Hello, everyone.

I'm Ginger Rowsey with Madison Co.. of Channel 11 Checkup.

It's a show that brings you the latest health information and local happenings.

Channel 11 doesn't run commercials.

As a community nonprofit TV station, they rely on donations from the public.

It's super easy to donate.

Go to their website westtntbs.org, and click on the donate tab.

Your donation stays local and helps WLJT be a community TV station for all of West Tennessee.

Channel 11 is all about home.

[music] It's all about home.

This Tennessee author has taught junior high, started and shut down a tutorial business, taught English to Chinese students, and has been a receptionist at a doggy daycare.

Straight ahead on Tennessee Writes, we're meeting author Eliza Carlsby, an elementary ed grad from Union University.

She's a mom of four boys who has turned her love of family into her first novel.

We'll find out how she finds time to write with four boys and if she can speak Chinese.

Brew some coffee and find a comfy chair.

Tennessee Writes starts right now.

Books about Tennessee.

Books that come from Tennessee authors.

Books and stories with a Tennessee twist.

West Tennessee PBS presents Tennessee Writes.

Welcome to Tennessee Writes, the show that gets up close and personal with Tennessee authors.

My name is Peter Noll.

This show goes beyond the book to learn about its author, from childhood to where their stories come from.

They'll even offer advice if you want to write a book yourself.

Plus, we put the authors on a stopwatch as they try and beat the clock and answer questions in the lightning round.

Tennessee Writes welcomes author Eliza Carlsby.

She's a Union University graduate and has been a teacher for junior high and Chinese students, but says she loves her jobs with no pay the best, being a wife and mom to her four sons.

Tennessee Writes welcomes Eliza Carlsby.

Welcome to the show.

Thank you.

You are from Jackson?

I'm actually from Murray, Kentucky, but I've lived in Jackson since 2001.

Okay, so you're a Kentucky girl at heart.

I am a Kentucky girl, but I have split allegiance because I've lived here so long.

What brought you to Jackson?

I went to Union University, and I met my husband my freshman year.

We got married between my sophomore and junior, and we just have stayed around the entire time.

You got married in college?

I did, yes.

What are you doing now?

We heard you wanted to be a teacher, so you actually taught junior high?

I taught junior high at Brownsville, Haywood Junior High for five years.

Then, when I had my second child, I went home to be a stay-at-home mom.

I've continued educating.

I homeschool my four boys.

My oldest is now a starting junior, a rising junior.

I have a second grader and four of them, all educating them.

I also work at our family business, Wagging Tail Resort, here in Jackson.

For full transparency, that's where I met Eliza.

I was checking out.

Our family gets our two dogs groomed there.

I'm the king of point-of-purchase sales.

I saw this book as we were checking out, and I said, "Oh, what's that?"

It's one of the books with a very beautiful cover.

She's like, "Well, I wrote a book."

That's sort of what this show is about, is you meet everyday people that have written books.

That's right.

I love that you love the cover because .. the story was inspired by my mom and my dad's relationship.

My mom is the one who designed this amazing cover for me.

She freehanded it, and I thought in a world of AI, it would be a standout on the bookshelf.

It is a standout.

It is a standout.

How do you find time to write with four sons?

Well, I think it's really important to model a full life for your kids.

Early on, I had a professor tell me if you wanted to have your kids love to read, you need to read in front of them.

If you want your kids to love to write, you need to write in front of them.

Just as a educator, I just decided that that was important.

I carved out just a little bit of my day, every day, to work on it.

There were times and seasons where life was too busy, like when we fostered.

There were other times where we just dove in, and I just tried to say, okay, 30 minutes before everybody wakes up, I'm going to write.

It took me a long time, seven years, actually.

That's how I--.

Seven years, but y.. I kept at it a little at a time.

Talk to us about teaching Chinese students.

You taught them English?

I taught them English.

It was a really interesting program.

What you did is they didn't want Chinese speakers.

They wanted Native Americans or English speakers, primarily with English-- not English, American accents.

They even liked Southern accents.

I just would get on, and I would follow the curriculum and talk to them.

This was online?

Yes, it was online.

You didn't go to China?

I did not go to China.

Do you speak Chinese?

I don't, although my oldest son wanted to.

It is a very difficult language to learn because it's so tonal.

I couldn't do it because mom sounded the same as milk to me.

It's a really cool language, though.

How long did you do that experience of teaching Chinese students?

I think it was about three years.

