Hawthornden, week three

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

Hawthornden, week two

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

Hawthornden, week one

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.

Dixie Road Trip, 1417 miles

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.

Djerassi week four

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.

Djerassi week three

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.

Djerassi week one

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.

London & the Galaxy British Book Awards

My British publisher, William Heinemann, flew me across the pond for the Galaxy British Book Awards, a black tie affair held in the grand ballroom of the upper-crusty Dorchester Hotel. I was nominated for Best New Writer of the year. Alas, the honor went to British author Tom Rob Smith for his novel Child 44, but I had a splendid time that night even so. They had a red carpet complete with paparazzi for us arriving authors — “Look here, luv! Smile swee-har!” — at which I did my poor best to channel Angelina Jolie and look insouciant and glamorous. After the ceremony we all drank champagne and danced till 1:30 in the morning, for which my head and feet paid dearly the next morning.

Apart from that, I had the luxury of some free time in London, a city I haven’t been to in twenty-five years. The first night, my lovely editor, Jason Arthur (pictured with me above), took me to a veddy traditional British establishment called Shepherd’s, where, surrounded by lots of red-faced, middle-aged men in three-piece suits who all looked like prime candidates for gout, we feasted on English favorites such as roast beef and Yorkshire pudding (me) and kidney-something-or-other (him, and I tried very hard not to watch while he ate it).

Friday I had lunch with my old college friend Susie Schoenfeld, then spent two hours (or was it three?) primping for the awards ceremony that night. Saturday I slept rawther late, then had lunch and a nice browse at Harrod’s with another former classmate, Laura Wood Cantopher, after which I went to Fortnum & Mason, where a beautiful young man in a black morning coat escorted me round the store while I picked out items for a “bespoke” (meaning, custom) gift basket for the Heinemann team. Dinner Saturday night at the home of my dear friend and fellow writer Nick Rankin, whose new non-fiction book, Churchill’s Wizards: the British Genius for Deception, 1914-1945, has sold an impressive 15,000 copies in hardback. Kudos, Nick! Regrettably absent was Nick’s wife Maggie Gee, who’s currently working on her autobiography at an artists’ colony in Scotland called Hawthornden (where I will be myself in October). She also has a new novel out, the magnificently witty, moving and incisive My Driver, which I had the great honor of blurbing. My first blurb ever, actually.

Sunday I walked my legs off, beginning at the Random House corporate apartment in Marsham Street, up the Thames past Whitehall and Downing Street (which is gated off and presided over by very serious-looking blokes with machine guns) to Trafalgar Square. Paid my respects to Lord Nelson, then spent a happy few hours with Rembrandt, Botticelli, Velasquez, et. al. in the National Gallery, after which I went to Evensong at Westminster Abbey. Adored the singing of the men’s/boys’ choir, could have done without the praying (and in fact, I must confess I left before the sermon began). Walked all the way back to the flat, had an abysmal meal that night at one of the only open restaurants I could find in the area, then collapsed. I’m writing this from the plane home. Wish I’d had another week to explore this marvelous city, which I adore, despite the mostly execrable food. Must visit again very soon.

Chicago/Ann Arbor/Milwaukee

The paperback edition of Mudbound was released March 17, so I’m touring again. Last week I did a three-day whirlwind pass through the Midwest, with events at Anderson Bookshop in Naperville (a Chicago suburb), Shaman Drum Bookshop in Ann Arbor and Harry Schwartz Bookshop in Brookfield (a Milwaukee suburb). Wonderful shops all, especially Harry Schwartz, which I’m sad to report closed its doors today. Like many independent bookstores, they got killed by the one-two punch of amazon and the economy. I’ll confess that I used to have a bad amazon habit myself, but being on book tour and meeting so many lovely, knowledgeable, passionate indie booksellers has caused me to mend my wicked book-buying ways. If we don’t support our local bookstores, we soon won’t have any, and then where will we go to hang out and browse, and who will be there to say, “You have got to read this book, Hillary, I know you’re going to love it”?

So, dear readers, please renounce the anonymous online megastores, spend the few extra bucks and buy from the bookstore around the corner. Which in my case is the wonderful Oblong Books of Rhinebeck.

The Long Beach Festival of Authors

It doesn't get much better than this: 750 people (749 women and one man) who not only love literature but buy hardbacks came to the Long Beach Convention Center on February 21st to hear me and six other women authors talk about our books. The event, sponsored by a group called Literary Women, is in its 27th year and is a sellout every single year. Amusingly, we shared the Convention Center that day with two other groups, see signs below (it was not difficult to tell who was with whom). The ladies of Literary Women were very gracious hostesses, and a splendid time was had by all. And did I mention it was 70 degrees and sunny? Heaven.

