Mary Kay Andrews

Nobody in our family knows exactly where my late mother got her carrot cake recipe, but it’s a good one. For years she made it for every special family occasion. In fact, when she died, the son of a close family friend leaned over to his mother at the funeral and asked “who’s gonna make the carrot cake at Thanksgiving now?” As it turned out, my sister Susie stepped right into the carrot cake-baking role. The first Christmas after Mom was gone, we were all down at her house–including Wyatt, our English setter. Susie baked the three carrot cake layers, and she and I went out to do some last minute Christmas shopping. When we got back, we noticed that one of the cake layers had large gaps. And Wyatt had tell-tale carrot crumbs on his snout. She dog-cussed Wyatt, but she still had a large bag of carrots, so she baked another cake, put it in the oven, and we gave my husband instructions to take the cake out of the oven when the timer buzzed. We went out to do some grocery shopping. You know what happened next. We got back, there was a football game on television, and my husband hadn’t even heard the timer dinging for at least 30 minutes. The cakes were as hard as hockey pucks. Back to the grocery store for more carrots. On the third try we finally got it right. After my sister’s death in a car accident this summer, I wasn’t certain I was up to making the carrot cake. But it was Easter, and we had family coming over, and really–can you even have Easter dinner without carrot cake? I dug through my file box of recipe cards and found the carrot cake card–grease splattered, but readable. And even though I was helping give a 50th birthday party for my friend, I managed to get the carrot cake baked and iced. It was a beauty, that cake. Three layers, with maple cream cheese frosting. I put it on the sideboard in the dining room, and off we went to the birthday party, leaving Boomerang Boy home with the dogs. When we got home, Andy was still asleep on the sofa, and Mr. Mary Kay announced his intention of having himself a slice of midnight carrot cake. But somebody had beaten him to it. A quarter of the cake had been gnawed away. Wyatt did not deny his complicity. And even though Weezie is not tall enough to reach the top of the sideboard, I know she was involved, so I am counting her as an unindicted co-conspirator. We shaved off the gnawed on portions of the cake, and served it yesterday, with full disclosure about Wyatt’s crime. Fortunately, all our family members love dogs–and carrot cake, so nobody seemed to mind. Besides, I’d made a pound cake too, to be served with fresh strawberries and whipped cream. All in all, it ended up being a very nice Easter Sunday.

Here’s the recipe for Sue’s Carrot Cake

Pre-heat oven to 350. Grease and flour three 8-inch cake pans

4 eggs
1 cup vegetable oil
2 cups flour
2 cups sugar
2 tsp. baking soda
1 tsp. salt
2 tsp. cinnamon
4 cups grated carrots
1/2 cup chopped pecans

Combine eggs and oil and beat ’til frothy. Beat in sugar. Combine flour, baking soda, salt and cinnamon, and add to wet mixture in 3 batches. Mix in carrots and pecans. Bake for 25-30 minutes, or ’til firm to touch. Cool completely on wire rack–out of range of marauding dogs.
Frost with:

1 lg. package cream cheese
1 stick softened margarine
1 lb. box confectioner’s sugar
1 tsp. vanilla
1 tsp. maple flavoring
milk or cream as needed.

Combine softened cream cheese and margarine. Beat in confectioner’s sugar, add vanilla and maple flavoring. If frosting is too stiff, add up to 1 Tbsp. milk or cream. Store cake away from dogs and hungry husbands.

