Beth: Good morning Kathy. We're so excited that you've joined Eons for a little bit. Thanks for taking time out of your busy book tour, which sounds exciting. So thanks for being here. Where are you, exactly?

Kathy: Well, Beth, we are actually on the road. We just left Vicksburg, Mississippi. We did a wonderful book signing last night at Laureli Books, and we're headed - I'm actually going to be home tonight, and then we'll be in Shreveport, Louisiana, for a book signing tomorrow at Tower Books.

So we've hit the road pretty hard since January 2nd, and it's going very well Very well. In fact, I'm so pleased; I can't even believe how well the turnouts and the book sales have been on this tour. It's been great.

Beth: How fun is that? I mean, we see your blogs every couple of days, but what's it like to have a lot of the gals come and visit you at the book stores?

Kathy: Well, I have a new appreciation for authors on book tour because I'm driving this tour with my Pulpwood Queen posse. I've got girls that have been traveling with me from the get-go that are in my book club, and I don't know how I would have done it without them. So these authors that travel around by themselves, it's amazing.

We're driving a big Texas Cadillac. It's a Suburban. At one point, we had 24 bags of luggage because we're driving in weather. So we wanted to be prepared. We're former Girl Scouts, and everywhere we go, we bling it up and clip in our big hair for our signature look.

And for those that are not initiated into the world of the Pulpwood Queens, when we were on Good Morning America, Diane Sawyer asked if we'd have big hair. And so I didn't have big hair, so we clipped them in with these Raquel Welch Hair You Wear pieces.

And we call them our go-to-town hair, and so we clip these in, and it takes five seconds, but we're also doing big hair makeovers at each one of the bookstores, so we do a drawing, and the winner gets to have big hair, and they get to keep the hairpieces. It's fabulous. People just get the biggest kick out of it.

Beth: That is a blast.

Kathy: Not your normal book signing because I have a book portion of my presentation that's courtesy of Grand Central Publishing, and then I have my beauty portion, that's sponsored by the Raquel Welch Hair You Wear. So I'm having a really good time. I'm showing that reading can be fun.

The women are so responsive. I mean, one of the bookstores that we went to was Watermarks in Wichita, as we were getting out of the car, carloads of women were pulling in wearing tiaras, and we were mobbed. All these women go, "Oh, we just -" but that was like an hour from my home town.

And these women all go, "We all wanna be Pulpwood Queens." Everywhere we've gone, we started 20 chapters of Pulpwood Queens on this book tour.

So we really got people ready to read. Well, they can see how much fun we're having with the reading. And I think reading is the best entertainment in the world. So I'm on this mission to show people that reading isn't just homework. It's actually a lot more exciting and thrilling than people give it credit if you find the material that people enjoy to read.

And I think I'm really good at picking those books.

Beth: I think I read that you read To Kill a Mockingbird once every year. Is that right?

Kathy: At least once; sometimes more than that. I just pull it out when I wanna be inspired. It's my standard for the best book ever written, and I love the story. When I was a child, I totally related to Scout. And now, as I'm older, I'm relating to many of the characters, including Atticus Finch.

I absolutely still - that's been my book. That's the book that spoke to me, and it's just kind of been my constant companion.

Beth: So tell me how do you get a little bit more out of a book that you've read 20 times?

Kathy: Well, it's just like I reread Kirk Vonnegut's Breakfast of Champions. It was my first book I checked out when I went to the adult section of the library, and I remembered I loved that book. I reread it the other day, and I was scandalized by the subject matter and it's very provocative.

And I just thought, oh my gosh. As an adult, I thought totally different than I did as a teenager. And I think that as we get older and are more educated and enlightened, we perceive the story differently. And it's just like you can hear a story a hundred times, but each time it'll affect you differently.

It's the same way with books. And the way I think that books come alive is by having the author in attendance. So my book club is so different because we almost always have the author in attendance at our book club meetings, and then I try to arrange for the author to visit the chapters.

