Episode 68
Ghosts, unlikely friendships, and snarky humor with Author Tracey Buchanan
Tracey's journey pursuing the right words has been both straight-forward and circuitous. She wrote nothing but the facts as a journalist and has created worlds out of pure imagination as a novelist. Either way she loves telling stories because stories are connectors that bridge our experiences and help us understand each other better.
Tracey's story began in the bootheel of Missouri, but quickly moved to a little corner of western Kentucky called Paducah, a UNESCO Creative City which is home to the National Quilt Museum and the birthplace of Vice President Alben Barkley.
After she graduated cum laude with a degree in journalism from Texas A&M University, she returned to Paducah with her husband, Kent, also an Aggie. She worked as the editor of the lifestyle section of her hometown newspaper, where she earned awards like Best Feature Writer of Kentucky and Best Column from the Kentucky Press Association.
After having her second son, she decided to write from home and began freelancing. She eventually became editor of a nationally distributed health magazine. She also wrote dramatizations for the City of Paducah, and that's where many of the characters in Toward the Corner of Mercy and Peace were formed.
Tracey's also an artist and ran a business for several years selling her watercolor and ink illustrations she called "flutterbies." But, even as an artist she included words in her paintings and collages. She's an author at heart.
She and her husband have two married sons, eight grandchildren, and a kooky little Corgi-Yorkie mix that's still frisky at age 16.
You can learn more about Tracey on her website, www.traceybuchanan.com.
You can also follow her on Facebook: www.facebook.com/TraceyBuchananAuthor/ and Instagram: @tracey_d_buchanan. Toward the Corner of Mercy and Peace is available from her publisher, Amazon
or
support your local bookstore & this podcast by getting your copy of Toward the Corner of Mercy and Peace at https://bookshop.org/a/90599/9781646033379
A little about today's host-
Author and musical composer Kathleen Basi is mother to three boys and one chromosomally-gifted daughter. Her debut novel, A SONG FOR THE ROAD, follows a musician on an unconventional road trip. Bestselling author Kerry Anne King writes, “In a novel filled with music, heartbreak, and surprising laughter, Basi takes us on a journey that encompasses both unimaginable loss and the powerful resilience of the human heart.”
Meaty, earnest, occasionally humorous, and ultimately uplifting, Kathleen’s fiction highlights the best within ourselves and each other. She writes monthly reflections on life, writing and beauty on her newsletter. Subscribe at https://kathleenbasi.substack.com/.
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Learn more about our hosts, the guests we've had, and their books -
Transcript
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Kathleen Basi [:Welcome to Author Express. Thanks for checking us out. This is the podcast where you give us 15 minutes of your time and we give you a chance to hear the voice behind the pages and get to know some of your favorite writers in a new light. I'm one of your hosts, Kathleen Basi. I'm an award-winning musical composer, a feature writer, essayist, and, of course, storyteller. Let me tell you a little bit about today's guest.
Kathleen Basi [:Tracey Buchanan crashed into the literary world when she was 6 and won her first writing award. Fast forward through years as a journalist, mom, volunteer, freelance writer, editor, artist, small business owner, and circus performer. Well, not really, but wouldn't that be something? And you will find her happily planted in the world of fiction with Toward the Corner of Mercy and Peace. Publishers Weekly had this to say about it. Buchanan debuts with the folksy story of a curmudgeonly woman in the 1950s in Paducah, Kentucky. Along with the brisk pacing and naughty protagonist, Buchanan adds plenty of homespun details. This slice of life is one to savor. What a nice thing to say for them. Welcome, Tracey to Author Express.
Tracey Buchanan [:Hi. Thank you for having me today.
Kathleen Basi [:It's great to have you here. So, tell me, if you will, to start, what is the most interesting thing about where you're from?
Tracey Buchanan [:Well, Paducah is a small town in Western Kentucky, but we are also a UNESCO creative city, which is pretty unusual. There are only 246 of them worldwide and only, I think, 9 of them in America. So, that's a very unusual designation, and we're designated that mostly because we're also known as Quilt City USA and we're the home of the National Quilt Museum and it's the world's largest of its kind.
