I had the pleasure of speaking yesterday to 150 or so book-loving ladies and two extremely brave (or extremely clever & wily) gents at the Book Lovers’ Luncheon, a fundraiser hosted by the Hopewell Valley Education Foundation. Many thanks to Carol Jackson and Randee Tengi, the respective chairwomen of the event and of the foundation (pictured with me below), for giving me and my guest, Elizabeth Molsen, such a warm and enthusiastic welcome. And thanks to all those who attended and asked thoughtful questions and decided that what their friends and relatives really need in their stockings this Christmas is a copy of Mudbound. Excellent idea.

It was standing room only at Sparta Books in Sparta, NJ last Thursday. About sixty people showed up for the wine, jumbo shrimp and other tasty fare generously provided by owner Donna Fell (pictured below) and stayed to hear me read and ask me some questions. Most of them were book club people, bless them. Book clubs have been very good to Mudbound, as have independent bookstores.

On that subject, please buy from your local indie bookseller this holiday season. They need our business, and we need their passion for great writing. If you don’t know who or where they are, you can find them here: http://www.indiebound.org/

Home again. Reentry as always is hard. Bills to pay, groceries to buy, the garden to put to bed for the winter, and no more lunches and clean laundry delivered to my door. Amazing how productive one can be when all those mundane tasks are taken away, along with the siren call of the Internet. I left Scotland having finished Part IV of RED and with a good start on Part V. The end is in sight. Thank you, Hawthornden!

Here are a few last photos: the six of us; another amazing sky; our fearless director, Martin; a stone seat on the castle grounds overlooking the Esk; Sarah & Jacqueline; the castle

The final stretch, and as always I can’t believe how quickly the time has flown. I’ve worked harder at this residency than at any of the others, and the days have blended together to the point where I’ve felt like the Bill Murray character in “Groundhog Day.” (Better than the Jack Nicholson character in “The Shining,” which was how I felt after three weeks at Yaddo in January.)

I was starting to go seriously bonkers last weekend so I took an entire day off from RED and went to Edinburgh, a beautiful, hilly, cobblestoned city of many pubs and coffee shops, packed with tourists despite the rainy, gloomy weather. The Royal Mile is the tourist mecca, with Edinburgh Castle at one end, Holyrood Palace at the other, and hundreds of shops and restaurants in between, selling kilts, sporrans, clan keychains, Celtic rings, cashmere sweaters, and the inescapable haggis. The ticket line at the castle was dishearteningly long, so I took the tour of Holyrood instead and was glad I did. It’s a living palace; Queen Elizabeth stays there when she’s in town. It was home to generations of Scottish royalty, including Bonnie Prince Charlie, who led the disastrous Jacobite rising in 1745, and Mary, Queen of Scots during her brief, turbulent reign. It really is a place full of ghosts. Impossible not to get a chill standing in Mary’s bedroom, listening to the story of how her secretary, Rizzio, was dragged from the room by her jealous, enraged (and very handsome, from his portrait) husband, Lord Darnley, and stabbed fifty some-odd times. The room where this happened, the outer chamber, now houses many of her personal effects. Most touching are the samplers she stitched during her 19-year imprisonment by her cousin Elizabeth in the Tower of London. How bored she must have been!

That one adventure aside, I’ve done little but work and, on decent days, tramp around the countryside with the other women in a vain effort to combat the potatoes, custards, and tea cakes, which have recently been supplemented by fettucine carbonara and croissant bread pudding with caramel sauce. Sarah, Jacqueline and I got extremely lost one day and ended up thrashing our way through the woods and gasping our way up a treacherous, nearly vertical bluff that must have been a hundred yards tall. I got badly stung by nettles in the process, and Sarah plucked a leaf from this other plant growing nearby and told me to rub it on the burning areas. And sure enough, it helped. Apparently dock leaves almost always grow next to stinging nettles; they’re said to have been planted by the faeries as an antidote. Who knew the wee folk had such a pragmatic streak?

