Sasha Serena
Thursday, July 31, 2014
Tuesday, July 29, 2014
Save the Date
The
title of this entry might lead you to believe I'm finally saving a date
to write in my blog. So let me start with a slight aside and say
that, it's true I've had a bit of a break, but I've got lots of stuff to
write about, and a bunch of pictures to show you (some of which are slightly more embarrassing than others), and if you'll forgive it being a little out of order, I'm
ready to try to catch you up. 
So what does Save the Date refer to? Fans of Mary Kay Andrews will immediately recognize this as the title of her most recent novel, released in June. Mary Kay came to my library a few weeks ago to speak and spend an afternoon talking about and with sassy, southern women. Wait? What? Some of you are thinking, you did this already, right? Didn't Mary Kay come to speak at your library about ten years ago? Are you sure you're not mixing the libraries up? Well, yes, yes she did. But one engagement with Mary Kay is not nearly enough, so I put in a proposal with the too-wonderful-to-be-true folks at the Macmillan Speakers Bureau to bring her to my current library, too. I may or may not have stalked her just a little bit until she said yes.Mary Kay Andrews is a pseudonym for Kathy Trocheck, who wrote ten
critically acclaimed mysteries about a house cleaner named Callahan
Garrity back in the 90’s. As Mary Kay Andrews, she’s turned to writing
about sassy southern women who I’ve often wish could be my best friends
(I would wish I could be those sassy women themselves, but they tend to
get into a lot of trouble, and I think I’m safer on the sidelines). Ladies Night,
which takes place in Bradenton, FL, starts out with a splash when Grace
Stanton discovers her husband has been cheating on her, and in a
perfectly understandable reaction, drives his convertible into the pool.
Anyone who’s enjoyed a bottle of Cheerwine, made in the small town of
Salisbury, NC, will love spending time in Mary Kay’s fictional town of
Pascoe, NC, home of the Quixie Beverage Company, where, in Spring Fever,
Annajane Hudgins thinks she’s over her ex-husband...until she attends
his next wedding. And no one can call herself a Mary Kay Andrews fan
until she’s tagged along with best friends Weezie and BeBe (whose
mother, exhausted from having had eight previous children in ten years,
had settled upon the name BeBe with the French pronunciation of Bay-Bay
for her ninth child) in Savannah Blues, Savannah Breeze, Blue Christmas, and Christmas Bliss. Andrews’ newest book, Save the Date follows wedding florist Cara Kryzik as she tries to
save her business and a budding new romance. These funny, sharp titles,
along with Summer Rental, Hissy Fit, Little Bitty Lies, and Deep Dish, are great beach reads.
I first met Mary Kay (and I'm going to call her Mary Kay because, even though her real name is Kathy, I'm easily confused and need to pick one and stick with it) about ten years ago when I worked as an adult services librarian in Raleigh, NC. I knew I had to invite her to speak to our readers when I heard her on NPR answering a phone caller’s question of whether or not men can have hissy fits with the obvious answer: of course they can. They’re called conniptions. She gracious agreed to come to my library, and she was as delightful a speaker as she is a writer. I ran into her again a few months ago at a national library conference (where, incidentally, she ended up sitting at a dinner table with my boss and a bottle of wine while I was in the back of the room). When I finally fought my way up front, she said she would be thrilled to come to Gainesville, and by the way, would we have time to visit any antique stores? Mary Kay is a lifelong “junker” who claims to know the location of every thrift store, flea market, and junk pile in the southeastern United States, and a few parts of Ohio.
The process of bringing Mary Kay to Gainesville was fraught with paperwork but eventually came to be. The only part that made me nervous was the fact that I was picking her up at the airport at 10pm on a Saturday night, and anyone who knows me knows that this is dangerously close to bedtime for me. To make it a little easier, I stopped by the fabulous Sweetwater Inn Bed and Breakfast to check her in so that all she would have to do on arrival is go on up to her room. I briefly considered barricading myself in Julia's room (because gorgeous bed and breakfast suites must have a name) and refusing to come out, sending Mary Kay home to share a bed with Sasha, but I eventually persuaded myself to step away from the hardwood. With the slight exception of her plane having to be towed in the last few feet to the gate, Mary Kay's arrival was smooth and we chatted amiably as I took her to Sweetwater.
