Mississippi University for Women – Julie Liddell Whitehead

Possumtown Book Fest Weekend

So this weekend was full of book fun! I went to Starkville Book Mart and Cafe for a signing on Friday–they brought out a punchbowl for visitors and me and Bob and employees to partake of–after I signed my first book at the event, I went and got a cup of punch, and the pattern was set. Now it was a drinking game; for every book sold, I got a cup of punch. Good thing it wasn’t spiked! We sold half the books we had on hand–she had some and I brought some and let her keep them and sell them herself. So I took away a nice check at the end of the day.

Then Saturday, I went to the 2nd Annual Possumtown Book Fest in Columbus, MS just a few miles down the highway from Starkville. That was a LOT of fun! Met some people, like my online writing buddy Shannon, the organizer and bookstore owner Emily Liner, the novelist Snowden Wright, my panel mates Benjamin and Nadia, and various other authors I knew only by reputation. I saw a lot of folks I already knew–MFA alumni, Bookstagramers, MUW professors, MSU professors, Mississippi Art Commision people, etc.

I had fun on my panel. I talked about why I wrote Hurricane Baby: Stories, how I felt being a Mississippi writer, what being a Mississippian was all about, etc. I carried on a good bit, as we Mississippians tend to do. And I got quoted in the local Columbus paper this morning! So that was a neat extra and hopefully may send people to the bookstore to get a copy of my book on Monday or this weekend. That would be nice.

This week I have a TV appearance and my last scheduled book signing. Things are winding down for Hurricane Baby. After this week, I have another TV appearance and two podcast interviews. Then I have a few events scheduled for 2026 already. In three days, the book will have its first birthday. Quite the milestone and a punctuation mark to a wild year!

Rolling Along

This week is going to be wild!

On Thursday, I’ll have an article coming out on Jane Friedman’s website on networking as a debut author! It was amazing how that opportunity came together; I just cold-emailed her the idea of doing an article on my author journey and threw in everything but the kitchen sink into the pitch. She emailed back that if I picked ONE of those ideas, it would probably make a good article. So I pulled out that strand, and she said to give it a shot! That runs August 14 at https://janefriedman.com/

On Friday I go back to my college town bookstore and do a signing there–I hope it goes well as well. Give us an opportunity to see some old stomping grounds, me and Bob. The owner wants me to talk the local newspaper to do an article on the twenty-year Katrina anniversary this month so Monday I’m going to see what I can do about that.

And I’ve also started receiving all the materials for the Possumtown Book Fest this Saturday in Columbus, Mississippi–schedules, directions, information, contacts, etc. It looks like it’s going to be a lot of fun! I’ll see a lot of people I’m familiar with from school and some I know only by reputation. Hopefully meet a few people, too. This is only the second year they’ve offered it, and I’m really proud to be involved. I would have attended last year except it happened on the day of my first signing!

Such an amazing week! And there’s more where that came from the NEXT week as well. Hope to see some of you around!

New Opportunity

So we have our first festival invitation! The Louisiana Book Festival in Baton Rouge, Louisiana has invited me to be on a panel and will have my books available for the sale tent at the event in November 2024. So that was a nice surprise when I got the message.

I am still holding out hope for the Mississippi Book Festival in September 2024. It’s only a few weeks after my book launch, which is now about two months away. But it’s not unusual for them to finalize their author list at the last minute, so I still have time to wait.

My work-in-progress is getting more manageable! I have two half-chapters and a set of scenes that aren’t connected together yet. I will figure them out. Maybe I will finish this section before the end of the month. Then I have the whole middle to write (from scratch!) That’s too terrifying to think about right now, though.

I did a very rewarding this yesterday–I talked via Zoom to students from my former MFA program about my journey to publication, along with two other alumni who are publishing books–Karol Lagodski and Lauren Rhoades. We just talked about pushing through and persevering and not giving up, sprinkled in with some practical advice along the way. It was so good to see everyone that runs the program and to meet the new faces as well. I hope I can do more of those kind of talks in the future.

I guess that’s all my news for today! Wishing everyone well!

Single-Digit Fidget

My publishing company keeps saying we go to print six months before publication.

You know what?

That’s this week on February 20!

So I am nervously anticipating that I get to put up pre-order links and my new website page this week as well!

I have been reading about all the emotional whiplash that happens to new authors with an eye to moderating my expectations and all that. I like being prepared. Because I don’t want this whole wonderful accomplishment to throw me off emotionally. Because my stability is worth a lot to me.

But it’s up to me to manage that–so I am trying to keep my expectations in line with the fact that I’m a new author, I don’t have a big pre-made audience to sell to, and I have to understand all that I can control is my reaction to events. I can’t control what others do or say. I can’t control what kind of reviews i get or anything like that. I can just put it out and do what I can to move the needle–and leave the rest up to God.

Like I said when I prayed that day to give my pledge to the church. It’s all up to him. I’m just to give him the glory that is his. I gave the book my best shot for success revising and sending it out. I plan to keep doing that with events and publicity where I can get them. I’m going to start to introduce the book the first weekend of March at the Mississippi Philological Association at my alma mater, the Mississippi University for Women.

I’ll be reading what I can of Still Waters, the first story in the collection, at a panel of other creative writers. I’ll attend other panels while I’m there, probably just the creative writing ones. It’s kind of a full-circle moment for me–when I was in my last year of grad school at Mississippi State University, I read a paper I had written on James Thurber, the great American comic writer, at the MPA Conference that year–also at the W. So I will mention that before I start reading.

(My parents were at that conference since it was only a few miles away from their house. My daddy later asked me was my paper supposed to be funny? I said yes sir, it was. He was scared the audience was laughing at me in a mean way so he decided to check.)

So that’s what I’m preparing for this week. Wish me well!

Writing The Story

Long story short–these characters have been alive in my mind for quite some time. The story has undergone many, many permutations since I completed that first story draft. In 2010, in anticipation of the Hurricane Katrina fifth anniversary. I took the story and adapted it to a stage play, which is when the title went from “Still Waters” to “Hurricane Baby”. That stage play won third place in the Eudora Welty New Plays Festival at New Stage Theatre in Jackson, Mississippi, where a stage reading was performed on May 1, 2010.

I kept working at it and revising on it until I wondered if I had taken it as far as I could. I finally gave up on fiction almost entirely and started concentrating on blogging, setting up a blog about my life with bipolar disorder in 2014. In 2015, I enrolled in a low-residency MFA program at the Mississippi University for Women, concentrating on nonfiction. But even with that as my concentration, I kept flirting with fiction stories.

I took two semesters to write in fiction classes under Mary Miller, an up-and-coming short story and novel writer from Oxford, and Diana Spechler, a writer based in Mexico City. I wrote new fiction in their classes and experimented a great deal with flash fiction, discovering a had a knack for compressing a story down to its bare bones.