It wasn’t all writing last week–on Sunday I joined a gorgeously attired group of fans for a Book-Lovers Tea put on at the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Public Library. A good time was had by all!

Okay, so DEEP DISH fell off the New York Times list for the coming week. I’m a big girl. I can take it. We were on for four weeks, so it was a nice ride. And I accomplished my goal–making the printed list at #13.

And while we’re on the subject of goals, I basically reached my stated page quota for the day–only it was nine pages instead of ten. But it was a chapter, and I finished it, and now, I’m back in the saddle again with THE FIXER UPPER. Yippee-Cay-Yi-Yay. Of course, the whole motivation for reaching my page quota is so that the posse can go junking on Friday. See, there are these two rockin’ estate sales tomorrow…

It was fun while it lasted, this book tour thing, but mostly it’s over. Oh sure, I still have a few more scattered book signings for DEEP DISH–including one this Saturday at Dog-Ear Books in Madison, GA., but as far as my editor is concerned, there are no more EXCUSED ABSENCES. She wants pages, and she wants ’em now. So yesterday, I whined and procrastinated. I looked up the last chapter I’d written of THE FIXER-UPPER, which is my book-in-progress. I was horrified to learn that the last time I’d tinkered with it was waaay back in February. Now I’ve got to get re-acquainted with Dempsey Killebrew, the protagonist of TFU. It’s hard, picking up your knitting after having dropped it for six weeks. Last night, it seemed absolutely crucial to world peace that I watch both American Idol and Dancing with the Stars. Finally, right at bed-time, while I was watching LAW AND ORDER, an errant plot-related thought crossed my mind. I ran for a pen and yellow legal pad. Therefore, my written output for yesterday–in fact, for yesterday and all of March was…..one lousy paragraph. So. Here’s my pledge. I will meet you back here tomorrow, by say, noon, and I will be able to report that I’ve written at least ten pages. Stay tuned.

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.