I brake for dead people’s stuff

Did you miss me? Hard to believe I went nearly three weeks without posting here. I missed blogging and connecting with readers, but the holiday season was so wild, this seems like my first chance to catch up. I’m down at Tybee, holed up at The Breeze Inn, working on the next book, or as writers say, WIP (that’s work in progress). The secret code name is Project Ex. But since I exceeded my ten page writing goal Friday, I got to do a little junking on Saturday. Savannah was where I cut my estate sale junking teeth, and when I saw the Craigslist ad for an estate sale for a 90-year-old prominent Savannahian, in Ardsley Park–primo junking territory, no way was I going to miss out. I set my alarm for 6 a.m., and hit the ground running, Diet Coke in one hand, giant tote bag in the other. By 6:45 I was rolling through the drive-thru at Krispy-Kreme, and by 7 a.m. I was pulling up to the stately old home where the sale was being held. Eight or nine stalwart dealers were already lined up outside, huddled in the pre-dawn chill, sipping coffee and discussing their latest scores. One guy even brought his own portable propane heater to ward off the cold! Now that’s a first. What next? Porta-potties? Wouldn’t that be awesome?

The early morning line-up–and their propane heater

The dealer gang included my friend Liz Demos, who used to own my favorite Savannah shop, At Home Vintage General. These days, Liz sells through a booth at a new antique mall called Steal Magnolias, in midtown Savannah, but mostly she stays busy as a much-in-demand wedding planner, magazine and ad photo stylist and designer. This gal has flair to spare! Unfortunately, we like the same kinds of stuff, and unfortunately, she was in line ahead of me, but since the house was so huge, there was plenty of vintage junk for all, so no problem-o.

Dining room packed with antiques

When the doors opened shortly before 8 a.m., we rushed inside. This was the kind of sale junkers dream of–a house packed full of decades and decades worth of treasures. The furniture, silver, crystal and china were the real deal. That portrait of Robert E. Lee in the dining room was priced at $18,000! Upstairs there was a magnificent rice-carved mahogany four-poster with it’s own pull-out steps, I think it was $4,000. The high-ceilinged old rooms had once been elegant, but the whole house was painted a dingy green, giving the effect that you were under-water.

General Lee presides over the sale

I had myself a grand time, browsing and ogling. In the end, I managed to fill my tote for a grand total of $69. My biggest expenditure was a covered ironstone vegetable tureen for $20. I also bought a candlewick spread with a sprightly design of pink tulips for $2, a red vintage straw hat with a saucy red rose, some ironstone butter pats, a never-used pin the tail on the donkey game, a never used tartan wool lap blanket from Scotland, a tin tole tray, and a silver-plated bevelled hand mirror. True to my deep-seated need for vintage linens, I also succumbed to a flat sheet with pretty crocheted trim for $2, but I did manage to tear myself away from the wonderland of embroidered and monogrammed damask tablecloths and napkins and pillowcases.

Couldn’t resist this vintage hat

My bag o’ treasures

After the sale I met up with Liz and my pal Diane Kaufman, who owns Mermaid Cottage Vacation Rentals. Diane and her crew manage The Breeze Inn, and she has established her first off-beach beachhead with the tiniest, most adorable little cottage in downtown Savannah, which she has been re-doing. Can’t wait to take pics of the finished project to share with you. We managed a quick dash through a promising new antique mall on Wright Square, and an even quicker dash through Habersham Antiques before I had to scoot back to Tybee to have lunch with new friends Beth and Carla, who’d lured me into lunching with them because they’d very sweetly scored me some vintage glass Christmas ornaments. What can I say? I’ll lunch for junk any day.

New friends Beth and Carla

After lunch I told myself I needed to go grocery shopping at Publix, on Wilmington Island. That’s what I told myself. Somehow, I ended up at the Goodwill. Now, I never find anything at that Goodwill. My friend Polly furnishes her whole booth at Seaside Sisters with Goodwill treasures, but I have never once found anything even remotely attractive there. But yesterday, I walked to the back of the store, and there it was–shining like a nugget of gold in a heap of sad, fugly ’80s cast-offs. A vintage rattan sofa! In decent condition! With sad, fugly Herculon plaid cushions! For $39.99! I could not rip the tag off that puppy fast enough. Marched myself up to the cash register and staked my claim in a loud voice.

Gem of a vintage sofa in the landfill of fugly

Then I went back to fondle and fawn and photograph said sofa. And I noticed a pair of vintage mahogany bookcases. They were unpriced, so I marched back to the front to inquire. “Oh those? They’re $9.99 apiece.” Oh those? They are so mine now.

