October was a busy travel month. I spoke at a session of the Red Hat Convention in Savannah, Georgia, and then fellow author and friend, Celia Miles, and I drove to the Book Festival in Charleston, WV, where I spoke to a full house about becoming an author and the trials and tribulations of getting published. We stayed at a beautiful Marriott hotel in downtown Charleston. This trip was quickly followed by one to Charlotte, NC to talk at a Red Hat luncheon.

Ed and Mary Jane Bayer with Joan in West Virginia

November’s newsletter is a bit late, because Celia and I spent two days in the Salem, SC area. On November 4th, I gave a talk about my books to one- hundred-and- fourteen vibrant Red Hat ladies at a luncheon at Keowee Key Country Club in Salem. Thank you ladies for a delicious luncheon, which started with dessert, and for buying so many of my books.

We stayed in Clemson on Friday night, and did a book signing at the Booksmith Bookstore in Seneca on Saturday. It was homecoming weekend at Clemson University. At Breakfast on Saturday morning, Celia and I we were the only people in that motel not wearing orange, which is Clemson’s football color. Even small children in strollers wore orange.

On Saturday, we had lunch at The Steak House in Walhalla, and I was able to say hello to my friends there. The book signing went very well, and the drive home was a great treat as the leaves in SC were at peak color.

Audio books make the miles fly. We’ve been listening to The Full Cupboard of Life, a novel by Alexander McCall Smith, set, as you may know, in Botswana, South Africa. I especially like it that the author describes a full-figured woman as having a ‘Splendid Traditional build.’ The main character’s fiancée is a mechanic, who installs an extra large seat belt in her "tiny white van," so that she can be comfortable when she drives.

Which reminds me, a policeman once stopped Grace for driving without her seat belt. When she explained that it hurt her chest to wear the belt, he suggested that she go to an auto supply shop and buy a clip that goes on the belt and makes it possible to adjust the tension. Grace did that and bought a clip for Hannah and Amelia too. It’s so much more comfortable driving, that Grace plans to buy clips for Brenda, Laura, and Molly for Christmas.

Have you noticed that department stores are decorated for Christmas before Halloween? There are long lines of traffic entering the malls. The other day, I stopped for lunch at a local cafeteria. A line of ladies waiting to get to the food counter extended out of the door. Buses from South Carolina and Georgia filled the parking lot. These women came to Asheville to shop for Christmas. It’s fun and exciting to step into a store festively decorated with trees, Santas, large, faux, gift-wrapped boxes, and of course Christmas lights, but I think that I will develop Christmas fatigue way before Christmas arrives.

Television reports that sales are up and that the economy is booming. In this area, plants and factories keep closing and people are thrown out of work. What puzzles me is that with so many people losing their jobs and having to take whatever available lower paying jobs there might be, often without benefits, where is the money coming from to keep these sales figures high? Are we living totally on credit, or are people depleting their savings? And if so, then what? What happens when the piggy bank, so to speak, runs dry? I find my own expenses rising. Property taxes and insurance, for instance, and the price to have garbage toted away is higher, and food is higher, as is gas for the car and gas or oil for heating. My beauty parlor has raised it’s prices by $4.00 for a shampoo and blow dry, and it goes on and on.

Lucy Medina and her husband retired to The Villages in Central Florida, where she has organized a Ladies of Covington Book Club. This club will meet for the first time in November. On October 14th, Meghan Burke, writer for The Villages Daily Sun newspaper, wrote a wonderful article about my novels and the newly formed book club in the lifestyle section of the paper. Along with the article was a lovely picture of Lucy, her friend, Bobbie Richter, and front facing copies of the five published ladies novels. Thank you Meghan. Welcome Lucy, Bonnie and all the ladies of this fan/book club to the circle of friendship forged by readers of The Ladies of Covington novels. Lucy will be sending photos, which I will include in the December newsletter.

This summer, Hannah painted her bedroom a light shade of green. She agonized over the color, buying a dozen different pints in various shades before selecting one. Did she want a blue green or a yellow green? Blue-green won. At first, she loved the new color and invited everyone in to see it. But on the first cold night, Hannah knew she had made a mistake. Green was lovely for summer, but suddenly she craved red or pink or orange. She bought a new bedspread, a quilt with a five-pointed star in the center, whose principle color was a reddish/maroon. She changed the drapes, alternating soft sheers in off white and maroon. Still something was missing.

On Hannah’s wall hung a favorite painting of summer trees. Hannah removed it. At a frame shop, she selected a print by painter, Jack Vettriano, of a man and a woman dancing barefoot on a beach. The woman wears a long, sleek, brilliant, red gown and the man a black tuxedo. Beside him stands a tall man, a butler perhaps, in a dark suit and hat, holding an umbrella high above the dancing couple, and to the woman’s left, a maid in black with a white apron, attempts to hold an umbrella above the dancers. There is the suggestion of a high wind in the white caps beyond the beach, the maid’s upturned apron, and the manner in which the two attendants struggle to hold their umbrellas. Dark clouds hang on the horizon and the sand appears wet.

Unperturbed, the man and woman dance on. It is a striking print, Grace and Amelia agree, but odd for Hannah. Yet, it did the trick. The brilliant touch of red changed the look of the room and warmed it. And why not do something different for a change? If you saw it, I think you would agree.

I wish you all the happiest of Thanksgiving holidays.

Don't forget, a very special Christmas gift: A COVINGTON CHRISTMAS in stores NOW.

email: jmedlicott@mindspring.com

web: http://www.joanmedlicott.com