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I have committed raking. I spent all day Saturday outdoors, rake in gloved hands, collecting the fall leaves and depositing them on the garden beds. I love the meditative quality of raking, and my neighbors love it that I rake at least once a year. On all sides of my house I hear leaf blowers on Saturdays, and lawns have a picture-perfect quality to them. "I'm a yard man!" says my neighbor Pat.

My yard remains coated with leaves until some warm January morning, when I pick up a rake and give myself permission to take all the live-long day to put the front yard to rights. Pat still likes me. What he and Clarissa and Scott and Elizabeth and even toddler Emma, who is quite my gardening friend, don't know yet is that I plan for the entire yard to be a garden one day, with pea gravel pathways winding around the bee balm, the yard art, and the benches.

Until that day, I dream, and January is perfect for dreaming. I'm dreaming about color choices for the house (see my shutters? You can also see how the carport enclosure is coming along), I read cookbooks in bed and dream about recipes I want to make (this is how my Lively-up Yourself Lentil Soup came out -- it was delicious; you can compare my version to Holly Swanson's at 101 Cookbooks)...

...and I dream about the stories I want to write. I moved to this house in Atlanta in June 2004. I came with files, notebooks, and boxes of stories, some of them published books, some of them half-finished orphans, some of them just sketched-out ideas or half-pages of notes. I've added to this stash in the years I've been here. So this week I decided that, in this January dreaming month, I would open my story cupboards and make a list of what I had, so I could get what I still needed as recipe ingredients in order to turn these partial ideas into full fledged stories.

Or not.

I mean... sometimes you find that you no longer want to write about The Incredible Hulk or gumshoes named Mud, don't you? If I was no longer interested in a topic, out it went, like the moldy corner of cheese still in the dairy drawer of the fridge. But if I got a tiny tingle when I read through the pages of research, the failed drafts, the snippets -- and especially, if it made me laugh when I read it -- I rinsed it off at the sink and I kept that story, tidied it up and gave it a folder all its own, labeled and ready for my attention.

I used a sketch book and colored pens to list all the stories. I didn't go in any particular order, just grabbed pile after pile of papers, and I didn't color code anything; when one marker didn't suit me (or when I got interrupted and came back to my chair), I used another. I drew lines and circles and doodles as I made connections. For instance, I've got one snippet that reads, "I have an office. My associate sleeps at my feet. Her snores are a rhythm I depend on." It made me laugh. I've drawn an arrow from that snippet to this one: "People smell. Have you noticed this?" Ha! This dog (whom I've named Buddy, it seems) also says, "I don't understand fried okra." Who knows what this might someday mean, but I remember when I wrote the second snippet. It was during a freewrite, in Vermont, on retreat.

Have you ever pulled all your work together from wherever you've got it stored, and listed all of it in one place, in one notebook? I filled five pages of my (large!) sketchbook with lists of snippets, ideas, drafts, work-in-progress, rejected stories that I still love, and more. Five pages! I look at these five pages and see that I have been much more productive than I have given myself credit for.

How do you track your progress, in writing? In life? What does success mean to you? Not so long ago, success was survival, for me.

To be able to sit here, in a home of my own, and look out the windows onto a world of my own making (see the unraked yard?) seems like success enough. To look at these five pages of story ideas -- all of them with potential, because all of them hold a piece of my heart or they wouldn't be on the list -- I think I am rich! I have just needed to rake them up, these ideas, to put them in one place together, in a sort of garden-in-winter, in order to see how hard I've been working at telling my stories, and how much I have done. These ideas aren't going anywhere; they are waiting for me to return to them, waiting for inspiration, enthusiasm, hard work from me. Waiting for me to stop mixing gardening and cooking metaphors, maybe.

And now what? What do I do with this list? I gave each story a folder. The snippets I put in a folder called "new work." All folders are in one big file drawer now, all together. The research that won't fit into folders is on one shelf, each bit labeled appropriately. That in itself is satisfactory to me. It's satisfactory to create, to organize, to try my best to finish something using all the skills I possess, to revise, to improve, to revise again, to weather rejection to try again, to be finally lucky enough to put a story out into the world, to find readers. Lucky, lucky, lucky.

I did this story gardening work on Monday, January 14, the day of the ALA award announcements. I knew ALL-STARS was not on the list, as I had not been notified, and I stayed away from my computer most of the day and immersed myself in my own stories.

And. you know... part of me had wished, from time to time, for award recognition -- it would be human, of course, and hard not to get swept up in the hoopla for a book that made so much noise in the world and that my publisher (Yay, Sweet Harcourt!) and booksellers, teachers, librarians, readers worked so hard to promote (I guess I did, too!), a book that got such wonderful reviews and such kind attention from readers.

And, if I'm being honest about it, which I'm trying to do, financially it would mean a few years more off the road, too -- a while longer to work at what I love and not take on the proverbial day-job to support the writing (something I've put out there as a goal), and the ability to continue to publish (I have opinions on this, too, but for another time). So, I'll admit that I looked at the possibility, when I looked at it, with more of a practical than emotional eye.

I used to wax romantic about writing and publishing children's books. No longer. This is a business. Years ago, children's publishing occupied a benign corner of the adult publishing realm, where it was patted on the head and not expected to turn a profit. Not so today, of course. The pressure inside publishing houses is intense, and the pressure that writers feel as a result... well, it's a hard business sometimes, and it's best for me to remember that it is a business, and that I am trying my best to make a living and grow a career.

Still, I have steadily learned, in these past few years, to disconnect from the award aspect of publishing and to focus on the page. And I'm healthier for it. I really do know what's important and what feeds me artistically, emotionally, spiritually, even physically... it's time, space, quiet, home, routine, love, family, kinship, peace.

I need these things most of all, in order to create, to be healthy, to live well. So. I wasn't disappointed on Monday: I am making a living in the arts, I am writing well, I am being published, and I have readers, solid reviews, good sales figures!, a great big cheering section, and lots of possibility ahead of me.

