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I went to a marathon watching party this weekend, and I ran into my friend Katherine Center.  Not literally, because I was eating donuts, not running.  She wasn't running either, she was returning home from a literary event in Dallas, something that sounded sort of like an Iron Chefs for writers, although as she said, "Writers are so sensitive, they couldn't really judge us too harshly." Picture writers in the hands of Simon Cowell.

She said the people who put the event on thought that readings could be a little iffy sometimes, and they wanted to spice up the medium.  They had Nerf footballs and stuff. They had a ball, literary-ly.

Katherine's main job is writing books and doing literary stuff. My main job is editing books and doing publishing stuff. Net net, she goes to infinitely more readings than I do, so I hadn't exactly gotten the news that readings could be iffy.  I still put them in the category of the word from Mt. Sinai

Here in H'town we have a wonderful reading series put on by Inprint called The Margarett Root Brown Reading series. It brings amazing authors to town. Between my responsibilities at Bright Sky and my responsibilities at home, I don't get to go to these readings as often as my fancy Editorial Director title might insinuate, but when I do go, I am always transported.

I read with great delight in the New York Times that Zadie Smith has a new collection of essays just published. Stop everything and google Amazon. Like Katherine, maybe a little more famous, Zadie Smith is an amazing author.  I was first introduced to her at an Inprint reading. She is beautiful--in a completely Beauty of Different way--and smart, and as clever with words as any writer I have ever admired or analyzed for a grade.

Having stumbled into the reading that night at the invitation of a friend, I hadn't done any due diligence on who Zadie Smith was or what she wrote about. I vaguely remembered an unread copy of White Teeth on my shelf. As I listened to her in the velvet-seated darkness of the Wortham, I was blown away by her eloquence and her story's similarity to one of my all-time favorites, E.M. Forster.

Well, go figure. On Beauty, the book from which she read that night, was a reworking of Howard's End. Only so modern and so insightful it made me think that there was no time or space between me and not only Forster, but any great writer I have read. Hearing her read in her sexy Anglo tones from her gorgeous prose was an experience far beyond iffy, by anybody's definition. I've never been able to think of glee clubs the same way since.

So today, when my old friend Zadie popped up on my screen-saving NYT. I was delighted.  Her essays sound so fine to me, although of course our Overtly Intellectual Friends to the North had to rake them over the coals. In them, she talks about David Foster Wallace, and Zora Neale Hurston, of course Forster, and so many other people who have given us gifts of prose beyond panel--or New York Times-- judging.

I can't wait to get the book. And when I read it, I'll hear her beautiful voice in my mind. Just like I hear Katherine's lovely voice when we eat donuts and cheer for runners or when I read her books. It will be like Zadie is my friend, too.

Thanks to that iffy, old-school reading.

This is a beautiful novel about soulfulness. That it should be so is a tribute to Hurston's skill. She makes "culture" — that slow and particular and artificial accretion of habit and circumstance — seem as natural and organic and beautiful as the sunrise. She allows me to indulge in what Philip Roth once called "the romance of oneself," a literary value I dislike and yet, confronted with this beguiling book, cannot resist. She makes "black woman-ness" appear a real, tangible quality, an essence I can almost believe I share, however improbably, with millions of complex individuals across centuries and continents and languages and religions...
Almost — but not quite. That is to say, when I'm reading this book, I believe it, with my whole soul. It allows me to say things I wouldn't normally. Things like "She is my sister and I love her."

~Zadie Smith on Their Eyes Were Watching God

What is wonderful about great literature is that it transforms the man who reads it towards the condition of the man who wrote.
~E. M. Forster

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I have lots of memories of college: some are from my classes.  My school prided itself on its ranking as the number one non-professional party school in the nation (Rollins College was considered the number one PPS at the time). But as the thrill of doing 12 oz. curls with 3.2 beer soon wore off, I realized that I was smack in the middle of an academic wonderland, and I started to pay close attention to the stuff they were teaching. At least in English class.

