SUMMER IN THE SOUTH: AUTHOR INTERVIEW AND GIVEAWAY

GIVEAWAY ENDED
SUMMER IN THE SOUTH

BY CATHY HOLTON

ABOUT THE BOOK:

For Chicago writer Ava Dabrowski, fleeing her own troubled past, the chance to spend the summer writing a novel in quiet Woodburn, Tennessee seems a welcome reprieve.  A guest of Will Fraser and his great-aunts, Fanny and Josephine Woodburn, members of an aristocratic, old-moneyed family, Ava soon finds herself surrounded by an eccentric cast of characters.

But the Woodburns are not who they seem to be.  Gradually hearing rumors about the mysterious death of great-aunt Fanny’'s first husband, Ava stumbles upon a decades old family secret.  Putting aside her planned novel, she begins instead to write the tragic history of the Woodburns, a family with more skeletons (and ghosts) in their closets than anyone can possibly imagine. 

As she writes the history of the Woodburns, Ava begins to put together the pieces of her own fractured past, learning that a good story is always more dazzling, and ultimately less painful, than the truth.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Cathy Holton grew up in college towns in the American South and Midwest.  As a child, she entertained her classmates with tales of a scaled creature that lived in her carport shed and a magical phone that hung in her family’'s bathroom that could be used to summon an English butler (this was in North Carolina in the 1960’'s and her family lived in married student housing). 

Once, in a moment of epiphany, she overheard two neighbors discussing her.
 

"That child is quite the story-teller,” one woman said.
 

"That child is the biggest liar on God’'s green earth,” the other woman replied.  

"She wouldn’'t know the truth if it fell out of the sky and clumped her on the head.”
Cathy knew then that she would be a writer.             

She studied Creative Writing at Michigan State University under Professor Albert Drake.  She has worked as a dude ranch hand, a university seminar coordinator, a paralegal, and an assistant in a fire investigation firm.  The mother of three grown children, she lives in Chattanooga, Tennessee with her husband and a rescue dog named Yoshi.   She is the author of Revenge of the Kudzu Debutantes, Secret Lives of the Kudzu Debutantes, Beach Trip, and Summer in the South, all published through Random House/Ballantine Books. 

She is currently at work on her fifth novel, The Sisters Montague, about a nineteen-year old runaway who takes a job as a caregiver for a ninety-four year old Southern grande dame, a woman haunted by her own  past.  Think Girl, Interrupted meets Driving Miss Daisy.  With a twist.  For more about Cathy Holton, visit her website HERE.

AUTHOR INTERVIEW: 

1.  Where did you get the inspiration or idea for this book?

    
    Twenty years ago I went with a friend to visit her great-aunt Fanny in the small town of Franklin, Tennessee.   My friend, Randal, it turns out, was from a very old-moneyed family who had been in the Nashville area for over two hundred years.  We stayed at Fanny’s large, impressive downtown home, which had been built by her great-great-grandfather in 1832 as a summer “cottage” where his family could escape the plantation during the summers.
 
    I was fascinated by the history of the house and the family, (there was a framed letter from Thomas Jefferson on one of the dining room walls addressed to Fanny’s ancestor).  I was also impressed with Fanny and her friends, all highly intelligent, vibrant and genteel elderly women who had been educated at Vanderbilt in the nineteen-twenties and who still clung to the time-honored tradition of cocktail hour.
    
    While there we did a very Southern thing.  We “visited” the Dead at the cemetary with Fanny, placing flowers on the many graves of deceased family members.  I noticed Fanny putting flowers on a grave set apart from the others and curious, I asked Randal, Whose grave is that?
    
    “Her first husband,” she said.  “He died young.  We never speak of him.”
    
    I was fascinated.  There was a look of – what? Tenderness, concern, guilt – on Fanny’s face as she leaned to place the flowers on the grave.  I couldn’t stop thinking about the first husband.  Who was he?  What had happened between he and Fanny that kept her devoted all these years and yet the family would not speak of him?  And how did he die?
  
