Eugene, a man I adored, once lived at the Cox-Deasy.

Joel took Eugene’s words and blended them into a short version of his play that captures Mobile in a way uniquely Eugene. “Down in Mobile they’re all crazy because the Gulf Coast is the kingdom of monkeys, the land of clowns, ghosts and musicians, and Mobile is sweet lunacy’s county seat.” This is the opening line of Eugene’s novel and Joel’s play.

Eugene would be 90 this year. He died at the age of 78. It is just now that Mobile is beginning to recognize the literary treasure that lived in the midst of the city, for Eugene was Mobile’s strongest supporter. But he was also an out-spoken critic of many things that are now proving what a wise man he was.

Our topic for the blog this time is about how the seasons affect us as writers. There can be no better example than Eugene. He lived for many years in Europe, where he worked with Fellini, wrote, painted, and cooked. He was an extraordinary chef (he has several cookbooks, including one for Time/Life on Southern cuisine) and an avid gardener. He was completely in touch with the seasons, the day-to-day workings of insects, mice, the small creatures who are part of our eco-system and who many want to eradicate but which Eugene championed.

In his musings, Eugene  talked about how the advent of air conditioning was destroying the South of his childhood. And mine. I grew up in the ‘60s, and we had a window unit to cool the kitchen for my mother to cook and for meals. Otherwise, we had an attic fan, which meant good screens on windows because we opened up the house and let the fan pull the cool night air over us.

The nights of my childhood I fell asleep to the sounds of crickets, moths batting against the screens, night birds, and the occasional slish of car tires on the paved road in front of our house. The little town of Lucedale slept with only a latch on a screened door.

Air conditioning, like television and now computers, have moved our society toward isolation. We live insular lives. Our emotional experience is achieved not through community, or at least not the community of a street or neighborhood or region, but through electronic devices that emphasize our individuality, not our commonality.

We drive in our air-conditioned cars (and god knows in the Alabama humidity, I love my a.c.).

Yet I still have one foot in the world that Eugene loved, a world that I feel slipping away so quickly. I am a farmer. The weather—the seasons—dictate my daily life. This past winter was very hard. My older horses suffered, so I did, too.  

My writing routine depends on the weather, the season. In the summers, I write in the middle of the day, when it is hot. The horses are under fans, the dogs and cats are lounging on the sofas in the a.c. (yes, they love it too!) and I am at my computer. I do my farm work early in the morning or late in the evening.

In the winter, this is reversed. I write early and late and do my farm work in the middle of the day when it is warmest. Of course, there is the 10 p.m. hot mash session for the horses when it is bitter cold.

This spring break, my friends Joe and Perry came out to the farm with heavy equipment and dump trucks filled with clay and sand to work on my erosion problems. My plans to write for the whole week I was out of school were abandoned for the necessity of doing this work while the weather was good.

It is the weather that dictates my life. It is the blessing and curse of those of us who still are linked to the land in a way that few people know today. But in a very strange way, it feeds my spirit. Without this bond, I would not be the writer I am. My senses are attuned to the natural world, and I believe that makes my characters and my settings more powerful, or at least I hope so.

Eugene said that air conditioning would be the death of the South, and he has been proven right in so many ways. The days of front porch visiting, story telling, the courtesies and manners of that era when people lived and relied on each other to survive—those have slipped from us. Now, as developers cut the trees and pave the pastures and corporate farming brings us genetically modified vegetables and the brutality of factory farming, we will lose the last things that tie us to a way of life disappearing all over the country. I do not think we will be better for it.

As David said, “The only thing more humiliating than losing would be winning.”

With that, Dean took the dubious honor, the panama hat and cigars, home to Houston and his ailing cats, who he said lifted their little heads up when he promised to bring home the prize. As you can see, it was a blast.

I could not have asked three better, more spirited and fun candidates to vie for the title of Big Daddy.

A surprise hit was Dixie Smith, who entertained on “the porch” with stories from her youth about Alice Jackson and me. Many involved the police. I didn’t realize Dixie had the goods on me and Alice to the extent she does. If she ever decides to pen her autobiography, Alice and I are in trouble.

Alice responded with a public exhibition of Downward Facing Dog, proving yet again that though a year has passed since the DELTA BLUES launch in Clarksdale, MS, that she is just as nimble as ever. But she failed to wear a peignoir (and there were some really beautiful outfits on display!) so she was disqualified from the peignoir competition.

Videos of all the events, thanks to Priya, who worked her fingers to the bone, are available on my website, my Facebook, Fan Page, and My YouTube. Without Priya, there would be little documentation of what went on. I do believe she is accepting checks for the “low down” on everyone there. She knows all!

Seriously, it was one huge fun event. From all the things I heard, everyone learned a lot from the panelists: Dean, David, Ben, agent Marian Young, bookseller McKenna Jordan. I even rattled on a bit.

