When I was a senior at the University of Georgia in 1984, I needed a bunch of P.E. credits in order to graduate. Probably I had been doing a little too much partying at the downtown Athens scene and not enough attending of classes. Nonetheless, I eagerly  registered for a class called Fitness for Life; an intensive, multi-sport approach to physical fitness that would fulfill my P.E. requirement. I made a trip home to borrow my little brother’s ten-speed bike, got back to campus, laced up my Pumas, and prepared to get my body in top shape. Boy, did I have a  surprise around the bend.

My class was biking down S. Milledge Avenue, sans helmets, when an elderly gentleman’s car slammed into me from behind. I don’t know if I flew up into the air and then hit the pavement, or just got struck, went limp, and lay motionless on the road waiting for the ambulance to arrive. I’ve got no memory until some sketchy images weeks later in a hospital room, and then mostly snippets of what my Mother and my best friend have shared with me. I do have a few hazy memories which take place later on in the physical therapy room of the hospital; learning to walk again between parallel bars, of squeezing sponges of water from one bowl to another. I can see bottles of phenobarbitol and hear admonitions to “Be careful, take things easy.”

When the hospital sent a brain-injury specialist to prepare my family for their new reality, I was oblivious to it all. One thing I really hate to ponder is my folks going over to the dorm to clearing out my room when they were finally allowed to take me home from the hospital. No telling what they found! Apparently my mother dwells only on the good things because she said so often as I mended, (and still says so much I get tired of hearing it), “Julie, you are a walking miracle!  You should be dead, or at the best, a vegetable. God’s been good to you.”

Well, at first I was not so sure about all the ‘God’s been good to you’ talk. I was covered in scars; a long pink-white puckered one down my inner thigh, one along my spine, and a big shiny one on the back of my head (hairdressers wonder about it). My wrists would let me down when I tried to hold something heavy, like a skillet (which makes me think I must’ve landed on my hands). Trips to the neurologist, who hooked me up to various machinery, revealed a “spark” from the right front temporal lobe of my brain. I certainly wasn’t feeling the need to say thanks or even talk to Someone who would let all this happen.

Though I’d been raised by very devout, God-fearing parents who taught me the Golden Rule and carried me to church every time the doors were open, I had never had the time, nor the desire for any of that spiritual stuff. I did not want anything that got in the way of what I wanted to do. Life was all about me.

Months and months passed, years, and as I journeyed along in my recovery (particularly as I saw the drooling folks in wheelchairs in the neurologist’s waiting room) I began to see that I had indeed been spared, and that there was a greater power at work in me.

Now, I don’t believe God made that accident happen to get my attention. He didn’t say, “I think it’s time for Julie to appreciate her every breath, and love her neighbor as herself.” But I do think He allowed it, held me all the way through it, and taught me a lot because of it.

That experience taught me about cherishing the small things. I try not to take a lot for granted. I know life as we know it can be gone in one split-second. It gave me compassion for other people. Going through that valley, which turned out to be a fairly long, dark one, made me at last (I’m very, very stubborn) seek a relationship, a peace with God that I would not trade for anything in this world.

Sometimes it still hits me right between the eyes; I realize what a miracle it is that I still possess the mental clarity to tell the stories I’ve always loved to tell, that I’ve been given three children (and a husband), and the ability to walk through and enjoy this world, this life!

The bike wreck, the brain injury and my subsequent journey to recovery has to be one of the hardest things I’ve ever been through. But as many challenges as I faced, still face, it was worth it all. In an odd way, I’m even thankful for what became the pivotal moment in my life. I would not erase it even if I could. What it taught me is of immeasurable value. It literally changed my life.

A brain injury is a funny thing. If things are calm, I’m good. But when I am stressed, or tired, I am prone to what are called ‘spells.’ This is a spacey disconnect with reality, preceded by an unusual aura. Sometimes while I’m sleeping, I’ll even have seizures, and I absolutely HATE hearing about these, because most of the time I’m unaware of them. They are why I do not drive.

The Bible says to give thanks in everything (not for everything), which to me means to live with gratitude. So, I try to slow down and not stress, to take delight in the small joys of life.  I covet the peace that comes from a grateful heart, and I’m very passionate about giving thanks, about trying to live with a spirit of gratitude.

I am a storyteller and I like what Donald Maass has to say about conveying our passionate opinions: “They are always stronger in the mouths of characters than in the prose of the author.”

One of the characters in my latest novel, “I’ll Be Home for Christmas,” is Mr. Tyronious Byrd, an aging black gentleman who’s caretaker of a tree farm in 1944 Georgia. Tyronious Byrd has gone through a valley of utter darkness, a time when his inner fortitude and all of his convictions were tested. It became one of those inward turning points for him, and now Mr. Byrd has things to say to a young man named William who struggles with polio and cannot serve alongside his peers in WWII:

“Now don’t go pityin’ yo’self, son. Seem ever’ day I hear about some mama or daddy getting’ a telegram say their baby ain’t coming home. Don’t be gettin’ jealous of nobody over there fightin’. Besides yo’ limp and a hand what gives you trouble, you an able-bodied man. Got this nice family business just waitin’ for you to take it over someday.”

