The Challenge of Writing Both Drama and Sass by Jackie Lee Miles

I spent five years writing my second novel Cold Rock River. When I finally finished I was looking for a respite. At the time I was touring with the Dixie Darlin’s, three additional published authors with a passion for promotion. We call ourselves Thelma and Louise Squared, so we’re a pretty zany bunch.

I was also looking for an agent at the time, as mine had recently birthed two babies and left the industry. An author friend of mine said to be careful when crafting letters to agents; that one should never try to be funny in a query letter. For those not in the know, this is a letter writers use to pitch stories to literary agents, hoping to get representation.

I disagreed with my writer friend, figuring I could write something funny from a character’s point of view that would grab an agent’s attention. The result was the tumultuous tale of Francine Harper and her comically troubled marriage to her no-good husband named Dwayne. I wrote the first book Divorcing Dwayne and outlined the second two in the series and immediately sold it to Cumberland House.

I called it The Dwayne Series. It included Divorcing Dwayne, Dear Dwayne and Dating Dwayne. Sort of sounds backwards, but it actually just came full circle, as she divoreced him, wrote him letters to get him off her chest, and then having been recently widowed, started dating him again.

The letter to the agents that I sent out included the opening line to Divorcing Dwayne, the first book in The Dwayne Series:

Me and Dwayne met at a pig-pull. I only married him once, but I ended up divorcing him twice. Dwayne’s a hard man to get rid of.

I went on to describe some of the problems Francine was having with Dwayne and ended with:

Would you like to hear some more of what’s going on down here in Pickville Springs? Like the time I drove Dwayne’s tractor right through the plate glass window of his new topless barber shop? It seats two, so I took my best friend Ray Anne with me. You know I never could understand a tractor having two seats. Is one gonna finish plowing the field if the other has a heart attack or what?

Francine eventually redeems herself after a trial and many errors. The story is a genre removed from what I normally write, but it did provide the respite I was looking for. On the other hand, my debut novel Roseflower Creek was inspired by an actual death penalty case in Georgia. It covers the short life and death of ten-year-old Lori Jean, a sensitive dreamer of a child who longs for a normal family life. Lori Jean discovers a secret that leads to her untimely death. Earl Hamner, creator of The Waltons calls is, “A powerful, extraordinary novel.” My second novel Cold Rock River is the parallel journey of two young women born a century apart. In 1960’s rural Georgia, with the Vietnam War cranking up, seventeen-year-old Adie Jenkins discovers the diary of seventeen-year-old Tempe Jordan, a slave girl, with the Civil War well under way. Adie is haunted by the death of her baby sister. Tempe is grieving the sale of her three children sired by her white master. What’s buried in the diary could destroy Adie’s life. New York Times bestselling author Dorothea Benton Frank writes, “Cold Rock River is a powerful story of family, love and loss that will keep you reading into the wee hours. Absolutely wonderful! Beautifully told and straight from the heart of an exquisitely talented writer.”

I decided I best re-design my web page to reflect my two diverse genres and settled on: Introducing Author Jackie Lee Miles, author of Southern Drama and Southern Sass. I listed my debut novels along with the Dwayne Series. Shortly thereafter Sourcebooks bought out Cumberland House. They were intrigued with the “Drama”, but not overjoyed with the “Sass” and decided to drop the Dwayne series, which broke my heart, as the second book in the series Dear Dwayne was scheduled to be released and the cover was adorable. But such is the nature of publishing. One has to move with the flow.

I’m back to writing drama, but naturally with a comic element woven in. My latest ALL THAT’S TRUE is scheduled to be released January 2011. Sourcebooks calls it “an authentic coming-of-age tale with a terrific takeaway.” It follows Andrea St. James’s (Andi for short), privileged life, which is interrupted in the fall of 1991 when she discovers her father is having an affair with her best friend Bridget’s sexy new step-mother. With an equal mix of joy and sorrow the novel celebrates Andi’s journey to young adulthood, where she struggles with the elusive nature of truth and the devastating consequences of deception.

