Monthly Archive for December, 2011

In the Studio – Neil White, The Sanctuary of Outcasts, and New Year’s!

Published on December 31, 2011 in Clearstory Radio Blog. 0 Comments Tags: beautiful homes, camp, Carville, In the Sanctuary of Outcasts, inspire, John Grisham, leipers, leprosy, literary, Louisiana, luxury, memoir, Neil White, new years, nice cars, publishing.

It’s the day we’ve all been waiting for. It’s Do Over day. We get to begin again and to do our best to get it right! And what better book to feature and kick the year off with than a book about New beginnings and chapters closing. New friends and a new way of looking at things. New Life! 107.1fm Nashville or http://www.clearstoryradio.com streaming

Please join us Sunday night, New Year’s night at 6:00pm Central as Neil White shares his experiences living in and writing about The Sanctuary of Outcasts. Literary News, Book Reviews, and Musical interludes. It’s a great way to start the year!

About the Book

“In the Sanctuary of Outcasts is a remarkable story.”

JOHN GRISHAM

Daddy is going to camp. That’s what I told my children. A child psychologist suggested it. “Words like prison and jail conjure up dangerous images for children,” she explained.

But it wasn’t camp.

Neil White, a journalist and magazine publisher, wanted the best for those he loved—nice cars, beautiful homes, luxurious clothing. He loaned money to family and friends, gave generously to his church, and invested in his community—but his bank account couldn’t keep up. Soon Neil began moving money from one account to another to avoid bouncing checks. His world fell apart when the FBI discovered his scheme and a judge sentenced him to eighteen months in federal prison.
But it was no ordinary prison. The isolated, beautiful colony in Carville, Louisiana was also home to the last people in the continental United States disfigured by leprosy. Hidden away for decades, this small circle of outcasts forged a tenacious, clandestine community, a fortress to repel the cruelty of the outside world. It is here, in a place rich with history, where the Mississippi River briefly runs north, amidst an unlikely mix of leprosy patients, nuns, and criminals, that Neil’s strange and compelling journey begins. He finds a new best friend in Ella Bounds, an eighty-year-old, African-American, double-amputee who had contracted leprosy as a child. She and the other secret people, along with a wacky troop of inmates, help Neil re-discover the value of simplicity, friendship and gratitude.
Funny and poignant, In the Sanctuary of Outcasts is an uplifting memoir that reminds us all what matters most.

New Years Day – On the Road

Published on December 29, 2011 in Life, Praying for Strangers, River Jordan and Road Trips. 0 Comments Tags: 2012, beginnings, Church, journey, New Years day, resolutiions, road trip, Rome, Rome Georgia.

It’s true. I’m beginning the amazing year of 2012 on the road. And visiting with the wonderful people at The First Baptist Church of Rome, Georgia. Please join us if you are in the city or the area at 9:15 for a time of sharing inspirational stories about this wild journey of a resolution, Praying for Strangers.

Blessings in the New Year!

This One Tiny Thing In 2012

Published on December 24, 2011 in Praying for Strangers Blog. 0 Comments Tags: brother, cake, holidays, husband, lose, neighbor, new years, new years resolutions, people, Prayer, Praying for Strangers, psychology today, queen, resolutions, sister, spouse.

I write this as the end of the year approaches. I am occupied with to-do lists. Things to clean, to buy, to cook. Relatives are pouring in soon from all corners of the world as the world’s spiritual holidays collide. Our house will be soon putting up our tree, stringing lights and planning to make yet another Red Velvet cake because my mother is with us and she is Queen of said cake. We will devour it completely until absolutely, positively – gone. Not a crumb in sight.

It’s also the time of year when like many people, I tick off the days until New Year’s and begin to think of that signification word, resolution. There are sites that list the most popular top ten or twelve resolutions that people have. It appears when most things are said and done, most of us are so very, much the same. We long to be better people, to be kinder to our families and spend more time with them – real time. We want to learn things, see things, and travel places. We want to exercise more,stress less, and yes, get out of debt. We want to pick up trash, go to the beach, climb a mountain, and make new friends. To offer more hope and smiles. To breathe. And on many of those lists, to love unconditionally and to judge less. These strangers writing down all of their resolutions could very well be my sister, my neighbor, my spouse. They could be me.

The purpose of this Psychology Today blog is not for promoting our personal professions, our books, and our general marketing platform. It’s for sharing ideas about the things that are important to us that the editors feel other people will find interesting, challenging, enlightening or inspiring. To that end let me disclose this fact – I wrote a book about a resolution that I made. That book is a collection of the people and their stories that I collected along the journey of that year. This post is not to sell more of those books. It’s about the resolution itself. About what started it all. Let’s just say I had a moment near the end of 2008 that did indeed inspire me to consider one New Year’s resolution - to silently say a prayer for a different stranger I encountered every day of the year.Actually, close to midnight on December 31, 2008, I began that resolution. This is December 2011, three years later and I’m moving again towards the end of one year, the beginning of another.