Couldn’t pass up this promising pair

And then, to put the cherry on my sundae–the cashier looked me over and asked if I might qualify for the senior citizen discount. Let me just say that when I got that nasty AARP card in the mail after a certain birthday, I ripped it up in a huff. I don’t ask for discounts at the grocery or the movies. But at the Goodwill? For 10 percent off? Hell to the yeah. Today I must commandeer a truck to pick up my stuff. And get some fabric for those sofa cushions. And hide the sofa in the garage at the Breeze, while the cushions get recovered. Shh. Do NOT tell Mr. Mary Kay. Oh yeah, time to get back to writing again.

With Christmas right around the corner, I got a special gift this month from my friend Jay Powell at Digi Ronin Games.

It turns out that the casual game “Mary Kay Andrews: The Fixer Upper” is now available in Target stores! Up until now, the game was available only as a PC-download, sold online on various gaming sites. But now you can buy the PC-version in your local Target. It’s even in a snazzy box designed to look just like the book cover–perfect for gift giving if you have some MKA fans on your list. Cool, right?

But that’s not all.

Jay has also gotten a Mac-based version of the game approved by the gods at Apple. So now all of you iPad users can play the game too!

Well, it is better to give than to receive as they say. Having received this good news—along with a bunch of boxed copies of the game AND some free digital download codes for both the PC and Mac versions of the game—now I get to give these out to my loyal fans. Oh how I love to play Santa!

Enter to win your free download or a boxed copy of the game by visiting my Facebook page. Leave a comment letting us know what books you are giving as gifts this year. And at the end of your note, be sure to mention whether you are on a PC or a Mac. We’ll select winners at random from all the entries and contact the lucky winners next week, just in time for Christmas.

Merry Christmas to us all and good luck everyone!

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Vintage silver and gold glass grapes and silver candlesticks

Whew! Did you hear that giant sigh of relief? That was me, happy to have nearly all my Christmas decorating completed. And yes, there are still another half dozen bins of stuff down in the basement. After having two different homes on our neighborhood’s Christmas tour three different times, we (and by we I mean I) have accumulated a lot of holiday decorations. A veritable buttload, my husband would say. When your house is on a Christmas tour, you find yourself putting Christmas trees in the claw-foot tub in your son’s bathroom (2008), and your husband’s office (2008). You find yourself painting your office walls only hours before the tour begins (2000). You sweet-talk your girlfriend and her daughter into wallpapering your bathroom the night before the tour. (1996). And of course, you buy miles of garland and enough lights to string halfway around the world. Why? You rationalize that you are doing this for the betterment of mankind. But really, if you’re me, you can’t not. If you’re me, you fervently believe that anything worth doing is worth overdoing. But this year, we are not, thankfully, on tour. So I’ve simplified. Bwahahahahaha. Who am I kidding? I thought I’d share pix of some of my Christmas collections. Unlike most people, my collections are not numbered, signed, or dated. There is no Christmas Spode in my cupboards, no Christmas villages on a tabletop. Nor are there any artisan-made velvet Santas. I like all these things, but they do not speak to me. What speaks to me are old dime-store decorations. Brush trees from Woolworth’s. Plastic Santa candy containers from Kresge’s. Honeycomb snowmen from stores that haven’t existed since the ’60s. For years and years, I’ve picked up my kitschy little cuties at estate sales and the occasional dealer, especially when I’m junking in the Midwest. Some of my vintage treasures still have their yellowed original price stickers or grease-pencilled prices pencilled on the bottom. Hmm. When was the last time you found anything for 19 cents? Me neither, but these guys remind me of those simpler, cheesier days.



Vintage (mostly) snowmen snuggle up in the secretary.



I love looking at vintage Christmas collectibles on blogs and at antique shows, but I only add to my own collections when I find things on the cheap. The thrill of the hunt, you know. And I love arranging everything around the house once the bins have been brought up from the basement. I put on my Sinatra, Crosby and Nat King Cole Christmas CDs, and light an aromatherapy candle and commence to putter. I line up the brush trees, some of them shedding their glitter and rusted branches like their real-life counterpart in the living room, on the shelves of the Welsh cupboard in the dining room.

Vintage brush trees sprout among the transferware

The snowmen have found a home in the glass-front secretary in the living room, and the Santas and elves are always perched on top of my collection of vintage picnic baskets, thermoses and breadboxes in the old pine armoire. This year, with Miss Molly toddling around, it’s good to be able to gently close the armoire doors to keep busy fingers away.