If they cannot or not in those cities, I arrange teleconferences. And most of the authors are thrilled to call a book club that has read their book. I mean, Jeannette Walls, who wrote the Glass Castle, when we picked her book, way back when it was first out, she called every one of my chapters and spoke no less than an hour and forty-five minutes.

It also gives these women, who live in little towns like Calvert, Texas, or Houston's Ford, or Eureka, Kansas - it gives them a little bit of celebritism. They get to feel like they are living the life to have a celebrity call them and talk, especially since her book has now gone two years on the New York Times Bestsellers, they can go to their church or garden club meeting or whatever and say, "oh, we talked to Jeanette Walls last night."

And they go, "What? You mean the NBC -" at that time she was the MSNBC reporter for gossip and dish. And they go, "You're kidding me." And it gives them empowerment to know that they can kind of become - walk in those author's shoes too.

Beth: Now you have actually become an author with this first book. Is that right?

Kathy: That was really hard for me. I call it come out of the writing closet, because I've always put authors on such pedestals. I was really into Greek Mythology when I was in school. I had this wonderful teacher, and I always felt like authors were those Greek gods, and I was like the mere mortal on earth.

And you know, the mortals couldn't really mix with the people up in Mount Olympus and what has happened to me is I'm finding out that I still have little glittery stars in my eyes when I meet an author that I just admire so much, but at the same time, I realize that everybody has a story.

In fact, I encourage everybody to write their story because the story they don't tell is a library lost to all their families and friends. And I really believe that everybody has a great story. It's just sometimes we think we have to have these bigger than life lives and sometimes it's the simplest stories.

I always think of Jim the Boy, by Tony Early, which is a simple story of a little farm kid. Most beautifully written book in the world. And I think everybody has a story. And so it's the connections that we're making with the book club members and the authors and being an author myself, it was a little uncomfortable.

The hat didn't quite fit. It felt way too big for a while. But as I'm going on the road and people are embracing me and embracing my passion for reading and books. I'm finding that's starting to feel a lot better. I'll never quite - I've had a lot of reviews that said, well, it won't ever win any Pulitzer or she doesn't have the prose of To Kill A Mockingbird, I'm going, good grief. Who does?

I wrote this book as a book that would be totally accessible to the nonreader. I wrote it as a conversation to get people reading. And I read it out loud. And if it didn't sound like something I would say to you right now, Beth, I took it out. Because I didn't wanna have big words where people felt like I was being pretentious or snobby.

I wanted it to sound like we were just talking, like you and I are, and that reading can really change your life. For me, it helped me find myself. Books saved me. And when you read the story, you'll understand why. I came from a very dysfunctional family. I love my family very much, but my parents fought.

And they fought hard. And it was difficult to understand that as a child. So I escaped into books. And those stories would take me places that was away from my small-town upbringing.

It was just a way for me to escape, and I escaped into the story, I read about these people that were just like me. And I also became very brave because I fell in love with the Tarzan books. And Tarzan was probably the bravest person I've ever seen, lived in the jungle with all these animals.

That's why we wear the leopard prints, because I have this thing for Tarzan. I wanted to be Tarzan. And I just thought it was so cool. I swang out of my tree house all the time, trying to emulate Tarzan, and I wasn't athletic, so I landed pretty hard a couple of times.

But I learned that if Tarzan can do this, well then, I can walk to the front of class and check out a library book. Which I was very fearful as a child. I was afraid to - everything was inward on me. I was so afraid that people would make fun of me, and then as I read books, I realized that there were a lot of people like me.

And even since I've been on the book tour, women come up to me, and they say, "Oh, I totally related to your story, Kathy. My family was this way. And I'm so shy." And I said, "I'm telling you. Read my book. If it could change one person the way those books changed me, then this world is gonna be a better place."

And everybody always says well if you could do one thing in your life, what would it be? And I always laugh because you always heard the Miss America beauty pageant say world peace.

Beth: Right.

