries. Pray for me anyway!
Tiara wearing and Book sharing,
Kathy L. Patrick
Founder of the Pulpwood Queens Book Club
http://www.beautyandthebook.com/
www.pulpwoodqueen.com

P.S. The blonde is my oldest daughter, Helaina, and the brunette is my youngest Madeleine with her peeps!

Books Alive! Is Back and Getting Better and Better!

When I moved to East Texas twenty plus years ago, I never dreamed I would be dealing with hurricanes. In fact, I moved from California to Texas because I was missing weather. What’s that old saying, “Be careful what you wish for?” Sunny San Diego, California was living like always you were always on vacation, sublime but after while; you miss work and a good thunderstorm. Great weather is boring. Growing up in Kansas, we were forever running for shelter from tornados. Electric storms were terrifying but also beautiful to watch in the night sky. Now with the onslaught of hurricanes, I can now say that I have lived through some beauties, Katrina, Rita, and mostly recently Ike.

Besides weather, I love reading. I am one of those people that forget to eat, sleep, and put off going to the bathroom until I am in dire straits because of a good book. I am a die hard booklover, thus have devoted my life to promoting reading. That is why I own a hair salon/bookstore, Beauty and the Book, and run the largest "meeting and discussing" book club in the country, The PUlpwood Queens! If I ain't reading, I'm not breathing!

A little back-story, one weekend on my birthday and it was one of those life changing ones, I decided to hold for myself a party. Only once in your life are you 49 and I was wanting a life changing experience. You may have heard this story before but like all good stories, they bear repeating. I had told all my family and friends that I had packed a bag, come kidnap me, and take me away for my birthday. I love surprises but I received the biggest surprise of my life. No one came to my party, no one. Talk about a life changing experience.

Now let me preface that by saying earlier in the day friends and family had stopped by to drop off gifts with reasons why they couldn’t join me later. A storm was brewing and it looked like a biggie! That just made my adrenaline run even faster with anticipation of my big surprise birthday. What happened folks was Hurricane Katrina hit!

My town had sandbagged the doors of businesses, we took cover. Jefferson seemed like it faired pretty well. Branches scattered, some trees down, a bit of water damage from the winds but what unfolded in the weeks ahead was something I had not ever imagined. Our town filled with displaced families that weekend from the hurricane. Good folks who drove out in their S.U.V.s, t-shirted and flip-flopped, maybe with the family pet, to ride out the weekend in our fair city that is known as a tourist town for it’s brick lined streets, museums, antiques stores, mom and pop eateries, bed & breakfasts, carriage and train rides on all the bayou. What happened that next Monday changed all of us! The levees broke.

What would you do if you lost everything? Your home and all it’s contents first, then no way to get home as it was flooded. What if you couldn’t get to your work or your bank? What if you were stranded in a town hours and hours away from home with the clothes on your back and maybe a credit card?

I believe that we all are about two weeks away from being homeless. You lose your job, your home, then how long can you go on a credit card? Not long my friends so that is when my church came into the picture. My church, The First United Methodist Church of Jefferson, began to help coordinate the efforts of helping these good folks, people displaced by the hurricane. My shop too became a place where they could go to get internet access, view the latest news on CNN or Fox as most bed & breakfasts did not have televisions, or perhaps get a relaxing shampoo. People were parked on my porch for hours just trying to get out of their rooms with no money to spend, just waiting. I brought out books and began reading in-between appointments to these folks and my children began reading to the children. For awhile we all were able to escape our lives and make time go perhaps a little less painfully slow as they waited for the word they could go home.

We are talking weeks. Weeks of waiting, most folks had to leave the bed & breakfasts as they had other reservations booked or their credit cards were declined. We opened the doors of our church and the community opened the doors of their homes. The Hamburger Store here in Jefferson through their own generousity and that of generous donations fed over 2,000 free meals. I never knew how much I loved Jefferson until that weekend. Our church and our town embraced mission and outreach.

My life was changed during those weeks as I will never look at a possession of mine the same way ever again including my books. What if that had been my family?

What I learned was that life is not about things. Life is about relationships. I had to do something to help but what? Being a bookseller, I didn’t have any real money to help. What could I do? I could do something that I do best. I could hold a Christian and Inspirational Author, Book, and Music festival to be a total fundraiser for the church. We call it Books Alive! You see the church depleted every resource they had from food and clothing bank, to funds to help others, to members of the church digging into their closets and pockets to help others.

The first year of Books Alive!, I emailed all my author friends to see who could come and help me put on this fundraiser. Denise Hildreth was one of the first authors to come aboard and guess what? Most of the authors to come aboard and let me state at their own expense were southern authors. That was nearly three years ago and it’s time again for Books Alive again, November 7 – 9th here in Jefferson, Texas. This will be our biggest year ever!

We have had quite a few more storms since then most recently, Hurricane Ike where we housed a family of almost fifty from Port Arthur, Texas at our church. I personally with my minister, Allison Byerley closed out our Books Alive account to help buy groceries and necessities for these people. We are back again this year flat broke. The family that stayed with us were Hispanic and even insisted on one night before they left cooking up a fiesta for all the volunteers. Great times my friends. The nicest people in the world. What if that had been our family?

I have to tell you I received the best birthday present that year and since then. One that I did not expect, but one that has made me a better person. If you are reading this you are a passionate reader. My books use to be my most cherished possessions but now I see them only as something to give away and share with others. My library use to be in my house, now I house my library in my heart. I have also found that they more you give, the richer your life becomes.

Every chance I get, I read these authors blogs. Everyone is a treasure. I am finding that a book loving community is all the home I will ever need. Share the love and pay it forward. And like me try to remember that your birthday should be worth celebrating by helping others. God made us all for a purpose and this Pulpwood Queen believes that is service to others through reading!

Tiara wearing and Book sharing,
Kathy L. Patrick
Founder of the Pulpwood Queens Book Clubs and author of “The Pulpwood Queens’ Tiara Wearing, Book Sharing Guide to Life
Beauty and the Book
608 North Polk Street
Jefferson, Texas 75657
www.beautyandthebook.com
www.pulpwoodqueen.com
And for more information on Books Alive go www.booksalivejefferson.com

P.S. Photo above of my church this past weekend taken during break as we were unloading a semi-load of pumpkins for our fundraiser, PUMPKIN PATCH!