Get to know Kathy L Murphy, the Pulpwood Queen, and the book club she started over 20 years ago - “where wearing tiaras is mandatory and reading our good books is the only rule.”

She is the author of “The Pulpwood Queens’ Tiara Wearing, Book Sharing Guide to Life” and “The Pulpwood Queens Celebrate 20 Years!”

The International Pulpwood Queen and Timber Guy Book Club Reading Nation is the biggest meeting and discussing book club in the world - with 800 chapters, including chapters in 20 foreign countries. Be sure to check out the Reading Nation Magazine, where you’ll find out about many of the Pulpwood Queen and Timber Guy authors and more information about Kathy.

Check out my video: YouTube Conversation with Kathy L. Murphy where you'll see just how fabulous the Pulpwood Queen is and visit the wonderful interior of her magical home Murphy's Law.

Here are links where you can find out more about Kathy:

www.thepulpwoodqueens.com

https://www.facebook.com/Pulpwoodqueen 

www.twitter.com/Pulpwoodqueen 

www.instagram.com/thepulpwoodqueen

Designer at www.shopvida.com/collections/thepulpwoodqueen

Artist at www.decorateornate.com

Bookshop at www.bookshop.org/Shop/ThePulpwoodQueenBookShop

Kathy L. Murphy, The Pulpwood Queen - Conversation Transcript

[00:00:02] Kathy: Well, it's a Sunday morning. Maybe I'm just feeling blessed today or something.

[00:00:11] Kathy: Well, I've kind of gone Bollywood. And, of course, I have on my mandatory Pulpwood Queen Tiara. This was a gift from one of my friends that she bought in the Parisian flea market.

I know a little bit about you. I know that you are Kathy L Murphy, the Pulpwood Queen. Tell me how you reached the point where you became the Pulpwood Queen.

[00:01:02] I ended up opening the only hair salon bookstore in the country. This was January 18th of 2000. And shortly after I opened my hair salon bookstore, cause I'm a hairdresser. That's how I put myself through college. I had the local book club invite me to join their book club meeting. And I thought they were inviting me to be a member.

[00:01:43] We can only have eight in our book club because that's all that fits around the table. So we just invited you as a guest and she goes, unless somebody dies or moves away. She goes, I'm sorry. I hope you understand. I was really kind of in shock. So I, you know, when I went back in the room, nobody made eye contact.

[00:02:19] I'm going to start my own book club. And we're going to be an inclusive book club. We're going to welcome everybody, regardless of race, color, religion, economic background, whatever, whoever wants to join can join. And we're going to wear the crown, which I have on, because we're beautiful within because we're reader and it's so important to know that don't we all deserve to wear the crown.

[00:03:02] I didn't know any of them. And they were well-educated women, librarians, world travelers. And they just came out of curiosity and thinking, what would a hairdresser know about running a book club? But they did not know that. I ran out of money. After my first two years of school, I had two sisters starting.

[00:03:39] I mean, it's creating beauty and that's what I am trying to put out into the world. The beauty of reading and letting everybody know that by reading, we are creating ourselves to be more beautiful from the inside. We have more empathy, more kindness, and more understanding of a greater world than just a small world we may live in.

[00:04:19] Lovelace: Let's talk about your beauty shop and bookstore because it was Beauty and the Book …

[00:04:38] I said, what should I name my store, Jennifer, it's a hair salon bookstore. I mean, people go, which came first. And I go, they were open at the same time. She goes, well Beauty and the Book and, it’s funny through the years people have called it a lot of different things, booty and the book, beauty and the beast.

[00:05:06] Lovelace: I think that's probably when we first met, and I really don't know how possibly through Joyce Dixon who had the Southern Porch.

[00:05:21] Kathy: Guide to Life. Yeah. You know, I'm one of these people just happen to be at the right place at the right time because when I opened within a relatively small amount of time, I got a call from the Oprah Winfrey organization and they wanted to come and do a show called Dallas Doll and feature me.

[00:06:09] I had a Los Angeles Times reporter come and follow me around to a week because I kept starting more chapters. As we grew, we went from like, seven, eight people almost overnight to over a hundred. And then we started opening other chapters. And so, when she came, I had 12. Mary McNamara was her name. She ran a story on in the Sunday edition of the Los Angeles Times - their entertainment calendar and I made the front page and a full center fold. It was called “The Tastemaker.”

[00:07:08] We've never heard of anybody having this kind of notoriety in the media. Yeah, I do. It was just a sensation. I said, Oh my gosh, you know, I've always wanted to be a writer, but I thought it would be a novel. And they said, no, no, we want the story of your first year. And so, as I was writing it, I had an author in that.

