6.25.15 - 7 Minutes With... Patti Callahan Henry

I met Patti Callahan Henry last year over margaritas and queso dip (which is truly the only civilized way for any author to meet another.) We’ve circled each other for years, having many friends in common, but had never met face-to-face. I couldn’t wait to meet her, though, and I wasn’t disappointed. She’s a lovely, intelligent and fun woman. And when I heard her speak at Parnassus later that evening, I knew she was the whole package as an author, too. Smart and sassy, but poignant at the same time, Patti wraps her readers, and audiences, in a warm embrace of words. I am so thrilled to have her join us today. Welcome, Patti!

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Set your music to shuffle and hit play. What’s the first song that comes up?

"Every Little Thing" by Eric Clapton and "Brave" by Sara Barielles 

Now that we’ve set the mood, what are you working on today?

My speech for book tour!

What’s your latest book about?

It’s about a failing screenwriter out to steal a love story when he finally meets his match—a woman who is giving him the perfect love story. Or is it?

Where do you write, and what tools do you use?

I mostly write in my attic longhand at first and then on the computer.

What was your favorite book as a child?

CHARLOTTE’S WEB or Narnia, depending on what childhood age you catch me.

What’s your secret talent?

Poker (well, it’s not really a talent, but I love playing when someone will let me. I usually lose, so not sure it’s a talent). The other secret talent—sleeping in on Saturday. I am almost a professional.

What book are you reading now?

AT THE WATER’S EDGE by Sara Gruen

When did you know you wanted to be a writer?

I knew I wanted to be a writer when I was too young to even know what “being a writer” meant. But it wasn’t until I was 35 years old that I admitted it to myself and set out to find out how to do such a thing.

Who is your writing idol?

Anne Rivers Siddons

Have you met him/her?

Yes!

If so, did you completely nerd out or keep your cool?

I absolutely did not keep my cool. It was before I even started my first novel. I waited in an hour-long line,and then babbled until her husband asked me to move on.

What’s your favorite bit of writing advice?

Aim for the heart.

What do you do if the words aren’t flowing?

Walk. Walk outside in nature and try to let go of my expectations and just “be.” Which sounds easy but isn’t!

Are you creatively satisfied?

Sometimes. In the best times.

What would you like to be remembered for?

Touching a reader’s heart.

Alright, now for the really important questions:

• Beach or mountains? Both
• Coffee or tea? Coffee
• Skydive or bungee jump? Neither. Ever.
• Chocolate or vanilla? Chocolate
• Winter or summer? Summer
• Cake or pie? Pie
• Cats or dogs? Dog
• Pens or pencils? Pens
• Truth or dare? Dare
• Print or ebook? Print

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New York Times bestselling author Patti Callahan Henry has published ten novels, including her latest, THE IDEA OF LOVE, which will be released by St. Martin’s Press in June 2015. Hailed as a fresh new voice in Southern fiction, Henry has been shortlisted for the Townsend Prize for Fiction, and nominated four different times for the Southeastern Independent Booksellers Novel of the Year. Her work is published in five languages and in audiobook by Brilliance Audio.

6.15.15 - Today's the big day for BASED ON: Words, Notes, and Art from Nashville

I have the greatest pleasure of announcing that today we see the release of a most fabulous original project, and I am honored to be a part of it. My dear friend Chuck Beard told me he wanted to curate a special anthology, with songs based on short stories written by Nashville authors, and I told him I was in before he finished his sentence.

And now, BASED ON is alive!!!!!

All the details are below, but we have a special, one time event TONIGHT-- the ultimate launch party, Come see the show, get your copy of the book and CD, and revel in the art this great city produces. Here's the official announcement. Hope to see you tonight!

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East Side Story is incredibly excited to be publishing an anthology titled Based On: Words, Notes, and Art from Nashville! This project is a rich collection of short stories, songs, and visual art prints "based on" one another and thoughtfully arranged in a single printed book that includes a CD of 12 songs. We will celebrate the publication of Based On with a one-night ticketed show at Belmont University’s BEAUTIFUL McAfee Concert Hall Monday, June 15, at 7:00 p.m. We would LOVE for you to join us!

Tickets to the event and pre-sale book purchases may be made at BasedonNashville.EventBrite.com.

Based On: Words, Notes, and Art from Nashville contributors include:

Authors: Chuck Beard, Paige Crutcher, Tony Earley, J.T. Ellison, Cary Graham, River Jordan, Ariel Lawhon, Betsy Phillips, RashadthaPoet (Rashad Rayford), Victoria Schwab, Shawn Whitsell, and Tommy Womack. (Introduction by Craig Havighurst /afterword by Robert Hicks) 

Musicians: Kyle Andrews, Boom Forest, Carolina Story, Michael B. Hicks, Griffin W House, Phil Madeira, David Mead, The Coal Men, The Lower Caves, The Rough & Tumble, Tristen Gaspadarek, and Brooke Waggoner.