Touring for a new book reinforces for me the fact that I love books. I love writing ’em, selling ’em, meeting the people who read ’em, and the people who sell them. Last night I had the priviledge of signing at The Book Exchange in Marietta. Book Exchange owner Cathy Blanco has to be one of the hardest-working booksellers I know. Her shop is small, and true to the name, they sell used–as well as new–books. Now, some writers absolutely hate the idea of a used bookstore. Not me. I know from experience that somebody who picks up a used copy of one of my books for a buck or two will usually decide they really need to buy my new hardback as soon as it comes out. Or, maybe they’re a working mom or retiree who can only afford to feed their habit by buying used books. I’m good with that. Cathy has become well known with authors in the Atlanta area, especially romance writers, because she and her staff really know how to move books. For DEEP DISH, Cathy decided to throw a wingding of a party. She charged five bucks a head, took reservations and when the reservations started flooding in, she went to work. She put her wooden bookcases on wheels so she could move them to the sides of the shop to make room for folding chairs for her customers to sit in. One of her workers, Theresa, made a huge vat of chicken salad–with grapes–mmmm! Somebody else made cheese straws. You can’t have a party in the South without chicken salad and cheese straws. I think there’s an ordinance. Then, because Cathy always tries to have refreshments that tie in with the theme of the book, she made two of the tomato soup chocolate cakes that figure in the plot of DEEP DISH. She had fried pork rinds–which also figure into the book, and Moonpies, because the dog in the book is named Moonpie. She served wine, and Diet Coke–because I drink a lot of Diet Coke when I’m working. And the people came. More than a hundred of them, lined up outside the Book Exchange, chatting with their girlfriends, co-workers, their sisters and their mamas. Two of my college roommates, Nancy and Sheryl came too, and I got to see the snapshots of Nancy’s daughter Stephanie’s wedding, which I missed because I was on tour. We laughed and sipped wine, took snapshots, scarfed down the cake, and “visited.” That’s what we call it. “Visiting.” As in, “Lorraine and I drank about a gallon of appletinies, and then we visited about what kind of shoes we would wear to that hussy Veronica’s wedding shower. And we decided we would both wear our new lime green slingback spikes, just to show Veronica we don’t care that she didn’t ask us to be in her wedding.” Now, “visiting” is different from “fellowshipping.” I think mostly Baptists do fellowshipping. At our party last night, we had die-hard Southerners and Yankees and Midwesterners, and everybody visited and played nice. One woman confided in me that she had discovered the difference between women from the North and women from the South. “If you act ugly, a Yankee will call you a bitch to your face,” she told me. “But, now, a Southerner, she’ll just set her mouth, pat you on the arm and murmur ‘Bless your heart.’ “

My father’s name was John Patrick Hogan, and he was first generation Irish-American, from the southside of Chicago, where he grew up in the shadow of the stockyards. He was what they call “black Irish” with curly coal-black hair and brown eyes. He had the Irish wit, loved to tell jokes and stories, drink beer, and he never met a stranger. Like the rest of his family, he loved to read the obituaries, which he always called “the Irish sportspage.” I’ve been thinking about my dad a lot today. Years ago, when my husband and I moved to Savannah, which has the second-largest St. Patrick’s Day parade in the country, my parents came to visit us for the big weekend. We went to mass in the Cathedral of St. John the Baptist, which is the way all true Irish-Catholic start the big day in Savannah. The church was a sea of green, and I remember many of the men had sprigs of heather pinned to their jacket lapels. Afterwards, we watched the parade, and I remember Daddy nearly fell down laughing when one band came around the square. The band was from a large high school in a rural South Georgia county. As they rounded the square, where the Archbishop and most of the priests from the diocese were seated in the VIP reviewing stand, they broke into a surefire crowd-pleasing number by KC and the Sunshine Band. Yes, complete with appropriate choreography, the band played “SHAKE YOUR BOOTIE”–and all 100-plus shook their booties at the assembled priests, nuns and Archbishop. I think perhaps that band did not get an invitation to march the next year. If you’re looking for an appropriately seasonal book to read for St. Patrick’s Day, you might try IRISH EYES, the last one of the Callahan Garrity mysteries, which I published under my “real” name, which is Kathy Hogan Trocheck.

