Middle Tennessee – Lots More Than Hee Haw and Honkey Tonks with Linda Thorne

My husband and I chose Tennessee as a new home base without having ever been here. In 2007 we were both out of work and, after some online research, decided to look for jobs in this beautiful state, specifically the Nashville suburb of Hermitage. We started answering ads for jobs in Middle Tennessee. We didn’t use our California address knowing that would be an obstacle when looking for a job on the other side of the country. Instead, we sent resumes with a Nashville post office box and began getting calls. I was the first to be invited to interview for a human resources manager position at a company near Nashville and I packed up and moved here. I didn’t get that job, but my husband joined me in early 2008 and I was gainfully employed a few months later.

Nashville is the capital of Tennessee and often called “Music City” for good reason. Artists flock to downtown Nashville in hopes they’ll strum and sing their way into celebrity status. It’s not just country music the city is known for. We have rock and roll, symphonies, and blues. Nashville is the home of the Nashville Jazz Workshop and B.B. King’s Blues Club. Since I’ve been here I’ve worked in a building that used to be the recording studio for Willie Nelson. I  know the man who found the stolen guitar that Gibson Guitar Company gave B.B. King for his 80^th birthday. Eric Dahl found the special guitar and returned it in person to B.B. King, and then wrote a book about it. Here’s the link to that story: https://www.ericdahlpublicity.com/book

You can hang out in downtown Nashville and never be bored. Have some of our great barbecue ribs or hot chicken and take a ride on the Trash Nash tour bus. Visit places like the Country Music Hall of Fame or go down Broadway and stop in at one famous honky-tonk spot after another or visit Printers Alley and the Ryman Auditorium. While in town, you’ve got to see the Parthenon, which is a full-scale, honest-to-Pete, exact replica of the real Parthenon in Greece.

We've got sports galore. Tennessee Titans, Nashville Sounds, Nashville Predators, Nashville Metro’s Pro Soccer and some great college teams like Vanderbilt, Austin Peay, UT, MTSU, and more.

For a writer, I hit pay dirt moving to Nashville and didn’t even know it until I’d settled in. Every year I attend the Killer Nashville International Writers Conference held close by. https://killernashville.com/

The picture below is of one of the two panels I served on this past August at Killer Nashville.

Before I moved here, I didn’t know that Nashville had about the largest writers’ meetup group in the United States. I eagerly joined them and also the Sisters in Crime Middle Tennessee Chapter. Click the SinC Middle Tennesse link below for more information : http://www.sistersincrimemiddletennessee.org/

 

How convenient to have Fall Fest in Hermitage, three miles from my home. I attended last week and sold books with a group of other local authors.

We also have the Southern Festival of Books each October. The 2018 event ended today. Here’s a picture of the most recent past panel I was on at the SF of Books.

And, on the outskirts of downtown Nashville, there’s the Grand Old Opry and another hidden gem outside of downtown called the Loveless Café famous not only for its southern style cooking, but its biscuits made by someone cooking on a television program who was known as “the biscuit lady.”

I’ve stuck primarily with Nashville on this post because I have not spent much time outside of this area, but I’ve seen some other spots and heard of many more. There’s honestly way too much in this state for a post the size of mine. I could talk about Gatlinburg. The famous Dollywood in nearby Pigeon Forge. Or Memphis and its Beale Street and the famous Graceland, the Elvis Presley home.

In my third, yet unwritten, book in the Judy Kenagy mystery series, I plan to relocate Judy to the Nashville area of Tennessee. Once she is here, like me, this will be her home for the remainder of the series.

For more about me visit: http://www.lindathorne.com

                                       
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