You can catch fellow Southern author Shellie Rushing Tomlinson and yours truly kicking up a little dust as we hit the road interviewing book sellers, readers, and even each other for our respective radio shows - All Things Southern and River Jordan Live. Check out the map and come see us along the way. If you can't make it send your buddy's in any of those cities as we will be giving away cool surprises every day and all along the way. And a special thanks to Literary Threads for joining the tour and providing us with literary giveaways.

The newest novel The Miracle of Mercy Land will be available on September 7, 2010 and I can't wait for readers to discover this story set in 1938 in a sleepy, southern town on the Alabama Coast. Without giving too much away let's just say things are not quiet as simple as they seem.
A hundred years could pass, a thousand more, and writers will still have to seek caves of solitude to produce works worthy of the noise and bustle. And in this ever increasing day of electric connections, it's increasingly more difficult do just that. But sometimes life gives us snow storms, iced in days of quiet introspection. A nice clean landscape to grow silent and appreciate. And it's just this type of landscape that a poet must seek, a quietening, a blanket inside, a fresh fallen internal cover of silence so that even the slightest breath of a character speaking will be heard, the smallest light of truth, will illuminate, the direction a story - fiction or non- so clear the direction is as clear as footprints through a moonlit forest.

I have serious business to attend to. Decisions to make. Projects to birth. Stories to write. A radio show to produce. And yet -

Once again a new snowfall has exceeded expectations. Up on this hill every tree limb is softly layered. A band of snow and ice has taken up residence across this rustic road we call a driveway. My meetings and all my scurry, hurry may just have to wait. I might just be forced to stand at this window for a long time this morning watching the snow fall with a steady grace and listen to the stories wanting to be told.

And in all this business of busy, and in the absolute need for me to get time to be alone and quiet to write, I've taken up the strangest habit of talking to a stranger pretty much every day of my life. Oh yes, there's a story behind that and it's a little more than just a random howdy do - but I've learned that taking that few minutes to truly connect with another human being out of compassion not obligation, has been a saving grace for me.

Wherever you may be when you read this I hope you get all the multi-media fast and furious social media connections that your heart desires. And that you are able to carve out a little time to sit still in the hush and hear your own story rising to the surface. And I pray that when the opportunity comes you have the grace to listen to a stranger's story. You may be the only touch of kindness they receive all week. And in turn, I have no doubt that it will water your soul.

Keep reading, and Keep believing.

River