Visual Artists: Adam Baker, Cory Basil, Carl Carbonell, efharper (Emily Harper Beard), Michael Mcbride, Barry A. Noland, Rebecca Sloan, Julie Sola, and Ian White.

All proceeds from the book and event will benefit the Arts & Business Council of Greater Nashville. Printed copies of Based On will be available at East Side Story and Howlin' Books after the event on June 15.

We are extremely proud of this project and hope that you will share in our excitement on June 15. Any help sharing this information would be greatly appreciate. See you soon!

6.8.15 - On Eliminating Busy From Our Vocabulary

As a writer, I love words. I find our language rich and beautiful. There are so many exciting, insightful ways to express ourselves. Truly, there are few words that I dislike. My friends know my biggest no-no buzzword (it starts with an M) but aside from that squicky one, there is a word that I truly despise. 

Busy.

I hate the word busy with the fierce fire of a thousand suns. I hate myself for using it, because it’s such a deflection, such a cop out term. “How are you?” “Oh, I’m so busy. Busy, busy, busy.” It implies importance, excitement, a sense of belonging to our crazy society. It’s become the buzzword of our generation.

We are all so busy. So very, very busy.

And it's a term so often abused. Busy is the new No. Don't want to do something? Just say, "I am too busy," and everyone immediately understands, empathizes, and seeks to soothe. In the past, I found myself often too busy to get together with friends, too busy to talk on the phone, too busy to make dinner, do laundry, get the appropriate amount of sleep, eat well, love well, even (gasp) read.

I’ve launched a campaign against the word busy this year. This year, the busiest I’ve ever had. I’ve been underwater too many times to count with deadlines and obligations, which means only one thing. It's not that I'm busy. I am overcommitted.

Worse. I am rushing through my life.

A life that is well-lived, but going so fast. Too fast.

As I sit here with my parents, 78 and 80 respectively, I think about where they were in their lives 40 years ago. A major move across the country, to an area of the country thirty miles from the nearest town. Three children in three different schools. New jobs, a new real estate practice. New friends and parties and unpacking and settling in.

They were busy, my parents. 

But I never felt like they weren’t around. I never felt they weren’t present. My dad took me fishing. My mom took me to the library. My brothers played Pippi Longstocking with me, allowing me to throw them bodily around the house (They are 9 and 11 years older. They had such patience with their little sister.) We lived a life, a beautiful, quiet, lovely life. 

I think back to the peace of my childhood, of growing up in the woods, and realize my parents chose this place because it was away from the bustle of the city. Because nature and life were inextricably linked. Because they didn’t want the insanity of being busy all the time.

It explains why I feel so comfortable here. Why my creativity sparks. Why I feel like I can breathe. 

For the first quarter of this year, I was trying to satisfy too many masters, letting important things slip through the cracks because there weren’t enough hours in the day. Yesterday, 9 p.m. rolled around and I mourned because my day was over. So I stayed up until 11:30 watching a movie because I didn’t want the day to end. Today I have a headache, and I'm tired, and I've been working, but it's been forced. If I'd just recognized it was time to end the day instead of trying to sandwich in just one last thing, I would have been much more productive today, and felt better to boot.

I want time to slow. I want life to slow. My Year of No has gotten away from me, and it’s time to pull back again. 

I’ve been taking baby steps away from busyness for the past few months. Recognizing I simply can’t do it all, nor do I want to do it all. You know how they say actions speak louder than words? 

I’ve been showing up on the golf course. I’ve been getting to bed at a decent time. I’ve stopped piling every thought of Oh, I must do THIS, and THIS, and THIS into my Wunderlist. How many things on your To Do list are actually vital to your survival? I bet over half of them aren't important at all. 

I’m eating better — they call it eating mindfully, but it's true. I enjoy food more when I slow down enough to think about what I want to eat, then cook or prepare it, eat it, taste it, appreciate it.

If I start feeling stressed, start feeling busy, I set down my laptop and breathe. I play with the cats. I take a walk. Read a few pages from a book. Cut an apple with a knife and dip it in peanut butter. Make a cup of tea. Play with the cats. Do a few yoga poses. Call a friend.

Anything—anything—that will calm my racing heart and pull me from that scattered sense of Stress and Busy multitasking gives me.

I have a long way to go until I unyoke myself from the busy. But I’m trying. Will you try with me? Together, we can stop this insanity, and start living our lives again, instead of rushing through them, busy, busy, busy. 