The next morning, I picked her up, ready for a short tour of Gainesville before plans for Sunday brunch with some book club members. We'd not gotten three blocks before Mary Kay called out "Stop! Yard sale! Stop!" After a couple of circles while we debated which way the arrows were pointing, we made a quick visit to a local yard sale that had pretty much already been picked over. But it is with great pleasure that I can say that I went to a yard sale with the best junker outside of HGTV.
We made it to brunch at Leonardo's 706, a fantastic local restaurant offering a choice of a buffet or brunch off the menu. They also have this great fresh orange juice with nutmeg and a ton of other fancy stuff, except that I also had to order a mimosa to get the other fancy stuff I wanted. I had invited members of my book club and my boss's book club to join us, so we spent an hour gabbing about favorite books and the merits of Amazon. The food is fabulous, and we spent a good bit of time comparing the buffet to the entrees off the menu. My five cheese omelet was going to need to be split in half and provide dinner as well. A great time had by all, we took some pics and headed for our Millhopper branch, where Mary Kay was scheduled to speak.
We were a little unsure of what to expect in terms of attendance. We had high hopes, of course, and were quite optimistic for a good turnout. We'd done a lot of publicity, including a local NPR radio show on Friday afternoon. The Millhopper branch meeting room holds about 100 people, and the goal was to fill it without "going over." Walking up the sidewalk to the entrance, I peeked under the blinds to see a flurry of feet walking around the meeting room. Woo hoo! Good numbers, judging by the shoes. We made our way in, and I stopped for a moment to give huge thanks to our Millhopper branch and Facilities department staffs, who had prepared the room, put out lemonade, and generally gotten set up so that Mary Kay and I could enter like the princesses we are. Looking around, I saw that most of the chairs were full, so I started to snag one for our guest of honor. "Would you like to have a seat before we get started?" I offered.
Mary Kay waved her hand. "Oh, no, honey, I want to talk around and talk to these lovely people!" And off she went, talking with patrons, even questioning one gentleman as to whether he'd gotten lost and found himself in a room full of women. We pulled in a few more chairs from the children's area (it's okay, they were more colorful than they were short) and watched as people filled the room. Many lined up to purchase Mary Kay's titles from a local BooksaMillion, so there were happy faces all around.
When the time came to introduce Mary Kay, I explained that our patrons were in for a fun afternoon but they couldn't necessarily believe everything they heard. "You know, Mary Kay was on NPR on Friday and told the interviewer she was almost a Gator, coming here to UF [insert cheers here], but her dad said it was too wild, and he didn't want her to go to a party school, so she went to UGA instead." I paused. "When I picked her up at the airport last night, I told her that I went to the University of Georgia, too, and she didn't have me fooled for a minute." Mary Kay took the floor, describing the process she went to transition from a journalist who'd covered the trials serving as the basis of Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil to a novelist. Her protagonists are strong southern women, and Mary Kay shared that she writes books in which they create homes. These women are decorators and chefs and vintage connoisseurs who make a place in which they belong. Mary Kay is a proud mom and grandma, and the worlds she writes are full of these kinds of women--mature, capable, and occasionally just a tiny bit dysfunctional.
Despite having been speaking and answering questions for more than an hour, Mary Kay moved to the sales table and signed books. A few book clubs attended and got their picture taken with Mary Kay. We counted and realized we'd had 109 people attend, a good number on any day. Our patrons genuinely had a good time, chatting with Mary Kay, each other, and in one instance, the shelver who came in to help restack the chairs. On the ride back to the airport, we chatted like old friends. Mary Kay had actually had a speaking engagement earlier in the day prior while her family held a yard sale, flew to Gainesville while they took the remainder to the thrift shop, and was coming back to continue the process of selling her house and moving into a house around the corner. I guess my expression asked "Around the corner?" because she quickly said it was a long story but would be a wonderful new house with a yard for the grandkids. I dropped her off at arrivals and watched Mary Kay Andrews (OMG, Mary Kay Andrews!) walk into Gainesville's three gate airport.