I hope you’ll pick up a copy when it releases!

All best,

Jackie Lee Miles

A TREE GROWS IN BROOKYN and Other Adventures in Reading by Kerry Madden

There are books for me that I can climb back into and walk around and breathe again. I believe the most important one is Betty Smith's A TREE GROWS IN BROOKLYN. I don't even know how many times I have read this book. I remember that I ordered it from a Scholastic Book Order when I was in 7th grade at St. Teresa's in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. I was worried that it would be too hard for me or possibly too boring. After all, I had just read the movie/book adaptation of Linda Blair's BORN INNOCENT and PORTRAIT OF A TEENAGE ALCOHOLIC, so I wasn't sure if A TREE GROWS IN BROOKLYN would suit my reading tastes. But Betty Smith went and ruined many books for me besides the Linda Blair movie adaptations. She also showed me a young girl growing up at the turn of the century in Brooklyn in a place called Williamsburg, and I knew those people. I knew them like my own family, and I couldn't get enough of them. I adored Aunt Evie and Aunt Sissy, and Francie's mother, Katie, and of course, Johnny Nolan, the dreamer, who loved his children and his stories and of course, drinking. I'm of Irish decent, and I recognized Johnny Nolan in a few Irish relatives of mine. I also recognized the no-nonsense, practicality of Katie Nolan from the women on both sides of the family. I read everything by Betty Smith from JOY IN THE MORNING, MAGGIE NOW, and TOMORROW WILL BE BETTER, but nothing was better than A TREE GROWS IN BROOKLYN although JOY IN THE MORNING was a joy to read.

I grew up in a house without a lot of books. Mother got us a library card in every new football town, but we didn't have many books with all the moving around. We had SPORTS ILLUSTRATED and LADIES HOME JOURNAL, and I learned to read the delicious "Can This Marriage Be Saved" in that magazine. I can recall a menacing green book that sat on the shelf called DARE TO DISCIPLINE by Dr. James Dodson. I also remember my mother reading GREEN DARKNESS by Anya Seton at the adult pool where we would go beg her for money for the snack bar and she'd shoo us away, warning:  "This is the adult pool! Beat it!" My father read Dale Carnegie's HOW TO WIN FRIENDS AND INFLUENCE PEOPLE and a slew of books about achieving the perfect golf swing. I also remember them both loving the book THE GREATEST THING SINCE SLICED BREAD by Don Robertson and reading parts of it aloud to us.

In 8th grade, I discovered Irwin Shaw's RICH MAN POOR MAN, and I became consumed by the lives of those two very different brothers during a weekend state basketball tournament for the Saint Teresa Titans. Seventh and eighth graders jumped on beds and took tons of pictures, and in every single picture I was in the corner reading. Later, when the pictures got developed, kids said, "Did you do anything at State besides read? We won by the way!" I was embarrassed. Of course, I knew the boys basketball team had won.

But A TREE GROWS IN THE BROOKLYN was the book I returned to again even as an adult, maybe especially as an adult. I loved this paragraph about Sunday Mass in Brooklyn: "On Sunday, most people crowded into the eleven o'clock mass. Well, some people, a few, went to the early six o'clock mass. They were given credit for this but they deserved none for they were the ones who had stayed out so late that it was morning when they got home. So they went to early mass, got it over with, and went home and slept all day absolved from sin."

I used to think about those people who stayed up all night in New York and then slept all day long. I wanted to be like them when I grew up and explore the city, and go to the theatre and eat Italian or Indian at midnight and walk across the Brooklyn Bridge. I was utterly and completely with Francie Nolan eating the peppermint wafers reading IF I WERE KING on the fire-escape beneath the Tree of Heaven when Betty Smith wrote: "It was a sunny afternoon. A lazy warm wind carried a warm sea smell. The leaves of the trees made fugitive patterns on the white pillow-case. Nobody was in the yard and that was nice. Usually, it was pre-empted by the boy whose father rented the store on the ground floor. The boy played an interminable game of graveyard. He dug miniature graves, put live captured caterpillars into little match boxes, buried them with informal ceremony and erected little pebble headstones over the tiny earth mounds. The whole game was accompanied by fake sobbing and heavings of his chest. But today the dismal boy was away visiting an aunt in Bensonhurst. To know that he was away was almost as good as getting a present."