I would wake up at 3:30 in the morning and then work until seven o'clock, and then homeschool my kids.

It was a busy season in our life.

I'm glad not to be doing it anymore.

Wow, with your four sons?

Yes, yes.

We also fostered during that time.

We had six children that came through our home during that time.

You must stay very, very busy household.

We are a chaotic, beautiful, loud household, yes.

[chuckles] Then it's a family business, the doggy daycare grooming.

It is.

Wagging Tail was primarily my in-la.. My sister-in-law and my husband, 15 years ago, they started Wagging Tail Resort here in Jackson.

We do grooming, daycare for dogs, training for dogs, and boarding.

Just recently, I jumped on board.

Now that my kids are a little older and I'm not teaching Chinese at 3:30 in the morning anymore, I decided I could lend a hand, too.

It's really a family business.

It really is.

My two older sons work there as .. They're learning how to groom this summer.

It's very much, we believe, in family working together and playing hard together.

When did you decide, I'm going to write a book?

Through all this, your life seems really busy, busier than mine, busier than most people's.

At some point, you said, I want to write a book.

Well, I feel like the best writers are ones that are truly readers.

I love to read.

I, even as a child, wanted to write, but it was always agonizing.

I guess it was probably when we moved to our new house.

The house was all clean.

We had pared down our possessions.

I felt like I had a little extra time.

I tried to teach myself piano, but that didn't stick, but the writing did.

You call yourself-- even though you're not professionally teachin.. you still consider yourself an educator.

I do.

We have four children that we educate.

For a long time, that's what most of my day is still going through.

I just finally taught my dyslexic child how to read.

It took four years, 400 hours of intense solo tutoring, and we got there.

I do feel like that is my calling, is educating.

How lucky your sons must be to have a professionally trained educator as their mom.

I don't think they always feel lucky.

[laughter] Sometimes I think they're like, "Mom, why can't you not make us do school during the summer?"

Your sons are well-behaved.

We ran into them at the grocery store, but they're very well-behaved.

Thank you.

I am really proud of.. They're sweet boys, and they work hard.

I guess our biggest gift is that they really love each other well.

Your family business is a doggy resort.

Do you have dogs in the house?

We have one dog, and he hates other dogs.

He is a one-dog-only dog.

We also have three cats and a bird, and then we really enjoy everybody else's dogs at the resort.

We really do.

It's so fun.

You like have a menagerie at the house?

Oh, absolutely, yes.

What is the most surprising thing our viewers would not know about you?

Oh, that is a hard question.

I'm stumped.

Let me think.

I was homeschooled myself, so .. that's one of the reasons why I wanted to be a homeschool mom.

I was homeschooled in the'80s when it was almost illegal to be done.

Then I went to a public high school and enjoyed that.

I don't know if that's surprising or not.

What did your husband, what was he learning at Union?

My husband, he has a double degree in psychology and public relations.

It was really--.

Oh, I thought of what I could tell you.

It was really unusual.

It was not our life dream to start a doggy day here, but we did.

It's been a great adventure.

What's the one thing you want to tell us?

Well, believe it or not, when we were first married, we actually had a casket company.

Here in Jackson?

Here in Jackson, where we sold caskets to funeral homes.

That's unusual about us, I guess.

How long did you do that?

Two years, and we were not very good at it.

[chuckles] Wow.

What did you learn a.. I learned that many funeral homes have no incentive to buy caskets from cheaper suppliers because they are owned by Batesville, the casket company.

Wow.

You learn something new every episode on Tennessee Wri.. [music] Eliza, let's delve into Taming a Honeybird.

This is a book that really celebrates your family.

Tell us about it.

It is set in the 1950s in a Louisville suburb because my parents grew up in the Louisville suburb of St.

Matthew's.

They were best friends growing up.

When I set out to write this book, I just took all my family stories, and mainly the personalities of my mom and dad, and I just started to write.

As I wrote, the book shifted.

It got a plot.

I added things to it.

They're not identical.

It's not really a memoir or anything like that, but has a lot of fun stories from my parents' childhood, like creating a miniature golf course.

I was fascinated in that it's almost biographical of your parents, but yet it's fictionalized.

It's not just a series of short stories.

They're all woven in together.

I also, one of the viewers know, it isn't like a happy-feel-good book, although you do, but there's some adolescence through the eyes of children, which I think is fascinating.

Tell us about that.

I love narrators who are children.

