Usually the topic for my blog doesn’t make itself known to me until the day before I have to post it. This month it was a rhyming phrase with a bit of profanity in it and it came to me when I was inside a church. Plus, it came FIVE days before I had to post, and has literally followed me around and given me no rest. I’m hoping sitting here writing it out will deliver me.

Here’s how it came: I walked into the social hall of Watkinsville First Methodist a few minutes till 9:00 A.M. last Monday. Now, I must confess I arrived there carrying a good bit of personal baggage: my ten-year-old had left the house kicking and screaming that he didn’t want to go to VBS (Vacation Bible School) and that he hated me and would never talk to me again for making him go, I’d had to move heaven and earth to awaken my 17-year-old to drive us there (I don’t drive due to a head injury), and, now this is the one that was “consuming” me; I’d recently found myself with the need to find a new agent and was immersed in that overwhelming, ego-squashing job of researching and sending out query letters. I was distracted, fretting over everything from Bookscan numbers to websites I needed to visit when I got home.

I’d barely had time to strap on my volunteer nametag and make my way to a table surrounded by third graders before I was assaulted. Another human body slammed into me, wrapped itself around me, and literally claimed me with a breath-squeezing hug.

Startled, I looked down and this dark face tilted up; the forehead laced with scars, snot bubbling out of the nostrils, and the body below it dressed in hand-me-down-down-downs. A smile spread across that face so big the eyes turned into slits. “Mrs. Lady,” he said, “which one’s your car? I want to see your car!” I motioned out the big window at a 1987 Honda Accord. His eyes opened wide. He looked back at me with admiration and that was when my blog topic made itself known. “Quit your bitching,” a clear voice said to me.

Now I am not wealthy compared to most people. But to Franklin I am unfathomably rich. Over the next few days I learned a lot about my new friend. Franklin lives with 21 “brothers and sisters”, he rides to VBS and home on a bus, he wants to know where to find a Bible verse that assures him that when birds die they go to Heaven, and he is scared of robbers.

There were 17 kids in my group of squirming 9 and 10 year-olds, but Franklin picked me to be his constant pal. He literally attaches to me like a barnacle every morning – either by constant hugging or sitting in my lap. No matter what activities we engage in; art, music, science, etc. . . he is holding my hand, whispering in my ear. I sense that what Franklin wants most is for someone to simply pay attention to him, to love him. I do. This may sound like I am doing him a favor, but oh, no. Franklin has given me much more than the A-ha moment that led to this blog. That kid is so full of love it literally splashes out of him. I need those hugs, kisses, the playful joking.

My Daddy likes to say I am hard-headed, stubborn. Well, I always deny that, but this morning, when I got up to check my e-mails before leaving for VBS, I found one from Kristy Barrett (she agreed to let me use her real name). Kristy found me while reading this blog. She asked if I’d send her an autographed copy of The Romance Readers’ Book Club. She promised to write a review for my trouble. Kristy freelances for three newspapers in Kentucky, and she’s getting ready to launch a book blog.

Now, of course I plan to send a book to Kristy. It will be a great career move. But that is not what struck me about her. Reading on down the note Kristy sent I found that she illustrates what I’m trying to say here.

I’m going to quote a bit from her note: “I would be over the moon with joy and gratitude….books could literally, but joyfully, bankrupt me…. I was born with Cerebral Palsy and in my twenties 4 other illnesses crept in to make things truly interesting….this means I am chronically, sometimes critically ill, and I spend 85-90 percent of my time in bed devouring books. I’ve almost left the planet 5 times in 16 years. I would rather read than eat!! …. If you choose to send anything my way, I would be blessed beyond measure. I’ve only very recently started contacting authors and publishers for my upcoming blog and the experience has been beyond my wildest dreams. Unabashed book joy is wonderful medicine for me. Blessings Always.”

I am in awe of Kristy. I believe her story reflects joy despite the valleys. She knows that bitching can ruin a person’s day. She’s so grateful to have the joy, the escape of books! I believe that gratitude keeps her balanced. Franklin and Kristy make me see that it can keep me balanced, too, so I’m going to try and make gratitude a habit. I may be hard-headed, but I’m going to try and recognize all that I have to be thankful for and quit my bitching.

My ten-year-old will most likely forgive me for forcing him to go to VBS, my 17-year-old will one day grow out of the need to sleep until 2:00 P.M., and God willing, I will find a new agent. Anyway, if I stop fussing long enough to listen to a couple of author friends who went down this same road a while back, it may well be the best thing that ever happened to my writing career.

“Please come!” pled the email, “to my signing at the Barnes & Noble in Snellville on Friday, from 7:00 to 9:00 p.m.” Then my fellow author, J. L. Miles (Jackie, to me), added a one-word “sentence” that strikes terror into the heart of any writer embarking on a book tour: Mortification.

