Well, I have made it my personal goal and mission to finish out this weekend by watching some Quality Sunday Evening Television. In fact, I just sat through an entire episode of 60 Minutes for the first time in about twenty years, and do you know what? It was delightful. When I was younger I used to associate the sound of the 60 Minutes stopwatch with DREAD and DOOM and HORROR because SCHOOL IS COMING SOON, but now it just makes me think about Sunday nights at my parents’ house. And how we ate roast beef sandwiches a lot for Sunday night supper. And how Ed Bradley always seemed so cool and with it compared to all the other reporters.

The mind works in peculiar ways, doesn’t it?

We’ve had a really laid-back weekend at our house, mainly because there is a child in this house who is waging war with pollen right now. I’m guessing you know which child I am talking about since, well, THERE IS ONLY ONE OF THEM HERE, but he usually has four or five days every spring when the pollen makes him absolutely miserable, and that’s exactly where we were at the end of last week. Friday he coughed from the time he got out of bed until the time he went to sleep, and while on one hand I felt so sorry for him and wanted so much for him to feel better, I was also about ready to take that cough outside and give it a piece of my mind because OH MY WORD IT WOULD NOT STOP. We’d been to the doctor the day before, so I knew that there wasn’t much I could do, but that didn’t stop me from putting Vicks on the bottoms of A.’s feet, offering a steady rotation of cough drops and Lifesavers (for variety, you understand), and practically setting a timer so that I’d know when it was time for the next dose of cough syrup.

Thankfully, yesterday and today have been so much better (thank you, rain). I ran some errands yesterday morning, and since I needed to go to The Summit for a few things, I decided to stop by Belk to look at sandals. What I did not know, however, is that all of Belk’s dresses – ALL OF THEM – were 50% off, and quite frankly I felt like it would have been irresponsible to not investigate the sales possibilities. As you might imagine, the store was COVERED UP with some dress-fixated women (and a few despondent men). I seriously could have sat in that store all day long and soaked up some stories. In fact, at one point I was trying on a few things when I heard the very distinct voice of a man in the dressing room area, and as I stood there and tried to make sense of it all, an employee said, “Um, sir? You’re not supposed to be back here in the women’s dressing rooms.” And the man replied, “Oh, no. It’s fine. Because I’m watching our baby. I’m not just sitting back here by myself. This is different.”

And while I think every woman in that dressing room area who was listening probably agreed that it was kind of him to watch the baby while his wife tried on clothes, I think we were probably also in agreement that SIR, THIS IS A VERY LARGE STORE – LO, A STORE WITH FAR MORE SUITABLE BABY-WATCHING AREAS.

Have mercy it was awkward. But I was happy to endure the awkward because I found a really cute summer dress and I certainly wasn’t going to miss out on the 50% off (plus an additional 15%) just because a doting daddy made a questionable seating choice. That wouldn’t even make good sense.

This morning we went to a different church because our friend Shaun was speaking and leading worship there. It’s been a year and a half since Shaun led our Compassion Bloggers trip to Ecuador, and it was so good to see him and get to laugh for a few minutes. Afterwards we made our weekly pilgrimage to the Chuy’s, and then we came home and watched the Masters and napped and watched the end of the Masters and ate leftovers from our lunch and now I’m about to watch Oprah interview Mark Burnett and Roma Downey.

So all in all, I guess, it was kind of a boring weekend. But after last weekend and the Virus-y Plague of Doom, I’ll take it. It was just what we needed. A. is feeling better, D. and I are rested (we bought some new pillows – I will report our findings after we’ve had a chance to use them for a week or so), and hopefully there’s some springtime fun in store this next week – springtime fun that’s virus- and cough-free.

That would be a wonder, now wouldn’t it?

FINGERS CROSSED.

Happy Monday, y’all!

