Winning the Powerball in Tennessee

By Annette Cole Mastron, Communications Director for Southern Writers Magazine 

"Winner winner...chicken dinner." Yes, that's right, I won in the biggest lottery jackpot ever in the U.S. Powerball. My win was a whopping $8, just enough to buy a chicken dinner from World Famous Gus's Fried Chicken in Memphis, TN.

The Powerball lottery on January 12, 2016 was approximately 1.6 billion dollars. There were three winners of the big jackpot. Lisa and John Robinson were the first winners to publicly announce their win. They live in a town of 6000 folks in Munford, TN just north of Memphis. The Robinsons said they agreed to appear on NBC's Today Show prior to claiming their winnings on advice of their lawyer, Joe Townsend. The day was a whirlwind for the couple. They appeared on The Today Show, flying by charter jet from Memphis to NYC. After the Today Show appearance, they flew from NYC to Nashville to claim their winnings. From Nashville, they flew back to Memphis where a limousine whisk them away. They had a private tour of Elvis's home, Graceland. The Graceland tour was shown on NBC's Today Show on Monday. I'm happy for this couple and wish them well. I hope they are able to retreat back to their former lives and enjoy their winnings. Unfortunately, because of the publicity it seems that may be hard for them to do.

As authors, we work in relative obscurity. Once published, we have to get the word out about our books. It requires authors to become actively public on social media. An author may participate in tv and radio interviews, book signings and maybe even an appearance on NBC's Today Show. So how do you keep your private life private? The trick is being able to retreat from the public eye to resume your life as you write your next book.

The lessons to learn from these TN lottery winners is to be cautious with what you share as an author. The Robinsons had a personal social media presence and it was still viewable when they appeared on The Today Show. They were candid in their interview about were they worked, lived, shopped for groceries and attended church. Their home was seen on local news both tv and in print. It is my hope they now have security in place to help them manage any unwanted contact from the public.

Author J. K. Rowling moved her family to a Scottish estate, Killiechassie midway through the famed Harry Potter seven-book series. She authored four of the Potter books in this home. She has sold that estate and now resides in a 17th century mansion commonly referred to by Edinburgh locals as "the fortress Rowling." 

Rowling seems to have found the balance of protecting her private life and maintaining contact with her fans via her interactive website, Pottermore. Her website is geared to entertain her fans without the need to make her private life public. Something to consider before your book becomes the next big thing. 

What are your thoughts? 

Thinking of Elvis While Writing About The Delta

By Annette Cole Mastron, Communications Director for Southern Writers Magazine

Last week was Elvis celebration week in Memphis. It was a ten day event, attended by generations of Elvis fans from around the world. The last event is a candlelight vigil held at Graceland, Elvis's home. It always reminds me that a man who came from poverty roots in The Delta continues to impact the world 38 years after his death. 

An amazing photographer, Chris Barwick, inspired today's blog post. Thanks, Chris. This picture of an old sharecropper's shack in the middle of the Mississippi Delta, just south of Tunica made me crave the need for a road trip south to soak in some settings for my current work in progress. Elvis was born in Tupelo to sharecropper parents. 

The land of The Delta can be a hard land where blood, sweat and tears of generations, past and present, have been in constant odds with the elements of nature. It's ironic that the very floods from the Mississippi River over this land gives it renewal by leaving behind silt that enriches its soil and its people. 

I hopped in the car and drive south out of Memphis on Highway 61 one hot summer day in August. Blue suede flip flops on my feet and Marc Cohn's song, "Walking in Memphis," playing, set the tone of the trip. Once I hit the TN/MS state line, The Delta begins to emerge an icon for the South, good, bad and ugly. The Delta has produced amazing talent, perhaps from the hardship and rebirth of the land. The Delta Blues are world famous as is Elvis who came to be known as The King of Rock and Roll. 

Of course, since I'm a writer who lives in the South I feel an affinity to those Southern writers' past and present that have written about the region known as The Delta. Their words speak to my soul. Eudora Welty, Willie Morris, William Faulkner and those other Delta writers drive my desire to further capture the struggles of the modern day Delta. 

I continue my drive, soaking in settings to use in my book. When I stop to take in the abandon sharecropper shacks, commercialization of some of the areas down Highway 61, I record what I see with my camera and record my research on my iPhone app. I detour off Highway 61 and turn down a farm road so I can soak in the view of “King Cotton” growing in the field, and as I turn my car around, a farmer in an ancient pickup truck stops to ask if I need help, and we chat about his crop. He is very happy with his crop and says this year he might actually make up for the years before. I shared I was a writer, working on a book and needed to see a cotton field up close and personal. He asked if I wanted to inspect his crop. He showed me the cotton, and we talked about how cotton is graded. He broke off a stalk and ask me if I wanted it. I said I'd love to have it as my talisman. This interchange provided in-depth research for my book and reiterated the Southern hospitality found in The Delta. 

My day spent driving in the Mississippi Delta was invaluable research you can't get from searching on the Internet. Sometimes you just need to put on your blue suede flip flops, head to your "Delta" and soak up the setting of your book. Be sure to bring back a talisman to put by your writing area. 

In the Groove

by Gary Fearon, Creative Director

I guess Sunday was Elvis Presley’s birthday. It would have escaped my awareness were it not for the newscasts mentioning the thousands of fans who continue to make their annual pilgrimage to Graceland. It makes me wonder whether more Elvis devotees flock to Memphis for his birthday or for the anniversary of his death every August. That’d be a good question for George Klein.

As for today, January 10^th, it’s also a day that goes down in music history. For Elvis fans, it was on this day he recorded “Heartbreak Hotel”.  For Beatles buffs like me, this was the day their first album, Introducing the Beatles was released in America. 

But perhaps most importantly of all, today is the anniversary of the 45.

Around since the late 40s (and introduced almost simultaneously with the vinyl LP), this 7-inch wonder was the most popular means for teens to bring their musical idols home with them. Anyone younger than thirty has probably never owned stacks of wax, nor have any idea what the oddly-shaped yellow plastic in the picture was for. This adapter – used for centering 45s on a turntable spindle – was officially called a “spider” (though, wisely, I don’t think they were ever marketed by that name).

Every music store carried 45s during the 50s and 60s, and it was their most popular section. But look how frequently things have changed since then:

By the late 60s 8-track tapes became the top portable music medium. Prone to malfunction, however, they would not survive long.

Next, hoping to save the day, were cassettes.  By the 70s, these little pocket-sized tapes were king. 

Then 1982 brought the CD, and nothing’s been the same since.  It nailed the coffin on all vinyl medium – and eventually tapes – with technology so universally accepted that it begat DVDs.  Now, even the CD and DVD are being threatened with eventual extinction by MP3s and streaming video.

Buyers have always been attracted to the most convenient medium for their entertainment, and in this mobile society we like being able to take it with us. The prevalence of e-books and e-readers speaks to that.

Fortunately for traditional publishers, books have always been and always will be sufficiently portable. The trade-off, perhaps, is that you can store countless books in a single digital reader. But for many who’ve compared the two, e-readers are the microwave version of a restaurant meal. It’s quick and does the trick but once in a while you gotta have the real thing. 

There will be room for both for a very long time, and the publishing world’s acceptance of the two allows them to support each other and play nice together.

So unlike the 45, the 8-track, the cassette, and possibly the CD, the digital age isn’t about to replace the printed page, which has been around since the 1400s, because we just plain love ink on paper. For that, I say to Gutenberg: Thank you, thank you very much.