Tyronious Byrd is an impassioned advocate of looking at the silver lining of every cloud. His faith in God’s plan is the force that drives him. He cleaves to the belief that giving thanks in spite of circumstances is a sure way to have peace. William complains to him that this is not an easy thing to do:

“Naw. It ain’t easy, that for sho’. But then ain’t nothin’ worth havin’ ever easy.” Mr. Byrd cleared his throat. “You recall me tellin’ you God ain’t never goin’ let you down? That whatever happen, He goin’ use it in His perfect plan?”

Even though William is doubtful, Tyronious Byrd cleaves to his convictions. He does not mince words. He speaks the truth as he sees it:

“Sometime when life give a person a hard blow, the Lord don’t reach down and deliver ‘em out of all they troubles. Sometime He give ‘em the strength to endure and overcome. Now I ain’t gonna lie t’ you, son. Sometime the nights still be lonely, and some days seem t’ go on forever, ‘specially in December, but even then I been able t’ find a peace and joy I ain’t never experience before my valley – on account I feel Jesus, the Presence, walkin’ beside me.”

Funny, but Mr. Tyronious Byrd, a minor character, became my favorite character. His story, in “I’ll Be Home for Christmas,” is about finding things to give thanks for even in the dark valleys of life. Finding joy and peace and a spirit of thanksgiving despite our ‘momentary afflictions.’ This is what I hope and pray this book brings into the hearts of readers this holiday season.

HAPPY THANKSGIVING, Y’ALL!

P.S. Last week I got an email from Teresa Weaver, editor of Atlanta Magazine. She was in Haiti with Habitat for Humanity. As I write this, Haiti is still reeling from a blow by Hurricane Tomas. This impoverished country was already fighting a deadly outbreak of cholera, and now torrential rains and heavy winds have displaced many from their homes. Teresa’s gift of time and labor, and the Haitians plight remind me to  ask everyone to please lift up a prayer for the folks in Haiti while you’re feasting with family and friends today.

No, I’m not dying. Well, in a sense I guess we’re all dying, but that’s not what I’m talking about here. This is my story about moving from the secular publishing world to the CBA (Christian Booksellers Association).

Some years ago, when my editor at Simon & Schuster said to me, “Julie, we don’t publish religious stuff,” I didn’t have the faintest notion of what to say back to her. I knew absolutely nothing about the CBA and I didn’t really think of my Homegrown series (Truelove & Homegrown Tomatoes, ‘Mater Biscuit, and Those Pearly Gates) as religious. I liked to think of it more as ‘spiritual.’

The marketing department at S&S targeted the stories toward the gardening community. At the time, this was okay by me, because I never set out to write religious stories, and even now with two books in the chute for the CBA, I ask myself; “How in the world did I get into this business of writing Christian fiction?” Sometimes I even say to myself, “Isn’t writing Christian fiction the same as preaching to the choir?” I still haven’t read any of the how-to books out there on the subject of writing inspirational (CBA) fiction. I’m still not sure about a lot of stuff, and so I’m hoping to uncover some answers as I write this.

My family claims I’m hard-headed, a southern term for stubborn. What I’ve always desired is to tell my stories exactly the way I want to tell them. Mother says I was born telling stories and as soon as I could write, I was fashioning crude little books on things such as my dog, Roscoe, who loved to steal construction workers’ lunches from around our blossoming 1970’s neighborhood. Over the years, my English teachers put encouraging notes on my report cards, and for me, a particularly nerdy child (all knees, elbows, eyeglasses, braces, and stringy brown hair) it was a way to shine, to hold my head up a tiny bit even if I was picked last for teams at recess.

After high school I went to the University of Georgia where I earned a degree in Advertising from the Journalism school. I kept up my creative writing obsession, however, writing all sorts of awful stories and experimental poems. During my senior year, 1984, I became fascinated by the power of spiritual things because this was a time when I absolutely hit rock bottom and there was no way in this natural world I would have survived if not for being sustained by God’s mystical hand of mercy and huge amounts of grace (grace being defined as ‘God’s undeserved favor’).

Flannery O’Connor was right when she wrote, “Grace changes us and change is painful.” Flannery didn’t have an easy life. She earned a lot of spiritual wisdom as a young girl from witnessing the tragedy of her beloved father’s struggle with lupus, followed by his premature death and then her own diagnosis of lupus. As a devout Catholic, she wrote often about “Christ-haunted” characters, trying to portray them as they might be touched by divine grace in a created world charged with God.

I’m often asked where my story ideas come from, and I say that when I sit down to write, the story is the first thing on my agenda. I start out striving to write page-turners that folks can just fall into and forget their troubles for a while. But somehow my plots always seem to interweave themselves with spiritual themes – with many different angles of “the human condition” as it pertains to that mystical relationship between the Creator and the individual. At the core, the very center of my stories I inevitably find that those “truths” I’ve discovered along my life’s journey have just kind of slipped in. These are things to which I know I’m indebted and hence, about which I care passionately. It looks like there’s something inside me that absolutely has to share them, that feels this fierce need to offer readers hope in the midst of all the troubles they face in this crazy, capricious dance called Life. I want those whom the world mistreats or injures to see their true worth as children of the living, loving God.