A LAMAZE FOCAL POINT?

Yes, I even brought A TREE GROWS IN BROOKLYN with me to be a "focal point" while giving birth to my son, Flannery, at the Natural Childbirth Institute in Culver City, California in 1988. The midwife, Nancy McNeese Marshutz, whom I adored, advised me to bring pictures or objects that would help me focus during labor as suggested in Lamaze. Well, I set out A TREE GROWS IN BROOKLYN on a table, but when labor slammed into me with a force that I described at the time as "cinderblock surrealism,"A TREE GROWS IN BROOKLYN was the last thing on my mind. I never found my glasses, which meant I couldn't see a thing anyway, so I didn't focus on jack except having the baby. When I begged for painkillers, Nancy said, "Having the baby will be your painkiller." Of course, I'd like to think that I closed my eyes and thought of how Francie helped her mother, Katie, through the home birth of her little sister, Annie Laurie, but I know I didn't. I do remember telling my husband, Kiffen, and Nancy, the midwife, in the middle of things, "Please let me go home. I'll come back on Thursday and do this. I swear." It was Tuesday, and Nancy said, "You're not going anywhere. The baby is coming today." And he did...November 8, 1988. I even had this idea I might vote on the way home from birth in the Presidential Election. That didn't happen either.


BOOKS BOOKS BOOKS

It's hokey, I suppose, to say that books saved me from a childhood of loneliness but they did. I didn't really learn how to be a discriminating reader until I was an exchange student in England at Manchester University. I took a Women in 19th Century Literature tutorial, and discovered Jane Austen, the Bronte sisters, Thomas Hardy, George Sand, George Eliot (we share the same birthday!), Guy de Maupassant, Honore de Balzac's COUSIN BETTE (I felt like Bette because my nickname growing up was "Gertrude Marblecake," and I was known for bursting into tears over nothing and having no sense of humor and for being able to clean a kitchen with gusto). I also discovered Emile Zola, Henry James and so many more in that tiny tutorial in the professor's office where we met on rainy Monday mornings. It always rained in Manchester and I loved it. In bake shops filled with "scones and biccies," clerks, pronounced "clarks" would say to me, "How are you, luv" or "Ta, luv" and I felt loved.

I became friends with a group of British Drama students who had their books all lined up on shelves, and I knew that for the rest of my life I would always make sure to have shelves and shelves of books no matter where I lived. I came home and gave my family required reading lists. Mother read MIDDLEMARCH by the swimming pool that summer, and my sister, who was in 9th grade, attempted PORTRAIT OF A LADY, but her heart wasn't in it as she was preparing to do GODSPELL in the fall. I can't remember which brother refused to read Hardy's RETURN OF THE NATIVE, but one or both of them did. My father was coaching for the Detroit Lions, so I didn't push any novels on him as I knew they would have been refused. 

THE STORIES MY OWN CHILDREN LOVED....

The first book I read to my son, Flannery, was WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE, and we danced the wild rumpus to that book for years, which became his favorite part. He ate up Roald Dahl books as a boy followed by CS Lewis, Gary Paulsen, Lois Lowry, J.R.R. Tolkein, and now he can't get enough of Raymond Chandler as he drives around Los Angeles thinking of Noir plots and stories. He is 21 and a filmmaker-actor-musician, who got his first job three weeks ago as a PA on a film in pre-production. He sent me a picture of his employment badge and first paycheck.

