The Tennessee Waltz

I’ll be dancing my way across Tennessee this weekend, signing copies of the newly released paperback of DEEP DISH. Catch me tomorrow night, Friday Feb. 27 at the Davis-Kidd Booksellers at The Mall at Green Hills at 7p.m. And if you miss me there, follow me over to Memphis on Saturday, for my 1p.m. signing at the DAVIS KIDD on Perkins Extension. Be there or be square!

Our Fixer-Upper: The Breeze Inn

Progress Report on The Breeze Inn: Vintage schoolhouse lights hung in dining room. Check. Vintage postcards of St. Petersburg hung in downstairs bathroom and part of my vintage tin sandpail and toy watering can collection installed in downstairs bath. Check. Master bedroom nightstands painted glossy black to match the Baptist Yard Sale bed. Check. Dresser for Andy’s room painted barn red. Check. Sorta, it still needs a few touch-ups. Drapes made by Tacky Jacky hung in master bedroom. Check. Slipcover for living room sofa made by Tacky Jacky. Check. Bedskirts for Andy’s room ($7 from TJMaxx–score!). Check. Fabulous desk from Ballard’s Backroom Clearance Center (on sale–$139 plus 20 percent off–score!)–installed in office space. Check.

Lack of progress: Heat–not so much. We changed propane gas suppliers, but when they came out to install the new tank they detected a leak in the underground pipe. Billy the plumber came running and they’ve found the source of the leak–a cracked pipe–and that’s been repaired. Billy swears I’ll have heat next Friday when I head down to Tybee before my Saturday book signing event in Baxley. So this week I spent two nights huddled under a down comforter and over my heating pad. On the bright side: at least we had electricity. And electric space heaters on loan from my friends Ron and Leuveda.

Stove: Also not so much. We hauled the defective Bosch stove back to Sears in Atlanta and demanded to exchange it for a working stove. Hauled the new Kenmore stove back down to Tybee, but had an installation glitch, so we still have to get Sears out. Whenever they decide to send somebody. I won’t be holding my breath.

Overall: It’s starting to look and feel like a home. Curious neighbors have started dropping by to voice their approval of the remodel and to welcome us to the ‘hood. My sweet little backdoor neighbor even offered to bake us a pie. Doncha love the South?
Our list of projects still seems pretty long, but we’re beginning to see the light of day. If not the heat.

Outwrite Book Signing Tuesday Night, East Cobb Borders Wednesay

DEEP DISH is just out in trade paperback, which means a spate of booksignings for the next two weeks. You don’t have to be gay or lesbian-lawd knows I’m not–to join me for my signing tomorrow night, Tuesday, Feb. 24 at Outwrite Books in Midtown Atlanta at 7:30 p.m. Bring your feather boas, your Liza Minelli 8-tracks, your Cher outfits–oh yeah–bring money too–and come on down, no matter whose team you’re on, I’ll happily sign your books, or at least dish about my new BFF Eddie Ross. On Wednesday night I’ll be at the Borders Books in East Cobb County at 7p.m. Y’all come!

Check me out in COOKING WITH PAULA DEEN


That’s me-in the March/April issue of COOKING WITH PAULA DEEN–right there amidst the recipes for chocolate mint cheesecake and butter-baked chicken and gray. Lawwwd! Staff writer May Knowlton and photographer Sarah Dunlap came calling way back in the summer to do a story about me, and they did a great job. They even gave the recipe for Reggie’s Tomato Soup Chocolate Cake from DEEP DISH in the magazine. One look at the photo of that cake and you’ll be getting out the mixing bowl and Campbell’s. True confession: I did not actually bake the cake pictured in the magazine. My cakes are never that pretty. The actual baking was done by my friend Layne Lee at Sweet N’ Sinful Bakery in Avondale Estates. But the cake plate and blue willow dishes are all mine. Enjoy! P.S. DEEP DISH is now out in paperback. You should probably rush out and buy a couple dozen copies while you’re at the store buying cream cheese and tomato soup.

Attention Birmingham-area Junkers & Readers

I’m headed your way. Tomorrow. For the Southern Voices event at the Hoover Library. But I’m going to stop and do a drop-in signing tomorrow, Friday, from 4-6 p.m. at Milestone Books in Vestavia Hills at 700 Montgomery Highway, Suite 106, along with my friend Patti Callahan Henry, who I’ll also be speaking with Saturday at the library event. Linda Brown, who owns the store, always throws a fab affair. Patti will be signing her newest, THE ART OF KEEPING SECRETS, and I’ll be signing anything anybody’s got–with the exception of bad checks. So c’mon by tomorrow and join the party. But before I get down to work, I need a junk fix. Anybody got any suggestions for fabulous junk spots on the way to Vestavia Hills/Hoover from Atlanta?

