Drinking with Agnostics

At the Decatur Book Fest, I went out for cocktails with a bunch of writers.

You note the above has no actual time or date, because this is a pretty apt description of how I spent all the time I wasn’t actively speaking or signing. Sometimes, instead of cocktails, you could insert the word BRUNCH or COFFEE. But mostly cocktails.

(DIGRESSION: Birdi’s in Decatur makes a CLEAR Chocolate Covered Cherry Martini --not a cream based syrupy drink but a BITEY kind of cherry with a little chocolate linger on palate. It is awesome. The owner’s of Birdi’s are CLOSING it in a month and retiring to the North Georgia Mountains to live at peace among the deers and eventually be savaged by bears and die.

If you happen to be a driven, type A, self-made wealthy person – Diane Keaton might play you in the movie version -- who has made your fat nest egg and now you want to retire from whatever sort of exhausting capitalist piracy you practice and instead own a charming martini bar in an art-farty, coffee-house-and-bookstore-riddled, organic-grocery-loving town and have a cast of funny-weird employees who make for good, contrasting subplottage, please buy Birdi’s and keep it open so I can pretty much LIVE there all during the Decatur Book Fest. THANKS!

PS. Do not change the menu. OR if you do change the menu, keep the chocolate covered cherry martini. And the artichoke dip. Because, yum.)

Most of the folks I posse’d up with at this particular fest are agnostics. I am used to this. Subjectively speaking, most writers I meet tend toward various flavors of agnosticism. I’m quite often the only Christ-bitten little turd in the herd, and I am pretty up front and out about my faith: I love me some Jesus. I say so.

I say I am devout when the topic of God comes up, and it almost always does, because we are writers. Writers having cocktails -- again SUBJECTIVELY SPEAKING --- talk about God and love and death (because what the hell else matters?) and also about history in both the literal and the personal and subjective sense (because these are the contexts that exist for God and love and death) Also, sometimes we talk about how funny it is when a dog farts and then turns to look at his own butt all surprised and quizzical because… WELL, IT IS.

Anyway, I out myself as a Christian and QUITE often the agnostics who are new to meeting me get this faint twinge of a LOOK on their faces. Not an unkind or disdainful look, just---SURPRISED. As if they only just now noticed that my nostrils have great swaths of dandling exotic peacock-ian plumage sprouting out and cascading down my chest in a colorful wave.

Sometimes I feel their surprise is a TELLING thing.
It can feel telling about how Christains are viewed, as in a “She doesn’t SMELL like she just came from setting a gay person on fire…” kind of surprise.
Sometimes it feels telling in another way, about me, as in, “I didn’t think Christians were supposed to be quite so… LOUD. Or quite so…SCATALOGICAL.”

It is TRUE that I am very loud and opinionated and competitive and at times, SUPREMELY OBNOXIOUS. I wonder if I should be troubled that it strains credulity, even for that brief second, at the reveal, that I am a person of faith? I HOPE it is not me, representing badly. I hope it is just that most of the writers you meet at fests are agnostical-ish, and so I am perforce an oddity.

It was neat to have Patty Callahan Henry around in Decatur---she is a minister’s daughter and a devout Christian herself --- being loud and kind and dear and rowdy and delightful. I want to be like her in these ways.

Anyway, this has no POINT, ALAS. It is simply a mildy troubled, faithy rambling. As you know, I am DATING CHURCHES right now. We broke up with our church, (on good terms, we will always be friends, etc etc,) but dating a new church is forcing me to try to define who I am. And who I want to be. I’ll let you know how or if it goes.

3Q with Jayne Pupek

I love that I can tell you guys without batting an eyelash that Frank Turner Hollon is a cannibal and you all just go, “Oh. That’s nice. Please sign me up for the mailing list.” FTH himself merely said, in phlegmatic tones, “Since people are not included in the meat food group, cannibals are vegetarians.” RIGHTO!

Jayne Pupek is probably NOT a cannibal, but I can’t say for CERTAIN as I have never met her. I do have to say, this book is one I have been waiting for ever since I heard about it six months ago, and of course I can’t read it because I am hip deep in drafting and it is first person southern, which mucks up my voice and can cause me to lose weeks…It is on the TIP TOP of my Southern-to-be-read pile for when I finish Rose, and it is acting as motivation. If you read it or HAVE read it, I would love to hear your opinion.