I truly cannot thank Mary Kay enough for coming to hang out with us on a Sunday afternoon. She's absolutely delightful, and it's a rare event to get to meet one of your favorite authors.
So what does Save the Date refer to? Fans of Mary Kay Andrews will immediately recognize this as the title of her most recent novel, released in June. Mary Kay came to my library a few weeks ago to speak and spend an afternoon talking about and with sassy, southern women. Wait? What? Some of you are thinking, you did this already, right? Didn't Mary Kay come to speak at your library about ten years ago? Are you sure you're not mixing the libraries up? Well, yes, yes she did. But one engagement with Mary Kay is not nearly enough, so I put in a proposal with the too-wonderful-to-be-true folks at the Macmillan Speakers Bureau to bring her to my current library, too. I may or may not have stalked her just a little bit until she said yes.Mary Kay Andrews is a pseudonym for Kathy Trocheck, who wrote ten
critically acclaimed mysteries about a house cleaner named Callahan
Garrity back in the 90’s. As Mary Kay Andrews, she’s turned to writing
about sassy southern women who I’ve often wish could be my best friends
(I would wish I could be those sassy women themselves, but they tend to
get into a lot of trouble, and I think I’m safer on the sidelines). Ladies Night,
which takes place in Bradenton, FL, starts out with a splash when Grace
Stanton discovers her husband has been cheating on her, and in a
perfectly understandable reaction, drives his convertible into the pool.
Anyone who’s enjoyed a bottle of Cheerwine, made in the small town of
Salisbury, NC, will love spending time in Mary Kay’s fictional town of
Pascoe, NC, home of the Quixie Beverage Company, where, in Spring Fever,
Annajane Hudgins thinks she’s over her ex-husband...until she attends
his next wedding. And no one can call herself a Mary Kay Andrews fan
until she’s tagged along with best friends Weezie and BeBe (whose
mother, exhausted from having had eight previous children in ten years,
had settled upon the name BeBe with the French pronunciation of Bay-Bay
for her ninth child) in Savannah Blues, Savannah Breeze, Blue Christmas, and Christmas Bliss. Andrews’ newest book, Save the Date follows wedding florist Cara Kryzik as she tries to
save her business and a budding new romance. These funny, sharp titles,
along with Summer Rental, Hissy Fit, Little Bitty Lies, and Deep Dish, are great beach reads.I first met Mary Kay (and I'm going to call her Mary Kay because, even though her real name is Kathy, I'm easily confused and need to pick one and stick with it) about ten years ago when I worked as an adult services librarian in Raleigh, NC. I knew I had to invite her to speak to our readers when I heard her on NPR answering a phone caller’s question of whether or not men can have hissy fits with the obvious answer: of course they can. They’re called conniptions. She gracious agreed to come to my library, and she was as delightful a speaker as she is a writer. I ran into her again a few months ago at a national library conference (where, incidentally, she ended up sitting at a dinner table with my boss and a bottle of wine while I was in the back of the room). When I finally fought my way up front, she said she would be thrilled to come to Gainesville, and by the way, would we have time to visit any antique stores? Mary Kay is a lifelong “junker” who claims to know the location of every thrift store, flea market, and junk pile in the southeastern United States, and a few parts of Ohio.
The process of bringing Mary Kay to Gainesville was fraught with paperwork but eventually came to be. The only part that made me nervous was the fact that I was picking her up at the airport at 10pm on a Saturday night, and anyone who knows me knows that this is dangerously close to bedtime for me. To make it a little easier, I stopped by the fabulous Sweetwater Inn Bed and Breakfast to check her in so that all she would have to do on arrival is go on up to her room. I briefly considered barricading myself in Julia's room (because gorgeous bed and breakfast suites must have a name) and refusing to come out, sending Mary Kay home to share a bed with Sasha, but I eventually persuaded myself to step away from the hardwood. With the slight exception of her plane having to be towed in the last few feet to the gate, Mary Kay's arrival was smooth and we chatted amiably as I took her to Sweetwater.
