Janis Owens

Here are a few glimpses of life on the road in the Spring book tour. I stayed in three haunted houses, got food poisoning and was almost snowed in, in Atlanta, in March. I had my faithful Cracker husband as companion till the dogwoods bloomed and his allergy kicked in. I had to leave him home after that, because if I heard him sneeze one more time, I would have shot him.

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Here we are, at the beginning of the tour, before the sneezing began, in January. He may be wearing a golf shirt and cap, but believe me when I say: this man is 100% pure saltine. No braces ever touched those teeth.    

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Cracker Kitchen was launched on the northwest end of my Cracker kingdom, in Bay County, at BooksAlive. I’m flanked by fellow Cracker buddy, Michael Morris, a native of Perry, author of, among other books, A Place Called Wiregrass, and Slow Way Home, and to the other side, Jeff Shaara, author of so many books that I’m getting a little brain freeze, trying to remember them. God and Generals was one. 

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I’m standing here with Cassandra King (Queen of Broken Hearts, The Sunday Wife, The Same Sweet Girls), Kathie Bennett, and seated, Linda Busby-Parker (Seven Laurels) at Florida Chautauqua, in the lobby of the haunted Defuniak Hotel. The rooms might be haunted; the food was wonderful. We’re wearing crowns because we were staying with Pulpwood Queen Kathy Patrick (who took the picture.) We were drinking wine because we were skeered of that ghost.

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 Many of the stores on tour cooked food from the book, which is the reason you’ll note I start wearing slenderizing pants, half-way through. Here I am, eating red beans and rice, at Bound-to-be-Read Books, in Atlanta, East Village. The snow was falling as I spoke, and it was a homey little moment, talking Cracker and watching real snow. No one in Altanta could understand my deep-seated hillbilly fear of being trapped in the snow. Or for that matter, driving in Atlanta traffic, with Mr. Wendel, on ice. 

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Janet Keeler, from the St. Petersburg Times, had me to lunch. We cooked and talked Cracker for - I swear - two hours. Out of that, a great review was born. She must have had to edit out a million words. Her husband Scott took the picture below and it is my favorite picture. It is a triumph of film angle over crow’s feet and South Alabama double chins. He should patent that angle.

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Fairhope is a little town on the eastern edge of Mobile Bay, where I both signed and cooked. The signing was at Page and Palette.

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And yes, I cooked, too, at The Village Peddler and hate to say it, but my biscuits weren’t fit to feed the hogs. They were an insult to the culture. I talked the whole time I was cooking (the pie and rest of it was fine) and I’ve never been one to multi-task. I was half-way through demonstration when I realized that to do daddy’s Famous Biscuits, you have to use lard, or the dogs won’t have them.

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If you want to know the definition of surreal, try speaking at the library where you fell in love with books. Daddy and Mama were in the audience and it was a Xanax moment: taking to the faces of the people you get paid to talk about. Here we are afterwards, in a happy benzo glow: Daddy, Mama and Miss Ellen, our family friend. Her son is a famous golfer, whose name I will not delulge. I haven’t laid eyes on him in thirty years, but thanks to the Mama-Miss Ellen Grapevine, know the details of his every move for the last three decades of his life. Maybe I’ll work him into my next novel.  

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My cousin Cynthia came to see me at the Southern Festival of Books. She is a great Rick Bragg fan and I gave her permission to go see Rick instead of me, reasoning that she could always hear my BS, but Rick was only there for a day. Here they are, full of Crackery love.

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Cynthia also got up with another star of Southern Lit, my buddy Silas House, the King of the Kentucky Crackers and a sweet ole boy.

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What writer’s blog is complete without a few smug, braggy pictures of famous friends? Here’s Pat in Thomasville, with three young women he brought along as dates & introduced as nieces, though there wasn’t much family resemblance.

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Back in October, I blogged about mine and Katie B’s last great collaboration - a book signing at her newly renovated house with proceeds from sales going to buy a laptop for the Afghan Women’s Writer’s Project. Old Burg and Sooz came to see me and though they are out of the frame, I was talking to one or the other of them, hence my gossipy, giving-you-the-inside scoop expression and pointed finger (”Don’t tell ‘em I said it, but - “) 

Photo was taken in Katie B’s dining room, in front of her window, looking out on  her birdfeeder. I spent many a happy Saturday morning drinking coffee and looking out on that feeder. Katie B passed last year, but she was there in spirit. I could hear her laughter. I always loved to make her laugh.

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One of the last stops on the winter freez-o-thon through Florida, at Amelia Island, me, Sonny Brewer, Jack Riggs, Dickie Anderson, Pat & Sandra, who is holding umbrella that looks like a bagged bottle. Not that she didn’t have reason if it was a bottle - it was cold as a well digger’s tail in Alaska (saying of my brother’s) on the coast that weekend - note sweaters and woolen scarves.  

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I have lots more pictures to post, but for the moment, will tie it up with a shot of me standing in the Riverside Cemetary, in Marianna, on the first stop of the Claybird tour, in ‘03. It was 19 degrees that day, which accounts for my face of haggard introspection. I look like a character out of Faulkner: Flem Snopes’ great-neice. Grannie and all Mama’s people are buried somewhere around. I wanted my first tour picture to be a family shot.