Yaddo, week one and a half

This is a beautiful, rambling, historic place, storied to a fairly intimidating degree. My scribbler forebears at Yaddo include two of my literary idols, Carson McCullers and James Baldwin, as well as John Cheever, Saul Bellow, Truman Capote, Langston Hughes, Sylvia Plath, William Carlos Williams, Rick Moody, yadda yadda yaddo. And then there's little ole me, eking out my few pages a day of RED. Apart from the usual muse-wrestling, it's been a pretty uneventful 10 days. We've been snowbound for most of it, with highs in the teens on balmier days and lows well below zero most nights. Except for breakfast and dinner, which we eat together in the mansion, we're all basically hunkered down in our studios. I have a lovely suite, a bedroom and study/sitting room separated by a full bath, in a small house which I share with a poet and a visual artist. The house, which is called Pine Garde, has a fireplace in the living room, which I've taken advantage of on many nights. They take excellent care of us here, though it's not like the old days, when servants would bring breakfast trays to the rooms of late (and presumably hung-over) arisers.

We have a quartet of composers (an unusually high number), with the bulk of us being visual artists and writers. We've been between 14 and 20, though I gather that number grows much larger in the summer months. My old friend Doug Wright, a playwright & screenwriter, is here, which has been great fun we haven't seen each other in a couple of years.

Saratoga Springs is a pretty little town, and when I get stir crazy or start to run out of wine & munchies, I dig my car out from under the snow and drive in. This place is known for horse racing and hot springs; people have historically come here to gamble and "take the waters." Which Doug and I plan to do next week at a local spa.

I'm about halfway through the book now. Since I've been here I've invented a plague, a new villain and a vigilante group that makes the Klan look like a Boy Scout troop. (RED, it seems, is going to be an even more cheerful book than MUDBOUND.) My heroine's currently in Dallas, and it's been fun imagining my old stomping grounds, somewhere around 2040.

Château de Lavigny week three

A few facts about Switzerland I bet you didn't know: They have bomb shelter capacity for all 7.5 million Swiss citizens, secret hideaways all over the countryside where people can go in case of nuclear attack. Switzerland has four national languages, German, French, Italian and Romantsch, and dozens of local dialects, owing to the alps, which kept people from traveling outside their little isolated valleys for centuries. Swiss foxes now carry some sort of horrible, mad-cow-like disease which destroys your insides and doesn't manifest for up to 10 years (we were warned from eating any low-hanging fruit the foxes may have shat upon). And the Swiss didn't give women the vote until 1971. Yes, that's a 71 at the end, not a 17.

I'm writing this on the plane home — sitting next to a woman with a 3-month-old infant in her lap, so I suspect it will be a very long flight indeed — feeling a bit blue to be trading the beautiful château with its lush gardens and spectacular views of the alps for my tiny, half-renovated, unlandscaped (and unlikely to be landscaped any time soon) house in Tivoli... Yesterday and today were heartbreakers, naturally — glorious, sunny, 80 degrees, the air so clear we could see Mont Blanc (highest peak in Europe) in the distance.

I think we all felt a bit triste to be leaving today. We could not possibly have wished for a more congenial group. There was Claude, the celebrated French novelist, elegant as only a Frenchwoman can be, but so kind and warm we all got teary-eyed saying goodbye to her; Maggie, who not only has a gift for writing beautiful fiction but for making everyone around her feel special; Nick, her husband, English gentleman extraordinaire, bringer of pillows, lifter of heavy objects, cheerful doer of many dishes, walking encyclopedia of information both useful and arcane, occasionally long-winded lecturer on matters historical, and court jester whose jokes kept us all in stitches; Grazyna, who was a late but essential arrival, and whose fiction (which none of us were able to read, alas, as it hasn't yet been translated into English or French) is very popular in Poland; and finally, Khaled, our resident Egyptian and philosopher, who (it must be said) did almost no dishes whatsoever but charmed and fascinated us with his tales of Cairo.

The farmers must have finished their fertilizing because the week was blessedly merde-free. Last Sunday we gave a reading which was attended by about 30 locals, including many members of the Geneva-area writing community. I read from Mudbound, and the Mississippi accent seemed to go over well (though it's quite possible none of them understood a word of it and were just being kind). Worked all week, then celebrated the seven hundredth and some-odd Swiss Independence Day on Friday. We all decided God must be Swiss, because after a dreary day of pouring rain, the heavens cleared miraculously just in time for the fireworks. We climbed to the top of a nearby hill and watched them go off all around the lake. Lausanne's were the most spectacular, but even the smaller villages nearer to us had their proud displays, each trying to outdo the other. Then on Saturday I went with Khaled to Lake Geneva, and we spent the day toodling around by boat. We had lunch in a charming medieval village called Yvoire, on the French side of the lake, and basked in the beautiful weather and views. It was the first day I didn't work and a welcome respite from Red.