Good Guys vs. Bad Guys

Last night we got a bit of bad news: our daughter and son-in-law’s home about a mile from here was burglarized–while we were all sitting in our living room eating dinner and watching Jeopardy. Let’s pause here. I’m not really a sexist, but I do frequently cheer for the women on Jeopardy. Last night was no exception. The returning champion was a librarian from Athens, GA. Chances are she went to my alma mater–the University of Georgia. She was funny and cheerful. One of the challengers was your classic Jeopardy triple threat: a dweeby shut-in type dude whose hobby was performing 17th century French erotic plays. No shite! I am NOT making this up. Of course, he out-triggered the champion at every turn (I think he got every question in the Seinfeld category: need I say more?) and she was quickly over-powered. I think somebody should do a dissertation on this: guys nearly always out-perform women on Jeopardy, not necessarily because they know more useless stuff (they do though) but because they are more aggressive and willing to bet bigger on themselves. At least that’s my theory. In the 35 minutes Katie and Mark were here matching wits with the troubled loner on Jeopardy, some lowlife crackhead bandits crowbarred their way into a downstairs window of their rental house and made off with a goodly cache of the kids’ stuff: two laptops, some iPods, their brand-new video camera, and Katie’s jewelry, including some treasured pieces given her by my sister, who was Katie’s godmother. They did this with the kids’ big black lab Tybee right there–we think they used a piece of lumber they found in the house to fend him off–although let’s face it, Tybee was probably more afraid of them than vice-versa. They trashed the kids’ bedroom and office, and thoughtfully put up the dog gate and let themselves out. And took away the kids’ sense of security and well-being. Katie was too freaked to sleep in her own home last night, and chances are good it may be a while before she can feel safe there again. They have renter’s insurance, so they can replace the electronics, but the tiny diamond earrings my sister Susie gave Katie for her 18th birthday are gone. The kids are installing a burglar alarm. They will probably move from the house they loved, and Tybee has been given a stern talking-to about being a more pro-active crime dog. And oh yeah–Mark’s laptop had the video we did of me and Eddie Ross at the Scott Antique Market last month. Mark had just finished editing it and was getting ready to add music so I could post it on my blog. Bastards! I may have to just go vigilante on ’em. We spent the morning cleaning up the mess the thieves made–washing everything they might have touched so as to remove the bad ju-ju from the house. And when I got home, there was a package on my doorstep from one of my oldest bestest friends, Sue in Ohio. Sue and I have been friends since 7th grade back in St. Petersburg, and she knows well my fondness for junk, especially Floridiana themed junk, which I’m using to decorate the Breeze Inn. She’d packed me a splendid housewarming gift, including a fantastic Florida souvenir tablecloth, probably from the 1950s (mint condition), a Georgia souvenir handkerchief, and a vintage Viewmaster with lots of fun slides from around the world. Planning how to display my new treasures vanquished the bad guy ju-ju. Sometimes, the good guys (or make that girls) really do come out on top.

The games writers play

I’ve been on a writer’s retreat this week with my buddies from North Carolina. This is our fifth or sixth getaway, and it’s always an amazingly productive week. This time around we are at The Weymouth Center for Arts and Humanities, which is a non-profit foundation based at a beautiful old home in Southern Pines, N.C. The foundation invites working writers to have up to two weeks a year as writers in residence. The six of us; Margaret Maron, Katy Munger, Sarah Shaber, Diane Chamberlain and Bren Witchger, are old hands at this process by now. We each take responsibility for one night’s dinner, and bring groceries enough for a Trojan army. Katy and I are sharing a bedroom, but everybody else has their own little room and writing space. We started the week Monday night by setting writing or plotting goals for the week. And then each morning, after breakfast, we meet and write down our goals and post them for all to see. Because in addition to having mutual support and brainstorming, we all need some accountability. After lunch, we usually chat about what we’ve accomplished–or what’s giving us problems. Then we scatter to our corners around the house. It’s so interesting to me to see all the different ways each of us works. Sarah is working on the re-write of a historical novel, so she brought her marked up manuscript, and a huge poster, with outlines and diagrams, and Post-It notes telling her which chapters would have to be re-worked. Margaret was working on the final copy edits for her next mystery, which will be out in August. It’s the latest Deborah Knott mystery, to be called SAND SHARKS. Her manuscript was neatly spiral-bound, ready to be worked on. Katy is working on a new project, as well as an old one, so she had schematics and flow-charts to plot her next book. The fact that she types with two fingers adds to the entertainment value. Diane has a long skein of taped together file cards with hand-written notes and color-coded highlighting. Bren has her journals full of notes and ideas. And me? All I have is my wits and a yellow legal pad with some cryptic scratchings. The weather has been ideal this week, sunny and mostly warm. The mansion is set amongst the horse country of the Carolina sandhills, and there are pastures and barns all around us, so the girls have been taking walk-abouts and visiting the horses in between writing jags. Me? I just write and eat M&Ms. After dinner each night, we discuss what we’ve accomplished. And then the real fun begins. On our retreats, we don’t watch television. We pretty much limit contact with the outside world to phone calls home and emails. After dinner, we play games. But not just any games. Word games! Margaret introduced us to Balderdash on one of our first retreats, to Holden Beach. In case you don’t know this diabolical game, it consists of a deck of cards with the most obscure words you’ve ever seen on one side–and the meaning of the word on the other. One person draws a card and announces the word. The other players then write down their bluffed definition of the word. The sillier the better. Playing this game with writers–people who make a living from playing with words, is SO much fun. After we’ve warmed up with Balderdash, we usually gravitate to Taboo, sort of a modern version of Password. Great fun, especially after some adult beverages have been ingested. This week, we’ve been playing a new game, brought by Diane. It’s called Apples to Apples, or, as the box advertises “a game of comparisons.” We stayed up late many nights flinging silly words at each other–the perfect antidote to the serious word-slinging taking place during the day.