It’s been almost 10 years since I published my first novel and still I’m excited when I get emails and notes from readers about it. It literally thrills me to hear from people who’ve been touched by Imogene’s story and her strength in the midst of grief; folks who’ve found a laugh, gained insight or hope or comfort or peace. Hearing from readers is the thing that gives me perspective. It’s easy to forget in the frenzy of writing, editing, and promoting – this business of putting words onto paper and into the world – how powerful words can be. As a writer, it’s not about how many thousands of copies you sell, or the 5-star reviews you collect, or your advance (though, let’s be honest; sometimes you DO have to worry about paying the mortgage and for the braces and a jug of milk.) It’s about touching people.

Looking back on my own reading history, I see some books that shaped my life. As a young teen I remember reading Christy, a novel by Catherine Marshall, set in the fictional Appalachian Village of Cutter Gap, Tennessee, in 1912. The soul of that novel touches me to this day, as does The Beloved Invader, by Eugenia Price, set on a Georgia plantation after the Civil War, and more recently, Jewell, by Brett Lott, a story I plan to read again and again so I can savor his lyrical prose along with his insights into human nature. I practically inhaled Anne Lamott’s devout but quirky book, Traveling Mercies; Some Thoughts on Faith, a narrative spiced with scripture and stories about her walk of faith how she came to believe in God, and hence, in herself.

I’ve always been fascinated by words; collecting bits of dialogue, plot ideas, and character descriptions and stuffing them into drawers and file folders. Just lately one morning, during my meditation time, I was reading Jeremiah 4:14 and I had to copy it down on an index card. I love God’s use of synesthesia (using one sense to describe another) here: “Behold, I am making my words in your mouth a fire, and this people wood, and the fire shall devour them.”

Yes, words are powerful stuff. As far as synesthesia goes, it’s comforting to me to be compared to a tree in Jeremiah 17:7-8; “Blessed are those who trust in the Lord, whose trust is the Lord. They shall be like a tree planted by water, sending out its roots by the stream. It shall not fear when heat comes, and its leaves shall stay green; in the year of drought it is not anxious, and it does not cease to bear fruit.” (NRSV)

Recently I was talking about my cross-over to the CBA with my new editor at Abingdon Press, Barbara Scott, and she said “Terri Blackstock is a Christian who used to write in the secular world and now writes in the CBA.” I hung up the phone and went right to Terri’s website. I clicked on the word ‘About’ and read the opening line with interest. “Terri Blackstock hasn’t always written for the Lord. Just over a decade ago she was an award-winning secular novelist writing for publishers such as Harper Collins, Harlequin, and Silhouette . . . After much soul-searching and wrestling with God, she finally told the Lord that she would never write another thing that didn’t glorify Him. Thinking she might never be published again, she began planning ways to supplement her income, while she worked on her first idea for a Christian novel . . . “ You can read ‘the rest of the story’ at Terri’s website (TerriBlackstock.com).

Writing in any genre is a matter of persistence and faith and hard work. But I feel it even more now that my agent has me firmly entrenched in the CBA. It sure isn’t for the faint of heart. It takes a lot of nerve and honesty. It requires a writer to look deep inside and expose their raw self. As far as my hard-headedness, my stubborn determination to write the way I want to – now that I’m writing in this genre, and since I know as a Believer “it’s not all about me,” and combining this knowledge with the fact that my stories can only be all about me (because my experiences and my world-view are all I have to mine my stories from) it can be sort of nerve-racking. And because I know I’m a lump of clay, a work in progress, and because I want to be sure I’m allowing His greatness to work for me and through me, I often have to take a deep breath, exhale, and pray, “Okay Lord, please rescue me from my tendency toward self-centeredness, give me a heart to share stories about your goodness, and language to speak it well.”

I still have so much I want to say and figure out about life, and by the grace of God I’ll continue to devote myself to the one thing I’ve loved to do since childhood – stringing words together to compose stories, stories that not only draw a reader away from their worldly troubles for a spell, but that also offer hope and comfort they can carry with them long after they close the book.

Well, it said that the optional topics for this month are Author Friends and Favorite Authors.

Actually, this kind of shameless book promoting is disgusting to me. Way too pompous. Don’t y’all agree? Guess I ought to ask my author friend, Karin Gillespie, founder of this blog. Way back, she’d advise us bloggers, ‘Now, don’t be too blatant about selling your books.” But, recently another author friend of mine, Gail Karwoski, who writes children’s books, shook her head and admonished me about my reluctance in book promotion, saying, “Julie, even us artists have to eat!”

That was because I am what you’d call a reluctant hawker of my own books. Now, I can sell the heck out of someone else’s story. Just today I raved about two books to another author friend. I sent Susan Nees home with Anne Lamott’s “Bird by Bird,” and told her she absolutely must read Janisse Ray’s “Ecology of a Cracker Childhood.”

For those of you who know me, you know I struggle with Laliaphobia, a debilitating fear of public speaking, and in addition to this, it is extremely hard for me to pat myself on the back, to say, “Read this book I wrote. You’re gonna love it.” I was raised by parents who prized humility, who warned against being prideful, and never encouraged us four kids to applaud ourselves.

