One of the greatest beauties of a book, in my opinion, is there's no passport needed to take you places you want to go or never even knew existed.

Hi, I'm Holly Jackson, the host of Books by the River, and I'm here to navigate the conversation of those who draw the maps for some of the most interesting journeys that are bound in a book.

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ Major funding for Books by the River is brought to you by the ETV Endowment of South Carolina.

For more than 40 years, the ETV Endowment of South Carolina has been a partner of South Carolina ETV and South Carolina Public Radio.

This program is supported by South Carolina Humanities, a not for profit organization inspiring, engaging, and enriching South Carolinians with programs on literature, history, culture, and heritage.

SC Humanities receives funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Democracy demands wisdom.

Additional funding for Books by the River is provided by Visit Beaufort, Port Royal and Sea Islands and Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at USC Beaufort.

Holly-- Hi.

Thanks for joining us.

I am here today with Mary Kay Andrews.

So happy to have you here on Books by the River.

Thanks for coming over.

Mary Kay-- Thanks for having me.

Alright, we are here to talk first about Summers At The Saint the latest book.

Beautiful cover.

And you just coordinated so nicely with the staff.

So we really appreciate you choosing these colors.

Tell us a little bit about what this book is about.

Mary Kay-- This book is about, Tracy Eddings, and she is, a “townie” in a place, a fictional place, across the river from the Saint Cecelia, which is an iconic southern beach resort.

And it bears a slight resemblance to the cloister in Sea Island, but it's not.

This book is fiction.

Tracy has married into a very wealthy family that have run this, resort for generations, and they have let her know for a long time that she's an outsider.

And so the book starts with her facing the challenge of how to staff up the resort, The Saint, the Saint Cecilia for the summer.

She can't hire enough help.

Her most recent, front desk manager and chef have left, and she's short of help, and she doesn't know if she'll be able to open for the upcoming summer season.

So that sort of the beginning plot of the book.

The book is really about, I think, all of us have a longing to belong.

We all want to find our community.

our tribe, and Tracy's, family that she's married into have let her know that she ain't one of them.

And in this place where she grew up, she grew up in a working class family in in a town across the river from the Saint Cecilia.

And in that community, there are the haves and the have nots, or as they call them, there, “You're either a saint,” meaning you belong to Saint Cecilia, or , “You're an ain't,” and you ain't belonging.

Holly-- Right.

Okay.

Tell me how you land on these storylines, and does it come with the just kind of watching the comings and goings of a hotel lobby or where does this all come about?

Mary Kay-- Well, you know, we have a beach home on Tybee Island outside of Savannah.

And every year, and in the past few post-pandemic years, I know, and when I'm on book tour, I go to a lot of southern towns, coastal towns, every place I've gone for the past 2 or 3 years, you see “help wanted” signs.

And the problem is, in these beautiful places, these resorts, much like, I'm sure, Beaufort, the people that you need to run, to work in your businesses can't afford to live there.

Holly-- Right.

Mary Kay-- And so that's the big challenge that Tracy is facing this year in particular.

And so her solution to that is to build a staff dorm out of an old golf cart barn.

And so she staffs up and all of a sudden you've got this dynamic from all these folks.

I think there's 5 or 6 new employees that move into this staff dorm.

And so there's some conflict and of course, you know, my books always have they always have some romance, but they also have some murdery stuff so there's all that.

Holly-- And usually I think I heard you say something about you always want to land on a happy note somehow?

Hopeful and happy?

Mary Kay-- Yes.

Holly-- so, Mary Kay-- Yeah, I write towards I write dark stuff.

There's dark stuff in this book.

I mean, there's rape, there's incest, there's fraud and theft.

And as dark as that sounds, I'm writing towards the light.

And so I am looking to find a way to give Tracy, who I've fallen in love with, she has this long estranged best friend from her childhood, Shannon, who still lives in the same community.

They've been estranged for many years.

I'm writing to find a way forward for them.

Holly-- All right.

This makes number 31?

Mary Kay-- 32, yeah.

Holly-- 32!

How do you keep up with them all?

Mary Kay-- I don't!

<laughs> Holly-- Have you been busted like a good bit?

Mary Kay-- Oh my gosh, yeah!

People will... Holly-- Do the readers ever call you out?

Mary Kay-- All the time.

They'll say, you said this and this, but that's not right.

And I'm like, you're right.

I haven't read that book because I'm always a couple years ahead.

This book, Summers at the Saint, I finished a year and a half ago.

And so - and I'm, I'm in the middle of my next, my 33rd book.