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Santas and elves congregate on picnic tins and thermoses.

Little lost lambs mingle with plastic reindeer



This year, the lambs, most of which were probably orphaned from old nativity sets, decided to herd up with the plastic reindeer on a silver tray on top of the mahogany chest by the sofa. But other years, they’ve paraded across the mantle. I’m hoping the lambs won’t ridicule the reindeer for their missing antlers, or for being so woefully out of scale, compared to the sheep.





Santa mugs and jug lined up on kitchen windowsill

The Santa mug collection got its start because my grandmother had some at her house when I was very young. My sister Susie and I pieced a set together after finding boxes of them at a florist shop. The ones pictured here are actually tiny nut-cup sized, but I’ve also got the cocoa-sized ones on another windowsill.

Christmas boxes seated by the fireplace…for now

Some years I don’t add a single piece to my collections. But this year I picked up a couple of these holiday gift boxes. Some years I get really lucky and find vintage Christmas decorations inside the old gift boxes, a rare twofer. My favorite recent find is the box I got for fifty cents. On one side is a large-lettered label. ELF HATS. I seem to remember that the elf hats were in shreds.

Brush tree and mercury-glass ornaments

Because every year the holidays seem to get busier, I always try to fit in some down time, an afternoon or evening when we turn down the lamps, light the tree, loll on the sofa with a glass of wine, and watch an old Christmas movie. Sometimes, Katie will agree to share my ritual of watching White Christmas. I try to savor these moments, and not think about the day AFTER Christmas, when Mr. Mary Kay will start tapping his toe and demanding that I pack up that buttload of stuff, piece by piece, tissue by tissue, so it can go back down to the basement again until next year. Sigh.

Saturday night was indeed, an engaging evening on Tybee Island. If you read my blog from Sunday, Nov. 21, you saw that Mr. Mary Kay and I chanced upon a young man intent on posing a very important question to the girl of his dreams, whose name is Dana. Tybee is small, and the internet is big, and it happens that the young man, whose name is Blake, works with our friend Carolyn, who’d invited us to share their sunset viewing that night. Carolyn shared my blog with Blake, who, it turns out, didn’t mind me sharing his happiness with my readers.

I thought you’d enjoy reading the email I received from Blake this morning:

Thank you to both you and Mr. Mary Kay for assisting me with my preparations for the evening. I wanted to let you know that you were indeed party to the best night of my life so far. She did say yes! In fact, she said, “Oh my gosh! Oh my gosh! Of course!”

Dana models the bling

Sigh. Don’t you just love a happy ending?

Most of the time when we’re down at the Breeze Inn on Tybee, we’re preoccupied. Mr. Mary Kay is out fishing on his boat, I’m junking, or pimping my antique booth at Seaside Sisters, or working on the next book. We’ve had a busy weekend this month, as always, seeing old friends, ect. I did a signing for BLUE CHRISTMAS at Seaside Sisters, and Mr. Mary Kay was tearing up the sea trout and redfish. But Saturday night, our friend Carolyn invited us to join her and her husband at “the point” for sunset. It had been another beautiful mild autumn day on Tybee, and sunset sounded like a great idea. We fixed ourselves an adult cocktail and headed off to the beach. The first thing we spotted was the glowing orange sky over Little Tybee Island. Silhouetted in front of that was a small wedding party, a young bride and her handsome groom in full Marine dress uniform. As we were headed down the boardwalk, another man nervously asked my husband if he could give him a hand carrying his stuff down to the beach. He had two picnic baskets, a cooler backpack, and a portable CD player, plus a blanket. He confided to MMK that he was plotting a proposal for his girlfriend, and packed everything for just the right ambience.
We joined our friends on the beach and settled in for a technicolor sunset. The wedding was completed with a quiet round of applause. Children splashed in the chilly water in front of us, and lovers strolled past hand-in-hand. We chatted with our friends, but mostly took in the spectacular scenery. As the sky turned violet, and then dark blue, we packed up our little camp and headed back up the beach. We spotted the young lovers, laughing and sipping wine in the glow of a candle, and we could hear strains of their mood music floating across the dunes. We discreetly skirted their location, fingers crossed that the young man’s proposal was accepted. We rode back to The Breeze and our planned dinner, with a renewed vow to stop and watch the sunset—even in November.