I’m trying to figure out what has possessed me today. Maybe heading through menopause has changed me (like it changed Evelyn in “Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Café” by Fannie Flagg, a wonderful and favorite book of mine) or, perhaps I’ve watched too many episodes of Snapped! Because when I pondered the topics, trying to think of talking about my author friends and my favorite books, my mind just went spinning off into SELLING MY NEW BOOK. Yes, I’m asking people outright to please buy my book, because if they don’t, I’ll be hunting a job. Seriously. Don’t smile. I’m not joking. I’ve got a mortgage due, along with a plethora of other bills, debts, and two kids in college and a 12-year-old with crooked teeth.

As an author, I know we have to participate in selling our books. I have this dog-eared notebook on which I’ve written MARKETING with a sharpie, and whenever I have a new book out (this in #5), I take a big gulp and ruffle through tattered sections of media contacts, on-line opportunities for promotions, speaking possibilities, etc…

But this time, when “I’ll Be Home for Christmas” came out, I had a deadline for another novel (which I met last Friday!) and so it was easy to rationalize putting that notebook out of sight and out of mind. Also, I’d been reading this book by Donald Maass that said, and I loosely quote, “It’s word-of-mouth that sells books.”

I clung to that bit of Maass wisdom until, like I say, I snapped. Until it hit me over the head like a two-by-four. HOW is word-of-mouth going to happen if nobody ever first reads your book?! And CHRISTMAS books, it seems, have this teeny tiny sales window, from right around Thanksgiving until December something or other. Oh yeah, December the 25^th.

Now, I honestly do love this book I wrote because my heart is inside of it. My favorite character is not Maggie, the heroine. I fell in love with Mr. Tyronious Byrd, the ancient black caretaker of a Christmas tree farm. I still cry when I read his story.

Speaking of stories, I have a story on my website called Crossing Over and if you go to my website at www.juliecannon.info you can click on it and read about how I left the ABA after my last novel, and moved to the CBA. Summerside Press, publishers of “I’ll Be Home for Christmas,” put a lot of faith in me (no pun intended) and gave me the song title made famous by Bing Crosby in the 1940’s to write a story around. They wanted me to write an ‘Inspirational Romance,” and I did, but they gave me so much leeway it turned into a story about WWII and Mr. Tyronious Byrd, too. When I told my minister about the novel, she said, “What in the world is an Inspirational Romance? Is that when he rips off the bodice, and underneath there are long-johns?” Not really. You’d be surprised.

So, I’m offering my wares to you today. Here’s the heart of “I’ll Be Home for Christmas” in a brief paragraph: It’s 1944 and Maggie Culpepper is furious at God because of her mother’s untimely death. She stumbles into a recruiting center and enlists in the U.S. Navy WAVES, leaving Watkinsville, Georgia to serve at a naval base in New Jersey. The proverbial boy-next-door, William Dove, whose battle with polio has left him physically unfit for military service, wages a war of his own from the family’s Christmas tree farm. William learns a priceless lesson about surrendering from the farm’s aging caretaker, Tyronious Byrd, who’s struggled through some dark valleys of his own.

If that didn’t grab you, it’s gotten a couple of honors: It’s in Nielsen’s ‘Top 50 Inspirational Titles’ this month, and it has been chosen as a ‘Top Pick for Fall 2010 Releases’ by CBA Retailers & Resources magazine. If that doesn’t convince you either, think about this: It would be a really CHEAP gift! With a cover price of only $12.99 at your favorite local bookstore, and on-line at around $8, there are no excuses. You’ve got lists of folks who you need to buy a Christmas gift for, right? You could do that AND feed a starving artist!

Whew. I don’t believe I’ve ever done so much shameless hawking of books in my entire writing life!

God bless you all and hope you have a wonderful Thanksgiving and a beautiful Christmas – even if you don’t buy my book.