My daughter, Lucy, loved Laurie Halse Anderson as a young teen, but as a little girl, we read everything from The VERY HUNGRY CATERPILLAR  to THE STORY OF FERDINAND to SYLVESTER AND THE MAGIC PEBBLE to SWAMP ANGEL to BUZZ to THE TRUE STORY OF THE THREE LITTLE PIGS to CHRYSANTHEMUM and later Frances Hodgson Burnett, but now Lucy loves Joan Didion, Dave Eggers, and Raymond Carver and so many more. But the love of Joan Didion was due to a cruel English teacher, who informed her in the beginning of 9th grade that she was "No Flannery" when it came to books and reading and intelligence, (she'd been in his class two weeks). I despised him on the spot and wanted to take her out of the class, but Lucy wanted to prove this teacher wrong (and not wreck her sports schedule at school). She did exactly that and along the way fell in love with Joan Didion and is now a student at Sarah Lawrence College in New York. She wants to be a photo-journalist.

Our youngest, Norah, is reading CATCHING FIRE to me, but she won't let me read it at night because she's worried I'll be too sad. She was very unhappy with MOCKINGJAY and isn't sure if I should read it at all. She reads aloud to me when we drive the back roads exploring Alabama together. She has often told me that she prefers fantasy over historical fiction, and her favorite authors include: Diane Wynne Jones, Suzanne Collins, J.K. Rowling, Lois Lowry, Garth Nix, Michael Scott, Kristen Miller, Jean Auel, and too many more to name. She has to find a stopping place in a book whenever we arrive somewhere in the car, which may take her anywhere from 3 to 7 minutes, sometimes longer.

THE STORY-CATCHERS

I just gave a talk on literacy to the DIVAS of Birmingham, (Developing Initiatives and Values Among Sisters) who were raising money for the UNITED WAY literacy campaign. I told them that I tell kids to be "Story-Catchers" in my writing workshops and to write their stories down or paint them in pictures or simply tell them...I tell young writers to ask questions and listen to the stories and read read read! The DIVAS  gave me a fabulous centerpiece, which now sits on my table next to the Courthouse of Monroeville, Alabama where Harper Lee set another of my most favorite books in the world, TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD.

ALL THE PLACES I USED TO READ...

As a child, I read in a front yard on Central Avenue every summer in Leavenworth, Kansas visiting my grandmother, Elizabeth, who'd bring me a plate of Swiss steak and cucumber salad to devour along with my library books. I read on the side porch in Washington DC and my other grandmother, GranMary, would let me read my book at the "hot shop" where we'd go for chocolate milkshakes. I read in the backseat of a Buick through thousands of miles across the country to football towns in the South and Midwest with two brothers, a sister, parents, a styrofoam ice chest that NEVER survived the trip, and a drooling black lab named Clancy. I read in trees and attics. I read in the woods and at football games. I read under my desk at school in Sister's Joel's geometry class (I don't recommend it) and late into the night and on the beach and in mountain cabins and on Greyhound buses and in China where Kiffen and I spent our first year of marriage. I read A TREE GROWS IN BROOKLYN aloud to my sister, Keely, on trips to Kansas to visit the grandparents, and Kiffen has read parts of it to me over the years.

BOOKS, PEACHES, AND LUST

At the age of thirteen, I told my cousin, Mary Margaret, that I "lusted for peaches." She looked at me and said, "You read too many books, and by the way, a person can't lust for peaches." But I did, and I know I lusted for books too. In fact, Mother used to find tons of peach seeds in my room because nothing was better than eating a summer peach on a Saturday afternoon and reading a book.

Betty Smith said it best in the opening words of A TREE GROWS IN BROOKLYN:

"Serene was a word you could put to Brooklyn, New York. Especially in the summer of 1912. Somber, as a word, was better. But it did not apply to Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Prairie was lovely and Shenandoah had a beautiful sound, but you couldn't fit those words into Brooklyn. Serene was the only word for it; especially on a Saturday afternoon in summer."

* * *

Kerry Madden is the author of OFFSIDES (a football novel), WRITING SMARTS (book to spark story ideas in young authors), GENTLE'S HOLLER, LOUISIANA'S SONG, and JESSIE'S MOUNTAIN (the Maggie Valley Trilogy of the Smoky Mountains), and UP CLOSE: HARPER LEE. She's an assistant professor of Creative Writing at the University of Alabama at Birmingham and lives in Birmingham with her daughter, Norah, and commutes (once in a while) to her dear husband and home in Los Angeles.

www.kerrymadden.com
http://mountainmist.livejournal.com/

Inspirations from other writers by Susan Reinhardt

Inspirations in Writing by Susan Reinhardt




My mother keeps the well-worn hard copy of “Cinderella” in a nightstand drawer of her Spartanburg, S.C. sprawling rancher.

