Today, we’re hosting an eclectic artist and author,
Carol McClain, who is also secretary of the Author’s Guild of Tennessee. She’s a transplant from New York, but more on that later. She has published five books and currently does a little blogging. Welcome Carol McClain and read a little sage wisdom gained from her time in New York and her time in Tennessee.
You’ve seen black and white cookies, those giant confections whose frosting is equally divided between “chocolate” and “vanilla.”
As a child, I loved them. Being female, and a moody one at that, I always claimed the chocolate side when my mother bought them. (We had to share).
As an adult, I one day discovered a display of them. I indulged and bought one.
I nibbled the chocolate side—no need to share as I paid my grown-up money for it. I discerned no chocolate flavor. I chomped into the vanilla side. It tasted like the same—maybe with a slight variation. Both sides of the black and white cookie could’ve been one color.
One day, after several years of debating, my husband and I decided to move from northern New York to the warmer climes of East Tennessee. A writing friend became excited. “Write one of your funny books about the differences between the North and South.”
As I packed for my move, I envisioned the novel. With the animosity between the North and South, with geopolitical and social differences, I’d have an hysterical story.
We moved to Campbell County in the heart of the Cumberland Mountains and discovered, like the black and white cookies, with only slight variations, no differences existed.
There went my book idea.
Still, my friend nagged while I settled in.
Cornbread, a hill dialect, a culture of Christianity as opposed to a culture of agnosticism were about the only variations I found. It confirmed something I believed.
Liberalism mimics conservativism. It, too, excludes things it doesn’t believe in. Blacks/whites, Russians (my heritage)/Anglo Saxons, Baptists/Evangelicals, gay/straight, we all vary outwardly like the icing on the pastry, but as Mandissa sings, “We all bleed the same.”
In the end, I found my book. A New York Yankee on Stinking Creek explores the difference between the North and the South. And nothing’s as it appears, and the extremes of anything err.
We are human. We are sinners. We need redemption. We’re two halves of a black and white cookie.
Carol enjoys running, jazz, stained glass and, of course, writing. She is the President of ACFW Knoxville. The world in East Tennessee intrigues her from the friendly neighbors to the beautiful hiking trails and the myriad wildlife.
NOTHING GOOD COMES FROM STINKING CREEK
Alone, again, after the death of her fiancé, abstract artist Kiara Rafferty finds herself on Stinking Creek, Tennessee. She wants out of this hillbilly backwater, where hicks speak an unknown language masquerading as English. Isolated, if she doesn’t count the snakes and termites infesting her cabin, only a one-way ticket home to Manhattan would solve her problems.
Alone in a demanding crowd, Delia Mae McGuffrey lives for God, her husband, her family, and the congregation of her husband’s church. Stifled by rules, this pastor’s wife walks a fine line of perfection, trying to please them all. Now an atheist Yankee, who moved in across the road, needs her, too.
Two women.Two problems. Each holds the key to the other’s freedom.
A New York Yankee on Stinking Creek, on Amazon in print and digital at https://tinyurl.com/y2pxjt4a