Gracie Lee - grace grits and gardening

Gracie Lee’s Mixtape

October 19, 2015 By Talya Tate Boerner

As a nine-almost-ten-year-old, Gracie Lee didn’t have much money but when she managed to save a little, she liked to buy a new record or two at Savage Tunes on Main Street. Most of the time, though, she was forced to listen for her favorite songs to be played on the radio. WHBQ in Memphis played the best music—mostly top forty—and unless it was stormy, clear reception traveled across the Mississippi River to her corner of Northeast Arkansas.

She liked country music, too. Daddy blasted everyone out of bed before sunrise with the music of Waylon Jennings and Willie Nelson, so those songs grew on her.Continue Reading

meet Gracie Lee

October 7, 2015 By Talya Tate Boerner

It’s high time you officially met Gracie Lee, the nine-almost-ten-year-old protagonist of The Accidental Salvation of Gracie Lee. Over the next two months before official book release, I’ll be talking more and more about her. What she likes and says and does.

So who is she really?

Let me start by saying it’s true, the idea of “writing what you know”. Gracie Lee was born from a compilation of true life stories, what began as memoir. So it’s only natural that we share many memories. But Gracie Lee is her own person apart from me.

She’s precocious and mature beyond her years. And brave when it counts.

She counts the days until her tenth birthday, certain that ten will feel different than nine.

Her Momma sees to it that she practices the piano, a complete waste of time in Gracie Lee’s opinion. Instead, she’d much rather learn to speak French, a skill she’s sure will help her someday when she has an important job working somewhere other than in Arkansas.

She still plays with Barbie, but tries to keep this from her Daddy.

As Gracie Lee lies in bed at night, unable to sleep, her mind is chock-full of questions and notions and secrets that churn like the nearby muddy Mississippi.

The Accidental Salvation of Gracie Lee is available to purchase via Amazon and Barnes & Noble.

Talya Tate Boerner
Grace Grits and Gardening
Farm. Food. Garden. Life.

Musical Pairing:
The Five Stairsteps, Ooh Child

I have a publisher!

August 9, 2015 By Talya Tate Boerner

I have the best news! And if it’s possible to truly walk on sunshine, I’m doing it. Yesterday, I signed a publishing contract with SYP Publishing, a Florida press that specializes in southern authors. Someone pinch me. I have a publisher.

I love the way those four little words feel in my mouth and melt on the tip of my tongue like old-fashioned butter mints, the sort served in a crystal compote at baby showers and weddings.

Know the mints I mean?

♫♫ Wonderful feeling, wonderful day! ♪♫

I plan to enjoy the floating-on-cloud-nine-feeling for as long as it lasts. And, yes, the clichés are flowing in this post, but I can’t help myself. The air is light, the sun is bright, and the view is brilliant.

Right this very second, I want to thank every single person who reads my writing (on-line and print) at Grace Grits, Front Porch Magazine, Winthrop Rockefeller Institute Blog, OnlyinArkansas(dot)com and wherever else I am lucky enough to finagle an article. I am especially grateful to those who stop me in Wal-Mart or tell my Momma at church how much they enjoy my writing. This often keeps me going, and having a following, however modest, has helped me obtain a publishing contract. I truly believe this.