Pulpwood Queen's Girlfriend Weekend

Pearl Handled Pistols, Petticoats and a Passel of Pulpwood Queens

It’s a long way from the sleek, silver skyline of Austin to the moss covered, alligator ridden wilds of Marshall, and it’s not just the miles and miles of Texas that separate the two cities. For me, it was two years of brainwracking work at the computer, lots of whining to my friends about how hard it is to write a novel and the good old-fashioned benevolence of Kathy Patrick, the Pulpwood Queen her ownself. This tiara-wearin’ booklovin’ blonde bombshell has one of the best gigs in the world with her very own creation of Girlfriend Weekend—a shin dig of good friends, great books and some of the brightest literati south of the Mason Dixon.
Now, what I’m about to tell you is the God’s honest truth, and anyone who knows me will tell you that this is only the kind of stuff that happens to me, ‘cause sister, you can’t make this stuff up.

Friday, January 19, 2007
So the plan was to head the 500-some-odd miles (yes, you can travel more than 500 miles and still be in Texas) to Marshall check in at the La Quinta and get dolled up in plenty of time to make the press conference at 2 p.m. The press conference was sponsored by xxx, and if I learned anything from my days as a journalist, it’s that media will storm the place if there’s free food and libations. So, I was anxious to hit the road, especially since if there are droves of media, you have to get there before all the good stuff is gone.
And because I feel I don’t have enough drama in my life, I’d invited my mother to the weekend.
Inviting my mother to anything more than a day long is always a crapshoot, since it’s a fifty-fifty chance she’ll be her charming self, or her other self, which is just as charming, but sometimes winds up naked in the rose bushes.

I speed dialed Mama repeatedly to make sure she hadn’t cracked open the Grand Marnier, then packed the car to the moon roof with books, tee shirts and a dress that had more taffeta than a Toyota full of bridesmaids.
My dog, Tahoe, was sitting in the passenger seat, pointy white nose aimed north toward Marshall, the last stretch of Texas before you hit the marshy gator-bitten wilds of Louisiana.
All buckled in, I put the key in the ignition and of course, nothing happened.
So, four hours later, I had the filthiest rental car ever to hit the road in Central Texas, a big box of books and a dog with a sour disposition.

The Long Hard Road to Marshall:
Okay, so I admit it. I’m directionally challenged and I have no sense of time or distance, which, in the past, made me a fairly popular girl to date. But somewhere along the five-hour drive through moss-shrouded cypress and dilapidated trailer parks along Hwy. 87, it seems I can still be popular girl. Or at least that’s what the big guy with the toothpick told me at the Texaco outside of Hearn.
We headed for Marshall, and despite driving like a bat out of hell, we missed the big press conference that was chock full of media, munchies and a boatload of wine. There are few things I like better than munchies and liquored up press people, but I also missed the whole Pulpwood Queens Go Hollywood skit, which pained me right down to my pantyhose.

The Kick Butt Panel:
Right now I want to share my big-ass adventure at Kathy’s Girlfriend Weekend, the big, book extravaganza thrown by the tiara-wearin’ book-bearin’ Pulpwood Queen and a whole slew of her sparkling subjects.
Kathy Patrick invited me to be part of a star-studded panel of Texas literati after I won the Writers’ League of Texas Novel Writing Competition, which greased the way to a two-book, third option deal with Midnight Ink.
My panel was slated for 9:45 Saturday morning, and anyone who knows me at all knows I couldn’t find my rear with both hands a flashlight before eleven. But there I was, long jean skirt and big ponytail ready to trade witty banter with some of the brightest literary brains this side of the Rio Grande. We’re talking Carol Dawson, David Wilkinson, Elizabeth Crook and *yikes* Sarah Bird, all refereed by former Texas Book Festival director extraordinaire Cindy Hughes. Of course, there’s little ol’ mystery writer me on the end.
But Cindy found the common denominator—Texas. Turns out that there is something about Texas that gets in your blood bangs around in your brain and somehow comes out of your pen. And it doesn’t matter whether you’re writing about settings in Texas, New Mexico, or God help us all, California, the Lone Star State seeps through.

It also turned out that three of us were Air Force brats—a seemingly simple detail that seemed to turn each of us into watchers…outsiders looking in. Like beings from a different dimension. We can see people, we can hear them and we can empathize. We can’t, however, join them. Or maybe it’s the other way around.
But, I suspect that all writers have that in common, military progeny or not. I think this sense of “Other Than” is part of what makes us good at what we do…

The Signing:
Okay, so it was one of the very best signings I ever had. My mother was there (and on her best behavior) and my dog, Tahoe, who gets more fan mail than I ever did. The Queens were a hoot, and

panel I wound up on had enough wit banging around in their frontal lobes to keep the ghost of Truman Capote giggling his glasses off. The Saturday morning panel included
I’ve always been a big fan of Sarah Bird, especially since she is a charter member of a writers group I belong to, so sitting next to her on a panel in front of tiara-wearin’ gals and a group
So, armed with an butt-load of my own books, a trunk full of shoes and a dog with an attitude, I packed up the