Greenwood, MS

I'm in Greenwood, MS.  I had a reading at TurnRow Book Co.  It's a cool, two-level bookstore in a great space.  There was a nice little crowd and I read and talked and sold some books, which was a good feeling.  Thanks to Jamie, Ben, Becky, and Tad, who were gracious hosts.  Jamie and I talked about Charles Portis and why Masters of Atlantis might be the best of his books, which made me like Jamie a lot.  I also bought The Manual of Detection by Jedediah Berry, which several people have told me to read.  I read a few pages in the store and, man, it looks good, a surreal, weird detective story.

I learned something about book tours, which is that there are times when you are not at the bookstore and you are not yet in your hotel room and you are not driving.  This is not time that I like.  We were out of our hotel in Jackson at 10 am and then realized that it was only an hour and a half to Greenwood and what the hell were we going to do until we could get into our hotel room?  We went to a TJ Maxx and we almost bought a 24 board game that came with a paper cutout of Jack Bauer.  We looked for movies but there was nothing playing at the times we had open.  My dad and I had run out of things to talk about fifteen minutes into the drive the day before.  We slept in the car for a little while and then drove to Greenwood.

I brought along a trade paperback of Jack Kirby's Mister Miracle.  If you want to see someone punching the shit out of a bunch of bad guys, Jack Kirby is the man to draw it.  Scott Free, who is the second Mister Miracle, was raised by Granny Goodness in one of her Terror Orphanages.  If someone wants to write a story about terror orphanages, they need to get cracking because I'm already on it.

We ate at Spooney's.  It is the size of a closet.  And I have eaten at hamburger and barbecue places that are the size of closets but usually they don't offer seating.  Spooney's has two tables and only three chairs.  When we walked inside, a man informed us that Spooney was at the store and would be back in a little while.  So we waited for ten minutes and Spooney showed up and seemed surprised as hell to see us.  We ordered rib tips and a rack of ribs and this is where things got a little weird.  We saw him remove some ribs from the fridge, then we heard him cutting the meat, and then we saw him put the ribs in the microwave.  This was weird.  He asked what we wanted to drink and then, immediately, opened the fridge to reveal that there were only two drinks available: a can of tea and a bottle of orange-flavored water.  We took them.  The ribs were pretty good but the sauce was incredible.  I wanted to eat a sandwich made of bread and this barbecue sauce.

I'm off to Memphis tomorrow.  I do a radio interview and then read at Davis-Kidd.  If you live in Memphis, please come.