This word is one that my fellow authors and members of the Dixie Divas (Karin Gillespie, J.L. Miles, and Patti Sprinkle) and I have often whispered to one another as we tiptoe together toward the doorway of a library or a bookstore, trying not to notice the empty parking lot. It is shorthand for the fear that no one will come to your book event.

Mortification is also the title of a book by Robin Robertson, with a subtitle of Writers’ Stories of Their Public Shame. These are authors who write about how miserably disillusioning certain aspects of their book tours can be; situations where at times the audience consists solely of the bookstore manager and the author’s mother.

“Of course I’ll be there!” I wrote back to Jackie. Her new book, Divorcing Dwayne was hot off the press. I was eager to read this new offering, but even if I hadn’t been, I would have gone to support my friend, because there is not enough space in this blog for me to tell you how much support Jackie has given to me over the years of my writing and publishing journey. She has inspired me, encouraged me, made me laugh, and also been there physically at so many of my own book events. I understood her fear all too well; her need of assurance that live bodies would be at her book event.

With hundreds of book events under my belt, many solo and many with the Dixie Divas, believe me, I have experienced my share of mortification. There are instances where I’ve driven hundreds of miles to a library, or a bookstore, with my well-rehearsed literary speech, a bookmark tucked into the scene I plan to read, my special signing pen in my tote bag, along with a bottle of water to cool my throat during my profound and entertaining literary talk, and my imagination overflowing with visions of my audience, my adoring crowd of fans, only to find that there are but three fannies in a vast sea of theater seats stretching out before me.

There can be any number of reasons the attendance at a book event is low or non-existent, mortifying to the author. Sometimes the event is not well publicized or even publicized at all, sometimes there is a conflicting community event such as Little League playoffs or a Miss Marigold pageant, sometimes it is the opening night of American Idol (this last one is the reason the host gave me for a disappointing crowd for my latest book, The Romance Readers’ Book Club.) Down South, holding an event on a Wednesday evening is a foolish thing, for that is family night at most churches.

Even authors who have books on the New York Times Bestseller’s List experience this phenomenon called mortification. I’ve spoken with big-name authors, and heard stories of big-name authors showing up for a book event where few or no one comes (I don’t want to name names for fear it might subject them to yet another moment of public shame).

But J. L. Miles needn’t have feared. I walked through the door of the Barnes & Noble at 7:00 p.m. and saw Jackie sitting at her signing table right inside the entrance. There were three ladies standing and talking with her, holding copies of Divorcing Dwayne. When they left she smiled and told me that before she’d even gotten to the store, they’d already sold a good number of books. There were only a few remaining copies on her signing table, so I grabbed mine and had her sign it quick.

I guess I should have known J.L. Miles and Divorcing Dwayne would have no trouble attracting customers. The blurbs on the back cover promise a hilarious romp through Pickville Springs, Georgia, and I have had a chance to read the first couple of sentences…“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.”

If I’d had any way of knowing the trauma that would ensue, I’m not sure I would have joined my husband at Lowe’s to pick a gallon of paint for our den. But it’s been one week and the phrase ‘Murder your darlings’ keeps zipping through my mind.

No, I’m not planning on doing away with my husband or my children. This phrase, from one of my writing textbooks, refers to editing, which can be a very painful process. It hurts. The words I write are like my children.

So is my collection of novels.

“Too many,” Tom huffed. “You need to weed out.” He was scowling at a bookcase he was attempting to move from the wall so he could begin rolling on swampwater green.

I fumed and clenched my teeth. Silently I began moving armloads of books to the dining room. Books were wedged spine to spine, shoved to the back of five wide shelves, on their sides six deep in front of these. My darlings.

Okay, I said to myself, after dozens of trips back and forth to the dining room. Maybe I do need to weed some. I bet folks at Goodwill need books. This altruistic thought helped.

I decided to do it slowly. I would never perform such a painful task in one gulp. First I sat down to categorize.

There were The Classics; Bronte, O’Connor, Faulkner, Welty, etc… These had to stay. There were Oprah’s Book Club Picks, some I did not really get into, but how could I let them go? Then, my most precious; Books Lovingly Inscribed From Fellow Authors. No way would those be leaving!

Next I made a stack of books I’ve Cherished, (practically memorized); White Oleander, by Janet Fitch; The Prince of Tides, by Pat Conroy; All Over But the Shoutin’, by Rick Bragg, and many more.

I became overwrought with emotion, had to take a break for several days. Just thinking of weeding through the mountain of books which did not fit any of the above categories was agonizing. I know what goes into writing a book and it somehow felt mean to fling any of these volumes into the spot I’d designated “Murder.”

