Where the Magic Happens

I'm in Pasadena, California, for the day. I flew here yesterday, leaving on the 6 am flight out of Bristol, landing in Burbank late morning. This afternoon I'll be pleased to receive the California Young Readers Medal for The War That Saved My Life at the California Library Association conference's Rose Tea. Tomorrow I'll fly home, arriving there at midnight. It's a peculiar sort of trip because it's a lot of flying for only one thing--no other events tied to it. The time change didn't help--you could either say I woke up at 4 am yesterday, and went to bed slightly before midnight, Eastern time, or you could say I crashed at 9 pm last night, Pacific time, but woke up at 1 am the same day. Either way I slept as long as I could and was wide awake in my hotel room at 6 am local time. By 7:15 I was in the only open nearby coffee shop, where the three white customers in residence, including me, all had fresh shower-slicked hair, and all the customers, including the two black ones, were hunched over cups of coffee, reading books. I felt very at home.

I read two books on the flight here, both for review, and after coffee and superb avocado toast I came back to my hotel room, where I am now, and wrote both reviews. There's not much else to do in Pasadena on Saturday before 8 am. I suppose there's probably a farmer's market somewhere, but I can't haul a bunch of fresh veg with me on tomorrow's flight home. At breakfast I was reading the book I picked up yesterday, at Vroman's, a wonderful independent bookstore here in Pasadena: The Body, by Bill Bryson. I like Bill Bryson always, but I think this topic is uniquely suited to his wry, gentle writing. "...it is surely astounding to reflect that not once in the three billion years since life began has your personal line of descent been broken. For you to be here now, every one of your ancestors had to successfully pass on its genetic material to a new generation before being snuffed out or otherwise sidetracked from the procreative process."

Last night I had dinner with Christine and Amy, two teachers here in Pasadena. Christine picked me up at the hotel; when I got in her car, she said, "Do you often get into cars with total strangers?" I replied, "Only if I've met them on the internet."

Christine was the first teacher who ever wrote me about The War That Saved My Life, the actual week of its publication. We've been Facebook friends ever since. Usually when I go to conferences I have busier schedules, and know lots of other people there. But this isn't a school library conference and there are almost no other kid-lit authors here. Nor do I know many people in Pasadena. But I did know Christine, virtually at least. She was bold enough to want to spend time with me, and I was bold enough to want to spend time with her. As such, and with the addition of her friend Ann, we had a really lovely evening, and now I have two new real-world friends.

Despite my chattiness I am not at all an extrovert, and sometimes it feels foreign to me to go out and look for company and friends. I find, though, that when I do I am always glad. Realistically a seventh-grade English teacher in Pasadena is not likely to be an axe-murderer, no matter what she says. The biggest risks to last night were that Christine and I might find each other boring, or offensive, or I'd hate the restaurant she chose, and those were actually pretty small risks compared to the chances of having a very nice time in good company, which I did.

Slightly outside my comfort zone: it's where the magic happens, every time.

In Which I Go To the Farmer's Market, At Last

Early this year, or perhaps late last year, because that's the kind of planners we are, my husband and I looked at our 2019 calendar and blocked time off expressly and only for staying in our mountain house.

We've had a second home on the high slopes of Grandfather Mountain for some 13 years now--incredible, but true--but especially in the past few years have not been very intentional about spending time here. It's only a 75-minute drive from our home in Bristol, so we tend to think we can just be spontaneous, when the truth is we rarely end up with time in which to be spontaneous in. I plan as far in advance as I do because otherwise I end up never fitting in the most important stuff. So this year we blocked a week in July, a long weekend over Labor Day, and a week in October.

What I didn't block is time away from my own work. Until this year, especially when my children were small, I tended to work very part-time in the summer. I slacked way off. It was fabulous.

This year rolled around a little differently. I finished the fifth draft of Fighting Words on June 26th. (That was its deadline.) Then, even though I knew the book was being "launched" by marketing, and I knew it wasn't quite done, I felt so happy about the draft that I threw caution to the winds. I accepted a short story assignment and several book reviews, and made ambitious plans to write some crazy grant applications for my nonprofit, Appalachian Literacy Initiative. Then my editor assigned the sixth draft due August fifth. Along with all the other stuff.