It is the book, beautifully illustrated, I read hundreds of times as a child in awe of Cinderella’s gowns. And even her rags as she swept the ashes from the fireplace.

This is the book that launched my love of reading. It is the same book my own daughter, now 12, forced me to read repeatedly from her toddler into her pre-school years.

Throwing that book aside or hauling it to Goodwill would constitute nothing short of sacrifice. Like tossing the heirloom quilts my great-grandmother left behind.

And so it’s tucked in the drawer, pages and bindings loose and tattered, yet waiting for the next generation of ears and eyes.

I also recall a childhood spent with piles of Little Golden Books and my mother’s enthusiastic voice as she chanted, “I think I can, I think I can,” from “The Little Engine that Could.” She would often repeat the words from “The Little Red Hen,” to guilt my sister and me into helping her do chores around the house. As you recall, no one would help the hen bake her bread from scratch.

In elementary school, I read a book that has stayed with me for over 40 years. It was called the “Boxcar Children,” and about three orphaned kids living and surviving on their own in an abandoned boxcar. It feels as if I just read it weeks ago, and that is the mark of excellent writing and characterization.

In junior high I fell in love with Dinny Gordon books. This was my introduction into series reading. And then in high school, I’m ashamed to say I don’t remember reading much more than my English classes required. I even fudged on the books I considered snoozers at the time, but would love to revisit in my middle years.

As an older teenager, books took a back burner and my social life boiled with activity, both good and well…wild!

College was about the same. I didn’t have time for books. They morphed into chores instead of pleasures. It’s hard to admit, now that I’m a writer, that I quit reading for about seven years. I cringe to think of some classics I now wish I’d read.

After graduation from the University of Georgia, I headed down to Myrtle Beach to write for the local paper. I met a man 20 years my senior who reintroduced me into reading via the nearly unmatchable comedic talents of John Kennedy Toole’s novel “A Confederacy of Dunces.” I never laughed so hard in my entire life and have read or listened to the book countless times – the only book I’ve ever read more than once.

I am saddened the author took his own life 11 years before the novel snagged a publisher. At first it became a cult classic then later enjoyed mainstream success and a Pulitzer. I’ve read a lot of humor, it’s the genre I enjoy most, but nothing can match my love with this quirky story of a hefty lunatic and his mother muddling around New Orleans’ culture.

This is the book that took my newspaper career and turned it into a means to an end. I’d keep writing for newspapers, until my own humor books were published. This took more than 20 years, but that’s another story.

This is about books and favorite authors. I’d have to say my three favorites, besides all the ones who blog here, are Toole, Anne Tyler and Sophie Kinsella. Of course then there’s Barbara Kingsolver and way too many more who’ve influenced my writing and infused my heart with the ongoing desire to write.

I had a best friend in college, Julie Cannon. We were sorority sisters and got into gobs of trouble. I had always been fascinated by her artwork, but never imagined she’d become an author, much less such a successful one. I had no idea until long after we graduated that she liked to write.

While Julie Cannon, also a blogger here, may not list me as her best author friend doesn’t matter. She’s mine. I can go to her for anything – from agent blues to the pits of publicity.

There are other authors I’ve befriended, all of whom are extremely helpful. Without these friendships with other writers and the hope and help that bridge the insecurity of this business with the wishful successes, I couldn’t carry on.

And with that, I think all of us find a “best” friend in Pulpwood Queen Kathy Patrick, now leading our pack on this blog. She’s fueled more careers than Oprah in my book.

Susan Reinhardt is author of “Not Tonight Honey, Wait ‘Til I’m a Size 6,” “Don’t Sleep with a Bubba,” and “Dishing with the Kitchen Virgin.”