Yes, more than two weeks between blogs. A thousand pardons! But I’ve been working, truly I have. Book signings and speeches, and novel-hatching and such. A couple weeks ago I was the speaker at The Southern Lady Celebration, here in Atlanta, at the Grand Hyatt, sponsored by Southern Lady magazine from Birmingham. Great group of 500-600 women, and such a fun, Spanx-worthy audience–yes, I even put on hose, makeup and heels for the event! The next morning I was off to my annual writer’s retreat to the Weymouth Center for Arts & Humanities in Southern Pines, NC.

Southern Ladies Prove to be Spanx-Worthy

Weymouth 7-Minus Bren, who was MIA

Diane and I took a stroll in the gardens

We think our retreat last week was our tenth! We’ve also met at another borrowed beach house at Topsail Island, and last year, we gathered at our own Breeze Inn on Tybee, but we always try to meet once a year at Weymouth.

Don’t know why, but the place seems to hold magic. We arrive with our laptops and crockpots, claim our rooms and writing corners, and settle down to work. There are lots of nooks and crannies at Weymouth where you can hole up and write in splendid seclusion, but there’s also a great library, where we gather at night. Each writer brings a dinner, which we eat communally, but we’re on our own for breakfast and lunch. A LOT of coffee (and Diet Coke for me) is consumed.

Alex working dark magic in the library.

We try to start mornings by setting goals and brainstorming. I’ve turned into the self-appointed retreat task-master, querying everybody on their work in progress, any stumbling blocks, and what they’d really like to achieve. And I write it ALL down. This time around, several of us–myself included, were starting new books, which can be agony. Two of our members, Sarah Shaber and Katy Munger, have new book contracts, which we celebrated. So we did a lot of brainstorming, kicking around ideas, making suggestions for characters and plot. Then, we headed for our hidey-holes to write. And plot. And chart. At the end of the day, we all drifted back to the library for dinner, wine, progress reports, more brainstorming, and then, a round of word games.

Diane “Working the Outline Grid”

If I’m the whipper-snapper, our friend Margaret Maron is the leader, the glue that holds us together, not to mention the champion at Scrabble, Balderdash and Taboo. Unfortunately, Margaret was in a car accident, where she sustained four broken ribs, just a few days before we were to leave, so she was a no-show, although we were so glad she was able to make it to the rescheduled launch of her brand-new book, CHRISTMAS MOURNING at Raleigh’s Quail Ridge Books on Saturday. If you missed her there, you can still order autographed books here, and the nice folks at QRB will ship ’em to you.

Last Monday, we did a panel discussion and group booksigning, with books supplied by our favorite local indy, The Country Bookseller. If you missed us, we left behind lots of signed books.

Another day, our own Alexandra Sokoloff treated us to a mini-workshop on her Three Act Structure charting system. Alex teaches her method frequently, and if you’re a writer, looking for a new way to plot, I highly recommend her work. In fact, she also has a fantastic workbook you can download.

In between brainstorming sessions, the good people of Southern Pines decided we needed treats. Giant bags of Peanut M&Ms (our favorite brain food) were dropped off. Mysterious foil-wrapped trays of rugelach, cookies and brownies appeared in our kitchen. “For the Writers” was taped to each tray. We got so sugar-buzzed we joked that we’d have to put up a sign on the stairway: PLEASE DON’T FEED THE WRITERS. Just joking, of course.

By Friday, the end of our work week, I think all of us were thrilled with the amount of work we’d gotten done. I managed to write more than 10,000 words, and come up with the first five chapters of the NEXT book. So it was a very, very good week.

On the long drive back to Atlanta I decided to treat myself to a junk stop. I’d read the blog for a shop called OLD-TYME ANTIQUE MARKET in Marshallville, NC, and just had to check it out. Beth, the owner, was a doll, and her shop is a delight. I could have loaded everything i her shop into the back of my car. Instead, I practiced restraint and only picked up a few things.

It was great to get home to Mr. MKA and the rest of the family on Friday. Grandbaby Molly seemed to have sprouted another 3 inches. My to-do list grew just as rapidly. But I’ve got a solid start to the NEXT book, and am happy to be firmly back in the writing saddle once again. And now come the holidays. Sigh. At least Mr. MKA takes care of the turkey.

SUMMER RENTAL is done. Mostly. I’ve finished the copy edits, written the dedication, am working on the acknowledgements. Also the recipes still have to be written. Which means that my writing plate is, metaphorically speaking, clean. So, you ask, what comes next?

Next comes the fun. Starting a new book is like starting the first day of school–you know, back before you hated school and worried about passing math and whether or not you’d ever get a date, or get accepted to a college, any college. I like to think about starting a new book in terms of getting up excited in the morning, putting on a starched cotton plaid dress with a big sash bow in the back, and marching off, newly sharpened Number 2 pencils in hand, along with a crisp new notebook, to find knowledge and new books in the library.