And still – today, I will pray for a stranger. Tomorrow, I will pray for a stranger. In the coming year, I will pray for a multitude.

On New Year’s Day I will be standing in front of a group of strangers talking about what the year will hold for them and the world. This is what I will tell them. This is what I believe. (This blog is continued on the original post at Psychology Today Spirituality Blog – Praying for Strangers – Click here to read )

Clearstory Christmas Show

Published on December 23, 2011 in Clearstory Radio Blog. 0 Comments Tags: angel, carolers, christmas, Church, Clyde Edgerton, dogs, hot chocolate, JT Ellison, Kaya McLaren, Kerry Madden, lepers, Neil White, New Orleans, outcasts, Sanctuary, star, story, tobacco, tradition, traditions, trees, trucks, wine, wine tasting.

Christmas Night at 6pm, the Clearstory Christmas show airs for 2011. Can this become a tradition? Last year we featured authors sharing Christmas memories, stories, and traditions and it was so much fun we had to stop the world and do it again. This year Clyde Edgerton reads his story Goodwill about a man who just wants to be left alone to chew tobacco and not consider that puppy he sold with a questionable background, JT Ellison remembers a Currier and Ives Colorado Christmas, Neil White share a poignant story of his five days of leave from the Sanctuary of Outcasts in the federal prison where he considers the real meaning of Christmas, the history of a Leper colony, and what being with this children means to him, Kay McLaren tells wild tales of traditions you’ve never heard of, and Kerry Madden reads her essay from the LA Times about Leaving Santa Behind. All blended with a mix of Christmas Music from Enya, John Cash, Martina McBride, The Blind Boys of Alabama and more.

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Many Blessings friends, Merry Christmas – and here’s to a Peaceful New Year full of light!

River Jordan

On The Road – Woodstock, GA

Published on December 6, 2011 in Authors, River Jordan, Road Trips and Story. 0 Comments Tags: christmas, foxtale book shoppe, novels, Praying for Strangers, river jordan, Road Trips, shopping, woodstock.

Please join me for a special afternoon or reading, signing and story sharing at Foxtale Book Shoppe in Woodstock, GA at 1:00pm. It’s an incredible chance to visit historic downtown Woodstock, shop for Christmas, peruse the books, and have a great lunch. Let’s Make it A Date!

In The Studio – N.M. Kelby and White Truffles in Winter

Published on December 6, 2011 in Clearstory Radio Blog. 0 Comments Tags: Chef, Delphine, Escoffier, food, Italy, love, NM Kelby, Ritz, The Savoy, war, White Truffles in Winter, Writing.

FOOD, LOVE, WAR!

Join Clearstory Radio for N.M. Kelby’s visit in the studio to talk about her amazing new novel, and the business of writing like you haven’t heard it lately. The true tales from an insider’s perspective in the know. A great chat with that Bookseller Around the Corner, That Bookstore in Blytheville, and some Lit Chat news and great Musical Interludes. Wednesday at Noon, Sunday Night at 6:00pm – WRFN – Radio Free Nashville, 107.1lpfm – or Clearstory Radio listen live and streaming.

N.M.Kelby is also the author of The Constant Art of Being A Writer: The Life, Art & Business of Fiction (Writer’s Digest Books), the story collection, A Travel Guide for Reckless Hearts (Borealis Books) and the novels Murder at the Bad Girl’s Bar and Grill, Whale Season, In the Company of Angels, and Theater of the Stars. Her work has won numerous awards including a Gold Medal from the Florida Book Awards, has been translated into several languages, and offered by The Literary Guild, Doubleday Book Club, and Quality Paperback Book Club. She is the recipient of a Bush Artist Fellowship in Literature, an NEA Inter-Arts grant, the Heekin Group Foundation’s James Fellowship for the Novel, both a Florida and Minnesota State Arts Board Fellowship in fiction, two Jerome Travel Study Grants, and a Jewish Arts Endowment Fellowship.

Her story “Jubilation, Florida” was selected for NPR’S “Selected Shorts,” and recorded by Joanne Woodward for the CD Travel Tales, and reprinted in New Stories from the South: Best of 2006 (Algonquin Books).

A breathtaking novel, rare and moving, about the world’s greatest chef and his unruly heart.

White Truffles in Winter imagines the world of the remarkable French chef Auguste Escoffier (1846-1935), who changed how we eat through his legendary restaurants at the Savoy and the Ritz. A man of contradictions—kind yet imperious, food-obsessed yet rarely hungry—Escoffier was also torn between two women: the famous, beautiful, and reckless actress Sarah Bernhardt and his wife, the independent and sublime poet Delphine Daffis, who refused ever to leave Monte Carlo. In the last year of Escoffier’s life, in the middle of writing his memoirs, he has returned to Delphine, who requests a dish in her name as he has honored Bernhardt, Queen Victoria, and many others. How does one define the complexity of love on a single plate? N. M. Kelby brings us the sensuality of food and love amid a world on the verge of war in this work that shimmers with beauty and longing.