The Pulpwood Queen Ran Away with the Book Loving Circus, Won’t You Join Me!

Kathy L. Murphy as The Ringmaster at her circus themed Girlfriend Weekend Author Extravagana

Good Morning from East Texas and Holly Lake Ranch!

I bounded out of bed this morning because I had this dream, right before I work up, on what I was going to write today. You see, my life my book-loving Breathless Bubbles and Book friends, is a three-ring circus and I am the Ringmaster. I juggle many balls in my life. I am an artist, the Pulpwood Queens and Timber Guys Book Club founder and facilitator, (the largest “meeting and discussing” book club in the world” and I have my own life that is sometimes like a merry go round. It has its fair share of up and downs but always reaching for the brass ring, always. I have swung from the trapeze, been shot from a cannon, road the elephant and been too many times snapping my whip in a cage with the lions an tigers, not because of my athletic abilities but the fact, that I am a lifelong reader. Books have taken me to places that I never dreamed and now spur everything I do in life.

When I was a child, my parents took me to the circus, Barnum and Bailey and we could take one friend. It was a really big deal. We didn’t go many places and only one true vacation when I was a child. You remember every detail from the cotton candy to the balloons, to the girl riding on top the elephants to the flying trapeze Later I took my own daughters man times to see the small circuses that performed in Jefferson, Texas. The elephants would put up the tents. Then that very special day to go ourselves on to the big top, Barnum and Bailey Circus in Dallas, a dream come true. Circuses are becoming a thing of the past with Barnum and Bailey folding up their tents for the last time but I refuse to quit. You see I am driven by this world of my own through the many pages of the books that play out in my imagination.

Did you ever read the children’s book, “Toby Tyler or Ten Weeks with a Circus” by James Otis? The book was written in 1881 but became popular when I was a kid in 1960 by Disney as they made a movie based on the story of a small boy that sees tents and runs away to join the circus. He sells peanuts and lemonade but eventually returns home. It is quite an exciting story. We even had a traveling theatre group come to my school “Toby Tyler” where all the Kindergarteners to Seniors at Eureka, Kansas public schools went to the high school auditorium to watch the production. I remember paying a dime to go. I was lost in the pomp and circumstance. I had not thought about that memory until this morning when I was dreaming about what I would write for the day.

All my life I have been running away with the circus in my mind, after all, it was the greatest show on earth. Life is sometimes very hard my friends and never gets easier. I just put on my lavender-tinted glasses and keep on reading. I would much rather be a Wendy, or Peter, or Tinkerbell, or Tarzan, or Toby Tyler from the pages of my favorite children’s books that live in a world that has become so mean. Some people think I need to grow up. Some people think that I need to live in reality but this is my coping mechanism for a life that makes me bound out of bed in the morning to begin a new day. A new dawn of all the possibilities in this world is open to me by keeping on reading and educating myself in this world of books. I have no fear when it comes to my passion for books, authors, literacy, and reading as books did save me. I am on a mission to get everybody reading and into this world whether through my art, or my book club or whether you are an author or reading. Like the Lost Boys of Peter Pan, I am creating my own tribe to fight
Captain Hooks and all that brings evil and sadness into the world. Won’t you fly with me, I dare you!

For more about my book club go to www.thepulpwoodqueens.com and you can still find out their copies of my first book, “The Pulpwood Queens’ Tiara Wearing, Book Sharing Guide to Life”. I am currently bringing it back into print by Girlfriend Weekend 2019, our annual book club gathering. I am also working on three NEW books, again my life is a three-ring circus. Two non-fiction, the sequel to my first book to be called “The Pulpwood Queen Goes Back to School”. The second a book with my first cousin, retired Lt. Colonel Terry Purcell about our freedom growing up in the 50’s, 60’s and 70’s in the flint hills of Kansas on my grandparent’s farm, called “Outhome”. And last my first fiction book that may be a children’s book but adults will want to read it called “Frogtown.” I keep juggling those balls and never had more fun in my life. Here is King Laurencia that I created who rules the kingdom and an artwork of mine that is the entrance to Frogtown. Happy Reading now running back to the circus.