Where I’m Writing From eli.cranor@gmail.com November 13, 2022 Eli Cranor is an Arkansas novelist whose debut novel, Don’t Know Tough, is available wherever books are sold. He can be reached using the “Contact” page at elicranor.com and found on Twitter @elicranor

I’m writing from the depths of a post-book-festival hangover.

No, this hangover isn’t alcohol induced (that one ran its course on Saturday). This hangover is more mental than physical, the kind of brain fog that comes from driving eight hours down to Baton Rouge, cramming your whole family into a hotel room for two nights, then hightailing it back up to Arkansas on Sunday, the work week looming like a thunderstorm in the next day’s forecast.

Jericho Brown (left) and Eli Cranor (right) at the Louisiana Book Festival

It’s been back-to-back book festivals for the Cranor fam. Last week, it was an hour-long drive to Little Rock. Nothing to it. This trip was different. Three days later, and we’re still recovering.

I’m currently in my basement, trying to get back into the writing groove. My wife, on the other hand, is upstairs, trying to get our kids down for a nap.

Our family runs best on a routine. Both of my parents were elementary school teachers. Minus the one year I spent overseas — and two months every summer — my entire life has been punctuated by a bell.

My wife and I have taken the same disciplined approach to parenting. We get our kids to bed by eight each night, and they wake us up around six every morning. There are no bells, but there is a definite schedule, and every second of our lives follow it.

My wife’s grandmother, a silver-haired woman we all call “Granny,” has dementia. Which is why, when we see her, she repeats this same line, often more than once per visit: “Ever wonder what you did with your time before you had kids?”

Despite Granny’s lessened mental state, her question is spot on. So sharp, actually, it makes me cringe when I realiz how much time I wasted before becoming a father.

Which brings me back to Baton Rouge and our choice to bring the Cranor kids along to the Louisiana Book Festival. This was the third and final festival for me before year’s end, and when I got the invitation, I almost turned it down.

I remember looking at my calendar, seeing all the different events piling up, and thinking another trip would be too much. It didn’t help matters that the LA Book Festival was taking place on Halloween weekend, a sacred time at the Cranor house.

I expressed my concern to the event coordinator, and he responded by sending me a link to Baton Rouge’s Fifolet Halloween Parade. I watched the attached video, watched all these Mardi-Gras-sized floats come rolling down Convention Street, and decided I’d at least ask my wife, aka, “The Boss.”

The Boss didn’t grow up loving Halloween like I did. She wasn’t much of a reader, either. But in the ten years since we’ve been married, she’s dressed up in ornate costumes at the end of every October and now reads a couple books a month.

Long story short, The Boss said, “Let’s do it.”

And so we did.

We rolled into Baton Rouge Friday afternoon and took the kids downtown to see Amanda Shaw and her band “The Cute Boys.” We ate jambalaya and got two oversized snow cones. One green. One blue. My daughter never stopped dancing. My son fell down right before intermission and scraped his hands. The Boss held him for the rest of the show.

That night I went to an author event and ran into Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Jericho Brown. I later chatted with New York Times bestselling author M.O. Walsh about that one time we met up at the Yoknapatawpha Writers’ Workshop in Oxford, Mississippi. It was a great night, followed by a great day where I spoke at two panels and was surprised to see real-life people in the audience.

As wonderful as all the author events were, nothing topped the Halloween parade. It was everything the festival coordinator had promised, complete with a gang of crazy clowns, a horde of Elvis impersonators, and enough spookiness to last us till next year.

It’s taken me a little over half an hour to write the first draft of this column, enough time for the kids to finally settle down upstairs. Maybe they’re asleep now, already dreaming of our latest adventure. I watch the cursor blink, timing up with the seconds, each one inching us back toward our normal routine.