She is also a stand-up comic and Sarah Palin impersonator. Go to www.susanreinhardt.com to check out the crazy videos.

A Week in the Life of Mary Alice Monroe

My name is Mary Alice Monroe and I’m happy to meet you all!

We’ve been asked to introduce ourselves as we re-launch our Southern Authors Blog. I’ve always liked doing this at large meetings or conferences because often we smile politely and say hello when we have no idea who we are speaking to and we’re too embarrassed to ask the name. Or during a book signing when a reader steps up to the table for an autograph and says, “It’s for me.” So I think this is a great idea.

If you read my bio below you’ll read about the number of books I’ve written but it doesn’t tell you who I am or what I write about. Perhaps if I tell you how I spent the past typical week, you’ll know more about me and the themes of my work.

I am a “turtle lady” on the Isle of Palms, SC. I basically serve as midwife and guardian over the loggerhead sea turtle nests on Isle of Palms and Sullivans Island in South Carolina. Most nights since July I’ve been sitting on the beach waiting for sand to move. But it’s the camaraderie between the women that keeps us chatting under the moon for hours, even if the wind is blowing sand in our hair and teeth or, if it’s hot and sweaty, the mosquitoes swarm. This bonding of women is a central part for most of my novels.

Last night was our farewell to the turtle season at our last nest inventory. I’d just flown in from a Women’s Weekend in Amelia Island where I spoke on creativity and rushed to change into my team T-shirt and jeans. I showed up still wearing my pearls! The girls teased me, but that’s pretty much who I am-- a combination of outdoor wear and pearls!

Today I’m back in my office for a day’s writing. But first I have to replenish the milkweed supply for the two dozen plus monarch caterpillars I’m raising on my porch. When I write a novel my research involves rolling up my sleeves and getting intimately involved with the topic. I love my job because with each book I learn something new and dive into a new story world. Only by doing this can I bring that authentic story world back to you. The Butterfly’s Daughter is finished and I’m making plans with my publisher, Simon and Schuster, for its release in May 2011. Now I’m in a hurry to finish the children’s book, A Butterfly Called Hope. I’m always feeling like that that saying, the faster I go the behinder I get.

Fall is an introspective time and I feel the change in seasons intensely. As I approach a new novel, the characters from the novel I’ve finished are flying away like the migrating birds and my mind must become fallow, ready for the new seeds of inspiration. My family, too, is in transition as my son enters the US Marine Corps, my daughter moves to LA, and my other daughter skypes weekly so I can witness the changes in my grandbabies. My family is my heart and my stories are about family bonds, hopes, dreams, struggles, and joys.

So, that was my last week. This week I will write, speak at a Pink Ribbon event, and hopefully release a dozen monarchs to the garden. I hope you’ll enjoy my books. It was a pleasure meeting you!

Mary Alice Monroe is the NY Times bestselling author of over a dozen novels. Her most recent is LAST LIGHT OVER CAROLINA, a saga of a shrimp boat captain and his wife. She’s won several awards and speaks at conferences and events. Her books are sold worldwide. Mary Alice lives with her husband and menagerie of pets on a barrier island outside Charleston, SC. Please visit her on Facebooks and http://www.maryalicemonroe.com/

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

Dear Readers,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Introducing Renea Winchester

A few hours after I posted my second blog I received an email that this site would be terminated. Panic gripped my chest as I re-read my post, desperate to uncover what I had written that caused the demise of this incredible blog. (As an aside, we authors are a delicate group). Later, The Pulpwood Queen, Kathy Patrick, announced she’d accept the enormous responsibility of running this blog. She has since asked that we make a formal introduction. With that said...

I’m Renea Winchester, and I’m a reader.


Mariana Black Library



I’ve always been a reader. At an early age my mother drove my brother and I to the Mariana Black Library. In my hometown of Bryson City, North Carolina a trip to the library was a big event. There were no bookstores in this single-traffic-light-town. The nearest bookstore was over an hour away in the “big city” of Asheville, North Carolina. 

