back to mississippi

I managed to post using the updated blogger, and I also found umpteen comments "awaiting moderation." Who knew there was such a thing? So I moderated. Thanks for the kind words, all. I've published most of them with their appropriate posts now. It's good to hear your voices.

It was good to return to Mississippi last month to do research for book two of the sixties trilogy. I've been to the Delta several times now, and have chronicled some of those trips here, here, and here. This time I took Jim, who had never been to the hill country (we spent the first night in Oxford) or the Delta.

It was a revelatory trip. So let me catch up here a bit on this Saturday morning in Atlanta where it has turned cool after a stormy rain and I've got a homemade split pea soup simmering on the stove.

We started on a Sunday afternoon, after Jim's church gig, with our coolers packed and had an old-fashioned picnic at the Alabama Welcome Center. I had such high hopes (ridiculous, I know) of eating well on this trip and keeping to my newly (and firmly) established food routines. hahahaha.

 This would be the nutritious last meal with real greens that we ate until we ended up with family in Brandon, five days later.

We made it to Oxford in time for supper at Taylor Grocery. I first went to Taylor Grocery with Jim Allen, my Mississippi driver on my book tour for Each Little Bird That Sings in 2005. Jim drove me all over the Delta on that leg of the tour, and told me I had to eat at Taylor Grocery. "Good catfish," he said, and he was right.

I had the catfish -- it's still good -- and we left our names on the tablecloth with all the rest of the unknown names, and went off sleepy and weaving into the dark, to the Inn at Ole Miss, where we crashed into bed well-fed and were asleep in seconds.

Next, Square Books in Oxford, a nap at Rowan Oak (William Faulkner's home), and a drive into the Delta -- the heart of book two of the sixties trilogy.

Off to stir the soup first. Maybe make some cole slaw. Cornbread. You know.

heading away from May

A girl steps away from the world and into her story for a few minutes and what happens? Blogger updates. gaaaaaaaa. Let's see if I can figure it out.

May was a pushing-forward month for writing and traveling. And for reading, which you'll see in the sidebar. I want to talk about what I'm reading, but first I want to say thank you.

Thanks to everyone, especially librarian Cathy Farrell and the 7th-grade team at Potomac School in McLean, Virginia, for a fantastic writing day earlier this month. Potomac is a school full of stellar teachers and exceptional students, and I am always honored to be asked back to work with students on personal narratives. Thank you, thank you. Such an inspiring day.

May was also for visiting Mississippi once again, for research, and for family. Soon I'll post some photos of Sunny's world in Greenwood, Mississippi, the location for book two of the sixties trilogy. I'll give you an update on book two as well.

In Greenwood this trip, I found Sunny's house, and I used the time in Greenwood to map routes Sunny will take from home to the pool, home to the courthouse, home to her friends' homes, home to downtown, home to her father's store and on into the land of -- literally -- the other side of the railroad tracks, where SNCC's offices are, where Jo Ellen is staying with a black family, Raymond's family, during Freedom Summer in 1964. Whew.

More soon. Let's see if this will post. Where is the "publish" button??

and now it's april

What have I done with the first three months of this year off? So much. And now it is April and book two of the sixties trilogy is once again under my fingertips. So is a little girl named Cambria Bold. She is seven. She loves to cook. She makes me laugh. She has a little sister named Miss Moss and a dog named Old Dreadful No. 7.  Her best friend is Queen Esther Washington who does not love squash.

April is shaping up to be the month I work on two stories. Maybe three. And, just as I allowed myself to find my rhythms in the first three months of the year, I'm allowing these stories to stand up and shout, to wave wildly at me, to occupy my days (and nights), to insist I sit at the page and take care of them -- all at once, sometimes. It's delightfully ridiculous, and sort of like chasing after an active todder. I'm trying to keep up.

March was for family. We celebrate five family birthdays in a two-week time frame in March. For the first time in ten years, I was home to celebrate every one of them.  And now it's April. The characters that have been brewing in my head for months (years) are capturing my heart and asking for attention. I'm right here, I remind them. Start talkin'. One at a time.

My new friend Cambria reminds me a whole lot of a certain one-year-old I've been hanging around with. Her dog reminds me of my new granddog, Wesley. (Or Westley, as I have been calling him, in honor of Buttercup's true love in The Princess Bride...)

When I think of that one-year-old, I itch to get to the page and write a new picture book I'm calling Abby's Kitchen. Maybe I will. This familiar, welcome itch tells me that new ideas are bubbling up, words are coming, and stories are being born. Finally.

It took the time it took. I'm grateful I had the luxury of that time to be home, to be still, and to listen. The list of what I did from January to March is long and was necessary. Some of that list is reflected in the sidebar of this blog where you can see what I was reading (and doing). The entire list is at my bookstore, here.

I've got a long, long reading list going right now, all culled from my public library. (How much do I love being able to find and hold the books I want online, then send my sweet husband to the library to pick them up? I feel rich. I am.) I've got holds in for another long list.

I'm reading memoir because I love that form of personal narrative and I'm going to write one. I'm reading books about food because I'm learning how to take very good care of myself. I'm reading fiction mostly because I love being held captive in a good storyteller's hands, and partly because I'm looking for models.

And I'm writing. Finally writing forward with book two of the sixties trilogy. There's a girl named Sunny Fairchild in Greenwood, Mississippi in the summer of 1964. A boy named Gillette. Another boy named Raymond. A best friend named Polly. A young woman registering black voters in Greenwood during Freedom Summer. Her name is Jo Ellen Chapman -- you know her already; you met her in Countdown.

There's baseball and Willie Mays and missing Civil Rights workers and a World's Fair and a bus named Further and four boys from Liverpool... I'm right there with them, breathless, listening hard, capturing their stories.