One of the big themes for undergraduates was transitions in literary forms that reflected transitions in social thought. Or, as the catch phrase went, you can't put new wine in old bottles. Well, you can, but since biblical times, they've warned that you'll pop the cork if you do.

So, since we are, as the Socialnomics video attests, in an age of change more massive than the Industrial Revolution, it seems only fitting that the publishing industry is looking hard for new bottles.  Bottles that reflect change, hold change, and become provocative prisms for understanding change.

Easier said than done. Although our era forces us to digest change at a rate that would give even George Jetson heartburn, there aren't a lot of instructions. No road maps for this brave new territory. There's no AAA when we bog down on the road to the Future of Publishing, and in fact, if we do manage to make it over the pass without becoming the literary Donner party, there are no homesteads or other hostelries on the other side. But there are a few saloons offering camraderie and a cold one for weary travelers in this strange frontierland where the restless tribes of art, commerce and technology don't ever seem to find lasting peace.

Some of these pioneers lean to the digital, like Cursor and their wonderfully interactive vision of what a book can be.  Others, like CellStories, stake their claim on the web world's need for speed and i-cessibility. And there are many other novel approaches to publishing out there. Certainly, there has never been such an exciting, chaotic time in the lifetime of the printed word.

Bright Sky Press has a history of making books for Texans.  As we have often noted, Texans may pride themselves on their barbecue and their shiny silver spurs, but, when it boils down to it, they are a delightfully diverse crowd. Though many have tried to stripe them as Red or Blue, Texans cannot be easily pigeonholed.  But they are known for being friendly, downright social. In every medium.

So when we had the good fortune to make friends with Laura Mayes, one of the founders of kirtsy.com, we realized that she had a story to tell that was of interest to Texans. Texans who really live in Texas, and metaphorical Texans--big hearted people who live anywhere in the world where there's wifi. And that's just about anywhere. Laura, and kirtsy, needed a book to document, to archive, and to celebrate the new tribe they were creating online. And we thought we were just the ones to publish it.

When we started looking for a bottle to hold this heady new wine, we couldn't find one that seemed to fit. What was this book called Kirtsy Takes a Bow? What was a book of blogs, tweets and beautiful design bits--material that had appeared on line before--supposed to look like? What commentary did it need? What would raise it from rehash and make it a vehicle worthy of bearing the amazing ambassadresses of kirtsy in the mainstream publishing parade? It was a daunting thought. Did it need to be an electric car? A Prius? Or some completely new contraption?

As Laura worked hard tracking down material that she thought was representative of the dawn of the kirtsy movement--the Founding Mothers' Best of the Best--we began working with her to solve that puzzle. We were torn between two mediums, feeling like a fool. Then, after lots of conversation, laughing and crying over the material that began pouring in, and philosophizing at the Mom 2.0 Summit, it all started to come together.

The kirtsy book needed to show the energy of the living, breathing, real-time kirtsy site and all the women who keep it pulsing, but it also needed to archive what they were doing, to raise it up from the fast-moving, ephemeral content stream.  It needed to say, "You matter forever." " It's your birthday." "Let's stop and take some pictures and not just leave them in the digital camera, but let's print them out and put them on the wall." "Let's celebrate." In technicolor. In hardcover. On the coffee table.

And then it all made sense, and it seemed inevitable that the bottle for the spirit of kirtsy wouldn't be any old longneck or even a regulation crystal decanter. It's it's own thing--it's a little bit book-y, a little bit blog-y, with a touch of the magazine eye-candy sensibility we love. It's a freeze frame on right this minute: two hundred and some gorgeous pages that fit in perfectly with this eclectic, delightfully anachronistic era where we can read Plato on a Kindle sitting on a mid-century chair or we can read the best of a web content aggregate site in a luxuriously beautiful coffee table book on a fast moving train.

Change is inevitable, but the kirtsy book reassures that it doesn't have to be scary. It can be warm and full of love. We can have the ability to go fast, but choose to linger. Modern doesn't have to be a highly technical or dystopian Transformers affair. Having choices may allow us to barbecue a few sacred cows, but it does not necessitate throwing everything we've loved on the fire. How we meet  change is our perogative, and there is room for richly varied approaches.

