Beach House in the Burbs

According to Kathryn Tucker Windham, yelling "Rabbit, rabbit," at the top of your lungs, before your feet hit the floor on the first morning of every month will guarantee you have good luck all month long. To keep that luck going, eat the pointy end of a piece of pie last. Eating it first is a sure way to bring bad luck. But to me, the best luck of all came just through knowing Kathryn Tucker Windham, the Alabama storyteller, writer, photographer and inspiration who died this past Sunday at the age of 93. While she became famous for her ghost stories, including stories about Jeffrey, the ghost who lived with her in her Selma home, the stories I loved best were of her family and friends. I feel like I knew her aunt Bet, the local postmistress who tried to save a tree from demolition with a shotgun and a rocking chair. And her daddy who ran the local bank and told stories to Kathryn. And the carpenter who built the pine box she'll be buried in. She stored her mother's ...

The last Saturday in January was the date of the best ever Murder Goes South mystery conference. This conference distinguishes itself from others with its concentration on mysteries set in the South or written by Southern authors. This year's lineup included featured author Erica Spindler , who spoke at the Friday night dinner; local authors Patricia Sprinkle ; and Georgia Adams ; and many others. The conference also offered speakers in other areas of interest to mystery readers and writers, including, Susan Kirkpatrick Smith, an assistant professor, who teaches forensic anthropology. Smith talked about what bones can and can not tell about cause or time of death, and about how the TV shows Bones and CSI get it wrong. For the first time, the conference offered critiques of 20 pages of a manuscript by a real live New York agent (that last should be said in your best Beverly Hillbillies accent for maximum impact). We welcomed literary agent Janet Reid , from FinePrint Literary Manag...

We're having a snow day here--5+" at our house north of Atlanta. It's been a great day for sitting by the fire, making a snow munchkin (the snow was too dry to make a snow man) and rescuing a cold, homeless mother cat and her kitten (bringing our total of cats to 5). According to sources I have reached Crazy Cat Lady status. Stay warm, everyone! The mother cat and kitten we rescued. Looking for name suggestions. We don't know if the kitten is male or female yet. She's (He's) very skittish. Chris, the Crazy Cat Gentleman Prissy, who thinks 5 cats is too much! Snow munchkin

Guinness is GREAT! Never liked it here in America. But, oh, I am a convert now! The rocky landscape. Somehow I pictured the Emerald Isle as a rolling, green, golf-course landscape. Not so. It is one big, beautiful rock.

There are lots of reasons I'm happy to be from the South--my family lives here, my job is here, my husband is here, but one of the biggest reasons is the weather. I'd die in a real winter. I'll take those hot, humid, miserable Georgia summers anytime. But I love, love, love that I can still get excited about a dusting of snow! It was so beautiful swirling around today. Tomorrow will be awful--the frozen stuff leaving roads slick and icy. But tonight all is peaceful and white. I know if I lived in the frozen north I'd be sick to death of snow already.

My grandmother, Nana , who passed away in December, left us one final Christmas present this year--one more round of "Shut up and Go!" Many years ago, Nana told us she'd come up with a new game to play after Christmas dinner. All day we (cousins, aunts, in-laws) bugged her about what this new game was, but she wouldn't tell. She dropped a few non-hints, like, "it doesn't have many rules, except that everybody has to play. Oh, and a couple of others that I'll tell you about later. Now, keep stirring that gravy." Then she'd smile and add, "But you're gonna like it." When dinner was over, she got a couple of the cousins to follow her to the back of the house while the rest of us gathered in the living room--a small space, that opened to the dining room. We sat on the sofa, on dining room chairs, and in the floor. In a few minutes the cousins came back toting big cardboard boxes. Nana had a basket with folded pieces of paper in it. The ...

My Nana died a week ago today. She was 92 years old and lived, at least as far as I knew, a full, wonderful life, though she certainly had her share of hardship. She left behind three daughters (my mother included), eight grandchildren and 14 great-grandchildren. We were all at the burial and memorial service in Charlotte, NC, this past Friday. Five of the eight grandchildren spoke about Nana at the service. And I learned that she apparently thought we were all as special as I know I was to her. That was the theme that ran through all five of our stories. Here's what I said about her. I knew from early on that Nana loved me, not in some abstract, send me a card with money in it for Christmas kind of way, but in a concrete way that made me know she wanted me around. She introduced me to her friends. She wanted to know mine. She was a part of my life. I took all of that for granted until my freshman year of college. I was at Emory, living in a dorm that had been built in the 1920s. I...