The next morning, I picked her up, ready for a short tour of Gainesville before plans for Sunday brunch with some book club members. We'd not gotten three blocks before Mary Kay called out "Stop! Yard sale! Stop!" After a couple of circles while we debated which way the arrows were pointing, we made a quick visit to a local yard sale that had pretty much already been picked over. But it is with great pleasure that I can say that I went to a yard sale with the best junker outside of HGTV.
We made it to brunch at Leonardo's 706, a fantastic local restaurant offering a choice of a buffet or brunch off the menu. They also have this great fresh orange juice with nutmeg and a ton of other fancy stuff, except that I also had to order a mimosa to get the other fancy stuff I wanted. I had invited members of my book club and my boss's book club to join us, so we spent an hour gabbing about favorite books and the merits of Amazon. The food is fabulous, and we spent a good bit of time comparing the buffet to the entrees off the menu. My five cheese omelet was going to need to be split in half and provide dinner as well. A great time had by all, we took some pics and headed for our Millhopper branch, where Mary Kay was scheduled to speak.We were a little unsure of what to expect in terms of attendance. We had high hopes, of course, and were quite optimistic for a good turnout. We'd done a lot of publicity, including a local NPR radio show on Friday afternoon. The Millhopper branch meeting room holds about 100 people, and the goal was to fill it without "going over." Walking up the sidewalk to the entrance, I peeked under the blinds to see a flurry of feet walking around the meeting room. Woo hoo! Good numbers, judging by the shoes. We made our way in, and I stopped for a moment to give huge thanks to our Millhopper branch and Facilities department staffs, who had prepared the room, put out lemonade, and generally gotten set up so that Mary Kay and I could enter like the princesses we are. Looking around, I saw that most of the chairs were full, so I started to snag one for our guest of honor. "Would you like to have a seat before we get started?" I offered.
Mary Kay waved her hand. "Oh, no, honey, I want to talk around and talk to these lovely people!" And off she went, talking with patrons, even questioning one gentleman as to whether he'd gotten lost and found himself in a room full of women. We pulled in a few more chairs from the children's area (it's okay, they were more colorful than they were short) and watched as people filled the room. Many lined up to purchase Mary Kay's titles from a local BooksaMillion, so there were happy faces all around. When the time came to introduce Mary Kay, I explained that our patrons were in for a fun afternoon but they couldn't necessarily believe everything they heard. "You know, Mary Kay was on NPR on Friday and told the interviewer she was almost a Gator, coming here to UF [insert cheers here], but her dad said it was too wild, and he didn't want her to go to a party school, so she went to UGA instead." I paused. "When I picked her up at the airport last night, I told her that I went to the University of Georgia, too, and she didn't have me fooled for a minute." Mary Kay took the floor, describing the process she went to transition from a journalist who'd covered the trials serving as the basis of Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil to a novelist. Her protagonists are strong southern women, and Mary Kay shared that she writes books in which they create homes. These women are decorators and chefs and vintage connoisseurs who make a place in which they belong. Mary Kay is a proud mom and grandma, and the worlds she writes are full of these kinds of women--mature, capable, and occasionally just a tiny bit dysfunctional.
Despite having been speaking and answering questions for more than an hour, Mary Kay moved to the sales table and signed books. A few book clubs attended and got their picture taken with Mary Kay. We counted and realized we'd had 109 people attend, a good number on any day. Our patrons genuinely had a good time, chatting with Mary Kay, each other, and in one instance, the shelver who came in to help restack the chairs. On the ride back to the airport, we chatted like old friends. Mary Kay had actually had a speaking engagement earlier in the day prior while her family held a yard sale, flew to Gainesville while they took the remainder to the thrift shop, and was coming back to continue the process of selling her house and moving into a house around the corner. I guess my expression asked "Around the corner?" because she quickly said it was a long story but would be a wonderful new house with a yard for the grandkids. I dropped her off at arrivals and watched Mary Kay Andrews (OMG, Mary Kay Andrews!) walk into Gainesville's three gate airport.I truly cannot thank Mary Kay enough for coming to hang out with us on a Sunday afternoon. She's absolutely delightful, and it's a rare event to get to meet one of your favorite authors.
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