Loving the Day Job

I love history. I’m also a water girl – though Charlottesville is beautiful, my big complaint was always that it is just too far from the ocean. So what more could I ask than to live in this city on the coast so proud of her past?

How about a job on the Battery in one of the most photographed houses in Charleston? I waited a long time to find the perfect place to work (no institutional hotel or office building for me), and my patience has paid off. I started last week at Two Meeting Street Inn, a beautiful nine room inn overlooking White Point Gardens and, beyond that, the Charleston Harbor.

Besides writing, hospitality is my thing. I love giving a guest an amazing experience, going above and beyond expectations. I love sharing this city with newcomers. Two Meeting Street Inn gives me the chance to do that, in a gorgeous and gracious setting.

I will need to revise my writing schedule, because my day now starts much earlier and I won’t be able to stay up until 2 or 3 in the morning any more. But I’ve always said that if you really want to write, you’ll find time. And writing, I think, whatever time you do it, is much easier when you are happy with your day job.

So if you’re in Charleston, please come by and see me and I’ll give you a tour of Two Meeting Street Inn. And if you want to stay in a romantic and beautiful historic home South of Broad, check us out. You’ll fall in love with Number Two Meeting, just like I did.

Super Bowl (of Books) Sunday

I love Super Bowl Sunday. Nope, not for the football, or the parties. To me, Super Bowl Sunday means only one thing: a whole day of reading anything and everything I want to read. No chores, no TV, no social obligations, not even any writing. I reserve that one special day a year just for my books. Last year I was on the beach with a blanket, a camera, and a bag of novels. Today, it was a bit chilly for that – 60+ but super windy – so I stayed on my sofa in my jammies and never ventured outside.

To prep for the big read, I make sure to have plenty of page friendly snacks – mainly chocolate – and a stack of books I most want to read. Pre-game I thumb through the stack to decide what I want to lose myself in for a whole day, reading back covers and skimming random sections. This year I have a great team, all first string reads. To kick-off the day I finished up Wish You Were Here, by Stewart O’Nan. Then, mid-morning, I started a new book, one that’s been waiting on the top of my to-be-read pile – Bring Up the Bodies, by Hilary Mantel.

After I’ve been reading for a while, I periodically pause the novel to read short stories from a new collection. (my answer to Super Bowl commercial breaks) I’m totally excited today to be reading one of my favorite short stories authors, George Saunders, and his much-lauded Tenth of December. His stories are the perfect Super Bowl of Books commercial breaks, smart and funny and memorable. I continue in this fashion until after midnight, knowing if I stay up way too late immersed in my fictional world, well, at least everyone else will be sleep-deprived tomorrow, too.

My Super Bowl of Books is not for everyone, but for those of us who really do not give a damn who wins a football game, it is the best sport I can imagine.

Wandering in Cemeteries

Tomorrow I’m heading downtown for a little alone time with a few ghosts. I’ve been meaning to revisit some of Charleston’s graveyards, and it’s supposed to be decent weather, and well, I can’t think of a better thing to do with my Sunday afternoon.

I’m a big fan of cemeteries and graveyards. (For those of you who don’t know the difference – and I didn’t until not too long ago – a graveyard is attached to a church, while a cemetery is separate from church grounds.) There’s something about them that can keep me mesmerized for hours, reading old headstones, making up stories about the people who are buried there. Everywhere I travel I search for them. I’ve wandered graveyards in France, and Italy, and Ireland, and in most places I’ve been. My daughter Lauri and I found one tucked away in a park in Venice, and I dragged my oldest daughter Ali to the graveyard at St. Michael’s here in Charleston when she was only a few years old. Sometimes my traveling companions are game, and sometimes they opt to shop while I daydream. Which is OK, because to me a graveyard really is best as a solitary experience.

At an artist residency at Anam Cara in Ireland, I could be found most days at sunset walking through the cemetery on a hillside across the street. I took pictures, wrote in my travel journal, and talked to myself about my characters, imagining them there. While in residence at the Studios of Key West, I rode my bike to Key West’s historic 1847 Cemetery, where I spent an entire afternoon photographing the above-ground tombs and statues. One of my favorite inscriptions there is “I Told You I was Sick.” Another gem is “good citizen for 65 of his 108 years.”

While in Key West, I met an artist who had started his work in stone as a gravestone carver. Imagine my fascination with that. I asked so many questions that I’m sure he wished he’d never run across me. But one day I’ll use that information in a story, I’m sure.

Tomorrow, I’ll take some pictures and daydream, wandering between confederate soldiers and signers of the Declaration of Independence. But the ones that will interest me the most, that always do, are the people no one has ever heard of, the ones I can create stories for.