I met my friend Joni the summer before my sophomore year of high school. We were both pledges for a high school social club in our hometown, and while I’m really not sure how the social clubs became a tradition (a tradition that is still going strong, I might add), I do know that when I was 14, I was convinced – CONVINCED – that I would never have a meaningful social life if I didn’t join. That is why I spent the better part of three months making an utter fool of myself so that I could fulfill the requirements for membership. That is also why I am certain that if I could travel back in time, the grown-up version of me would tell the 14 year-old version of me to HAVE SOME PRIDE, ALREADY, and stop it with that pledging business.

Seriously. If I told y’all everything that we had to do, you would cringe. And you would also understand why the smell of maple syrup will forever make me shudder.

What I realized early on in that pledging process, though, was that Joni, who was a year older, was hilarious. Her dry sense of humor made me laugh until my stomach hurt, and her perfectly-timed one-liners made that very long, very hot summer just a little bit more bearable. I got the biggest kick out of being around her.

When school started that fall, Joni and I found ourselves in the same biology class, and we eventually became lab partners. That meant that we got to walk through all sorts of memorable moments together – like dissecting a cat that we christened “Diane,” for instance. Joni’s grasp of biology far exceeded mine; I usually had a hard time in classes that didn’t interest me, and for most of high school, English was my only interest (well, English and typing – and for whatever reason, I really loved calculus). Joni and I would often plan “study sessions” before a big biology test, but we usually laughed way more than we studied. I’m sure that at some point I memorized a few details about prophase and anaphase and meiosis and mitosis, but the fellowship was way more fun than the subject matter. Always.

There were lots of days when Joni and I would start conversations in biology class that time didn’t permit us to finish, so we fell into the habit of writing epic, novella-length notes to each other after biology was over. There’s no telling how many pieces of paper we passed back and forth between classes. And while I know that hard things happened and sad things happened and embarrassing things happened, we’d write those notes and try our best to find the funny in every single bit of it.

A couple of years ago I ran into Joni here in Birmingham, and after we visited for a few minutes, she asked me if I remembered the notes we used to write. I absolutely did, though I hadn’t thought about them in a long time, and she told me that she’d kept a lot of them tucked away in a box at her house. I couldn’t believe that she’d held on to them, but oh, did I ever want to read a few. And when Joni and I saw each other again at a Mississippi State football game this past fall, she assured me that she really was going to dig out that box of notes and see what ancient treasures she could find.

Monday night I clicked over to Facebook, and this picture was at the top of my feed.

I spied my 10th grade handwriting in the bottom, left-hand corner. And I grinned like crazy.

I’m not a person who gets overly nostalgic when I think about high school. It was fun and I had great teachers and I made some wonderful, life-long friends, but by and large I am infinitely more nostalgic about college. That being said, there was something about seeing that old note in Joni’s picture – that little sliver of my 15 year-old self – that made me so grateful for the blessing of sweet friends and healthy friendships. I had no idea how fortunate I was.

But I understand it now.

And I am ever-so-grateful.

Does anything make you nostalgic for your high school days?

Last Thursday night, I was minding my own business and doing something terribly important (I can’t remember, exactly, but I’m assuming that I was either counting down the seconds until Scandal started or watching my 4,378th episode of Diners, Drive-ins, & Dives when I realized that I didn’t feel so hot. I told myself that it was just a little indigestion, and that’s what I continued to tell myself several hours later, when I was still in denial about the possibility of a stomach virus even thought I was tossing and turning and basically longing for some Tums or maybe even a couple of sticks of sidewalk chalk.

But by Friday afternoon, the virus / plague / Masque of the Red Death (apologies to Edgar Allan Poe) had made a believer out of me. I thought the worst was over by Saturday morning, but that was only because I had not yet experienced what was coming my way Saturday night and Sunday morning. It was SOMETHING ELSE.

Today, though, I am so much better. I’m a smidge dehydrated and a little dependent on bananas as my primary food group, but compared to a couple of days ago, I am downright peppy. Doing high kicks in a field of daisies while puppies frolic nearby. Relatively speaking, of course.