[00:07:47] And she said, you know, I just married in New York times, bestselling author. I said, Oh my gosh, really? Cause I didn't know her. And she said, yes, do you, by any chance know Pat Conroy? I said, [00:08:00] Do I know Pat Conroy. Yes, I do. I go, I have known, I love his books. In fact, Marly Russoff, who was with Bantam, Doubleday, Dell, actually through her and my rep, I got to meet him in person in Dallas and she goes Marly Russoff now an agent she's my agent and Pat's agent. You should write a book. And I go, well, I am. And the next thing I knew Marley called me and she said, don't sign that contract. Let's take you to New York. I mean, who has this kind of stuff happened? So I said, really? She goes, yeah, let's, let's do a query and let's pitch it.

[00:09:03] Who the better to tell the story than you. You're so inspiring. You always, you find a way and it's always through the love of books. So that's how that book got published by Grand Central Publishing.

[00:09:30] Kathy: James Patterson, a Page Turner award. Yes, he's. And he's lovely. We're actually . . . We were published by the same person. So, I got to meet him at the Grand Central Launch Party at Grand Central Station. And that was a big thrill. I've always said it was a thrill to win that award, but what was even better for me was I won the award, at the same time as, Dolly Parton.

[00:10:16] Lovelace: You do. And let's circle back just for a minute to what you said about failure and success failure. How do all of these pieces, all of the things that I've seen you go through that I know that you've gone through. How do they all fit together?

[00:10:55] He said, have you ever had any mistakes in coloring? I go all the time. He goes, that's how you learn, only we don't call them mistakes. You changed the word to discover. I discovered that didn't work. It's discoveries. So now I say, well, I learned that did not work. I discovered a better way.

[00:11:35] Lovelace: I agree entirely been there, done that. I was thinking back, I know you interviewed Fannie Flagg at one time.

[00:12:01] We're kind of ahead of our time. The television people weren't interested in a talk show about a book club. The cable shows weren't interested. So they decided they’d post it online. And you know, those crazy shows are being watched more now on YouTube than they were when they came out. But everybody from Yann Martel, Anna Quinlan, Pat Conroy, Fannie Flagg, Helen Simonsen, Deborah Rodriguez.

[00:12:52] Lovelace: Very, very exciting. I've watched you multitask like nobody's business. First of all, I know I've heard you talk about your theater background. In every video call, we are in like a set, a theater set. You've got set design, you're dressed up, dressed to the nines.

[00:13:24] Kathy: You have to come. You just, you cannot describe it to people. It's one of those things you have to go

[00:13:37] Kathy: Well, well, the first after the first year I had all these authors, they started calling me and wanting to come. And, I thought at the end of the year, I'll have a party. And my first salon was attached to my garage of my house out in the woods.

[00:14:24] I invited all the authors. In our 2022, it’s going to be virtual in online again because of COVID we're not ready to open up convention centers yet, but we're going to have it a weeklong with over a hundred authors. It's going to be, and we've got some big plans for some really exciting new things to add. ‘Cause now we figured out how to do it online, now I know how I can really make it my own. So stay tuned.

[00:14:53] Kathy: You can't see me, but I'm also an artist. I went back to college when I was 59 and I finally got my degree after seven universities, 43 years later, graduated from the University of Texas was my BFA. That was my main goal in life was to be an artist, but I always had my nose stuck in a book.

[00:15:29] It's just basically another way of creating art, whether fashion, clothes. If you were, you could see the background of my house. It's a moving gallery. I've just been spring cleaning and I've got paintings all around me. I'm going to be doing a virtual tour coming up just to show everybody what I live in.

[00:16:07] And my book club that I started has always been a diverse and global; we've picked books from around the world. And I've always armchair traveled and traveled to as many places as I could because after I read the books, I wanted to go there. So I'm really excited to be here today because India is my number one bucket list place to go because during COVID I started watching these Bollywood films. Talk about storytelling, talk about art and color and dance and theater and over the top. And they're so happy. I'm watching a lot of other Indian films that touches upon some really incredible social issues that I just think everybody in the world should see.

[00:17:15] Lovelace: And everyone has a dream.

[00:17:39] And if you can't read, you are handicapped for life. So we need to promote literacy efforts like the Pat Conroy Literary Center. These are so important. Volunteer to read in libraries and schools and help children and do read-alouds and read to your own children. These are all very important and something that I practice, what I preach.

[00:18:11] Kathy: I love, I love living in nature because I was an outdoor girl. I really thought when I was a little kid, my sisters, I would act out our storybooks, like little Rascals did. My favorite was Tarzan because I didn't want to be Jane. I wanted to be Tarzan. I wanted to swing through the jungle, wear animal skins and have, you know, a pet monkey and a cheetah running with me.

[00:18:48] Lovelace: And yet the name of the place where you live and what you're going through right now. Let's talk about that.

