If you don't know about the Pulpwood Queens, let me introduce you to Beauty and the Book, located about an hour from where my grandparents used to live in East Texas. This is a part of the world that is very close to my heart.
And owner Kathy Patrick wrote this wonderful book called The Pulpwood Queen's Tiara-Wearing,
Book-Sharing Guide to Life. It's a hoot.
And now there are 239 Pulpwood Queen Book Club chapters all over the place. Not just in Texas. You probably need one in your town. Find out more here.
I am going to try very hard to get to her Extravangza in January. Working on it.
So last year I wrote a novel about my worst fear: the death of
bookstores. The story came to me in a flash, in response to something
that was happening around me at that very moment, but for a few months
I fought against the idea of writing it. I'm a nonfiction writer, with
four books on the shelf and fifth one in the works. Surely jumping into
fiction would be a risky career move at this point.
But the fact is that when I'm not doing research for one of my own
books, I read nothing but novels. I was that kid who always wanted to
be a writer when she grew up, and it was not nonfiction that inspired
me. It was fiction. So eventually I decided to quit fighting the
impulse. I cleared my schedule and gave myself a little time to write a
novel. I didn’t tell anyone—not my agent, not my editor. I didn’t write
a book proposal or seek out a book contract. I didn’t worry about the
marketing plan. I just wrote.
And it was glorious. Delicious and delirious and intoxicating.
Here’s what I loved about it: when you write fiction, you get to make
stuff up. For me, as a nonfiction writer wedded to facts and research,
that felt risky and transgressive. I wrote for several hours every day,
thinking all the while, "Can I really do this?" If I got bored with a
character, I could drive him off a cliff. If I hated the house I'd
constructed for one of my characters to live in, I could burn it down.
Being a character in a novel-in-progress, I realized, is dangerous
business: mine were subjected to sex changes, disastrous love affairs,
and run-ins with the law, all because I wanted to test the limits of my
new-found power.
Really, it was amazing. There was no fact-checking, no deadline, and
no contract to fulfill. Just the sheer joy of telling a story that
delighted the hell out of me. And because I was working in complete
obscurity, I didn’t even worry about whether it was any good. I just
wrote.
But now what? Well, I've decided to undertake a little experiment. I'm releasing it in digital form as a kind of beta test, a way to get feedback from readers. You can read all about it here. And if you own a Kindle or an iPhone, you can download a copy. If you own a Sony Reader or if you want to read it on your computer, you can do that, too.
What about a print version, you ask? That may be coming soon. Stay tuned.
Here, by the way, is a preview, courtesy of Scribd, the document-sharing site that is fast becoming the YouTube of text.