    All that night I lay awake in my big four poster bed in a moonlit room and waited for the ghost of Fanny’s dead first husband to appear.
    
    Twenty years later I wrote Summer in the South, about a visiting Chicago writer who stumbles upon a sixty year old murder mystery in a small Southern town.  Did the love affair between Charlie and Fanny happen as I imagined it?  Was what happened in that big house on a moonlit night real, or did I just dream it?
    
    The answer to both questions, I suppose, lies clearly in the realm of fiction.   
    
    2. How did the title of your book come about?
    
    I had originally titled the book, “Old Money,” but my publishing house didn’t like that one.  So we settled (eventually) on “Summer in the South.”
 
    3. Do you see yourself in your characters? Which characters are easiest or more difficult to write?
    
    My female protagonists always have a strong, stubborn streak running through them, an inability to do as they’re told, a sense of themselves as being “outside the norm.”  I suppose that’s because I’ve always exhibited those traits.  Being an introvert (which I think most writers are) I have a tendency to be very introspective and somewhat moody.  And I have a dark sense of humor, what my mother used to call “gallows humor.”  My characters use humor as a defense mechanism because I do.
    
    The hardest characters for me to write are the long-suffering, self-sacrificing types who give everything of themselves and never lose their tempers.  Or rage against their fate.  Come to think of it, I don’t write many characters like that.
      
    4. What books would you say have made the biggest impression on you, especially starting out? What are you currently reading?
    
    Well, I’m a history freak so I read a lot of historical fiction.  Little Big Man is one of my favorite historical novels.  I loved Cold Mountain.  The Giant O’Brien, Oscar and Lucinda, The History of the Kelly Gang, the trilogy by Rodney Hall.  Right now I’m reading Peter Carey’s Parrot and Olivier.
   
    I suppose early on it was the short stories of Flannery O’Connor, Eudora Welty, Louis Nordan, John Cheever, and Alice Munro who most influenced me.
    
    5. What is the next or current book/project you are working on?

    I’m working on a novel tentatively called The Sisters Montague, about a nineteen year old runaway who takes a job as a caregiver for a wealthy, ninety-four year old Southern grande dame, a woman with her own shadowy past.  Both characters share a wickedly dry sense of humor, and as time goes on a wary friendship develops between the two as each begins to open up to the other about her past.  At the heart of the novel is a seventy-four year old love triangle that went horribly wrong, from which the elderly woman has never really recovered.
    
    Think Girl, Interrupted meets Driving Miss Daisy.
    
    6. What is something about you that you would want people to know about you that we probably don’t know?
    
    Wow.  There’s a lot about me I don’t want people to know (think tequila binge days of college).  But if you’ve read my books, you probably already know that about me.
   
    7. Do you own an eReader of any kind and how do you feel about their impact on books, as well as you as an author?
    
    My children bought me a Nook for Christmas, and I have to say, it’s pretty awesome.  I’ll always be someone who enjoys the feel, smell, and weight of books but I do understand the ease of use and instant gratification of eReaders.  They say in two years e-books will make up 80% of the market.  It’s a brave new world out there, which is both scary and exhilarating to me as a writer.  My feeling is, whatever keeps people reading is good.
    
    8. What is your advice to anyone, including young people, who want to be writers?
    
    Write.  Don’t talk.  Write.  And read.  You can’t be a writer if you’re not a reader.  Read writers who amaze you, who depress you with their skill and virtuosity, who inspire you to try and do your best work.    

WATCH FOR MY REVIEW:

Watch for my review in a couple of days so you can comment on it and gain bonus entries so you have a better chance of winning one of these copies of SUMMER IN THE SOUTH

GIVEAWAY

THANKS TO CATHY HOLTON, I HAVE 

THREE HARDBACK COPIES OF THIS

WONDERFUL BOOK JUST IN TIME

FOR YOUR SUMMER READING!

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