River Jordan || Author, Speaker, Radio Personality

People it is hot in Nashville I can tell you that. Big white polar bear dog can tell you that too and so can every other critter around. I think it was 97 today in the shade. We've had storm after storm and I'm not talking a little Seattle rain (a special nod to my friends out on the northwest coast ) I'm talki

ng Southern Summertime lightning, thunder, heat, and deluge. After a particular night that I kept thinking - Okay - if I hear a train is it really a Train or a tornado pretending to be a train? - I wake to the birds singing like they were recording a hit song, green trees, blue skies. Summer daze and hot nights in the city indeed.

It seems only a few days ago that I was leaving Jefferson, Texas and The Pulpwood Queens in the rearview and booking my way up the winding road talking to Shellie Rushing Tomlinson for an hour on the cell phone while I was NOT texting but we were laughing and trading Mama stories, writer stories, and being thankful for these messy lives we live. Now I look and it's been over a week since I've been home and I just don't know how that happened! Life is running as fast as the lightning across the sky in those storms. My days are filled with writing the new novel, answering notes from readers, and interviews about the latest novel, Saints In Limbo. In the meantime, I have to follow up on real world things like pay the light bill (as we said at Mema's house) and try to sort through the menagerie of whatnot. Real life can really cramp my style - that is those little details like going to the store for that thing you forgot the last three times you were at the store. But isn't your life like that? Don't you wish we all had more time? To laugh and share funny stories, and catch up with old friends, and maybe even sit down and write someone an old fashioned heartfelt letter? Time. What a precious commodity in high demand and short supply. Or is it?

Back in my Grandmama's time daily trips to four different stores was not needed. The bills still came in the mail I think but they were much fewer and far between. Life really, truly felt like it had 48 hours in a day. I experienced it as little girl on those Summer days that seemed to take forever before the sun even set. Running with those wild cousins of mine. One year two of us made up a treasure map on an old paperbag, cutting out the map, crinkling it, and drawing dots for the lines and an x marks the spot. Then we half hid it in the dirt and of course, found it appropriately in front of all the other cousins so that suddenly we were off on the chase, screaming and laughing and digging until even the two of us that had made up the treasure map believed in it. We had no Nintendo, no air-conditioning, no vcr's, dvds, wii's or anything else. But what we possessed to no small extent were imaginations and a day full of nothing but promise.

Now, beyond measures, we all have deadlines of one kind of another in our lives. We all have the strangest wrong bills that show up and I swear take us the better part of three days to clear up so that our bank accounts aren't being drafted for widgets from another country that we did not order. We all have stuff that tries to erode our lives moments yet . . .

I think if we give it a chance, if we really purpose in our hearts, we can carve out a few moments each day to give thanks for the mornings that follow the storm, for the memories of long summer days, for laughter and love, and for the chance to keep letting the music of life pervade our souls.

"River Jordan's third novel (Saints In Limbo) is a Southern Gothic Masterpiece." Paste Magazine

Yes, yes, I have been roughing it in the historic Hotel in Jefferson as you can see. Sometimes writers have to pay a high price for being on the road. Actually, this is looking pretty cushy and there is a claw foot tub in the bathroom where I have tried to take three baths a day just to appreciate it. The trains run through constantly which is music to my ears. It's a great place to write, an incredible little walking picturesque town that makes me want to hold up in this room writing for at least a month. No, I don't always get so cozy, comfortable and those of you who read my last blog know that I was camping in one of the hugest rain, lighting, thunderstorms of my life when I attended the recent Cherokee County Book Festival. The accommodations change from here to there and everywhere but there's nothing like getting on the road and meeting with readers and book clubs to make me so very aware of

why it is that I write stories - for other people. Sometimes when an author, this author, gets lost in a story, in the writing and creating of it, it can be easy to hold the story and its characters so near and dear that I can forget that it's meant to find it's way out into the wild world. To me I'm simply lost in listening to Velma True and writing about her and Rudy, Annie, Rose, and Sara and the town of Echo, Florida. I traveled to Jackson, Mississippi recently, met with the Pulpwood Queens there, raided Jonni Webb's pottery studio and then crossed through Louisiana bayou country to Jefferson, Texas for two more nights of discussion about stories, and the reason writers keep returning to the page. I realized that readers were making Velma True their own. That they were possessing the story as much as I ever had and no longer belonged to

me. Velma and what she has to say and to reveal to us is really out there for the world. And that's a great and glorious thing.

That being said - these women know how to make reading some of the greatest fun that I have ever known. And, one of the things that I get so much pleasure out of is the fact that the book club is made up of people from so many different background and walks of life but that they have integrated themselves into one another's lives on such a deep, personal level that incredible new friendships have been born out of their love for reading. One Pulpwood Queen told us that she had never read for just fun until she joined the club (all heavy work related brainy things before) and now she reads fiction of all kinds all the time - book after book - and if that isn't the greatest kind of inspiration! Patti Callahan Henry talked about her latest release, Driftwood Summer (that just hit the NY Times Bestseller list!). But being old home week anything Pulpwood Queens collide, we ran around Kathy's bookstore and picked up books on every shelf from the authors who have traveled to Jefferson or been featured by the club. There was Carolyn Turgeon, and Janis Owens, Charles Martin, Kaya McLaren, Denise Hildreth, Shellie Rushing Tomlinson and it just goes on and on - I could sit down there and read all summer and never get anything done. Just reading. But this summer will not be that way but far from it. With a new novel creatively making it's way to Waterbrook/Random House in August and the Adorables scheduled to visit soon, it just can't be that way. Not a summer of lazy reading but you know I'm going to capture stories everywhere I go.