What I was on Monday, was curious. Hmmm... and I suppose it's arrogant (I'd prefer to think it's hopeful or naive) to even assume ALL-STARS had a chance for that recognition in the first place. It's all such a puzzle; there are so many good books out there, and I actually have lots of trouble with the whole notion of awards and prizes and bests, being an inclusive sort of gal.

At any rate, I didn't plan (and certainly don't write) for awards. I planned for an introspective, inward-looking, homeward-bound, good-writing year this year (for the first time in seven long years!)... and I will have it. When I came back to my computer at the end of the day, Monday, I found an email about ALL-STARS from an adult reader, an engineer, who I bet has never heard of the the Newbery, the Caldecott, the Printz, and other ALA awards. But he has heard of ALL-STARS:

"I was emotionally connected from beginning to end. True to theme, just about everything in the book resonated with me. Even the Redbug catcher seemed eerily familiar. As a kid I lived and breathed baseball. Played every day until dark; knew all the major leaguers - my favorites being (of course) Sandy Koufax, Willie Mays, Gil Hodges, Yogi Berra, and the rest; - had all the baseball cards; knew all the statistics, etc. My brother and I would lie in our bunk beds at night, room all dark, and quiz each other, What was Ty Cobb's lifetime batting average?, How many home runs did Mickey Mantle hit in 1952?, What is Ted Williams' nickname?

"Early in grade school my teacher took us to the school library and told us all to find a book to read. I wasn't interested. Up until then, reading had just been a rote exercise like spelling or adding and subtracting: Look Dick, See Jane, blah, blah, blah. My teacher, Miss Tremarene (who was also my next door neighbor), said, "Read about something that you are interested in." The concept sort of blew my mind. I said, "Can you do that? Can you read about anything you want to?" She said, "Sure." So I said, "I'm interested in baseball." She helped me find a book. The first book I ever read was The Pee Wee Reese Story! Weird, huh? It changed my life. I've read
non-stop ever since."

Just think: a book (and a teacher) that changed someone's life. It could be any book. It could be the book you write. It needs to be the right book for that particular reader. And the right book for one reader is not necessarily the right book for another.

I asked Kate DiCamillo once, if she'd meant it when she said, at the end of her Newbery acceptance speech for DESPEREAUX, "I know I don't deserve it." Absolutely she meant it, she said. And we talked about how you just never know: who's on the committee, what do they love, how do they interpret the criteria, what can they agree on, and more... it's all so arbitrary. And yet it's not, Kate. I think good work rises up, like cream. I have to believe that. And yet, I get it. There are many good books out there. Many good books in this season alone! There are so many stories. It's a wonder and a treat for readers... I'll never get to read them all.

So I look at this year's awards list and I grin. I like it. What I like best about awards is that we get to celebrate our common community, our business of writing and publishing books for young people -- we get to celebrate all our stories.

Then I turn to my notebook listing my five pages of stories, and this time a slow smile spreads across my face. Here are the stories I have control over. Here is my garden. Here are my ingredients. Here is my future, a work in progress.

Time to get to work.

How did it get to be January 9 already? I'll swan, give a girl a chance to hunker in at home, and she starts baking her famous homemade granola that she hasn't made in five years (travel, travel), she roasts hazelnuts and puts them up in saved olive jars, she eats well and sleeps well,



and she hires her friend Jim Williams to enclose the carport and turn it into a gathering room, following her desire to implement pattern 182 of A PATTERN LANGUAGE by Christopher Alexander (who knows this book? I'm using it like a Bible as I work on this house...


...I'm investigating Pools of Light (252), Warm Colours (250), Different Chairs (251), as well as Communal Eating (147) and Family of Entrances (102), Entrance Transition (112), Car Connection (113),
and more, but that will do for now. Ha!)




Oh, and she plans to build a bottle tree. (This is a photo of Felder Rushing's blue bottle tree in Jackson, Mississippi. I love Felder and I want a fire bowl like his, but I digress.)


She also opens the mail that has been piling up since the last ice age. And just look what's in the mail! EACH LITTLE BIRD THAT SINGS is still cutting a rug on the book world's dance floor. First news is that LITTLE BIRD has won the Alabama Book Award as the Young People's Book of the Year from the Alabama Library Association! Joy and Happy Day! RUBY won this award in 2004, and I know how special it is, both because I've seen how wonderful this conference is (I've met those wonderful Alabama librarians!) and because I was born in Alabama, so coming back is like going home. But the best thing about this award is that LITTLE BIRD finds its way into the hands of more young readers in Alabama. I'm so glad. Thank you so much, ALLA! (And Tim Berry, I'm trying to email you, but your email keeps bouncing...)

As if Alabama -- and the United States -- weren't enough, here comes news, too, from IBBY -- the International Board on Books for Young People -- that LITTLE BIRD "has been nominated by the U.S. Section of IBBY for the IBBY Honour List 2008 for the quality of its writing."

Be still my heart. IBBY! One of IBBY's objectives is to encourage international understanding through children's literature. Sharon Deeds, chair of USBBY's Hans Christian Andersen committee (the U.S. Section of IBBY) wrote me some months ago, but it wasn't public news until now, and I wasn't sure I believed it, but now I have official confirmation. Sharon had written me: "Each section... nominates three honor books: one for writing, one for illustration and one for translation. The Honour List began in 1956. The books are chosen to represent the best in U.S. publishing in the previous two years."

I'm floored, I'm honored, I'm humbled. And may I throw in delighted... I am. Readers! LITTLE BIRD will have international readers... what a thrill. The entire Honour List from around the world will be part of a traveling exhibition in Japan, the U.S., and Bologna. Then, according to my Official Letter, these books "will be kept as permanent deposits at the International Youth Library in Munich and other research collections in Belgium, Russia, Japan, Slovakia, Switzerland, and the USA."