Holly-- So what's new to us is old to you.

That's got to be hard.

Mary Kay-- Yeah.

And I always I tell my writer friends, I'm part of this group called Friends in Fiction, and we're four New York Times bestselling authors, and we have a weekly podcast called Friends in Fiction and a Facebook group.

And I tell them, I just have so much bandwidth.

And so I have to sort of put this book aside.

And driving over here today, I'm thinking about my characters, I'm thinking about their backstory.

I'm thinking about how I'm going to get them to the place I want to get them to.

Holly-- There's no doubt when you're writing these books, you become friends and fans of these people, Mary Kay-- Oh yeah!

Holly-- ...but then because new people come along, they kind of you kind of have to let go in some way.

Mary Kay-- Yeah, Holly-- But, are there some that are maybe from books one, two, three, four that you just you'll never they hold a special place?

Mary Kay-- Well, you know, I started my career writing mystery under my real name which is Kathy Hogan Trocheck and those books have been, rereleased as Mary Kay Andrews.

And so the Callahan Garrity mystery series, which is set in and around Atlanta, that was my passport into writing fiction.

I was a newspaper reporter for years before that.

And then, I sort of broke out of the mystery mold unexpectedly, with a book called Savannah Blues.

In that book, the character “Weezie” Foley is an antique picker turned dealer, and I thought that was going to be a one off book.

But then I wrote, four books in that Savannah series.

So Savannah Blues, Savannah Breeze, Blue Christmas, and Christmas Bliss.

So Weezy and her best friend Bebe are kind of near and dear to me.

And those are the books people always say, are you going to bring Weezy back?

Are you going to bring Callahan back?

Holly-- Readers connect with Weezy as well?

Mary Kay-- Yeah they do, especially when I do library events.

Holly-- Since you went there, let's talk about this name change and why you decided to do that.

Mary Kay-- You know, mystery readers I discovered are very brand conscious, and they only want you to write what they want you to write.

So I wrote two books that were not - they were mysteries, they were not Callahans - and they flopped.

Because my readers said we don't want that.

And so I had an idea for the Savannah Blues that was a different book.

It wasn't set in Atlanta.

It was obviously set in Savannah.

It was a different protagonist.

And by that, by the time I'd written ten mysteries under my real name, what I discovered was there are people who think they don't like mysteries.

They won't buy a mystery.

And so I started out writing this Savannah Blues as a mystery, but there was more of a romance to it.

It was more women's fiction.

I didn't even know what women's fiction was.

And so, when I got done, you know, I started thinking, you know what?

I'm going to I'm going to do this under a pseudonym because I don't want people saying, “Oh, mystery don't like it.” And my, my editor said, we're not going to sell it as a mystery.

We're going to sell it as women's fiction.

And so that's when I decided I'm going to roll the dice.

And in my long career, I have learned that if I'm going to gamble, I'm always going to gamble on myself.

And I thought, let's give it a shot.

So the name is a combination of my kids names.

My daughter, it was Mary Kathleen or Mary Kay.

We called her Katie.

And my and Andrew.

My son's name is Andrew, so Mary Kay Andrews.

Holly-- And it works!

Mary Kay-- Also, fiction is shelved alphabetically, so of course I had an ulterior motive.

<laughs> Holly-- That was real good.

All right.

Have you found that some of those loyal mystery readers did did come over to your side with Mary Kay Andrews?

Mary Kay-- Yeah.

Yeah, they you know what?

As soon as Savannah Blues came out, as far as my readers knew, it was a debut novel, but that book outsold all of my previous mysteries combined.

Holly-- Oh my gosh.

Mary Kay-- And so when people say, “Are you going to go back to writing as Kathy?” I always say, “No, no!” <laughs> she didn't do as well as Mary Kay.

Holly-- No, she didn't do as well as Mary Kay, so - Mary Kay-- No, she's she's having a nice long nap.

Holly-- Yeah, I like that.

All right, let's back way up.

Like, even before newspaper.

So tell me how writing even began for you.

Mary Kay-- You know, I come from a family of readers.

My mother always had an open book and a lit cigarette and a glass of Nestea instant ice tea.

Holly-- Okay.

Mary Kay-- I was reading before first grade.

I was always a big reader.

We were storytellers in my family, my sisters and I. Holly-- Was it really pushed at home?

Mary Kay-- Not pushed at all.

It didn't have to be.

I was the middle of three sisters, and we would act out Nancy Drew.

It was funny.

My mother never had to push my sisters and I to read - my brothers, maybe.

And so I think as soon as I was reading, I thought, I want to write stories.