[00:19:08] I had to move. Both my children were in the university of Texas in Tyler. So I decided to move. I got a job as a youth director here in Hawkins, Texas. I found a little cabin in the woods, outside of Hawkins.

[00:19:44] Because Murphy's law, you know, the adage that if it can go wrong, it will go wrong. Well, that has just followed me. You know, I say that, but I've had just as many great things happen, but this year has been pretty devastating because we had a, an ice storm unprecedented since the 1960s hit and it burst all the pipes in my cabin, ruined my roofs, peeled the paneling on the side of my house, tore up my brand new camper trailer.

[00:20:56] I know what it's like to live in the 1800’s, man, because I couldn't go anywhere. Couldn't get out of my driveway. It was too thick was snow and ice. And I learned how to live just off of what I had on hand. Former Girl Scout be prepared.

[00:21:28] Kathy: flawed individual. I cry, I pout, I scream. You're just seeing the good me, it has been very difficult.

[00:21:40] Kathy: Well, I tend to make people do that because I'm such a chatty Kathy that if you get me started, I just am like that Energizer bunny. I just keep going.

[00:22:00] Let’s go back to Bollywood. You’ve been isolated in your cabin? Throughout the pandemic. It's been hard on everyone

[00:22:31] I mean, I, every film that I wanted to see> so I thought, well, I'll start watching films. And I remember years ago I watched Bride and Prejudice, which was a takeoff of Jane Austin. And I pulled up something and I don't remember what the first film it was. I watched, I wish I'd taken note, but I discovered this actor named Shah Rukh Khan.

[00:23:33] And what else I loved about it. He's not a young man. He looks great. I mean, he's like 55 and I'm 64. So I'm, I was inspired by him. There's a wonderful thing called YouTube. You get on it. And I started listening to his speech. He's done Yale talks and Ted Talks and gotten all these doctorates from all of these college and he's well educated.

[00:24:12] I just started reading that. And then I ordered the only book I could find on him. He's working on a book, but he has to come out with it. But it's called King of Bollywood: Shah Rukh Khan and the Seductive World of Indian Cinema, and Anupama Chopra, who is a film critic in India wrote this book. She's done more interviews and I watched all of them. And the more I watched, the more impressed I was because. He's married to a wonderful woman who Gari Khan, who is, Hindi. And, he is Indian, but he's Muslim. What I love about their marriage and their children and their family is that he's another man that practices what he preaches.

[00:25:21] I just got in, since I talked to you about setting this up a new book, I'm really excited about Jaipur City Palace and it's looks really exciting to me on the, every part of India has different stories. There are over 500 different dialects. I've been trying to teach myself. I'm trying to learn the language. And honestly, I've watched so many of the films. I don't even need the subtitles anymore. I can't explain it, but it's osmosis. I don't understand the language, but I know dual means heart. I know, you know, ji, I know, you know, Mamaji. I know what these things mean and I can piece it all together but, you know, everything is done in a heightened sense of acting and I get the storyline and I'm in love with it.

[00:26:30] But then I discovered. How ignorant I was, because once I started reading the stories, I just finished an Indian author that I discovered on another blogger. Her name's Anju Gattani. She lives in Atlanta, Georgia, but she's lived all over the world and she's got a new series called The Winds of Fire, Duty and Desire set in India.

[00:27:27] But her book is fantastic, and she and I are talking almost, every other day now because I fell in love with her books. What's funny is she had over 500 rejections for this book and she was on our meeting the other night. And she said, then out of the blue, you come along, and you say, I'm going to make this a, you know, a pick for 2022.

[00:28:07] And so, as I travel in these Bollywood films and I go to the different cities, whether it's Jaipur or whether it's Calcutta or Mumbai or Bombay, whatever you want to call it, I I'm learning that. It's not, it's just like everybody thinks of United States is New York or Dallas and you have preconceived conceptions.

[00:28:39] You know, Bollywood and Books is going to open up a whole world of listening to people that are ready and willing to go to these places they've never dreamed they could go. I don't know when that's going to be, but in the meantime, let's read like crazy.

[00:29:08] Kathy: So that's what I want to know. Lovelace. Did you go by yourself?

[00:29:25] Kathy: We read a book years ago about a woman who, whose best friend had fell in love with a man from India.

[00:29:55] But the girl that goes with her meets someone. It was the best book. And the next thing you know, this, the self-publisher that helped publish her book, took out a full page in the New York Times of Cooking for Love about this book and how the Pulpwood Queen had endorsed it.

[00:30:31] Connections are made and it's only because I'm a reader, but that Bollywood seed was planted when I started reading these books. And I started watching these Bollywood films. And I just ordered two more poetry book. I want to learn everything I can about this country. It fascinates me because they have literally turned their country around in the past two decades.

[00:31:15] Yours certainly have. I mean it's thrilling to hear, first of all, your kindness comes from the heart, your generosity, the way in which you wish to serve and to help people. I'm real big on generosity and service.