Kathy: We laugh about it, but actually, that's what we really need to focus on. And I think the way to that is by reading. I mean, we just voted the book of the year of the Pulpwood Queens for the Doug Morelett Award was the Kabble Beauty School. And it was about reading about this American woman going to Afghanistan and running this beauty school.

Can you imagine? It's just hard to fathom. But these women, once they read the story, they had a little bit different version of what it must be like in that country than what we see on the news. I mean, we just see the terroristic things. We don't see real people. And of course, the Kite Runner's another wonderful book.

And by reading these books, these people that have never been out of their counties in whatever state they're living in, all of a sudden they're understanding that all everybody basically wants is to be loved and needed and to have hope in their lives.

And that we need to be a nicer people. And that comes about by reading. Only good things can come from reading.

Beth: Well, I'm telling you Eons loves being part of your growing the largest book club in the world.

Kathy: Isn't that amazing?

Beth: I love that idea. And our members love that idea. And we want everybody to come to your group and keep up on your book tour. I think your ah-ha moment, Kathy, from the perspective of pick up a book and have an ah-ha moment in your life is just a great idea.

It's just very simple.

Kathy: I have to give credit to my agent Marley Rousoff because she is the one that said - I go, "What do I write about? I mean, who am I?" And she said, "Kathy, write of those ah-ha moments in your life, those moments in your life that were life-changing." And that's what I wrote about.

Beth: Yes, you did.

Kathy: - people. And the story about my friend Joyce, who came to me after she got her hair back from chemotherapy, and then that was the first time I did her hair. And the last time I did her hair was at the funeral home. And that scared me more than you can possibly imagine.

And in fact, riding with me is the woman, one of the Pulpwood Queens that went with me to the nursing home to do her hair, Kay Berkshire, and I was scared to do that. And I found out something about it. We don't need to be afraid of death. And we need to celebrate life, you know?

Death is gonna happen to all of us. And I think when you read the story, and you read what happened to us when we went to the funeral home to do her hair, and how much she meant to me, I think readers will be - I think we're afraid because we don't know.

So we need to write about those things so that we will know. And if you do that, if you educate yourself and enlighten yourself, we have nothing to be afraid of. And I think so many things happen in life because of fear. Fear of the unknown. Prejudice and racial tension.

All of it comes about from just not knowing, and the more you read about other peoples, other places, other cultures, you find out really we're not as different as you think we are.

Beth: Well, you are the poster girl for reading, let me tell you.

Kathy: I hope so. I've always told people, when I die, I hope the one thing people remember about me is man, she tried. She really tried. And that's - I know just like a calling to be a minister or a teacher or anybody who serves others, I have this calling to really get America reading.

And I read all the time. In fact, Kay's waiting on me to get off the phone to finish - we're reading in the car Ron Ration's new book, Serena, and it's so funny. And most people go, oh I hate driving. And we're reading aloud. We just finished Chicken Dance by John Couvian and now we're reading Serena. And we've got about five more in the car that we wanna read as we're driving down the road.

And we take turns reading aloud. It's awesome.

Beth: What a great way to go. Well, listen, you guys, we wish you a safe and happy book tour. Please keep blogging and telling us what's cooking in every one of those towns you see; that's been so much fun.

There's plenty of Eons' members that are starting to go to your group on Eons as well, so you'll see lots of comments there. And a lot of enthusiasm and support, Kathy, honesty, for all the good work you're doing, and the great message that you have, and helping us all be in touch with our own kind of tiara-ed, ah-ha moments.

Kathy: Yeah. Well, your Web site is absolutely amazing. I am just loving the conversation. The problem is I just don't have enough time to look at all of them. When I get home, I plan on really reading these things because there's so many wonderful groups from the book-a-holics to the every one of them are just a treasure.

So thank you for giving us this voice and venue.

Beth: Yeah. Well, thank you. And absolutely. When you get off your book tour, we'll all kind of hunker down and get back to it, and be reading some books together.

Kathy: Thank you.

Beth: All right Kathy.

Kathy: Well, everybody keep reading, and we'll see you on the road.