River Jordan || Author, Speaker, Radio Personality

It's true, I'm in hiding to complete the next novel which a friend of mine recently said sounded a whole lot just like the witness protection plan. I guess it is in that I'm at an undisclosed location where I don't talk to anyone. I surfaced slightly today to find the rural PO to mail a letter to Mama assuring her that I am alive and well and to mail a birthday present to the Adorable turning 3 because she doesn't understand a thing about writer deadlines or the witness protection program but she will know it's her birthday and that all things Dora the Explorer are true treasure in life. Since the PO is very Mayberryish and has it's own special hours I have been left in the parking lot which is just perfect a perfect excuse to use this time where I have an Internet connection to post a blog instead of write another word. There are horses galloping in the field next to the post office and never have they sounded more beautiful. Horses love my sister. Horses try to kill me. Okay - not exactly but I promise you have a few stories about some rides that sure looked that way. That's why when I heard so many people saying but you're going to have a great story out of this I wanted to say - Hello Mate -(because talking in a foreign accent has been proven to help lesson stress levels) I've got a enough stories I' tell you. I've the story of getting stuck at the Mexican border, the story about my wallet and all my cash getting left at a gas station in the middle of the Texas dessert which I didn't realize until I had driven oh, a few hundreds of miles away and stopped on an empty tank to fill up again, I have the story of the horse that went crazy - with me on his back mind you, the story of my house burning down on Christmas day, the time I was stranded . . . well you get the idea - I've had me share you know. No need for more stories aye? But the truth is as long as there is life and good people there will be need for more stories and so I hope that part goes on for a long, long time.

(From Facebook Excerpt)

My dear mentor genius Dr. Yo Reed once toasted to a group of playwrights, me being one of them, Here's to all your travels and Travails! And I thought . . . what? Then I began to embark on my life's journey through different stage and went oh my, I am traveling. I am travailing. And never have I done so much of that it seems in the last few days as I have been on the road and then broken down on the road after safely taking the adorables home again and then . . . well, you just won't believe it. It became a mix of something between Groundhog Day and Planes Trains and Automobiles. The funny thing was strangers kept telling me - boy are you going to have a story out of this! And they didn't know that telling stories is pretty much what I do for a life's work living. And then my husband said - Are you writing this down? All of this? You have to be writing this down! But the thing is - I would have been writing down every strange moment of the last strange days. Travails really do sometime produce incredible circumstances, opportunities, and because of that - stories. So some of those things, the people, and events, will be surfacing in a new work yet to be titled BUT in the meantime, all this travailing has been happening with me trying to get to the place where I am - hiding and seriously writing. So, here I go, deeper and deeper into the story. Will surface on facebook when this particular journey comes to a peaceful conclusion called - The End.

Now, in short note - My lovely little car was one that I had put ohhhh, about 200,000 road trip miles on and it safely carried me all the way kinda dying as I rode it into the sunset. I"m just strange that way. For one thing - I love cars the way some women love shoes or people love horses. I will go to car shows, will turn around for car shows, will turn around just to go back and look at a car or truck that I think has sass. Love cars and trucks of every model and year. If I rolled in money like Jay Leno I might have cars like he does. Fact is, I'd be one of those people who might get a tad obsessive. Which is pretty funny because to see me driving around in something non-descriptive and not very flashy you just would know that. Maybe it's like loving horses but that old plow horse that you grew up with was your favorite forever. Regardless, that old car of mine has given up the ghost and now it will have to be replaced with something that I hope will serve me just as well. But yes, cars, they have their final days and mine offered me just as I posted on facebook and as everyone said - an opportunity for a story and the stories of the people who befriended me along the way like the night clerk at the old, old roadside hotel where I pulled up in a taxi and said - this is just fine - looks like one of those old, old Florida hotels from back in the day, it has character! But the hotel night clerk checked me in and began to rattle off his favorite authors and what he was reading and he might of well of had a PHD in classic literature and some of the greatest (but many unknown) writers of our time. Amazing. Really.

Then I went in the hotel room and not much of anything worked just right so I decided to just pretend I was in Italy and go to sleep thinking of my cousin Deb and how she would just be having a fit to stay in such a place under all due circumstances and I fell asleep laughing about ti. But back to travails and finding a story in the process.

To A Frustrated Poet

by R.J. Ellmann

This is to say

I know

You wish you were in the woods,

Living the poet life,

Not here at a formica topped table

In a meeting about perceived inequalities in the benefits and allowances offered to

employees of this college,

And I too wish you were in the woods,

Because it’s no fun having a frustrated poet

In the Dept. of Human Resources, believe me.