Torrential rain last night, flooding all over Scotland. Wind howling mournfully all night long in the chimney in my room, and most of the leaves were down today. Winter has arrived.

Photos below: Edinburgh at dusk; “Best Haggis,” a contradiction in terms if there ever was one; the haunting, ruined, 12th-Century abbey at Holyrood; more fall splendor

I took an afternoon off and went to Rosslyn Chapel, which is about an hour’s walk down the River Esk from us. I have no good photos of it, alas; they’re not allowed inside the chapel, and the outside is completely covered in scaffolding. They’re doing a major renovation, thanks largely to Dan Brown, whose use of Rosslyn in The Da Vinci Code increased their annual visitors from 7,000 to 117,000, at seven and a half quid a pop. The chapel was begun in 1446 by the St. Clair family (who still own it) and took thirty years to finish. The inside is completely covered in carvings, and they’re some of the finest and most fascinating I’ve ever seen. There are over a hundred “green men,” pagan nature spirits with ugly little fat faces. There are mysterious carvings of corn — a crop unknown to Europe until after Columbus, indicating that the Knights Templar (who are associated with Rosslyn, as are the Freemasons) may have “discovered” America before he did. The crypt beneath the chapel, which holds the remains of 14 Earls of Rosslyn, is also rumored to be the secret hiding place of King Solomon’s treasure, which includes the Holy Grail. No one knows for sure because the crypt hasn’t been opened in 300+ years — the current Earl St. Clair won’t allow his ancestors’ rest to be disturbed. A few years ago, one of the guides pried a stone up in an attempt to peek in, and the Earl fired the entire staff. I got the distinct feeling that there are many historians and other interested parties impatiently awaiting the poor man’s demise.

The keep of Hawthornden was built during the same era as Rosslyn, the castle in the 1600s. Beneath it are dank, gloomy caves that I couldn’t wait to escape from and that date to the Picts in 1st Century B.C. Rumor has it Robert the Bruce once hid in them — better him than me. This whole area is riddled with caves, sandstone being relatively soft and carvable. There’s also a dungeon, which I haven’t seen. Martin, the director, says that’s where they put the bad writers.

I’m working verra verra hard, and the pages are accumulating slowly but steadily. A typical day: I get up at 9:00 and bathe in “the sarcophagus,” a boxed-in bathtub so enormous that I can lie in it fully supine and never touch either end. Usually I miss breakfast, so I have a piece of fruit at my desk. Lunch — soup, a sandwich, and carrot sticks — is delivered to my door in a wicker basket at 12:30. I write from 10:00 until 5:00 or so, then get out for some much-needed exercise, assuming it’s not pouring rain. (The freakishly mild weather has departed, and we’re now experiencing the usual Scottish autumn: cold, cloudy, rainy & windy. Good writing weather, if nothing else.) At 6:30 the residents meet for a sherry. Supper’s at 7:00, after which we have chamomile tea and conversation in the living room.

One of the Brits told us that Scotland has the highest incidence of obesity in the world, and after two weeks here, I understand why. Breakfast is toast, cereal, or parritch. For supper, we have ______ and potatoes: bangers & mash, beans & roast potatoes, shepherds’ pie (ground beef stew with a layer of mashed potatoes on top). Occasionally the potatoes are supplemented by macaroni & cheese. Then there’s dessert (see week one blog). Oh, and did I mention the homemade shortbread and lemon cake they put out for 4:00 tea? Och!