Kathleen Basi [:Well, that is interesting. Who among us does not have quilters in our family? My sister is a quilter, and her mother-in-law was a quilter, and my grandmother was a quilter. So, these are all, like, I have never gotten that bug myself, but I see lots of beautiful quilts out there. The ones with the ties as their memory of people who've died and things like that.
Tracey Buchanan [:Yes. You ought to come to our quilt museum. It is phenomenal. It truly is, and we're just a small little town.
Kathleen Basi [:Yeah. How big is Paducah?
Tracey Buchanan [:I'd say 35,000.
Kathleen Basi [:Okay. Very good. Alright. Well, let's get to know you a little bit better today as a person before we start talking books. Tell me what's something about you that other people find hard to believe.
Tracey Buchanan [:Hard to believe? Probably that well, I don't know.
Kathleen Basi [:You're an open book?
Tracey Buchanan [:I'm pretty much an open book. A lot of times I get, I'll have the comment made whenever somebody sees me in person after they've just seen my picture. They say, oh, you're so tall, and I wanted to tell them, you know, pictures are able to know where the person's head is, like, you know, just because they're tall doesn't mean I'm going to be up here.
Kathleen Basi [:How tall are you if I might ask?
Tracey Buchanan [:Well, that's another good question because I'm actually 5’11, but I tell everybody I'm 6 feet because it just seems, just easier.
Kathleen Basi [:Also, it sounds more impressive too.
Tracey Buchanan [:True.
Kathleen Basi [:Okay. So, here's a question. Do you wear heels?
Tracey Buchanan [:I do on occasion, but I've had foot surgery, and I can't wear anything taller than a 2-inch heel now.
Kathleen Basi [:Okay. I ask because I'm only 5’4. And when I made the list of my ideal man, I said, I would like to have no one higher than or taller than 5’8, and my husband is 5’8. So, I never have to wear heels again in my life, and I'm very happy about that.
Tracey Buchanan [:Good.
Kathleen Basi [:Okay. Let's talk about your book a little bit. Tell us about your book in one sentence.
Tracey Buchanan [:Well, missus Minerva Place, the protagonist, prefers communing with the dead to dealing with the living, but when a young boy and his father burst into her world, her life in small town Paducah is turned on its head.
Kathleen Basi [:That just sounds so much fun. And I read this book, and it really is just so much fun. You get to have a curmudgeonly person just as soon as you bring in that small child, you know something great is going to happen. So, that sounds like a really fun book. Tell us about where, you know, it's set in Paducah. So, what's significant to you about Paducah in terms of the book?
Tracey Buchanan [:Well, I started this book years and years ago not knowing that it was going to be a book. I was asked by our city to develop some plays for the local cemetery and so I would write stories about that, research the people who were buried there and then I'd tell their story, then they would dress in costume from that period and tell their story, and so I had a whole collection of these things. I had, like, over 30 different pieces of research that I've done and characters that I had developed, and I wanted to do something else with them, and so I tried writing something similar to Spoon River Anthology, if you're familiar with that, and it wasn't working. So, I brought in someone who could introduce the characters, and I named her missus Minerva Place, and then the more I wrote, the more I realized it was really her story that I was telling and not the people who were buried in the cemetery. So, that's how it came to be.
Kathleen Basi [:That is really cool. And I really do love the idea that she's hearing voices of people who have passed away as this book goes on and she's questioning her sanity. I really love all of that and that being able to bring in interesting people. And if I recall, it's been a while since I read the book, but if I recall, there's some resolution that happens because of this, isn't there?
Tracey Buchanan [:There is. She really learns a lot about herself and she's able to finally forgive herself for some things that she's been holding herself back from doing.
Kathleen Basi [:That's really cool. What a creative idea for a book. Go you.
Tracey Buchanan [:Thank you.
Kathleen Basi [:So, who do you think is going to connect with this book and who were you thinking of when you wrote it?
Tracey Buchanan [:Well, I was thinking a lot of people, just other readers who like what I like, which I guess are middle aged women, and I was also thinking a lot about the families of Paducah and our history here. We have quite a collective history. We have a vice president and we have a very famous writer, Irvin Cobb. He was famous years ago, but we also have local people who have gone off and done very well. I can name several people from Paducah who've risen to prominence nationally.
