She has a perfectly serviceable home office, anchored by a desk and filled with papers, books and files — all the usual writerly supplies. However, Ann B. Ross prefers to compose her popular Miss Julia novels on her glass-topped dining-room table.
“It’s nicer in here,” says the author, who has lived in her most recent Hendersonville home for 10 years and in the area itself for almost 40 years, moving from South Carolina in the 1960s with her physician husband. “There’s more light, and I can face the yard.” Edging the street is an arbor crawling with late-summer clematis; the back’s been finished as a small, Williamsburg-style formal garden with rectangular hedgerows and a gazebo.
Entering the foyer, visitors encounter a tastefully understated trompe l’oeil mural. Chickadees, tangles of vines and the likenesses of two former family dogs have been painted with crewel-like precision and whimsy. Next is a small sitting area, where ornate gilt mirrors reflect traditional cottage-style appointments — a scalloped cotton valance with an English floral print, painted end tables — and crowds of family photos. Clad in black and trimmed with regal gold accessories, Ross sits as slim and poised as a fountain pen. She says she always writes in the morning.
“I know some writers who work in their bathrobes, but that’s not something I’d do. You never know who’s going to come knocking at the door.” In so saying, she sounds satisfyingly like her much-loved creation, “Miss Julia” Springer — ladylike with a shot of sandpaper.
Their biographical details are not the same. Miss Julia, the protagonist of 11 novels, is a childless widow when the series begins, while Ms. Ross is proud to have family all around her. But her Abbotsville, North Carolina is clearly modeled after Hendersonville, and local readers delight in the WNC references, although Ross receives fan mail from New Zealand, France, Canada and Mexico, among other countries. Stateside, her books are just as popular in the Midwest as they are in the South. All of the titles are still in print, and seven of them have made the New York Times Extended Bestseller List; her current novel, Miss Julia Renews Her Vows, is in the top 20. There’s long been talk of a Miss Julia movie, and to prove it, the author shows off a framed letter from Dolly Parton voicing her intent to one day play Julia’s rival-turned-friend Hazel Marie Puckett.
Call it small-town savoir-faire. In the first volume, Miss Julia Speaks Her Mind, the heroine finds out that her late husband has bequeathed her an unexpected inheritance — his young son by a mistress she never knew about. Battling bitterness, sticky church mores and various hilarious subplots with the help of her housekeeper Lillian and would-be lover Sam, Miss Julia ends up with an unexpected family and a new backbone.
Novel number 12 is due in spring, and Ross’ publishing contract keeps her on a strict schedule. (Once the book’s out, the book tour starts. Afraid to fly, she drives to every engagement.) Nevertheless, the author recently sat down with Carolina Home + Garden to talk about the writing life and random matters of small importance.
CH+G: Even though some of the novels end up being temporarily set in other locales, it seems as though a central motif of the “Miss Julia” books is pride of place, the richness of small-town life. Ross: To me she is a small-town person, and although I know you need to vary the books a little bit, I have to really get my mind set to move her out of Abbotsville. Essentially these books are about a small Southern town, and even though they’re set in the present, Miss Julia and her friends are living in an earlier, more idealistic time, and that is reflected in their attitudes.
Obviously, given the popularity of the books, that concept has a wide appeal. The editor of my first book said my audience would be limited to Southern women over 40. Well, she was wrong.
And what are the advantages and disadvantages of small-town life? Small towns are a great place to raise children. Of course, this little town [Hendersonville] has really grown so much over the years, and I don’t know people like I used to. But when my children were young, everyone knew who they were, and people watched out for each other’s children, and for each other in general. As far as disadvantages, I guess they’re the same things that Miss Julia worries about — that if everyone knows you, they also know all your business.
Certain famous Southern women authors, including Eudora Welty and Flannery O’Connor, never married or had any major family responsibilities. They had all the time in the world to write. Your children are grown now and you have a “room of your own” to get away to, so to speak. But it wasn’t always that way. I have written when I had children at home, and it can be a big problem not having a space of your own. You have to quit and put the manuscript up every time you step away from it or else some child’s going to come over and spill something on it. Now I can leave my desk and not worry that someone’s going to come along and eat my homework.
Do you collect anything? This place is so small I don’t want to have to look at anything I don’t want or need to look at. And I’ve gotten to an age where there aren’t many things I particularly want in the first place.
What are some things you enjoy doing with your six grandchildren? When Ramsey, the youngest, comes over, she brings a coloring book and assigns me a page to color while she colors her own. The boys usually like to throw balls of some sort or other. I also go to their soccer and basketball games, tennis matches and races.
Have you always been a morning person? I learned that I’m a morning person. When my children were still at home I would have said “night,” because I used to sit up late until they came in. But I wasn’t worth shooting the next day when I had to get up early.
What’s your favorite dessert? I like a black-bottom rum pie or strawberry shortcake, depending on the season.
If your desk were a famous work of art, which one would it be?
Well, I cleaned up for you. But normally I would say my desk was like a Dali [painting], with everything strewn all over.
Miss Julia Rocks the Cradle comes out in April 2011. Visit www.missjulia.com for more about Ann B. Ross.