I don’t want to tell you too much about What Comes Next, because I’m Irish, and deeply superstitious, and don’t want to hex the little embryonic book that is even now growing and developing in my warped subconscious.

What I will tell you is how this little puppy was conceived. I dreamed it. Yup. For several nights running this summer, I dreamt of a woman. She was sitting in a church and she was righteously PISSED. Hmm. So one night, in my dream, or maybe it was while I was driving, I asked that dream woman what she was doing. And she told me–“I’m watching my ex-husband get re-married.”

Reaallly? “Yup,” she said. “And I’m okay with it.” Reallly?

I mentioned to my agent and my editor that this woman was bothering me with repeat appearances. Since it was time for me to tell them exactly what my NEXT book would be, I thought it might be good if I went back to dream woman and asked her a few more questions.
I scribbled down some options. Cobbled together a proposal for the NEXT book. And they like it, they really like it.

Why am I telling you all this? Because I thought I might share with you the twisted process I go through when hatching an idea. Because readers ask me this all the time. Where do you get your ideas? When my children were younger, I frequently got them during carpool, either driving to school in the morning, or waiting in the school parking lot in the afternoon. I got them while reading the newspaper. Once, a dear friend’s son was involved in a searing custody battle, and I sat in the courtroom with her, and the idea for a book was born from her pain. I got the idea for HISSY FIT while sitting in a bubble bath. I had to scribble down the idea for SAVANNAH BREEZE on a paper napkin in a restaurant in Charleston, after I eavesdropped on a conversation at the next table.

Once I have an idea, I pester my agent. What do you think? Could this be a book? Is there a story here? Is this a character my readers will love? And is it I story I could tell and tell really well? Does it seem like a Mary Kay Andrews story?

Stuart is a very, very patient man. He’s used to these deranged phone calls and knows exactly how to keep me on process. Sometimes, he hates the idea, and he’ll tell me why, and I’ll go away and sulk for a while, but almost always, I come to realize he’s right. Other times he loves the idea, and he’ll brainstorm with me. That’s how the plot of SUMMER RENTAL came about, over dinner (and wine) before a book-signing two years ago at the Jersey Shore.

Once Stuart likes the idea, I noodle around with it some more. In the meanwhile, he has a conversation with my editor, just to see if she likes it too. Fortunately, Jen seems to love the idea for the NEXT book. We have phone discussions, and I scribble some ideas. What’s the name of this character? Names are incredibly important to me. For protagonists, I like a name that sounds unique, which is why my books are peopled with characters with names like Callahan, Neva Jean, Weezie, BeBe, Mary Bliss, Keeley and Dempsey. For the protagonist of my next book, I chose the name of my late great-grandmother, whom I only met as a very young child. I love that name so much I could hug it, I could eat it for dessert, that’s how much I love this name.

Where is the book set? A real town, or a made-up place? Georgia, or someplace else? It’s looking like someplace else, this time around, probably a made-up small town in North Carolina. What does my character do? Oh, what fun I’m going to have writing about the world of this next book. I’ve already started researching that world, and at the risk of sounding smug, it’s gonna be good.

What’s my protagonist’s dilemma? Hmm. I guess we start with the fact that she’s actually attending her ex-husband’s wedding. What’s that all about? Now we’re getting down to brass tacks. Now comes the hard part. Actually plotting the story. For me, characters and setting are the icing, the sweet part that comes quite naturally. Now I’ve got to bake the cake, making sure I have a strong, stable, tasty platform to support my characters. I’ve got to figure out how to get her out of that church pew–and into and out of all kinds of plot complications.

Lucky for me, my writer’s group is having our twice-yearly retreat next week. We’ll meet up at the Weymouth Center in Southern Pines, N.C., lugging our laptops and crockpots and notebooks and index cards–and peanut M&Ms and cheap Chardonnay. We’ll all share the ideas for our next books, brainstorm, set goals, write like women possessed—and then, at night, meet to bitch and whine, discuss progress, and most importantly, play word games like Scrabble, Balderdash and Taboo.

Hopefully, at the end of the week, I’ll come home with the strong foundation–and lots of new pages, of the NEXT book. I’ll put away my little plaid dress, climb into my black yoga pants, and get down to work.

How about you? Is there a novel raging inside you? Did you know that today is the first day of National Novel Writing Month? (Also known as NaNoWriMo) Check here for the details, and let me know what you decide. Who knows? Maybe November will be the month we all get a book going.