When I think of great books like To Kill a Mockingbird, which I know this isn't, but when I think of Scout's perspective of looking on her childhood and telling about adult events, those are my favorite books.

Maybe it's because I'm an educator.

Maybe it's because I love children.

I wanted this to be a story where we, as the reader, understood more of what was going on than the narrator.

Peggy Sue is a child, so she's limited by her child's perspective.

She sees her father's gambling.

She thinks that she can solve the problem.

I think that if we're really honest and we look at our own childhood, when we encountered problems, we were like that too.

I want Peggy Sue to be a character that is hopeful and that sort of thing.

Also, as the reader, I want us to know there are problems that are too big for us to solve on our own.

It took me a long time to try to get that balance between just sweet and sappy, but also just like life is hard sometimes, and there are hard lessons that we can't control.

I just want to convey that through my story.

This was of a lot of the books I've been reading for this season of Tennessee Writes.

This is the first thing-- I've cried at two of them, and .. at the end because it was just so sweet.

I don't want to give away the ending, but it was so sweet.

It's incredible.

I've heard a lot of stories from my parents growing up and my grandma and my mom, and my dad.

I never, ever thought about I need to write these down.

This would make a great book.

I will say what pushed me to finish the book was actually-- because I had it and I was working on it and working on it, but what pushed me to finish is my mom had a heart attack.

I thought, "I want this to be a book she can have in her hands before she dies."

We don't know how many days we have on this earth.

I think it's important to say thank you to the people who have raised us-- even if they're imperfect-- and to celebrate the good things they've given us.

The two main characters are Peggy Sue and Stretch.

Are those really parents' names?

No, my mom and my dad.

They're Barbara and Phil, but it's really based on their personalities.

Basically, when I wrote the book, while the plot is my own device, I would think, what would my mom have done in a situation like this?

How would my dad have responded to this?

My dad is a very quiet man and very, very thin, but he loves to tell stories.

In it, I give Stretch a couple of scenes where he gets to just tell these outrageously crazy ghost stories and things like that.

It just reminded me of my dad.

Or with my mom, how would my mom have solved a murder if one had happened in her neighborhood?

That's what I did.

[music] We have come to the segment in Tennessee Writes called the Lightning Round.

It's where we test our authors against the clock.

We ask you a series of quick literary book-writing questions and see how many you can answer in two minutes.

Okay.

If you don't kno.. We'll put two minutes on the clock, and it will begin counting down after the first question.

Whose autobiography book is your all-time favorite?

Corrie Ten Boom, The Hiding Place.

What's the most expensive book you own?

Crime and Punishment.

How much did you pay?

50.

Name a fellow author you would like to go on a book tour wi.. Ooh, Kate DiCamillo.

Who did you give a copy of your first published book to?

My mom and dad.

What celebrity would you most like to co-author a book with?

Pass.

Name the book you think everyone should read.

Till We Have Faces by C.S.

Lewis.

If you were stranded on an island with only one book, what would it be?

The Bible.

How many versions of your book did you write before it was completed?

20.

What is the first book that made you cry?

Christy.

What type of pen or marker do you sign your books with?

Sharpie.

How many pages would be the book about your life?

160.

What animal best represents your book?

A kangaroo.

Oh, hummingbird.

What is your favorite book of all time?

Today I would say Anne of Green Gables.

What's your least favorite book?

Today it would be [?].

How often do you check your Amazon book reviews and ratings?

Every week.

What is the name of the font used in your book?

Garamond.

If you could pick a celebrity to narrate your book, who would it be?

Pass.

Name a book you're reading right now.

Bad Kitty.

What food, item, or drink helped you write?

Coffee.

If you could have a book signing event in any city in the world, where would it be?

Probably Brooklyn.

What author, living or dead, would you most like to have dinner with?

C.S.

Lewis.

[music] We always love to hear the authors, in their own voice, read from the words they've written from their stories.

Would you mind reading a short section from your book?

I would love to.

I want to read a chapter or a part of a chapter where Peggy Sue finds out her bike is destroyed.

Here we go.

"Dag nabbit, Peggy Sue, how many times have I told you not to leave your bicycle in the driveway?"

Daddy's words made my blood run cold, and bile rose in my mouth.

I dashed to the door and saw poor Apache's mangled remains besides daddy's wheel.

His sinews and bones had crumbled underneath the weight of the Cadillac.

I ran over and pulled his streaming mane from his eye and tried to comfort him by patting his handlebar ears.