And what was really fun was that readers were there. I learned a whole lot listening to readers talk about why they love certain characters, what they read for, what turns them on and turns them off. It was such an exchange of information that—We’re going to do it again next year!

After conferring with several wise people, we are concerned that Gulf Hills Resort may not be big enough to hold us next year. So we are opening the door to suggestions. We need a place where we can party (Gulf Hills was perfect! We had the Carlisle House for our parties, and folks only had to walk across the parking lot in their peignoirs. I am sure a few golfers were wondering what in the heck was happening outside!) so we need a sort of special place.

Now that the DG Weekend report is done, let me turn to other things. The Natchez,  MS book launch is looking good. Mark your calendars and book your B&B or the Eola Hotel if you want to come. June 25. The signing (and the wonderful Big Daddy himself, Dean James, will also be there signing his brand new book!) will be from 5-8 p.m., June 25, at Turning Pages Book Store.

We’re going to have an “open mic” night for ghost stories. So bring a ghost story. And after the signing, we’ll have a bus to take us for a ghost tour of Natchez. Our special guest will be DeWitt Lobrano, a man with some very special talents.
More on this as we firm up details.

Contest news!  If you enjoy reading my Sarah Booth Delaney series, you’ll be pleased to know the prizes of April’s Freebie-of-the-Month contest are two Advance Reader’s Copies of BONES OF A FEATHER.  Enter the contest by clicking here:  Freebie-of-the-Month Contest.  And congratulations to Nancy Measles and Angela Evans for winning March’s contest.

If you’re on Twitter, follow me by clicking on:  DeltaGalCarolyn.   I’ll have more give-aways there.

On the animal front, it’s been a little rough. My friend, Stephanie, who designed my logo and does such excellent graphic art work, lost her wonderful horse, Nugget. He was a gorgeous palomino and he came down with an illness last Spring that a dozen vets and the vet school at Auburn couldn’t pin down. It was genuinely heartbreaking, and they tried everything to save him.

And my niece, Jennifer, who does the Lab4Rescue, lost her horse, Starlight, in a case of acute colic. This is something every horse owner fears. One minute they’re fine, the next they’re in gastric distress, and it can occur over a drop in the barometric pressure, stress, digestive upset, pain, a change in the grass—almost anything. Horses appear to be massive and indestructible, but they are so very fragile. Sometimes colic can be treated successfully, and sometimes there is simply nothing that can save them.

Send a good thought for Stephanie and Jennifer. This is a hard, hard thing.

Miss Scrapiron has given me a few bad scares. The vet tells me her heart is beginning to fail. I hardly know how I’ll manage this, but she will have the most love and best care possible.  And lord knows, no one ever believed she’d live to be 34 (on my birthday, May 12). So she may kick butt for another five years!

On a much happier note, I wish you all a wonderful Spring. The zinnia seeds Pam sent me are coming up and soon I will have flowers to photograph. The cycle begins again.

I’ve just returned from Love Is Murder, the Chicago conference that is more fun than the law allows. The driving force behind the conference is Hanley Kanar, Mary Welk, and Luisa Bueler–three ladies with a lot of spirit.  There’s just something about the “can do” attitude of the Chicago delegation (and there are lots of volunteers who put this conference on) that makes it a success. While the serious business of writing and the publishing industry are given their due, there is also some foolishness and a bit of irreverence, and that makes the conference unique.

This was my second go round at Love is Murder. I think I am their token Southerner. Fine by me. I know I am the only attendee who begs for a snowball fight—and gets one. If you are on facebook, check out the impressive snow photos that we took this year. Ben LeRoy, the publisher of Tyrus Books, actually climbed up the snow bank and pelted us with snowballs. Ah, youth!

I thought the “worst blizzard since 1967” would cancel the conference, but the sun came out and the conference was on. With hot coffee and libations to warm the cockles of my black little heart, I was snug and content.

While I spent most of my time on panels and giving a master class, I found time to socialize with other writers, agents, publishers, publicity gals, and readers. I’d forgotten how refreshing it is to reconnect with those afflicted by the same illness—the love of writing and reading.

Although I’d interviewed Jon Land for the Thrillerfest website, I’d never met him. What a charming, generous man! And I’d served as a judge on a panel for best thriller with Joseph Finder, but I’d never met him either. It was fun to listen to him talk about writing. And both Jon and Joe had great stories about Hollywood. They knew how to spin a funny story.

Rhys Bowen was as elegant as I’d been told, and Joan Johnston was quick with a comeback when Joe Konrath teased us all at the Saturday night finale of “Stump the Stars.” Joe read passages from novels and we had to guess if we’d written them or not.  Needless to say, it was pretty funny.