If you have not, probably you should. It is from Algonquin, and I tend to like most books that press puts out. Also it is getting great reviews, like this from Publisher’s Weekly, which also tells you the premise, which is what made me want to read this book, and yes I know this is a run-on sentence and can someone please tell the grammartician sitting in the back to STOP JUDGING ME as I have been drafting all day and I cam CLINICALLY INSANE:

The absorbing, unsettling debut from Pupek centers on 11-year-old Ellie Sanders, who has already seen a lot of heartache in her short, rural mid-20th-century Virginia childhood. Her beautiful but troubled mother, Julia, who today would probably be diagnosed as bipolar, has frequent outbursts necessitating restraints and horse tranquilizers, administered by Ellie's father, Rupert. When a pregnant Julia suffers a bad fall, Rupert uses the incident to bring home more trouble, in the form of Tess, the teenage tomato girl who supplies his general store with home-grown produce. Intended as a caretaker for Julia and Ellie (and a bedmate for himself), Tess, who has troubles of her own, instead initiates a series of increasingly horrific events that leaves the family irreversibly altered. Issues of racial and religious intolerance are touched on lightly, but the real focus of this accomplished debut is the fatalistic accounting of the events engulfing Ellie.

I thought ELLIE would be the titular tomato girl, but I am GLAD she is not. SO interested in TESS…Anyway, I was so INTRIGUED that I randomly accosted Ms. Pupek and asked her to visit, and here is the result of that assault…

JJ:What do you think of your cover and how does it compare to the cover you imagined when you were writing the book?

JP: While I agree with the adage, "You can't judge a book by its cover," I've bought a lot of books simply because I loved the cover art. I've undoubtedly overlooked many other books because the covers were drab or boring. Covers matter.

My poetry book, "Forms of Intercession," was published earlier this year. While I selected the artist whose work I wanted on the cover of that book, I didn't have the same level of control over the cover for "Tomato Girl." I basically chewed my pencil and waited to see the jacket design. I wondered what the folks at Algonquin would choose. A basket of tomatoes? Ellie's green chick? A jar with Baby Tom inside?

A friend reminded me that most of Algonquin's books are gorgeous. My ears tuned in on that four letter word "most." Meanwhile, I came across images online that made me cringe: a painting of a girl with a tomato for her head; a doll dressed in a red diaper and matching hat, supposedly to look like a tomato. I didn't know what I hoped would be on the cover, but none of these were it.

It even occurred to me that I could paint the cover myself. I'm a bit of a weekend artist, dabbling with watercolors and pastels. This idea didn't last long, maybe a minute. The truth is, I completely lack talent, a point underscored by the number of times my sons look at my paintings and ask, "What IS that?" They crane their necks like contortionists, as if somehow a different perspective will help them decipher goats from cows or a blue sofa from a mountain. How easily they forget who pays Santa!

During this process, I received an email from my editor. He wanted me to take a look at the cover. Oh, dear.

I took a deep breath and opened the file. It was almost like falling in love. There was Ellie, twirling in her yellow Easter dress. Behind Ellie: her father's tool shed, a white building with a red roof. And in the foreground was an envelope like the ones Ellie's father may have used to mail letters to his daughter. Printed inside the envelope: the book's title and my name.

I couldn't have imagined or chosen a more beautiful cover. I certainly couldn't have painted one. No matter how many times I've looked at the book (and believe me, I've looked at it plenty), I'm still amazed at how lovely it is, and how perfectly it fits the story.

JJ: I agree--- I think the colors and movement on the cover are FANTASTIC. Who did you dedicate this book to and why?

JP: I dedicated the book to a teacher named Dora, a woman unlike any I had known. In a blue collar family like mine, the women worked as hard as the men. After all the scrubbing, canning, planting, ironing, and so on, there wasn't a lot of time for leisure activities. When the women finally sat down, they were more likely to watch television or knit than to paint or read.

Dora was different. She had gone to college, and a lot of things interested her. She read books, including novels, memoirs and poetry. During the summers, she wrote to me on pretty stationary; she brought back shells from the beach to share. Dora had cats, not as mousers, but as pets. She also had several dogs, including a little white poodle she called Pooh. She took pictures of him, and once, even brought him to visit me.

She gave me pretty things that often had no use other than to be pretty. Even the candy Dora ate was pretty; shaped like ribbons, it came in a colorful tin. She also gave me my first kitten, a black and white fellow that I named Boots. I remember being stunned that my mother bought canned food for Boots. All the cats I had known lived in the barn and hunted for their food.

Dora also gave me books, including a wonderful book about a girl who lived in the woods. I read all the Little House books by Laura Ingalls Wilder, an author that quickly became a childhood favorite. And most importantly, Dora showed me how to write a poem.The poem itself was pretty bad as poetry goes, but I was immediately mesmerized by the act of creating with words. I still am.