I knew it. I knew it all along, that everything is connected (as Uncle Edisto says in LITTLE BIRD), that we are more alike than we are different, that we exist in community, through our stories, on this planet. This lovely IBBY award is confirmation and validation of that fact -- just imagine these books, written in many different languages, traveling together next year. Just imagine the kinds of stories they tell individually. Imagine the story they will tell together, of their journey.

Oh, thank you, USBBY committee members, for honoring Comfort Snowberger's story, she who has been to 247 funerals and thinks she knows all about death, only to find out that life is about to take some turns she can't anticipate, and that the most important thing to know about death is that it is part... of life.

There is so much life going on at my house right now, on a warm January day. The carport area rings with hammering and the stapling of screens to the framing. Husband Jim's music wafts up from his basement studio, where he is practicing. The cats want in and out every fifteen minutes. The granola is finished and sits in 12 sweet, squatty little Mason jars, ready for ribbons. The hazelnuts in their jars are standing tall next to the granola. The crepe myrtles that needed to come down (talk about death... sob!) so a new driveway can be built, have been cut and deposited on my back porch so I can gather the most earnest, most enthusiastic branches for my bottle tree.

In the book I'm working on now, a character named Partheny, who is old, wise, and superstitious, makes a bottle tree for her front yard, to ward off evil spirits. I want to make the tree that Partheny would make.
So I've got my branches now. I've been collecting my bottles. I need the just-right bucket and some cement, I think. Let me see what I can do, gathering these elements that you wouldn't naturally find together, and making something brand new out of them. Sort of like the IBBY award. Sort of like stories. Sort of like life.

My notebook is getting a workout with LISTS these days. Lists of projects I want to do, lists of supplies needed, lists of administrative tasks that need to be tackled, grocery lists, lists of stories I'm working on or want to work on this year. In January I list. (Well, I list all the time, but in January, especially, I list for myself: what would you like to accomplish this year? How might you make that happen? I start with a fresh notebook for my lists. I know that I'll fill up several notebooks this year, but this is the first for a new year, with lists, including, this year, lists of what I eat each day, how far I walk (I've walked over 25 miles so far this year), lists of my weekly WW's numbers (11.3 pounds so far -- who's still with me? I'm so serious about this...).

Looking at all these lists, I see patterns, too -- it's the same every year; I bring many disparate elements together to create a life. Kind of like my Southern serial-story-turned-into-full-fledged novel, THE AURORA COUNTY ALL-STARS... so many elements and so many characters fairly seething with their wants and needs and aspirations, conspiring separately but finding out that together they make one movement out of whole cloth. You do it, too, don't you? You are interested in so many things, just as I am, you make your lists, either in your head or on paper, and you pull together a life. In doing so, you see how different you are from every other human being on this earth... how different your family is from every other family, how different is your home, your mind! And yet. We are also so alike, wanting to love and be loved, to belong, to achieve something worthwhile, to understand how the world (and each heart) works, to have purpose.

Each of us individually, AND together, makes up the symphony true.

My childhood Mississippi friend Pam Evans (Howell) and I had grits and omelets for breakfast on Friday morning and then tootled together to the Eudora Welty House on Pinehurst Street in Jackson, Mississippi. Eudora moved into this house with her parents when she was 16. She would write her fiction here, in the upstairs bedroom, where her office looked out of the three windows on the left.

Books were everywhere: stacked on tables, spilling over on sofas, tucked into plum reading nooks -- books. Eudora Welty worked upstairs in her office -- which was also her bedroom -- where she had a commanding view of the street below and Belhaven College directly across the street. She often read in her favorite living room chair, where she could see who might be coming up the walk. Folks would knock on the door and ask Eudora to sign a book for them, which she would graciously do.

She traveled, she gardened with her mother Chestina, she kept up a correspondence that filled boxes, file cabinets, closets, bureaus, and this secretary. (You can see the electric typewriter near the window. Eudora never quite got used to it. According to one of the excellent tour guides, she thought the hum it made was telling her to hurry up and write.) What I loved about the desk were the small notebooks that dotted it -- notebooks Eudora carried with her to record the smallest of details. She collected names in her notebooks, and would often write "REAL" beside them so she wouldn't use someone's actual name in a story.

When her brother Walter died young, Eudora became even closer to his two children, her nieces.

"She even drove car pools," said niece Mary Alice White. Mary Alice now takes good care of visitors when they arrive at the Welty home. She told me that her sister had trouble pronouncing "Eudora" when she was young, and the word came out "Dodo." So Eudora Welty became "Aunt Dodo" to the two girls. "For years we received cards and letters signed 'Aunt Dodo,'" said Mary Alice.

I love this story. I shared with Mary Alice that in THE AURORA COUNTY ALL-STARS, there is a six-year-old girl named Honey, who calls her dog -- a loveable old pug -- "YouDoggie" throughout the book. Honey hears the name that way, even though her brother, House, tells her that the dog's name is.... Eudora. Eudora Welty. YouDoggie, Aunt Dodo, Eudora.

Welty's home has been preserved with the same furniture, books (in all the same haphazard places), photographs, hairbrushes, china! It's intact and looks the way Welty left it, thanks to the family's bequests and the hard work of many, many volunteers.

The gardens are being restored to their Chestina Welty glory-days as well. I found my favorites, zinnias, nodding their old heads in the September morning. Friend Pam told Mary Alice that she'd see about coming to volunteer and cut back the roses. Moonflowers (another favorite) climbed a trellis near the house and a cold frame stood ready for this coming spring.

Welty had a wide and varied life outside the south. She traveled extensively, loved her friends lavishly, and supported emerging writers ardently (including dear friend Reynolds Price, whose work I so admire -- read his book A WHOLE NEW LIFE to start, and then move on to his fiction). She wrote reviews, articles, essays and fiction -- my favorite fiction is DELTA WEDDING followed closely by THE PONDER HEART, which makes me laugh. I also love the short stories "Why I Live at the P.O." and "Powerhouse," which was written after Eudora saw Fats Waller play.