I had a little bit of vacation that week in July, but I worked a lot more than I usually do, and when I wasn't working I was fretting or thinking or planning. I wasn't a whole lot of fun. Still, I made all my deadlines, and I was happy, really happy, about the work I'd done. The short story was fun, the grant applications completed, and the sixth draft was much improved. Which, quite frankly, it needed to be.

So there. Big breath, done. Right?

Wrong. On August 12th my editor told me that the seventh draft would be due September 3rd, also known as the Tuesday after Labor Day Weekend. I pointed out that, haha, that was a perfectly ridiculous deadline, especially as I would be overseas over 8 of those 21 days. She replied, haha, look at you traveling, have fun and also get the seventh draft done by September 3rd. We want ARCs by NCTE.

ARCs are Advanced Review Copies and NCTE is the National Council of Teachers of English conference, at which I'm speaking. So phew. It was insanity with a higher calling.

I had been speaking to my husband lovingly about my plans to go to the Watuaga County Farmer's Market, in Boone, the Saturday of Labor Day weekend, while he golfed, but when we woke up that Saturday I shook my head. I was going upstairs, to my writing desk. No farther. He said, "But you love the farmer's market." I said, "I love meeting my deadlines, too, and trust me, I can't have both."

I worked my tail off and made it. Draft seven-and-a-half was due September 16th. Then there was some back and forthing about a few specific scenes, and then the book flew through copyediting in two days, I kid you not, and I corrected the copyedits in between sessions at another conference, and all of a sudden, here we were, a week in Linville in October and me with no deadlines at all.

We drove over after Bart got off work Friday evening. We had a lovely dinner with friends. We slept deeply. Saturday morning I dropped my husband off at the golf course and headed to the farmer's market.

We hadn't stopped at the grocery yet, and there wasn't much to eat in the house. We were even out of cereal. My husband spread peanut butter on some crackers, but the cracker box had been open all summer and the crackers were so stale they folded. He found some very old yogurt in the fridge. I ate nothing. I was waiting for the biscuit truck.

I have a method regarding the Boone Market. I walk the entire length of it before I buy anything. At the near end, at the biscuit truck, I buy a loaded (that is, with cheddar cheese baked in) biscuit with egg and bacon. They fold the wrap so that I can eat it while I stroll through the market. I admire everything. At the far end is the coffee truck. I drop my biscuit wrapper in the trash can and get coffee. (Saturday, when I got in line, a young woman in front of me grimaced and said, "They're already out of nitro brew.")

I sip the coffee and start to shop. Enchilada sauce--I try some on a chip, and it's got a stronger bite than the stuff from the grocery. Into my bag. Some new potatoes and sweet potatoes--just a few of each. Then turnips, zucchini. The jalapeno pimento goat cheese I always, always buy. A whole bag of heirloom tomatoes. The hot weather lately has been annoying but at least we still have tomatoes.

To my surprise, a few late ears of sweet corn. Some peppers so bright and lovely I want to paint them. Then at a stall selling fall-themed wreaths I fall in love with a door swag--evergreen shot through with small berries of orange and purple, and tweezles. It's gorgeous. I can't carry it back to the car along with all the other vegetables so I ask the woman who made it to put it to one side for me. I'll be back.

I head to the car. On the way I get a bunch of flowers--dahlias and sunflowers and basil as greenery. They're lovely. And some apples--a small bag, of mixed oddball varieties.

As I'm walking back to the market, having unloaded my vegetables, I'm stopped by a polite young man with oddly expressive eyebrows. He's holding a clipboard. "Friend," he says, "are you registered to vote?"

"Yes," I said, "and I intend to do so." He smiles

I'm wearing a sweatshirt with a deep pocket. At the beginning of the morning I'd taken some twenties out of my wallet and stuffed them into the pocket. I keep paying for things from the money in my pocket and stuffing the change back in--I'm not really keeping an accounting. I go back for the swag (later I hang it on my front door. It's gorgeous) and some lettuce and a small bag of basil. Then, because my life is so ridiculously privileged, because I have just gone through the farmer's market buying every lovely thing to eat, I stop at the desk near the biscuit truck. The Avery County Food Pantry collects donations every week, and uses the money to buy fresh vegetables for their own shelves. I empty the contents of my pocket into the jar. I'm not sure how much it is. I don't stop to count.

It is a glorious day.