My brother and I rode in the backseat of the Cutlass Supreme, trying to ignore each other the way siblings do. Since our legs were too short to climb the steps, Mother took us by the hand and helped us up the steps until we reached the glass doors that opened to possibilities small-town folk can only dream about.

“Don’t move,” she said while holding out her hand in the stop position. “I’ll be right back.” Then she scurried down the steps back to the car and retrieved an A&P bag full of books.

“I wanna do it this time,” I said, my hands reaching for the bag. My brother would whine, “No, it’s my turn. You did it last time.” We’d continue fighting over who would feed the metal-mouthed contraption marked “Book Deposit.” It didn’t matter that the library was open and staff were waiting to take our book returns. Neither of us wanted to hand anything over to a person when we had access to a magical portal that shot books through a brick wall. Mother fairly distributed the stack of books then held us as we pulled the handle, placed the book on the shiny mouth, then listened as it vanished into the wall with a tumble.

Inside, the smell of mimeograph fluid mixed with books so old the bindings were threadbare. Dreams were not only born here, they cultivated and grew. As I matured, I longed to read all the Nancy Drew books in consecutive order, but others before me had fallen in love with the series and kept their favorite book. I used to wonder how anyone could “forget” to return a library book. This from someone who checked out Harriet The Spy week after week after week, and gave serious thought to eternally borrowing (not stealing) the book.

While many consider my weekly library visits commonplace, to my mother these visits fed an insatiable hunger inside her spirit. For you see, her father could not read. In fact, he could not write his name. That is why she reads…voraciously, and that is why I write.

For me, my soul can’t imagine a world without words. Sometimes I think about my grandfather, this man who died before I was born, and imagine his daughter coming home from school, with books clutched to her chest, excited about what she had learned, eager to share.

Her favorite book was Black Beauty. At last count she owned five copies.

As a parent, one of my favorite pictures is of my daughter reading. She’s in bed, a book propped open, Big Bird by her side. She’s “reading him to sleep.” Only Big Bird is still wide-awake. My mother never experienced the magic of a bedtime story. I wonder, did she ever read to her father? Or was he too proud.

Surely it pained him to be surrounded by books and unable to read. He knew the bible from “cover to cover,” yet couldn’t transfer the words he heard others read onto paper, nor could he absorb the written word he saw into his heart. After my grandfather died, Mother found a tiny leather-bound book where he recorded his debts and the prices of goods he sold. It is one of her most prized possessions. However, looking at his “mark” and attempts to document dollar amounts makes me weep.

That’s why I read, because he couldn’t. I write because people and their stories matter.

Like you, I’ve known my share of heartache. I’ve been divorced. I’ve had cancer. I’ve received telephone calls that launched me into a journey I never thought I’d take. I’ve watched loved ones suffer through agonizing battles just to live another day…specifically, my mother who is struggling with ovarian cancer. I’ve been so frustrated I could scream…and have. I’ve been so happy I could cry…and did.

I write to bring stories to you, the reader, in a way that ties us together. I write to introduce people that matter, in a way that says, “Welcome home. I’ve been waiting for you.” I write to make my grandfather, whom I never met, proud. I write because like Kathy, founder of the National Book Club called The Pulpwood Queens, I believe in literacy.

In a few weeks Little Creek Books will release my non-fiction book, In The Garden With Billy: Lessons About Life, Love, and Tomatoes. I hope you will buy this book and enjoy reading about this wonderful man. I should warn you that once you step In The Garden With Billy you’ll become entranced, as I was, by a magical man who-like my grandfather-earned a living by “the sweat of his brow.” Despite modern-day advances in technology, Billy’s world remains the same. His pace is slow. His love is pure. His tomatoes are delicious. I am proud to invite you into the world he and I share, and I’m proud to have another opportunity to contribute to this blog.

Billy and I are hosting a book launch festival on his "little strip of land," Saturday, October 23, 2010 from 2-4 pm. If you're in the Atlanta area and would like to meet Billy, send me an email and I'll forward driving instructions. At Billy's we're all family.

