Guest Author: Kris Radish

Keep your eye on Kris Radish: her fiction is already starting to show potential of Ya-Ya proportions. When I found out that she was already--after just two novels in two years--doing well enough to fill up unique weekend getaways that bring her together with her readers, I dropped her a line and asked if she'd be willing to give Beatrice the inside info. Since she had one coming up the very next weekend, she was more than happy to oblige...

Dancing Naked and as Elegantly as Possible
by Kris Radish

It sounds risky doesn't it--to dance naked with the women who read your novels but the women who read my novels know how to do it better than anyone else. And I have photos to prove it--just kidding.

The Elegant Gathering of White Snows and Dancing Naked at the Edge of Dawn have touched a raw and very open nerve with women across the country. The books have been called "a virus" by booksellers who see one woman come in to buy a copy and then come back days later to buy ten copies so she can send them to friends across the world. Elegant just went into its tenth printing, while Dancing is already in its seventh…since coming out this January.

This is obviously good news to my wonderful publisher, Bantam Dell, and to me but the best news is that these women write to me and respond to my message of empowerment, moving forward, letting go, embracing reality, honoring female friendships, having a hell of a lot of fun and making certain they are taken care of in ways that have helped me create a reason to meet them all beyond signing a book.

The characters and story lines in my book are very real to the women who read them and these two novels, and I hope every single one that will follow, address female common denominators in a way that allows women to embrace themselves, each other and this Kris Radish woman. My readers want to meet me and then want to expand on their reading experience and I am more than happy to do that.

My weekend gatherings--called everything from Dancing Naked in the Elegant Northwoods to, simply, An Elegant Gathering--include lots of discussions, always a walk--like the women in Elegant, a informal/formal presentation by me about my writing and how I created the characters, the constant popping of wine corks and brewing of coffee and tea (which is what "the elegant gathering of white snows" is--a tea)...and all of this and more in an atmosphere of total and complete acceptance.

It's a woman thing.

Women say things and tell stories they have never before shared. They link arms and tell each other how, like the women characters in my book, they have suffered, been afraid, made some interesting life choices and how they really just want to be happy even if that happiness involves a life change or a dose of honesty that can feel like a slap upside the head.

We stay up late and talk as if we are the only people alive. We cry and we do a lot of laughing. We become friends and pass around photos of our babies, teenagers, spouses, partners and sisters. We write down address and the names of the best bottles of wine and we eat and then we laugh a whole lot more.

These Elegant Dancing weekends are filled with moveable structure and I use my work as a journalist, university lecturer, mother, woman, former manager, friend and wanna-be stand-up comedienne and jazz singer to facilitate an open, honest and very real atmosphere. Hey, I'm from the Midwest, where we still stop to help people change tires, love corner bars and still know how to bake and write handwritten thank you notes.

These weekends are as important to me as they are to the women who, like the fine females in The Elegant Gathering of White Snows, leave the coffee pot running and head out towards that light at the edge of the horizon. I am a good listener and I create stories about women and life that are as real as the very seconds that I live myself.