Being Catholic–and Irish–I am deeply superstitious. So when DEEP DISH made the New York Times bestseller list at #13 for the week of Mar. 16, I was thrilled–but also cognizant of the fact that I would be getting my comeuppance fairly soon. I spent the week surreptitioiusly looking over my shoulder. And yesterday, the list came out. My editor, Carolyn, and my agent, Stuart, warned me that we would probably drop down the list. And they were right. We slipped down to #18. Still on the list, although the extended list. They tried to comfort me. The list is top-heavy with the biggest names in publishing right now. John Grisham. James Patterson (and a co-writer), Nora Roberts (writing as J.D. Robb), Stephen King, Danielle Steel, Ken Follett. Just to add icing to the cake, four MORE heavy hitters had new books released last week. Names like Jodi Picoult, Anne Rice and Jeffrey Archer. Now, before you start prescribing Prozac and pep talks, let me admit that DEEP DISH is still selling really well. People are coming to my signings, and, as Sally Field famously said, “you like me. You really like me.” Personally, I have always liked Sally Field. But then, I have a high tolerance for perkiness. I liked Sally when she was Gidget, and I liked her when she co-starred in SMOKEY AND THE BANDIT, and had that subsequent, unfortunate relationship with Burt Reynolds. I loved her in STEEL MAGNOLIAS. Oh, but I digress. This whiney, self-absorbed, incredibly needy rant is about me. Right? So, here is how I have managed to rationalize my slippage. Jodi Picoult. Writes sad, heart-wrenching books about family dysfunction. It’s an election year. We, as a nation, are absolutely wallowing in sadness and dysfunction. (i.e. The Spitzer affair, et al). Jeffrey Archer. Former disgraced and jailed member of parliament writes sexy sizzlers. (see Spitzer, as above). Anne Rice. Writer of scary, sexy Vampire books, atheist turned born-again Catholic, comes out with a book called–no kidding, CHRIST THE LORD. Right before Holy Week. Coincidence? You be the judge.

One more night on the road. I love book tours, but sometimes these hotel rooms start to close in on you, and I start to miss Mr. Mary Kay, and the Boomerang Boy, and Weezie and Wyatt. And to be truthful, I miss my pillows. My own, big, fluffy down pillows. But mostly it’s all good. I haven’t zeroed out any signings on this tour. YET. Of course, it’s threatening to snow this afternoon and evening in Birmingham, where I still have two more signings today. We Southerners are notoriously snow-shy. It’s not that we’re weather weenies. We brave hailstorms and tornadoes and droughts, and heat waves. You’ve never been hot ’til you’ve been stuck in a traffic jam on I-285 in August with an air conditioner on the fritz. But we have snow so seldom down here, most towns and counties don’t have snowplows. And the only people with snow tires are transplanted Yankees–who love to tell us how they do it “up home.” Helpful Hint–Never, ever, offer to tell a Southerner “how we do it up home,” unless you enjoy getting the death-eye. In Atlanta, if even the teensiest flake falls, we rush to the stores for milk, bread and videos. Also beer, and in my case, chocolate. My reasoning is–they have tons of snow in Switzerland, and everybody knows the Swiss are famous for chocolate–hello? ever hear of Swiss Miss? So the only way to guarantee you’ll make it through a snowstorm is to lay in an emergency supply of chocolate. My hope is that everybody in Birmingham will rush out to get chocolate and milk and bread, and then they’ll realize they should also stop by a bookstore and buy DEEP DISH. And then, tomorrow, I’m hoping the folks in Greenwood Mississippi will turn out at Turnrow Books, where a real live chef will make the tomato soup chocolate cake from DEEP DISH. After that, I’m headin’ home. Another reason I’m looking forward to going home is that this is Scott’s Antique Market in Atlanta. I’ve missed the last three months of Scott’s, so I am not about to skip going out there Sunday with the junk posse–snow or no snow.