I chose one that is a little bit old,  a little bit new. A little bit country, and a little bit...well, you know. Join us at Bright Sky as we raise a toast to a new book from a new bottle. As Katherine Center so eloquently puts it: this one's for the girls!

It's a celebration!

What you leave behind is not what is engraved in stone monuments, but what is woven into the lives of others.
~Pericles

(photo by @lmayes from stop #2 on The Kirtsy Book Event Tour of Justice)

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 When I was in college, I dated a boy from Virginia with a very large family.  Everywhere we went in the Commonwealth,  I was introduced to cousins, aunts and uncles, of every degree.  The way I knew that they were his relatives is that their relationship preceded them: everyone was called Aunt Leticia Baldridge, or Cousin Buthorpington.  Most of them had names of such old stock that John Smith himself would have felt like an upstart newcomer, so it was interesting for me when they found out I was from Texas.  One Aunt--Hezbollah Jane, or whatever her name might have been--actually looked at me over her pince-nez and said, upon learning my state of origin, "Oh, I'm sorry."  Veddy, veddy sorry, I'm sure.

The great majority of the twice, thrice or octoply removed cousins that I encountered were lovely people, but the sheer number of them boggled a person who then had only five first cousins on the planet.  I have more now, but that's a different story, longer than I care to go into right now. Point here is, the idea of a greatly extended family who valued its connectedness to the point of nomenclature, was not only phenomenal, but inspirational. I wanted cousins like that--hordes of kind, interesting people to see on holidays and lesser occasions, to drink tea and juleps with, or perhaps correspond with on Crane's paper about literary ideas or Kilimanjaro trips. There would be trust, openness, and great inspiration. Every day would be lived at the pinnacle of Mazlow's pyramid.

My first real inroads into expanding my circle of trust came when I married the youngest child of a family of eight siblings.  Can't you see the relative clicks adding up?  In laws, outlaws, nieces, nephews, a bounty of riches in the connectedness department.  None of us call each other "Cousin," but that's ok.  It is the 21st century now. Holiday activity increased tenfold, and creativity abounds in my extended family.

But even with all those wonderful people added to my life, I still felt the need for another kind of connectedness.  My current nuclear family started looking for other like-minded families to hang out with on Friday nights, fish with, and such. We have a family of friends here in Houston that we call "the Country Cousins."  They are not related to us, but we love them like they were. All of our children are mildly confused by it. "Are we related?" they ask, and all the grown ups resoundingly  answer, "Yes!" One day they'll understand: love is thicker than water, thicker than beer.

Recently, I have been reminded of the camaraderie of shared work. Spending time creating books with people forms a wonderful kinship, a bond that is somewhat like a family thing, as we go through good times and tough ones together, always with the green-light optimism that more good times are ahead. And I have  found another line of connectedness among these individuals--something that doesn't transcend these primary relationships but augments them like Oxiclean does Tide. It is the Katherine Center Effect, and it flows back and forth between my personal and professional lives like some kind of powerful primordial soup, creating new relationships, strengthening old ones, and enhancing connectedness wherever it flows.

Everyone I encounter these days--everyone to whom I am inexplicable drawn to befriend, or to write a contract for their book, or just to drink coffee with--is linked to Katherine like a Virginia cousin, usually only once or twice removed. Well, you may think, that is logical, because you are a book editor and she is a famous book writer, and you both live in Houston, which is not a book town. And that's where you would be wrong.  On several levels, the first being that Houston is as conducive to the propagation of the book arts as anyplace. Salt Lake City? St. Paul? Oxford, Mississipi? Exeter, New Hampshire? What did those towns have in a meaningful hard-cover way besides a few inspired individuals?

