OFF THE PAGE with RIVER JORDAN

OFF THE PAGE with RIVER JORDAN

Dear Pulpwood Queens and Timber Guys,

So, I was thinking about you guys and how when I came to PWQ weekend you would beg me to tell stories that were off the page. That is – I have loved how you have loved my novels and other books – but I got such a kick out of the whole – just tell us another story, River. About your cousins, about the creek, about snakes, old boyfriends, hap and happenstance, travels and travails. And I thought it would be such good fun to celebrate this long-standing relationship we have and all the memories you’ve given me by sharing with you stories that have nothing to do with my books or current writing projects or the publishing business. Just crazy, fun, real stories about life off the page. What’s really going on behind that writerly façade. Well, I’ll tell you. Chaos. That’s what goes on. My youngest son says I’m a chaos magnet and wherever I go chaos breaks out and I say that is not so, not so. But before I can get away from him something has happened, broken, broken out. Chaos, he says, is your middle name. You are the Queen of Chaos. Not so, I swear again. And besides if there was such a title I swear I’d share it with PWQ author Shellie Rushing Tomlinson because I spent two weeks on the road on book tour with her and I know what happened the first thirty minutes before we could even get out of the parking lot.

She lost her new, expensive camera. Then found it. But by then I had lost my cell phone. And, then found it. But before we could get in the car, Shellie had lost her cell phone. Then one of us lost our sunglasses. We were standing still mind you. Parked in the parking lot of the infamous Loveless Café in Nashville which was our taking off point before we shot down the Natchez Trail to our first bookstore in Tupelo. We really didn’t know each other very well. Really – not much at all. I remember us sitting in the front seat of the jeep trying to catch our breath from the last 30 mins of chaos and Shellie saying. I knew I was like this but I thought one of us would be the person to keep things together and that it would be you. Now, I see that is not going to happen. Nope, it wasn’t and it didn’t. We lost things and found things in twenty-one cities. Survived and carried on. And, I’d like to add – stayed calm about losing all these things. Staying calm in the middle of your off the page chaos is one of the special powers you need to develop if your life involves many, many instances where people say – well, you are just going to get a great story out of this. I always say – I don’t need any more story material. I just need to get from point A to Point B without the police showing up, a firetruck rolling up with sirens on, or an ambulance being called.

I type these words with my right foot propped up over my head because it looks like an elephant foot and is black, blue, purple and some other colors I can’t identify. Apparently, I thought I could fly while searching in a panic for my dog and managed to miss not one but two steps and came down hard to a resounding crack. The dog came back smiling and filthy an hour later. He was trying to tell me stories of his adventures but I wasn’t in the mood to listen.

So here we go, off to new adventures off the page and straight into real life.

Thank you for being you and letting me still be me up all the mountains, down all the valleys and through all these years.

River Jordan is an author, speaker, teacher and radio host.As a southerner with a global perspective she is a passionate advocate for the power of story.

River's writing career began as a playwright and she spent over ten years writing and directing. She is the best-selling author of four novels and a three spiritual memoirs. As a critically-acclaimed author her work has been most frequently cast in the company of such writers as Flannery O'Conner, William Faulkner, and Harper Lee.

Ms. Jordan lives on a hill just beyond Nashville city limits surrounded by her wild, southern family. When not on the road you'll find her on her porch at night watching the moon move through the star-filled sky and contemplating all manner of things human and divine.

"River Jordan writes with the lyricism and grace of a gospel hymn, and the tales that weave through Sugar Baby ring like the chorus of a choir, rising and falling and then rising again, like all good sinners do." Michael Farris Smith, author of Nick and Blackwood