I had a wake-up call at 4:20 a.m. to make my flight out of Memphis to Kansas City. So when I finally got to my hotel here, I was dog-tired. I read some e-mails, had some lunch, read, took a nap. And then at 3:30 p.m. there’s a knock at my door. Tired, cranky, I demanded to know who was there. “Guest relations” the man said. His disembodied voice reminded me of the old “Land Shark” routine from Saturday Night Live. Remember? “Candygram”? Anywho, I went to the door, opened it, and there was a man standing there with a tray of huge chocolate chip cookies and chocolate covered strawberries and grapes, all drizzled with white chocolate. Apparently this is one of the perks you get when staying on the concierge level at the Sheraton here. I was happily munching away when my cell rang. It was Stuart, the best damned agent in the world, posing an odd question. “What’s the luckiest number?” he demanded. “Dunno,” I said. And then he hollered “Thirteen, as in DEEP DISH is number 13 on the New York Times Bestseller List!”
I think they heard me screeching clear over in St. Louis. And I know the people on the floor below me thought there were elephants roller skating overhead when they heard the sounds of me doing the happy dance all over my hotel room. My past three books have made it to the extended NYT list, but never the printed list before.I am over the moon. Wow! Chocolate covered chocolate chip cookies and my first trip to the PRINTED New York Times list, all in the space of half an hour. Life is very, very sweet tonight. Also fattening. So thanks, kind readers, for buying my books, and telling your friends, and coming out to see me in DC, Raleigh, Souther Pines, Atlanta, Memphis and Kansas City–at the very cool Rainy Day Books, and everyplace else. Tomorrow, on to Birmingham. Y’all come!

The Peabody ducks have been put to bed for the night, and so have I. It was raining when I got into Memphis last night–and snowing when Iwoke up this morning. I did a television interview on WREG this morning. One of the hosts, Marybeth Conley, had actually read most of DEEP DISH! You have no idea how unusual this is with television interviewers. Generally, they have so many authors and guests coming and going, they’re doing well to get my name straight, let alone actually READ the book. Refreshing! I lolled around in my room most of the day, doing some internet stuff, then left for my signing at Davis-Kidd Booksellers. I got down to the hotel lobby just in time to see the ducks parading back down the red carpet from the fountain We had a nice crowd for this lousy weather, so thanks Memphis! Then it was back to the hotel, room service dinner, a glass of cheap chardonnay and a dial-up movie. I chose 27 DRESSES, becuz, well, I was in a chick-flick mood. But I’m sorry to say I didn’t love 27 Dresses. Mostly becuz they threw every chick-flick cliche in the book at this one–the meet cute between adorable not-so-plain Jane and adorable, cynical journalist Kevin, the sarcastic, slutty half-drunk best friend, the cliched bad bridesmaid dresses, the selfish gorgeous drop-dead blonde sister–played by a Cameron Diaz wannabe actress. We even had the hunky eco-conscious yet unbelievably clueless boss George, and the beaming, hard-working hardware-store owning Dad. I could see pieces of about ten different chick-flick movies in the past few years in this movie. And you know–it kinda pisses me off. Movie people throw together a stale casserole of a script and cast likeable actors in it, and rake in the dough. And chick-flick loving people like me watch it anyway, in the hopes that maybe, just this once, they’ll get it right. Next time, I’ll just wait til I get home and watch When Harry Met Sally. Tomorrow–on to Kansas City and Rainy Day Books.