His tires let out a slow hissing noise as I comforted him in his last dying moments, my heart dying along with that angelic beam.

Daddy shook his head, "Haven't I told you to put that bike up?"

I diverted my attention from Apache's body and glared at him, "You killed him."

Rage and sorrow mixed together.

"You killed Apache."

I ran my hand across his crushed frame, "I loved him, and you killed him.

I hate you."

Daddy's face purpled, and he threw his hands in the air, but I didn't care.

I continued, "Don't just stand there, go get my gun."

Daddy ran his hands through his hair and looked bewildered, "I can't let him suffer.

I need to put him out of his misery."

I dashed inside, grabbed my cap gun, and went back to the suffering beast.

Daddy just stared at me when I said, "Apache, my old boy, I'll see you in glory."

It was hard to properly aim.

The guns were my tears, and I needed to aim too.

"Daddy, please, you do it," and I gave him my gun.

He shakily took it, aimed, and pulled the trigger.

The cap's gunpowder smoke drifted in the air like a spider and burned my nostrils with its accurate smell.

Then Apache's tires let out one last exhalation before he left me alone on this cold earth.

Once he was gone, I could no longer be brave.

I crumbled into a ball beside him and allowed my sorrow to overwhelm me.

Daddy pulled me into his arms and carried me gently inside.

Mama came over and ran her fingernails down my back.

Sandra tucked Judy beside me and had all the good sense to be quiet.

I went over to the window and saw that daddy was digging.

I opened the door, and he asked, "Daddy, why are you digging a hole?"

He didn't stop digging.

"It's for your bike."

It seems to me that a bike like that needs a proper funeral.

"You want to help?"

[music] Eliza, there are a lot of people out there watching who are thinking, "I've got a story, I want to tell my family's story," or, "Oh, I want to write a book."

What advice do you give them?

Even if you just want to write a story, I would suggest kind of coming up with where you want to go, so a plot.

One of the reasons my book took so long to get from start to finish is, at first, it was a bunch of unconnected stories.

I had to go back and try to create a plot afterwards.

That was like taking a string out of the middle of a sweater and pulling it.

It would create problems all down the line, and I'd have to fix it and fix it.

I would suggest writing at least a loose plot down, because that's the bones of your story, and then just writing.

Don't give up.

You took seven years.

Seven years and life happens.

You have to fight for those pockets of time if that's something you want to do.

I would just make sure you write every day if you can, and if not every day, maybe once a week, an hour a week.

Where can people get Taming a Hummingbird?

The easiest place would be Amazon.

If you look up Eliza Carlsby, I'm the only Eliza Carlsby out there, so you should be able to find it.

Good name.

You should be able to find it.

It's in e-book, it's in paperback, and it's in hardcover.

Audio?

No.

Not yet.

My sons want me to do that, and my husband is trying to convince me to.

He thinks it'd be really cool if I read it myself.

That way they could hear me when I'm old.

You do a great job.

Well, thank you.

The other place locally is our resort.

At Wagging Tail Resort, we have it on this-- That's where I got it.

[chuckles] We have it on the shelves there, and we'd love for you to come by, get a book, and you can take a tour and see all the puppies, too.

They're really fun.

You can follow me on Facebook at elizacarlsby.com.

You have your own website.

I do.

If you are a book club, I have book club quest.. for you and a menu you can get off of my book club of recipes that are mentioned in the book.

I love to talk to book clubs.

Feel free to contact me if you want me to talk.

What is that website?

It is www.elizacarlsby.com.

Great.

Eliza, sadly, we have come to the end of this edition of Tennessee Writes, but we do want to thank you for joining us, coming in, and telling us about your journey to becoming an author, your chaotic, fun family, and your book that shares so much about your parents.

Please stay in touch and keep us updated on what you do.

We do want to thank you with this Tennessee Writes writing kit.

It's a briefcase, a latte mug, notebook, and pen for your future writings, including the Cozy Mystery Series, you're going to toying around with?

Yes.

Keep us updated.

Keep us updated.

Before you leave, though, you got to sign .. My pleasure.

Thanks, Channel 11, for supporting local authors.

Thank you.

For comments about today's show or to suggest a Tennessee author for a future program, email us at tennesseewrites@westtnpbs.org.

Tennessee Writes, on air and streaming now.

[music] The program you've been watching was made possible through the generous financial support of West Tennessee PBS viewers like you.

Please visit westtnpbs.org and make a donation today so that we can continue to make local programs like this possible.

Thank you.