Pictured below: the view from my window, Rosslyn Village, and my fellow inmates, Jacqueline, Sarah, Sharon & Shaun

I’m on day seven of my much-needed four-week residency at Hawthornden Castle, half an hour outside of Edinburgh. The castle dates from the 1400s, though the part that’s that old (the keep, which was the former fortress) is half-crumbled into ruin. The estate is owned by the Heinz family, of ketchup fame, and Mrs. Heinz, who is a serious patron of the arts, generously turned it into an artists colony in the 1980s. It’s for writers only — no painters, composers, choreographers, etc. need apply — which definitely creates a different dynamic, as I learned last summer at Château de Lavigny. Our passions and our demons are more nearly identical, so there’s a great deal of understanding and shared experience. On the other hand, there tend to be fewer surprises than in a mixed group, meaning ideas or ways of looking at the world that really turn your brain sideways. Also, it must be said, we writers tend to be a rather serious and introspective lot when unleavened by other kinds of artists. Tonight for example we started innocently enough on the subject of food (which I’ll get to shortly) and ended up talking about the age of sexual consent for minors, and whether Roman Polanski is a pedophile who deserves incarceration or a misunderstood man wronged by the American legal system. I’ll leave you to guess which side of that debate I came down on.

We are six: three Americans and three Brits. Three novelists, a playwright, a screenwriter, and a poet who’s also a visual artist (we’re all a bit envious that she can do both). It’s a nice group, with none of the variously nutty types who sometimes crop up at artists colonies. It’s everyone else’s first residency, and they’re all reveling in the unaccustomed quiet and the freedom from cooking, cleaning, laundry, email, demands of children & spouses, and all the other stuff that gobbles up one’s writing time. I’m reveling in it too, greedy thing that I am, for the seventh time! And in the beauty of this place, which both spikes the heart and soothes it. We all feel very fortunate to be here and to be so well cared for.

Which brings me to the food. Och, the food! Chicken pot pies and raspberry crumbles with cream on the side — everything has cream on the side — and custards and tarts and nightly potatoes. And cake, this incredibly moist, scrumptious, irresistible cake, handmade by Angie the cook (who is everyone’s favorite person) and served daily at 4:00 in the parlor. They call it “tea” but really it’s all about the cake. My jeans are already starting to feel a wee bit tight.

The weather has been unseasonably nice, apparently, meaning it’s warmish and not pouring rain every day. The locals are all wagging their heads in wonder, as if we’d had a foot of snow. I haven’t done much exploring yet because I’ve been working hard on RED and making excellent headway, but from my few brief forays into the outside world, I can tell you that I’m already in love, or should I say luv, with the Scots. They’re much warmer than the English, if harder to understand, and I feel very at home amongst them and in this green landscape of rolling hills and river valleys and pastures. My grandfather was a Kirkwood, and I was told today by the housekeeper that there are many Kirkwoods in the nearby village of Bonnyrigg, which was a coal-mining town at one time. Who knows, perhaps we’re distant kin? I’m listening hard to the locals and working on my Scootish accent, which seems to come verra natural. Yesterday, an admiring old man on the bus called me a “wee lassie,” and I nearly swooned. I think the sound of bagpipes, should I chance to hear it, might just fell me. And should I happen upon a handsome lad in a kilt . . . well, I won’t be held responsible for my actions.

I set off five days ago from fair Tivoli to the land of cotton, in search of inspiration for my second novel, Red. My heroine, whom I’ve left stranded in Dallas on page 212, is about to head due east, across Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia and South Carolina, then up through North Carolina to Washington D.C. And so I’m making the same journey, though under considerably less desperate circumstances, as she’s running for her life and I’m staying with friends and in cozy little B&Bs.

My first stop was New Hope, PA, where I spent a night with my dear friend Lizzy Molsen, pictured below, whom I’ve known since we were 13 (a good 20 years or so). Thursday I had a long, rainy and wearying drive to Fincastle, VA, outside Roanoke, where I stayed at a B&B/winery with picturesque views and mouth-withering wine. Friday I drove another 6 long hours to Glen Falls, NC, in the Blue Ridge Mountains, where my mom was vacationing with two teacher friends. The house was perched over a waterfall, and after polishing off a huge steak dinner followed by two slices of her famous peach chess pie, I fell asleep to the lovely sound of rushing water accompanied by the gurgling protests of my distended stomach.

