Andi Cumbo-Floyd

January 1, 2020 By Lucie Winborne Leave a Comment

In Praise of the Big Honking Reading List, Or: The Real Reason Ponce de Léon Got it Wrong About the Fountain of Youth

On this first day of the new year, I’m indulging in one of my favorite activities—reading. Well, I don’t know that I should call it an indulgence when I’m getting paid to do it for a deadline, but fortunately I’m also enjoying Denise Weimer’s Spring Splash, a novel about competitive teen swimmers that was inspired by the author’s own daughters and will be published by Lighthouse Publishing of the Carolinas. I’m also finishing up another forthcoming LPC title, Hope’s Gentle Touch by Laura Hodges Poole. Quite a different story, that one, featuring a young woman who escapes from a severely abusive marriage and slowly learns to love—and trust—again.

There’s no shortage of books awaiting my attention. Not proofreading assignments, but books in general. In fact, they now number in the hundreds, which was a rather alarming prospect, especially since the list just keeps growing, at a slow but steady pace. What can I say: People will keep writing books, and recommending books, with no sympathy whatsoever for my dilemma. I’ve even taken to deleting most emails from freebooksy.com, since I fear my vulnerability to the temptation of adding ever more titles to the pile. As I’ve wryly remarked a few times to various friends, I have so many books to read, I can never die.

Then I had a short chat with a friend and fellow reader with a TBR not dissimilar to mine, who joked that I had discovered the Fountain of Youth. And I thought . . .

Dang . . . she’s RIGHT!

Too many books? Who cares? Of course I will have time to read them all! Hear that, Ponce de Léon? You didn’t need to visit Florida all those years ago! You just needed a fifteen-page reading list going back over six years and more than four hundred titles in your laptop’s Kindle app!*

With that settled, it was time to think about how many of them I could, and really wanted to, get around to in 2020. I’m not like some folks who plow through dozens of books per year, gleefully surpassing even their own expectations. No siree, I figured that at my typical rate, along with my normal daily responsibilities (day job! Housework! Grocery shopping! Cooking! Exercise! Errands! Car maintenance! Playing with the cat!), the occasional outings with friends, and monthly proofreading assignments, I’d better err on the conservative side of one per month, with a healthy division between memoir, biography, self-help, the craft of writing, and fiction. In no particular order, the top twelve came down to:

Psycho-Cybernetics by Maxwell Maltz. (A classic. Period. As one Amazon.com reviewer put it, “Most of the current speakers in the area of personal development, including Zig Ziglar, Tony Robbins, Brian Tracy and others owe a debt to Maxwell Maltz for the foundation of their material.” But even that seems like an understatement.)
As I Knew Him: My Dad, Rod Serling by Anne Serling. (I’m a great fan of The Twilight Zone and have seen enough fellow afficionados recommend this to feel sure it was a must-read.)
On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft by Stephen King. (Millions of copies sold. Called a classic that should be on every writer’s bookshelf. Over 4,000 five-star reviews on Amazon.com. Plus—it’s Stephen King, peeps.)
The 10 Commandments of Author Branding by Shayla Raquel. (I need to learn about self-marketing. From someone who freely admits she “used to suck rotten eggs at marketing” and clearly no longer does. After all, she makes a full-time living as an author/editor/marketing coach and is nearly three decades my junior to boot.)
Writing the Cozy Mystery by Nancy J. Cohen. (Because I enjoy the light escapism of this genre and aspire to write my own first cozy in 2020. Which is a slightly daunting prospect as I’ve never attempted a mystery of any sort before.)
Marmee and Louisa: The Untold Story of Louisa May Alcott and Her Mother by Eve LaPlante. (I’m a nearly lifelong fan of Louisa, and that was one hell of a family.)
30 Days to Understanding the Bible by Max Anders. (I see this as something of a precursor to one day actually reading through the entire Bible in one year, as I’ve tried and abandoned twice already—and getting more out of that than simply saying I read the entire Bible in one year.)
Discover Your Writing Self by Andi Cumbo-Floyd. (Help me, Andi.)
The Cracked Spine (A Scottish Bookshop Mystery) by Paige Shelton. (I love a good cozy mystery. I love bookshops. And I would love to someday visit Scotland. ‘Nuff said.)
Go Down Together: The True, Untold Story of Bonnie and Clyde by Jeff Guinn. (The definitive work to date on one seriously crazy story. Plus, I’m also planning to resume work on my second poetry collection, Riding With Bonnie and Clyde, and this is a vital resource to that end—along with book #11.)
The Shape of Poetry: A Practical Guide to Writing and Reading Poems by Peter Meinke and Jeanne Clark Meinke. (See above.)
Farming, Friends, and Fried Bologna Sandwiches by Renea Winchester. (Renea, I loved your debut novel, so now it’s time for me to check out your nonfiction. Thanks for the autographs!)