If it’s Sunday, this must be Atlanta. Today was catch up day. Time to unload my suitcase. Unload the dishwasher. Open the mail. Read e-mail. Do laundry. Watch the clip of myself on CNN.com from last week. Yikes! Remind me not to watch myself on television. Ever. Again. I look like a ginormous yellow school bus in my yellow jacket, which I thought was so cute and spring-like. But here’s the link, just in case you need to feel superior to certain schoolbus-like Atlanta-based authors. My sister-in-law Jeanne has moved back to Atlanta as of this weekend, so we had a wonderful leisurely brunch at a great restaurant in Decatur, Cafe Lily. Food is always yummy, prices great, service friendly. Then a walk around the neighborhood, as it was a glorious sunny day in Atlanta. The DEEP DISH signings have been wonderful. We had a great crowd at Quail Ridge Books in Raleigh, in fact, it was standing room only. Sitting in the front row were my Scribblers buddies, Sarah Shaber, Bryn Witchger, Margaret Maron, Diane Chamberlain, and of course, QRB owner Nancy Olson, who runs just the best independent bookstore around. We all had dinner beforehand, including another scribbler, Katy Munger, and her daughter Zusu. Also checking in at the QRB signing were the Pink Posse, a group of fun-loving gals who once tailgated a talk and signing I did at a library in Raleigh. They all sat in the front row sipping bottles of orange juice–which I later found out were spiked with likker! They brought me my very own kit for their “Carolina Delightful Cocktail”–which includes Cranberry Juice too. I had a chance to see lots of old friends even tho I was only in Raleigh for a day. I shopped at my friend Beth’s KnickKnack Paddywack. To celebrate the publication of DEEP DISH I bought myself a teensy little sterling silver trophy. I have 3 others like this one, two of which I picked up on our antiqueing trip to England a couple years ago. Also bought a really unusual piece of the blue and white transferware that I love–a sardine dish. It is rectangular, attached to a plate, and has a lid. It’ll never see a sardine at my house–I wouldn’t touch ’em with a ten-foot-pole. I had fun arranging my new pretties on my
Welsh cupboard. Beth and I are plotting a May trip to the Brimfield Antique Market. Also checked in with Roi, my hairdresser in Raleigh, who sat me down, re-colored and re-cut my hair (even tho my Atlanta hairdresser had just done it–Roi has certain standards) and did my make-up for the signing. Now that’s the kind of friend to have! I felt like a princess by the time I got to QRB. Friday I had a signing at The Country Bookshop in Southern Pines, NC, and another nice turn-out. I flew home Friday night, got up and went to my signing at the Barnes & Noble in Buckhead–and went junking along the way. I only hit two sales, but I did find some cool new watering cans, which I’ll put in Maisy’s Daisy when I head down to Savannah at the end of the month. Tomorrow I’ll be signing at Scott’s Bookstore on the Newnan Square. Miss Earlene is a wonderful bookseller. And the Newnan Square has lots of fun shops and restaurants, including The Redneck Gourmet, which makes an awesome pimento cheese sammich. The only fly in my ointment these days is Amazon. Two people have decided to rain on my parade by posting negative reviews of DEEP DISH. I just wish these folks would have done like my grandma said–“if you don’t have something nice to say, keep your mouth shut.” Oh well.

Wow, the DEEP DISH tour is officially up and running. The launch party at Wordsmith Books in Decatur Monday night was great, like 200 people showed up to show the love. And drink. Good Lawd my peeps can drink some wine. But since wine consumption seems to be directly connected to book-buying, it’s all good. On Tuesday I did what we in the biz call “drive-by signings” at 9 bookstores in and around Atlanta, and then Tuesday night I signed at the Books-A-Million in Peachtree City, south of town. It was a great signing, and I got to see old friends and meet new fans. Then it was up at 5:15 a.m. to catch a plane to DC. I’m staying at The George Hotel, which is one of these fab Kimpton boutique hotels. The bathrobes are zebra-striped! I did make a brief junking trip to Georgetown, where I checked out my favorite charity consignment shop, Christ Child Opportunity Shop. They always have great antiques–especially good for vintage jewelry, silver, china, ect. Didn’t buy anything today, due to a tight luggage situation, but it is a wonderful place to browse and shop. Signed tonight at the Borders in White Flint Mall, and amazingly–becuz I didn’t think I had so many peeps here, people DID show up to show the love. Including two friends who’d driven two hours to see me. Then it was back to the hotel for some room service dinner and some Law and Order. Tomorrow I’m up at 5:15 again (ouch) to catch the plane to Raleigh. Really looking forward to hooking up with old friends and neighbors and the wonderful folks at Quail Ridge Books. If you’re in the Triangle area, stop by Quail Ridge around 7 and say hey.