Next, Huntsville, Alabama, 95 degrees in the shade, where I was hosted by the charming, vivacious, and utterly Southern Mrs. Evelyn Spearman, age 84, a 40+-year member of the Huntsville Literary Association and a true lover of literature, especially Southern literature. Evie (which rhymes with levy) pulled together, with a week and a half’s notice, a talk at the Episcopal Church of the Natitivity, publicized beforehand by a radio interview of me on the local gospel station, announcements in the newspaper and the church bulletin, and a plug by Evie herself, who knows everybody in Huntsville and seemingly the entire South, on the local PBS radio station. It was a marvelous event, attended by sixty some-odd people, and preceded by a singalong performance, led by Evie and a guitar-playing gentleman named Microwave Dave, of the song “Mississippi Mud.” Which begins like this:

“When the sun goes down, and the tide goes out,
The people gather ’round, and they all begin to shout,
‘Hey, hey! Uncle Dud!
It’s a treat to beat your feet on the Mississippi mud.
It’s a treat to beat your feet on the Mississippi mud.’
What a dance they do!
Lordy, how I’m tellin’ you…
They don’t need no band…
They keep time by clappin’ their hand’
Just as happy as a cow chewin’ on a cud,
When the people beat their feet on the Mississippi mud.”

This was without a doubt one of the most enjoyable events I’ve done since Mudbound came out, and Miss Evie one of the most delightful characters I’ve met. At her insistence, I stayed at her house — “All the authors stay my house” — and met her son Alan (one of four children) and her granddaughter Vivian (one of nine grandchildren, all beautiful — “I don’t have any ugly grandchildren”) and quite a few friends. The walls of every room of her house are covered with photos of her multitudinous family, mixed cheek by jowl with pictures and posters of Southern authors like Faulkner, Shelby Foote, and Walker Percy, who are clearly members of her extended family, because she so loves their writing. And now, I suppose, so am I. I feel positively anointed.

Today, I drove to Columbus, Mississippi and collapsed, after an early and very satisfying meal of fried catfish. Clearly I won’t be losing weight on this trip.

Mother Nature decided to break all our hearts this last week by blessing us with perfect early summer weather: sunny, warm days and deliciously cool nights. It will be hard to leave this place, we’ve all grown to love it. Not to mention accustomed to daily two-hour hikes through the mountains, nightly gourmet meals, glorious sunsets, excellent company, peace and quiet and redwood-scented air. And the occasional game of homemade twister (see photo below).

On the subject of our Mother, Djerassi is home to a profusion of interesting flora and fauna. There are bobcats, mountain lions and coyotes (none of which I’ve seen — probably for the best). My sightings so far include an owl, a Great Heron, a hawk, and many, many deer, birds, hummingbirds, snakes, iguanas and salamanders — little auburn-colored things that come out in droves during the rains, so that the paths literally seem to be writhing, and it’s hard to take a step without crushing one. And the ubiquitous ticks, which we check for religiously after our hikes, and one of which took up residence on my stomach last week.

But by far the most fascinating creature here, deserving of its own paragraph, is the humble banana slug, pictured below. They are without a doubt the most repulsive creatures I’ve ever seen, more cringe-inducing even than the giant water bugs in Texas. Six slimy inches long, a putrid shade of yellow, with a shape resembling…well. But my respect for banana slugs increased greatly after learning more about them: They are mighty defenders of the redwood forests, because they consume competing seedlings. They can rappel from trees by spinning a slime cord from the mucus plug at the end of their tails. They are hermaphrodites who mate in pairs (each banana slug has both sets of equipment). The mating ritual lasts up to twelve hours, at least half of which is foreplay. Sometimes they are unable to disengage afterwards, requiring them to gnaw off their own penises, which later regenerate — but still. And finally, if you lick a banana slug, your tongue goes numb (tempting as it was, I didn’t test the veracity of this).

