I recently went on a date with a woman who has a Ph. D. Still, I did not feel like quite the slacker then as I did when I checked in on the recent book-launch party for longtime friend and novelist Mary Kay Andrews in Atlanta.
It was more like a product rollout, with themed T-shirts, raffles for a cake and martinis under a tent for the newest novel, “The Fixer Upper.” These are the trappings that come with celebrity status. She qualifies, even if you don’t see her on morning network TV shows. At least she does in Atlanta and the Southeast, where she’s been writing novels (under two names now) since the early ’90s. (However, the author DOES get plenty of media attention. Here’s a recent video from CNN.com.)
She and I were colleagues on the student newspaper at the University of Georgia, back before Herschel Walker had a driver’s license and when typewriters still mattered. So I could not miss out on the special feeling that comes with enjoying the success of someone who I once went to war with, so to speak. And one who has even managed to shift gears a bit in doing so.
Her literary success also includes several novels under her real name, Kathy Hogan Trocheck, but she’s really blossomed since her publisher prevailed on her to take a new tack under a different name. Not unprecedented. Famous novelist Stephen King is another who was so successful and prolific that he wrote under a nom de plume, so as not to confuse his fans.
I remember how excited I was when I first read in the book section of the California-based Orange County Register a review of her first novel. The review was not kind, and she gave me a good natured smacking when I mailed it to her. Still, she took the time to catch me up on her motivation.
Seems she was growing disenchanted with the news biz, for reasons that have it on life support now. Demands at the Atlanta paper, where she was a reporter, for shorter stories were frustrating her. So her therapy was to start writing for hard covers. She kept her day job (and support from her husband, involved in commercial real estate, had to help). She plugged away on a series of whodunits involving protagonist Callahan Garrity, and some involving Florida retiree Truman Kicklighter. (The author is a Florida native.)
But the distinct flavor then, as now, was a gaggle of Southern stereotyped characters and zany plot lines (dead bodies in a department store fur vault, for example) that I’ve never quite seen a parallel to. “She has bunnies running around in her head,” her husband, Tom Trocheck, told me at the launch party.
It showed back in the day. A student newspaper tradition then was to empty out all the typewritten copy at the end of the school year. “You’re throwing away all my words,” she joked.
All this, of course, makes me wanna brag a bit on the old newspaper crowd. Many have done well. One has a Ph. D. (no, not the one I dated) and teaches in Iowa; another is perhaps the nation’s best known college football writer (Tony Barnhart), author of several books himself and now in the College Football Hall of Fame. One covers New York-area sports for a national magazine.
Me? My career has been OK, but mostly behind the scenes. I did review one of the Callahan novels for the Register a few years ago. My, those California readers never saw the likes of such characters as Baby and Sister Easterbrooks and their “sleuthin’ “.
So now there’s fresh inspiration to finish the book that I’ve started and which now rests on my hard drive. I’ll never catch up, of course, and probably will never make it to a best-seller list. But it sure is fun being around those who do.