Renea Winchester is a two-time winner of the Appalachian Writers Association Award. Her work has appeared in Appalachian Heritage, Georgia Backroads, Smoky Mountain Living, Longleaf Style as well as Georgia Public Radio 90.1 FM. Little Creek Books will release In The Garden With Billy: Lessons About Life, Love, and Tomatoes October 25, 2010. She blogs at http://blogthefarm.wordpress.com and may be reached at www.Renea.Winchester.com

Accidental Princess Reincarnates Elvis

Accidental Princess Reincarnates Elvis

By Peggy Webb

Kathy the Fearless said introduce myself, so I’ll admit right off the bat that I’ve worn a beauty queen crown. But it was purely by accident. About a million years ago when I was living on a farm in northeast Mississippi and dreaming about being a writer, I was Joshilyn Jackson’s Longed-For Good Girl – 4-H All Star, straight A student who starred in all the high school plays, and budding blues pianist who headlined all the piano recitals, but skinny, skinny, SKINNY. (Now don’t I wish!)  Never in a gazillion years did I dream of wearing a crown. Then one day my 4-H leader said nobody showed up for the local Dairy Princess contest and would I be the princess?  And I said, “As long as I don’t have to wear a swim suit and do the beauty queen wave.”

Because, although I did go on to win the state title and wear the crown all over Mississippi, and although I’m from the Deep South where beauty pageants are a religion, I never aspired to ride on the back of a convertible in a pink evening gown with net ruffles that itch.  I wanted to write.

And so I did. First  poetry, published in the National Anthology of High School Poetry. Then later more than two hundred humor columns published in trade magazines, and finally almost 70 (I’m not kidding) published books. (My printable book list is on my website.) By the time my first book came out (1985), I was married with two children and had entered graduate school (University of MS in Oxford). But while I was penning my thesis to complete a Master of Arts Degree in English, I had targeted the vast, booming romance industry and was also secretly writing a comedic romance novel.  At first the editors said, “Your writing is too funny,” and tried to change me. But when they realized I’m a born comic, they threw up their hands, threw down their blue pencils and stopped trying to delete my funny bone.  In 2009 I was honored at Romantic Time’s International Book Conference in Orlando with a Pioneer Award for paving the way for the sub-genre of Romantic Comedy.  Think Meg Cabot.

Umpteen novels and many birthdays later, I could only vaguely recall what romance was, so I abandoned sex and turned to murder. Now I spend my days writing comedic romps for the amateur sleuths in my Southern Cousins Mysteries (hardcover, Kensington).  The fun of these books is that I reincarnated the King of Rock ‘n’ Roll as a basset hound and gave him a voice. As one of the two narrators, my Elvis is funny and wise, self-confident and snarky.  According to a recent review, he “ruminates on the foibles of felines and folks.”  That’s about right.    

And that’s about it. I’ve left out a bunch of stuff - like my teaching stint as adjunct instructor at Mississippi State University and how my beloved-but-dearly-departed retriever Jefferson was the inspiration for Elvis and how I always write with music, usually the Native American flutes of Marina Raye, and a cup of Big Train’s green tea chai on my desk, and how my hips are gradually taking on the size and shape of my chair, but that’s okay as long as they don’t get as big as my car.  

Anyhow, you get the picture. If you live near Tupelo, join me for a book party this evening at Barnes & Noble at the mall from 6 to 8 to launch book three of the series – Elvis and the Memphis Mambo Murders. I’ll have cake and punch and door prizes. Elvis will be there, too. No, I didn’t spot him at Piggly Wiggly and ask him to come. This Elvis is Tribute Artist Dale Rushing.

One more thing… I am so grateful to you, my loyal fans and faithful readers, for making it possible for me to live my dream.

Peggy Webb is currently sipping green tea chai while plotting to kill Santa in the fifth Southern Cousins Mystery.  She was going to dance naked in the moonlight for inspiration, but the neighbors have binoculars and her children said to take a cane in case she stepped in a hole, and that ruined the whole effect. Please visit her at www.peggywebb.com.  Send accolades and chocolate.