When I arrived in Montgomery last week, my great editor Jim Gilbert was there to pick me up. We met the inimitable publisher Carolyn Newman. I got to see the offices of River City Publishing (with some incredible art) and 1500 copies of Coffin Point in the Warehouse.
After lunch, I got to kill some time at the Hank Williams museum—where I saw the car and the suit he died in. That was enough for me, made me feel like a Hank song.
The book launch was at the Fitzgerald House Museum—where Scott and Zelda lived for a period. It was a real honor to introduce the book, surrounded by the relics of such a hell of a writer.
Capital Books did a great job with the books that night and it was a great evening and the place was pretty full. Montgomery was full of fascinating people—including Kirk Curnutt, the author of Breathing Out the Ghost and Dixie Noir.
The next day, I rented a car, ate lunch with Gilbert and his fiancée Jaime and drove the three hours from Montgomery to Fairhope—and specifically to the Waterhole Branch where three great writers live. Joe Formichella (Murder Creek, Wreck of the Twilight Limited) and Suzanne Hudson (In a Temple of Trees, In the Dark of the Moon) live together across the dirt road from Ronald Everett Capps (Off Magazine Street), the Mayor of the Waterhole Branch.
Thanks to Joe and Suzanne, I ate like a king—not to mention drinking.
The party was the next day—an annual event—the famous shoe burning. The shoe burning began years ago when an old friend of the Mayor’s didn’t want to go outside to get firewood and came back with a bog bag of shoes. Since then, the denizens down at the Branch have been burning shoes during a big party one night in November every year, burning up the bad juju from the previous year, and commemorating the good. Everyone makes a speech about his or her shoes and throws them in. You’d be surprised how brightly shoes flare. I burned the shoes I wrote the book in. Since I write standing up, when it was hot, I often wore nothing but shoes and underwear. It was nice to watch them burn.
I read that night from the Play-Like Playhouse there on the Branch surrounded by the Mayor’s art and met a bunch of wonderful people, including Milton Brown, who wrote the song “Every Which Way But Loose.” As a dabbler in song-writing, it was a real honor. And as a lover of good stories about country music, a joy.
A great first weekend for Coffin Point and thanks to everyone involved.