Dora was not only an unusual woman, our relationship was unusual. Dora taught in the Home-Bound program, which was basically a visiting teacher program. Certain students--mostly sick children and pregnant girls-- were assigned a teacher to come to their homes and give lessons. I had been born with a neuromuscular disorder that placed me in a wheelchair by age two, so I, too, participated in the Home-Bound program. I did not attend public school until sixth grade, when Dora said she could not teach me the "new math." While my brother and cousin had a different teacher every year, Dora was my only teacher for six years. During those years, I spent as much quality time with Dora as I spent with anyone. She taught me how to find grace and beauty in things I may have overlooked. She did what any great teacher does: she opened new worlds to me. I couldn't imagine dedicating my first novel to anyone else.


JJ: Do you think of yourself as a Southern writer, and what does that MEAN to you?

JP: People tell me that an entire world exists beyond the boundaries of Virginia, but you couldn't prove that by me. I was born in the Shenandoah Valley, where I remained until I graduated from college and completed graduate school. Afterwards, I relocated to Central Virginia, where I worked in mental health for many years. I've never lived outside of Virginia. I married a Yankee, and he's all I know of the North.

Writers do best to write what they know best. For me, that is the South, particularly the Commonwealth of Virginia. To be a Southern writer means that the voices I hear inside my head belong to the people of the South. It means that the landscapes in my mind are ones that belong to this region. I believe the sense of place in my work is as important as the characters. From the foliage to the food to the way one sees family or religion, the South permeates my work.

"Tomato Girl" specifically fits into the Southern Gothic genre. Southern Gothic literature derived from the larger Gothic genre and includes a combination of supernatural elements, mental disease, and the grotesque. Damaged and delusional characters are important in this genre. Southern Gothic literature primarily uses these elements to examine social issues rather than for suspense. "Tomato Girl" novel raises issues of racial division as well as the stigma and isolation of mental illness. While I know and love the South, I tend to explore some of the darker aspects of our culture and people. Human complexities fascinate me. I'm particularly intrigued by the ways that upbringing and place influence how people behave.

The Pinkest of All Pink Mailing Lists

I HAVE NOT FORGOTTEN! I have not. There WILL be a mailing list.
Secretly? Between you and me, O Best of all POSSIBLE Beloveds?

There already IS one. Shhhh.

Scott made it out of tape and black magic your e-mail addresses. (Duct Tape, he clarifies. Because he is a staunch convert to the First Church of With Duct Tape, I Can Do Anything.)

ANYWAY, the reason I am PRETENDING to have no mailing list yet is that I still have PRIZES to list, and with the CRAZED TRAVEL of the last bit of August, I did not have time to do that.

The Decatur Book Fest was INSANE – I had ZERO time to put up prizes. This is because there is a word I cannot say. The word starts with N and ends in an O and rhymes with the GO part of Amy-Go. ALSO, I LOVE the Decatur Book Fest, it is one of the highlights of my year, so whenever ANYONE from the DBF called and asked me to do ANYTHING, I said the opposite word, which is “OH YAR YAR I WOULD LOVE TO!”

SO that weekend, I did four introductions, two panels, and talked about The Girl Who Stopped Swimming to a standing room only crowd in the old courthouse, and by the end I was HAPPY but EXHAUSTED. The courthouse TGWSS thing was my favorite part, because I had talked about the book in three or four venues in Decatur before, so I did not tell the stories I have become used to telling while on tour.

Instead, I showedthe quilt and read what is perhaps my favorite little snip to read aloud (Uncle Poot’s ghostly detached polka FOOT) and then I talked about where books come from. (“Sometimes, when a mildly deranged person and a ream of paper love each other VERY, VERY, MUCH…)

Mir watched me haring off from one venue to another, wild eyed and sweaty in the 98 degree windless heat, even leaving one panel in the middle because I had another scheduled so that it overlapped, and she shook her head. Her husband, Otto, made me some FLASHCARDS. Ten of them. Each Flashcard had a SINGLE two letter word in the center, all printed up neatly in different fonts. It was that WORD. The N word. No, not THAT N word. The SHORT one. The one I cannot say.

Mir held the flashcards up for me, and I tried to practice…

Me: Read what’s on that card?
Mir: Yes.
Me: Does it say…. ON?
Mir: No. *shows me the next card*
Me: …On?
Mir: No. *shows me the next card*
Me: …On???
Mir: No. *Shows me the next card*
Me: Turning head to peer at the card SIDEWAYS* … Oz????
Mir: NO.

I never quite got the hang of saying that word, but I LUCKILY I am passive aggressive and can get out of things I truly do not want to do by simply not showing up. *grin*

I AM KIDDING. Mostly.

But I digress.

SO! I am going to list a PRIZE every day – EVERY DAY I TELL YOU- (and by this I clearly mean ALMOST every day, or, more specifically “every day that I actually BLOG”) until they are ALL UP, and then I will do the drawing. I will not announce the winners HERE on FTK. I will, instead, send out an E-MAIL to the mailing list telling you the winners. It will be the inaugural test launch e-mail, and then my mailing list – assuming it works – shall not trouble you again until TGWSS comes out in paperback next summer.