I want to make up my own stories.

And I majored in journalism at the University of Georgia and went on to have a mediocre career as a reporter.

Holly-- This is daily news you're writing?

Mary Kay-- Yeah, mostly I work for some weekly papers.

But I ended up I started actually my professional career at the Savannah Paper.

Holly-- Oh, okay!

Mary Kay-- Yeah, and that's how I became, you know, fell in love with Savannah in the low country.

And then I eventually moved to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution and I spent my last ten years as a reporter there.

Holly-- What made you make the switch?

Was it something that always burning inside of you to write a book, or did something push you?

How did that all begin?

Mary Kay-- You know, newspapers had changed by the late 80s.

Newspapers had changed and they didn't consult me.

Holly-- Right.

Mary Kay-- And so, you know, the big thing was being a reporter for a daily paper is a grind.

And I really wanted - my mother always worked outside the home.

I really wanted to be home with my kids when they got home from school.

I wanted, for the first time in of my life, to to drive carpool.

I wanted to drive field trips and be the cupcake mom, and I couldn't do that as a reporter.

So I started tunneling out.

I started writing in secret a couple years before I actually left the paper.

I would write, nights after I put my kids to bed and I would write weekends.

All of this in secret.

It was like a huge, huge secret.

And, and I just started plotting my escape.

Holly-- Now, when you say secret do you mean even from your family?

They didn't know you were doing this?

Mary Kay-- No, my family knew.

My husband knew and my kids knew.

Don't bother mom.

Holly-- Right.

Mary Kay-- But I didn't tell a whole lot of - I didn't tell a whole lot of other people because it was embarrassing.

Like, “You have the audacity to think you can write a book”" Holly-- <laughs> Okay.

So I'm very familiar with the grind of daily news, because I live that life as well prior to this.

So I know how stressful that is, those deadlines and everything.

Do you still keep with that when it comes to writing, or have you been able to let that go?

Mary Kay-- No, when I'm on deadline - and I'm always on deadline.

Because up to now I've done a book a year and some, some years, two books.

I know, I know, when things are bad, I have anxiety dreams.

and I'm back at the paper and my editor is standing right over my shoulder ripping copy paper out of my IBM electric typewriter.

Now, that's how far back that anxiety dream goes.

And so when I have that dream, I'm like, okay, things are really getting a little tense here.

Holly-- Okay.

So how do you treat your writing process?

Mary Kay-- I treat it like a job.

I treat it like a job.

On good days, I put my laptop beside mine on my nightstand.

I start out drafting in a black and white composition book, old school composition book, and I'll start out drafting longhand.

And when I get some momentum going, I'll jump onto my laptop and start and start writing, typing the switches.

Holly-- So then it switches - It's whenever you have that real thought process - Mary Kay-- Yes, when the switch is flipped, or I've gotten to a point and I have I have these strange little stupid rituals like I have to write 500 words minimum.

Holly-- I love hearing these ritiuals, this is cool.

All right, so 500 minimum a day?

Mary Kay-- No, 500 at a sitting.

No, a good day for me is like 2000 words.

Yeah.

Or a chapter.

So I can get a piece of the plot on paper..

So, yeah, that's one of my stupid rituals.

Holly-- All right, well, let's talk about your online life, because that's really, blown up.

I mean, tell me how that this was kind of a Covid thing, right?

Mary Kay-- Yeah.

Yeah.

You know, I'm a visual person, so I'd always done, as soon as I figured out how to do Instagram and Facebook, I was on there posting silly pictures of my dogs or my family or whatever.

I'm a junker, an “antiquer,” and so I had built up a nice Facebook following at the beginning of the pandemic.

My friends and I, there were five of us originally, Patti Callahan Henry, who I know has been on this show Kristy Woodson Harvey, Kristin Harmel, and originally Mary Alice Monroe.

Mary Alice stepped away a couple years ago.

We all, that early spring of 2020, we all had books coming out and the world was on lockdown.

Our book tours had been canceled.

We didn't know how we were going to promote our books.

We were worried about indie bookstores.

How were they going to survive?

They'd closed their doors.

Libraries were locked down.

And so we had a text chain going and I said, well, let's get on a 5:00 happy hour, Rosé happy hour, and let's talk about what we could do.

And we came up with an idea to do a, a Facebook Live show.

And because I have a a serious problem with alliteration, I said, well, let's call it Friends & Fiction.

Yeah.

And so we we did it.

We did not know what we were doing.

We went live in April of 2020.

And I was so sure no one would be watching I did it in my pajamas.

