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'Confessions of a Counterfeit Farm Girl' goes from blog to book
Although she’s been a southern belle for only three years, author Susan McCorkindale is leaving her mark on the world and putting northern Virginia on the map. Her book, “Confessions of a Counterfeit Farm Girl,” is now available in stores and she’s heading to Culpeper for a book signing on Nov. 23 at Pepperberries.McCorkindale was embedded into Fauquier County after spending her entire life, up to that point, in the suburbs of New Jersey. She was a city mouse, to be sure, with her high-powered magazine marketing career in New York City, expensive business suit wardrobe and a Starbucks on every corner.
After a series of events McCorkindale, along with her husband, decided to uproot their two boys and reinvent their lives as farmers on a 500-acre cattle ranch in Upperville. Obviously, no small change.
Living amongst livestock, dirt roads and field equipment - and not a coffee house nor a shopping mall in sight - she did what any fish-out-of-water female would do in our new millennium; she started a blog. Lonely for her Yankee friends, McCorkindale blogged about the odd things she found about country life and the trial and error way in which she figured out how things run “in this neck of the woods”. Not quite sure where she fit in, she entitled the site, “Confessions of a Counterfeit Farm Girl.”
The blog became such a hit among her friends “back home” as well as the new ones she made along the way to becoming a bona fide Virginia farm girl that it made it onto the computer screen of a literary agent, who immediately contacted McCorkindale about the idea of turning “Confessions” into a book.
After working some literary magic, McCorkindale’s agent signed her masterpiece with Penguin Books. “Confessions of a Counterfeit Farm Girl” made it into bookstores on Oct. 7 and it’s rapidly becoming a huge success.
The book begins with an accounting of McCorkindale’s city life and career, her rise to the top and her mischievous misgivings about her job. Every page is lined with laughter as McCorkindale narrates her animated adventure (or misadventures, as the case may be) of agreeing to changing every facet of her life, which became glaringly apparent with every mile her family migrated further from New Jersey toward the Virginia border.
While the locals here in Virginia will enjoy reading about familiar things like driving long distances to get to ANYTHING, getting stuck in “traffic” behind farm equipment and learning the value of a mudroom, it’s also a great peek into what living on a farm is like. One piece of advice from McCorkindale - “Manolos and manure do NOT mix“.
With all of the attention McCorkindale and her book are getting she is riding high, enjoying the success of so much hard work in putting the project together to the publisher’s satisfaction.
“My book signings and the media stuff are my reward for spending hours and hours alone writing the book,” admitted McCorkindale, “I’m a people person so being social is how I recharge; meeting new people energizes me.”
While the success of the book, the fans, the interviews, the attention are all thrilling for McCorkindale, to her family, she’s the same loving and devoted mother and wife they’ve come to know, love and laugh with all along.
“I’m still just mom [in the opinion of my sons],” said McCorkindale, “Until somebody recognizes me in, like, Panera, and my boys get free bagels - then I’m cool. Otherwise, I’m just the cleanliness-homework-get-off-face book-it’s-4 a.m. Nazi.”
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