Are you in?

5.26.15 - To Celebrate Release Day - a Contest!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

It's launch day!!! WHAT LIES BEHIND is now available wherever you buy your books, print or digital. I'm so excited to present the next installment of Sam's story, and hope y'all have as much fun reading it as I did writing it!

Tell me what your favorite Samantha Owens novel is, and 25 of you will win a signed page of the working manuscript! 

Thanks for being the greatest readers on the planet!

Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Books-A-Million

 iBooks | Indiebound | Kobo | Powell's Books

5.17.15 - What Lies Behind the Book (see what I did there?)

On July 24, 2013, I read a story about a young med school student named Paul DeWolf who’d been killed in his apartment. No motive, no witnesses, no suspects. By all accounts, DeWolf was an exceptional young man. He excelled in everything from school to his military training to sports and his faith. He was perfect. Everything about him foretold a brilliant future. And here he was, his promising young life cut short. I couldn’t get him out of my mind. I read everything I could find on the case. And there was a single conclusion to be drawn. 

It was a perfect murder…

That became the first line of WHAT LIES BEHIND. I let my imagination run, wrote up a somewhat outlandish proposal. By August 12 I had a title, one that fit beautifully with the idea of a locked room mystery, and the futility of a life lost too soon. The title comes from the Thoreau (or perhaps Emerson, no one knows) quote:

What lies behind us and what lies ahead of us  

are tiny matters compared to what lives within us.

Oddly enough, the day I decided on the title, I was in Ace Hardware looking for plants, and saw a plaque with beautiful birds on it. Up close, I realized it was the very quote I’d used to title the book. (I snatched it up, and it resides in my office in a spot of honor.) I knew then I had something special. Sometimes, the universe tells you when you’re on the right track.

In October, I submitted the proposal, which my agent and editor loved. I shelved the story until April 2014, when I was finished with my six months of the year I dedicate to Catherine and could think about it.

I started writing April 3. My publisher needed an excerpt for the paperback of WHEN SHADOWS FALL, so I wrote an opening. Cobbled it together, really. And in so doing, realized the story I thought I was telling wasn’t the story that wanted to be written.

It happens that way sometimes. You think a book is about one thing, but it surprises you, takes on a life of its own, and suddenly, you’re left with a completely new story. The characters dictate the story, obviously. And a lot happened between October 2013 and April 2014. Weird things, and good things.

Several wonderful people gave money to charity to have their names appear in the book. When I accept these kinds of commissions, I don’t just toss in a name. I want the donor to get their money’s worth. I create real characters, with real purpose to the story. Tommy Cattafi became my dead medical student. Robin Souleyret was his contact, also dead. (There’s another character name I can’t share, because I don’t want to spoil the story for you. You’ll see that one in the acknowledgements.)

And then the story decided it didn’t want to be about dead people. It wanted to have live people, who did amazing things. Every day, while I watched, it wove itself into a completely different entity. Tommy Cattafi wasn’t dead, but gravely injured. Robin Souleyret was very much alive, and a former CIA agent. What? She had a sister who was FBI, and her name was Amanda. She was murdered and Cataffi injured in what looked like a murder suicide. Their names became so intrinsically involved that, because of these character names, the story itself changed. It evolved. It became about Sam and Robin, the push and pull of the investigation, and the power of love.

There were other issues with the story as well. At its heart, WHAT LIES BEHIND is about a bioterror attack on the U.S. using an Ebola-esque hemorrhagic virus. Yeah. Topical much?

I was more than halfway through the writing well before the African outbreak, and as the virus, and the story, continued to spread, I kept having to change the book so it didn't look like I'd stolen the story from the headlines. Because I, apparently, am simply too prescient when it comes to writing about current events.

And then we have Sam and Xander and Fletcher. The backbone of these books. Vital, one might say, to their longevity. Samantha really comes into her own during this investigation. It was such a blast to watch her take over. She’s always been a smart cookie, but now, she’s smart and tough and isn’t about to sit back when she sees injustices. To put it mildly, she kicks ass.

It took five months to write this book, because the story was a moving target, day after day. When I finished the book, I was almost afraid to turn it in. The synopsis I’d given my editor months before was unrecognizable outside of a young man cut down in his prime. Completely different from the finished book. Happily, she loved it, and here we are.

It’s always fascinating to me to relive the writing of a book. WHAT LIES BEHIND was possibly my most challenging to date, simply because it did not behave. It didn’t do what it was told. It’s fitting WHAT LIES BEHIND was the thirteenth novel I’ve written. It seems I’ve just given birth to my first teenager.