* * * * *

But that’s enough about me. I’ve got READING to do. How about you? Do you have a Big Honking Reading List that will allow you to live pretty much forever? How many titles are on it? How do you prioritize them? (Or do you even bother?) Tell me about it!

*Yes, I know old Ponce wasn’t really searching for a fabled “Fountain of Youth,” but it’s a good story.

June 1, 2019 By Lucie Winborne 1 Comment

30 BOOKS AND 30 THANKS: JANIS OWENS

Six years ago, my good friend Joyce and I had the great pleasure of listening to a talk (and sampling a little Southern cooking) by Janis Owens at the Orange County Regional History Center in Orlando, Florida. Janis was in town to promote her latest book, The Cracker Kitchen, and though I like to eat much more than I like to cook, I knew I’d be going home that day with a copy. After all, as a proud seventh-generation Southerner, how could I resist recipes such as Easter Bunny Cake, Mama’s Cornbread, Wilted Country Salad, and Banana Split Cake, not to mention Roy’s Famous Biscuits? (Yea, Lawd!)

(Forgive me, Janis, but I’m passing on Baked Armadillo, Rattlesnake, Roast Possum and Sweet Potatoes, and Stewed Squirrel. I’m not that Southern. In other words, I’ll be joining you at that local Hardees. Or Chick-fil-A.)

I was as charmed by Janis’s open, down-to-earth manner as her recipes. My friend Joyce even discovered after the talk that they had some common ancestry (well, they say everyone in the South is related somehow). Over the past six years I’ve enjoyed her Facebook posts both amusing and moving, her family photos, stories about her mama (and Big Mama—every Southern family has a Big Mama), almost envied her friendship with the late, great Pat Conroy, and thought more than once: Gee, I wish she lived closer, because I’m pretty sure she’s a kindred spirit.

Here’s part of what I wrote to her this week:

Dear Janis,

Back in 2013 I had the great pleasure of meeting you at the Orange County Regional History Center in Orlando, where you were speaking to promote The Cracker Kitchen. My friend Joyce and I accepted your kind invitation to “Friend” you on Facebook, and ever since we’ve both enjoyed your posts considerably. This year another Facebook friend, author/editor Andi Cumbo-Floyd, took on a project I decided to emulate—30 days of thank yous to 30 authors she admired. So this is my thanks to you—for your humor, your pride in being a Florida Cracker, your stories, your pictures, your memories, your knack with words (“Kingdom of Newberria” immediately springs to mind, but there are so many more), and your commitment to honing your craft and sharing your gift with others. While to date I’ve only delved into The Cracker Kitchen, your novels American Ghost, The Schooling of Claybird Catts, Myra Sims, and My Brother Michael are all on my “To Be Read” list. So thanks again, Janis. The literary world is a better place for having you in it.

Do yourself a favor and check out the gem of a voice that is Janis Owens. You’ll thank me for it.

May 30, 2019 By Lucie Winborne 2 Comments

A FACEBOOK POST INSPIRED ME . . .

Earlier this year, author/editor Andi Cumbo-Floyd embarked on a 30-day project to send letters of thanks to authors whose work she admired and that had particularly touched her. One letter, one author per day.

While I admired the thoughtfulness of the idea, it didn’t make that strong an impression on me at the time. Yet the memory of it popped into my head on several seemingly random occasions, until I knew I wanted to try something similar. As a writer (even a sometime one) myself, I knew about the feelings of isolation and being misunderstood, or worse, unvalued and invisible, that are just as much a part of the profession as the joyful flashes of creation and discovery.

But at first (and I’m embarassed to admit it) I wasn’t sure I could even come up with 30 authors. Living ones, that is. I enjoy and frequently reread the classic authors of yore—Jane Austen, Louisa May Alcott, the Bronte sisters—but how many had I read lately of my own generation, or even century?

My worry turned out to be unnecessary. The names started coming quickly if not all at once. Certified Florida Cracker Janis Owens. Missy Robertson of “Duck Dynasty” fame. Mike Dellosso, who turned a short passage from Revelation into a thriller that had me staying up till nearly 1:00 a.m. on a work night. The list went on.

So I’ll be sending notes to 30 authors. Thanking them for the enjoyment they gave me, for the gift of their unique way with words, for their commitment of time and effort in putting those words to paper for the rest of us to enjoy. I’ll also be posting links to their websites and/or works, so you can check them out as well.

I hope you’ll join me.