Help! I Need Somebody . . .

Eat Your Words at Avenue M (on Merrimon Avenue in Asheville) is a new kind of book club. You don't have to join or bring food; you don't have to take a turn hosting; you just make a reservation and show up.  For a modest price, you'll get a four course meal and lots of discussion of the book of the evening (which you are asked to read beforehand.)  It's limited to 21 so that it can be a real discussion, not a reading or a talk.

By an amazing coincidence, Under the Skin will be the featured book next week (Thursday, November 17th at 5:30) and I'll be there to lead the discussion and answer questions.

Of course I'd love to see any of you who are in the Asheville area at this dinner. (Go HERE for information.) But I beg any of you who've read the book to help me think of topics for discussion -- seances? sisterhood? syzergy? (I threw in that last one, just to be silly and alliterative but on looking it up in Wikipedia, I found that one of its meanings (the union of opposites)  is appropriate.

Please, if you've read the book, help me out and suggest a topic suitable for book club discussion!Or any question you might have re the book.

Dog Friends

 

Ali and Willa are unlikely playmates...

In spite of a considerable size/weight difference . . .

They like to play-fight . . .

Willa is tireless...

And fearless. . . .

And she likes to win.

Blog Friends

You know what's been really, really nice about visiting bookstores to do presentations for my latest publication? Meeting blog friends -- folks who read this blog and/or whose blogs I visit. Of course, I always meet nice folks -- book lovers, by definition, are nice folks. But what fun to meet people that I already feel like I know!

Tracy, who comments here often, showed up at Fountainhead Books in Waynesville; Carole of  Writer's Porch, surprised me at City Lights in Sylva;  Terry, whose great, great grandfather Benjamin Franklin Freeman I've written about was at Accent on Books, as was fellow dog lover Brenda, of A Scratch Behind the Ears.

Jim, aka Wayfarin' Stranger, was at Malaprops, en route home to Tennessee, and Nancy, who has so generously shared her aunts Inez and Odessa with me was there too. 

 And yesterday at Blue Ridge Books, as I started in on my book talk, I kept noticing a pretty, smiling young woman who was noticeably pregnant and somehow familiar but I couldn't make a connection (I'm appalling bad at recognizing people -- ask my family.) During the question and answer period, I found out that, lo and behold, it was  Nicole of Rare Bird.  

Nicole is in the middle of a high-risk pregnancy -- her little girl was very premature --two pounds -- so Nicole is on bed rest -- only allowed up four hours a day.

And she came to see me -- I am so honored and so touched...

Writing hasn't made me rich in money -- but it's enriched my life with experiences and friends like these -- and like you . . .  I treasure you all.

Smoky Mountain Haze

 They say God cast a veil of mist over these beautiful mountains so mountain folks in Heaven wouldn't look down and be homesick...

If you missed my post on Creeping Woo-woo (the vortex kept eating the link...), it's still there at Jungle Red . . .

Back to the Vortex -- No, Really . . .

 

They tell me that this time I'm really over at Jungle Red, explaining how living in a New Age vortex has led to creeping woo-woo in my writing. Do stop by and share your thoughts  on woo-woo. 

And by the way, notice how when I superimposed the picture of a vortex (lifted from the internet) over one of our own sunrises, THE SUN IS CENTERED IN THE VORTEX!

Coincidence? Or the Appalachian Crystalline Vortex at work?


You be the judge.

 

Aflame

The vortex post will be tomorrow -- meabwhile, here are some pretty pictures . . 
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Really, I'd thought I was done with autumn leaves and then, at the school where my Wednesday night classes meet, there was this absolutely GLORIOUS row of maples. . .

Writing from the Vortex

This sounds like bait and switch but really, it's just a mixup. I was told my guest post at Jungle Red would be up today. But it's not. 

Turns out it's SATURDAY I'm over at Jungle Red, explaining how living in a New Age vortex has led to creeping woo-woo in my writing. Do stop by then and share your thoughts on woo-woo,

Today the Reds are discussing whether 99 cent Kindle books will be the death of publishing. And it's an interesting post, as are the comments.

Willa's Wordless Wedneday

The River Road

After reading in Asheville on Sunday, I returned home along the River Road.

This is the road the drovers would have followed before the coming of the railroad.

When we moved to Madison County in '75, this narrow, winding road was the only way in.

On one side the river, on the other, rocky cliffs...

When the 'new road' was built about twenty-five years ago, the river road was deserted except for cyclists and folks who liked to take their time.

Sunday afternoon around five. The sun was low and the light was lovely.

I must have stopped six or seven times to catch the sparkle of sun on the water.

I even took one picture through a chain link fence that was too high to reach over.

A lonely barn on a hill above the river...

Lovely, long afternoon shadows . . .

Dark trunks against bright water and bright leaves against dark trunks . . .

The beautiful French Broad River like a sheet of beaten silver . . .

And leaves like golden coins.

A perfect day for a Sunday drive. . .