Saturday it got very hot here, and Susan, Jeremy, Ben & I hiked down to Bear Gulch Creek and took a dip in the extremely bracing water — during which it must be said that the guys shrieked louder than the girls — after which we picnicked on the banks under the redwoods. And yes, it really was as perfect as it sounds, right up until the moment I almost had a heat stroke on the hike back. Ah, how I hate being such a delicate flower…

Last day: our own James Huang contributed a sculpture to the place, a sort of tennis court to nowhere which he constructed in a creative frenzy in the last five days, and we all celebrated with bubbly and munchies at the site. On the way, we actually came upon two banana slugs mating! It was a sight to see. I’ll spare you the pics, but see below for a photo of the spellbound watchers.

Home now. Reality feels rather harsh.

As always, or almost always (excluding Yaddo in January), the time has flown here. We have an unusually lovely, supportive & cohesive group, which has created a fertile creative environment for us all. And the landscape is so inspiring, especially now that the chilly, gray, misty-moisty weather of our first two weeks has finally lifted. Hard to believe that these 580 spectacular acres are just for us eight artists, but apart from occasional sculpture tours and other events they host here, we have the run of the place. I’ve been hiking in the mountains almost every day. Goodbye, buns of tapioca, hello, buns of steel!

The second week we all did show and tell for each other every night after dinner. The three writers — myself, poet Susan Briante, and Jamaican novelist Patricia Powell (who is my bathroom-mate) — read from our work. James Huang gave a slide presentation of his whimsical and astonishingly diverse sculptures. Jeremy Zuckerman played his compositions, which range from the score for Avatar, The Last Airbender to wholly original and unexpected pieces that are hard to describe — I’ll call them digital manipulations of natural sounds. Beth Howe shared her painstakingly rendered sculpture, drawings (which are drawn with thread instead of pen or pencil), and bookmaking. Benjamin Levy, the gazelle amongst us, danced for us and showed us some of the pieces he has choreographed for his dance company, LEVY Dance. And finally, media artist Maggie Cardelús, who sadly is leaving us today to return to Milan, showed us her work, which involves slicing up photographs and using the cut-outs to create these stunning pieces that defy description, some 2-D and some sculptural. I’m thrilled because Maggie made a piece from a photo of me — see below, where I am pretending to be a tree — and has promised me a copy of it. I will miss her, but I now have a friend in Milan, always an excellent thing.

This place is spectacular. A 1,200-acre eyrie in the Santa Cruz mountains, just 8 miles (but a good 30 minutes, on account of the twisty single-lane mountain roads) from Palo Alto. The residence was established about 30 years ago by Carl Djerassi, a Viennese chemist and writer who earned the money to buy all this magnificent land by inventing the Pill, God bless him. He is in his 80s now and still has a house on the property. Apparently he occasionally drops by to visit the residents. I would love to meet him, if only to thank him for keeping me child-free all these years.

We have a great group: two fiction writers, a poet, a choreographer, a composer, a sculptor, and two visual artists whose work defies categorization. A lovely bunch, all grownups, no narcissists or snooty entitled types or crazy misanthropes (all of whom do tend to crop up with annoying frequency at artists colonies). The staff is friendly and helpful, and the food is excellent. Chef Dan makes us dinner M-F, and there hasn’t been a less-than-scrumptious meal yet. He keeps the fridge stocked, and we forage for breakfast, lunch and weekend meals.

I’m working well here. I’ve been waking early for me, at around 8:00. I shower, have breakfast, read the Times and start writing at about 9:30. I work for several hours, cobble together a quick lunch, then continue writing till 5:00 or so, at which point I take my reward for my labors in the form of a one- to two-hour hike around the property with some of my fellow residents. There are pathways throughout that lead through stands of towering redwoods and across rounded green mountains that look like perfect hobbit dwellings, and around every turn one discovers amazing sculptures by the many artists who have been here.

Happiness is the ability to saturate oneself in extreme beauty, sore leg and butt muscles, a full stomach, good company, and 3 pages of new prose daily. That’s my current definition, anyway.