All in all, a splendid residency, the best of them all so far. If only they didn't make you wait ten years to reapply..

Château de Lavigny week two

It must be said that life in a beautiful château, with a staff to cook, shop, clean and mow the lawn, ain't half bad. I've been writing a lot (a lot being a relative term, I average about 2 pages a day) and Red is coming along nicely. The book is so dark that I'm very glad to have lovely surroundings to escape to after spending hours in my right-wing fundamentalist dystopia. In the ten days we've been here the farmers have harvested the wheat in the field below us and made the stalks into big round bales which dot the fields picturesquely. All this bucolic charm does come at a price, however: the smell of merde that wafts up from the surrounding farms and vineyards (which are apparently in full-bore fertilizing mode) is so noxious some days that I have to shut myself in my room with the windows closed. Still, it's beautiful here. The roses and giant hibiscus bushes are in full bloom, and the grapes in the vineyards are coming on, though we'll miss the harvest, which is in September. They grow cold-climate grapes here: Gamay, Pinot Noir and a varietal I've never had before called Chasselas, a light, refreshing white which is almost a bubbly. We drink it every evening on the patio as an apéritif before dinner.

I haven't had many adventures here — the villages within walking distance are small, quaint, and dull — but I've been very content to hang at the Château and write. Sunday evening we're giving a public reading here, and Monday night we'll go into Geneva to dine at the home of one of the foundation's board members. We're all still getting along, thank heaven. We speak a hilarious mixture of French and English, often within the same sentence, but it seems to work.

Signing off from (somewhat malodorous) paradise.

Château de Lavigny week one

I'm here at a marvelous artists colony in a small Swiss village called Morges, near Lausanne and Geneva. What an exquisite place this is. A big, pink, every-so-slightly shabby house perched in the mountains overlooking Lake Geneva. The château has a rich, fascinating history. It was the summer retreat of a famous German publisher named Ledig-Rowohlt, who published — and translated — many celebrated authors for the first time in German after WWII, e.g., Faulkner, Camus, James Baldwin, Updike, Thurber, etc. Harold Pinter refused to let anyone else translate his plays into German. Nabokov, who was a neighbor, was a frequent visitor here, as was Henry Miller, a few of whose watercolors (G-rated) adorn the walls of the living room. My office or study was Ledig's library, and I write each day surrounded by books and by the friendly ghosts of all the writers who sat in this room. Ledig's widow established this place as a writers' retreat 12 years ago. And here we all are. There are six of us: myself; a delightful English couple, Maggie Gee and Nicholas Rankin — she's a successful novelist in the UK, he's a former BBC journalist and non-fiction writer; a bestselling Arab author named Khaled Al Khamissi; an utterly charming and gracious French novelist in her 70s called Claude Pujade-Renaud; and a Polish novelist, Grazyna Plebanek, who just arrived last night but seems lovely. No jerks or serial adolescents in the bunch, for a wonder, and everyone is incredibly passionate about ideas and books and film and culture. The people at the château are very generous and take excellent care of us. The only way I know I'm not in heaven is that I have to go down the hall to pee.

I've done little this last week but recover from jet lag — harder than usual for some reason, but I'm almost there — and write. I think that's how it will go. Three weeks is such a short time, and my creative juices are flowing here. I will venture into Evian and Lausanne one day toward the end, and perhaps take a boat ride on Lake Geneva, but apart from that and daily walks in the countryside, I'm going to work. This is the perfect place to do it, and after having lost a month at home with the dreaded bathroom renovation, I'm eager to make progress on Red. That's my job now (she said, pinching herself).

Book Tour Highlights

The book tour is winding to a close, and I'm back to being a writer again after several hectic months of being an author. My feelings are mixed: part hallelujah, part letdown. Being on a book tour is exhilarating, exhausting, fun, tedious, gratifying, occasionally humiliating, and totally consuming. Here are some of the highlights: Favorite indie bookstore: Lemuria in Jackson, MS

Best meal: Big bloody Porterhouse steaks at Doe's Eat Place in Greenville, MS

Funniest outdoor ad: Seen somewhere in Tennessee or Arkansas, a billboard sponsored by the Council for Healthy Marriages (or something to that effect) showing a man lying under the covers in bed with a dead deer, and a headline that said, "Hunting won't keep you warm nights."

