THE HISTORIC OAKLAND CEMETERY OF ATLANTA:  SPEAKING STONES  (must get the title of the book in first.) As Cathy Kaemmerlen, a professional storyteller and author of two published books from the History Press, a small publishing company out of Charleston, SC that promotes book projects about regional history, this is my first visit to a SIBA event.  (As a journalist, I’ve been trained to get in those 5 w’s  and one h up front.  They’re not all in here yet, so read on.)

Wearing the hat of an author still doesn’t sit easily on my head although I’ve been writing since childhood, just not publishing, but researching and writing with performances in mind.  (Have been keeping a journal of my first book signing/book talk experiences, which often end up being an afternoon of people watching and trying not to be invisible and on the other extreme, too pushy–this has the makings of a book in itself or at least a personal story in the storytelling world.) Selling one’s own book, which one has poured heart, soul, and vast amounts of time into is not an easy thing to do.  And of course I wonder why this is necessary- when it should be automatically obvious to all parties that my book is the most fascinating thing out, as you sit there in a huge bookstore surrounded by so many titles that you yourself are drawn to and that are in direct competition with you own. (Doesn’t it appear as if everyone has a book out these days?  Everyone is a writer?  Everyone’s blog is worth reading? )

So, I’ve decided the key is to find one’s niche, just as I have to find my right audience as a performer.  As an actress, I can’t keep the “pretense” act going. I’ve been taught to keep it real.  And what I write about is real people.  I am drawn to ordinary people who have, through no design of their own, been placed in extraordinary circumstances or times and have had to make some key and critical decisions.  Often these decisions involve whether or not to take the high road or the low road. And the final decision made by these real folks from our past, has made a difference down the road to us.

There is no greater place to find a magnitude of these kinds of folks and their stories than in a cemetery.  I live in Atlanta, Georgia, so the cemetery that chose me, the obvious candidate, was Historic Oakland Cemetery of Atlanta, the city cemetery from 1850 (the city’s origins) to 1885 (when a rival cemetery opened due to urban growth and the rise of the Phoenix Atlanta.) No, cemeteries are not creepy places, at least not Oakland, being an example of the Garden Cemetery Movement of Victorian America.  Some 70,000 souls reside at Oakland and to me, a storyteller,that means 70,000 stories speak out to us from their stones. With a little bit of digging (it’s easy to use these sort of puns when you’re writing about cemeteries), you can’t keep up with the amount of material available under your feet. Margaret Mitchell is there.  Bobby Jones is there– probably the most famous residents.  But there are so many others whose stories tell the interconnected history of Atlanta through the destruction of Atlanta during the Civil War and the rise of Atlanta after the war.  There are the movers and shakers who abide there, including Jasper Newton Smith, whose statue sits close to the entry gates and checks out all the visitors.  There are those whose lives ended in scandal, murder, mystery, like the brothers Hill.  There are those who have noble stories to tell, like Sarah Dye who had to bury her dead child in the midst of the Battle of Atlanta.  Profiles in Courage governor John Marshall Slaton sleeps at Oakland.  Digging into his story you unveil the story of the Leo Frank trial.  As then Georgia governor, Slaton made the decision to commute Frank’s death sentence, which caused an outage and a lynching and the rise of the ugly faces of anti-Semitism and the Ku Klux Klan, which takes you to Lucille Frank’s story, as the widow of Leo, which takes you to Sally Slaton’s story as the wife of the governor, which takes you to the story of her prior wedding to Tom Cobb, who committed suicide, which leads you to the story of the Lewis Redline Scandal that Tom Cobb “appeared” to be involved with…And then you are taken in, ensconced by all these peoples and stories of the city where you reside. You are hooked.  It’s your legacy and story too.  We are all connected.

And so, I assume that everyone will be interested in the stories I’ve unfolded, because how can they not be?  And I get ten minutes on Saturday, September 29th in a room with three other authors who are representing other “elements,” me being earth, to convince all of you, that my book of stories is something you won’t be able to put down.  I’ll be the lady who might be wearing Victorian garb because Oakland is a Victorian cemetery and we all need some attention grabber. And I’ll be bringing to life some of these stories that live well beyond the grave.