She was a courageous writer as well. On the night Medgar Evers was assassinated in Jackson (see previous post on this), Eudora sat down and wrote in a white heat, "Where is the Voice Coming From?" It was written in the voice of the person who killed Evers, although no one had yet been apprehended for the crime. It is a powerful indictment of racism in the deep south.

You can read more about Eudora Welty in Suzanne Marr's wonderful biography. Here's chapter one. You'll see that Welty was something of a renaissance woman, although I doubt she'd claim that word. She was anything but a provincial southern lady who sat in her home making up provencial southern stories. She had a vision.

If you've read ONE WRITER'S BEGINNINGS by Welty, you'll know this house on Congress Street, where Eudora was born and grew up... where she started out, a stone's throw from the state capitol building, with a cow in the back yard. Here's a wonderful review of that book. You can hear Eudora read her work here. Eudora was a photographer as well. You can see some of her Depression-era photographs of people all over the state of Mississippi here.

Eudora Welty started out on Congress Street. Debbie Edwards (moi) started out here, with these folks, and I am glad to call them family. Both my parents died in 2003 (part of the genesis of EACH LITTLE BIRD THAT SINGS) but my father's sister keeps me in her heart, as does the rest of my Mississippi family. Here is Aunt Beth, the girl who raised chickens in Louin, Mississippi, just as Ruby Lavender raises chickens in LOVE, RUBY LAVENDER. Uncle Jim still plants peppers and tomatoes from seed in his Brandon, Mississippi back yard every summer.
I'd asked for tomato sandwiches for lunch, and that's what I got! "The last tomatoes of the season," said Uncle Jim. Aunt Beth gifted me with her treasured 1915 copy of LITTLE LORD FAUNTLEROY (I will take good care of it, I promise). After lunch, Cousin Carol and I sat with Aunt Beth and looked at a notebook full of old photographs and clippings (many of them obituaries -- Comfort Snowberger would have loved this!)

Aunt Beth read out loud some of the research she'd copied on the Edwards family tree. We got to laughing so hard we couldn't stop. Here's one snippet from "Memoirs of Mississippi" found in the Neshoba County Library in Philadelphia, MS:

"Records show that James Madison Edwards, merchant and farmer, Shuqualak, Mississippi, is related to some of the best old families in Mississippi. He is a man whose enterprise, energy, and business sagacity place him among the state's most progressive citizens, destined to be long felt as a factor in all that constitutes the solid development of her grand possibilities."

Through our laughter, Carol managed to croak out, "Whose opinion is that?" and we laughed until we cried.

Mississippi. Such a land of contrasts. I love it and think of it the way Welty did: "Place conspires with the artist. We are surrounded by our own story, we live and move in it. It is through place that we put out roots."

Thank you to Pam Evans and Cousin Carol (the pretty cousin) for driving me all over the place, and thanks to the wonderful staff at the Welty House for making us feel like family.

Got home very late on Friday (thunderstorms dotted the air) and slept. Took two naps on Saturday. It's Sunday morning now, and I'm feeling rested and ready for tomorrow -- Quail Ridge Books in Raleigh, North Carolina. I hope you've rested some this weekend and are ready for twelve straight days on the road with me! I don't know this new territory -- I will need to learn a new, west-coast geography. I hope you'll help me! Here we go --

I have lost my shirt. I must have left it in the Jackson hotel. I'm pretty sure it's not here, in William Faulkner's bedroom.

I spent Thursday morning in the deep bathtub at The Alluvian, the hotel up the block from TurnRow. I padded around in my pajamas, dug another shirt out of the suitcase and, at noon, I waved goodbye to everyone at TurnRow after I paid for my books, took a last photograph of everyone, and... left my wallet on the counter.

What is it with me and wallets? Last tour-time, I left my wallet in the car as Jim dropped me at the airport and I missed my flight out of Atlanta. This time I won't realize that I don't have my wallet until we get to Oxford, two hours northeast of Greenwood. "But I'm getting ahead of myself," as Comfort Snowberger says, "let me back up. I'll start with Oxford and Rowan Oak, since that trip involved me; I witnessed it."

It was a drizzly day that turned into hard rain, but the weather held off long enough for me to soak up the powerful atmosphere at Rowan Oak.

Faulkner lived at Rowan Oak for over 30 years. He created a fictional Yoknapatwpha County for much of his fiction to inhabit, and I have, in turn, created the fictional Aurora County out my childhood summers in Mississippi.

Faulkner is one of my influences, in particular his last novel, THE REIVERS. It won the Pulitzer Prize in 1963, and I consider it his most joyful work. The story is told in a frame. Here's how it begins: "Grandfather said:" and then we launch into the story. Shortest framed beginning I ever read. And it's perfect.


We arrived at Square Books in plenty of time for my 4pm signing. I felt like the long-lost daughter, walking through the door, falling into everyone's embrace -- the entire staff embodies the passion of Peach Shuggars in EACH LITTLE BIRD THAT SINGS: "I'm just so glad to SEE you!" It does a heart good.

Jill is in the front next to Leita in the blue, and then lovely Norma. Second row is Ramona (not a pest), Kenneth, moi, and Lyn Roberts, who amazes me. They all amaze me. They are just as passionate about books as they are about greeting every person who walks through the door.
Here I am, wearing Leita's glasses so I can see, and listening to baseball stories and signing books. Thank you to everyone at Square Books, Jr. for making me feel so welcome. Thank you, Victoria Penny from First Regional Library in Hernando, for coming all the way to Oxford with Lindsly and Taylor! Thanks for the hugs, girls.

And Lord, y'all, look at this. Here is the crowd arriving for Thacker Mountain Radio. This radio program broadcasts live in Oxford on Thursdays and then rebroadcasts on Mississippi Public Radio on Saturday nights just after A Prairie Home Companion. Its tone and feel are very much like A Prairie Home Companion -- music and spoken word. A house band (so fun), a Keillor-like host (Jim Dees, who is gracious, funny and smart, and who made me look good), a guest band, and two authors who read from their work for, oh, 13-minutes or so, while keeping an eye on the producer sitting on the floor with her watch, giving signals. Two minutes! One! Wrap it up!
Here is part of the guest band, Jump Back Jack, singing a song that has Sampson in it. Yes, that Sampson. These guys were awesome, awesome, totally awesome. They're on myspace -- I'll try to find the link... well worth listening!

