Like the sunshine she evidently brought with her, Deana Carter fills the room with peace and warmth, a pretty tough sell these days.

Happiness isn't cool, after all. It's something to be mistrusted, scrutinized, but it has another local scribe beaming as he comes out of her hotel yesterday morning.

"She is just such a nice person," he says with a smitten smile.

Hip or not, Carter is a believer in good, she says, at the same time letting out the occasional foul word with a smile of her own while admitting a fascination with '70s icon David Bowie and '90s icon Marilyn Manson.

Her husband has the new Manson CD, Mechanical Animals, waiting at home for her in their south Nashville house, once owned by Dolly Parton.

Like Manson, the sunny Carter is fixated with the decade of her childhood, though her take on the times is a little different.

"Why dwell on the negative? But I have to admit I'm fascinated with him, Marilyn. We'd make quite a pair, eh? I don't say I agree with him 100%, but he's very intelligent, that much is clear from interviews."

Also like Manson, Carter's on a spiritual quest of her own, exploring her feelings and beliefs.

"I'm reading a book called The Messenger right now and it's amazing. It sounds silly, but it's about angels and stuff like that."

Carter believes, along with living right and having a beer reward at the end of the day, that ghosts and reincarnation are real. Her house is 150 years old and having had only seven owners, it's a perfect setting for the spirits.

"I don't want to wish a ghost on myself, but it sure would be something. My mother's a southern Baptist and she's gonna freak when she reads the book. She'll condemn me to hell," she laughs.

Carter, here on a promotional tour, is dressed casually in the breakfast room at the posh Varscona Hotel yesterday morning, immediately taking a relaxed, cat-like pose on the couch. She's the kind of woman who looks you in the eyes enough to make you squirm a bit, and her revelations come quickly, such as she was once a high school cheerleader - "I can still do the splits," she says, demonstrating - and that she carries a note from Steven Spielberg in her wallet after she kissed him in a skit on the Tonight Show.

She spent the day before touring the city, even catching an Oilers game and making it on the big screen. "I sure didn't expect that," she says, a-rolling her blue eyes.

More seriously: "My quest in life is to: A) figure out myself and to B) promote all the possibilities in life. I just want to be the light instead of the dark, you know? You have to have elements of both, of course," she smiles.

What she also needs is a massage to get the kink out of her back, and the bigger pain in her back from three straight years of promoting herself, ever since the release of Did I Shave My Legs for This - which she didn't yesterday, by the way, pulling up her pant leg to prove it.

"I think the legs aren't as bad as the pits," she snickers.

Her new album, a more personal one, is called Everything's Gonna Be Alright and includes a wild version of that old rollerskating song, Brand New Key.

Carter is clearly in control of her career and has had a great time living a life of "rigid spontaneity, if you get my meaning.

"But I was reading a medical journal about doctors giving warnings to pregnant women over 35 and it's scary. I'm only two years away, man."

Given this, she admits she wants a baby but is wary of the compromise it may bring to her doorstep.

"That's the scary part - the big black hole!

"When it comes to kids I can now visualize them running around the house.

"But I've devoted so much of my spirit and my life to this career, I'd better get on it, don't you think?"

I think, Deana, whatever you do will be just fine.

Let's just hope the sun hasn't gone back south with you.