In the poems of yours that I’ve read, you seem ever intelligent and decent and patient in a way

Not evident to us in this office,

And so, knowing how poets can make a feast out of trouble,

Raising flowers in a bed of drunkenness, divorce, despair,

I give you this check representing two weeks’ wages

And ask you to clean out your desk today

And go home

And write a poem

With a real frog in it

And plums from the refrigerator,

So sweet and so cold.

I suppose that it is true - writers have a way of turning those travails of life into a feast of something worthy of wading in. We have a way of finding the illuminating, engaging, funny, or heartbreaking story in all those things and yes, I'm sure, somehow, my travails over the last days will find there way into my words. Where else could they possibly go?

ON a great hat's off note - If you are in the Franklin area for the upcoming teachings of author/speaker Denise Hildreth check out her site and schedule for the Whole Woman Revolution, a special congratulations to Joshilyn Jackson as one of the INTERNATIONAL SPOKESMODELS for the American Heart Association so follow those links and her amazing stories of her progress.

I'll be surfacing and presenting at the Decatur Book Festival in Decatur, GA the first weekend in September so don't miss that if you are in the area. I will be more than read to talk,talk,talk after being on this deadline imposed exile.

And now as Saints In Limbo continues to find it's way into the four corners of the world, as stories continue to unfold every morning and every night across this good earth, I'll keep listening to the one that I'm writing and surface with it by Summer's end.

All Grace and light to you and Warmest Wishes for the last few precious days of Summer!

River

Today was my day to post on the Southern Authors blog A Good Blog Is Hard to Find. It's about living the dream of the writers life and how the reality of the dream is different than what it looks like on the outside. And it's different at one age than it is at another. Just like life - real life. Right now in my real life The Adorables are here after more miles and memories of making our way back to Nashville. We stopped into a Cracker Barrel and spent a fijjilllllion dollars but we didn't try to shove the great rocking chairs in the car for the trip back but it was soooo tempting when you have such cute faces rocking like grandma on the porch, like they have been rocking just like that all their lives. Careful, I should tell them, rocking is dangerously addictive. My mama should know as I ended up getting three new rockers when she came to visit. One for the porch, one for the living room, and one for her room which has now been turned into the Adorables room with Christmas white lights strung everywhere and bears dressed in full costume. My mama doesn't just sit anywhere - she rocks and rocks and rocks. Which I do so suppose that might be part of the influence of the fact that the characters in my books rock and rock and rock their way through the stories. Why would they want to do anything but???? And as a child I know my favorite activity was a) to have someone hold me and rock me which pacified me for as absolutely long as they would allow and b) for me to sit in my own little rocker rocking the day away listening to the old people tell stories.

Now I am once again in high respect for all the mothers of toddlers who manage to ever take a shower much less one more solid thing like cook for and clean said toddler and I can't imagine the mothers that manage to do this and blog and write books at the same time which I find to be the equivalent of juggling ferrel cats while humming Beethoven's 5th. I'm covered up in training pants, and have been speaking in Dora which means my Spanish is improving immensely but my sentences are getting shorter and shorter.

I have managed to do the library and check out twenty books that we should read in just no time with selections ranging from Dr. Seuss to the Encyclopedia of Horses. Tonight's great activities are to include fireworks and face painting to which Husband says - You're crazy. Nada nosireebud not me. I'm making memories. I mean - the Adorables are in Zaza land so what is suppose to be normal about that? Nevermind that their Dad (my son) keeps sending important messages about what they are suppose to eat and NOT eat like two weeks on the road with me will scar their nutritional plan for life - I'm down to telling him that they are foraging in the woods for food. We're down to eating blackberries, and bugs. That's it. That's their diet. Isn't that enough of the main food groups? And the little one makes declarations like Me go nite nite even when it's only ten am. She take a nap this early? I asked the older one full of baby wisdom. Yep, when she's grumpy she does! And the little one declares, Yep, me grumpy! Go nite nite. You know - if the world would only understand that when me grumpy - I just need a blanky, a snack, and a little nite nite and all would be right again. Non-nappy people don't get it. Mama and sister totally get it. We have respect for the nap and will barely answer a ringing phone with the word nap and the other person will say Later - and hang up.

Thanks for all the great notes and comments that continue to pour in from readers for Saints In Limbo. I was delighted about the new review just posted at Tell Tale Souls and am discovering people here and there who have embraced Velma's story in all its wonder. Also tickled purple that Saints In Limbo was recently featured with high praises on Talk of the Town CBS Nashville.

Now it's back to blackberry fever and real life with the adorables while I have this great chance to be Zaza. The writer in me waits and soon I'll be off to finish the new novel and travel in the mysteries of the human heart. But right now, I'm very content to read a story, rock a baby, and pick wild berries with abandon.