So, here's how it struck me that Katherine is at the center of a web of book people in Houston, a gracious Miss Spider, encouraging other writers and editors to come for tea rather than to become lunch. First, I realized:

1.  Katherine introduced me to Laura Mayes, a kirtsy.com founder and general wizardress, who first became our author and more recently our colleague.
2.  Katherine grew up on the same street as Angela Caughlin, the author of Journaling Through: Unleashing the Power of Your Authentic Self, which we will publish this fall.
3.  Katherine invited me to lunch one day where I got to sit with Karen Walrond, who has since become our author as she pens and shoots The Beauty of Different.
4.  Katherine is connected to the Bright Sky editors: her talented sister is recently responsible for Oobleck, Slime, and Dancing Spaghetti, and her former carpool mate not only edited Angela Caughlin's books, but also The Mother-In Law Manual.
5.  Katherine told Beth Irvine about Bright Sky, leading to a ripple effect of  signs that made it  possible for us to sign Beth up for three exciting books.
6.  Katherine is a graduate of the University of Houston Creative Writing Program, making her, in my book, first cousins with a huge number of the amazing authors in town.

Six first degree relationships, and I will not bore you with all they myriad  once-removeds.  But, even recognizing these connections, I had never thought about the incredible enzymatic role my talented friend was playing in Houston until this Friday.

I went to a workshop at Joy Yoga, on Washington Avenue, down the street from  my favorite pizza place. It was lead by Angela Caughlin and Beth Irvine (who also know each other, go figure). It was about combining yoga and guided journaling to go deeper with intention.

I come rushing in, late from busyness and stress, and I hit peace like a wall.  After I smacked into it, I slid into a river of mental and physical submission and let these two powerful ladies have their way with my consciousness and my piriformis as I floated through the next couple of hours.  Only when I reemerged, focused, calm, and content on the other side, did I notice that Karen Walrond was in the workshop, too.  Wow, I thought, Look at all these wonderful women, together.  And the realization spread like a double rainbow in the mountains: They are all Bright Sky authors. That's when it struck me like a bolt that before we connected under Bright Sky, we were connected through Katherine.

So, perhaps she is some sort of literary fairy godmother--a sane Auntie Mame, a well-grounded Durrell, a rosy-cheeked Mrs. Wilcox or even  a kinder, soberer Dorothy Parker--inviting us to lunch, waving her wand over us, opening our eyes to the marvelous potential in one another. In any case, even though her copyright pages pledge her to another, Katherine is an integral part of the Bright Sky family. Love is thicker than imprints, too.

How many more wonderful connections are out there, waiting to be discovered in this creative frontier of a book town? And how many lead back to Cousin Katherine?

We'll just have to stay centered to find out.

It is something-it can be everything-to have found a fellow bird with whom you can sit among the rafters while the drinking and boasting and reciting and fighting go on below.
~Wallace Stegner

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My friend Katherine has written a novel.  Actually three, although the world has only been lucky enough to read two so far.  And the reaction to the two that people have read to date has been fantastic. As well it should be. And when number three, and eventually four, five, six and so on come out, we will be lucky to read them, too.

The first book she wrote was called The Bright Side of Disaster.  Set in Houston, a town near to my heart, it told the story of Jenny Harris, a young mother who is dumped by her man the night she goes into labor.  Ouch.  Katherine told Jenny's story with so much empathy and charm that readers and reviewers everywhere went wild for it. Like they were at the rodeo. Kirkus Reviews, who can be a little grumpy sometimes, even said it offered "credible descriptions of first-time motherhood, affecting characters and situations and low-key charm,” and Booklist was a little more bubbly in their description, saying, “Stellar . . . Center paints an accurate and humorous view of motherhood.” If you've ever been a mom, or been married to one, it would do  your heart good to read this book.

Or you could read her new book: Everyone is Beautiful.  It has the most luscious blue-green cover with a delectable cupcake on it, and once you get to the filling, it is even more of a feast.  Katherine's still on the motherhood topic, but this time she goes in for the hard core stuff--Lanie Coates has three very young children. Read it, too, and you'll be able to say you knew Katherine when.

I've heard people say, "Houston isn't a book town."  I have to laugh.

Katherine Center lives here.

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