Kathleen Basi [:Very cool. So, you're thinking of your hometown crowd. Have you got lots of hometown connections to get it out there now? I would think your connections who asked you to write the play would be all over publicizing this.
Tracey Buchanan [:Yes. That was years ago, but, yes, they're still around. And I did work for the local newspaper at the beginning of my career. So, yes, I've got lots of great connections, people who've been very supportive in Paducah.
Kathleen Basi [:Yeah. Well, and hopefully, it'll go much bigger than that too because I'll tell you from my spot in Missouri, it sounds like it would resonate very well with the people I'm around as well. So, that's very good. So, let's talk a little bit about how you got to this point, the writing process, the writing journey. When did you first know that you wanted to be a writer? I mean, you said that you were asked to do plays, so clearly somebody already knew you were a writer and you worked for the paper as a journalist?
Tracey Buchanan [:Right. Right. I was an editor of a lifestyle section, but, yes, I mean, from early, early on, I knew I wanted to write. I didn't know that I was going to be a writer, so to speak, but I knew that I wanted to write. So, I kept journals early in my life. And then when I went to college, I thought it was more practical to go into journalism than it was to go into creative writing, so I went into journalism with a thought, this is a way I can support myself. So, I've just continued to write all through the years in different ways, and this book, Toward the Corner of Mercy and Peace was my first attempt at a novel.
Kathleen Basi [:That's very cool. So, who encouraged your writing the most when you were younger?
Tracey Buchanan [:Well, different teachers along the way and of course my parents have always been very supportive, but I had wonderful, wonderful teachers.
Kathleen Basi [:Yeah. That's very good when you have good teachers. Are you a lifelong Paducan?
Tracey Buchanan [:I am. I was born in Missouri, but I've lived here most of my life except for a couple of or 4 years, I guess, in Texas when I went to college.
Kathleen Basi [:Okay. So, where did you go to school?
Tracey Buchanan [:I started out at Baylor University, then I ended up at Texas A&M University.
Kathleen Basi [:A couple of big ones.
Tracey Buchanan [:Right.
Kathleen Basi [:That's good. Okay. I also because I'm from Missouri, I have to ask where you were born in Missouri.
Tracey Buchanan [:Cape Girardeau.
Kathleen Basi [:In Cape Girardeau. Okay. So, southeast and not too far from Kentucky, of all things considered.
Tracey Buchanan [:Right. Right. Yeah.
Kathleen Basi [:Very good. Alright. Well, let's find out what's the best place for people to find you if they want to find out more about you, about your book.
Tracey Buchanan [:Probably my website. That's traceybuchanan.com. Tracey with an E.
Kathleen Basi [:Yes. TRACEY, and Buchanan is BUCHANAN. Great. And you have all of your links there for socials and everything?
Tracey Buchanan [:I do.
Kathleen Basi [:Alright. Very good. Okay. So, then let me ask you this. What book or story is inspiring you the most these days?
Tracey Buchanan [:Well, I thought about that. I'm an avid reader and am constantly reading and my favorite book is always the one I'm reading, but I think the one that influenced me the most and that was probably Spoon River Anthology by Edgar Lee Masters and as I was flipping through the book again just to remind myself how much I love, why I loved it, I found that there is actually a character in the book named Minerva and that was fun and when you read the poem about this Minerva, you see that she was a little ostracized from her community too. So, I just loved that connection between this book that inspired my beginnings of the book that I wrote and the connection to the 1915 anthology.
Kathleen Basi [:Yeah. That's very good. Well and I've heard of Spoon River Anthology, but I don't know that I know anything about it. So, this is always the most fun part of the interview is getting the TBR list just keeps getting longer and longer and longer.
Tracey Buchanan [:It does. Doesn't it?
Kathleen Basi [:Yes. Alright. Well, thank you again for being with us, Tracey. Everybody, go check out Toward the Corner of Mercy and Peace.
Tracey Buchanan [:Thanks for having me.
Kathleen Basi [:Thanks for joining us today. We hope you'll take a second to give us some stars or a review on your favorite podcasting platform. We'll be back next Wednesday and, in the meantime, follow us on Instagram at Author Express Podcast to see who's coming up next. Don't forget. Keep it express, but keep it interesting.