One of the best things about the conference was sharing my love of writing with others.  When working, which must be done alone, there is often a sense of isolation. It is at writers’ gatherings that the passion for writing and reading is shared, found, and rediscovered in others. I’m sure it’s similar to any gathering of people interested in the same topic, but it is heady stuff.

There is also a chance for some good old-fashioned fun. Stories were told, anecdotes shared, old jokes revived, dreams ignited, and new conclusions drawn. And then there was the snowball fight. These Chicagoans, sick of snow, went back outside and got pelted and plastered because this Mississippi/Alabama gal never gets to play in the snow.

That’s one of the things I’ll never forget.

The need to create fun is one of the reasons I want to do the Daddy’s Girl Weekend. Think about it–a night of campaigning for Big Daddy and a dress code of peignoirs and smoking jackets—it’s silly fun. Yes, there will be writing business and readers’ panels, but also shopping and just craziness. There is too little fun in our lives. We’ve forgotten how to connect with that part of ourselves that can’t resist a snowball fight or a chance to wear something outrageous—just for the fun of it.

Shake off the shackles of being an adult and simply misbehave, because it’s the right thing to do.

This is what the best writers’ conferences achieve: a level of education and focus on matters of writing and publishing, but also fun. I salute the hard work that went into Love Is Murder, and I applaud the spirit of fun that turned out a few brave souls for a snowball fight in a 20-foot drift.

We need more fun in our lives—and I think it’s high time we demand it.

It had been a long time since I’d driven along Highway 90 on the coast, so I decided on that route. The landscape opened the door on the past, and I found myself wondering about the randomness of birth and life and the choices that lead us to the place we are today.

I grew up in Lucedale in George County. It’s one of the poorest counties in a state that consistently ranks close to the bottom on average household income, education and most everything else. George County was—and still is—a dry county. Churches, almost all protestant in the varying denominations of Baptist and Pentecostal with a few Methodists thrown in–can be found in abundance along any rural road.

The Gulf Coast, only an hour away, was an exotic paradise with nightclubs, liquor, fishermen who gambled on the weather just like the farmers in my home area, and all sorts of entertainment. There were movie theatres, bowling alleys, putt-putt golf. Things that George County didn’t have—and still doesn’t.

When I was in my twenties, I moved to Ocean Springs, another small town, but one with a very different outlook on life. It was the coast. The attitudes were just different. Giant oaks canopied the main street in town—and still do. I loved living there. But a job took me elsewhere, and I left the coast in 1982.

Jump ahead some twenty years, and one late August morning Hurricane Katrina skips into the Gulf of Mexico and begins to grow. I remember clearly the weekend before the storm hit. I was working on a project with my friend Alice Jackson. We were laughing and she said she should probably head back to Ocean Springs and get ready for the storm.

We all take hurricanes seriously—Camille taught us well. Windows are boarded, important paperwork is put in a high, dry, secure place. Extra precautions for pets are made. I have horses, so there is no evacuating for me. But we hunkered down and waited for the storm to pick a path and get on with it.

Little did we know that within two days, life would be changed forever.

Alice lost her home, her mother’s home, and her brother’s home. They were “slabbed” as the term now goes. My brother’s business in Biloxi was gravely injured. Even as far away as west Mobile County in Alabama, I lost the roof off two barns, the house, and about forty old cedar and fruit trees. The devastation was incredible.

While the Gulf Coast was off-limits to spectators, I went over to help Alice cut a tree off the house she was staying in,  and the devastation was stunning.

Highway 90 was washed away in some places. The floating casinos were beached inland, often on top of other buildings. The tidal surge was so strong and high that the land was changed forever. Old homes that had survived decades of bad storms were splintered. The rubble looked like a gazillion matchsticks with hunks of concrete and dead trees. The bridges over the Bay of Biloxi and The Bay of St. Louis were simply gone. Destruction moved through the area from Louisiana all the way to Point Clear in Alabama, not to mention the flooding of the South’s greatest city, New Orleans.

Last week, as I drove along the repaired Highway 90 to the book club, I was amazed at the progress. New homes, business reopened, cars moving briskly. The casinos are up and going, as are restaurants and groceries—things that were unavailable for a long, long time.

But piles of debris—the remains of a concrete foundation, splinters of wood—are still in evidence. The empty lots tell a sad story. And the trees, the beautiful oaks that were so much a part of the drive along the Gulf Coast, still show signs of the battering of wind and salt water. The communities have truly worked hard to save these landmarks, and many did survive. Some that didn’t have been carved by local artists into incredible works of art.

But what is back in full force is the spirit of the people. There is no complaining, no clinging to the past, as I am wont to do. Loss is part of life, and rebuilding is the challenge of living. I’m proud to say that the Mississippians have met and are meeting that challenge everyday.

