If Graciela Jones was a real person, I'd insist we be best friends. If that failed, I'd try hard not to be her enemy.
Ace, as she is known, is sassy, spunky and deeply Southern, the kind of good ole gal you can imagine bending over a gas burner to light the first cigarette of the morning. Fiercely loyal and incapable of suffering fools, she whips out zingers like "I am so sick of living in Bugtussle, Mississippi. There are many folks here I can't stand the sight of, and every time I leave the house I see at least 10 people I want to punch in the face."
She has no use for her friend Chloe's abusive husband and is losing patience with Chloe, lamenting, "She won't entertain even the slightest suggestion of divorce and ignores me when I say he should be killed...Just like that Dixie Chicks song about Earl."
See what I mean? I need more people like Ace in my life. Because she exists only on the pages of Stephanie McAfee's hilarious debut, "Diary of a Mad Fat Girl," a chat with McAfee had to do.
"It’s a dream come true to walk in and see my book on the shelf," said McAfee, who is scheduled to appear at the Book Exchange, 2932 Canton Road in east Cobb, at 6:30 p.m. Feb. 16 to read and sign the book. Local author Karen White will introduce her.
A Booneville, Miss., native who now lives with her husband and son in Milton, Fla., McAfee was a school teacher unhappy with her job when she turned to writing. Actually, school teacher isn't quite the right term. She was officially known as a "math interventionist."
"I’m an English major," she tried telling her employers. But off she went, helping high school freshmen untangle algebra problems.
"I met some really sweet kids," she said. "I think I helped them more with their personal problems."
While she enjoyed the students and her colleagues, the job itself was "painful" to an Ole Miss graduate who'd studied English at Oxford.
"What that job did was put me in a place where I was like, ‘OK I can’t do this anymore,'" McAfee said. With her husband Brandon's support, she quit her job and spent a year on the book, writing around her son Carson's nap schedule. After receiving a pile of rejections from agents McAfee posted the tale online in December 2010. By early 2011 it had become an e-book hit. A flood of emails from agents and publishers soon followed, and it's just been released in soft cover by New American Library, a division of Penguin Group.
"I’ve still got my stack of rejection letters," McAfee said. "Sometimes I pull them out and read them and go, bwah ha ha ha!"
Frothy as the head on a cold PBR, "Diary" concerns Ace, Chloe and their friend Lilly as they deal with drama that starts swirling when Lilly is accused of carrying on with the high school quarterback. Ace's crabby boss, former flame and trusty four-legged sidekick, a Chihuahua-dachshund mix ("chiweenie") named Buster Loo, complete the portrait of a small town stuffed with big personalities.
"I polish off a few beers and, after much pomp and circumstance, I beguile them with the details of everything that happened from the moment I stepped off the elevator until Sheriff Jackson stuffed me into the back of his patrol car," Ace rattles off at the beginning of one chapter. "I'm quite the storyteller, if I do say so myself."
So is McAfee, if I do say so myself.
Event preview
Author Stephanie McAfee will appear Feb. 16 at 6:30 p.m. at the Book Exchange, 2932 Canton Road, Marietta. Visit www.bookexchangemarietta.com. or call 770-427-4848.
About the Author