Oh! And since I’m watching the NCAA Championship Game right now, I guess this is as good a time as any to point out that the most unlikely thing EVER happened after the first two Final Four games.

THIS IS UNPRECEDENTED.

Now if Louisville loses, I’m guessing this whole phase of being atop the leader board will be, as Joey Tribbiani would say, “a moo point – like a cow’s opinion, it doesn’t matter” – but given my embarrassingly poor showing in the early rounds, I’m a little tickled that things have turned out this way. Even if it’s only temporary.

So that’s pretty much all that’s been going on around here: a whole lot of virus-ing (D feel prey to the plague on Saturday, I’m sad to say), an impressive amount of sleeping, and a little bit of basketball-ing. I did watch parts of the ACM Awards last night, an experience that left me wondering when exactly the men who sing country music for a living started to get spray tans (at least they LOOK like they get spray tans – I have no real evidence, other than the muted orange head-to-toe hue that I noticed on several performers). To each his own, I reckon, and honestly, who cares what I think? I mean, I still can’t get used to the sight of male country singers wearing skinny jeans, so clearly I am all sorts of ancient.

Maybe tomorrow I can stand on my porch and shake my fist at the sky and find a reason to scream the word “hooligans.”

I’ll get to work on that first thing in the morning.

Love,
Mamaw

I wasn’t kidding around back in January when I said that I was not – WAS NOT – going to watch American Idol this season. I’d read a few things about drama during the auditions, and I just couldn’t muster up the energy to watch judges argue. I’d much rather use that energy to count the number of times that someone says “amazing,” “connection,” or “journey” on The Bachelor. I think that we can all agree that it’s a much more valuable (and productive!) use of a person’s time.

I didn’t watch a single second of Idol auditions – not even Hollywood Week, which has always been my favorite. I kept my distance all the way through the selection process, in fact, and even when the finalists started the “real” portion of the show in the studio, I stayed away. But once the finalists were narrowed down to the top 10, I took a little bitty peek at the singing when I was flipping around on the TV on Wednesday night, and I sorta / kinda / maybe got slightly hooked again. Granted, I don’t watch it as intently as I used to – if a contestant doesn’t grab my attention during the first few seconds of a song, I fast forward the DVR – but I have to say that I’m enjoying the show.

My favorite so far is Candice Glover, a South Carolina girl who can flat-out SANG. I also like Cree and Janelle a lot – they are super-likeable on stage, which is a big deal with me for some reason. Interestingly enough (well, it’s interesting to me, at least, but I certainly won’t presume to speak for the group), Candice won me over for good when she sang a song that I absolutely loathe, “I Heard It Through The Grapevine.” It’s a nice enough song, I guess, but I watched a lot of TV in the early 80s, and I saw those California Raisins commercials so many times that the “Grapevine” song was OH-SO-DEAD to me.

But then Candice made it better.

Now. Pretend that this sentence creates a lovely transition into the next topic.

I have never had a Facebook page for my blog. The reason I have never had a Facebook page for my blog is because I didn’t want one. It was one more thing to keep up with and one more thing to manage and I kind of like to keep the social media part of my life low-key and breezy. But what I am realizing is that over the next couple of months, I’m gonna have announcements and questions and ponderings that pertain to the book, and I don’t want for the blog to become All Book, All The Time. I also don’t want to use my personal Facebook page for book stuff, mainly because someone who hasn’t seen me since 2nd grade probably isn’t going to care a whole lot about whether or not I’ve scheduled any book signings.

All that to say: I caved and set up a Facebook page for the blog / book / general writing-type endeavors. I actually set it up on Tuesday, but it’s taken me a couple of days to work up the nerve to mention it because, well, I am weird. It is currently a very sad, desolate Facebook page with upwards of three “likes” (my friends Anne and Nicole found it somehow even though I hadn’t told them about it, so clearly they have magical Facebook powers). I do think that I’ll enjoy having a separate place to share book news / blog news / whatever news, and that way the blog can continue to be a place to tackle all the hard-hitting issues of the day: pillow selection, snack cracker flavors, meats we don’t enjoy, vegetables that strike us as friendly, etc.