I *love* Thacker Mountain Radio, as does most of Oxford. They crammed into the space made when the Off Square Books staff shoved the rolling bookshelves against the wall and set up wooden folding chairs in this old warehouse of a store. What a mood! What a celebration! What nerves! I was the first reader. I read chapters one and two of THE AURORA COUNTY ALL-STARS. I had plenty of time to let the story spin out, to read it in the style of the grand southern storyteller who is telling the story, read it to a room full of grand southern readers and storytellers alike. As a friend of mine says, "It don't get much better than that."
This picture of me reading (do I look stunned, or what? I didn't realize the crowd would be so large. I didn't realize there would BE a crowd. Somehow I'd gotten my mental wires crossed and had started thinking "studio" and then, here was this gorgeous crowd of fine folks!) This picture is dark. Don't spend time here. Look below at Billy Southern reading from his wonderful new book, DOWN IN NEW ORLEANS: Reflections from a Drowned City.
This was my book purchase at Square Books. I had Billy sign a copy for my daughter Hannah, who has been working in New Orleans during her college breaks. Billy still lives in New Orleans (he evacuated to Oxford and then moved back home) and is a passionate lover of his city. He inscribed Hannah's book: "Thanks for coming to work! Stay! We need you!"

After signing stock for Square Books, Jim Allen and I took off into the rain soaked night (the vestiges of Hurricane Humberto). We stopped at Taylor's Grocery for a catfish dinner. We stopped in Greenwood to retrieve my wallet. The folks at TurnRow had boxed up my wallet and sent it over to The Alluvian, where it was waiting for me behind the desk. We went only an hour (ha!) out of our way to get it. Have you ever done this sort of bone-headed thing? I'll bet you have. I know I can't be the only one to have left her wallet -- twice -- and have been lucky enough to have retrieved it whole.

Thank you, driver Jim Allen, for taking such good care of me on this trip, and especially for being a calming presence yesterday, all day, and almost all night! It was after midnight when we pulled into the parking lot at the hotel in Jackson -- same place I stayed on Tuesday night -- where I sit now, catching you up. My friend Pam is meeting me in a few minutes. We'll have breakfast and go to Eudora Welty's home. Then, a family lunchtime and a trip to the airport, and home for the weekend before we begin again on Monday.

But before I do anything else, I'm going to scoot to the front desk and inquire after my shirt.

Wednesday morning Jim Allen picked me up and we drove to Medgar Evers' home. If you've seen "Ghosts of Mississippi," you'll recognize the house. I wanted to pay homage. As many years as I'd been coming to Jackson to visit my parents, I had never sought out this house, but today it felt important to go there.
For one thing, I'm getting ready to write a trilogy of novels about the 1960s for Harcourt, and I want to soak up as much as I can of the Sixties, remember what I can, learn what I can, and pay my respects to people black and white who worked for change in the Sixties. Medgar Evers was one of those people. After a few solemn photos and a silent namaste, Jim Allen and I take ourselves north, into the Delta. We have a two-hour drive to Greenwood and TurnRow Book Company. Here was our scenic drive.










It's corn harvesting, cotton picking time in the Delta. This country is the setting of my favorite novel of all time, DELTA WEDDING by Eudora Welty.










What a difference, what another world, as we enter downtown Greenwood, and step into TurnRow Book Company:










The Viking Range Corporation is headquartered in Greenwood. Fred Carl, president and founder, is transforming Greenwood -- here is a fascinating article about his work. He is a partner in TurnRow along with Jamie and Kelly Kornegay, who welcome me and whisk me off to Pillow Academy, where I'm scheduled to talk with students.








The students at Pillow are full of questions. I tell them how I turned my brother into a girl in LOVE, RUBY LAVENDER, and I read them Comfort's "Top Ten Tips for First-Rate Funeral Behavior." I read them "How to Hit the Ball" from THE AURORA COUNTY ALL-STARS. Rule number one: "Remove all tiaras." We laugh and laugh together, hugs all around, and I tell them I'll see them later at TurnRow -- and I do.

Jamie and Kelly have put together a day for teachers and students and their community. My visit to Pillow brought kids in with their parents after school. Parents smiled and wagged fingers at me: "Taylor told me I HAD to come here!" What lovely, obliging parents! Teachers were invited to come for their own hour before the signing, and one thing blended into another with the brownies and the sweet tea. Jamie and I hung out long after it was over while I signed a ton of stock -- I was so surprised at how many books Kelly had purchased. "I really believe in these books," she said of all three novels, "and I'll sell them." She took baby Bayard home to 3-year-old sister Sophie. I told Jamie I'd settle up with him the next morning -- he had pulled books for me to look at. I knew he'd have a good selection of books about Mississippi, the civil rights movement, the blues, and more. I'll take a look this morning before we head to Oxford. I wish I had time to visit the juke joints and blues treasures of the Delta! I'll come back.

Here are some Pillow Academy readers Ellie, Julia, Catherine, Taylor, Mary Brian, and Anna (That's Jamie Kornegay in the background, watching folks come up the stairs and find seats), and here is Kelly Kornegay with Sweetheart Sophie (another Sophie), who is Maudie's daughter, and who helps out at TurnRow.










We had a marvelous evening. I signed and chatted for a while, spoke for a bit and read from ALL-STARS, signed some more, and folks floated toward home. We hung out, as southerners will do, and kept on talking, celebrating stories.
I was thrilled to get my own copy of DELTA LAND signed by a Maude Schyler Clay (may we call her Maudie?) -- I fell in love with her work -- and with her -- right away. We Southerners revere our writers, especially those who are courageous enough to capture our landscape and our hearts truthfully, as Maude has in her beautiful book of photographs.