Truly, Julie

When I come home I pause to see if there are any phone messages waiting. The voices ringing out from the bowels of my answering machine are usually good things. This is why I was shocked one day last summer.
I set down my packages and punched PLAY. “Julie?” came the southern drawl of a woman who’d been struggling with a great moral dilemma. It was a voice quavering with admonishment. “This is Ina Hemphill. I enjoyed your first three novels immensely, so I made a special trip to the Barnes & Noble and ordered your newest book. However, when I went to pick it up this afternoon, I decided that in spite of my admiration for your talent, I’m not going to read it because of the subject matter!”
I stood paralyzed, waiting for her to say “Amen” but heard her voice reciting her phone number.
How she got my phone number, I didn’t know. But what in heaven’s name had offended her? My collection of three novels set in rural Georgia and christened The Homegrown Series had passed inspection from thousands of readers who held rigorous standards for “what they put into their minds.” My fourth novel, THE ROMANCE READERS’ BOOK CLUB was not for sale until December 18th.
This poor woman is struggling with Alzheimers, I decided. Or, perhaps she was playing a joke on me and when I called her back she would laugh and invite me to speak to her book club, named something like The Presbyterian Book Hens.
My husband narrowed his eyes. Tom is a reluctant patron-of-the-arts, having supported me financially, and sometimes mentally through years of writing, publishing. and doing all manner of things in pursuit of hawking my books. A skeptical man, he ran to our computer, zooming to Amazon.com.
He began laughing crazily. “There’s a new Julie Cannon, author! She writes Lesbian Erotica!”
I peered over his shoulder at a sturdy woman with cropped hair perched astride a motorcycle, wearing the leering grin of a pirate.
Now, I’m a very live-and-let-live kind of person, rarely given to explosions. But I was outraged, scandalized, because this Julie-Cannon-Come-Lately had a book recently published called Come and Get Me.
I was really crushed as I pondered the long road I’d traveled since 2001. I’d put in miles and miles along backroads, reading and speaking at hundreds of libraries and book clubs to build a readership under the name Julie Cannon. I’d put my family through a lot! Lots of missed PTO meetings, lots of frozen burritos and lots of dustballs rolling around under the beds. I’d struggled painfully through the disabling affliction known as Laliaphobia to become a public speaker.
“Isn’t this against the law?!” I hissed. “I couldn’t just up and decide I wanted to write under the name Dolly Parten, could I?”
My husband laughed as he stared at the flat plane of my silhouette. “Call Jenny.”
Jenny is my New York agent, a gutsy woman who’s not afraid to flip a bird at cab drivers. I knew she’d handle the imposter. “There’s nothing you can do,” she said. “Several years back, a transvestite used my name and he, I mean, she has a website under it.”
Tom shot the cruellest arrow of all. “Looks like your mother was right.”
I bristled. Mama had long been urging me to use my maiden name, Lowrey. I’d smugly chuckled, figuring her next request would be to add a family photo, circa 1962 to my book covers.
Now I knew what happened when you disobeyed mama.
“Sit down, send an email to the people in your address book about the other Julie Cannon,” my husband said.
I shook my head. I had tons of emails for those who’d signed up at readings, but my thoughts were on folks like Ina, who didn’t even own a computer. I visualized poor Ina parking her Buick in the parking lot of Barnes & Noble, climbing out after freshening her Avon red lipstick, her thin body clad in a modest blouse and a khaki skirt below her knees. Her hair had been rolled and set for the week ahead. I saw Ina striding purposefully to the sales desk and asking for her Julie Cannon novel. I heard the titters of the sales girls as she left with Come and Get Me clasped in her hand.
Fueled by righteous indignation, I dialed her number. “Mrs. Hemphill? This is Julie Cannon.”
Long, pregnant pause.
“How are you?” I added perkily.
“Fine,” she answered in a clipped voice.
“I’m so glad you called me!” I gushed. “You alerted me to another person who’s writing under my name! I didn’t write Come and Get Me!” I explained the whole mix up.
I heard Ina Hemphill expelling all her air. I could see her deflated body sink down onto her brown corduroy sofa, sensible shoes suspended in mid-air. “Julie, Julie,” she said after quite a while, in that voice readers use that says they feel they know an author, heart and soul, after reading their books. “I’m thrilled! Relieved! I hope other fans will realize those books are not your creations!”
“Me too,” I said.
We chatted on about the weather and recipes. As we ended our conversation, she reassured me that Barnes & Noble had allowed her to return Come and Get Me. She asked me to write more books in The Homegrown Series.
In the days following has come a steady crop of inquiries from confused, questioning
fans. Sometimes solicitations come from places like Dykelife.com, requesting I submit an article. I smile as I think about my stories reporters describe as “Southern fried soul food”, and “A cross between Fannie Flagg and Jan Karon.”
One thing was left. Thinking of that trembling, proud smile Mama wears whenever I present her with a copy of my latest book, I sent an email to the folks at Penguin, asking them if I should put Julie Lowrey Cannon on my upcoming THE ROMANCE READERS’ BOOK CLUB. My editor said Julie L. Cannon would be more visually pleasing.
“Okey doke,” I said. “What the L?”

Setting. Hmmm. My mind’s been turning this topic over for a day or so as I ponder what wisdom I have to offer. I can remember way back as I was studying the craft of writing and reading a how-to-write-a-novel book that the author used this fancy word, milieu, in a section about setting. I had to look up milieu in my Webster’s, which said milieu is a noun, and means place, surroundings, and environment. My how-to-write book said milieu is of utmost importance in a story, and I agree wholeheartedly. I love nothing more than to be transported to some place. That’s why I read. And why I write.

I just finished the fourth and final edit of a book coming out this fall. It’s called I’ll Be Home for Christmas (after Bing Crosby’s famous song) and it’s set in the year 1944, in Watkinsville, Georgia, and in Trenton, New Jersey. Now, I thought I’d researched the milieu of those places fairly well. I studied climate and terrain, and things like the style of homes, travel, clothing, what restaurants were around, etc… Since World War Two is going on in my story, I read a fifty-pound book on the war. I was so proud as I incorporated things about various battles, which products were rationed, and how folks displayed their patriotism.