So. Here’s the Facebook page.

And I would love to know if you’re watching AI and who your favorites are.

I’m glad we’ve had this talk.

Happy Weekend, y’all!

I cannot thank you enough for your sweet, encouraging comments about the book. Your kindness means the world to me and has helped to take the edge off of my book-related angst. I’m working on another post that I’ll put up tonight, but in the meantime, I want to introduce you to my friend Anne, who has written a fantastic young adult fiction book called Shadows of the Hidden. Yay, Anne!

See? It is very mysterious.

It was one day about five or six years ago, I think, when I was totally immersed in some mundane task (sorting paperclips, maybe? throwing away all the receipts in my purse?) and overheard my friend Anne talking to another friend of ours about sending query letters to literary agents. My head shot up like a rocket.

“HOLD ON,” I said. I knew that Anne had written a book, but I had no idea that she was so, well, GROWN UP about the whole thing. “You’re looking for an agent? Like somebody who will represent your publishing interests?”

“I am!” she answered.

And I thought that was the fanciest thing I’d ever heard.

At the time I didn’t have any plans to write a book, but that didn’t matter. I just loved talking about writing with Anne. Since then we have had approximately 1496 conversations (a rough estimate) about how we write and when we write and how sometimes we HAVE TO WRITE. Anne mostly writes young adult fiction, and listening to her talk about her ideas for plots, for characters, for alternate realities (oh yeah she does) never fails to fascinate me. And bless her heart, she’s probably had to listen to me talk about my writing insecurities more than anybody else in the Birmingham area, so you might want to keep her in your prayers.

Sure enough, Anne eventually found an agent, and it’s been so fun to sit back and watch her dream of being published come true. She has worked so hard, and she has worked cheerfully, always choosing to see the bright side at every bump in the road. I love that about her.

Here. Let me show you a picture so that you and Anne can get better acquainted.

(HI, ANNE.)

And here’s some info about her book, which greatly interfered with my sleep two nights in a row because I could not put it down. This is a book that’s appropriate for teenagers but fun for grown-ups, too, so it’s a win for the whole family.

PLOT SUMMARY:

Natalie Watson doesn’t believe her parents are dead, even though they disappeared five years ago. Discovering the truth about their fate is one of the only things that get her out of bed in the morning. But after moving from her home in Georgia to her aunt’s boarding school in Maine, solving the mystery of her parents’ whereabouts is just one of several challenges she must face. When she’s not fending off attacks from the popular kids, she puzzles over the rumors about a strange boy in her math class–one with fiery red hair who rarely speaks.

Despite suspicions that he murdered his sister a year earlier, Natalie finds it impossible to stay away from Liam Abernathy–especially when he confesses to knowing something about her parents. Soon she’s following him into the forest, where things happen she doesn’t understand…things that shouldn’t be possible.

Natalie soon realizes her connection to Liam is deeper than she ever imagined, and not everyone she counts as a friend can be trusted. When she finds herself at the center of a centuries-old quest for immortality, she must work with Liam to stay alive–even if it means facing a truth about herself and her family that will not only shake her perception of herself, but of the entire world around her.

EXCERPT:

The grinding of a key in a lock sends adrenaline shooting through my veins. I stagger to my feet in a fog of panic and lunge for the closet door handle, catching a glimpse of Liam’s red hair just before I shut myself into darkness.

Was I fast enough? Did he see me?

The clink of metal against wood makes me jump; he must have tossed his key on the desk. I shut my eyes and try to keep my breathing even, but my lungs are working overtime and I’m terrified he’ll hear me. What am I going to do if he finds me here? What reason could I possibly give for hiding in his closet?

Hey, I’m part of the new Closet Safety committee. Just checking out your shelves. These are some solid looking brackets.

Right.