You BB’s know that I am a HUGE Frank Turner Hollon fan, and that I do not and cannot and will not EVER understand why he is not as well known as Philip Roth or Robert Penn Warren. Perhaps because lives in a hollow tree in the wilds of Alabama and is an agoraphobic and possibly feral cannibal. It is hard to be feral AND agoraphobic and still capture enough people to sustain a cannibal life, but he manages, Best Beloveds, he manages. He is my favorite.

I RISKED LIFE AND LIMB to get a signed copy of his latest book:

You can buy it here or at your favorite local bookstore or at other venues online.

I got it at a rare public appearance he did at Lemuria. He was, of course, safely chained to a gurney with the Hannibal Lector hockey mask on, so his sig is a little hard to read. But it is his. This particular book may well be his best yet. And this is the guy who wrote THE GOD FILE and A THIN DIFFERENCE, so that is SAYING something.

You enter by signing up for the mailing list. You sign up for the mailing list by clicking this link which allows you to send an EMAIL to “Mailing List at Joshilyn Jackson dot com.”

(OH! Hey! SPEAKING of pink socks – remember the FAQ? Heh. Me neither.)

Roadside Rabbit

Driving from Sara’s house in Asheville to the Decatur Book Fest, I paused in Athens to pick up Mir. Once back on the road, she was telling me a very funny story and then she looked at my face and saw I had horror face.

She followed my line of sight and saw a large EX RABBIT on the side of the road. He was very very ex, most PROBABLY a rabbit although I would not say so under oath, and Mir looked back to see how my skin had paled and gone slightly green and said, "IT IS OKAY! DO NOT THROW UP! THAT RABBIT IS ...SLEEPING! HE IS SLEEPING!"

“Sleeping?” I said, in a trembling voice. As we zoomed past him, I decided this was a program of sad-and-ill-avoidance I could get behind with a strong will, so I said, decisively, “YES! He is sleeping."

She echoed, "Sleeping!" in a cheerful tone and then added under her breath, "Sleeping with his nose shoved backward through his butt."

I pretended not to hear that. POOR rabbit (or rather, poor rabbit-like former animal).

Then we got to the festival – more on that later – and met up with Karen Abbott. I was a RAGGED PIECE OF MEAN to Karen every second. I was hateful about her taste in clothes as we purse shopped. I was a snarky about who would get what room and what bed and called her a selfish turd as we checked into the hotel. I mortally insulted her parentage all through dinner. After dinner, we hooked up with Patti Callahan Henry and Daniel Wallace to have martinis at Birdi’s, and I remained completely AWFUL to Karen.

She kept saying, “WOW, WHY ARE YOU SO MEAN TO ME!!!”
And I would answer, “Shut up, I hate you.”
And then we would both cackle like two of Macbeth’s witches at each other and then I would say, “SHUT UP.”

This was Friday. You realize, Best Beloveds, that SUNDAY, just yesterday, was the day she and her husband packed up their furniture, rented out their Atlanta condo, and went to really and for truly and forever live in Manhattan? Well, they did, and allllll weekend, I was AWFUL to her.

Finally I said something ALMOST unforgiveable, and she said “OH WOW WHAT? Are you are actually MAD at me? I thought you were just being mean for fun?” and I smiled a facile smile and said, “. Nope. I violently hate you is all.”

She looked actually hurt, and then I broke and said, “OKAY FINE, Here is your other choice,” and started bawling and wailing, “PLEASE DO NOT GO AND LEAVE MY LIKE ROADSIDE RABBIT ALL IN A WED RED CHUNK WITH NO DEAR FRIEND IN TOWN AND YOU ARE THE CORVETTE WHO WENT BY AND SMASHED MY NOSE BACKWARDS THROUGH MY BUTT TIL IT IS UNCERTAIN THAT I AM EVEN A RABBIT AND YOU DROVE ON TO NEW YORK I WILL MISSSSS YOU WAH WAH I WILL MISSSSS YOUUUUUUU.” and then she waved panicky hands and teared up and screamed, "OH GOOD GRIEF, BE MEAN BE MEAN."

Daniel Wallace said, in fake, sage tones, “It is easier to leave then to be the one left behind. Because see, Karen, the LEAVING one will make all new friends and have a fabulous time, while you, Joshilyn, will most certainly dry up and die.”

We fell out laughing and pelted him with the fruit from our cocktails and the night went on, and I was mean as a SERPENT to her and she would smile back all sparkly with every new and vicious low I sunk to, because she heard the underwords. She knows that, “I hope you die in a fire,” was actually me saying, “I do not know how I will bear it---how sad and gapped my city will be, with nothing sitting in your place.”