William Faulkner captured us, too. I am on the way to pay another sort of homage as I visit Faulkner's home, Rowan Oak, in Oxford. Then, a signing at one of my favorite bookstores, Square Books. And after that, listen for me (soon!) on Thacker Mountain Radio, as I'll spend a little time with those folks after my Square Books signing. It's going to be a full day. I so appreciate all of you who have written me both here and in my email inbox... it has lifted my overfull heart! It is essential, when going on journey, to take friends. Thank you.

See you in Oxford!

Coming to Mississippi IS coming home. I spent my childhood summers in Jasper County, Mississippi, with my grandmother (the real Miss Eula of LOVE, RUBY LAVENDER) and a cast of characters who couldn't wait to see me. I'll will see some of them before the day is out.

I was up at 4am Tuesday morning and to the Atlanta airport early, only to sit for an hour with flight delays. Still, got to Jackson, Mississippi in good time. Jim Allen was waiting for me. Jim toted me around Mississippi two years ago on the LITTLE BIRD tour. When he heard I was going to high tea at the Brandon library one afternoon, he commissioned his friend Barry to pick me up at the hotel in his 1959 Silver Cloud Rolls Royce. You can read more about it here (where you'll find the LITTLE BIRD tour journal archived).

I didn't ride in the Rolls today, but I was in good hands. I hopped inside Jim's red Ford Explorer for the trip to nearby Clinton, where I was scheduled to spend some time with third-graders at Northside Elementary School, a grade two-three school.



Librarian Tammy King had contacted Harcourt about having me visit at the same time we were wrestling with a last-minute schedule change in the tour, so here we came -- Tammy got busy preparing her students, and I seized this opportunity to read from my Mississippi stories with a Mississippi audience.



I'm setting up my slides. Here come the third graders. What a great group of kids -- totally attentive and eager to hear stories... "Put your hands in the yoga of writing," I say. They do. "Every one of you has a story to tell. So many stories. What are they?" And I read about my grandmother, about a little girl who has been to 247 funerals, about a big shaggy black dog who loves everyone, and about two boys who want to play baseball... all stories from my life, and yet all made up. Personal narrative turned into fiction. Something like that. We laughed a lot.



Saying goodbye: Parent Coordinator Jimmie Sue Stringer, Tammy King, me, Assistant Principal Joy Tyner, and Principal Stacy Adcock who has a gracious heart and a younger brother named Casey ("I think my mother wanted twin girls."). Thank you all so much!



Here are Tammy and Stacy again on the right. On the far left is student teacher Amanda Eldridge Helmintoller, standing next to her mentor, Janet Medders. Janet teaches at the local middle school. Amanda is doing her student teaching at Northside and is a student at the University of Southern Misssissippi. Heads up, Ellen Ruffin! Amanda confirms that you are a stellar teacher yourself, in addition to being the curator of the de Grummond collection.

Jim Allen and I grab lunch with his mother -- fried green tomato sandwiches. (Welcome to the land of Fried Everything.) We make a quick stop at Pentimento, a lovely independent bookstore in Clinton that Jim thinks I would love to see. He's right.



Each bookstore has its own personality. Look at this one! VERY Southron. Lots of southern writers and southern charm. Squint hard and you'll see a poster of Eudora Welty in the background.

Here, I'll bring it closer. I'm going to the Welty Home on Friday -- stick around for a tour of the house and gardens.



Here's Jim Allen with Marilyn Poindexter of Pentimento. Owner Toni Wall was out when we stopped in.



Back in Jackson, I checked into my hotel and spent two hours lying across the bed in my pajamas. Then I was ready for the legendary Lemuria Books.

When I visited Lemuria in 2005, children's buyer Yvonne Rogers had me at a little table in the front of the store, where she tenaciously introduced me to every person who walked by. This time I occupy the golden, lamp-lighted signing area in the back of the store and we have a lovely crowd of parents, kids, librarians and teachers who come in looking for me. How very nice.



This is the enthusiastic Emily Hardin (Yvonne and teacher Sherry McWhorter are watching), whose guided reading group is reading LOVE, RUBY LAVENDER. She's taking this photo of her stellar students Anne Carrie, Marlee, and Sarah (hmmm... Sarah might be wrong -- correct me!)

Readers brought their copies of RUBY and LITTLE BIRD to be signed. Payton (not pictured) told me she's going to be a writer. I believe her. She already is.



There was a fair amount of mayhem, actually (sorry, Yvonne!), and my family was there in all their gorgeous glory... just look at how collected we seem here, when it's all over! I feel about these folks the way that Eudora Welty describes family in her novel DELTA WEDDING: "These cousins were the sensations of life."


Here's the fabulous staff at Lemuria: Sarah Ryburn Stainton, Jennifer Meador, Mark Regan, moi, and Yvonne Rogers.

I asked for good books. Yvonne sold me INDIAN SUMMER: The Secret History of The End of an Empire by Alex Von Tunzelmann (can't wait to read this) and, for my grandgirls, IF I WERE A TREE (Brown Dog Books) by Dar Hosta, and SWING! (College of DuPage Press) by Pamela Klein, both of which I adore. "You're not going to find these in just any bookstore," said Yvonne. "We take the time to find books that are special, that not everyone will have..."

Yes, they do. Hand selling is such an art. I love being hand sold. :>

Then -- can you stand it? One more picture of one more event.

Supper with the Brandon librarians who made the tea party possible during the LITTLE BIRD tour, and who have tirelessly promoted Deborah Wiles books, and who are beloved by me. Cousin Carol is in the white blouse at the head of the table. Jo McDivitt, editor of "Today's Mississippi Woman," is wearing the straw hat. These are the women who put books into the hands of young Mississippi readers. Namaste! (Just for the record, I did eat the pimento cheese fritters and the eggplant fries.)

It's early Wednesday morning as I write this. Jim Allen picks me up in two hours. We're going to travel highway 49 to Greenwood. I want to ride through the country I'm about to write about in my next novel for Harcourt. By lunchtime we'll be at Turnrow Books, a new bookstore, smack in the middle of the Delta. I'll tell you all about it.