"River Jordan's third novel is a Southern Gothic Masterpiece." Paste Magazine
It's been one of those weeks. One where story takes a front row seat in my life. Oh - wait a minute. That’s every week! Well, I guess practically speaking that would be every day because I am writing a story, loving other peoples stories, or being the story.

To start off I grabbed my purse, cell phone, briefcase, laptop, charger for phone, charger for laptop, fed the dog, told his sad face he could not go, backed up and dutifully turned on Animal Planet for him to watch so he wouldn’t get depressed while still juggling purse, cell phone, briefcase, chargers, gym bag. The dog training lady was going nononobaddog to some poor deranged pup so I thought - my dog doesn't need that kind of pressure whereby I switched it to cartoons where he'd have happy stories, and wandered to the car like a pack mule thinking I really need to get in to see the chiropractor for this neck problem

A thousand errands later I dash into the gym so proud that I have made it and run in to change clothes where I pull not one but two left shoes out of my gym bag. I search the bag again. Shoe number one, shoe number two. Both left feet. Now mind you - yes, this girl can on occasion have two left feet even though I feel quite confident dancing to Motown but Motown wasn't playing a few nights ago when my feet got tangled and I crashed into our gate sustaining injuries that would be better for me not to discuss in public. Husband asked - what happened? as he was just ahead of me unlocking the door and I had a hard time answering that question as he was born with a left foot and a right foot so he doesn’t fully understand. It involved my shoes, the stairs, and my feet. That's all I can say to try to explain. So when I pulled the left shoes from my bag it was no major surprise and YES if there had been one left shoe and one right shoe that were from different pairs of shoes or different colors I would have put them on said feet and hit the gym as planned. (This fact about me is one of the things that makes my mother shake her head.) But never mind, left feet or no, I pulled my swimsuit out of my bag and thought - fine I'll hit the pool. Well, it just happened to be the community wide train your 2 year old to swim fasterthanashark at the Y. The pool was teeming, teeming I tell you!, with squeeling and squirming toddlers jumping at high rates of speed into the pool where I tried to slide into a corner and dogpaddle long enough that it would equate to the calories in one triscuit. Fine - I know when I'm beat. I hit the steam room where I prayed for the state of the world at large and that seemed just as good as jogging on the treadmill to tell you the truth.

Left feet. Two year olds. Surprises. Life, or my life at least, never just shows up in a neat package and I'm sure that somewhere in the equation is - hmmm, me?

Regardless, the beauty of the surprise, the ability to laugh at it all, the wonder of this blessed life - oh yeah, I'll take it any day.

I made a matinee late in the afternoon to see the new Sandra Bullock movie, The Proposal that I completely enjoyed. Part of that being for the blessing of hearing other people laugh all around me. In the world of home flat screens the size of small drive-in's and surround sound that excels anything the old movie house had - it's easy to forget that all theatre is actually created as part of a communal experience and it is meant to be enjoyed as such. I remember going to see the same play night after night and the entire play was always different depending not on the actors but on the audience. Today's audience was well pleased with the romantic comedy mishaps of Ms. Bullock but it was the infamous Betty White who took the stage and was so delightful. (Last week the audience traveled through galaxies and loved all the action of Star Trek and I was right there with them - finally - and enjoying every minute of the young new cast that preserved the personalities of the old one.)

If going to the movies wasn't enough of a break I escorted myself directly to a bookstore where I wandered through the store in admiration and amazement. For one thing, I'm in the bookstore and that's a delightful thing in and of itself. But it really astounded me after these many years of writing to see on every shelf the names of authors that I know and people I call friend. To reach out and touch their works and to be so pleased and proud of them including Joshilyn Jackson's, The Girl Who Stopped Swimming featured front and center, (and is now on the bestseller list) but there are so many! What a glorious and wonderful thing to be a storyteller in the company of storytellers. And that’s what we all are. Walking boxes full of stories keeping company of the same.

Last year we were hanging out in Italy at an outdoor cafe when an old man bega

n singing softly to himself and I wanted to say, Sing it again! Tell me where that song comes from, what it means to you. It was such a moment of blessing for me. A real time stopper. But I don't speak Italian - yet - so I just smile, walk away, and leave my bag by the table in the process and the old man comes running after me, calling out, and I turn back, retrieve my bag with a lot of grazie's.

I return home and embrace this new story that is rolling out beneath my fingers that is full of life, love, and great mystery, and talk to folks far and wide about Saints In Limbo and the story of Velma True. (For a great new review from Jackie K. Cooper Hollywood read here or listen to a recent Faith Radio talk on creative inspiration or the interview with St. Louis radio check the Podcasts link this site.)

As we salute freedom in this great country of ours this week, the freedom to read those stories, to write them, publish them, tell them, share them, and embrace them - is one of the things for which I am most celebrating. And to the special people who protect that freedom - with all my heart - and both left feet - thank you!