I sent the first go-round of the book off to my editor and waited, smugly. But, boy was I in for a shock when I got her comments back. I cannot tell you how many red editorial notes there were in the margin of my manuscript, saying, “This dialogue is too modern for this era,” and “This word did not appear until the 1960’s,” and “Julie, this is a fairly modern saying.” I found out I really needed some help on the setting in regard to . . . dialogue. Yes, what my characters were saying, their conversations, evoke a setting. Words like ‘workaholic’ (origin 1968) and ‘zilch’ (origin 1966) and phrases like ‘in denial’ and ‘freak out’ (origin 1967) and ‘into me’ were non-existent in 1944. Lots of slang that we use was not around back then. My editor changed one of the character’s exclamations (which I can’t remember off the top of my head) to “Jeepers!” Jeepers sounds so innocent, and indeed it does sound like something my Mother-in-law, who was my heroine’s age in 1944, would say. When I told my 12-year-old son, he just laughed. He said it sounded like something off of Scooby Doo. In another instance, my editor said that calling someone ‘man’ is a fairly modern thing, and so I had to change some dialogue reading, “Hey, man, you okay?” These examples are just a tiny percentage of what I had to re-write as far as dialogue to bring the setting of 1944 to life.

Speaking of dialogue bringing a setting to life, I was reading Lauretta Hannon’s blog on here from June 24th, and I laughed aloud at the setting her dialogue evoked. Lauretta, author of The Cracker Queen, was saying that one day she’s going to set a scene in the waiting room of a rural Southern hospital. She had lots and lots of examples of the dialogue her characters would use – in regard to illnesses they suffered. Lauretta quoted her Me-Maw saying, ”Oh, I’ve had Cadillacs on my eyes for ten years now. I can’t get ‘em fix-did ‘cause you know Crazy Aint Carrie will steal my pain pills…” Because I had a rural and Southern Me-Maw myself, and because I’ve literally heard every single one of Lauretta’s examples of rural Southerners illnesses, I could SEE that scene in my mind plain as day. I would not have to have any other descriptions of setting; i.e. words about what town it’s in, the way the characters dress, what they drive, the landscape, to BE THERE. When I read Lauretta’s dialogue, I was immediately plunged into the scene, the setting. Those characters were flesh and blood to me as I sat here staring at my computer screen, reading and laughing and nodding my head. I could tell you what they had on, what they ate for breakfast, what they were going to watch on the TV later that night, what was on the backseat of their cars, etc… just by their dialogue.

I’m currently reading a friend’s manuscript and it’s set in 1919 in Greensboro, North Carolina, among educated land-owning gentry. What I’m really appreciating is the setting my author friend is evoking through the dialogue of her characters. Caroline, the heroine, talks often about how hard it is to remember that a proper lady keeps her ankles crossed at all times, and about the Cotillion Club. She says things to her friend like, “The boys will want to fill in our dance card at the beginning of the dance.“ She says, “Do we have enough butter laid by?” and “I took the flivver (that’s what they called Model-T’s) to town Friday morning, first thing, and I almost cranked it myself.” Also, “I saw an aeroplane today.” At one point her daddy asks her, “Are you blaspheming, Caroline?” He answers someone with, ‘People befitting our station as major landowners, as pillars of the community.” These snippets of dialogue whisk me back to 1919, a time when speech was much more stilted.

When I teach writing workshops, one thing I advise my students to do is to keep journals. I tell them it’s okay to eavesdrop and to record snippets of dialogue they overhear. This is about becoming conscious. I’m constantly amazed at what I hear people saying to each other – even on their cell phones while sitting in a stall at a public restroom! A good thing is, when you’re doing this in the name of your writing, your art, bringing a setting to life, it sort of sanctifies the act of eavesdropping. Now, go out there and listen.

Sometimes I wonder why in the world I feel compelled to write, and in that manner of someone prone to over-analyzing things, I say to myself, “Vanity, vanity. All is vanity,” fling my pen (or push my keyboard) away and think writing is a silly thing to pour myself into; to suck up time and resources I could use for other things.

There are probably lots of reasons I write, some I don’t even know, or at least don’t admit to myself. I do know that I’ve figured out how to feel about a lot of things by writing about them. These flickering moments of insight are invaluable. But one reason I’m sure of, I write to preserve things. Handwritten journals fill a bookshelf in my bedroom. I feel driven to save my parents’ memories as well. Nothing prompts my Dad to share a memory with me like driving down Hog Mountain Road here in Watkinsville and seeing a field of cotton in all its glory. He gets this far away look in his eyes and tells stories about picking cotton that make it sound like a trip to Disney World. I”m sure it’s the brain fog called nostalgia that makes him look back so longingly on something that I believe was pretty torturous. I’ve never picked cotton, never hoed cotton, but when I hear my Dad’s stories, they fascinate me, and I must write them down. Many such memories made their way into three books I wrote called The Homegrown Series. Writing the books was a way for me to preserve many of my parents’ stories of their early lives spent on Georgia farms.