Most elegant venue: The Arts Club of Chicago

Favorite radio station: 95.5 Hallelujiah FM in Jackson, MS

Most humbling moment: The live interview I did for a local news program in Memphis where I was bookended by what was clearly the star attraction of that day's show, a guy eating a 7.5-pound hamburger

Most surreal moment: Sitting between Cokie Roberts and Peter Carey on a dais in an Indianapolis ballroom inexplicably designed to look like a Mexican Village circa 1900, eating lunch in front of 950 women, all with pink quilted book bags

Coolest hotels: The Hotel San José in Austin, TX and The Alluvian in Greenwood, MS

Strangest sight: The life-size diorama of a small T-Rex frolicking with Adam & Eve in paradise at the Creation Museum in Petersburg, KY

Loveliest views: Oxford, MS as seen from the balcony at City Grocery; the horse farms of Lexington, KY as seen from the plane; and HOME, when I finally got back here after two months on the road

Hudson Opera House

Had an incredibly special event on Saturday: a reading with my dear friends James Cañón and Jennifer Cody Epstein at Hudson Opera House. James' novel, Tales from the Town of Widows and Chronicles from the Land of Men, debuted in January 2007 (it's now out in paperback) and Jenn's novel, The Painter from Shanghai, came out this year a few weeks after Mudbound. The three of us met eight years ago, in our first workshop at Columbia, and wrote our novels simultaneously. James and Jenn were my primary readers, a lame term for two people who read and critiqued so many drafts of Mudbound that they could probably recite it from memory. And of course we all had many doubts along the way that we would ever finish our books and find agents and publishers and become real live authors. So it was really wonderful to read with them and celebrate our mutual success. We were joined by a great crowd of Hudsonians, including friends Tom Swope, Val Shaff, Tom Froese, Maureen Cummins, Sarah Sterling, Carol Derfner, and Marc and Christine Heller. A big merci to Gary Schiro, Joe Herwick and E. Fout for hosting us and beating the drums.

Massachussetts

Completed the final lap of my official book tour last week/weekend, beginning with a stop in South Hadley, home of Mt. Holyoke and the excellent Odyssey Bookshop. I'm in Odyssey's signed first editions program, so I spent a wrist-wilting hour signing 250 copies of Mudbound before the reading. (I did the math just now and I estimate I've autographed somewhere around 2,500 copies. You'd think I'd be heartily sick of it, but I'm not. There's something profoundly satisfying about the act of signing one's own book that defies description. I suppose that's my narcissism showing...) Afterward, I joined Odyssey's gracious owner Joan Grenier, events coordinator Emily Russo and some friends of theirs for an outstanding meal at Food 101 Bar & Bistro. Many thanks to them both for their hospitality and their enthusiastic embrace of Mudbound. Friday I drove to Wellesley for a few bucolic — if cold and rainy — days at the home of my old college pal Phyllis Spinale. It was an eye-opening glimpse into the life of a full-time mom. She has three kids age 9, 11, and 13, a recently-adopted dog, and a husband, all lovely, and all of whom she looks after and makes nutritious meals for and folds shirts for and drives to lacrosse practice and takes for walks and counsels and consoles with a serenity I found awe-inspiring, while also running five miles a day and, in her spare time, being a one-woman band for Mudbound — which, if every adult in greater Wellesley isn't already reading it, they soon will be or they'll have to answer to Phyllis. You amaze me, Phyl. Vive la différence.

Friday night I read at the First Church of Jamaica Plain, an event set up by my buddy Chuck Collins and hosted by the Jamaica Plain Forum. Chuck and I met last fall at the Blue Mountain Center, along with the indefatigable Susan Freireich, who also attended the reading. Both are excellent writers: Susan fiction, Chuck non. He's a liberal activist who has spent his adult life battling economic inequality (at BMC, Chuck taught us all to sing the union song "Solidarity Forever" to the tune of "Battle Hymn of the Republic" — which we all did, passionately if somewhat bemusedly, because it was Chuck leading the choir). We had a crowd of 25+ people at the church, and they actually asked me to read extra passages, which almost never happens. Doesn't get much better than that for an author on book tour. Thanks to Chuck and to Daniel Moss for setting up the event.

The final event of the weekend was a reading at Porter Square Books in Cambridge. Another unusually large crowd, swelled by lots of friends and friends of friends: Phyl, her sis-in-law Sue, Chuck, Susan, my friends Tom Alpern and birthday girl Charlotte Dixon. You'd think with all this support (and after being on book tour for two solid months) I would have felt completely at ease, but in fact I gave one of my worst readings of the tour, at least initially. Stammering, blushing, uh-ing — I could have been running for junior high school treasurer. I pulled out of my nose-dive eventually, but man, what a humbling and excruciating couple of minutes. Thanks to all those who didn't get up and leave, and to Nathan Hasson for coordinating the event.