Holly-- <laughs> Mary Kay-- And, it just kind of took off from there.

And now we have on our Friends & Fiction Facebook group, we have over 250,000 members of that Facebook group.

Holly-- When I saw that number, I was blown away.

Mary Kay-- We were too!

We were too.

Yeah.

Holly-- So something's working.

Okay, so this has gone from a Facebook Live in your pajamas.

Now you've got the podcast.

How often are you meeting with them, and do you believe it's grown into a lot more readers for you?

Mary Kay-- Oh, yeah, I think so.

Definitely.

I think all of us have increased, you know, everybody has made the New York Times bestseller list.

I'd made it many times before, but everybody else, everyone, the other ladies were just on the brink.

And I think not just Friends & Fiction, but their own work had matured enough and they grown enough in popularity.

But yeah, I think people were looking for a sense of community.

There was no place to go, nothing to do.

And people keep telling us during the pandemic that we saved them.

Because Wednesday night, 7:00, they knew they could sit down and listen to a program about books.

And we weren't bickering, we weren't fighting.

And we still on our Facebook group, we tell ourselves we call ourselves the friendliest corner of the internet because we don't allow political posts, we don't allow rants, we don't allow personal attacks against authors.

You can certainly, and people are always posting, “I read this book” or “It didn't do that,” you know, “It didn't click for me,” and that's fine.

But we really try to discourage personal attacks on authors.

This book, this group, is about a community of people who love stories and love books and love to have a place to come to discuss what they what they like.

And it's it's been a treasure for all of us, too.

We've met so many great writers and so many fans.

We do live events when each of us have a book launch and we've got a couple coming up.

Well, actually, we have several coming up, and it's great because we can connect to our followers in person.

Holly-- Do you feel that it's taking away some of your writing time?

Is it is it hard?

Mary Kay-- <laughs> Ask my editor that question!

Holly-- Is it hard to manage that time?

Mary Kay-- It is hard.

It is hard to balance it.

And when I go when I go back here from here today to Tybee, I've got a book I've got to finish before I interview the author on Monday.

And then right after that, somebody else.

Holly-- Right.

Mary Kay-- Yeah.

Well, but it's, you know, it's part of being a good literary citizen.

And I'm privileged to get to do that.

Holly-- I like that, “literary citizen.” That's great All right, can we go ahead and talk a little bit about what's next, or I guess, what you're working on now?

Mary Kay-- Yeah, what I'm working on now is a book that's scares the hell out of me Holly-- Oh, gosh.

Mary Kay-- It's multi-generational.

It's dual timeline.

It's multi POV point of view.

It starts in Savannah with a pair of estranged sisters.

Their mom has recently died, and they - There is a family portrait that their mother has always insisted is of their ancestor, who was a member of the aristocracy in Ireland.

So she's gone now, and one of the sisters sees an article in the New York Times about the same painting being auctioned off for $1.2 million.

So now they're going to figure out the truth about who they are and what that portrait means.

And I just came back from a trip to Ireland to research it.

Holly-- Oh, that's why you went?

Mary Kay-- Yeah.

Holly-- To research it?

Mary Kay-- Yeah.

And I'm, I'm Irish on my father's side.

My maiden name is Hogan.

So yeah, I did a little family ancestry stuff over there.

Holly-- Yeah.

Tell me about some of your research process.

Where has it taken you?

Mary Kay-- Oh, gosh.

Where hasn't it taken me?

Holly-- You know, the the good and bad part is that you can do so much on the internet now, and so you don't have to take these trips.

But- Mary Kay-- No, but, you know, there's nothing to replace first person research, you know, from your journalism background.

You can call someone up or you can do an online interview, but it's not the same as sitting across from them as we are right now and asking and asking nosy questions.

And because there's murdery stuff in all my books, I've done ride alongs with drug squad cops in Atlanta.

I've interviewed a coroner to talk about autopsies.

And even though I was invited to view an autopsy, I declined.

Holly-- Okay.

Mary Kay-- I've climbed under the trunk of a Cadillac to figure out whether or not I could hear what the people in the front seat were saying.

Holly-- Oh, wow.

Mary Kay-- I've gone to, I've gone to murder scenes.

Not, you know, right afterwards, but following up.

When I was researching a book and I went to a what was then called a “hobo camp,” a homeless encampment in Atlanta, and I, I have a friend, a former Atlanta police detective, who insisted on accompanying me for research to this homeless camp.

And we got there, and he was in plainclothes.

But immediately these guys recognized him, and we walked up to, they had an old car motor running with wires coming out of it, connected to a barrel, and he froze and he said, “Oh my God, I think they're I think they're making moonshine.