So a big, beautiful thank you to Nadine at the hotel for sharing her story with me - and cracking me up in the process. When I told her, "Honey, you need to be careful on those stairs!" She looked at me and said, "Who you think you tellin' to be careful? You think you got to tell me to be careful? I done fell up 'em and I fell down 'em." Then she went on to tell me a few other things and I put the laptop down, stopped writing and stood up (out of respect) to listen. What I wanted to say was - Nadine, let me help you clean those last few rooms and we'll get a cooler full of whatever you want cold to drink and go sit down by the river and tell stories for the rest of the day. But I had a deadline and so did Nadine so we went on about our business.

Then I was able to keep visiting with the Pulpwood Queens later and write today on the novel as piano music drifted up from below casting quite the writers spell. Who can't write in an old hotel to a wafting notes of a baby grand?

Kathy Patrick wrote about how her life is so rich with story, friends, and books and I can't agree more. The things that matter the very most don't cost a whole lot but a little of our time.

Now it's time to hit the road again but I'm leaving this church bells chiming, the train whistles blowing through the night, and Nadine somewhere telling stories. Jefferson always keeps a piece of my heart. Next time, Nadine, next time, you and me and that riverboat cruise. I promise I'll find you and we'll break bread and share a few stories that make life all the richer.

*Postscript: I pick up lunch for the road, work on this blog awhile at Annie Skinner's restaurant - (truth be told the Kornbread Kitchen which has some of the best cornbread this side of Heaven was closed the day I left so I missed it this trip) but I work a bit and then walk out to my car and catch Nadine in the middle of the street of all things, times, and places. She looks up and recognizes and comes over and asks me how far I've got to go. Hours I tell her. Way on up the road. Headed to Nashville. She asks where the car is and walks me to it telling me to be careful and to be sure and pull over if I get tired - not to fall asleep at the wheel. I promise her I will and that I'll see her when I get back. "If I'm not dead," she says - "I'll be right here." I'm home again, safe and sound and God willing, Nadine - you'll be right there and I'll be back. And the story will continue.

Now, anyone that reads my blog on a regular basis or has read the essays about mamanthem know that used to be Mama would a) riding shotgun as Aunt Kate drove or b) aunt kate would call us a thousand times a day while Mama was here because she wasn't with us and wanted to be here so much. And now, time has passed and the seasons go on and Aunt Kate has gone on the Sweet By and By. And I swear I just can't stand it. It's strange having Mama here as a company of one without Aunt Kate shadowing her every move and bossing her around.

And all that makes the story of Saints In Limbo all the more precious to me because Velma True teaches me to cherish the moments of my life. And that's what I've been thinking about recently a whole lot. That life is really made up of moments - not days or years - that seem to fly by with a blink of the eye, but moments that are so carved out we can't forget them. I imagine that we grabbed them because somehow we became a little more aware, a little more certain that this was something t

o treasure. I want to live my life that way every day. It's a challenge I know but a worthy one!

Now, what got me started thinking about all this was an interview that author and journalist Karen Spears Zacharias asked me to do - she being the one this time doing all the asking and me trying to come up with the answers. For her interview about the making of Saints In Limbo just go right here!

For those of you in the Nashville area, please join me at the Evening with an Author event hosted by Ginna Foster and the Tinny Contemporary at 237 5th Ave North, Thursday night at 6pm. I look forward to a great evening of reading and discussion about story in all it's glory! Great Fun.

Next week I'll be heading down to Texas by way of Jackson, Mississippi to visit with those beautiful Pulpwood Queens and their book clubs. Thanks so much to Kathy Patrick for choosing Saints In Limbo as their official June selection. And a huge thank you to all the reviewers out there reading, discovering, and falling in love with Velma and all the other characters of Saints.

I'm writing later on FACEBOOK at ALL THINGS River Jordan about how my characters have all taught me something and given me a lesson worth embracing. None more so than Velma True and I'm delighted that story is finding it's way out into the world.

Okay - I think I hear sister clearing my bumpy driveway (that Mama asked me to please have the county pave before she got here this week which was kinda funny since I had two days to accomplish that and I don't think that what Mama calls the dirt road to my house that is really my driveway is something the county is going to jump right to!) so I must go do sweet daughter things and miss Aunt Kate, and keep writing, and spend some time with a cup of tea and my feet propped up on the front porch listening to the hummingbirds fight. And much, much later, when the Owls are calling and everyone is in bed, I'll step outside and count the stars just like my blessings.