First things first, though. I ordered breakfast delivered to my room this morning -- I'm a genius for thinking of this last night. And, I'll ask Jim to make a stop at the nearest Walgreens for water, Ricola lozenges, and some Throat Coat tea. Gotta fortify myself for the days ahead. I'm already pretty pruned up. I hope you'll come along with a puffy prune on the next day's adventure.

It's like Oz, where I'm headed -- somewhere over the rainbow. Places I've never been, people I've never met -- but no strangers. In Book-Tour Oz, we are all kin.

If you are making your way to this journal for the first time, you'll see I've been practicing, in anticipation of your arrival. You can familiarize yourself with the room by scrolling down this page.

You'll find the tour schedule on the left -- hope I'm coming to a theater near you! You can easily sign up to receive journal entries in your email inbox each day. (And you can easily quit whenever you want.) You can sign up to have this blog added to your feedreader. You can just pop in and visit when you feel like it. I'll keep the front room picked up and make sure there's a pitcher of sweet tea in the fridge.

Scroll down and you'll read about the road trip that intrepid Harcourt book rep Michael Hill and I took to The Happy Bookseller in Columbia, South Carolina last Thursday.

You'll read about my love affair with Sandy Koufax and the 1960s Los Angeles Dodgers and see how my admiration finds it way into ALL-STARS. (And take a look at the comments -- you'll see that I wasn't the only fan in love with Koufax!)

You'll see how I spent my summer -- and learn some about my family, Atlanta, and my new.... husband. (Hint: it's not Sandy Koufax. But he's fine...so fine... and it's his birthday today. Happy Birthday, Jim!)

You'll meet wonderful North Carolina teachers who are writing their personal narratives.

You'll find that I'm just as nervous about this tour as I say I'm not. Something like that -- do read "Shirley Jackson and the Book Tour." You'll find that I'm excited, too. Those opposites that Uncle Edisto speaks about in LITTLE BIRD... they catch me up every time.

And if you scroll to the bottom (not far), you'll read Pat Grant's thoughts on why THE AURORA COUNTY ALL-STARS is a great American novel. Bless your heart, Pat.

Pat and Elisabeth Grant-Gibson own Windows, A Bookshop in Monroe, Lousiana. I met them on tour with LITTLE BIRD in 2005. These women -- and their staff, and their community -- are amazing. They host The Book Report every Wednesday morning -- "A scintillating once-a-week, one-hour radio magazine about books originating live from the KMLB studios in Monroe." Check them out!

I'm going to check out a suitcase. I'll be living out of it until the end of September. I can't wait to clap eyes on old friends, make new ones, and bring stories back with me to tell for years to come. I tell my students that every moment we live is our story. And each person's story is important -- it connects us to all of our stories. Walt Whitman knew it:

"Come, said the muse, sing me a song no poet has yet chanted; sing me the universal."

I'll back up quickly before we move forward, and tell you about our intimate gathering at Little Shop of Stories in Decatur, Georgia on August 25 -- a steamy summer Saturday. Owner Diane Capriola put the word out to area writers and teachers, and that's who showed up for a lovely hour and a half of talking shop, reading from ALL-STARS, and munching on Crackerjacks -- House Jackson, age 12, is a Crackerjack baseball pitcher, or so we're told in chapter one of THE AURORA COUNTY ALL-STARS.

Here is something I've learned about book signings: Every book signing, every bookstore, every bookstore owner is so different. Each owner's vision is different, and each audience creates a kind of personality or character that the author must read and respond to. Figuring out what works best in each unique community is a puzzle and a challenge for the bookstore owner. If that owner is very good at this puzzling, it's a gift to the author. Here's Diane behind the desk, smiling that knowing smile.

When Diane called me a little over two years ago to introduce herself and tell me she was opening an independent children's bookstore in Decatur, Georgia, I said, "good luck!" And I meant it sincerely, as I'd heard about independent bookstores closing across the country. I had no idea how tenacious Diane and her business partner Dave would be. Just one example: Jake's Ice Cream is adjacent to Little Shop -- no wall separates the two businesses and customers mingle back and forth between the two. "The books will get sticky," people said. They didn't. The comfy couches between Jake's and Little Shop have housed many an intimate author talk, ice cream sometimes included.

Hmmm, I think, as we settle into the furniture. Lots of writers in this bunch; some teachers, a few kids. Punt. We talk about the writing process, the choppy sea of publishing, do we need agents? and then savvy reader-mom Kim says, "This is all well and good, but what about your characters? How do you create them?"

I learn how to read from ALL-STARS -- something I'll be discovering the entire time I'm on tour. I try to relate the adults' questions to the kids' fidget factor so I don't lose either. I eat my Moon Pie.

Then I sign books. I discover that Dr. Pearl McHaney from Georgia State is here. Dr. McHaney is a Eudora Welty scholar; the ancient, wrinkly, lovable pug dog in ALL-STARS is named Eudora Welty. Diane! You called the Eudora Welty Society! See what I mean? Bookstore owners find the most interesting, unusual threads to follow when setting up a signing, just as readers unravel their most personal, internal threads as they devour a book and make it their own.

I'm going to devour ELIJAH OF BUXTON by Christopher Paul Curtis and THE WEDNESDAY WARS by Gary Schmidt, the two books I purchase from Diane. I'll get lost in the worlds those authors create for me, and then I'll pass them (the books and the worlds) on to Logan, one of the most discerning 12-year-old readers I know.

I've been home from Columbia and Happy Bookseller for three days. I've done my laundry, watered my garden, cut my hair, paid the bills, cleaned out my email inbox (a first), watched the Justin Timberlake concert on television with my daughter, and lay on a blanket under the stars with my husband (still such a new word!).

The Tour Packet arrived via FedEx from Harcourt. In it are luscious lists of bookstores, schools, libraries, events, signing confirmations, flight numbers, media escort cell phones, hotel reservations, an itinerary as long -- longer! -- than my arm.

