Jan 2, 2026

What’s in a Name: Color Me Crazy

One of my favorite things about the Magnolia Manor series isn’t just the stories themselves—it’s the titles.

From the very beginning, I knew I wanted each book’s name to feel like home. Something familiar. Something you might hear drifting across a porch on a warm evening, spoken with a knowing smile and just a hint of mischief. Southern sayings have a way of doing that. They’re lighthearted, expressive, and often carry far more meaning than the words alone suggest.

Each title in the Magnolia Manor series is built from a Southernism or bit of Southern slang—phrases that sound casual on the surface, but hint at deeper truths, tangled relationships, and the kind of drama that simmers just beneath polite conversation.

Passion, Impulse, and the Bravery of Feeling Too Much

“Color me crazy” is what you say when you already know how it looks. It’s the phrase you use when you’re about to admit something unreasonable. Something impractical. Something that doesn’t fit neatly into good sense or careful planning. It’s a half-apology and a half-dare, wrapped up in three small words. And in the South, it’s often followed by a choice you were going to make anyway.

That’s what makes Color Me Crazy such an important title in the Magnolia Manor series. Because after secrets are revealed and judgments are passed, what comes next is usually emotion, raw, unfiltered, and impossible to ignore.

This title belongs to people who feel deeply in a world that expects restraint. To those who act before thinking, love before protecting themselves, and speak when silence would be safer. It’s about the moments when the heart outruns the head and refuses to be called back. At Magnolia Manor, being “crazy” often just means being honest.

It means wanting something you aren’t supposed to want. Saying yes when tradition says no. Choosing hope even when experience suggests better sense. It means stepping out of line in a place where lines are clearly drawn and rarely crossed. Southern culture has long celebrated composure. Grace under pressure. Keeping your feelings tucked away where they won’t inconvenience anyone else. But Color Me Crazy challenges that idea by asking: what if passion isn’t a flaw? What if it’s a form of courage?

Because loving fully without guarantees and without permission has always been risky.

This title explores impulsiveness not as recklessness, but as necessity. As the instinct that pushes people toward change when patience has already failed them. It examines how quickly someone can be labeled unstable, dramatic, or foolish simply for refusing to settle for a life half-lived. At Magnolia Manor, passion doesn’t announce itself politely. It arrives all at once, demanding to be acknowledged. It disrupts routines, challenges expectations, and exposes truths that careful living works hard to avoid.

And once it’s there, there’s no un-feeling it.

Color Me Crazy is about the price of emotional honesty, and the freedom that sometimes comes with paying it. It’s about characters who stop apologizing for wanting more, even when “more” comes with consequences. It’s about doing the unthinkable because it’s the right thing to do. Because sometimes the bravest thing you can do is let yourself be seen fully, even if everyone else shakes their head and says you’ve lost your mind.

And if that’s crazy? Then Magnolia Manor has always been full of crazy and love.

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