So what if I hadn’t taken an interest in them before? What if they had spent years, unread, on my shelves? Maybe it wasn’t their time. We have different stages in our lives, and so many books I could not get into at one particular point later become my absolute favorites. My darlings!

One afternoon I thought I was ready. I sat at the dining table, took a deep breath. Hours flew by as I poured over the books. Dazzled by intriguing synopses on book flaps, I dove in and lost myself time and again. Finally I made a new pile – Read Soon.

One claimed to be “a story that crackles and sizzles like burgers on a red-hot grill.” Another was called a “major addition to the canon of one of the world’s literary masters.”

One book was so strange I laughed. The Dogs of Babel, by Carolyn Parkhurst, was about a linguist who comes home to find his wife dead and their dog the only witness. He proceeds to coach the dog to speak.

I fixated on each author’s photo, studying details of their lives; hometowns, education, jobs, kids . . . I read the praises to each author’s agent and publishing house.

In the end, after days spent agonizing, moving books into the Murder pile, then back to the Darling pile, I only got rid of 21 books. A teeny fraction of my novels. I don’t want to tell many of the titles for fear they are your darlings. The only one I will dare to admit murdering is Nights in Rodanthe, by Nicholas Sparks. I tried and tried but could not find a gleam of interest for this tale, and did not feel I ever would. Then I thought “Maybe I’m murdering this book because of jealousy! Maybe the fact that it was a New York Times Bestseller and translated into thirty languages has turned me mean and green!”

“Nah,” I said later, consoling myself. “It wasn’t only the cover you judged this book by.”

I like to keep journals because almost all of my books on writing say that if you want to be a writer you should record things. This will be your raw material. It’s about becoming conscious. They say you should put down things like memories, daily experiences, bits of dialogue you overhear, the way the sky looks just before a storm, your innermost feelings…

But it took me a long time to embrace the words of one writing instructor; “Write your fears, Julie,” she said. “Use your fears. They’re very powerful.” I did not want to do this. Something about putting those words on paper would give them authority.

When I was 34, my father was diagnosed with cancer and the bottom fell out of my life. I felt scared beyond words. Of course, I was not able to write about my fears of losing him in my journals, but I did begin this fictional story about a newly widowed older woman. In part to distract myself and in part because subconsciously I was playing that old “What if?” game. Of course I was writing around the real issue, which was the fear of losing my father, but I decided I had a story to tell.

Truelove & Homegrown Tomatoes began as a story about a woman who just lost her husband of 48 years. I decided to put my sad, empty widow Imogene out there in the garden to give her a distraction, to find solace and joy in the sheer pleasure of physical labor. But then her battle with grief touched me so deeply I did what I call “let her see the spiritual side of composting” which is that life springs from death. I figured that would cheer her up and give her hope. What happened was that gradually the garden emerged as its own character and the seasons in Imogene’s garden, her passage from grief to wholeness, wove themselves together. As I wrote I even startled myself by the insights I received. Not only by the simple, pure beauty of the natural world, but also that Imogene turned out to be like the tomatoes in her garden, the plants with the strongest survival instincts.

Another fear I wove into that same novel was my childhood fear of the Rapture. My Mother warned me and my siblings many times that the trumpet would sound when we were all unaware, and only the Saints would rise. “Be ready,” she would admonish, her brow furrowed. Well, I knew I was no saint, and several times I came home to an empty house, where unbeknownst to me, the other five had been invited next door for a hot slice of apple pie or some such thing, and I would do what they say in biblical language “rent her clothes in anguish.” So I let Loutishie, my heroine Imogene’s niece, get drunk and smoke cigarettes after she believes she has been “Left Behind.” The writing of this humorous scene was very cathartic for me.

In 2001, when said novel above was released and my publisher sent a long list of my media appearances and speaking engagements, I confronted yet another fear; Laliaphobia, or the fear of public speaking. You’ve probably heard the statistic that identifies public speaking as the number one fear in America, second only to death, and that a number of folks would rather be in the coffin than giving the eulogy. Well, this was a pretty apt description of me as I started out down the long road of book promotion with my quaking voice and my quivering hands. Previously I had believed that writers were reclusive creatures, not reduced to hawking their wares. I was ignorant. I prayed for deliverance. But even so, I knew that a person cannot kneel at the foot of their unmade bed and wail, “Oh, Lord, make this bed!” So, I dusted off my knees, plunged ahead, and fortunately, not too long afterward, my friend and fellow author, Karin Gillespie, invited me to join a troupe of women writers called The Dixie Divas. There is safety, comfort, boldness in numbers and years of events later, there is one thing I can say for certain: I may still have many fears to confront in this life, but I know that laliaphobia is not one of them. I am a polished and eager speaker.