[00:31:47] This planet is for us to work with nature and the animals and everything, to keep it a beautiful place to live, not destroy it. That's why I like living with all the trees. People go, well, how often do you mow your yard? I don't have a yard I've woods. And I have animals that go through every day, deer and armadillos and possums.

[00:32:46] In fact, I'm getting ready to start a whole series of paintings that are Bollywood inspired because the color, you know, the Holi, Diwali, the festival of the lights. It's just, I love to see the beauty in the world. If I could see some of those festivals . . .

[00:33:16] Kathy: I would love to go there.

[00:33:20] Kathy: That’s the one thing I'm trying to get some weight off because if the thinner I am the less, I'm going to be so hot, but I don't tolerate heat well, but I don't know how I can say that.

[00:33:53] I'll just deal with it. And you know, on one hand, I, you know, normally at home in paint clothes, my hair in a ponytail and a ball cap, but boy, do I look forward to these zoom calls? And I know this is a podcast, but we're videoing it. I love to dress up for these events. I just cleaned out all my closets and I got rid of everything except my costumes.

[00:34:48] And she just finished a book. I'm telling you, it's the mindset that you set for yourself. If you're going to think you're old, you're going to be old. I hung out with all those kids on campus. And the funniest story is my daughters came onto campus to find me one day.

[00:35:24] They helped me get through college, and I worked with youth group all my life. When you surround yourself with young people, you stay young. You have to be careful that you don't get into that recliner rocking chair stage or where you just sit and let life go by on the TV set.

[00:35:50] I love you. I've always loved you. And we were friends for years on Facebook, but we didn't even really meet until when down in Fairhope.

[00:36:11] Kathy: [00:36:11] There were Joe Formichella and Susan Hudson. I was staying with them and we were doing a big kind of art music event and never had more fun in my life. Met the best people. That's where I met TK Thorne, Maggie. I met so many people there. Fairhope is a cool place and I have a chapter there. I'm very excited about hopefully getting back that way.

[00:36:41] Kathy: I've got both shots now. As soon as we can get everybody vaccinated, I'm hitting the road and, I'll probably be bringing Mandy my executive director with me, like I did with Tiwana.

[00:36:54] Kathy: I feel like I've met a younger me because we've had so many of the same life experiences. Though, I will tell you something. Her writing is some of the best I've ever read. I'm telling everybody, mark my words, she's going to be famous someday because her two books Walking the Wrong Way Home and Sharper Than a Serpent's Tooth her short stories are great. And she's got a book she's working on that is going to be very powerful.

[00:37:36] Kathy: We need to start listening more. That is the secret. You can't learn anything if you're talking. So the more we listen, you know, I don't have very much patience. I've had to learn to be patient. And now that I've learned to be patient, I've learned to listen better and I'm talking now, but I get on podcasts.

[00:38:15] This is the one thing I want to end with. If we would all just work together and not worry so much about our own agenda, if we could all work together and show that listening and reading and educating ourselves is important. It's education through reading, this is going to change the world.

[00:38:53] So that's, that's pretty much it, that's my story. I'm going to stick to it.

[00:39:13] I never would have discovered Bollywood, but it got me. I have the whole last chapter of my book is on how Bollywood got me through COVID.

[00:39:34] Kathy: It's really simple. Everything is up on my official website.

And my email is thepulpwoodqueen@gmail.com. I am soon going to be having an art website, and so I'll be announcing that, but all my book clubs, selections, our calendar of events, our writers club or book and film club. Everything that we're doing, the Kathy L Murphy Show everything about everything we're doing is up on the website and then subscribed to my Kathy L Murphy channel on YouTube because I've got well over a hundred videos of our book events, author, interviews, story times. I mean, you name it. I'm wearing crazy costumes and I will probably be wearing them.

[00:40:32] Kathy: The website to a whole line of home fashions and fashions like pillows and, and placemats and different things. And then I have clothing for both men and women.

[00:41:00] Lovelace: I'm going to put all of that in the show notes so that people will know how to find you. Some of the recommendations that you have for the books, the books about India or films that you've loved.

[00:41:14] Lovelace: What a gift you are to the world. Thank you.

[00:41:44] I belong to the Methodist church and I love the fact that Shah Rukh Khan is Muslim and his wife is Hindi. He was asked by somebody in interview and he goes, well, what are your kids? Think about that? How do you raise your kid? And he goes, I don't know. They're just confused.

[00:42:15] I just really believe while we're here, remember that life is a gift and every day is a present. So live in the present, you know, really live in the present and understand that no matter how bad it is, there's somebody else in the world that has got it.

[00:42:53] I love having this opportunity to talk with you and find out more about you and just want to share your gifts with the world as well. Thank you.