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Made in the Shade
Many fine Southern authors thrive in the shadow of Grisham and Conroy
By Christopher Scanlan
Page 3 of 4
Kay says his editor, Lee Walburn, went crazy. "You idiot! That's the story." But it took Kay several more years to produce a short essay, "The Strange Dance of White Dog," and a letter from a reader -- "Very touching story but you have made a mistake. It's not a magazine piece. It's a novel" -- for him to finally see the light. "Writers can sometimes be the dumbest people on earth," he says, "and the most blind."
Still working for the power company, Kay often tried to get in some writing before heading home, a ritual he began by shedding his shoes and necktie, "Superman changing out of Clark Kent," he says. He wrote what became the opening of his fourth novel.
"He understood what they were thinking and saying: Old man that he is, what's to become of him?"
Kay was 50 years old and hadn't published a book in six years, but he and his wife, Tommie, figured they had enough savings to make it for three years without a paycheck. In 1989, Kay resigned as Oglethorpe's senior vice president of corporate affairs. "The other world was not challenging. I didn't know what I could do in this one. The question was simple: Do you want to hit the age of 75 and look back and say you didn't try?"
Published in 1990, To Dance with the White Dog changed Terry Kay's life. While it never was a best seller in this country, it did achieve that status in Japan where "we sold 2 million in a year," Kay says.
More importantly, the book, coupled with its Emmy-wining success as a 1993 Hallmark Hall of Fame movie, increased his marketability -- the advance for his next two books was $1.2 million, and Hollywood came running with lucrative deals -- putting him in the rare position of a midlister who supports himself solely with fiction. Since he left Oglethorpe 15 years ago, he's published six novels, a children's book, a collection of his nonfiction prose, and an Emmy-winning teleplay.
Today, he and Tommie divide their time between an Atlanta condo and an airy retreat on six wooded acres in Athens where he writes in an office overlooking the lake that inspired the pivotal setting of The Valley of Light. The day after the Clayton book signing, Kay stands at the kitchen stove, deftly turning out a mean breakfast of eggs, biscuits and gravy, and grits. "There's no question about it. This is the house that White Dog built." In a field where the average writer is lucky to pull in $5,000 a year, To Dance with the White Dog was the literary equivalent of winning Powerball.
Most midlist writers can't survive without a day job. Many teach or read for their supper on the college and conference circuit. "I've been on tour since March 2001," says Silas House, a young Kentuckian who's recently begun the journey that Terry Kay has been on for more than 20 years. A literary road warrior's life is no picnic, House concedes. But it is a lot easier than mining coal, the job that cost his grandfather a leg, breathing fiberglass in a factory as his father did for 30 years, or steering a mail truck up and down treacherous Appalachian mountainsides, the job House worked for six years while writing his first novel. Clay's Quilt is the story of a twentysomething Appalachian haunted by his mother's murder, a legacy that keeps him wavering between partying and his Pentecostal faith. House expected to write another Appalachian Gen-X story. Instead, he found himself inspired by his own great-grandmother's life in the early 1900s. The result: A Parchment of Leaves, a lyrical and award-winning tale about a mesmerizing Cherokee beauty whose marriage to a local boy leads to violence. His third novel, The Coal Tattoo, which features characters from the first two, comes out this fall. Even so, House still needs a job to supplement book royalties; this fall, he joins the faculty at his alma mater, Eastern Kentucky University, where he will teach Appalachian literature and creative writing.
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St. Stephen Treasure Sale @ St. Stephen United Methodist Church
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Tantra Speed Date® - Charlotte! Meet Singles Speed Dating @ YogaSix Ballantyne
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Summer Guide 2002
In Search of Cool
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The Best of the Blotter 1
Charlotte's most bizarre, violent, drug-induced and downright hilarious tales of crime
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Viagra and the culture of manhood 2
Godsend ... and recreational drug of choice