Memories of my very sheltered childhood wove themselves into a book called The Romance Readers’ Book Club. Now I’m two more books down the road (I just found a new agent and they’re with her, and I’m hoping for an imminent sale) and I’m once again tossing novel ideas around in my brain. I’ve got several, but today I was sitting on the floor of my bedroom waiting for my daughter and her boyfriend to clear out of the “family room” because number one, I didn’t want to interrupt their cuddle, and number two, I needed some space. I was bored until I spied my bookshelf full of journals. “Maybe there’s an idea for my next novel in there,” I said crawling over to look at the spines. But I shouldn’t have done it. It was like opening up a high school annual. I could not put them down. I sat there way too long, kept reading just one more entry, fascinated in a strange way, at these events of my life from five, ten, more years ago. Many were mundane; like treating the kids for pinworms and learning to cook a turkey, and some I’d totally forgotten. Many still struck me as stranger than fiction, which was the reason I’d recorded them in the first place. Here are a couple that had totally slipped from my memory:

“October 2, 1995: KITTY AUSCHWITZ. You think you know somebody and they tell you something you feel is totally out of character for them. Today Ruth called and told me about her and Joe’s new house in North Carolina. There were 10 or so feral cats living in the backyard with unchecked breeding – reproduction gone rampant. She and Joe decided not to feed the cats so that they would leave. But they didn’t – they only became more desperate, more bold, darting into the house when they could and pooping literally everywhere. You couldn’t step without squishing down into a steaming, stinky pile. The males sprayed the entire backyard. Their wild eyes made Ruth scared to pick them up to haul them away so Joe borrowed a big Hav-a-hart, and using this they lured them in with bits of meat. They bundled them into pillow cases and hauled the writhing mess to ‘Kitty Auschwitz’. Days later as Ruth was outside gardening, she found two pathetic mewling week old kittens with raw behinds and maggot-filled ears. Ruth flew into the kitchen and filled up her spaghetti pot with water and flung them in. They splashed and clawed and mewled and sunk. Some time passed, and then, filled with remorse, Ruth frantically dug the pair out, clutching them to her bosom and crying. One died anyway, and the other Ruth is currently medicating its butt, and stimulating it with a Q-tip to induce defecation per the vet’s instructions.”

Ruth and I have been best friends, closer than sisters, ever since winter of 2^nd grade (we’re 46 now). We know each other inside and out. She adores felines. Always has at least one special house-kitty, sometimes more, that she literally dotes on. I can see at the end of that entry where I was trying to gain some insight into the harrowing scene I had recorded. I had to reach way back into long-ago conversations, and what I knew of Ruth’s upbringing until I recalled her telling me “Used to, my granny would regularly bag up new kittens and toss them into the creek. That’s just something they did on the farm. It was like pest control.” Then, in response to that, I had written; “Maybe this is just some family legacy Ruth has to carry on. A latent tradition.”

Here’s another entry from that same journal, a bit over a year later. I read it this morning, lurking there, waiting for Iris and her boyfriend to go out of the house, and ever since I’ve been turning it over in my mind in regard to a possible ‘novel idea’:

“FREEZING CHILDREN. November 13, 1996. What do you think about freezing children when they are five years old? I met this guy at the High Hat on Saturday night when Anne’s band was playing and I told him I had a 7 year old girl and a 5 year old boy. He said that if he had his druthers, he’d freeze them at age 5 since that is when they are absolutely perfectly wonderful. Well, he added that his two sons are 12 and 16, pretty ornery ages for the most part. We talked on and I could see that inside he was a pretty pathetic guy in many ways, very needy. Maybe starved for the human physical touch because he kept patting me, hugged me once, then offered me some liquor. I told him I don’t touch the stuff at all and tried to excuse myself. “I want a child,” he said in this pleading voice, “who’ll love me no matter what. Like a 5 year old.” But after I finally got away, I thought about it, and I decided I would definitely not want to freeze Gus in at any one age, even a pretty good one like he is now, 5. He’s mostly independent, reads, can entertain himself, and can converse to an extent. It’s a lot better than babyhood and toddlerhood. Sure, I love it that he’s currently in this uncynical not-too-big-to-kiss-Mama stage. But, wouldn’t it be really, really odd, not to mention selfish, to lock a kid in? To keep him 5?! Time will pass and he will change, I realize, most likely become embarrassed of me in his teen years, do some objectionable things, but that’s all part of life’s journey. It’s fascinating to watch a human grow, to change, and I can’t wait to see what he’ll become.”

Well, it’s January 8, 2009, and Gus turns 18 in 2 weeks. I now have to bribe him to get him to hug me. Here’s how that works: he yells downstairs and asks me to bring food and drink upstairs to him as he sits at Facebook, or… and I holler back up, “Only if I get a hug!” Then I carry food and drink and bend over to hug his resentful, teenage self. Our conversations are mostly one-sided, with me talking away and him responding in these monosyllables, “Yeah” and “Huh?” Yes, I know he’s no longer a cuddly, innocent boy who thinks I hung the moon, but I cannot imagine wishing away all those years, those TIMES we’ve shared.

So, I’ve been daydreaming today, playing the author’s favorite game of What If? “What if?” I keep asking myself, “What if there were this mother who froze one of her children, at say, 5, and she just hungrily had this kid remain that age to adore her while she grew older and older and …

Well, tomorrow I’ll probably wake up and toss that novel idea right out the window, but if I don’t toss it around in my mind first, how else will I find out who I am and why I’m here, and on another level, what I’m supposed to be writing?

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.

Today is July 14^th and the reason I’m writing this blog so early is because I’m supposed to be at Cocoa Beach on July 28^th. Like an answer to prayer, a friend of mine who owns a condo there offered it to me and the family for an entire week! I imagine myself so busy frolicking in the surf that I’ll have no time to blog, so I’m planning to just find this on my laptop and send it off with the click of a few buttons.

