When Kathy Patrick (center) hits the road next week to promote her memoirish self-help book, The Pulpwood Queens' Tiara-Wearing, Book-Sharing Guide to Life, she'll be raffling off a "big hair makeover" at each stop on her 25-city tour. One attendee at each reading will, after signing a photo waiver, have a style session with Patrick—who runs her book club out of her combination hair salon/bookstore in East Texas—with "Put on Pieces" from Hair U Wear collection.

I imagine the photos will be turning up on her website around the time Patrick makes her way back to Jefferson, Texas, for her annual "Girlfriend Weekend" book festival—at which, I would be remiss if I failed to point out, I'm scheduled to conduct a workshop on blogging for aspiring (and accomplished) writers. It should be a fun weekend: Featured guests include Adrienne Barbeau, N.M. Kelby, Will Clarke, and Mary Kay Andrews, and something like two dozen other writers.

(I took the picture above at last year's festival, where Patrick was flanked by two members of her Grand Central publishing team, editor Natalie Kaire and publicist Elly Weisenberg.)