Southern Reading Challenge

I've joined Maggie Moran's "Southern Reading Challenge" for summer 2008. Maggie's a librarian from Mississippi whose mission is to get more noses in books, specifically Southern books. All you have to do is pledge to read three books set in the South and written by Southerners over the summer, and then blog about them. Join the challenge at http://maggiereads.blogspot.com/ My three books, in no particular order, will be:

The Hamlet by Wm. Faulkner

Smonk by Tom Franklin

Thirteen Stories by Eudora Welty ( a reread)

Chicago

Drove from Indianapolis to the Windy City for a long weekend with my aunt & uncle, Gay and John Stanek, and my mom, who joined us from Dallas. Chicago is a dangerous place to go for a stroll when the weather's nice due to all the fabulous (and fabulously expensive) stores clustered together along Michigan Avenue: Max Mara, Stuart Weitzman, Chanel, Saks, Vuitton, etc. etc. etc. Safer to go to Millenium Park and enjoy the art and architecture, as Gay, Mother and I did on Sunday. Sunday afternoon I did a signing at yet another wonderful indie bookstore, The Book Stall at Chestnut Court in Winnetka, then had dinner that night with dear friend and playwright Lisa Dillman. We put our literary talents to dubious use, composing bawdy limericks using the words "Kaczynski" and "Lewinski." (Don't ask.)

Monday I gave a luncheon talk at Chicago's famed Arts Club, which has hosted everyone from Marc Chagall and Jackson Pollack to Martha Graham and William Butler Yeats. Talk about being in good company! That night Gay and John had a splendid soirée for me at the club, attended by about 70 of their friends and family. My friend, artist Sherri Wood, who among other things makes the most gorgeous quilts you've ever seen, happened to be in town and was able to stop by. A marvelous time was had by all.

Chicago really is one of my favorite cities in the world. I would seriously consider living there if it weren't for the cold and the wind — and the accents, which are almost as dreadful. Oh, you betcha.

Indiana - Earthquake!!!

Spoke to my largest audience ever — 950 ladies who lunch — at the annual Christamore House Author Luncheon and Benefit in Indianapolis. Christamore House is an agency that supports needy families in the community. We were given a tour of the facility the day before the benefit, and they do marvelous work there. They provide preschool, counseling, food, emergency clothing, senior activities, dental care, you name it, to people in need. A worthy place to send a few extra bucks, if you have them. Every city could use a half-dozen centers just like it. One of the main ways Christamore House raises money is the annual Author Luncheon, which is organized by a Guild of volunteers. This year the Guild hosted me and four other authors, all way more distinguished than myself: Peter Carey, Australia's most celebrated novelist, author of Booker Prize winners Oscar and Lucinda and The True History of the Kelly Gang and, most recently, His Illegal Self; Sue Miller, author of ten acclaimed books including the recent bestseller The Senator's Wife; T. Jefferson Parker, two-time Edgar award winning mystery writer; and journalist Cokie Roberts, author of Founding Mothers and Ladies of Liberty, about the undersung women who shaped the birth of our nation. The night before the benefit, all of us authors (with the exception of Cokie, who hadn't yet arrived) hung out late at the hotel over a couple of bottles of wine, swapping tour stories and talking about this crazy, solitary, maddening, wonderful thing that we all feel compelled to do. They were a lovely, funny and generous bunch, and it was truly an honor for me, as a first-time novelist, to be in their company.

At around 5:30 the next morning, I was awakened by a mighty rumbling and shaking, the hotel swaying and groaning around me. It felt a lot like the earthquakes I'd experienced when I used to live in LA. Nah, I thought, they don't have earthquakes in Indiana. Must be a train. Or a dream. Or the wine. And I promptly rolled over and went back to sleep. Turns out they do have earthquakes in Indiana. This one was a 5.4 on the Richter scale. Jeff Parker took credit for bringing it from San Diego. Said it made him feel right at home.

After that, speaking to 950 people was pretty anti-climactic. I was seated with the other authors and the event chairwomen on a dais on a stage overlooking this gigantic room full of ladies. It was odd, eating in front of so many people; I was grateful they hadn't served ribs or spaghetti Bolognese. The best part was that I got to sit next to Cokie Roberts and chat with her a bit. She is exactly as you'd expect: smart, witty, kind, and down-to-earth to boot. A class act in every sense.

Many thanks to the Christamore House Guild for inviting me to participate and to Kim Hardin, my minder, for shepherding me around Indianapolis.