The most recent oil spill has been a terrible blow, and the environmental and health cost of that nightmare hasn’t been calculated. I can only hope that BP is held accountable in truly meaningful ways. These coastal residents have a deep love for their communities, and they will fight for them.

As for me, I wonder who I might have become had I been born here instead of there. Would I have still grown up to be the horse and animal obsessed person I am—or would I have a boat and be a passionate fisherman? It isn’t a question that needs an answer, but it is certainly one I’ll consider when I create new characters. I believe characters grow from the soil in which they live—just like real people.

Popular fiction is not less than. It is not necessarily different than “literary” fiction. This need to keep the two worlds separate serves no one that I can see—not the reader or the writer.
I would like to see more contemporary writers taught in universities. While I think it is important to read the classics—and for would-be writers to understand the transformations the novel has gone through to become the vibrant work that it is today. Our idea of what makes good writing and literature changes all the time. Many of the writers we hold as “Literary” icons were popular writers of their day.
What we need to focus on is creating readers who can judge a book by its merits, not because they’ve been told it’s good or worthy. These critical skills that English departments across the nation are meant to foster is the key to an educated reading public. One that won’t judge a book by its cover—or by the label on the spine, but by the story and writing inside.

Lot’s of things shaking at Casa Carolyn. We are surviving the horrid, humid, hot summer (how’s that for alliteration?). There is a hint of fall early in the morning just as dawn breaks, but it is mighty slow in coming. I am ready for cool weather, but please, weather gods, no winter like the last. Miss Scrapiron and I had a rough time.

School started this week at the University of South Alabama. New students, returning students—another busy year looms.

BONES OF A FEATHER is on the way to Kelley at St. Martin’s. I hope she loves it! And I’m halfway through my Southern gothic chiller. I hope to finish by Christmas and see what I’ve created.

I want to thank all of you who trusted my recommendation and bought Miranda James’s book MURDER PAST DUE. The book hit the NYT extended list at #26. I am so proud I could pop! This is a major big event in a writer’s career, and Dean (Miranda is a pen name) has worked very hard for many years. Thank you.  Jeannie’s book is also doing well. Several of you have written to tell me you enjoyed reading BLOOD LAW. I’m proud of Jeannie, too.

Now for some exciting things. My little factory in Zinnia has cranked out a couple of items.  I want to give them away in a contest.  And since I once forced my critters to give book reviews (through manipulative lip synching!) in this video I posted a while back, I just knew I had to explore this route again.  But THIS time, I want YOU to post a self-made book review of BONE APPETIT in the form of a video clip (if you’ve read it, of course).

I figure since a lot of cell phones (and digital cameras) have camcorder capabilities, it would be the perfect contest. You can be creative and fun and use puppets, pets, foreign accents, etc.  Or you can post a candid review!

Your choice.  Then I want you to e-mail it to: SarahBoothDelaney@yahoo.com

The top two entries will get the prizes! If you’re on Facebook, click on this direct contest link.

Really big excitement—the dates for the first annual Daddy’s Girl Weekend are set for March 11-13 at the Gulf Hills Resort in Ocean Springs.  Sarah Bewley, who organized the highly successful Writing the Region seminars in Gainesville, Florida, is in charge of this event. Our plans are to have two tracks—writing and reading. So there will be some writing classes for those of you who are interested in that. And some sessions will focus on readers and the books they love.

And there will be much mischief! We are going to have a competition for Big Daddy! Already I am lining up the candidates who will do whatever is necessary to win your vote for Big Daddy. We’ll announce the candidates later, and as we get the schedule firmed up, we’ll post it on my website and other places.

Gulf Hills (I used to live near it) is a small, cozy resort, so this will be very intimate. And we already have our Guest of Honor from Germany, Carmen, lined up to attend. We haven’t even started and we’re already an international event!

Thank you all for the tremendous support you give me. You inspire me to think up crazy events like Daddy’s Girl Weekend. I know it’s nutty, but what could be more fun than writers, books, readers and…well, more about that later.

My book signings have gone very well. Alice Jackson, who has a story in DELTA BLUES, did a lot of traveling with me, and we had fun tormenting each other across the state of Mississippi. One thing I learned from Alice: If something crosses your path and you can’t eat it—then damn well iron it! That woman is a demon with a steam iron!

Thank you again for your support of Good Fortune Farm Refuge.  Remember you’re free to post any stray animals you rescue. It’s very hard to find loving homes for so many animals, so if you have any space, I urge you to take in a dog or cat.

And get your pets neutered. So many of us have more “things” than we could ever need, so consider giving the gift of a spay or neuter to family and friends or as a donation in someone’s name. It’s a great thing to do and prevents untold suffering. I’m trying to get some grants for neutering companion dogs. It’s a slow process because I have to work on it when I can find the time. But I’m inching forward!

Later — and do enter the video contest!

Love,

Carolyn