It's official. It's a tour. Here we go.

I started this post on Friday -- how did it get to be Saturday already?? Let me explain. No, eez too much -- let me sum up.

Chickens! On Thursday (after hot-footin' it out the door) I drove to LOVE, RUBY LAVENDER territory -- Comer, Georgia -- where Michael Hill farms and sells books for Harcourt.

Michael covers the southern region for Harcourt -- Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia, the Carolinas, Florida (whew) and puts many miles on his car each season as he visits booksellers across the South, showcasing Harcourt's latest catalogs (both adult and children's titles). Michael and his long-time sweetheart Melissa (who also used to be a sales rep for Harcourt, and who owned a children's bookstore in Athens before that) have an organic farm in Comer, and live their lives as considerate partners with the earth, animals, minerals, vegetables... and books.

Here's part of the Harcourt Southern Region Sales Office, next to the chicken coop and near the John Deere (Melissa shows off a stack of this season's books):
Two years ago, when Michael and I did this part of the book tour together with EACH LITTLE BIRD THAT SINGS, there were four dogs who greeted me joyfully as I arrived at the farm. Now there are three. Spiffy (Bo-Bo's mother) died an old-age death, but Bo-Bo, Alice, and Hale-Bopp swarmed around my car as I arrived on Thursday morning. These gentle dogs were my inspiration for Eudora Welty, the loveable old dog (who does not disappear! Have I redeemed myself?!) in THE AURORA COUNTY ALL-STARS.

Here's Alice wondering why Michael and Melissa are sitting outside in the middle of the day holding chickens. It's a board meeting, Alice (note rooster in background):









Recalcitrant board members:










And here's the house:
We're on our way to The Happy Bookseller in Columbia, South Carolina, a three-hour drive. Owners Andy and Carrie Graves have set 5pm as the time when kids, teachers, and parents will come hear the debut of THE AURORA COUNTY ALL-STARS. After the signing, Michael and I will grab some supper before we head back home. It will be 10:30pm when we return to Comer. The chickens will be roosting in the hen house. The ducks will be back in the barn. I will pat Alice on the head, hug Michael, and drive home. It will be midnight as I pull into my driveway, back home in Tucker, Georgia. It will have been a day well-spent -- good conversation, good friends... and a good signing, too.

Here is the staff at Happy Bookseller in Columbia:

From left: Compton, Todd, Carrie (holding Henry, who will have a little brother by Thanksgiving), Thomas, and Andy.

At 5pm we shared stories. I told the assembled crowd that my books are fiction, but they come out of my history, my life, my personal (narrative!) stories. I read snippets from all three novels, and recited some of FREEDOM SUMMER... oh, and I sang ONE WIDE SKY. That book has music to go with its 88 words, thanks to my husband (still getting used to that word!) Jim Pearce. Kids had great questions, and great stories about playing baseball, which of course is part of what ALL-STARS is about (baseball, that is). I forgot to take photos of the comfortable crowd of kids, teachers, and parents, but I did think to dig out my camera as I was signing books.

Here's Kitty. Hellooooo, Kitty!

Kitty is an thespian and so is 14-year-old Finesse Schotz in ALL-STARS. "I'd be the perfect Finesse!" said Kitty. I have to agree, she's got the outfits down.








Here are Endea and Errin, sisters, with their mom.

Beautiful.








And beautiful is Makenzie, who plays outfield on her Little League team:

It was so good to hang out and catch up with the folks at Happy Bookseller again. Columbia has a great indie in Happy Bookseller. Andy and Carrie partner with the schools and community to bring stories to readers throughout South Carolina -- good work.

I came home with books, too: I was excited to find THE ECHO MAKER by Richard Powers in paperback. (More on Powers' work at some point.) Michael Hill recommended MISTER PIP by Lloyd Jones, about a man who begins reading GREAT EXPECTATIONS to a group of children on a tropical island... their lives transform. A have a character named Pip in ALL-STARS. I named him after the orphan in GREAT EXPECTATIONS, a book I loved in high school and studied again as I readied to write the serial story that would become THE AURORA COUNTY ALL-STARS. Michael also gifted me with THE THEORY OF CLOUDS by Stephane Audeguy -- I'm looking forward to reading this one, too.

So this was the first stop on the travelin' book tour. I'm home for the weekend and will catch a flight to Jackson, Mississippi on Tuesday, where I'll begin a four-day whirlwind of schools, libraries, and bookstores -- do come with me as I head for Faulkner and Welty territory (we'll visit Rowan Oak and the Welty Home together) and family (and, Lord, you'll meet them, too). My stories take place in Mississippi, that land of those opposites Uncle Edisto talks about in EACH LITTLE BIRD THAT SINGS. I'm heading for the homeland.

I woke at 4 (as usual) and got up (as usual) and went back to bed at 6:30 (uh-oh) "just for a few minutes." Wrong.

Hot-footin' it out the door this morning for the second "Day 1" of THE AURORA COUNTY ALL-STARS tour. The first "Day 1" was right here in Atlanta, at Little Shop of Stories on August 25. That was our kick-off (and I have pictures to share)... now we have one day in Columbia, SC, then home for the weekend.

I'm driving to Michael Hill's house. Michael lives just outside Athens, where he takes care of booksellers in Harcourt's southern region. We'll drive to Columbia together this afternoon for a 5pm signing, then drive back. We did this two years ago for LITTLE BIRD's tour as well -- I'm so looking forward to catching up with Michael and introducing him to you -- if he'll allow me to do that. So stay tuned, come with me, and let's see what develops at Happy Bookseller in Columbia.

One thing I've decided I want to do on this tour is purchase books for a 12-year-old boy named Logan, a 7-year-old girl named Olivia, and a new baby girl named Delaney -- my grandkids. Got book suggestions? Send them my way, please! And do tell me -- what should *I* be reading this season?

Gotta go -- come with me!