His heavy footsteps cross the room, growing nearer to my inadequate hiding place, and I press a hand over my nose and mouth. Maybe he’ll go to the dining hall for dinner and I can escape. Or maybe he wants to take a shower after going…wherever he went. Eventually, he’ll have to use the bathroom, right? And then I can make a break for it.

The closet door jerks open and Liam’s face appears. Horror explodes in my chest, but it’s instantly eclipsed by disbelief at two things—the battered state of his face and the knife in his hand. He’s holding it above his head like he’s ready to kill me.

I fall back into his clothes with a shriek.

BLURBS:

Medeia Sharif, author of Bestest. Ramadan. Ever.:

“This novel kept me on the edge of my seat. It was quite suspenseful with a unique historical twist to the paranormal. With great characters and non-stop action, it kept me hooked until the very last page.”

Krissi Dallas, author of the Phantom Island series:

“A riveting mystery filled with realistic teenage drama, suspenseful twists, and an extraordinary quest for the truth… Anne Riley is a refreshing storyteller with the ability to keep me desperately turning those pages for more adventure!”

Anne is giving away two autographed copies of Shadows of the Hidden, so if you’d like to enter, just click on the widget below.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

I’m closing comments on this post to avoid any confusion about how to enter the giveaway – and also to encourage you to go see Anne over at her blog (this post is one of my favorites).

I’ll see y’all later tonight; be warned that I have some thoughts about American Idol (yes, I caved and started watching again) and some other stuff, too. Hope y’all are having a great Thursday!

First of all, that title up there? Least imaginative ever. But everything I thought of was way too long (not that that’s ever stopped me before) or self-deprecating to the point of deeply awkward. So I went with bland. It seemed like the eh thing to do.

Second of all, my book (it’s called A Little Salty to Cut the Sweet, but Martha gets the title mixed up and calls it A Little Bit of Salt and A Whole Lot of Sugar!) comes out in about nine weeks. I can’t think about it / type it / say it / allude to it without wanting to breathe into a paper bag. I mean, I’ve never actually used a paper bag as a breathing aid before, but I’ve seen it in the movies several times and it looks like it’s super effective. And for the record, my runner-up hypothetical coping mechanism is to lock myself in a room and watch all the seasons of Flipping Out. Or maybe I’d watch Veronica Mars. I guess it would depend on my mood.

I’m spending way too much time focusing on my pretend emotions, aren’t I?

Third of all, some talented people who work for my publisher made me a very sassy book page, and it is now up-and-running right here on the blog. For some reason I like the fact that it’s here and not on some official author site (note: I do not in fact have an official author site, so that might make hosting a book page there sort of tricky). REGARDLESS, even though I’m basically 94 kinds of terrified for anyone to read my book, this blog feels like home to me, so it all seems more comforting and less likely to cause panic attacks if the book page is just kind of hanging out here, dozing when nobody’s looking at it and also hoping that somebody might stop by with a bucket of fried chicken or something.

(I know I’m rambling right now. But you must understand that my mind is pretty much A DEATH TRAP OF FEAR.)

So. Here’s the book page. There’s a place where you can download the first chapter if you’re into that sort of thing (it’s actually the table of contents, the introduction, and the first chapter, but I am giving you way more information than necessary because my nerves are kind of WOUND UP right now). And listen – if you have no interest in downloading the first chapter, I totally understand. A little bit of me goes a long way. Especially when I’m feeling like Judy Grimes.

Anyway, thanks for being so kind and supportive and all-around wonderful. And thanks to Tyndale for making the book page, because if the promotion of this book had been left to me, the marketing campaign would look something like this:

I wrote a book. But you don’t have to buy it. I hope I haven’t bothered you. Would you like some bacon?

The end.

edited to add this P.S. – I forgot to mention that there are some Pinterest-y and Twitter-y things at the bottom of the page…just wanted to point that out since there were some very nice people who went to the trouble of designing that stuff, and I think they did a great job. So grateful for them!