Breeze Inn Update

Living room–sofa in mid-slipcover
Kitchen curtains from tablecloth–made by friend Jacky

Dining area
It doesn’t feel like I accomplished much at the Breeze Inn last week. Got some curtains hung, moved some furniture around. I wanted to hang pictures, but then I was seized up with fear. What if I ruined a wall? What if my picture was off-center? (I am notorious about never being able to center or balance anything). So I puttered around, swept the floor, and decided to let the house tell me what it wants. Geez. It’s just a house. They’re just pictures. Some paint by numbers and silly amateur paintings of seaside scenes. Maybe I’ll feel more confident next week, when Mr. Mary Kay arrives with his level and tape measure. In the meantime, I’ve moved the show up to North Carolina, where I’ll spend the week on a writer’s retreat with my writer buddies Katy Munger, Sarah Shaber, Margaret Maron, Diane Chamberlain and Bren Witchger. Hoping for inspiration, or at least some quality time writing and exchanging publishing gossip.

Drapery Hooks and Fire Trucks

I’ve been down at Tybee this week, trying to get the Breeze Inn put together. The plan was for me to get towel bars and toilet paper holders and curtain rods put up, curtains hung–12 sets of Ikea Marete drapes–and all the boxes unpacked. Mundane stuff. Except my life is never mundane. Like yesterday, my friend Jacky came over. The plan was that we-meaning mostly her, since I am a total dweeb when it comes to figgerin’–would make the pinch-pleat drapes of my dreams for the master bedroom. I’d bought all the supplies, had my sewing machine at the ready. We cut out the fabric panels, puzzled over how to do the lining and the pleater tape, and then ran into a giant roadblock when we discovered I’d bought the wrong #$%^& kind of drapery hooks. Since we are out at Tybee, and the nearest “store” is T.S. Chu’s Department Store, a funky old 1950s beach novelty shop specializing in tourist crap, with an odd hardware store tacked on, this meant a trip into town to search for the right drapery hooks. Two hours later, Jacky was back, and we settled into more figgerin’ with a little sewing. Keith, my wonderful contractor, and his helper Brian, showed up to hang the aforementioned towel bars, ect. More roadblocks. The curtain rods for my office area didn’t have any brackets. The shower rod for the downstairs bath would require a special cutting tool. Ect. Jacky went home for dinner. I made the looong trip into town to buy more curtain rods. Came back and settled into working on the manuscript for THE FIXER UPPER which has to be shipped back to NY today. Jacky arrived with a worried look. Did I smell gas? We stepped outside into the freezing cold, and yes, it smelled like gas. A LOT of gas. Went into the backyard, where our propane tanks are. A whole, whole lot of gas smell. So I called the Tybee police department, and they came out, and they smelled gas too, so they called the Tybee Fire Department, who were conveniently having a department wide training drill last night. The firemen were more than happy to make the two block trip over here with lights flashing and sirens wailing. We’re talking two trucks, maybe 10 guys, plus additional police cars. The guys poked around in the attic, and the rest of the house, and could find no gas smell inside. They poked around the propane tanks, and couldn’t find any obvious problems. The cop came inside to take my report. I’m so proud: been on Tybee three days and already my name has entered the police reports! Finally, we decided there was no iminent threat of explosion. Jacky went home. I went to bed. This morning, the gas smell is gone. But you can bet your bippy I called the gas company, and they will send somebody out to make sure we don’t get blown to kingdom come. Oh yeah. P.S. We finished exactly ONE drape panel yesterday. Out of six. Stay tuned…