I haven’t been to the beach in years. Guess you might call it a case of genteel poverty. One child is in college and my husband recently started his own business, and both of these require sacrifices.

A need to be at the beach every summer germinated in the days of my Georgia childhood. Come July my parents and us four kids would jump into our wood-paneled station wagon and head to Florida. Florida was another world, an enchanted place that made me want to hang on to every second so that our vacation would never end. When we’d spy the Florida Welcome Center on the side of the interstate, we’d sit up straight and eager. My dad pulled into the parking lot and was barely stopped before we’d jump out of the backseat and go tearing to the wall-sized rack of brochures about places like Sea World and Weeki Watchi, pictures of mermaids and Flipper gracing the covers. At the desk, a nice lady in a crisp white sleeveless blouse and a perky bouffant with little pincurls (this was the 60’s and ’70′s) would hand us each a plastic cup shaped like an orange, full of REAL Florida orange juice. Back in the car our saved up allowance dollars burned holes in our pockets. Soon as we’d checked into our hotel, we’d make a beeline to the nearest aqua-colored tacky souvenir shop and come out with bags full of over-priced conch shells, rubber alligators, dried seahorses, and shellacked sand dollars. But the best part by far was the sandy shores …. and the ocean.

I bet you’ve heard it said that the mind is the strongest organ when it comes to sex, and indeed, the mind is a very powerful thing in lots of aspects of life. There’s a story about this man in an Iranian prison who survived a long isolation by weaving a rug in his mind.

Well, I don’t weave rugs, but to compensate for my straitened circumstances of too much time with no trip to the beach, I have my own devices. Over the years I’ve constructed this elaborate selection of mental settings, and so around 11:00 PM each night, when I lie down in my bed, I choose the escape I desire, make that need, to go to sleep by. I have several favorite settings I’ve honed to perfection over the years; places like my memaw’s farm back in the 70′s, some rather carefree days when I was in college and experiencing the accompanying freedoms of being on my own for the first time, and the beach. I mentally transport myself into these places using the five senses: sight, smell, taste, touch, and sound. Until I’m there in that place. It’s kind of like a drug.

I don’t plan to use these settings in a novel I’m writing, they’re simply for me to BE in them. Speaking of being in a place, have you ever noticed that some stories exist in a vacuum? Lines are spoken without any description of setting. To me, that’s like going to a play, entering the darkened theater and taking your seat, and then never having the stage lights come on. I believe place is a strong force in a story, and it’s probably the first thing in every book I want to make clear to readers. Setting lends weight and substance to scenes, and I work to show what the landscape’s like; the color of the soil, the plants that grow there, how light would look in different seasons or different parts of the day, etc…

Mainly, though, setting takes people away, and isn’t that why we read? It’s crucial that the reader feels transported into the story. I want him or her to get lost in the world I create; to look up an hour, maybe two, later, and blink with surprise to see where they actually are.

So, I’m wondering if I can put my fantasy beach into words; which as a writer I should be able to do: I’m going to try to take you to Cocoa Beach with me: I love the very name Cocoa Beach. It brings images of Cocoa Krispies, of chocolatey-colored sand and frothy milk-white foam at the edge of waves which are rhythmically licking the sand as my footprints weave a pattern behind me. I feel the sunlight like hot honey on my skin, taste the salt of dried ocean on my lips, smell the coconutty sweetness of Coppertone sunblock, hear the raucous cries of seagulls circling. It’s my favorite time of day to be on the shore; when the tide is way, way out, and there are lots of little tidal pools, puddles in depressions of sand. Some are filled with little fish, darting. Some are warm, some coolish, but all shallow enough to be certain what is in there, and so I sit down in one that comes just to my ankles. I trail my fingers in the silky, wet sand. Strewn along the beach are transparent jellyfish lying prostrate, live starfish with all their dark little hairs on the underside. Looking over one shoulder I can see the tacky neon sign of Ron Jon’s famous surf shop, and if I look out beyond the surf toward the horizon I can see the masts of shrimp boats in beautiful dark geometric shapes. These make me sigh with pleasure to think of an impending visit to The Seafood Shack for supper; a plate of fried shrimp, hush puppies, a baked potato loaded with puddles of butter and sour cream, and an icy cold Coke.

I know I’m not alone. Have you noticed the plethora of beach scenes on book jackets these days? Look in any bookstore or through a recent book catalog and there they are, a long line of novel covers featuring bare female legs, toes buried temptingly in sand, diaphanous dresses fluttering in salty breezes, and beyond that…THE RIPPLING OCEAN.

I keep titles of books I’d like to write in my purse, and lately I heard an advertisement over the radio while I was riding in the car. I wrote down a phrase from the ad that really spoke to me, called to me with pleasant images of swaying palms and frothy surf: A REFRESHING TROPICAL FLAVOR. But the more I ponder it, I worry people might think it’s a cookbook, and I also worry that I don’t really know any more about tropical stuff than what a roll of Tropical Fruits Lifesavers tastes like, but then I think maybe I can still use it if I just have this character who’s really pining to be there., who dreams so hard she mentally transports herself to the tropics while she’s doing something like scrubbing toilets, or paying the bills, or…