And if they are, we're in serious trouble.

So just start backing up.” Well, it turns out they were heating water to take baths.

Holly-- Oh, wow.

Mary Kay-- Yeah.

Holly-- All right, so when you approach whoever it is about, may I please follow along the drug squad?

because I'm researching for a book, are they like, all right, let's do it?

Or are they... <laughs> Mary Kay-- Well, you have to establish you have to establish some kind of a relationship with them.

There's a, you know, there's an issue of trust with anybody.

But I have found over the years, people love to talk about their work.

Mostly they're proud of what they do and they, they want to talk about it and they want to tell you about their work.

For this book I interviewed arson investigators and firemen to talk about, oh, how do you set a fire and can you cause an explosion?

Can you trigger a fire if you put accelerants in a clothes dryer?

Now, you're going to have to read the book to find out if you can, but.

Holly-- Well, I love that you've maintained that news background and you're still conducting those news interviews.

Mary Kay-- Yeah.

Holly-- In order to do this.

Mary Kay-- Yeah.

Being a journalist gave me so many skills.

You know, it it made me.

I won't say it made me fearless, but it made me comfortable approaching people and asking outrageous questions.

It gave me, the belief that I could and then sometimes have to write on deadline.

I can't wait for the muse to strike me.

I got to go grab the muse and drag it back to me.

And it gave me a sense of pacing, I think, with plotting and with story.

And I think one of the - people tell me I'm not a good judge, that they like my dialog, and I think I write good dialog because as a journalist, I had to listen really carefully when I was quoting people.

You know?

it wasn't just a matter of writing down what they said.

You have to watch them.

You have to watch the expression on their face to tell if they're lying to you.

<laughs> Holly-- Right?

Sure.

Okay.

Last question is, I want to know, at the end of the day, no matter what the story is, what do you hope that the reader takes away from your writing?

Mary Kay-- I hope they turn the last page of my book and they sigh and they immediately have a book hangover.

I hope they call their best friend and say, “Oh my God, you've got to read this book.” I want to leave my readers with the sense that they've just eaten a juicy, delicious peach, and the juice is dripping down their arm and they have a smile on their face.

That is what I'm.

That's what I want to do.

Holly-- Beautifully said.

Thanks so much for joining us.

I loved having you here.

It was a great conversation.

And thank you all for sticking around here with Books by the River with Mary Kay Andrews.

We hope to see you next time right here.

Mary Kay-- The first time, Tracy Eddings saw the Saint, she was 6 or 7.

It was an early summer morning and she was with her grandfather in his 12ft aluminum fishing boat, drifting along in the river, when she glimpsed the improbable pink turrets and crenelated towers rising up from the fog shrouded marsh like something out of one of her storybooks.

“Pops.

Look!” She pointed at the apparition.

“It's a fairy castle.” Her grandfather would only have been in his early 50s back then, but he already seemed ancient, bent, and beat down from all those years working at the loading dock at the paper bag plant over in Bonaventure.

He'd been studying the red and white bobber he'd cast out a few minutes earlier, letting it float along the river's placid, gray-green surface.

Pops looked up now and flicked half an inch of ash from his ever present Marlboro into the water.

“Why, honey, that's just The Saint.

No fairies, just a whole lot of rich people.” “I want to go there,” Tracy wailed, knowing that this was surely a place of enchantment.

“Please, Pops, can we?” His weathered face softened, but only for an instant.

“Afraid not.

People like us don't belong over there.” He quickly changed the subject, pointing at the ripples surrounding the bobber.

“Look there, Doodlebug!” he whispered.

“You got a fish on the line!” He handed her the slender rod with a Zebco spinning reel.

“Now you wait till he takes that bobber down a little bit more.

Then you pull back and reel that bad boy on in here.

Can you do that?” But her eyes were still fixed on the pink wedding cake looking building, and by the time she turned attention back to the bobber, the line had gone slack and pops was shaking his head in disappointment.

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ Major funding for Books by the River is brought to you by the ETV Endowment of South Carolina.

For more than 40 years, the ETV Endowment of South Carolina has been a partner of South Carolina ETV and South Carolina Public Radio.

This program is supported by South Carolina Humanities, a not for profit organization.

Inspiring, engaging, and enriching South Carolinians with programs on literature, history, culture, and heritage.

SC Humanities receives funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Democracy demands wisdom.

Additional funding for Books by the River is provided by Visit Beaufort, Port Royal and Sea Islands.

And Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at USC Beaufort.

♪